Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2060: Let’s Not Be Too Heston

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Patreon supporter Max Harris banter about Ben’s problems remembering Orioles rookie Heston Kjerstad’s name, Baltimore’s lookalike offensive core, and Max’s history with the podcast and baseball, then (18:22) answer listener emails about seat fillers at MLB games, hypothetical players “Mr. Repeat” and “Mr. First Time,” centralizing MLB R&D, systemic vs. […]

Vroom, vroom. Here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's End, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels. Lillian's Asked a Deal, and Mike Trout Hypotheticals. Waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello and welcome to episode 2060 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

We are also joined by one of those Patreon supporters who is presenting this podcast. He is appearing and presenting at the same time. Max Harris, welcome to Effectively Wild. Welcome. Thanks for having me. You welcomed us. We welcome you, Max. This is our podcast. You're our guest, but we're very happy to have you. And we're also happy to have you or at least someone close to you as a Patreon supporter. We will get into that.

But this is one of our Patreon upper tier, Mike Trout tier guests that we are pleased to welcome on from time to time. And we will talk to Max more in a moment about his history with the podcast and with baseball. And then, of course, we will answer some emails. But just the briefest of banter before we get to that, because I've encountered a conundrum here. And it's that the Orioles have promoted yet another top prospect. That's not the conundrum. That is maybe a conundrum for their AL East rivals, but not for me. I quite enjoy the fact that they keep promoting a new exciting prospect every other week or so. The new one is Heston Kerstad, and there are two problems with this, personal problems for me. Again, not problems for really anyone else. But the first is that

I cannot remember for the life of me whether it's Heston Kerstad or Keston Herstad. So that's the number one issue facing me these days. I'm pretty sure I've screwed that up before. I'm getting it right now because I've written it down and I'm looking at it as I speak. But if I were to take that away, it would be basically a coin flip for me. So I just have to stand in front of the mirror and say Heston Kerstad a hundred times, I guess. I don't know why I find this so confounding. Meg, do you have any issues with Heston versus Keston? I guess it's because it's the H and the K, they're both in there. And it's not like I encounter a lot of Hestons or Kestons in my daily life. I didn't really know those were names, at least first names. But I think

I also blame this on Keston Hura, right? Because my mind goes to Keston when I think of baseball. It's like, you know, he's got the K first name and the H last name. So it's reversed. So when I see Heston Kirstead, I think Keston Akira. It's just very confusing to me. Either of you have any issues with this? No, but I think, well, but Ben, I think that this is just yet another data point that suggests that your resistance to watching college baseball is to your detriment because I have never had a problem with Heston Kierstad, but that's because I've been watching Heston Kierstad play baseball

since he was at Arkansas and gave me time to get familiar with all the H's and K's and also that J, you know, don't, don't underrate that J as like a confounding factor in there, but you just have to watch college ball. If you did that, you would have no problems. Silent J. Yeah, so you have told me and so Michael Babin has told me. But even the first time you encountered Heston Kirstad in college, was there any confusion or was this just so long ago that you don't recall? I don't really remember, although I'm sure that they said it right on the broadcast.

So I was probably like, that young person's name is Heston Kierstad. And I shall call him that because that's his name. It's a mental block for me. Max, I assume that you're not with me on this either, that this is a Ben problem. I'm also not with you on college baseball. So I worked for a college baseball team for two years and appreciated the wacky world of college baseball. And you see stuff in college baseball that you don't see in Major League Baseball. Right.

There's a reason to watch college baseball. I want to ask you what you did for the college baseball team, but I will save that for a second because I have a second point about the Orioles prospects. And this one, I think, Meg may be more with me on.

Oh, yeah. And that is the fact that a lot of them look alike. Yeah. They really look alike. Not all of them, but at least a quartet of them have a distinct facial resemblance. And it's very difficult for me to keep them straight. Their names are obviously dissimilar. They actually have some striking and noteworthy names and confusing names,

at least in my case. But there's also something going on here with the way these guys look. Like, what lab are they growing these guys in? And are they doing like a create a player in MLB The Show type deal? And they're just like not messing around with the settings enough between each of the top prospects that they create i don't know what it is but i had noticed this and then i saw tweets about this too by two different people after kerstad kerstad not herstad kerstad again i keep reminding myself kerstad i saw tweets about this where someone said on Twitter, I'll link to these tweets, why does every Orioles prospect look like this? And then another person had quote tweeted that with headshots of four prospects who are indistinguishable to me from the prospects.

I think they're Adley Rutschman, Jackson Holiday, Gutter Henderson, and Heston Kerstad. There's always going to be a bit of a pause before I say that, right? But there's a distinct similarity there in the facial structure and maybe it's the hair also. And obviously seeing them all in Orioles caps. Right, that helps. Yeah, or that hurts, I guess, in this case. But yeah, there's's definitely there's something to this they not only all resemble each other but like if you i feel like if you mushed any two of

their faces together it would like produce one of the other faces you know like they they aren't perfectly identical to one another i mean obviously obviously that's true but like they they you know like if you take man it's really uncanny like if you if you take retchman and gunner henderson and you moosh them together like you just get heston kirstad and then if you take gunner henderson and heston kirstad and you moosh them together i think you get jackson holiday these are these we had, Ben, I'm so upset. I've worked myself up into being upset. We had moved past the great tragedy crisis of our time.

We no longer had Dansby Swanson and Charlie Culberson on the same team in the same dugout. And now they're multiplying. It's like troubles. Yeah. Yeah. They don't look as identical as Culberson and Swanson. Right.

Because that's the same guy moving back and forth very fast. That's one boy. Yes. But these guys, I mean, it's not all the Orioles prospects and good young players. You know, Colton Couser doesn't look exactly like this. Kobe Mayo doesn't look exactly like this. Joey Ortiz doesn't look exactly like this. Right.

Grayson Rodriguez doesn't look exactly like this. There is some variation amongst them, but this quartet is suspicious. It is. Yeah. Okay. Max, are you with me on this one? Yeah, I mean, I am with you on this one. The O's obviously, and this is maybe another function of them not being as prevalent in Latin America as other teams. Yes. Unintended consequence of this for sure. It's that I can't

tell their players apart. Yeah. Yeah. It's a problem. Again, not really a problem. I'm sure Orioles fans are happy to have as many similar-looking, incredible prospects as possible. They would probably say, yeah, keep calling up these guys. Just open up the clown car and they will keep piling out and we will welcome them with open arms, even if we can't tell whom we're embracing at any particular time. You might actually have to learn the uniform numbers, which I never know either, but maybe in this case I'll need that. They don't all play the same position, obviously. They don't have exactly the same build and height and weight and everything, although a lot of them are similar in that respect too. I mean, they're all in sort of like the 6'2", 6-3, 2-20, 2-30 kind of range, right? I guess. So that doesn't help a whole lot either. Maybe the O's are also trying to pioneer

the jersey swap hypothetical that I know you've talked about so many times. And this is part of their, you know, a lot of their front office comes from the Astros and maybe this was the next frontier. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and I don't want to alarm either of you,

but have you seen what Jackson Holiday's younger brother looks like? Because he is also a highly regarded amateur prospect. He's not yet in pro ball, but people think quite highly of Ethan Holiday. people think quite highly of Ethan Holiday. And what if they, I just, if they end up, it's going to be, oh my God, they are even more the same boy, you know, they're the same. Well, that's at least understandable.

If you're brothers, I'll give you a pass. Yeah, but if you take Jackson and you mush him together with Gunner, actually what you get is Ethan. That's who that guy is. That's the same guy. Oh, no. Yeah. By the way, they have so many prospects that the new ones can't play without replacing the old ones now.

Right. So Heston Kerstad had to pinch hit for Jordan Westberg. That was how he got into his first game. Jordan Westberg, fortunately, mercifully, does not look like these other ones completely either. So that's a small mercy. So, yeah, it's really just these four, I guess. But these are also maybe the four best, or certainly Retchman and Holiday and Henderson. And then I guess Kerstad is maybe ranked behind Couser currently.

I don't know. They're almost interchangeable in that sense, too. They're all just really good. It's just a cornucopia. The Orioles prospect cup runneth over. So it's only something I have to get straight in my capacity as a commentator and podcaster. It is important that I not take advantage of this and mess with you. I'd also point out, Ben, that Kirsten is ahead of Colton Cowles, or at least by our estimation of their farm system. All right. Well, other people have it

flipped. So that tells you, I guess, how close it is. So that won't help me either. Those people feel better about cows are being able to play center field than we do. It's such a feel-good story, whoever he looks like, because there was a stretch where it looked like Heston Kierstad might not have a real pro career because of COVID. You know, he was, he developed myocarditis after getting COVID and didn't play for a long time because of the sort of side effects and lingering effects of that. So it's a pretty, I don't know, I felt so, I felt so happy for the young man when he was able to, I mean, first just get back out on any affiliated diamond.

And then now here he is in the big leagues on a playoff bound Orioles team. It's very exciting. It is. Yeah. This is the only complaint that I have, but it's the minor reservation. Meg, I kind of feel like you're flexing by just saying Heston Kirstead so smoothly all these times with no discernible pause before you say it. Heston Kerstad. I feel very inadequate. I was trying to come up with a mnemonic. I was like, okay, who's the most famous Heston? Okay, Charlton Heston.

