Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2059: The Bloom is Off the Bloom

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the firing of Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and the extension of Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo, injuries to Max Scherzer and Sandy Alcantara and MLB’s UCL scourge, and a proposed tier system for the Hall of Fame and single-season awards, then Stat Blast […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats, with Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs. Effective in the high end. Effective in the high end. Effective in the high end. Effectively Wild, and we are still in those positions. Who would fire us? I mean, who has the authority to? I guess David Appleman could, but I don't know. And there could be an uprising among the Patreon supporters, I guess.

Yeah. I'm sure they'd have our backs. I don't know whether Red Sox fans have the back of Chaim Bloom to the same extent, but we can talk about that because we've got some front office, maneuvering front office news here. We have a president of baseball operations staying in Washington, D.C., Mike Rizzo staying a couple years longer. But more notable, perhaps, always more notable to have a firing than an extension, is Chaim Blum of the Red Sox, but no longer of the Red Sox because he got the axe. What do you think? Is this a fall guy scapegoat situation or is this a deserved,

yeah, he had it coming to the extent that we can ever tell from afar. My first thought upon serving the wreckage of this news on Twitter is that it's as much a Rorschach test for the people reacting to it as anything else. Like, I've seen some takes, and I'm a little surprised by the fire behind some of them, because here's my read on this situation. You tell me if you think I am being overly relaxed about the whole thing. My sense of Bloom's tenure in Boston is that he was for the duration of his time there under-resourced relative to the team's capacity and that he didn't really make the most of the resources he did have. And so I think this is what happens when you don't make most of the resources you do have. I think he'll get another job in baseball.

And so I think it's fine. I imagine that somewhere in like john henry's head and i don't know if it's toward the front or the back of his brain he might be thinking to himself well now i won't get booed you know if i'm out in public around boston sports fans like now i won't get booed and i don't think that that that's true because we hold on to stuff for a really long time and sports fans tend to be grudge holders. But I don't know. He was, I'm sure, mandated to trade Mookie Betts. So, like, that's not on him.

Did he maximize the return he could have gotten for Mookie Betts? I think we can arguably say no, he didn't do that. I think we can arguably say, no, he didn't do that. So does ownership have a role in a pretty sizable one in the fortunes of the Red Sox over the last couple of years? Yeah. I mean, that would be impossible to deny. But I think that we can also look at the last couple of years of Red Sox baseball and say that, at least to me, it has felt at times kind of rudderless there have been times when they have felt like they're you know coming and going at the same time not quite committed to putting a playoff caliber team on the field not really totally ready to tear it down all the way we've seen their firm system improve i think largely separately from the guys they acquired for Betts. But we also have seen that their pitching is really nowhere, you know, for the most part, both in terms of the guys they have in the minors now and what they've had in the rotation, especially at the big league level,

they've had up and down bullpens. So I think it's like a mixed bag. And if you had told me that he was going to get another year or two to try to bring along the young guys they do have, I would have been like, yeah, okay. And if you told me this news today, I'd be like, yeah, okay. So it doesn't, I mean, it feels like the amount of spice that it's being injected with has a great deal to do with the Red Sox of it all and a lot less to do with the bloom of it all. But yeah, I think it was an unremarkable tenure punctuated by a lot of uninspiring moments and one playoff run. It can be hard when you're dealing with executives sort of in this mold because, you know, I started by saying he was under-resourced while he was in Boston. I think that's true. But part of why executives in this mold tend to do

well in interviews and tend to get jobs is because they say to ownership, well, I can get you at least as much, if not more, by spending less. That's part of the strategy and approach to roster building that they will talk about when they're interviewing for these positions. So I don't want to tag him unfairly with the failures of the ownership group that employed him because those failures are relevant to our understanding of what this team is going to be over the next couple of years and what what its fans might expect but i also think that we don't want to let him off the hook entirely because like these guys go in and say you're going to spend less you're going to win as many games and that didn't happen for the most part

in boston over the last couple of years. So that's, I sound like I've taken like a second all. I'm like, really? I'm like early days of effectively wild register right now. I'm you from like. Episode five. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, it's been a week. Who could say? Trying to counteract the heat of the takes, I guess, on Twitter. And like, I get why, you you know for me to

say well it's as it's more about the red sox of it all than the boom of all is a little unfair because like this is i think a franchise that it is fair for us to imbue with like importance beyond it's the win-loss record of the red sox in any given year, right? When you are a team that is resourced in the way that Boston is, when you have the capacity to throw your weight around and you elect not to do that, like, I think it's fair to feel consternation about that and worry about what it means for, you know, spending more generally and whatnot. And like, I'm never going to begrudge someone being mad about boston trading mookie bets because like you know it's become kind of a joke at this point but like imagine trading mookie bets you know and you know i do think it's important for us to acknowledge that like we don't have perfect transparency and insight into like the back and forth of you know all of these decisions and who

knows like maybe they could have pushed really hard and Mookie Betts would have just gotten blown away by a free agent offer and he would have left anyway. Like, we don't know. But they made the decision to move on from him. And it sounds like they made it twice, right? By not giving him an offer that was sort of commensurate with what the market was thought to bear at that time and by explicitly trading him. So explicitly trading him makes it sound like it was like dirty. A lot of expense that it was. But not in a fun way, right? So all of that to say, I am whelmed. I imagine that we have not seen the last of Bloom as a front office executive.

I will be very curious to see what names start circulating to replace him. I imagine there will be some internal candidates, but it will be interesting to see if there are outside voices that resonate with Henry at all and what the reaction of the industry is to that job like if you're bet so ben congratulations you are a gm candidate uh i am sorry to see you go but i want you to pursue your dreams and you are being bloom by the way hired jeff sullivan away from effectively wild when he was still with the race so yeah but see i me ben i Ben, I'm a big person. I'm not going to begrudge him that because Jeff wanted to follow his dreams. And I'm happy for my friend getting to do that. Did it cause me a lot of heartburn literally in the early months of my tenure as managing editor? I mean, yeah, it did. But again, I'm a rise above kind of gal. So we're going to move on from that. But congratulations, you're being interviewed by the Red Sox. I will be curious to see what we hear from other industry folks about how they perceive that opportunity. Because on the one hand, it's the Boston Red Sox, Ben.

Storied franchise. There are, especially on the position player side, some really exciting young guys in their system. Again, you get to hang out with the weird mascot. There's a lot to recommend it, but they don't really have much in the way of pitching and they are in a division that is just stacked you know and is not like really positioned to get worse you know if anything the the team at the top of that division right now is positioned to get potentially a whole lot

better over the coming years in the form of the Orioles So if what you are tasked with is like, hey, go win quick, that might be hard for Boston, even if they really go whole hog and free agency, even if, you know, a lot of their younger guys sort of break right from a dev perspective. That's a big project right now. Is it as big a project as the Yankees? I don't know. Like, that's an interesting conversation, too. But I'll be curious to know. Like, that's, that's an interesting conversation, too. But I'll be curious to see, like, you know, when the names start leaking, and we start hearing from anonymous executives about how they perceive the Boston opportunity. You know, I'll be, I'll be curious to see what that the tone of that discourse is like. So yeah, Peter Abraham,

who covers the Red Sox for the Globe, has already been tweeting about some potential candidates. Apparently, Brian O'Hourin, who is the GM of the Red Sox, will not continue to be the GM, but will stay on in some other senior role. So they'll be hiring someone else, presumably. And Pete Abe, just off the top of his head, started listing several prominent executives from other front offices, from the Blue Jays and the Orioles and the Phillies and the Guardians and Atlanta. I don't know that he was linking them based on things he'd heard or just, yeah, these are kind of the generic candidates that you would put on any general manager, president of baseball operations

candidates list. But it's funny, I almost brought up Bloom on our last episode when we were talking about the Mets hiring Stearns and how that seemed like such an obvious fit. And Stearns was kind of the most obvious, most wanted candidate, probably because of his experience. And you would have said the same about Bloom when the Red Sox hired him, right? Because the Rays had had such success under him. And any top Rays executive is always going to be close to the top of the wishlist of any owner because again, as I said last time, they want to win, but if they can win without spending a lot, even better. So it was very much the model, the blueprint of where the Dodgers, let's go get the Rays GM, let's go get Andrew Friedman. And then

we can continue to win and maybe we won't have to spend quite as much to do that. And the Red Sox probably had the same sort of thing in mind. Let's go get Heimblum, and we can keep winning, we can ball on a budget, and we'll have the best of both worlds. And that didn't really work out so well. So I basically agree with your evaluation. I think he walked into a tough situation in the sense that he had to be the guy to take the hit of trading Mookie Betts, even though I think everyone knew that that was an ownership mandate and he just had to carry out their orders. But if you are going to trade Mookie Betts, then that is going to be forever associated with you.

And you're very unlikely to get a player of the caliber of Mookie Betts back. But if all you get is Jeter Downs, who's gone now, and Connor Wong and Alex Verdugo, then you didn't make the most or the best of that bad situation. So, yeah, it is true that the Red Sox have not spent as much during Bloom's tenure as they did during some of their championship years, their 11th in payroll this year. So it is partly a lack of ownership support. But as you're saying, it wasn't like he distinguished himself hugely. Like there are certainly fines and good signings that he had. And I guess the number one feather in his cap would be that he's built back up the farm system. So he inherited Dave Dombrowski's smoking ruin of the Red Sox farm system, right, as well as some contracts like the Chris Sale contract. And so he was somewhat hamstrung in that sense. And he's built back that system to be currently, according to Fangraphs, number three overall. So that's a pretty good turnaround if it was dead last or just about when Bloom was hired in late 2019. And here we are getting to late 2023, and they have one of the best systems, and they're not a disaster at the big league level.

