Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2063: Yusei Are Getting Very Sleepy

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Yusei Kikuchi’s (and other players’) sleep habits and the possibility of a three-way AL West tie with no tiebreaker game, then (28:28) answer listener emails about surprising team assignments in Baseball-Reference headshots, a player who replicates the talent of the player who started in the same lineup spot […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2063 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought Sometimes Last time we talked about A.J. Preller's sleep schedule and the lack of sleep. And now I'm wondering whether Yusei Kikuchi has stolen all of his sleep somehow. Maybe it's like there can only be a certain number of hours between the two of them. And it's just that Kikuchi is hoarding them all and Preller can't sleep anymore. Let's see. How do I want to engage with this hilarious story? How did you first hear about Kikuchi's sleep habits? I heard about it for the first time actually on the Mariners broadcast because one thing that happens when your baseball team is playing the Oakland

Athletics and they are doing what they should do against the Oakland Athletics, which is win. You kind of like, sometimes you don't have a lot to talk about because it's, you know, they're winning and they're supposed to do that. And it starts to feel like a far gone conclusion at some point. And so I heard Aaron Goldsmith and Mike Blowers talking about this on the Mariners broadcast. And as it was relayed to me by them, they relayed it via Caitlin McGrath, who's the beat writer for the Blue Jays for the athletic. Yes. Kikuchi sleeps 12 to 13 hours a night. Yeah, that was the first that was the first. Yeah, that was the first mention I saw. And I'm going to admit to having an instinctual kind of unfun response to that, which was to think, he's married and has a kid. Like, what sort of presence in his own home is Kikuchi being?

Like you say, come on, man, you got to engage with your family. And then Caitlin, being the good reporter that she is, did additional work on this question, because as soon as she tweeted his sleep schedule, the masses clamored to know more, Ben. does he live you know and what we came to find out was that this patently absurd amount of sleep is only before he starts it's only on the nights before he starts which made me feel better about like what kind of husband and father you say kikuchi is which is a weird thing to have as an opinion about a stranger because like i don't know him he seems like a nice enough guy but then ben so like you don't sleep very much right right yeah and i i sleep more than you i don't want to i don't want to like put a sort of like normative judgment on it because some people just need less sleep and some people need more sleep and like hopefully you're in a spot where you can sleep as much as your body needs for you to feel well-rested.

Because sleep is a very, it's a very important process for our dumb little fragile brains, you know, and the rest of our bodies too. And how much sleep you need to like, really do justice to those processes. Again, it can vary person to person, but 12, 13 hours is the kind of sleep that

you only have, at least as far as I'm concerned, when you either are a teenager or have mono or both. Maybe you're a teenager with mono and then you're really in a pickle. But I tend to get between, I'd say like seven and eight hours of sleep. I need seven or eight hours of sleep to be a functional Meg. And you know, that can be why our October podcast gets so weird because I never get that much sleep, right? And I can't imagine, I was having a conversation about this phenomena with friend of the podcast, Emma Batchelor, and also a friend of the podcast, Lindsay Adler. And we were flummoxed by the idea that one could ratchet up one's sleep so

dramatically only one night a week. Like I would be, I would feel hung over after sleeping that much if I wasn't doing it regularly. So, you know, Caitlin did good work here to clarify some important questions. And I guess he goes to bed at like 11 and then sleeps until one. Yeah. Which is, that's basically his entire time away from the ballpark on those days is he's unconscious. That would be the sticking point for me, I think, is that I wouldn't want my entire day to be the work portion of the day. Now, granted, the work portion of his day on a day that he's starting, pretty exciting. He gets to pitch in a Major League Baseball game. But still, I need time to decompress after that.

I guess he could decompress after his start because then he's merely sleeping 10 hours or whatever. Right. But I would not like to do that. And just, I mean, that's, you know, if you were doing that all the time, that would just be half your life you're not conscious for or more, right? And I like to be conscious. Everyone likes to get a good night's sleep too. But also I prefer being awake in general to being asleep, which is I think part of my resistance to sleep. I think part of it is just that I can be pretty functional without sleeping a lot for a while but also i resent the need to

to shut down to power off right sure it it feels nice obviously like lying down after a long day and drifting off to sleep of course but but then then sometimes I just, I wake up and eight hours went by and it's like I just lost that time. I mean, I needed to spend it that way, but I didn't really get anything. I didn't get to experience anything. It's a necessary reset for us. But if it could not be, if I could opt not to sleep, I think I probably usually would. Now, maybe it becomes a dystopian scenario where I realize that actually it's bad to be conscious 24-7 and it would fry your brain. But if we had evolved to be able to do that, then I don't think I would wish to do it. If we didn't

always need to sleep from birth and someone came along midlife and said, hey, you've got to just be unconscious a third of the time or so now, I don't think I would welcome that. So, in general, I'm resistant to the idea, the concept of sleep, but I do bow to the inevitable, but just not for as long as you say Kikuchi does. Well, and I immediately had two more thoughts, right? And one of them is related to the idea of like having all of your non-working hours occupied by sleeping. One of the things that Caitlin shared in her follow-ups to this was that, and I'm quoting from her tweet here, Kikuchi likes to sleep a lot because it helps reduce anxiety ahead of a start. Quote, if he's awake, he'll be thinking about baseball too much. Okay, so Ben, you're not an anxious person generally. Like, I'm sure you have your moments,

but like your baseline anxiety levels seem to be at a better place than mine are. And so, here's a thing. If this man knows how to sleep to reduce anxiety as opposed to having sleep interrupted by anxiety, you say, share your secrets, my good sir, because that is magical. That is miraculous. Like, your girl over here is sometimes unable to sleep well because of anxiety. And the idea that going to sleep then shuts down that anxiety is, I've never been more jealous of another person in my whole life, maybe. So there's that. And then my other question was, what does Yusei Kikuchi do if he has a day start? And you might think to yourself, well, how many of those has he had? And the answer is 12 in this season.