Where can I go with that? Charlton Heston. Ben Hur. But then that made me think Herstad, and that got me confused all over again. But then that made me think Herstad and that got me confused all over again. And then I was thinking of like the quote at the end of Planet of the Apes, you blew it up. And I was thinking, OK, the Orioles blew it up and they tanked. And that's why they have Heston, Kerstad and all these other good prospects. But that was a little elaborate.

But I think just trying to come up with a good Charlton Heston mnemonic now makes me associate him with Heston. And that's really all it had to do. So I think I'm okay, but we'll see. All right, Max, now that you've endured that, if you're not already regretting joining us on this episode, tell us how you came to discover Effectively Wild and tolerate it to the extent that you would want to be on an episode. Effectively Wild and tolerate it to the extent that you would want to be on an episode? Fair question. So I've been listening long enough that I remember episode 300 with Brian Kenny about the win. And so doing some quick math about how many episodes I would have listened to, I've come up with that I've probably spent about 83 days of my life just listening to Effectively Wild. Wow. Yeah, I did that math at one point myself, which was then a calculation of how much of my life I have spent on Effectively Wild. It was a hefty chunk. So yeah, maybe don't do that calculation if you're a longtime listener.

Yeah, so yeah, in my case, it's almost three months. So pretty amazing. pretty amazing. Wow. Yeah. And how did you find us on episode 300? Did you think, oh, Brian Kenney, he wants to kill the wind. I got to hear about this. Or was that just a coincidence? No, I think that's the first one that I really remember. I'd probably be listening for another 150 episodes prior to that, but that's such a memorable figure. Yeah, the rest are just a blur. Just nothing stood out to you about those 150. Well, I mean, I remember the multiples of five and then the importance of that and it was being, you know, a daily show. Yeah. And I was looking for baseball podcasts at a time when podcasts became more common and was a longtime baseball prospectus reader at the time. And yeah, obviously you and Sam really resonated and have really enjoyed all the other evolutions of the show since.

Excellent. Well, thanks for sticking with us for so long. And I always ask our Patreon guests, what could have possibly possessed you to support us at the tier required to join us on an episode? Although I guess in your case, it was kind of a gift, right? I don't know if it was a surprise, but it was not all your own doing. So yeah, that was a gift from my fiance and diehard Red Sox fan, Beth Goldberg. And so that was very sweet of her. She knows I'm a big fan of the show and we listened to it in the car. And so yeah, I can't take credit for this. This was her idea. Well, thank you, Beth. Effectively wild guest appearance. Just makes a wonderful gift for

every couple. Just in case. It's wonderful gift for every couple. Just in case. It's been great for our relationship, yeah. Yeah, you're not inflicting the show on Beth in the car or vice versa. It's a collaborative, it's a mutual decision. She really loves the hypotheticals and the team previews. I think those are probably... Oh, interesting. Okay.

Yeah, especially getting back into the AL East every year and listening and kind of getting up on the Red Sox and all the AL East foes. She finds it a very helpful primer. And do you share her Red Sox fandom or do you come to baseball fandom via a different team? Yes, I do. I come via the Montreal Expos. Oh. Sorry, but yay.

Yeah, so I grew up a diehard Expos fan in Montreal. Obviously, they left at the end of 2004. I moved to San Francisco in 2012, which is where me and Beth live now. And we go to Giants and A's games fairly regularly. At this point, I would say that I'm either baseball agnostic, baseball orphan, baseball atheist, however you want to frame it. But if people ask me what my favorite team is, the answer is still the Expos. Gotcha. Yeah. Are there particular players on other teams that have been like emotionally resonant for you

since you lost a team allegiance? I mean I think there's a couple people that immediately come to mind so obviously you know Otani in the last couple years has really stood out as someone that I've enjoyed watching. Trout obviously when, when he came up. The pitching aces of the last decade, so Scherzer and Verlander and Kershaw and Mookie Betts. I think I can appreciate all the great players and just the quality of great players that we have today. One thing that I think was also helpful was going on a bit of a ballpark journey in the last decade

and trying to go to see all the different teams at home and kind of seeing every team sort of cast as the heroes in their home whites, as opposed to growing up where I saw every team in their kind of drab road grays. Well, if you like Trout Notani, no wonder you've listened to this podcast for so long. I guess it's sort of a selective sample because if you couldn't stand Trout Notani, you probably would not be listening to Effectively Wild anymore. I imagine that would be tough to tolerate.

How does Beth feel about the Heimblum firing? I haven't asked her about that yet. She, without speaking for her too much, I think she's a little disappointed by the course of the season, but I think she likes the young core of players. She really likes Cassis a lot, and she's optimistic about Verdugo and Bayo and Connor Wong. And so I think she's overall optimistic about the trajectory of the Red Sox just because they

have potentially a young core. But obviously, you know, I know that there's been some grumblings about the fan base, about Mookie Betts, and some people are more upset about Bogarts. And so there's been a kind of give and take there. But I think she feels better about being a Red Sox fan than a Yankees fan right now. Yeah, that's fair. Well, to make her happy, we should probably get to some emails and hypotheticals, though. I'm intrigued that she really likes the hypotheticals and the team previews because I think of those as sort of opposite poles of Effectively Wild. Some people, they just want the info.

They want to get prepared for the season, the game on the field. And other people just want nonsense and silliness and absurdity. And evidently, she wants both. So that's great, I guess. Ideal listener. And not only that, but the fact that she gave you a gift subscription and an appearance on the podcast. All right. Where shall we begin? So many ways we can go. Should we start with one in honor of Beth with the subject line, ridiculous hypothetical? That sounds like a good place to start.

All right. I think so. Jared says, I'm currently watching the Rockies play the Cubs. The game is in Colorado and a replay review of Nick Madrigal getting thrown out at third base is replied to with seemingly a stadium

full of booze. This first made me think, how many Cubs fans are in Denver? It then made me think that all these Cubs fans are technically supporting the Rockies by buying tickets. The Rockies notoriously do not do much to improve their team, but see great attendance year in and year out. This leads me to my question, How feasible would it be for major league teams to buy tickets and send fans to games at Coors Field or the Oakland Coliseum and fool these teams into thinking that they don't need to spend money or even be half-decent baseball teams to sell tickets? This type of thing seems like something effectively Wild-esque. So this is sort of a psyop.

It's like they're trying to incept the idea that they don't need to try because they've already got full houses there. So their opponents are paying for people to show up so that the owners of that team will be complacent and will say, we don't need to do anything to get better because look at us. We're already selling out as it is. What about having seat fillers at the Oscars? That's the first thing that came to mind. Yeah, it is sort of like that, I guess. If you had people in the concourse that were just constantly filling seats, even the more extreme hypothetical,

so that there was never any empty seats at any given time, just to create the appearance of a full Louis Lorable at all times. Yeah, and ownership would be like, these people never have to go to the bathroom. It's so weird. We keep selling beer, but no one's going to the bathroom. Well, I guess in the case

of the A's, you don't have to talk their ownership into thinking that they don't need to spend on the team to get better. They're right with you. We've been to plenty of A's games this year, and you notice even like the little things like they have a promotion. Well, not a promotion, but like an in-game promotion where the broadcasters throw out balls to the crowd during the seventh inning stretch. And everyone is really into it until you remember that it's because they didn't actually hire like a promotions crew to do it oh my gosh so they don't even have like you know like plucky young people standing on top of the

the dugouts like throwing t-shirts and stuff they did they don't anymore wow wow The t-shirt cannons ran out of ammo, I guess. They just couldn't reload. Do you hear things at an A's game when there are only, let's say, a few thousand fans around? Are things that transpire in the field much more audible than they would be in the typical ballpark? Is there a good sort of sounds of the game environment that you might actually miss going from that to a full house? So we went to AJ's a few weeks ago and we could hear in the 32nd level, Brandon Romano loudly grunt between pitches. Yeah. See, that's nice, I think. It's like when you get the ballpark sounds on MLB TV, when you're able to do that and you get that overlay. Yeah, right. It was great when I've done it in the past. And sometimes it depends where the mics are placed, but sometimes

you will be able to hear things that you can't hear elsewhere. Some, the crack of the bat, the thing that people say about certain hitters, how the ball sounds different off their bat, like the ball sounds different off bats on certain broadcasts, just depending on how their mics, everyone sounds like they're Josh Gibson or someone, right? But also sometimes you might hear someone swearing. If there's someone, you might overhear a conversation, but also you get to hear stuff on the field. It's more intimate, right? So I would think in many ways, it's certainly bad to be an A's fan because of, you know, gestures at everything surrounding the A's. But the in-ballpark experience, despite the fact that the place is run down and sometimes floods and also there are animals,

which could be a plus or a minus depending on how much you enjoy spending time around animals. But just like getting to be close to the field, if you can move down, and also getting to hear stuff and see stuff that you might not normally. At least if you're a visiting fan and you're getting to see your team there, I would think that would be kind of cool.