I guess what did them in, I mean, 2020, they finished last. 2021, they were sort of surprise contenders, and they managed to finish second in the AL East and go all the way to the ALCS. And so it seemed like, well, okay, we thought there was going to be maybe a longer rebuild here. And of course, you could have said, well, if we had Mookie Betts on this roster, that roster, I don't know that that would have been sufficient. But like this year, if they had Mookie Betts instead of Alex Verdugo, then I guess they

would be closer to contention than they are. But they finished last year, and now they're tied for last, I guess, with the Yankees currently. So if you finish last or are close to finishing last in three of your four years, it's a city and an organization where you're expected to keep winning one way or another. Even though the Red Sox have really oscillated, I mean, they've been pretty volatile. They've gone from last place to winning the World Series like multiple times and back and forth, so who knows? But if you sort of settle in as a last place team, not that they've underperformed this season

based on what was expected for them. They were projected to finish 81-81 according to the FedGraphs playoff odds preseason. And as we record, they're 73 and 72. So they basically are who we thought they were coming into the season. Maybe it's a problem that that's who they were thought to be, even in that division. But yeah, you could look around and maybe John Henry's looking around and saying, oh, there are teams with lower payrolls than ours that are managing to be good and contend, including Bloom's old team, Therese. So when you look around, I guess it's very much in the way that Dave Dombrowski got credit for a lot of Ben Sherrington additions. for a lot of Ben Sherrington additions.

It's probably going to be the case that whoever is hired to run the Red Sox, and if the Red Sox go on to be good, then a big part of the foundation of that team will be Chaim Blum additions. That's always how it works. It's almost like an argument for keeping your baseball executives for a very long time.

That's the case that the baseball executive will make. Like, you need to give me five years or seven years or however long to see that plan play out. So if Bloom had come in day one and said, hey, it's going to be a while and this is going to be a rebuild or a step back, but I'm going to build up the farm system and then we will have the player development machine that Theo Epstein was trying to build and sort of did. By the way, Theo Epstein will not be returning to the Red Sox. It has been reported. Not that anyone really would have expected that, but it's going to be the same sort of thing where

the next guy comes in and gets all the credit, even though the predecessor did a lot of the work, right? But even if you look at this current Red Sox roster and you say, okay, the pitching development has been a problem for the Red Sox even back before Bloom and it has continued to be other than Baio this year, right? Brian Baio, other than that, there's not a whole lot to hang your hat on, but Baio was signed in 2017. So that preceded Bloom, of course, and Tristan Casas has had his breakout this year, but he wasn't a Bloom addition. So Devers is still around. Devers was the one guy that they did pay and he's having sort of a so-so season by Devers standards. And I guess the big bets that Bloom has made, like Trevor Story and Yoshida, I suppose, right? So those haven't been stunning successes.

Like Yoshida's been pretty good, but because of his defensive limitations, it's not like an overwhelming win, I guess. And Trevor Story, of course, was hurt for much of the season and has not played well since his return and really wasn't great last year either. So if you kind of like your big swings aren't home runs and then you don't have a whole lot of luck

just like finding guys who were unexpected successes during your tenure, then what do you have to hang your hat on other than, hey, look at the farm system, it's probably going to get better down the road. So just give me time. But that doesn't always work in a market like this. I think it might be a different situation if even the distribution of talent they had at the minor league level looked a little bit different. But like when you look at our farm system rankings, you know, of their guys who are at the moment viewed as top 100 prospects, you know, we're about to start a new cycle of org audits, but like,

they're all hitters. And a lot, while they are a well regarded farm system, and they have at the moment for top 100 prospects, a lot of the value here is being concentrated in depth so there's that piece of it too and you know i i just don't know at least from what they have on the roster now when you're when you would look ahead and be like well this is when we can really expect them to be good you know i think that there's there are ways off from that and some of the stuff you know know, like pitching is volatile, pitching gets hurt. A lot of the Red Sox pitching got hurt. They had Noah Song and then he couldn't play baseball for a couple of years because he had to go serve a military commitment, right? Like

there have been some weird things that have happened within this org. But they've also done like weird process stuff. And, you know, they were like, yeah, we'll take on Eric Hosmer for reasons. You know, it was just like it has it has felt kind of rudderless at times. like say Tampa Bay able to do what they do for less money it does take time to build out and so it could be that like you said a couple years from now we look back and say well the improvements that they made from a player dev perspective from a scouting perspective like they just hadn't borne fruit yet and we're gonna look back and feel like you, Bloom was sort of unfairly maligned for stuff, you know, setting aside the Betts deal, right? But I don't think that he did anything that's going to preclude him from working in baseball again. But I also don't think that, you know, he did anything that makes me feel like, oh my God, I can't believe that they let this guy go. It's like, yeah, this is kind of what happens, you know, particularly in markets like Boston. If he had been, I don't know, the GM of the Pirates just to continue our weird snaking Boston GM tree, right? Like, does he get let go this soon, quote unquote, into his tenure? I mean, probably not,

but he doesn't. He works for the Red Sox. And that comes with a different sort of resisted saying, we're buyers, we're sellers. He wants to maintain the flexibility of saying, well, we'll be opportunistic. And maybe there are ways we can add and ways we can subtract at the same time. And I sort of admire that in a sense, like, okay, maybe there's some merit to being flexible and trying to look for ways to help yourself that are in a sense on the surface almost kind of contradictory, but maybe not. Maybe everyone else is too rigid when it comes to we're adding and we're subtracting. Maybe you can actually do both at the same time. Maybe that's even an advantage to think of yourself more flexibly, but it also has led to a lot of confusion. Like, why are they getting rid of this guy and then adding that guy? And I've read stories about how there's confusion even within the organization. Like, who are we?

What are we doing? Which way are we rowing here so that we can all row together? And then I guess more recently there was that mess with Matt Dermody, the pitcher that they promoted. Right. Who had had a whole history of bad tweets. And they came out and were like, yeah, we did our due diligence. and they came out and were like, yeah, we did our due diligence. And then they had to come back and walk that back and say, actually, we didn't really look very deeply

into this at all. And we shouldn't change how we talk about this and also what our process is for doing these kinds of social media background checks. So that wasn't a moment of glory. Although again, you probably only have him on the team in the first place because you're so desperate for pitching.

So yeah, it's been kind of a confusing tenure. So I guess the shine is off the rose a little bit with Bloom, but maybe... You went with the shine is off the rose and not the bloom is off the rose? How did I? First of all, bloom is the expression. It's not even shine. Yeah, it was right there for you, Ben. I went from bloom to shine. Oh, man. Wow. Well, thank you for calling me on that because that would have been a major missed opportunity. I don't want to be unnecessarily antagonistic. I'm not saving up some vinegar because I've been so level-headed about my reaction to this firing.

But it's right there for you, Ben. Right there. The bloom is off the bloom. So now maybe he'll take a less prominent position somewhere else. You know, he'll have like that rebuild year,

like a James Click sort of situation. I'll just go and be an assistant to someone somewhere, right? I'll be a senior executive and then someone else will come calling or who knows, maybe someone else will snap him up more quickly than that. But yeah, it was probably not the debut that he was hoping for.

I would imagine not. But I also, I have one last, I have one last little thing. I'm like, the timing of this also feels strange to me. Like, I don't know if I think it's too early or too late. I don't know. I like, it's September 14th. Maybe that's just, you know, you think it's too early or too late. I don't know. I like it's September 14th. Maybe that's just, you know, you do it on a Thursday. I don't know. Maybe that's when you do it, but it does feel you didn't want to wait two weeks, let him conclude the season. Now you got this weird vestigial part of your schedule, but I guess you already had that. I don't know. What a weird, it's an odd one. Right.

Unless it's just, hey, we can get a head start here on interviewing our candidates. Right. There's probably kind of a jockeying for position when it comes to, hey, here's the cream of the crop when it comes to the front office prospects. So we fire our guy and start our interview process and start our head hunting sooner than we get the first mover advantage, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I think there are probably some ways in which he gets a bad rap for his tenure and people don't account for the difficulties he faced in terms of what he inherited and the ownership constraints. But also, it was, yeah, not the most distinguished tenure. So the other team, the Jeter Downs new organization, the Nationals, although he's in the minors, right? But what is going on with the Nationals these days?

I don't know, man. On the one hand, there's continuity in that they extended their manager. And that the vibes are bad? Yeah, well, there's that. But they extended their manager, Dave Martinez, and now they've extended Mike Rizzo, who is like the third longest tenured head of a baseball operations department, I think, at this point.

That kind of snuck up on me. Yeah, it did. Because you've got Cashman, who knows how secure his job is these days. Can I just say something about that really fast like i did see a lot of yankees fans being like cashman's next and i'm like i i still and i i say this because i expect it to be a long time from now so i'm not you know doing anything like spooky or pretentious he's gonna die in that seat like i just refuse to

believe that he is he is really on the block. So anyway, that is my Cashman take. No, until I see it, it will be weird if and when it happens. But yeah, it's Cashman and then it's John Mazzalac. And obviously his Cardinals are not having a great time this season either, but he signed an extension recently, as did Cashman. So now you have Rizzo, who's been running the show there since 2009. He's been with the Nationals since 2006. He's been president of baseball operations since 2012, I think.