In the 2023 season, I looked this up. He has had 12 starts that baseball reference qualifies as day starts and like i imagine that the the exact first pitch time of those might like vary ever so slightly but like day starts means like before night time and certainly before like the evening and so and so ben how does one and he has won most of these because i mean like he didn't necessarily take i don't know that he was like granted the win from a scoring perspective and all of these in most of them he was in most of them he was ben in many of them how ben when how does it change then?

Does he go to bed really early? Does he like have to leave the prior night start? Like halfway through to be like, sorry guys, I got a bed calling me. Like I got a hard wake up tomorrow. And then it inspires more questions because like I said, the idea that you could alter your sleep schedule one night a week, basically, so dramatically is like mind boggling to me. And then to have the parameters of that weird night variable. I mean, this man, Ben, is like, I mean, I don't want people to be studied in like an uncomfortable way, I don't want people to be studied in like an uncomfortable way, but I would, I invite a Kikuchi like sleep study, I think, because like how this. I think as incomprehensible as his schedule is to you and to most of us, I think our being flummoxed about it is equally incomprehensible to him. To him, this is normal because Steph Epstein wrote about this for Sports Illustrated, too, and it had a few more details.

And there was a quote that he said through his interpreter, my teammates asked me how I'm able to sleep so much. But like, honestly, if you close your eyes, I feel like you should be able to sleep. So for him, it's that easy. Wow. I'm in awe. Yeah. I guess he could just dictate mentally how long he will remain asleep. Or if he wakes up, well, he just closes his eyes and goes back to sleep again.

Because he said that getting only 11 instead of his preferred 13 or 14 prior to his start was why he had to leave a start early because his left was cramping after a bad night of sleep. Only 11 hours right now. That part of it is, I mean, I can't imagine. That just seems like are parts of him cramping on the nights when he's normally? Or is it just because he was pitching, he will break? Like, is it a strength or a weakness? I don't know. If he's breaking down. Yes, Ben.

Yes. You are asking so many good questions. Yes. Because people envy him, I think, that he's able to do this. But if it's not just that he's able to do it, but that he has to do it, that if he doesn't do this and he attempts to pitch, then he will just start breaking, then I would suggest that this is in fact more of a handicap than it is an advantage, right? At least when it comes to being a baseball player. And apparently he can sleep anywhere at any time. So a lot of this article, Steph talked to teammates and they were all marveling at how he can fall asleep just on the plane, in the clubhouse.

There's music blasting. He can sleep anywhere at any time. He just closes his eyes and he goes to sleep. And some people can do that more than others. And my wife, I think I've said, like, my wife will go to sleep very quickly. Typically, she'll just close her eyes, like, at bedtime, not just all the time. But if she sets her mind to it and wants to go to sleep, she can generally just go to sleep right away. And it amazes me and almost disturbs me because it's like we'll be talking. We'll both be conscious. And then both of us will close our eyes. Goes away.

And she's gone just like that. Wow. Snap. And for me, it takes longer. I wouldn't say I have a problem falling asleep, but it's definitely not an instantaneous thing. And I actually kind of enjoy that process of gradually falling asleep and thinking about things. I don't mind that it takes me a while, but it's definitely not just close my eyes and that's it. So he clearly has some sort of

special ability here, but I'm not sure. Is this a bug or a feature? Is this a superpower or like his Achilles heel? I don't know. The latest that any of these day games started is at 3.07 p.m. So I am just saying that there is more reporting to be done here because I need to know how the day game thing works. I don't think we've cracked that nut yet. It is so interesting that a person could could have seemingly such a strong capacity for change, right? You're used to some number less than 12 or 14 hours of sleep, which like is 11 your baseline? Like that's insane. He says on other days he's okay with getting 8 to 10.

Okay. Wow. Wow. That's the minimum, though. I think I have more questions about the parenting piece of this. Well, yeah. Steph's piece actually mentions that the unsung hero here is his wife, Rumi, because they have a four-year-old son. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I guess if he's on the road, he's not going to be home anyway, probably.

Sure. And maybe they wouldn't be traveling with him, but yeah. During homestands. Yeah. I guess he's got to be just checking out. Right. I mean, that's going to be the entire time that his kid is awake, probably. And like, that's the thing that I, you know, I don't want to put that all on Kikuchi. I imagine that this is a thing that people really struggle with. I imagine ballplayers and their partners, this is a thing that has to be negotiated. And I bet it is at times tricky and feels like the balance is uneven. And in a way that like the baseball players themselves probably don't enjoy, right? So like, you know, I imagine this is just one of the struggles of

like being a pro athlete. But so Ben, he's like able to shift back and forth between as few as eight and as many as 14 hours of sleep. And like he can do that. And that's wild to me. But also, if he gets disrupted and falls in the middle on a night before he starts, it's like a very fragile microchip that can't adjust. And so, I think he, we need a Kikuchi sleep study. I mean, like, we don't because it's none of my business, but they brought it up. So, like, he made it my business. afford to do that, to help out while he's sleeping for 14 hours. But yeah, I've probably slept that long at some point in my life, but only after not sleeping the previous night or I was ill or, you know, there was some sort of unusual circumstance. So yeah, to be able to fluctuate like that is maybe even more amazing than, I guess, if you were sleeping like