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Montreal, so I'm no stranger, sadly, to an empty ballpark and what that is like to go to a game there. Whereas Beth grew up at Fenway, and so she's used to a full ballpark, whereas the first few times that I went to a game with like a full house, I found that relatively jarring and kind of unfamiliar. Yeah. I remember it being, I mean, there were a great many things about watching baseball in 2020 that were sort of like disconcerting and disorienting. But I just remember being like, well, we can really hear these guys like we can really hear them on the broadcast in a way that I can't imagine like inspired a lot of goodwill between opposing

teams because stuff that would normally be drowned out by ballpark sound, you're just like, there's no one there. So we're hearing all of the trash talking and nonsense. But I wonder, to get back to the original question, I do wonder if you were paying for your fans to go to games, I do think that at some point, someone, maybe not ownership, because it would require a level of engagement with the, you know, ballpark environs that might be beyond some of the more recalcitrant owners. But at some point, somebody in your baseball ops group or your ballpark ops is going to be looking around going, like, there are a lot of jerseys from other teams, like every, every time. Are there this many Marlins fans in Denver? Like, I think you would at some point just be like

we gotta investigate what's going on here like what's what's the deal yeah the rockies always do draw well we've talked about that before and i guess part of it is just it's a nice place to go to a ballpark and nice views and affordable beers and so? Right. But I wonder if they had worse attendance, whether that would have lit a fire under Rocky's ownership. So I'm not saying like, Rocky's fans, it's your fault for supporting the team too well. You have not held ownership to account and forced them to change. But I wonder if they weren't drawing anyone, whether that would have sent a signal to them at some point, like, huh, maybe we should do something different. Yeah. Yeah. So I

don't know if it's worthwhile for a rival team to pay for other opponents' ballparks to be full so that those teams will be lulled into complacency. But perhaps it is sort of working that way inadvertently, at least where the Rockies are concerned. All right. Max, by the way, I'm sure that you have fond memories of seeing baseball in Montreal. Do you think of Montreal now as a very viable baseball market? Do you think it should be at the top of the list for expansion for non-self-serving sentimental reasons?

Or do you feel like we had our chance? So yeah, I think baseball can work in Montreal in the sense that I think it could work a lot of places the way that baseball is set up right now. I also think this is a city that loves being downtown in the summer and with the right ballpark situation, I think would be very viable. This is a team that outdrew the Yankees and Mets in the early 80s. I know it's hard to believe. But, you know, I also recognize that I don't think there's as much political appetite to publicly fund stadiums in Montreal.

And so that might be an impediment to them actually getting a team. Well, fingers crossed for you, although I guess you're no longer in the city. But maybe you'd move back if there was baseball. All right. Let's answer a question from Jonathan. Imagine there was a hitter, call him Mr. Repeat, who never reached base or got a hit the first time he faced a pitcher in a game, but always reached base and got a hit in a subsequent matchup with the same pitcher in that game. How would Mr. Repeat perform? Assuming there is enough of a sample that everyone took this seriously,

how would opposing teams handle this strategically? Would they plan for a bullpen game every time they face that team? Pull their pitchers a bit early when Mr. Repeat was coming up? On the flip side, how about the hitter, calling Mr. First Time, who always reached or got a hit against a new pitcher but never in subsequent at-bats in that game. How would he perform? In terms of strategy, would Mr. First Time be best used as a pinch hitter for one automatic hit in a clutch situation? Or stardom, know you'll get a base runner the first time through and then hope that the opposing starter doesn't go deep?

Would opponents stretch their starters longer knowing they'd have an automatic out whenever they got back around to Mr. First Time? So, Mr. Repeat and Mr. First Time. One has no chance the first time he's up, and the other has no chance subsequent times. So, who's better? How do we handle these guys? I would think Mr. First Time would be more valuable just because you could put him in higher leverage situations. Yes. So if you have room on your roster, I guess you can make room for someone like this who gets you an automatic on-base event or hit whenever you use them. He'd be the best pinch hitter ever. So that would be very valuable, I would think. So I guess that is probably the ideal way to use him, right? Yeah, I think you want to deploy him strategically when you can make best use of his skill. Imagine if you could combine him with being a fast guy. He'd be rostered every postseason. he remained in the game, if Mr. First Time is in and he's already had his first time,

so now he's just an automatic out whenever the same pitcher faces him, that would certainly be part of the opposing manager's strategic calculus. If everyone were Mr. First Time, then I guess that would solve our issues with the pitchers not going as deep into games anymore because you would just leave them out there forever and it wouldn't matter what they threw. But in real world terms, if you only have Mr. First Time in one lineup slot, then I guess it all depends, right?

It all depends how gassed the starter is and who else is coming up and how far away Mr. First Time is. But yeah, you'd probably want to get him out of there as soon as you could unless the game was already out of hand. If he were in there for some reason, then it would be additional incentive to leave the starter in. Now, Mr. Repeat. Yeah. So he's an automatic out the first time he gets up there, you're taking an out in the first inning.

But then after that, you'd be so pleased. You know, everything's coming up your guy from there on out. And yeah, they might sub in a reliever at some point. But wouldn't you want him like lead off to start maybe am i thinking about the math of this wrong no no i think you'd have to bat him lead off to maximize as it bats it yeah and then because even if he bats three times a game it's still a 667 hitter right like plus you get him up there with the bases empty that that time you know he's gonna make it out right exactly yeah oh see me math. Oh, see, me, math. Right, plus the third time up, he would be the 19th batter of the game,

and so it's more likely that the starter would be in with the 19th batter than it would be for the 23rd or 24th. Right. Yeah. No, I think you'd have to bat him leadoff in that situation. I think he'd be pretty valuable on a season, over a season, you know? Oh, yeah. There would be some times where you're like, ah, Drat, he's coming up,

you know, they're bringing a reliever in and he's. But then but then you would substitute him for Mr. First Time and the two of them together would be like, that's an indestructible kind of combo, I would think. Right. If you could combine them, then they would just never make it out. That would be wonderful. But yeah, if you had both on the same roster. Yeah, that would be. And they could look like each other like the holidays.

Yeah, it would be a potent and confusing combo. So yeah, it would help you, obviously, because if the opposing manager doesn't make a move, then you know you're getting automatic base runner for as long as the game goes whenever he comes up. But also, you're going to be in that manager's head. He's going to be getting off his game plan and saying, do I have to pull this guy? Because it would be intimidating, I think, to know that this is Mr. Repeat and that he's definitely going to get on, just like the certainty of, yes, I am doomed. If this pitcher faces this batter, there is only one way this can go and it's not good for me, then you're going to maybe make them over eager to make pitching changes potentially. They might just, because of the certainty, they might feel like

I'm even more motivated to make a move than I statistically should be. But also, statistically, you should be more motivated than you otherwise would be to make that change. And then you're going to be getting into the bullpen more quickly. And then you're going to be tiring out that team. And if you're facing them in a series, that's going to take a toll in subsequent games. You're going to get more looks at those pitchers. The other hitters on the team will. And also pitchers are going to get tired. So you'd sort of disrupt their whole pitching plan with this guy if they made moves to counteract him so that he would continue to make outs. Because it's a big swing, right? And knowing that you're going from automatic good outcome for the offensive team to automatic out, that's a pretty big swing, especially if there's anyone on base, right? If it's a higher leverage situation. So you would have reason to make more pitching changes. Well, the other issue is that with Mr., I guess, repeat, if you have two outs,

then you can intentionally walk the three batters ahead of them and still get out of the inning. Yeah, right. Or I guess Mr. First Time, sorry. But yeah, that would be another. Yeah, I guess that would be the other issue. Yeah, but so there would be some reverse chicane around the other way. There are some downsides to this. Well, and I was just going to ask, like how often do you think he would get intentionally walked?

Like how many in a season? Does the guy who you know, you know he's going to have some positive on-base outcome, but I don't think we know what it's going to be, right? So, you know, you might sit there and think, like, he's going to hit a home run, he's going to hit a home run, he's going to hit a home run, like, he's going to hit a home run. I guess I should just walk him.

Like, how many intentional walks? He should be intentionally walked every time he comes up, right? After the first time. If he's facing someone for the second time or more, then you should always intentionally walk him because you know he's going to end up at least on first base. That's the least bad outcome for you. So yeah, that way he can't send someone first to third. He can't get an extra base hit. So this guy's never really going to get to swing because the first time up,

I guess he can swing if he wants to, but he can't make contact or he can't produce good contact. And then every subsequent time, he's probably going to take, he's going to get the bat taken out of his hands. So this is, now that I think about it, sort of a sad existence.

It doesn't seem like this would be very fun for him. Well, I can make this even sadder because I think at a certain point, if they're going to intentionally walk him, they might as well try to hit him. Oh, no. If you know he's going to be on base anyway, you might as well try that. Like if you're being really cynical about this, because maybe you could take them out of the equation. To knock him out of the game?