He's been through ups and downs, and he built up that team, and they won the World Series. And then they traded away a ton of guys, and they just embarked on a rebuild that they have tried to speed up. And I guess there are some positive indicators there. But when it comes to the ownership situation and the spending situation, I was sort of surprised when I saw that he had re-upped there because there's been a lot of turnover lately. Yes. Like a close friend of his, apparently, the scouting director,

longtime colleague, resigned. Yes. contracts, but this was more than the usual, at least a one-time dismissal. And of course, there's the ongoing uncertainty about the state of the franchise and ownership. Ted Lerner died, Mark Lerner, the Lerners have been exploring a sale of the team for some time now, which they kind of put on hold for a while. And part of that was the uncertainty about the Masson dispute, which was, I think, resolved this summer. After dragging on for years, there was at least a decision. And I think the Orioles and the Nationals each got $100 million or something like that. The dispute going back years and years since the Nationals' old expos moved to D.C. and the Orioles wanted concessions for that and they've been sharing this broadcast network. So that maybe has been removed.

So amid all that, the turnover in the front office and the ownership shakiness, I wasn't sure whether Rizzo would want to stay or whether they would want to make a long-term commitment. But maybe this is part of making the team more attractive, just having some leadership in place, even though sometimes a new owner comes in and wants their own people. So I'm sure that Rizzo wants to sort of stay the course and see the Nationals through to the other side because it seemed like he was quite reluctant to do the rebuild that they did. I guess there's kind of a similarity here in that Rizzo traded Juan Soto and probably didn't want to, right? And initially came out and said,

we're not trading Juan Soto. And then they ended up trading Juan Soto, which obviously was largely an ownership decision too. And maybe so far it's too soon to tell, but they seem to have their returns for that deal and others were pretty praised at the time, at least. And there's been some progress at the major league level. Like the team has not had a good season, but I think they were expected to be even worse than they've been, right? Like they've been jockeying for fourth with the Mets, which is not what anyone expected coming into this year. In either direction. No. They're last now.

They're 65 and 81. It's not a good year. But there are signs of progress, I guess you could say. And C.J. Abrams has had a much better year, not looking like a slapdick prospect this year. And Josiah Gray has been better. And K. Burt Ruiz, I guess, has had framing issues, but has hit okay for a catcher. So, and farm system wise, I mentioned that Fangraphs had the Red Sox rank third, the Nationals rank second. Yeah. So there's hope on the horizon there, too. It's just a weird, it's a weird bundle of things because it's like, I guess you get extending him and wanting to telegraph sort of like stability, particularly ahead of a potential sale. But also there's a ton of instability below him. and it took a really long time to get him extended. And then there was all the Strasberg stuff. And that has been so strange.

I know when I am trying to convey that you are moving forward, that I handle things with a franchise icon who can barely lift his kids comfortably the way that I handle things with a franchise icon who can barely lift his kids comfortably the way that I handled that, where he was retiring, but obviously wasn't officially retired. And then there was supposed to be a press conference about it. And then the press conference got postponed.

I don't even know whose fault it is. It's hard to tell. Like there's been kind of conflicting reporting. Yeah. I'm sure the truth will come out. Yeah. And I want to be fair or at least precise and acknowledge that there is a good deal of uncertainty there. And, you know, it seems like there's recrimination on both sides, but it doesn't, it's not great either way, right? No. Yeah. Because they announced, or it was reported at least,

there was nothing officially announced, but it was reported that there was going to be this going away retirement ceremony and that the Nationals were just going to pay Strasburg what was remaining on his contract. Because it is sort of silly if you have a player with seemingly chronic health issues that even go beyond the ability to play baseball. Obviously, if you have years left on your contracts and many years due to you, then if you just retire, well, the team can say, well, we agreed on this contract and we were supposed to play to earn that money. And now you're saying I'm not going to play.

And so we don't have to pay you. And of course, that contract was not insured. It's been reported because of all his previous injuries. So the Nationals are on the hook for that. But it's also sort of silly to string it along. I mean, if you have a player who clearly is not capable of playing, then get some kind of doctor's note or something. It's like the Prince Fielder situation almost, where, yeah, I guess we could maintain the fiction that he's going to come back and he could say he's trying to come back. And every now and then, maybe if he feels OK, he could try rehabbing or something again. But when it seems so unlikely that he's going to come back, then maybe just move on.

But it was reported. I guess there was one report that like Rob Manfred had stepped in and had been like, we don't want to set a precedent of paying players their whole contract if they're not going to play and just having them say, you know, they're not going to play anymore. Like, what if this were some slippery slope and opening the floodgates and everyone just said, I'm retired. I'm not going to play anymore. And you have to pay me all my money as if that would happen. And then it was maybe reported that like the Nationals were trying to cheap out and get out of paying him full freight. But then the Nationals have defended themselves and said that that's not the case. And so both Rizzo has come out and said like there's been a lot of misinformation. Right. He said it's the most misinformed, miscommunicated non-issue of the season and that it's just like procedural stuff that has to happen in this kind of situation.

So I don't know. I don't know if they've been pressured or if they've done anything wrong or what, but it's been a very confusing situation, especially because like Lerner put a statement out where he ended by saying, it is our hope that ongoing conversations remain private out of respect for the individuals involved. Until then, we look forward to seeing Stephen when we report to spring training.

Lerner had supposedly said he expected Strasburg to pitch in spring training, which technically is not what he said. But also when he said we expect to see him in spring training, that seemed like he was at least maintaining the possibility or like expecting him to try to pitch. I think most people read it that way as opposed to just like, hey, Stephen, haven't seen you in a while. Here we are in spring training just hanging out. Haven't seen you in a while. Here we are in spring training just hanging out. So yeah, that has been just a very strange situation a perfect understanding a better understanding of like the places that they are behind both from a an analytics and player dev perspective but like it's gonna be a little bit you know it's gonna take a

while for them to sort through that stuff so i don't know it's gonna be a while i think until until it's like really in a position for us to be like, they're here. They're back. It's great. done for the season and potentially postseason, the Rangers have played a little bit better of late since we talked about the potential for them to miss the playoffs. Much to your dismay as a Mariners fan, maybe. I don't wish Max Scherzer injury, to be clear, but I do wish the Rangers losing, you know, like personally. Right. You know, personally, I do that.

Scherzer has the same injury, I guess, that Verlander started the season with. And it's going to take him out long enough that, yeah, he's probably done for the year, won't be back till next year when he's under contract. And that's been a recurring issue with Scherzer, just durability. He's pitched better for the Rangers than he had for the Mets. And he has helped them in their pursuit of the division and wildcard, but will not be helping them anymore. So Jordan Montgomery, who has also pitched well for them, he'll have to be the big deadline addition. But thanks for the Rangers, because they went out and got a Mets ace before the season, and that guy got hurt. And now they've gotten another Mets ace, and that guy's gotten. And now they've gotten another Metz ace and that guy's

gotten hurt. Not that that was like completely unpredictable in either case, but still stinks. It's a blow as they go down the stretch here. But the other injury that I wanted to mention is Sandy Alcantara. So we noted this the other day because he went on the IL with the dreaded flexor strain that often turns into something more serious. And now it's being reported as a UCL sprain. So it's not clear that this is a full sproing situation. Sprain is kind of a confusing term because sometimes sprain just means tear. Now, there's like the lowest grade of UCL injury, like the ligament is just stretched but is not torn. Sometimes that can be referred to as a sprain.

But also sometimes a tear can just be described as a sprain or a strain. It sounds less serious, I guess. It's just a sprain, you know. It's not like I broke it. It's just a sprain. But it's still bad when it involves the UCL. And it's just like the UCL just feels like the worst thing about baseball right now, at least when it comes to the game on the field. It's just, it's this like Achilles heel, Achilles elbow of pitchers and pitching and the sport what it is and it's not even

in many cases a painful injury there are a lot of times where it's like i didn't even know or something felt off but it wasn't acute pain like there's sometimes when a guy's pitching and grabs his elbow and and walks off and it. But other times it doesn't. Like maybe they sense that something is amiss, like with Otani, but it's not even clear that there's pain. And sometimes you can't even tell when it happened. Like with Jason Dominguez, it was just like,

yeah, this started bothering me and it didn't get better, but it wasn't necessarily like this swing is when it happened or this throw. It's just this sort of mysterious, nebulous, weak spot. And it just it feels like a flaw in the design of baseball players. And this is just getting worse and worse. Like there are more and more TJs, at least on all levels. I guess there have been worse years when it comes to Tommy John at the major league level.

But it's happening so often in the amateur ranks. And I don't know what to do about it, but it sucks because you can't count on anyone at this point. Like, it's obviously something that befalls hard throwers more often, but not exclusively. And you have someone like Alcantara, who was such a great story last year and was like this throwback, pitching lots of complete games, but efficiently and seemingly good mechanics. And then this year started slow, had been pitching better of late, and we're still going deep into games at times. And I guess someone who threw a lot of innings and throws hard, is not that unlikely a candidate for this. But you just can't count on anyone.