14 hours every night, then you'd have to worry, like, is there a problem here? Like, is there an undiagnosed health issue? Like, that is not normal and doesn't seem like it would be good. I mean, it doesn't seem like he minds this reporting, at least so far. He's not like, yes, this is my cross to bear. This is my curse. I must sleep 14 hours. It seems like he's kind of okay with it. So if he's okay with it, I'm okay with it. But yeah, everyone has just been flummoxed by this. And really, he's not alone among athletes in wanting to get a lot of sleep because Shohei Otani is a big sleep fan. He's mentioned many times that he sleeps, I think, at least nine hours a day has been reported. That that's like a minimum for him.

And there was a time when Lars Knuppar, who became his bestie, said about him. This was this May. He sleeps a lot. I asked him if he wanted to go eat yesterday and he said he was sleeping. So I don't know how he said he was sleeping if he was asleep. Presumably, he said that he would be sleeping at the time that Nupar wanted to eat. And also, he said he will sleep for more than 10 hours. This was another time he said he maybe sleeps like 12 hours a day sometimes.

Maybe not all at once but he'll he'll break it up so at least he's like doing his two-way thing so you could say maybe he needs like twice as much sleep as a normal normal man but oh man yeah it's and and like justin verlander has talked about how important he thinks sleep is and he chastised alex bregman some years ago for not getting his uh his 10 hours you know like and uh and teams generally have emphasized sleep hygiene and and have put in nap rooms right and they encourage their players to try to get sleep and and uh you know the blue j, it's said in this story, will sometimes like delay a flight

until the next morning so that they don't have a red eye so that their players can get sleep. And now that athletes are all tracking things and trying to optimize their nutrition and their rest and everything, some of them are like, you know, they'll wear a bracelet to sleep

and they'll try to assess their sleep quality and quantify these things. And in other sports like LeBron and Roger Federer, guys like this have talked about wanting to sleep 12 hours or at least sometimes sleeping 12 hours. And there have always been people who talked about the importance of napping, like Nelson Cruz is slash was a big napper. Lee Smith during his day was famously a big napper who could just fall asleep on the clubhouse floor the way that Tristan Cassis did and got a talking to, I guess. And even Mike Trout, I was searching and he's talked about how sleep is the secret to success for him. And this was a 10-year-old article when he was 22 at the time. So sleep is important when you're an athlete. And maybe that. But maybe we don't need quite as much physical recovery as a professional athlete. And that leads to a need for more sleep. So maybe this

is just one of those pro athletes are different from the rest of us. It is so weird, Ben, that sleep is so important and it can be so hard and it's such a tricky needle to thread in terms of how much or how little and you know like i need seven or eight hours but if i sleep nine hours sometimes i get a migraine like you know it's just like what are you know these little brains they they're only as good as you need to survive. They don't, like, the baseline is pretty low. Like, evolution doesn't ask a lot. Kikuchi is apparently a coffee addict, too. And I don't know whether that is surprising or extremely unsurprising. Because if his default state is, like, soporific, it's like he's just, he can fall asleep anytime he closes his eyes.

Then I guess maybe it makes sense that he needs to just constantly be on a caffeine drip because otherwise he might fall asleep when he blinked. But you might also think that makes it even more amazing and improbable that he's able to sleep so much if he drinks so much coffee because I'm not a coffee drinker. But there are a lot of coffee drinkers who will say that if they have a cup after whatever time, then they can't sleep that night. Clearly, that is not a problem for Yusei Kikuchi. Yeah. Wow. I just... He's having a good year, so it's working for him. He's having a great season. And that was, you know, that was where the discussion, just to bring it full circle, of him on the Mariners broadcast landed because, you know, he started his stateside career with Seattle and things

just didn't quite... It didn't go the way that he wanted. And he's had his struggles in Toronto too, but this year man, like 3-7-4 ERA 4-1-9-5, two and a half

wins. He's thrown 158 innings. that rotation has been so weird at times and they've had guys struggle and they you know they've had the manoa of it all and then there's just been like kikuchi's just been like a steady eddy kind of guy for them so he's having a great year and and like you know it's great but like and and did the sleeps they did it change ben right was he only getting 11 to 12 the past few years and he realized my problem is sleep deprivation it's like it's like those players who realize that they have sleep apnea or something and then maybe they get a c-pad machine or whatever it is and suddenly they're like oh i was like asleep

all the time. I didn't realize I had a sleep deficit, and I was so tired, and now I'm so awake. Maybe it was that with Yusei Kikuchi, except he was only getting 11 or 12 hours the nights before he starts or something. I don't know. Yeah, there's more I would want to know about this, I think, if anyone wants to dig into it further. One more thing here. This was a hypothetical raised in Joe Sheehan's most recent newsletter. He talked about how we might have potentially a three-way tie in the AL West, right? Now, I'm sure that you would prefer that that doesn't happen, that the Mariners just win it cleanly and that settles things. That would be nice. I would feel happy if that happened. Yeah.