Knock him out of the game. Yeah. I think teams would do that eventually if they knew that this guy existed. knock him out of the game. Yeah. I think teams would do that eventually if they knew that this guy existed. How long would it take teams to concoct, like realize they needed a strategy around him

that was different than what they would do for a normal hitter? Like what's the sample that you need to be confident? Like just walk him, man. We got to just walk him. Like how, I wonder how long that would take. I wonder that too that would take. automatically get on base the first time, but then he'd make an out every subsequent time. No one would really think of him as a threat. Now, his team, I guess, would be pretty quick to notice and he would be probably pretty quick to notice, hey, this goes really well for me the first time

I bet. And then I'm completely inept every subsequent time. So maybe it wouldn't take that long to dot on them, although it would take a while longer for them to believe in that because what is the mechanism that is causing this are his mechanics falling apart is it some black cloud that's hanging over him is this just a curse i don't know why these guys are mr repeat and mr first time but yeah i wonder how long it would take also to conclude that mr repeat because he'd make it out first time up every time and you'd think, oh, pushover, right? I can get this guy out. I just did. And then every time after that, he would punish you.

What would Mr. Repeat's strategy be knowing that he was going to get out the first time? I don't know. I mean, I guess he wouldn't want to get hit if teams are trying to hit him. if teams are trying to hit him. I think if teams started trying to hit him, it would be so obvious that they were doing that, that you would have benches warned when he was coming up, right? And it would be like an automatic ejection

if you actually plunked him because it would just be assumed to be intentional. But if you know, if you, okay, so you're Mr. Repeat, you know you're going to make an out in your first plate appearance and then you're going to get on after that. And like, you know that get on after that and like you know that you know that is like a magical thing it's like a supernatural thing don't isn't your

best course of action to just stand there your first PA and like take a strikeout looking because I mean it doesn't matter I guess if you are leading off no one is on anyway but like imagine your manager doesn't believe in magic, and so you come up the first time with runners on. You just want to stand there rather than put the ball in play and potentially lead to additional outs, right? Yeah, I guess if there is anyone on base, yeah, you don't want to ground into a double play.

And if you bat and bleed off, that takes away that problem. that problem right right yeah i guess the question is if you're this guy would you try to get out as quickly as possible or would you be the hardest out possible would you try to fell off as many pitches you as you can knowing that you're going to get out or would you just try to like bunt on the first pitch and get out and move on right that's another motivation to intentionally walk him if you're aware of this, just because now you don't have to throw any pitches, so you save your arm. So yeah, if you're this guy and you have the ability to extend the plate appearance, even though you don't have the ability to have it end well for you somehow, so if you can foul off pitches indefinitely, then yeah, make the pitcher work. Then you're contributing at least

a little bit. So I guess it all depends on the mechanism here on why this Mr. First Time is so terrible in every subsequent time and why Mr. Repeat is completely impotent the first time he's up. So maybe it's like Mr. Repeat, maybe he's just incredibly observant and it's like the times through the order effect that everyone has, but it's just dialed the first time up, he wouldn't actually get to see anything that would tip him off the second time. So it sort of has to be something supernatural to make this work. That's kind of a common theme to a lot of effectively wild hypotheticals. There's either magic or weed present for a lot of them, I think, is a safe conclusion to draw. Yep. Okay.

Here's a question from Alex P. Hypothetical. MLB owners decide they're spending too much on baseball analytics and research, so they have to fire the whole analytics and scouting departments and we're now forced to open source all analytics and scouting reports. hire a pool of scouts and analysts hired by GM committees, but they would operate as a neutral consultant headed by league employees and scouts slash analysts do the work without knowing who sent in the report and everything that comes from the reports is reported to all teams. And any found rule breaking comes with very punitive punishments like playoff bans or draft bans. Front offices are now restricted to only a GM, a farm director, and two assistant GMs. How does this change baseball?

Alternative to the alternative. All analysts are sacked and analytics and data are standardized and maintained by the league and open sourced with MLB paying researchers for breakthroughs through state institutions. Scouting would probably stay the same in this scenario. So this is probably what some teams would like. So this is probably what some teams would like. This is not so distant from what's been reported about some budget that teams would have to adhere to for front office people. And some of that is just about this very thing, standardizing data sources, because every team will individually pay for certain things and clients and vendors. And so the league and maybe some of the more miserly ownership groups have said, what if we could all just sort of get the same thing here and spend less? And of course, the teams that are spending more and think that they can get a competitive advantage that way would be very against that. But it's that same sort of

impulse that I guess is not entirely anathema to some owners, but this is taken to an extreme. So everyone, I guess, has the same centralized resource. Do you really need a farm director if you're scouting us outsourced entirely? Yeah. This actually reminds me of the Scouting Bureau. Yeah, I was going to say. Which kind of was this. I mean, this was a resource that was operated by the league and operated Scout School, which I attended. And teams would send prospective scouts and other people who just wanted to learn more about scouting to Scout School. who just wanted to learn more about scouting to scout school.

The scouting bureau had its own scouts that it employed full time who would file their reports and they were accessible to other teams. So if you wanted to sort of skimp on your coverage, you could try to get by with just scouting bureau coverage. Anyway, that doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in the form that it used to. So we've we've moved away from this. But if we went back to that and just like everyone has the same sort of data and technology, like if StatCast were all there was and everyone had the same subscription plan, the thing is it's different from even like the raw data is the same for every team because in many cases that's true now. Like there are different levels of StatCast and different things that you can pay for to get more granular detailed data. But there are a bunch of teams that might have the same StatCast data, but then it comes down to what do you do with it and how do you store it and warehouse it?

And how good are your analysts at asking interesting questions and analyzing them and dissecting that data. But in this case, in this hypothetical, you don't even have that differentiator because you're not even allowed to have your own R&D staff. So you can't really differentiate yourself. Yeah, I don't know how like actionable the information would be, even the information you would be able to access because you need, you know, at some point someone somewhere has to interact with it, whether it's a scouting report and sort of associated data that a scout is putting into a system and then a front office person is looking through or, you know, maybe you have a video scout that's sitting and watching most stuff on film and marrying that with data. Like, you have to have someone doing work at some point. I mean, it would be a really great way to cut through some of the vagaries associated with title creep because if all you have is a GM and two assistant GMs and a farm

director, we'd get a sense of who was good pretty quickly, I would think. But it would still be so much stuff that, you know, four people would not be able to sort of maximize it as a real resource, I would think. It's just too many, it's too many guys. Like if you have four people who are responsible for all of your analytics and then also have to serve as the person synthesizing the information that you would get from a pro and amateur staff, like that's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of stuff to do. You know, they'd never see their families. Yeah. Yeah. I guess those few executives that you're allowed to hire, the good ones would make exorbitant salaries because you would have your entire budget that you have now would be going to just those people. few ways for you to actually gain an advantage or separate yourself from other teams than it would be all about who has the best GM or farm director or AGM. I don't even know what exactly

the differentiator would be if they were all working with exactly the same analysis and information. It'd be hard to, how do you restrict those executives from doing data crunching and analysis, right? Like, how would you prevent teams from just hiring some great R&D person and saying they're the AGM now? I guess there's no way you could really stop them from doing that. But unless you just really rationed their access to the data, maybe at the source. But yeah, if that's the only way that you can spend on a front office level to make yourself better than someone else, then the most desirable executives, many of them are going to lose their jobs, obviously, because there's going to be a massive downsizing of front office staff. But the few, the elite who remain, I guess, will really be raking it in. So that's nice for them. Would this apply to like all the large coaching staffs? Like if there's a limit on the amount of coaches? Right. That I think would be a huge, huge consequence. Like we saw in

2020, guys who like couldn't look at the video between at-bats and got in the habit of that. And there's like a handful of guys that have really plummeted their stats that year. I think that that would be sort of the biggest consequences of like players maybe not even appreciating how fully much they rely on these scouting reports and data. I'd also think it would probably increase the importance of managers, that so much of the in-game decisions

would be based on intuition, which there's pros and cons to, but that would radically change the way that we look at managers. Almost back to like the way we did maybe 20, 30 years ago. on data and analysis of that data into those areas. And they would now become the new arms race unless you're suppressing spending in every area and standardizing everything. I was just about to say, there's something so optimistic in that, Ben, that they wouldn't just be like, great, we're spending $2 million less a year on all of these people. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And obviously, this would probably have ramifications for competitive balance, because if everyone has the same evaluations of players or at least sort of the same stats and data sources about players, and there would probably be even more general agreement about player evaluation than there already is. more general agreement about player evaluation than there already is. So then how would you differentiate yourself other than player payroll, right? Just spending more and some lower spending teams that have managed to keep up with the pack by investing in these other areas or being on the cutting edge. If there really is no cutting edge anymore, then they're not going to have any way to look for advantages that would help them compensate for a payroll disadvantage. So that might be bad. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why this would be good, really, I guess, unless you're the Rockies or someone, then you might appreciate the leveled playing field. But otherwise, it doesn't seem like it would be so great. Yeah, but you still need someone to help you

figure out how to win baseball games on the moon. So you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Here's an interesting question. This is from Ezra. So he says, while I was listening to your recent interview with Tanner Swanson, Yankees catching coach, quality control coach, on the show, it struck me that there was something unsatisfying to me about the idea that wild pitches and pass balls have declined due to something like catchers just got better and got coached better. This is nothing to say about Swanson's expertise in catcher defense, which exceeds mine by many orders of magnitude, but that it was not a clean, systematic explanation for something I felt should have one. I think sports fans like myself, and without wading too deep into these waters, those who have politics within a particular band, always want an overarching explanation for changes in the sport, whereas a more traditional fan will point to the actions of individuals as explanations for sea changes.