It's like any pitcher. They could get hurt at any time on any pitch, and you might not even know that it happened. So you're just in this constant state of uncertainty. It's not like, oh, he just came back from the UCL injury. He'll be fine now. He's got a fresh ligament. Not necessarily. You can re-injure it.

Or, well, I didn't see any obvious sign of pain, so he's probably okay for the moment. Not necessarily. You never know. It's really bad. It's just Schrodinger's UCL, and it can derail and disrupt careers. So it sucks.

I don't like it. I don't like this UCL at all. We need it, I guess, unless you're R.A. Dickey. But it's just like this point of failure for everyone. And it's spoiling the sport in some ways. Yeah. I don't know what you do about it, Ben, but I wish that we could figure it out. It does always feel like you're just waiting. You're just sitting in anxious, frazzled anticipation to learn like, you know, that time he shook his hand or that time he pumped his, you know, he tried to grab, it's just, you know, every time, you know.

Yeah, I don't like it, you know yeah i don't like it you know i don't like it either and it's it's such a weird injury because it usually doesn't interfere with your non-baseball life the way that stephen strasburg's injuries have like if you're not pitching you don't even really need a ucl or it won't bother you if your uL is torn. It might initially, there might be some soreness, but then like you could go about your business. It's like this very specific motion, this pitching specific ailment. I know like quarterbacks have had it.

You know, there's been an NBA player or two who's had it, but it just feels like this flaw in the design of human anatomy that has been exposed by this one activity where you're just throwing over and over harder and harder and it's the weak spot there's always going to be the weak spot in the kinetic chain and teams have done a better job and players have done a better job of strengthening their shoulders and and it's good in the sense that shoulder injuries are even harder to repair. And at least if it's a UCL strain, there's some recourse and you can get a TJ and it's fairly

reliable and you'll probably be able to come back. But it just is an epidemic. Like Jeff Passon wrote a book about this and it hasn't really gotten much better since then. And I don't know how it's going to get better because it's not like we're all going to suddenly evolve. Like unless we get the future blast scenario where you can enhance ligaments and tendons somehow, you can't strengthen it is the problem. You can't go in the gym and strengthen your UCL. So some guys have stronger ones than others. And some people have mechanics that are more efficient or place a little less strain on the elbow, but that's always going to be the weak point that is bearing a big

part of the load that you're subjecting your arm to. And it's just, it's going to fail eventually. And unless we find a way to either enhance that part of your body or stop players from throwing so hard. And we've talked about potential ways to do that, but it's tough to recondition all the pitchers who've been conditioned to throw really hard. So how do you get them to stop doing that? Can you change the rules in order to encourage pitchers to pace themselves?

It's just a really tough situation and it just bums me out every time I see flexor strain and UCL strain or UCL tear or Tommy John surgery and it's just so frequent. So it sucks. Yeah, it just, humans evolve so slowly except when they're X-Men. Then they have, as Patrick Stewart would tell us, jumps forward. Yeah, we need to jump tell us, jumps forward. Yeah. We need to jump forward with the UCL. Yeah.

Well, I guess you don't want it to be adamantium because it needs to be flexible in a way that adamantium is not, famously. Probably, yeah. Yeah. I think that that's canon, Ben. That's my understanding is that it's canon. Man, remember the X-Men, like the animated X-Men? Yeah.

Well, it's coming back. They're making a new animated X-Men? Yeah, well, it's coming back. They're making a new animated X-Men. Are they really? Yeah, X-Men 97. But we could not do that. It would be fine if we did a different story. You're part of the problem because you remember the original so fondly

and they're going to cash in on that nostalgia. I have not been agitating though, right? No, you haven't been out here like, we need to do animated extra. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, we're getting Frasier back and I feel deeply ambivalent about it, Ben. It's not even set in Seattle.

You've informed me. No, it's in Boston. Yeah. I got to tell you though, I watched the first couple and it's actually pretty good. I'm very surprised by my positive reaction I just don't

I was gonna be so begrudging, conflicted you know, they can replace the dog but they can't replace his dad that guy's dead, you know, the dog is the original dog is too yeah, that too anyway

so it is really a quadri because with so many problems about baseball, you could potentially tweak something or change something. Oh, the games are too long? Okay, we'll put in a pitch clock. Or the strikeout rate is too high? Well, maybe that's a thornier problem, but there are definitely things that we could do to address that.

And with this, it just feels like human anatomy is the enemy. And there's just only sozen quote in a recent USA Today article about this problem where he was like, I could take something off. I could throw 88 instead of 95, but we'd probably have the trainers running out there. Like what's wrong with you, right? Because everyone is coached

and taught to throw max effort all the time. So my main recommendation, I really feel like it's the number one way maybe to fix baseball is to limit the number of pitchers on the active roster. But even with that, there would be an adjustment period and there would be growing pains and maybe actual literal pains while you forced everyone kicking, screaming to adhere to that.

But something's got to be done. Like, we can't just go on with guys going down with this regularity. What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? You know, like, do we design fake ligaments? Do we create a time machine to the future? Is this what we spend that on, though? No, it's not the number one problem facing society.

The number one problem facing society is if we were to go back in time and put Mike Trout in a different dev environment, would he have ended up being himself? Like that's the number one. Well, that's the number one base. Well, I was about to say the number one baseball problem facing society, but that's objectively not true either. But like, you know, once we had addressed some of the more meaningful changes necessary to the timeline. Like I would put a ticket in to say, hey, can I go and do this little baseball experiment?

And I'll put it back, you know. Okay, let me get your thoughts, take your temperature on a proposed solution for another problem, if you consider it a problem. It's an interesting idea. So this week, I believe, Bill James Online is shutting down. I don't know if Bill James' whole online presence is shutting down, although arguably some of it maybe could take a step back at times. But I will miss his writing about baseball, as opposed to some of the tweets, at least, that he still makes me think and provoke some baseball thoughts at times.

And he had a recent bit at his website about a tier system for the Hall of Fame and also for award voting. So he's arguing basically that the problem with the Hall of Fame, I'll quote here, is not that it has no higher level, but rather that it has no lower level. It is this problem, the lack of a lower level of recognition that contributes to almost all of the problem with the selections. So he says, suppose that there was a lower level of post-career recognition, a level on which players like J.D. Drew, Julio Franco, Rico Petrucelli, Hank Bauer, David Wright, Cliff Floyd, Mike Cameron, Jose Reyes, Todd Zeal, Johnny Damon, Nomar, etc. A level on which those players were recognized and acknowledged.

Then there would be a place for those fans who loved David Wright and admired him to go, a place of honor and recognition. But the fact that there is no such honor forces people to argue that Johnny Damon is a Hall of Famer or Thurman Munson is a Hall of Famer or Omar Vizquel is a Hall of Famer because that's all there is. While a player is active, there are a pretty good array of awards that he can win to earn recognition. He could be an all-star, a gold glove winner, a silver slugger, an MVP, a rookie of the year, a comeback player of the year, a Fred Hutchinson award winner, a Roberto Clemente award winner. But once he retires, it's all gone. He's a Hall of Famer or he doesn't count. That is what forces people to make irrational arguments for half qualified people like Thurman Munson or Dave Steeb. Probably making some Munson and Steeb fans angry with that statement. level hall of fame in which everyone who plays in the major leagues is automatically on level one and certain other persons are also automatically on level one. Bob Fontaine, the scout who signed

several hall of famers, they're automatic hall of famers. Then you have some rule such as for every three players on level one, one gets promoted to level two. For every three players on level two, one gets promoted to level three, et cetera. You have 10 levels, but for every 19,000 players on level one, the Clint Robinsons, you will have one who is on level 10, Willie Mays. The math is a little awkward. A two to one ratio gives you too many players on level 10. A three to one ratio gives you too few. Anyway, with that structure, there is always a place for advocacy to go. Amos Otis is on level four, and I think he's worthy of a level five. There's a place for me to go with that, a structure for me to get involved in that.