But as we speak, these teams are, what, half a game apart and only because the Astros have played one additional game and won it. So if Joe raised the possibility, what if they all finish, let's say, 91 and 71? Like the Mariners play their last 10 games against the Rangers and Astros. So there's every possibility that this could remain close until the end. So if they all ended up with the same record, then you would have one team that gets the number two overall seed in the AL and just gets a bye to the division series. Another team that becomes the last wildcard team and would go off to play the twins in the wildcard series, and then a third team that gets nothing and is out of it, right? Because MLB did away with tiebreakers. Tiebreakers, yeah.

And we lamented that. I think we were pro-tiebreaker. I'm anti-doing away with the tiebreaker. I thought it was a cool thing that separated baseball from some other sports and also was just fun and exciting and maybe more fair, more satisfying, certainly. So it seemed like a concession, I guess, to adding more wild card games and having a longer playoffs and not wanting to go deep into November, even though we're talking about a day or two at most here, really adding a tiebreaker game.

So it seemed like cutting off a cool tradition and depriving ourselves of a fun tiebreaker for the sake of expanded playoffs and wildcards and everything. And that seemed like a shame. And I wonder whether if this scenario came to pass, whether there would be such an uproar that that might actually bring back the tiebreaker. Because we had the Mets last year and the Braves, who both ended up 101-61, and the Braves won that division, came back to win the division on the tiebreaker. Not a tiebreaker game, but just the season series or whatever, right? So that wasn't super satisfying, but at least neither of those teams was eliminated. Whereas if you had a three-way tie in the AOS, then the fortunes of the three teams would differ so dramatically that people would be pretty upset about that, I think. If one team just got a bye to the Division Series, another team gets to play in the Wild Card Series,

and the other team gets to go home and they all had the same record, it seems like if you're going to play 162 games and play a super long regular season, then you might as well play one more to settle that and provide some sort of closure as opposed to just saying, oh, yeah, it was decided because you won a game or lost a game in whenever you last played, right? So I wonder whether that sort of outcome would cause enough of a backlash to actually get the tiebreaker reinstituted. I've sort of given up on ever doing away with the zombie runner in the regular season, but I wonder whether the tiebreaker is still in play. Ben, I am here to tell you that if this comes to pass and it goes against Seattle, I am ready to be furious and be quite loud about it.

And if this comes to pass and it benefits Seattle, it's a perfect system. I don't know why you would question it. It's clearly pristine and architected by geniuses. No, I like bring back the diebreaker. Look, I understand. I understand that the people for whom what I'm about to say is remotely consideration, small number,

but like of all the people who might want to get it over and done with, like a baseball editor might be on that list. Cause like, it's a long, it's a grueling month, Ben, you know, it's grueling for the writers.

It's, it's obviously the most grueling for the players, but like, you know, they want to go to the post season and they want their chance to fight for it. I would imagine like if you were to ask them, I bet they'd say, given the option between these two choices, let's pick the one that has us play a tiebreaker game so that we have the chance to feel like it's in our hands, you know, when it comes right down to it, rather than the computers, rather than math. They hate math. hate math i mean not all of them but some of them are like math stupid so and even i am like give us a tiebreaker you know give us tiebreaker games because they're fun and exciting and can reduce otherwise calm grown people to like puddles on the floor so like give us the tiebreakers let jay jaffe write about team entropy for longer. He wants to do it, Ben.

And he feels less compelled when it's like this. So, I just, yeah, do it. But I think the ideal outcome for me personally would be for the Mariners to go on a surprising but delightful 10-game win streak and just put this sucker to bed because then you don't you know that i guess the possibility exists that all three uh aos teams could end up in the postseason right because who knows what toronto will do you know maybe they just fall on out of it you know like maybe maybe kakushi has a couple bad nights of sleep in a row and all of a sudden they're sitting there no i'm not i'm not wishing that on carson's blue jays but um or our blue jay fan listeners but i would prefer to see seattle

play postseason ball and i suspect that they would appreciate a bye because I bet they're pretty tired. So, yeah. Yep. All right. Let's answer some emails here. So here's one that I thought was fun. This is from Daniel who said, I recently had occasion to look at the baseball reference page of erstwhile highly rated Red Sox prospect Lars Anderson

and was surprised to see his photo showing him donning a Blue Jays cap. Anderson played in a total of 30 MLB games across three seasons, all for the Red Sox. He played for four other teams in the minors, none of which were the Blue Jays. I dug further to find that Anderson was in the Blue Jays system for a little over a month, one off season, between February 25th and April 1st, 2013. I also found out that when you hover over Anderson's photo, a second photo of him appears in an Oklahoma City Dodgers cap. OKC was the last of his North American minor league stops. There are no photos of him in a Red Sox cap, majors or minors to be found. This made me wonder how exactly Baseball Reference, likely the most prominent and

complete repository for MLB's historical record, chooses the photos that represent each player. I'm sure it has to do with mundane copyright privileges, but the oddity of Lars Anderson donning the cap of one of the 25 organizations for which he never played a game made me curious. Most players seem to have a fairly representative photo. I'm 99% sure there's no good way to query this, but I wonder how many player pages show the player in a cap that is even less representative of his career than Anderson's. So, yeah, not sure how to query that, but I did ask Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference how they handle this. And he said, in a lot of cases like this, we will have a headshot that was their official MLB headshot toward the end of their career. In some cases, this can be really wacky, like when a player's last hurrah is an invite to spring training with