point to the actions of individuals as explanations for sea changes. For example, a listener of Effectively Wild might say that the sack bunt has gone out of fashion because the math has said it's largely an ineffective play and the intelligency of the sport has come to a consensus on that. But a traditional fan might say the drop is because they don't teach them how to bunt anymore. In short, I think an old school fan will far more often put the onus on individuals, In short, I think an old school fan will far more often put the onus on individuals, whereas, quote unquote, we tend to look for an overarching reason more often. My question is this. Should we look for the explanation based on individuals more than we do right now? I have recognized that tendency in myself. I think that I am sort of seduced by more of a systemic explanation for

changes, which I guess there's a valid reason for. Like my initial misgiving or suspicion about the theory that wild pitches and pass ball rates have declined all of a sudden after years of increasing just because catchers got better. I guess I'm always suspicious of something where things change in a sudden and dramatic way across the league because it seems like it would be difficult to explain that by, oh, every player and every team in unison just started doing something differently. That always seems less plausible to me. It's like back when people were still speculating about why the home run rate was up before MLB finally admitted, yeah, it was the ball, right? Before that, there were all these

theories about, you know, a lot of individual level explanations in addition to other systemic explanations that didn't really hold water, like the temperature or whatever. But like it was, you know, better hitters are hitting higher in the order. And so they're getting more plate appearances or it's launch angle, right? It's guys just decided to swing for the fences, which obviously was true to some extent, or pitchers don't have command anymore. It's all about velocity, right? And those explanations never seem satisfying to me because they always require everyone to move in lockstep, right? In a way that seems like it would be difficult. That's why I still have suspicions about PDs accounting for all of the rise in home

run rate in the 90s, because it's like, did everyone start juicing at exactly the same time? And did only the hitters juice or did it only work for the hitters? And just overnight, like the home run rate spiked? When you have a change like that, that especially runs counter to a trend that's been running in the opposite direction, then I always look first to a league level explanation. Something changed, right? The ball changed. That's why home runs are up. And then maybe there's a subsequent change where players adapt to that and that causes a secondary rise, right? But that's why when I heard about this wild pitch pass ball

decrease and realized what was going on there, I thought at first it's got to be like the sticky stuff ban, right? It's got to be something like that that would account for, oh, maybe it's just, it's easier to, because that was why it seemed that the wild pitch and pass ball rates were increasing in the first place. It wasn't just, oh, catchers got worse all of a sudden. It was pitchers are throwing harder and they're throwing more rough speed pitches and breaking balls and it's in the dirt and it's hard to get yourself in front of that, which is, I guess, kind of also an individual explanation. So I'm picking up what Ezra's putting down here. I think maybe it's a possible bias, but also I think maybe it's more true than not when you have a sort of

sweeping change like this that's that sudden. Yeah, I mean, I take Ezra's larger philosophical point, but I also think that in watching baseball, there mean, I take Ezra's larger philosophical point, but I also think that in watching baseball, there are a lot less cross-ups, and I think that PitchCom is a big reason for that. Yeah, and PitchCom is kind of an example of, like, it's not an individual change. I mean, I guess, you know, individual players are making that decision to use it or not, but that's like new technology was introduced right so that's yeah point to that and say it's not that people just got better at blocking or worse at blocking or pitchers got less wild or more wild but i do think that like you know because there's more and more breaking balls being thrown every year the catchers are more trained on how to catch a curveball and i

think that that is contributing to the blocking being more of an emphasis and i also think with the pitchcom there's less pass balls because every time there was a cross-up, it almost always got scored a pass ball just because it looked like the catcher was catching it in a very awkward way. And if you get rid of those, or you significantly decrease those, then you're also going to get rid of a lot of pass balls. I also do wonder about the hidden pass balls in wild pitches

that we don't score because no one is on base because those happen all the time but those don't go those aren't a part of the box score because no one's on base and so we don't think about them but those are missed pitches in a way but we just don't pay attention to them yeah i also take the broader point although i do think that when it comes to like the catching question and how they're being coached in particular, like it's not like data doesn't go into informing those decisions. Right. And, you know,

I think that there's a lot of information that teams have access to about where guys are positioned relative to the plate and the hitter and all kinds of stuff that is useful to them. And, you know, when you think about how the framing piece of it informed the positioning on one knee or not, and then sort of noticing the relative improvement from a pass ball while pitch perspective that being on one knee allowed, I don't think it's like as maybe as this example in particular is maybe not quite as

squishy as the question is maybe assuming because like you think about a guy, there are a lot of athletic actions on the field that players are coached up around and are understood to be like fundamentally sound versus not. And I think that those are just better understood and sort of more part of the fabric and background of baseball than like thinking about how do we minimize this particular question and problem by having a guy be on one knee versus not. Like, we don't look at, like, the way that a shortstop is going to feel the ball and be like, well, that's, you know, it's not systematic. It's just that it's so entrenched in how we coach baseball that I don't think we think about it as much.

I'm sympathetic to the larger kind of idea, but I think it's maybe underrating how much information is informing those decisions and then how copycat happy the league tends to be. It's just that it's a different, maybe a different kind of data than, you know, what we then like spin rate would be on a pitch. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And I think with the wild pitch pass ball example, we kind of came down on, it's probably more than one thing going on here. It's a combination of factors. And it usually is.

And even in that bunting hypothetical that the questioner proposed, that's also sort of a blend of both. Because if the old school fan is saying these guys don't bunt anymore because they're not good at it, well, that's true, right? I mean, there's truth to that. Because it's not taught and it's not in vogue and it's not practiced, the players aren't good at it and they won't attempt it because of that. They don't have much experience or expertise doing it. But the reason that they don't is because it's been so de-emphasized because it's been determined not to be a beneficial play as often as it was being used in the past.

So I think they do kind of go hand in hand, right? And what's being taught and emphasized then has an effect on players' performance and skill. But if you're not aware of why certain traits are being emphasized, then I think you're missing part of the picture too. All right. Question from Matt, Patreon supporter, who says, been sitting on this one for years. We often talk about a pitcher roster limit, but what about a minimum pitch limit? First of all, no one sit on your effectively wild hypotheticals for years. If you got them,

use them. Send them to us, podcastoffangraphs.com. Matt says, here's my idea, inspired by a discussion on episode 2058. What if all starting pitchers

had to throw a minimum of 80 pitches and a maximum of 100 with no mid-inning pitching changes? You can't start a new inning after 80 and you're automatically

yanked at 100. This would force pitchers to pace themselves throughout the game and would lead to more consistent work slash strain, which would likely be better. Of course, you'd have exceptions for injury, sproing, and maybe also for rookies, no-hitters or pitchers recovering from injury. But I think this would really revive the idea of a starter's game. Maybe no pitch count for relievers, but once they're in, they have to finish the inning. So, what do you think of the idea of

mandating some minimum number of pitches that you have to deliver here? I mean, we can see some Alan Travers-level stat lines. Yes, that's true. Right. If someone's getting crushed, then you've got to leave them in there to wear it. So that's a downside. That's a downside, I suppose, on a personal level. the exceptions for injury and then you want to like i think it is important to have sort of a a returning from injury and also milestone exception because as we know like the hard

limit isn't necessarily necessary to protect pitcher health all the time but i also i don't know it does strike me as like not very nice maybe right yeah and and also like you're not removing anyone voluntarily with fewer than 80 pitches if they're pitching well generally right like no one's pitch limit is that restrictive and so all you're really going to accomplish here is that if someone doesn't have it and is getting tattooed, then he's going to have to stay out there and keep pitching. So you're probably going to get, I guess, more lopsided game outcomes, right? Because if someone's doing terribly, you have to let them stay in there to keep doing terribly instead of replacing them with someone who could do well. But like,

there to keep doing terribly instead of replacing them with someone who could do well. But like, you're not going to do much to increase the longevity and the durability of most outings or most pitchers who are pitching well. And if you're setting a maximum of 100, which is where the virtual maximum is these days anyway, but if there's no leeway whatsoever, then you can't have anyone go long. There's just a uniformity to it that I don't really like. It's sort of a heavy-handed solution. Like, it would work in some ways, but it would be kind of a blunt instrument, sort of an inelegant way, I think, to get the outcome that you're looking for here. Whereas I favor just having the active roster limit on pitchers because that kind of puts a cap, you know, puts a constraint on how many pitchers you can carry.

But within that, it's up to you. And you have some strategic flexibility within that framework to make it work for you. Whereas this, this almost just takes away all decision making and tactics and strategy. And it's just like, here's how long you're going to go. You can't really go shorter than that. You can't really go longer than that. You know, it's seems like it would be boring. It seems like it would be boring. And we would see a lot more bad baseball, right? To your point, we're not seeing guys who are doing well. I mean, there are, I'm sure, exceptions to this. But in general, you're not seeing guys who are doing well get pulled at 80 pitches. And so if the guy would get pulled at 80 pitches because he's getting lit up. And now we're like, guess what? We get to all watch you throw 20 more potentially.