A structure like that would do more to keep baseball history alive and current, make it relevant. And then he extends that to MVPs. He says he would argue that MVP awards would benefit from a similar structure. So everyone now is talking about MVP awards and how close some of the Cy Young Award races are, and it's either you win or you don't. Obviously, you could finish second or third or fourth or fifth that get some votes. But he's saying in 1910 or 1911, it was decided that each league would have one MVP in 1961 when there was expansion. They did not revisit that decision. And in 1969, when the league split into divisions, they did not revisit that decision. But what they could have done instead is this. Suppose that each team named their MVP for the season. And I guess there is something

like that. It's just no one cares. Suppose that among the five most valuable team players, each division selected the MVP for the division. Suppose that among the three divisional MVPs, one was selected as the MVP of the league. Suppose that among the two league MVPs of the season, one was honored as the MVP of the major leagues. And go even further, suppose that in each three-year period, one of the three MVPs of a season was honored for having the best single season of the three-year period. Or in each decade, one player from that decade was honored for having the best single season from that decade. So what do you think of this, in principle, a tier system for the Hall of Fame now,

I think is perhaps insufficiently flexible in terms of recognizing really great careers or recognizing careers that may be burned bright, but we are more likely to remember because they fulfill like the fame part of the hall of fame. I think that what, what Bill is proposing in particular is like hopelessly complicated in a way that would make people more frustrated than like feel like their favorite players being sufficiently recognized. So I think that if you were going to do this, you would need to do a version of it that is like markedly more simple than what he's saying and like i think that the

idea of guys moving between tiers is like probably not great like you want is you know we we want to be able to say here's what this guy was you know and then move on i think that we should encourage people to move on from hall of fame discourse much more quickly than they do i think that yeah they you gotta let it you gotta let it go you know it's like a it's as like a typo in a tweet that's not your problem anymore like that that typo has to live and stand on its own two feet you know and it's just like your children you got to send them out into the world at some point right but i think that being able to say like hey was this guy oh gosh i i like i'm hesitant to even name real players because i don't want to okay here's a here's a

way that we might think about this ben right is this this reliever as good as Mariano Rivera was? No. Arguably none of them have been. Is he really good for a relie and maybe he even gets to give a little speech and maybe everybody comes together in a part of the summer when it's less hot and humid. I mean, like, as an aside, I get that you can't do it in the winter, but like you guys do it in like July. It's like so hot, but like, you know, everybody comes together. His family gets to stand with him. He gets to feel appreciated in a way that I think is really nice and that we are appropriately prioritizing as we think about when we let guys in and wanting to get guys in in time for them to like get their roses while they're alive. Right. you can't be moving him around after that like once he's in a place like there's no moving him around and like 10 different like how many different levels is like scientology with all

the different levels so you know but a simplified everyone's like that was exactly where we expected you to go with that magnetism scientology so but a simplified version of this that acknowledges that like there is a tier or maybe two of player who are really talented had a tremendous impact on their teams on you know maybe had an impact on our understanding of the sport but aren't the very best of the best like that that seems like a good solution if if for no other reason than it also, I think, would afford us the opportunity to spend time with the careers of guys who were important to the sport movie for other reasons than just their play. And deserve to be memorialized for what they meant to the game and its history, but maybe aren't the very best guy, right? game and its history but maybe aren't like the best the very best guy right and i have not given i have not given one single second's thought to how worthy of even the hall of the very good he is so everyone who's like writing a mid-episode email lay down your keyboard i i make no assertions

but like i could see a case for hey like like the really valuable super utility multi-position guy. We want to recognize like how that changed some of the usage lately. I know that it's not like utility players are new and it's not like guys playing most positions are new. But like maybe you want to say something about Benzobrist as like an archetype of a guy, right? I'm not saying – but like maybe you want to do that about Benzo Brist as like an archetype of a guy. Right. I'm not saying he, but like maybe you want to do that. I don't know. And then if you had like a, a multi-tiered museum,

you could do that with greater comfort because you're not asserting anything about his quality relative to the very best guys. You're simply asserting something about his quality relative to all the guys you're still excluding, you know? And like, maybe that's fine. Again, I'm not saying like him specifically i don't know i don't like but just to pick a guy right or like um you know again openers not really new but like

newly back in vogue maybe maybe you want to say something about like how pitching has changed and so you look at that guys and you're like that guy you know he's really good at that thing so i put him in there like Like Scientology. Sure. Yeah. There are things I like about this because I think it's right just because it's you're either in or you're out. That does make a stretch for the players we like and advocate for. And if they don't make it, it feels like, oh, it's the end for them. Like they'll never be mentioned again.

And it also leads to a lot of bad arguments like well this guy is in and that guy's better than that guy so shouldn't this guy be in you kind of use the the least qualified player and say well he's better than that guy so right because you have the inner circle best ever guys who are just in the same big tier as everyone else, like some really good but not all-time amazing players. There's no distinction between them. They're just Hall of Famers or they're not. So it does lead to a lot of bad arguments and heated arguments and being a detractor of players instead of celebrating their accomplishments

but just focusing on what they didn't do. So maybe if we had multiple tiers, then we could just say, oh, yeah, he still gets honored and recognized, but it'll be a little less heated because it's like if you don't get in tier one, it doesn't mean you get nothing. You just get to be in tier two or tier three instead. Or would it just lead to even more arguments? Because you'd be able to argue about every player instead of just the ones who were clearly at least on the cusp of the hall. Not that people would get as exercised about like, is this guy a level one or is he a level two or is this guy a level seven or is he a level six? Like the stakes wouldn't be as high. People wouldn't get as worked up about that and call each other names probably. But there would be more to argue about, which I guess would be a selling point from the Hall of Fame's perspective or the media's perspective. Because, gosh, it wouldn't just be a once a year talking about a few exclusive guys.

You could argue about every single player. What level was he? Right. So it would just be endless content. Once a year, talking about a few exclusive guys, you could argue about every single player. What level was he? Right. So it would just be endless content. I don't know if it would be interesting content, but if you were into it, it would be nonstop. Every time someone retired, you would have the debates. Is he level this or that? Right.

So that might get tiresome. Maybe this would be like Pandora's box. That might get tiresome. Maybe this would be like Pandora's box. We think we're fixing the Hall of Fame, and instead we're opening ourselves up to a whole bunch of even less meaningful arguments. But on the other hand, you could recognize players for what they did accomplish. And maybe it would keep players in the conversation, because now it's like, if you're on the bubble, if you're a candidate, then you get talked about a lot because you have people who are pulling for you and advocating for you.

And then you have people on the other side who are saying, no, I oppose this. But once you are in or out, you get talked about a lot less. It's not a debate anymore. You're in. You still get seen if you go to Cooperstown and tour the museum. You see the plaque. But really, you get talked about more when you're like on the ballot for 10 years trying to get in than you do after you get in. Probably Scott Rowland was getting more ink before he got into the hall, though I'm sure he's

happy to be there. But this way, in theory, at least, no one would really be forgotten because everyone would have their appointed place, except maybe people just wouldn't pay attention below a certain level and they wouldn't really care. So you'd fade into obscurity anyway. You simply cannot ask any more of me. I have written every profile there is to write. I can't write any more than I already do. Yeah, I hadn't thought about how much more people would talk about it. That is a knock. Yeah, but it would be like a constant background hum instead of like, it's Hall of Fame season. Here we go again. We're gearing up for the Hall of Fame wars.

So there'd be fewer slings and arrows maybe, or they'd be blunted a bit. It would be like barbless hooks. I don't know. I think there would be as many, but there would be so many targets that they wouldn't be concentrated. Would you start voting? Maybe. This would be such a different situation. You'd have to start from scratch, really. I mean, you know, you're not going to get the Hall of

Fame to say, yeah, let's completely reorganize this. So it would have to be a new organization. And obviously, there are other Hall of Fame alternatives out there. And I guess this is not unlike, you know, my boss, Bill Simmons, with his NBA pyramid idea. It's having tiers and levels that's not completely new, but applying it to baseball in this kind of way. As for like single season awards, I think it's less necessary because we already have, you know, second place finishes and third place finishes. So it's not like if you don't win, you still got votes. You were still in the running there somewhere. And there is, maybe it's an American culture kind of thing, but we really like, we want people to win or lose. And we're kind of less comfortable with the gray area, which I think that's why Americans are so opposed to

ties. It's like, what, a tie, a draw? It just ends and no one is declared or the winner crowned at the end? Wouldn't that be unsatisfying? I think it'd be okay. It obviously works for other sports okay, but there's a lot of resistance to that. So there'd probably be a little resistance to this too. It's like, no, we want the big winner.

Either winner, you'll lose. I guess there's like, no, we want the big winner. Either winner you'll lose. I guess there's like a gold glove and a platinum glove. I mean, that exists, but I don't know that anyone really cares for it or that the concept has caught on. See, it's so funny because like, I really like, and we have versions of this for baseball, but like i really like like just doing like first team second team all pro like that is my preferred end of season in part because you can you can recognize more than one person at each position and you you know especially in a sport like baseball where as we talked about on the last episode like it is so unusual for one one person to really make or break a season like i i like the idea of there being multiples and it being

put in a roster context because that's how baseball works you know now someone listening to this might say like well meg you know the they do first team second team all pro for like the nfl they still have an MVP award, right? They still have offensive and defensive rookie of the year. They have like, they have individual awards. And like, I think that's fine. You can have them in conjunction with one another, but I think that structure appeals to me greatly. And, you know, my radical thought on the end of season awards, Ben, try this on precise. And I say this in an unofficial capacity, but as a member of the BBWA, I think we should all vote on all of them. Why don't we all vote on all of them? Yeah, it is very simply to limit it to, what is it, 30 per award. So you

take this already not big body and then you're slicing it into a tiny little subset. So it's not even necessarily representative of the whole group. Right. And part of it is that it's not representative of the whole group. And I think that people in general take their awards vote seriously. And I think that in general, make choices that are at least defensible, even if I don't agree with them. But there are always a couple of times where you're like, whoa, what was that? And people don't know or don't care to remember exactly how the process works and so then we all get tagged with that nonsense even though the you know for the end of year awards like the results are online um and for everyone you know we don't get to opt out of having our ballot published unlike with the the Hall of Fame, right? So people should know, but they still don't.

And then they get all flustered and they are like, why are they like that? And I'm like, I don't know, go ask the guy who did the vote, you know? I haven't gotten any pushback on my ballots when I've had the honor of voting. But that's because really only one of the times that I've done it has there been any real debate about the question.