a new team and they don't make the club, which might be the case here for Anderson. For some time, we had Ryan Howard shown in a Colorado Rockies cap because of a situation like this. Periodically, we'll do a sweep of players who played in the majors but have not played in the past two years and fix up their default headshot to match the team they had the most war with. But we don't tend to get far enough down that list to players like Lars Anderson. Butera wearing a Dodgers cap in his main headshot since he had the most war with them, despite his time there being brief and unproductive. But negative 0.3 war beats out his totals with the other teams he played for. So the Dodgers it is. That's thoughtful. That's a nice bit of editorial decision making. Yeah, it's funny. Like, there could be a whole book written about

like the aesthetic choices of roster photos. I know there have been articles written about it, but I'm saying like this deserves long form treatment. Because sometimes like the decision to smile or not the serious face or not. And then, yeah, you just do end up with you know i i encounter this when i am selecting like the future photo for our pieces where sometimes you'll be looking for a photo of a guy who had a long career and like you just have to go back pages and pages and pages before you can find him with like the team that people actually associate him with. And sometimes depending on the licensing rights that the photo service has, like, you know, I'll have to tell Jay, like, I'm sorry, we just can't get him in like a photo that is like the team that people think of

this potential Hall of Famer being most closely associated with. It's just, it can be a funny bit of business, you know? Yeah. I can't place it right now, but there's one funny example of a player bit of business, you know? Yeah. I can't place it right now, but there's one funny example of a player whose headshot, he just got like progressively sadder every spring or do you remember who that is? I'll have to dig it up. But, but it was like, gosh, I'm so annoyed that I can't think of it. Right. It's, it's often cited because he would just like smile less and less each year. I'm often cited because he would just like smile less and less each year.

And it was maybe for a team that wasn't doing well. I'm sure. Wasn't he an Oriole? Wasn't whoever it was an Oriole? Maybe. We'll find it. And if we don't find it during the recording, I'll mention it on the outro. Oh, I'm so frustrated.

Oh, Ben, I'm so annoyed that I can't think of it. You leave all of this and I'm going to figure it out in the course of this podcast. If I trail off, that's why I'm on. Okay. Tell me if you do. I know it can be frustrating to hear podcast hosts try to recall some information and fail. I know, but I try to make it fun. Yeah. Will Leach has said that's his favorite thing.

He thinks that's the best thing about podcasts when you're listening at home and shouting out, it's, you know, the answer. Like, I know what it is and they can't figure it out. He loves when that happens. I don't know whether most people like that or love that. I do that all the time. Oh, oh, oh no. Who's the bullpen arm I'm calling in here? I wonder if Craig will know. I'm going to ask him. Someone will know. One of my favorite genres of baseball reference photo is the old timey one where it's like a ghostly image. Like you can barely even see a player there. It's like they caught a poltergeist on the daguerreotype or whatever, right? It's like, but sometimes you can barely tell who it is or that it is anyone. And also, I like, have you seen Jose Valverde's headshot?

No. Check out Jose Valverde's headshot. I believe that's an intentional choice that they went with. John Becker for the win. John, you did a great job. Who is it? It's Robert Andino. Right, Robert Andino.

Oh, my gosh. Household name. Oh, what relief. What relief I feel. Craig responded mere moments later. Mere moments later. I wonder whether anyone remembers anything about Robert Adino other than that. I was right that he's an Oriole, you know?

Yes. Yeah. What was that? It was like 2010, 2011, 2012. He went from wide smile to barely smiling, not showing any teeth and then just no smile whatsoever. The third one. Yeah. Check out Jose Valverde's, though. I will link to that for everyone to enjoy. Oh, that's delightful. What a –

Oh, that makes me so happy. Papa Grande. Okay. All right. Yeah. I won't even describe what it is because it won't be as fun to hear about it as it would be to look. And I don't want to spoil the surprise. Yeah.

Oh, what a treat, Ben. What a little treat. Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, if you see any weird headshot team assignments, I guess you can let Kenny Jacklin know and maybe he'll swap them out. But it's kind of fun when you see those weird ones. So I don't mind it. I just think that there are so many guys, even guys who have had really long, illustrious careers, but they had a weird half season somewhere. And you just forget. You always forget. And so that is one of my favorite things about BRF is when it is random, you're like, oh, yeah.

Like, you know, like, he does meant he was a Rocky, you know. All right. Nathan says, some friends and I were at the Braves-Mets doubleheader on August 12th. In the second game, a friend and I noted around the seventh inning that the Braves had yet to use a mound visit in that game. At the time we made this observation, the Mets were pitching. We looked at each other and immediately had the same thought. What if you could mound visit the opposing pitcher? Imagine they're on a roll.

So you send your pitching coach out of the dugout to mess with their timing. This reminds me a bit of icing the kicker. How effective might such a tactic be? When might it be most used? And how useful might it be relative to spending your mound visits on your own guys? Also, what would the most effective strategy for the pitching coach be to talk to the opposing pitcher? Assume they can talk to them until the ump comes out to break out the visit.

Feel free to speculate about potential restrictions and or variations in this practice. potential restrictions and or variations in this practice. I love this idea of just going out there trying to psych out your opponent. I guess we're heading in a different direction because obviously MLB is trying to trim the time of games and is experimenting with having fewer mound visits in the minors. So I doubt they would be amenable to adding more so that you could mound visit the opposing pitcher or even allowing you to use your current allotted mound visits on that because then I guess more of them would be used in theory. I don't know whether anyone would actually do this, but let's say that we were free of the culture of trying to trim time and there were no great time pressure.