Like that feels like it would be, you're just seeing a lot of like crummy ball. And I guess I'd rather, I'd rather see a good reliever than see a guy like have to stay in because he's, you know. Yeah. And then of course, then there's going to be be how are you going to know that an injury is legitimate? Of course, there's always going to be that problem, too. So, yeah, I sympathize with the goal, but it's not my preferred way to achieve it. I think there are better ways to get to where we want to go here.

All right. I think there are better ways to get to where we want to go here. All right. Peter says, on two recent Effectively Wild episodes, you discussed Kyle Schwarber's remarkably bad war despite his hitting lots of dingers and Nick Ahmed's successful defense first career despite being bad at hitting. I took a quick peek at their career wars, and it's striking how similar their totals are to this point. Ahmed debuted in 2014, Schwarber in 2015, and as of when this email was sent, Ahmed had 12.2 baseball reference war, Schwarber had 12, Ahmed had 12.4 fangraphs war, and Schwarber had 14.6. Despite this, I feel like baseball teams consistently value the Schwarber skill set more than the Ahmed one, even if on a war basis they are not far apart.

Certainly Schwarber will likely end up making much more than Ahmed over his career. Do teams see something that war doesn't? Is power much rarer than defensive effectiveness? And a corollary, were you a GM, would you value two players of equal war or whatever your internal metric was the same, or would you still lean in favor of the Schwarber type as most execs seem to? Well, I think part of it is you're looking at potential. And so I guess maybe another way to think about it is, would a GM be more likely to elude themselves into thinking that this great defender could hit a little bit or that this great hitter could play a little defense?

Right. Yeah. Because you're always being optimistic when you sign these guys. Right. Yeah. And there are ways, maybe, to make players better at hitting. There must be ways to make

players better at defense, but you don't hear as much about that. I mean, we've certainly seen defensive transformations. You see what Bobby Witt Jr. has pulled off this season. And sometimes in the past, especially when you could still shift to your heart's content, there would be times where someone's positioning would change significantly and then their metrics

would improve. And obviously, I guess, you know, if you get in better shape and you do a different kind of conditioning and drills and exercises, then presumably you would be able to improve your quickness and your first step and your range and all of that. But the fielding fundamentals, you don't hear as much about from sort of a progressive player development standpoint. You know, it's like we've heard a lot about adding new pitches or refining grips on pitches or having a different swing angle or setup at the plate. You don't hear as much about like, oh, you were holding your glove the wrong way. Or, you know, like you, I mean, I guess there's the age old use two hands, get in front of it. But there hasn't been at least a public defensive revolution mechanically the way that there has been with pitching and hitting, right?

Like maybe it's more about your setup and which way you lean and anticipate and how you prepare for the pitch or something. But maybe there's just a little less you can tweak mechanically to improve a player defensively. Or maybe it is just all about practice and taking more and more challenging fly balls and grounders. I don't know. But yeah, you don't hear as often about a defensive overhaul like, wow, swing change, new pitch. What's the defensive equivalent of that these days there there isn't one that's so salient i don't think i wonder i mean like i think schwarber probably is instructive to how teams think about this which is first you look at a guy like him and you're like well we can just dh him and i know the phillies can't right now because

they were overly liberal with that designation right but like they're like yeah we can just dhm and then the other thing that they say is that we can just stick them in a corner and like you know schwarber is perhaps underscoring the limitations of both of those but there's so much value viewed in scoring and you think in most cases they're not going to be so edgy and fringe with their defensive capability that it's going to knock things down where that guy... I also don't know that war is necessarily the way that the Phillies are thinking about Schwarber's contributions to the team right now. That is probably not the main driver of their assessment of where they put him in the lineup and stuff they're like we know the defense is bad we you know we goof we signed too many on these guys but we need somebody out there so he's gonna be there and then he's gonna hit some dingers and

it's gonna be fine harper got hurt what can you do yeah right like i i doubt that they're like but i don't know his war is bad so i guess we can't play him. Like, that's not the lens through which they're making, they're viewing that decision or his play, you know? Yeah, it is certainly true, at least it's historically been true, that defense has been undervalued relative to power, let's say. Nick Ahmed's in particular, right? Yeah, right, yeah. I think one of the first things I wrote for Baseball Prospectus was about that, about kind of getting more bang for your buck, doing a fielding makeover than trying to pay for hitters.

You know, you could still kind of get defensive value for under the market rates that that offense was going for. inspired by the 2008 Rays turnaround and their defensive overhaul, which at the time, not a lot of people predicted or saw coming before it happened. And that's often the case with a surprise team. It's like, how are they doing this? Why are they so good? Like, it doesn't seem like they're hitting that much better. Oh, it must be defense. It's like, it's sort of this invisible thing because unless you're at the extremes unless you've got like truly elite defensive team and truly terrible defensive team it can be kind

of tough on a daily or weekly basis to tell the difference you know like you're only talking about probably a handful of balls falling in that otherwise wouldn't have. It's not super obvious unless everyone's running into each other and falling down, which the Phillies have done a lot of over the past several years. They have done that. Yeah. Yeah. So in their case, it has been kind of obvious. So I would expect that whatever edge, whatever discount you were getting on value on the fielding side has probably decreased, but it's probably still present, if only because our defensive stats historically have not been as good at measuring defensive value. So you couldn't be as confident that someone was a good fielder as you could that someone was a good hitter. Maybe now with stack cast, we can get to the point that you can be. And then maybe you'll have to spend the same amount to improve on defense than you do on offense.

But yeah, I think there's definitely something to this. It probably still persists. It's just, it's still more obvious. It's like those tweets we were talking about where people were like, Schwarber's war is that low, but he's got 40 homers. War must be wrong. No, I mean, maybe he's got 40 homers. War must be wrong. No, I mean, maybe he's just really bad at defense, but it's just so much more obvious. If someone has 40

homers, you can't ignore the 40 homers. You're not going to miss that, but you might miss some of the balls that he doesn't get to that some other players would. This also reminds me of an article I wrote, I guess it was for Grantland years ago, about why we need war, because it was sort of a similar case. I was comparing Adam Dunn and Juan Pierre, who had like identical career wars at that point and could not really have been more different as players. So very similar to Nick Ahmed and Kyle Schwarber, I guess, if Ahmed had more speed, right? So that is the handy thing about these value metrics is that at least in theory, they enable us to compare these completely disparate players who in the past we would have

just thrown up our hands and would really have had no rational basis to compare against each other. All right. Bonnie says, Meg's lament about the Mariners in episode 2058 might as well have been about the Blue Jays. What happened? They were fun last year, but this year has been such a slog. They don't even have a home run celebration anymore. Vladdy's numbers might be fine for some random guy, but he's supposed to be Vladdy.

The whole Alec Manoa situation is so weird, no one seems to know what is going on. And yet, the pitching has been so good up until this last critical series against Texas. Ryu has looked so good coming back from TJ. The boys from Buffalo have been delightful. Davis Schneider, yes, he is a fancy boy, to quote an earlier email. But Spencer Horwitz is also absurdly adorable. I'm rambling, but I have so many conflicting feelings. What am I supposed to think about these guys?

And Max, as an Expos fan, what do you think about these guys? Do you feel Canadian solidarity or is it just the opposite because the Blue Jays would take a lot of the attention that should have gone to the Expos back in the day? Yeah, so it's interesting. I know a lot of Blue Jays fans in my lives, especially because they're just on local TV every night. There's also people I know that resent the Blue Jays because they voted for contraction at the end of the 01 season, even though 27 other teams did as well.

But people take that especially personally as a Canadian team. But yeah, I mean, the Jays have had a really fascinating season. Like they've gotten these great relief appearances out of Meza and Garcia and I know they've lost Simber, but you wouldn't have guessed that the core of their team would have been their bullpen. The Minoas situation is super weird. And I also think it's one of those things where the team that's sort of on the ascent is always fun. You see this this year with Baltimore,

and then in a couple years, all of a sudden, it's kind of hard to maintain that morale. The White Sox are a really good example of that, of how fun they were a couple years ago versus how depressing they are this year. Yeah. So, yeah, I say enjoy things while you can, but the Jays have a great team.

They're still in the thick of it, but I know a lot of Blue Jays fans in my life that are very frustrated with this team on a daily basis. And I always find it funny that this is probably still going to be a 90-ish win team. And yet people are still genuinely disappointed in this team because they had expectations. Whereas a couple years ago, they didn't. And they were able to kind of enjoy them in a more unambiguous way. And they were able to kind of enjoy them in a more unambiguous way. Yeah, I think that there's a looseness that comes with just being like, happy to be there.

You know, you're like, oh, I don't know what I thought would happen, but this is exceeding my expectations dramatically. Underperforming relative to thinking like, oh, we're going to challenge for the top of the division, maybe. Like, it can feel very different and I think the part of it too is like I don't know that anyone is particularly satisfied with the answer to what is like ailing Vlad this year and why he's not better and why he is underperforming like his expected stats so dramatically and when I talk to Blue Jays like media people they they don't feel like they have a good answer on that either. And so I think underperforming and having a mystery at the heart of it doesn't always sit well with people. So yeah, it's just like a weird, it's a weird,

weird vibe. But, you know, some of it's fun some of the time, you know? Yeah. And Manoa is sort of a different kind of mystery, too. He led the 2022 Blue Jays in baseball reference war. And now you're getting nothing out of him. So that's going to be a big blow to lose that kind of production. Like they were up-and-comers, and then they stopped going up. They up and came to a certain extent, and then they kind of plateaued, I guess. And it keeps feeling like there's going to be a next level that they get to. It's like the infamous Vlad quote about how that was the trailer and this is going to be the movie, right? And it just feels like we're stuck watching the trailer. It's a good trailer. Some trailers are fun, but you kind of want to see the rest of it.