And as we discussed last year when I was agonizing over Strider versus Harris, not really a bad way to go with that vote. So I do not envy our colleagues who have to contemplate NL Cy Young. Envy our colleagues who have to contemplate like NL Cy Young. That sounds like a very anxiety producing exercise because there's, you know, there are a lot of worthy choices depending on what you care about most. So, sorry, guys. You should make everybody vote on that stuff so that you don't have to feel so on the spot. But maybe it's good to feel on the spot. I don't know. Sometimes we wither under attention and sometimes we really thrive, Ben, like in Scientology. For sure. Yeah. With this, you wouldn't have to pay at least to get into a

higher Hall of Fame tier. It would be about how you played. But I guess the other argument against needing a new structure for this is that the stats are so good now or so reflective of player value, at least opposed to what they used to be, that maybe we don't even need this anymore. You know, would it just be sorting by war or by jaws, which is a combination of peak and career war? Like you really maybe needed something like the Hall of Fame decades ago because there was no well-respected, well-conceived overall value stat. And so you could talk yourself into anyone being great or not great. And there was no kind of agreed upon standard, whereas now we're closer to that. And so there's more of a consensus, certainly among voters, about how good players were. So maybe this is just sort of unnecessary at this point, unless you're going to account for things that were count account for, like, are you famous? Are you a character? Are you a legend? Whether or not you were that great a player, maybe you made some major contribution to baseball history. Maybe you were a pioneer. And I do think the Hall of Fame should do more of that. And you have things like the Baseball Reliquary and the Shrine of the Eternals that can recognize players for that. But would this tier system recognize players for that? Like, could you get in a higher tier because you weren't that great a player, but you did something notable. You know, you were Mark Fidrich or something like you were a part of the baseball tapestry.

But even if you didn't have that long or accomplished a career, or then would we just end up with even less productive arguments again? Because like some people would be voting based on stats and other people would be voting based on things that go beyond stats. And then it would be just a big mishmash. Mishmash. It would be a mishmash. I mean, it's...

Hodgepodge, too. Hodgepodge. Hodgepodge. I enjoy saying... It's a turn of phrase with a nice mouth feel. Hodgepodge. It is. You know, it's satisfying. Like stew. I enjoy saying it. It's a turn of phrase with a nice mouth feel. Hodgepodge. You know, it's satisfying. Like stew.

Yep. All right. Well, we want to wrap up with some stat blasting here. Yeah. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Daystabust. So, we've got some news for everyone. Although it's not really new, it's more like a comforting return to an old friend.

Because the Stat Blast segment is once again sponsored. And it is sponsored by one of our two former sponsors in the history of Effectively Wild, Tops Now. So people will recall that Tops Now sponsored some stat blasts earlier this year, and they liked it so much that they're back for more, and they're sponsoring a new set of stat blasts now. And we'll give you the quick spiel if you're just joining us and you haven't heard our previous plugs of Tops Now. But these are baseball cards that are made very quickly and that you can purchase very quickly.

And they are limited stock and limited time only and limited availability. And they are about singular events or individual accomplishments or sometimes team accomplishments, but they're made to commemorate something special that happens in a game or in a season. And then you can buy a baseball card of that. So as opposed to in the past, where you'd have to wait for the new year and the new season to get a baseball card of a player, and it would just usually be of that player, not of something specific that that player did. It's almost like, to tie it to our previous topic, it's like a tier system sort of thing for baseball cards. It's like, okay, everyone gets your one standard baseball card, or these days, of course, they have many varieties of baseball card. But this way, you can get a baseball card if you just had one great game,

you know, then you get a baseball card of that. And someone who was at that game or saw that game or thought it was an impressive accomplishment can then buy that baseball card and commemorate it. And they can put it in the sleeve or the container where they store all their other cards. And if you're a fan of a particular player, you can collect all their Tops Now cards or a fan of a particular team. You can get all that team's Tops Now cards. And it's usually just a handful, a fresh set that becomes available every day. And you can go get them. They're only available for a day. And you can purchase them and they will ship them to you. And you don't got to catch them all, but you could catch them all if you want, or you could catch them selectively.

But it's a new way of doing baseball cards along with the old way. And we think it's kind of a cool innovation in the baseball card space. So Tops Now, go to tops.com and you can find out which cards are available on any given day. We will, of course, link to that on the show page as well. All right. I will give you some stop-blasts here, some of my own devising and some of frequent stop-blast consultant Ryan Nelson's devising and some prompted by listener questions. So here's one, for instance, that we got from Craig in Charlotte, North Carolina, Here's one, for instance, that we got from Craig in Charlotte, North Carolina, who says, am I the last person to realize Zach Granke has a win-loss record this year of 1 in 15?

1 in 15? Wow. To two question marks. And yet, he still has a positive war, albeit barely. How does any of this make sense? And Craig says, P.S., I'm the one who emailed years ago before Ronald Acuna's first MLB game about what it would take to sign him to a lifetime contract. At that point, I think I proposed in the neighborhood of 15 years, $375 million. I guess that probably would have been a bargain in retrospect. Yeah, how about that?

What's going on with Zach Granke is that sadly he's not a very good pitcher anymore. And he plays for a very bad team. He's not a very good pitcher anymore, and he plays for a very bad team. The combination of those two things will lead to a 1-15 win-loss record. So he's not been as bad as you might think based on that win-loss record. And, you know, we don't think about win-loss record all that much these days anyway. But when it's 1- 115, that's very bad. And that's one reason to keep calculating and presenting these stats is like the historical continuity and just the comparisons to past seasons. So it is true. He is just a tad above

replacement level. Baseball Reference has him at 0.3. Fangraphs has him at.5. And I guess that's because the peripherals are not quite as bad as the ERA. So he's got a 5.47 ERA. He's got a 5.04 FIP. I'm guessing Baseball Reference War is doing some defensive adjustments there that are probably helping him out and boosting his war somewhat. I don't love how they handle that in general. But the Royals, not the worst defensive team, but not a great defensive team. So obviously, this is a combination of Granke being old and not having the stuff that he used to

and just a lack of support from the Royals. In fact, there is a stat at Baseball Reference called run support per innings, which is like run support. It's like runs scored by the team per 27 outs while the pitcher was in the game as a pitcher. Zach Greinke, at least among the players that they have on this leaderboard,

dead last 2.3 runs of support per 27 outs while he's been on the mound. So yeah, he's not pitched great, but also the Royals are giving him bupkis when it comes to support. And it sort of stinks to see him go out like this, if this is his last season. It's kind of like Adam Wainwright, who's a few years older than Zach Krenke, if you can believe it.

Zach Krenke's almost 40. But Wainwright's been just like trying to get to 200 career wins. And it's taken him forever. He just got to 199. And I guess he has a few more cracks at it. But he's, I think, 4-11 on the season. And Greinke, 1-15. I was kind of hoping he'd get to 3,000 strikeouts, too.

Just because I like Greinke. And I think he should be a Hall of Famer. I don't think you should even have to make a bad argument to get him into the Hall of Fame. But if he's not a Hall of Famer, then he could benefit from the tier system, the level system, you know, he'd be a level two or three or something if he's whatever. I don't know how it works, but right. So he'd get something. He'd get some kind of recognition. But he's at 2,966 strikeouts. And it seemed like with someone like him, who's pretty clearly a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher in my mind, but not in everyone's mind, that maybe that round number might have

helped. Anyway, if the question is like, is this unprecedented? Is this like the worst winning percentage ever? No, not quite. percentage ever? No, not quite. If we do minimum 10 decisions in a season and go all the way back, so you have Zach Greinke at 1 in 15, which is a 0.0625 winning percentage ahead of him with at least, actually, let's do minimum 15 decisions. It's a little bit cleaner. If we do that, then we have Mike Parrott in 1980, who was one in 16. And Tom Sheehan in 1916 was one in 16. And Art Hagen back in 1883, he was one in 16. Anthony Young in 1993 for the Mets was one in16. And then you have 1875 John Cassidy, 1-20. I guess that was a National Association guy. And 1916 Jack Neighbors, 1-20. So this will be slightly out of date, possibly, by the time people hear this, because Granke is pitching Friday against the Astros. So he could be two and 15, or he could be one in 16, or potentially he could

still be one in 15 if he gets a no decision. But even if he goes to one in 16, that would put him in a second place tie, I guess, for worst ever. So there has been at least someone or someone's worse than him. So that's some consolation. Neil Payne recently wrote for The Messenger, it is the worst winning percentage by someone who won a Cy Young award at any point. So like any, you know, post Cy Young award winning season, former Cy Young award winner, it's the worst by that measure. So that's bad. And there was an item in David Laurel's most recent Sunday Notes where Jay Jaffe helped him out and said, has any Hall of Famer

had a worse winning percentage than this? And no. If you go by a 10-decision minimum, I guess Robin Roberts was 1 in 10 in 1961 but his current winning percentage would be the worst of any hall of famer if of course he ends up being a hall of famer but there have been way worse seasons by hall of famers like just in terms of era or era plus or whatever so it's it's not the worst ever season by a pitcher who's very accomplished just in terms of winning percentage, arguably it is. And that's as much the Royals' fault as it is Zach Greke's. Those Royals. Yeah, that's some consolation. I should mention also that even if you remove that qualifier that you had to have a positive war, that doesn't change much on the top of that leaderboard or laggard board of the worst