Do you think this would be advantageous? And if so, how would you use your opposing player, Manvisit? Well, I don't know. I mean, like my understanding of the work done around icing the kicker is that it largely doesn't work, right? I've seen the kickers that it largely doesn't work, right? That there isn't a discernible difference in how successful kickers are with the timeout call just before versus not. So that suggests to me that there is like an unflappability to athletes that maybe makes the stop matter a ton. I think that we, when would you do it? When would be the right time? Because I guess it really depends on how reliable we think folks assessment of being like on a roll really is, you know, because disrupting your like rhythm or whatnot, like do you want to if a guy has been really good, is he actually going to be that bothered by getting a little rest, you know, and being able to have a longer recovery time?

If he is struggling and he's wild and he's walking, guys, do you really want to give him an opportunity to reset you know i mean i guess like the place where we would see it tested to try to discern these things would probably be like when you're in a account right before issuing a walk right is when you maybe want to try to like throw them off but then like you just giving him a second to regroup and like then in theory execute a pitch like there are reasons why teams that like catchers or pitching coaches who are trying to get a guy like back on track will say hey we got to take out like let's take a pause and and figure this out when the count is about to flip in a way that is advantageous to the hitter so i don't know that there's like a and what would i, I want it to happen though, because

I want to hear what they would say. Like, what would you say, Ben? You could try to intimidate them somehow. You could go out there with some stats about how little success they've had against this pitcher, or you could say, notice that your changeup isn't working well today. You know, you could trash talk them a little. Depending on the player, that might actually motivate them more, right? Then they might get angry about that.

Getting angry could help some players and could impair other players' performance if it were a distraction. But others might be able to harness that anger and use it to motivate themselves and have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Maybe you could go out there and just distract them entirely. Like if you send someone really funny out there just to tell some jokes, then if it's someone like if it's Max Scherzer or someone, someone who's just like really intense and locked in and you just go out there and waste their time and talk about nonsense. I could imagine them just getting very frustrated about that and perhaps getting out of the zone, out of the flow state,

getting away from their game plan. But you're right. Other pitchers might actually appreciate the breather, right? And wouldn't really be phased by this. Yusei Kikuchi could probably just close his eyes and take a micro nap while you're out there. It wouldn't bother him at all. So it might really be pitcher dependent. You'd almost have to assess their personality and advance scout them. Like, are they someone who gets easily frazzled by this sort of thing? And you'd have to talk to people who knew them. Like, how do I trigger this guy? Like, how do I get under his nerves? What can I say? What is he still pissed about that I can go out there and get him thinking about that instead of about getting our guys out here? But that would be fun, especially if it were mic'd up. You know, like if your own, I wouldn't expect a player's own mound visits to be mic'd up.

If it's your pitching coach or your manager going out there and talking about strategy, then you couldn't really clue in anyone on the other team who might be watching that broadcast and monitoring it. But if you mic'd up the players here and if it were live, or even if you got to hear about that later, I think I would quite enjoy that. Oh, yeah. For me, I think it would be worth the couple minutes

that you'd have to sacrifice for this. Yeah. It would be an interesting new frontier to open in terms of like gamesmanship. I do think a lot of, there'd be a lot of silliness. Like there'd be a lot of, of what like men think is like intimidating and it wouldn't work because it would just be much a silliness. But, um,, but that would be funny to me. There would have to be rules. I think there'd have to be some rules because like you wouldn't want to let the pitching coach go out there and like start talking about a guy's mop, you know, like that. Yeah.

That would be uncored, you know. Yeah. You'd have to have rules that like if it would be something that would get a player ejected for saying it to an umpire it's off limits in a opposing mound visit or something you know but i think there would be a lot of goofiness i can't decide if i want this or if i find it horrifying because it would just be you know what would happen you know one thing that we could count on fans would hate this they would hate it home, home fans would boo. You think you've heard umpires booed. You've never heard anything

until you've heard the opposing pitching coach booed in like a big moment when you're like, go get him. And then my guy comes toddling out there. And you're like, I think people would throw things. I do. Yeah, I think they would throw things.

And then of course, when their guy goes out there in a big moment, they would cheer because we're not philosophically consistent as fans. But that's fine. We really shouldn't expect that. That's unreasonable. Could you send a player out there? Who's your most skilled trash talker on the team? Would this be part of the pitching coaches or whatever coach's interview process? He's great at teaching our guys the slider, but he's not very good at getting in the opposing pitcher's heads during the oppo mound visit. So I don't know whether you'd have to practice that right so and you'd have to figure out what the best strategy was and it would be hard to assess whether this was working also so it might take some time to figure out is this someone who actually

can be rattled by one of these visits or are we just wasting everyone's time here right yeah yeah i like the idea. Alright. Jonathan, Patreon supporter, says let's say there's a player who copies the true talent of the player who started in the lineup spot the previous game. So, for example, if Mike Trout batted second the day

before and the copy player batted second the next day, the copy player would have the ability of Mike Trout for that game. So if Renfro, Hunter Renfro, were a copy player, then you could have him bat second the day after Mike Trout bat second, and he would not only look like Mike Trout,

but he would play like him too. However, if the copy player batted second the day after, he would go back to his own ability level. So the best way to use the copy player is to alternate them in the batting order with a superstar player. The copy player's true talent is good enough to stay in the minor leagues, but he has a low probability of getting called up on his own true talent. Does anyone figure out how to use this player's superpower?

Can he be a Hall of Famer or is he more likely to still be a career minor leaguer? So he can be as good as the best hitter on your team, but he has the limitation of, I mean, I guess if you could do this, then you could just alter the superstar player's lineup spot every day.