So I don't know. Maybe it's just that. And if they were in a different division, probably you'd feel better about it. Partly it's just that they're in the AL East. If they were in a central or something, then you'd be probably pretty happy with how they've been. And their plan for this year, like the defensive makeover in the outfield,

I mean, that has paid dividends. That has had the intended effect. And I guess also it's just that they were like these big sluggers and now withlad stalling and then also the changes to the ballpark that have seemingly made it kind of a hard park to hit homers in all of a sudden it's a different way to win than it used to be it's not really that this is fun we're out slugging everyone with all of these young guys who are the sons of well-known former players kind of model. Right. So yeah,

I sympathize. It's been frustrating. Well, and two years ago they were happy just to have home games again. Right. So his fan base has like low key gone through a lot in the last three to four years with this team in terms of the highs and lows of being able to watch their team,

not watch their team have excitement, have disappointment. And you know, the Jays have a massive fan base. Like I said, they're on national TV every night. They have probably the biggest TV market in all of baseball. Certainly them or maybe the Dodgers. And so there's a lot of Blue Jays fans coast to coast. And so they get a lot of attention. I think that movie trailers show us too much of movies now. They should show us less. You can just figure out what's in the movie when you watch a trailer most of the time. You're like, oh, I've seen the movie. Yeah. Yeah. I know what that beat means. I can predict where it goes. You are not alone in that sentiment. Yeah. I tend to avoid trailers for the most part,

but yeah, I would like to see the Jays like I've pretty sure I've predicted them to win the AL East like multiple times they just have not done that and they've squeaked into the playoffs maybe they'll squeak in again if they do maybe it'll be at the expense of Meg's Mariners and you probably won't be

pleased about that no but I'd understand because I'm given to understand that after last postseason, Blue Jays fans aren't exactly happy with the Mariners. So, you know, it feels like we can have a little balancing out that that'd be fine. Yeah. And they're sort of what I was saying about like the fielding makeover, not always being obvious. Like you look at the pitching staff that the Jays have and their starters in particular, and there are a era is in that group and you think well look at

that are they all pitching really well even Jose burrios who started everyone was wondering what the heck is wrong with Jose burrios so he's been good I mean everyone in that rotation has like mid threes ERAs other than Manoa, Bassett, who's been better, and Gossman and Brios and Kikuchi all the way down. But that's partly the ballpark playing differently now. And it's partly the defense. They do lead the majors in defensive runs saved by, I guess, their entire team, it looks like, but their outfield especially, they're doubling the DRS of the next best team, the Padres. So the plan has worked in some ways. And then in other ways, I guess things that you were counting on, you have not been able to keep counting on. So yeah, it's been frustrating. Sorry, Chase fans. All right.

counting on. So yeah, it's been frustrating. Sorry, Chase fans. All right. And maybe we can end with one more that is statblasty and could have been a part of yesterday's statblasting. But this is a question from Evan A. And he says, he's a Patreon supporter, I'm sure Ben is getting tired of talking ad nauseum about the Mariners every podcast, though I'm sure Meg doesn't mind. But I did discover a potentially interesting stat blast based off their recent performance. The Mariners have obviously been on a tear. Now, this was sent on September 4th, so they had been on a tear to that point, losing just 11 of their last 41 games. But perhaps even more impressive as of this writing, all of their 11 losses over that

stretch have been by three runs or fewer, with their last loss by four or more runs coming against the Twins on July 18th. I'm curious how unprecedented this kind of stretch is. Three runs is somewhat arbitrary, but if a three-run game is considered a save situation, then it seems to me like it would count as a close game. What's the longest stretch a team has had without losing a game that wasn't even close, say by four or more runs? And it looks to me that even though I think they've had five losses since this email was sent, they still have not had a loss where the margin of victory or defeat was greater than three runs. So Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, answered this one and said,

the 1916 Boston Braves had a streak of 80 games without a loss of three-plus runs. They went 50, 28, and two in that time. The more recent record is the 1999 Diamondbacks, who had a 64-game stretch. So those are obviously longer than what we're dealing with here. 41, he said, is not particularly notable. 52 teams have done it, but only three teams have done it since 2000, not including this year's Mariners, the 2015 Blue Jays. Those were the days, 50. The 2021 Rays, 43. And the 2013 Pirates, 41. So the Mariners are tied for third this millennium with a pretty clear shot at second and a chance

at the record this millennium. Doubtful that they get the overall record. And as I said, I think the streak is still going here. And this email was sent 11 days ago and the marriage have not had a lot of off days lately. So few off days, Ben, really. They're the most tired boys. They have to be the most tired guys. Yeah. I think they've played 10 games since this email was sent so if it was 41 then i think they're up to 51 now which would surpass the 2015 blue jays streak for the longest this millennium so yeah it is pretty notable that the mariners have not been

beaten by three or more runs in quite a long time, which I guess makes sense. Like it's a good pitching team, right? They've had some hiccups lately, but they are a good pitching team typically. And so when they lose, I guess it tends to be close. I guess that would be the positive interpretation of that. Yeah, that is a positive interpretation. All right. Before we finish with the future blast, Max, anything you want to plug or promote or say while you're here?

Sure. Just a reminder to people that there is a great baseball tradition both in Montreal and the East Bay. And if the A's don't have a team in a couple of years in Oakland, that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of both in Montreal and the East Bay. And if the A's don't have a team in a couple of years in Oakland, that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of great baseball fans in the East Bay. And that's true for Montreal as well. Amen to that.

Yeah. Do you have any tips about the best ways to enjoy baseball where you are? Any tools of the trade other than, I guess, going and getting to hear everything at A's games while they're still playing there? You know, I guess in losing the Expos, I think the best thing that I had to do was, I admit that it was very hard to watch Major League Baseball in, say, 2005.

The best thing that I did was find baseball in other ways in my life. So whether that was coaching or playing or becoming an umpire, having a relationship to the game that was outside of Major League Baseball, I think allowed me to come back to it. I also was lucky that I, having a relationship to the game that was outside of major league baseball, I think allowed me to come back to it. I also was lucky that I, you know, 10 years later moved to a city that had two teams and that's slowly allowed me to kind of have a regular experience at the ballpark again. But even in between that, just having and getting to appreciate baseball in different ways, I think is the best way that I think I was able to keep a love of the sport. Baseball in different ways, I think, is the best way that I think I was able to keep a love of the sport. Yeah, that reminds me, I kind of forgot to ask you about how you got into baseball to begin with. We asked about your podcast history. And of course, we know you grew up rooting for the Expos, watching the Expos. But was it as simple as that? You just, you tuned in one day and liked it and kept going? Or was there someone or something that got you into it specifically?

And then you also mentioned that you had worked for a college team, right? So you've worked in baseball in some capacity as well. Yes, I have. But yeah, growing up, my family had a partial season ticket plan. And one of the cool things is, you know, before the era of like StubHub and all that stuff, it was basically the same people in my row pretty much every game. And so having that community of people who had been there 20, 30 years in some cases and knew the team in and out and every, you know, scrutinized every change and kept score and just having that sort of solid community of people that were there every single night is probably what got me hooked in the first place.

Yeah. Hey, we just got a late-breaking email, and it's extremely pedantic. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. It comes from a professor, and his name is David, and he says on the most recent episode, Ben reported, as many others did, that the Red Sox had already ruled out Theo Epstein as a candidate to replace Hein Blum.

But if you'll allow me to be pedantic, of course I will. I'm not sure that's actually the case. Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy was widely quoted as saying, I can rule out Theo Epstein as a candidate for one of these two positions, referring to the positions of chief baseball officer and general manager. Obviously, everyone is reading that as Kennedy saying that Epstein will not be a candidate for either position. Epstein is just one person, and so it would not be grammatically correct to rule him out as a candidate for both of these two positions. But couldn't it also be read that Kennedy was ruling out Epstein as a candidate for one of these positions, as in I can rule out Theo Epstein as a candidate for one of these two positions, but he's our top choice for the other one.

So I was going to say, Beth is desperately hoping that Theo Epstein will appear out of a gorilla suit and take over the Red Sox again. But to Meg's point about title creep, how do you go above chief baseball officer at this point? What is the next frontier? God, emperor of baseball. Yeah. Commander in chief baseball, commander in chief of baseball officer. I don't know. But, but yeah, David has a point here. So the, the quote from Kennedy, he repeated this apparently. He said, I can rule out Theo Epstein as a candidate for one of these two positions. I know there's speculation, there's professional history, there's an even longer personal history, but I can rule out Theo Epstein as a candidate for one of these two positions. I know there's speculation, there's professional history, there's an even longer personal history,

but I can rule Theo Epstein out as a candidate for one of these two positions. It's almost suspicious how he phrased it exactly the same way twice. I can rule Theo Epstein out as a candidate for one of these two positions. Obviously, you would rule him out as a candidate for GM, right? positions. Obviously, you would rule him out as a candidate for GM, right? He's not going to take the GM job and work under some other chief baseball officer or president of baseball operations. So maybe he was sending a signal that Theo Epstein will not be the next GM of the Red Sox, but there's still a possibility that he could be the top dog or the top gorilla. Probably not, though. Probably not.