winning percentages ever. Probably just because in order to get 15 plus decisions, you have to have pitched pretty well that they keep running you out there and maybe getting a little unlucky. The only negative war guy who shows up is Frank Bates, who pitched for the notorious 1899 Cleveland Spiders primarily and went 1-18 with a 6.9 ERA, not nice, and negative 1.2 war. Also in Greiky's defense, I did a stat blast on episode 1855 about how not only are starters getting a lot fewer decisions these days, but wins especially are scarce because starters don't go as deep into games. So if you era adjust his winning percentage, maybe it would be a little bit better. Still bad though. Okay, so that was a question from Craig. Also got one here from Sam, Patreon supporter,

who said, I have a potential stat blast idea for you. After tonight's game, Matt Olson has 51 homers. He tied the Atlanta franchise record or the Braves franchise record, tied Andrew Jones, of all people. It's probably not who you think of, but yeah. And Atlanta has, or had at the time, 50 losses this season with 17 left to play. How many times has a player finished with more homers than his team has losses? I wasn't sure how to query for the answer,

but just from looking up a few obvious candidates, Bonds did it in 2001. Maris and Mantle both did it in 61, and Babe Ruth did it a few times in the 154 game era. But McGuire and Sosa did not do it in 1998, nor did Aaron Judge last year. So yeah, this is a really rare accomplishment. And I was able to look this up, just counting players who were with one team all season. It's an exclusive club that Matt Olson, for now, is on track to belong to. But there are some Negro Leagues greats, of course, just because they had shorter seasons, regulation seasons at least. So, you know, you have a bunch of Josh Gibson seasons that qualify or Buck Leonard or Willie Wells or Ted Strong,

et cetera. But if we stick with longer seasons and go with ALNL, then the biggest differential home runs minus team losses is Babe Ruth, Murderers Row Yankees, 1927. Of course, he had 60 homers and that team went 110 and 44. So that's a gap of 16 dingers. Then Roger Maris, as mentioned in 1961, 61 homers, 53 team losses. Here's one you might not have summoned from the top of your head. Albert Bell in 1995 with Cleveland, which was a post-strike shortened season. So that's why, I guess. But he had 50

homers and Cleveland had 44 losses, if you count that. Then 1921, Babe Ruth, 59 homers, 55 losses. 1927, Lou Gehrig, 47 homers, 44 losses. 2001, Barry Bonds, of course, 73 homers and 72 losses, 1928 Babe Ruth, did it again, 54 homers and 53 losses, and Mickey Mantle, 1961, 54 homers, 53 losses. And then as of now, at least you have Matt Olson, 51 homers, 50 team losses. So I don't know. I don't know if he can pull this off, but it would be quite an accomplishment if he did. Aaron Judge last year just missed because he had 62 homers and 63 team losses.

Yeah. Remember when the Yankees were good? Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. Hey, they're a winning team again. They've poked their noses above 500 for now. Yeah, they have. The streak could be alive. We'll see if it stays alive.

All right. And then here's another quick one. This was a Ryan Nelson special. So Ryan Nelson frequents that blast consultant. You can find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. And he was asked by Lewis, he said, I see Joey Votto's Reds are playing Miguel Cabrera's Tigers. This got me thinking, when was the last time two players age 40 or older

homered in the same game? By Ryan's count, this has happened only six times ever. And they're all recent, all in the 21st century. And five of them involved the 2006 Giants and Barry Bonds. So in 2006, Barry Bonds did this twice, playing Steve Finley, who homered, and three times with Moises Elou. So that's five of the six times ever, apparently. And then 2016, David Ortiz and A-Rod.

And that's it, apparently. Yeah, I would not have expected that it was that unknown. But I guess it's maybe not a coincidence that you have some PD guys involved here, right? This was an era where you had abnormally productive late career and advanced age batters. So that may have contributed to it. But yeah, I guess, you know, there aren't that many 40 plus position players in any given year, especially like full time players. And once you get to that point, you're probably not hitting that many homers anymore. So sort of surprised me, but maybe it makes sense. And he says there are 10 other times with two 39-year-olds. It's surprising. It is. Okay. Here's a question from Sam who says, I'm a Royals fan. Tonight, this was September 5th. The Royals won on a balk off, walk off balk, for the second time

this season. A lot of Royals fans have been wondering if that's a record in a season. I'm sure it's not, given the long history of baseball and everything, but I was curious what the highest number of balk-offs in a single season is. I'm sure it's low, but I think it would be interesting to explore. This was a different Sam than the previous Sam. So Ryan reports that two actually is a record, and that apparently no team has even ever done it twice in a season previously. What? So, yeah. And he was able to Google up an answer, but also his data shows the same thing. 23 walk-off box in history going back to 1914.

So it's very rare. Wow. And he says 1943, 2000, and 2011 were the only previous seasons where there were two walk-off box, period, much less by the same team. Wow. So this is really rare. Yeah. Well, that's cool. Imagine how bad the Royals will be if they hadn't had an unprecedented two walk-off box this season.

And you raise such a dark question after such a fun fact. Yeah. A real land of contrast. I guess they wouldn't be that much worse, but they might be one or two wins worse. I wonder, hopefully, I wonder whether either. They wouldn't be that much worse because they already suck. Yeah, right.

Did either of the Zach Greinke losses, was he spared a loss by a walk-off buck? I don't know. Would that have been even worse? Anyway, that's something you can say you saw some history if you're a Royals fan this year. Walk-off buck. I mean, as we noted, bucks have been up a bit more this season. They are calling more of them with the new rules. They're enforcing that a little more rigorously. So I guess that has something to do with it. But yeah, it's just weird.

Yeah, it's weird. Okay. Here's one from Simon, Patreon supporter. I was at a minor league game tonight and the Richmond Flying Squirrels hit a home run in each of the first seven innings. What's the furthest into a game a team has done this? Not sure if minor league data is available,

but would be curious to know the record in both MLB and the minors. So just keeping it to the majors here. Ryan says 52 teams have hit a home run in each of the first four innings. Eight teams have done it in each of the first five innings. One team has homered in each of the first six innings, and that same team did it through seven as well. That is the record, and it was done by the Twins against the Padres on September 12th, 2017. So Brian Dozier hit a solo shot in the first. Jorge Polanco hit a two-run

homer in the second. Jason Castro hit a two-run homer in the third. Eddie Rosario hit a two-run homer in the fourth. Jason Castro hit another, this time a solo homer in the fifth. Eduardo Escobar hit a solo shot in the sixth. And then finally, Kenny Vargas hit a three-run homer in the seventh. That made it 16 to nothing, which was the final score. And the other seven teams to do it through five, the Angels in 85, the Brewers in 96, the A's in 2000, the A's in 2003, the Astros in 2004, the Cubs in 2012, and the Reds in 2021. And those 2017 twins, they, I mean, that was a year of high home runs.

It was not quite the 2019 Twins or 2019 scoring environment in general, but 2017 was the second highest year ever for home run rate. I guess with a lot of these

unusual or unparalleled performances, it's a combination of the team and flukiness and the environment being more conducive than usual to that sort of thing. I guess the 2017 Twins didn't actually hit that many homers. Obviously, in 2019, they did. But this was the pre-Bumba Squad Twins. They were like 16th in homers in 2017. So, all right. That was one more.

Now, here is one that comes from Max, who says, with Lucas Giolito, once more on the move, my mind wonders to the following thought. Which MLB player holds the highest war season total while playing on at least three teams? Bonus, why stop there? Four teams? Five teams? Giolito's 1.4 fangrass war feels perhaps top 25-ish to me. So here are all the players. Now, Ryan sent me all the players with six plus war on two teams in a season.

And I'll put these lists online but you you have a bunch of guys with six plus war who played with at least two teams uh leading with charlie sweeney and billy taylor in 1884 sadie mcmahon in 1890 dupie shaw in 1884 but ricky henderson, he had an 8.3 war season, played for two teams. CeCe Sabathia, famously, of course, in 2008, 7.7 war season, two teams. 2010, Cliff Lee, 98, Randy Johnson. You may remember that one. 2018, Manny Machado. I could go on.

There's a longer list. I'll put it online. All players with three plus war on three teams in a season. Slightly shorter list, but Mike P in 1884 and the Players League in 1890. It must have been a lot of player movement. And the Warriors, Buzz Clarkson, 1942. Mark Witten, who is one of those players I mentioned recently, like, who are the players who you always use your nickname when you say their name? You always have to say Hard Hittin' Mark Whitten. So Hard Hittin' Mark Whitten in 1996, Doc Ellis in 77. Again, this will be

online. And finally, all players with non-negative war on four teams in a season. So we're low in the war bar here, because if you're on four teams, you're probably getting passed around. You know, it's hot potato. No one wants you. So 1884, again, Harry Wheeler,.8 war, played for four teams. 2000, Dave Martinez,.8 war. 1943, Jimmy Ford. 1904, Frank Helsman. 1977, Dave Kingman.

2022, Yu Cheng. 2021, Michael Feliz oh and okay here's the final final only two players have ever played on five teams in a season I guess it's Bobo Leonard who played for five teams in 1924 and had.54

and former Effectively Wild guest Oliver Drake in 2018 of course famously was constantly changing teams and ended up with.54 playing for five teams. Should have known. Yeah. You can be a positive contributor despite no one wanting you or alternatively lots of teams wanting you. Yeah. We don't have to be negative about it.