Right. It's not like initially I was thinking, well, what advantage are you really deriving? If you have to bench Mike Trout so that the copy player can come in, then you're not really gaining anything other than I guess. Wouldn't you rather just play Mike Trout? Yeah.

I mean, I guess you might still be indifferent to, right? Yeah. Like you could, right. It wouldn't make a difference. I guess you could say he might be worth carrying just so you could give the superstar a day off every now and then and not lose anything but but you wouldn't want to alternate them like every day because then even if you'd get the same performance your superstar would be pissed because

now he'd be playing only half the time and he wouldn't be happy about that presumably but if if it's just lineup spot dependent then you could bat mike trout second one day and then the next day you have copy player batting second ahead or behind of mike trout who's leading off or batting third right and you can just have them go down the order. And yeah, you might have to deviate from the ideal slot for your superstar, but you've got copy player in there anyway. Like even if you have to bat them eight and nine one day, you're still going to get an advantage because now you're going to have double the superstars, right?

So it would be worth not having them in the optimal lineup slot. So I think if you're still allowed to play the original and you can just shift them throughout the lineup, then this would be great. This would be like having a second superstar and you could just kind of rotate through

and you could give other guys days off and that would be wonderful, right? It almost feels like there would have to be more restrictions here. Like, you can't have the copy player and the original in the same lineup. If that's the case, then I think you still would use him, but just more sparingly. You know, like, you'd still want him to play sometimes just to spell the other guy without having to put a below average or replacement level player in there how different do we think his actual not his copy player uh true talent but like his actual true talent is than like

the typical bench player in the bigs like he's worse it sounds like then because like you know guys are typically bench players because they're better than quad a guys or like they are like the very best quad a guys right but like if he's a little bit worse than that but he can do the spell your big your superstar thing and be amazing then maybe on balance yeah, it's worth a roster spot. And you just feel bad for the guy in AAA who's like, but I'm like, aren't I? You know what I mean? Now the question is, would you ever discover this latent talent that this player has? I don't know if you would, because if he's not good, if he's not a good player, probably he's never really going to bat in the same

lineup slot. He's not going to be replacing the superstar, probably, because even if you were to, let's say he's a backup outfielder, and every now and then you might give Mike Trout the day off, and this guy's in there, but he's not going to be batting in the same lineup slot that Mike Trout was, right? You're probably going to be just batting him ninth so that he hurts you the least. And then if he can't take advantage of the power, then you're just not going to know, right? So how many opportunities is he ever going to have to discover that he has this ability? And even if he one day happened to replace him, like you're not going to conclude based on one game that, oh, wow, he's Mike Trout.

Now, I guess maybe it depends on whether his physical abilities change in an obvious way or he just has the same production, right? If he suddenly has Mike Trout's speed and he's hitting the ball as hard as Mike Trout, that would be— And he looks like a thumb. Yeah. Whether or not he shapeshifts, obviously if he shapeshifts, that would be noticed. You would notice that. So I'm assuming that he does not shapeshift.

Disappointing. I'm assuming that he does not shapeshift. Disappointing. Does he run faster? Does he throw harder? Does he hit harder depending on which player he's following? If so, maybe that would be noticeable. or he's replacing Aaron Judge and suddenly he's hitting a ball 120 miles per hour, which he's never come close to doing before, that might raise some alarms.

He might think, huh, how did I do that? It's almost like I'm hitting the ball like Aaron Judge now. And wow, what a coincidence that I'm replacing Aaron Judge in the lineup. I wonder if this would work again. That might occur to him. So I guess it depends on whether his physical abilities change or merely the outcomes change. I think one thing that we have to contemplate, Ben, is that these kinds of scenarios are playing out every day across the majors and the minors,

but we just lack the discernment to see it, you know? Because that is always the stickiest wicket of these hypotheticals. It's like, well, how do they realize this? And then like, how would they feel confident that what they've realized is like an actual phenomenon and not just like some random bit of variance that makes a lot more sense than a guy being like magically empowered to be as good as well and okay so here's a question how does the copy guy is is it worth it if he can copy otani because then he could do a different could he do different stuff maybe maybe if could he well could he be the starter the day after Otani and be Otani and then the rest of the time he'd like

spell Otani as a DH sometimes yeah okay yeah that would make him more valuable as it makes Otani more valuable so yes okay well you sound skeptical and I don't understand why what I've proposed is perfectly reasonable Otani more valuable. So, yes. Okay. Well. You sound skeptical, and I don't understand why. What I've proposed is perfectly reasonable. Yeah, right.

I'm skeptical of that. I was with this up until then. Right, yeah. But now, suddenly, that's a bridge too far. Yeah, too far. All right. Here's a question from John. Not Jonathan, but John. Different guy, but also a hypothetical.

He says, today I want to present a rather intriguing, albeit Jonathan, but John, different guy, but also a hypothetical. He says, today I want to present a rather intriguing, albeit dark, hypothetical. Imagine if a Major League Baseball general manager possessed a superpower, a unique ability to foresee with absolute certainty that during the course of a season on a given day, a starter or position player is going to require Tommy John surgery. Or I guess injure themselves in such a way that they will. However, they can substitute any player that they want into that injury. The GM faces a moral dilemma. They could choose to protect their star player, their ace, by calling up any random player from their organization to fill in on the day when the injury will occur.