But we must acknowledge the possibility. Yes. The way it is phrased, it does not explicitly roll it out. Although really, like, why would Theo want that job? I mean, not that there's anything wrong with the job, but he's been there and done that, right? Like, he broke the curse. He won World Series. I mean, he could go back and do it again,

I guess, but that seems like it would be pretty anticlimactic after he broke the curse in Boston, then broke the curse in Chicago. Like we've talked in the past about, okay, what's the next challenge he could take on? Maybe he could win a division title with the Rockies, something like that. But, but, you know, or he could snap another drought. He could go to Cleveland, right? But, but just going back to Boston and doing it again, maybe he'd like some aspects of that job, but it doesn't seem like it would hold the challenge for him. It seems like he's maybe most interested in some sort of ownership level position potentially. He's already helped fix the sport by working with the league and the commissioner on the rules changes and everything.

So it seems like it would be almost too low stakes for him to go back and just run the Red Sox again. But I don't want to dash Beth's dreams. I guess there's still a chance. It is not ruled out by this phrasing completely. I'd like to see him take over the Mexico City team so he can figure out how to build a pitching staff at 9,000 feet of elevation. Yeah. If he could figure that out, then Colorado would be easy.

Yeah, literally to the moon, only place to go. Yep. Alright. Well, we will end with the future blast, which comes to us from the year 2060 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. both, with plenty of implications for the future of the game. Plus, there was an unusual visit from an old friend who put everyone on edge, from crazy conspiracists to level-headed Space Force officials. The personal comeback was by Paolo De Sesto, the AC Milan pitching star who suffered a spinal cord injury in 2057 when his self-driving car chose to go off the road rather than hit a

cyclist on the dramatic Stelvio Pass near Bormio in the Italian Alps. Lucky to survive the 30-meter drop over the edge of the road, DeSesto recovered and was then fitted with a brain-spine interface that allowed electrodes placed in his brain to send signals to a spinal implant that stimulated arm, shoulder, hip, leg, and ankle movements. The technology had been around since the 2020s, but dramatic improvements over the years culminated in helping DeSesto make a more than complete recovery. Together with new ligament and tendon enhancements

and his brain-spine interface, DeSesto was able to return to baseball in 2059 in the Italian minor leagues and then rejoin AC Milan for the 2060 season. There, he put together his best career season with 21 wins and an ERA of 1.85 and won the European division's Christie Ring Award for Best Pitcher and the overall Major Leagues Award for Comeback of the Year. He led AC Milan to the World Series where he pitched two games and won them both, but his club fell to the Nashville Rays in seven.

Sorry, Max, I haven't heard anything about a Montreal team showing up in the future blasts yet. Heard a lot about a lot of other cities, but haven't heard Montreal yet. Meanwhile, first noticed by the Keck Observatory telescopes at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Amuamua made an unexpected return appearance at the edge of the solar system. The oddly shaped interstellar rock that was shaped like an elongated

asteroid but seemed to be speeding up like a comet first paid our solar system a visit in 2017 and was notable for its appearance, with some people guessing it was an alien spacecraft. In a few months, it left the solar system and was not expected to return, but there it was in 2060, and again it seemed to be speeding up and heading in Earth's general direction. Scientists were excited by the prospect of one of the new generation of Space Force rovers paying the 500-meter-long rock a visit. roamers paying the 500 meter long rock a visit. Conspiracists were convinced it was either a U S government plot to take over the world with the help of the aliens or more likely an alien warship that we

should prepare to fight doomsdayers. We're delighted. Wow. The suspense is leaving us on a cliffhanger here, whether we're alone in the universe. All right. Well, until next time,

thank you very much, Max. And thank you also to Beth. Please pass along our gratitude to her as well. Thank you. I certainly will. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. Look at that. Ending week on a multiple of five for old time's sake, just like Max mentioned earlier. And congrats to Heston Kerstad, who hit his first Major League home run on Friday. It accounted for the Orioles' lone run in a 7-1 loss to Tampa Bay in a big weekend series. Attending that game was one Michael Mountain, former Effectively Wild guest and Patreon supporter,

which I mentioned because Michael did something cool in response to our last episode. We talked about Bill James' proposal for a tiered Hall of Fame with a bunch of different levels that would correspond to career accomplishment. So that wouldn't be a binary, yes, you're a Hall of Famer, no, you're not a Hall of Famer. It would go by levels. So he posted this in our Patreon Discord group and shared it publicly. Maybe we'll have him on to talk about this during Hall of Fame season. But for now, I will link to it on the show page And summarize what he did. He said he took a stab at defining career tiers using a 2.5x multiplier. So each tier must contain at least 2.5 times as many players as the tier above. Starting with 22,803 players in Major League history, which was the total through 2022, here are the tier sizes and a representative player who ranks near the middle of the tier. Now for a player rating, Michael is using former Effectively Wild guest Adam Durowski's Hall rating as calculated at HallofStats.com, which is basically an attempt to combine

war, wins above replacement, and wham, wins above average, or wham if we rebrand it as wins above mean, to more accurately reflect how we tend to weight a player's peak against their longevity when it comes to Hall of Fame evaluation. So it makes some era and position adjustments, give a bit of a boost to catchers, discount 19th century pitchers, account for shorter seasons. And then the values are all normalized such that the 242nd best player in Major League history has a Hall rating of 100 because there are 242 players in the Hall. And then that gets renormalized every year. So a marginal Hall of Fame career should have a hall rating of 100. That would basically be the worst deserving Hall of Famer. And for context, a median player season would be worth about 1.5 points of hall rating. So level one, which Michael has dubbed made it

to the show, that's 13,685 players. That's a hall rating below 0.9. Those are basically replacement level guys. Level two, positive contributor, 5,474 of them. That's a 0.9 to a 14 hall rating. Representative player, Gregory Polanco. Level three, all-star, RIP Steve Harwell, 2,189 players. That's a hall rating of 14 to 40. Jeremy Jeffress, representative player. Level four, fan favorite, 875 players. That goes from 40 to a 75 Hall rating. Hunter Pence, representative player. Was a fan favorite. Level five, historic talent, 350 players. That goes from a 75 to 110 Hall rating. Representative player, Troy Tulewitzki. So that's when you start to cross over into Hall of Fame worthy players as we think of them now. And then level six, you really get into

deserving Hall of Fame territory. Generational player, 140 players with Hall ratings from 110 to 150. Representative player Derek Jeter. Level seven, legends. Sorry, Derek Jeter, you don't quite qualify as a legend. 56 players, Hall ratings of 150 to 200. Representative player Bob Gibson. Level 8. All-time greats. 22 of them. Hall ratings of 200 to 265. Representative player Mike Schmidt. Then we get to level 9. The Immortals. 8 of them. Hall ratings of 275 to 325. Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Henry Aaron, Roger Clemens, Rogers Hornsby, Honest Wagner, Trish Speaker, Ted Williams. Level 10. The Gods. Three of them. Hall ratings of 335 to 365.

Barry Bonds, Walter Johnson, and Willie Mays. And finally, level 11, Michael calls literally Babe Ruth because the only member is Babe Ruth with a hall rating of 399. Using some Major League equivalency values for Negro Leagues players, gets two of those guys into the tier eight all-time greats level. Smokey Joe Williams and Oscar Charleston, nine others in tier seven, the legends. The basic framework, kind of cool. There's also a tab on the spreadsheet that I'll link to

that breaks down the tier success by franchise. So each player in MLB history is awarded to the franchise. They amass the highest hall rating for. Then you can assess the franchises based on how many of their players advance to at least a given tier. So the Marlins and the Rays are the only active franchises not to have any players in tier 6 or higher. And as for two of the players who were mentioned on our last episode, Dave Steeb comes in as a low level 6 generational player. Thurman Munson comes in as a high historic talent level 5.

Both do get above that 100 Hall rating. Fun project. Check out the link on the show page for more info or to see where particular players placed. And if you want to be like Michael Mountain or like Max Harris and Beth Goldberg and support Effectively Wild on Patreon, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay almost ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Miles Schachner, Derek Solberger, Clemente, appropriate as I say this on Roberto Clemente Day, Kevin Smith, and Becca Vidham.

Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Patreon Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, obviously appearances on the podcast if you're at a high enough tier discounts on ad free fangraphs memberships and merch and so much more patreon.com slash effectively wild if you are a patreon supporter you can message us through the patreon site but anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcast the fangraphs.com where you can send us questions and comments and effectively wild intro and outro themes if you want you can also join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild you can send us questions and comments and Effectively Wild intro and outro themes if you want.

You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. How can you not be pedantic? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death, but for sure to make you smile. This is Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild.

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