All right. And then last one here comes from Luke who says, I was watching the Cubs-Pirates game on Sunday, August 27th. And the broadcast mentioned that Ian Happ has reached base safely against the Pirates in 56 straight games, which is the record for any player against the Pirates with Stan Musial in second place. That got me wondering, how does that stack up against records for an on-base streak for one player reaching base against a single team? So to be precise, we must specify this is not just consecutive games, but consecutive starts. Because there was one game in there where Ian Happ pinch hit against the Pirates and struck out. So if you count that, then that snapped the streak. and struck out. So if you count that, then that snapped the streak. But if we're talking about,

you know, usually when you talk about an on-base streak or a hitting streak, you get a full game in there. I mean, if it's a hitting streak, if it's, you know, a Joe DiMaggio situation, I think any game goes. But for this fun fact to work, then he reached base in a record number of starts. So Ryan looks this up and said, for consecutive starts, he shows Ian Happ holding an active streak now of 64 games, not 56. So that's the 13th longest streak in baseball history for starts and the longest active streak in baseball. Musial capped out at a streak of 54 against the Pirates. The two longest streaks of getting on base in starts against one team are both by, go figure, Ted Williams.

He was pretty good at getting on base. So he had a streak of 86 starts versus the White Sox and 88 versus the A's, both ending in 1951. Williams also has the sixth longest ever with a 70 start streak versus the Senators. And the top of the list is littered with all timers, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Rogers Hornsby, Joe Morgan, Carl Yastrzemski, Trish Speaker, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, etc. So Ryan gave me the list by both games and by starts. So I will link to both of those on the show page. But for Ian Happ to be 13th longest ever, like looking at the players ahead of him, Ted Williams, Ted Williams, Rudy York, Barry Bonds, Chet Lemon, Ted Williams again, Hornsby, Morgan, Johnny Pesky, Buddy Meyer, Rogers Hornsby, Carl Yastrzemski, and then

Ian Happ. I mean, that's a name brand list of names there. Mostly Hall of Famers and, you know, like level two or three Hall of Famers too. So for him to crash that party, not that he's a bad player, but, you know, it's, I guess like a really long on base streak. I was just going to say like, is that a better reflection of true talent than a hitting streak? I guess you can fluke into an on-base event just like you can a hit. And the record on base streaks are longer than the record hitting streaks. Because, of course, you can get on base more ways than just via hit.

But this is notable. You know, it's like even underselling Hap to say it's like the longest streak against the Pirates. Yeah, it's one of the longest streaks ever. He's not like a great on-base guy. I mean, 343 career, 358 this year, 342 last year. Like, this is a low OBP era. He's clearly better than average, but he's not a great standout when it comes to that. You'd think it'd be like Juan Soto or someone, but no, it's Ian Hepp.

I have made the case multiple times that we should have greater respect for on-base streaks than we do. And I appreciate that we take note of them on a different scale than we do for hitting streaks. Like you said, they, they tend to go longer. And so we don't really start paying attention to them the way we did, but you know, I think we, we perceive walks as not being work. I think we, we view them as presence and that's why we don't have the respect for it in the same way that we do for hitting streaks. And I say that we should, we should like them just the same, or we should like them more than we do, even if you don't want to do just the same. So. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's a little less exciting if you, it's like,

will he get on via a walk or a hit by a pitch or something like the daily in and out following it wouldn't be quite as exciting i guess but you could also i don't know like a hitting streak you could just easily fluke into it or fluke out of it yeah right so sam wrote about this too and and talked about like will we look on the on-base streaks as the greatest records uh eventually and and it just like it wasn't tracked in the same way at the time like people didn't realize it was happening you know so so it's hard for it to have the mythology of the dimaggio streak which everyone was following and then also the fact that everyone was following it like the pressure is more intense right i guess now there'd be pressure. Someone would notice that you were going for that on-base streak now. But, you know, it wouldn't be quite as exciting, I guess, on, maybe the pressure isn't on in the same way.

And so you have a slightly easier time of it. And as you noted, multiple avenues to getting on base, whereas you only can do the one thing to hit or to get a hit. Rather, you have to get one. But I don't know. They're still, it's hard work. It's hard work, Ben. The on-base streak, it could potentially last longer which

would mean you could be excited for longer though i guess it would take you longer to get excited because you'd be further away from the record but also i guess the the counter to that maybe is that it would be less dramatic most games because you'd you'd go down to your last plate appearance less often because there are more ways you can get on base than ways you can get a hit. And so more often than not, you would be getting the on-base event earlier than you would be getting the hit.

So there'd be a little less suspense late into the game. But yeah, Sam was saying like it feels wrong to him to, like a walk is bad for a guy who's trying to keep a hitting streak alive. Right. Which is counter to the way we understand baseball now and value. And so it fits better where we could celebrate any on-base event, as you're saying. It's not just a gift that you get. Sometimes it is, you know.

Sometimes it is. You get a bad call or bad framer or whatever, but, but sometimes you're drawing the walk. It's an active process. Right. It, it is sometimes a gift, but as you said, like sometimes hits are gifts too. And if you are, you know, inclined to listen to the more conspiratorial, um, among, among us this year, like all the time, so many gifts, little presents for everyone. among us this year, like all the time. So many gifts, little presents for everyone.

Yeah. I mean, Joe DiMaggio got some official score gifts. It was said at the time, certainly, to keep his streak alive. All right. We'll wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from 2059 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. He says the return of a classic Yankees attitude marked the 2059 season as the Bronx Bombers went for power by bringing in Real Madrid's Lonzo brothers to New York in the hope that Mateo and Hugo would energize the Yankees

team that had finished out of the playoffs for four years in a row. Oh, my gosh. Armageddon. The contracts for the Spanish sluggers were at the $1.5 billion mark for each for five years. The brothers did their jobs. Yeah, there's probably been some inflation by this point, but it's a global game too. The brothers did their jobs, Mateo hitting 56 homers while hitting 298 and Hugo contributing 44 more, along with a dandy 345-440-460 slash line. Mateo added a gold glove and left. The Yanks revitalized on offense, also got a solid season out of their pitching staff led by ace Josh McClanahan. With 22 wins and a 1.12 ERA, the Bob Gibson number, with an impressive whip of 1.01,

McClanahan was enhanced, of course, which drew some parallels to his uncle, Shane McClanahan, who underwent the enhancement of his era with Tommy John surgery in 2023, rehabbed it in 2024, and came back better than ever in 2025 to enjoy eight more good years before retiring. That's good news. Despite the Lonzo brothers' expensive excellence and the solid pitching staff led by McClanahan, the Yankees didn't quite make it to the World Series,

losing to the Twins in a crucial seventh game in the LCS. That's good news. All right. The Twins, they beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the LCS. Who knows? When Hugo Lonzo's towering shot to right field with two men on was caught in a dramatic reach over the wall in target field by Twins gold glover Robin Basquette. Basquette? B-A-S-Q-U-E-T-T-E.

I guess it's a basket catch. I'm sure many commentators of 2059 have made that joke as well. Probably. All right, just to follow up on something from last time, we talked about Tommy Edmund, who's a switch hitter and has been experimenting this season with switch switch hitting, essentially picking spots selectively not to switch hit. While still switch hitting most of the time,

he will sometimes opt not to and will hit from the same side as the pitcher he's facing, just based on the matchup and the pitch characteristics and the repertoire. Now, I was saying I can't remember this happening before with the regularity that he's done it this season. Because you'll get guys messing around sometimes, maybe they'll hit from the same side against a knuckleballer back when there were more knuckleballers, Or there would be some other extenuating circumstance. But what Edmund is doing against right-handed pitchers this season, he's batted lefty 263 times and righty 56

times. So still acting like a regular switch hitter most of the time, usually opting for the platoon advantage, but 56 times so far this season opting for the platoon disadvantage. And I asked Ryan Nelson for a list that might help me identify previous switch hitters who had dabbled like this, and I cannot find any who made as many plate appearances without the platoon advantage in a season when they were still usually opting for the platoon advantage. I'll put the spreadsheet online if you want to check it out and look for precedents, but there just don't appear to be any previous switch hitters who were so prolifically not switch hitting while still remaining predominantly switch hitters. I

think Edmund is breaking new ground here because there were some cases where players would sometimes switch hit but mostly not, which is different from Edmund's sometimes not switch hitting while mostly switch hitting while mostly switch hitting. And then there are cases like Pablo Sandoval in 2015. He just stopped switch hitting entirely at some point in that season. He resumed in later seasons, but he went cold turkey for a while. He wasn't doing what Edmund is doing. He just stopped switch hitting entirely. Or there were cases like Randy Wynn in 2000 or Roberto Alomar in 1997, where Wynn had a wrist injury and Alomar had a shoulder injury and they were limited to hitting from the same side for a while. That

wasn't a choice though. So as far as I could tell, and of course we don't have complete splits for all past seasons, but based on what we do have, I think Tommy Edmund this season has been a switch hitting pioneer or a switch switch hitting pioneer, despite the fact that one would think it would place you at a disadvantage to not only face the same sided picture, but to do it rarely enough that you're not used to facing a same sided picture from that side. So I don't know if it's helped him. I don't know if it's a good idea, but I give him points for originality. And I also award my imaginary points to anyone who supports the podcast on Patreon, which

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