This move would undoubtedly save the ace's arm, but it would also come at a significant cost to the chosen organizational player. Oh, my God. That player would have been destined never to make it to the major leagues, but now gets a rare chance to pitch or play. And they're likely to accumulate two years of MLB service time during their Tommy John surgery rehab, a remarkable opportunity they would never have otherwise received. How many GMs would do this? on surgery rehab, a remarkable opportunity they would never have otherwise received. How many GMs would do this? How many org players would volunteer for this?

Oh, my God. I would quit if I were the GM. But maybe you'd still know even though you quit, and then you wouldn't be able to do anything about it because you'd not be the GM anymore. Oh, my God, Ben, this would be terrible. Can you imagine the burden of knowing? It would be difficult. If you could ask for volunteers who are fully apprised of the situation, that would at least remove some of the moral dilemma. I mean, at least, you know, if you're not subjecting unknowing players to it, because imagine how bad you would feel. You give someone a call up who's not

expecting a call up, but really you're throwing them to the wolves. They're a sacrificial lamb. And if you did this often enough, then that pattern might be apparent, right? Now, I guess if it's only TJ, if this is just Tommy John, UCL specific, that wouldn't happen so often that it would be obvious. Like every time you called up someone, they suddenly snapped their UCL. I guess, you know, it's how many major league players on a typical staff have to get TJ because of an in-game injury during the regular season? Right. It's not going to be more than probably one or like in a given average year. Obviously, it can be more than that, but I wouldn't expect it's more than that typically.

So you could probably get away with it. It's more than that typically. So you could probably get away with it. So if you told the player, hey, this is a situation. And you could also, you could find someone who's near the end anyway, right? Like someone who's thinking of calling it a career. And I guess one saving grace here, it's not always a painful thing or not always a supremely painful thing. It's not like you're calling them up to get drilled in the face by a line drive or something, right? This is an injury that may or may not hurt and also doesn't affect you in regular life,

really, very much. So, like, if you found someone who is, you know, like minor league journeyman considering calling it a career, you're probably going to have some org guy in your system somewhere who's considering hanging it up. Or maybe you know that they're not going to be asked back or you're planning on releasing them anyway. And you say, hey, if you want to do this, then you can provide for your family. You've got to sacrifice your UCL and you've got to have surgery and you don't even really have to rehab from it, honestly, I guess, because if your career is done, you could just live with it, except then you're not getting paid while you rehab your major league service time and your major league salary. So I guess you'd want to do that anyway, even if only to keep up appearances so that you can maximize your

earnings here. But yeah, it'd be kind of a moral dilemma. But I guess if I could fully let the player know what they were signing up for, it's not like a life-threatening thing. I wouldn't feel that horrible about it. But you still have to recover from surgery, even if you're not doing the full rehab program in order to pitch. You're still doing surgery. It got cut open. Yeah. Assuming you have to have the surgery.

If you or I had a UCL tear, we wouldn't have to have surgery. We wouldn't have to do anything. I don't think it affects your ability to do normal non-pitching things. Wouldn't it severely compromise your ability to go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap? I don't think so. No, I think you can live with a UCL. Like, I don't think you have to get it repaired. Crew service time and be on a program and like get paid while you're doing it. I think that like the org not knowing what you know would be like, well, they have to get the surgery though. Because otherwise, if they're just retiring, if they're not making an effort to rehab, then like the things off. Yep. They have to get surgery, Ben. They do have to get surgery ben they do have to get surgery and i

guess they maybe at least have to try to go through the motions of the rehab process but they would be making at least major league minimum while they were while they were doing that which could be a life-changing amount of money for someone who hasn't made much in the minors and perhaps doesn't have some lucrative second career to fall back on. So it's such a grim thing. I'm sure there are players who would willingly sign up for this and knowingly do it. You'd have to keep it secret from everyone, I guess, right? Because if it came out that this was, well, at first you'd have the usual, will the GM be burned at the stake for being able to predict this? But also if it became clear that this were sort of a scam, I guess, in the sense that you don't actually expect the guy to come back, but he's still going to be playing and making – you'd have to convince your owner to like – I mean, I guess there are protections.

If you suffer this injury while you're on the major league roster, then you are protected and you get to keep making that major league money while you're coming back from that. And I'm sure the owner, if the owner knew about this, they'd be happy to do this too because instead of losing your ace and that guy's probably going to be making much more money than this guy that you're going to be paying now to be on the IL in his stead. So yeah, if you could get that copy player from the previous question and just throw him to the wolves, then I guess you probably would do it, right? Or at least give someone the option to do it. I would feel so unsettled. Yeah. You'd feel so unsettled.

Yeah, you'd have to worry about pressuring. You wouldn't want to pressure anyone. It would have to be very much like the airline that asks for volunteers for people when they overbooked. And, hey, we'll give you this much. No one wants to do it for that much. Okay, we'll give you this much. And you can get a voucher for a hotel and then you could be on the flight tomorrow. It would have to be that sort of all volunteer. Like there, you wouldn't want, you know, I mean, I guess you could have some sort of scheme where you're just like signing people who aren't even players. It would have to, you'd have to have the appearances of, of at least, you know. Or are you writing a baseball like oceans? I don't know, 14. Are they up to 14 now? Yeah. I don't know. I think. It's a heist.

It's a baseball heist. I guess the question is like how severe would the injury have to be? If this is TJ specific, it's not going to happen all that much. But what if it's any injury? Right. What if this GM cannot predict injuries in advance of the season, but he just he gets a twinge, you know, like some people when the pressure drops or whatever, and they know a storm's coming, this guy, like, his bum knee starts

acting up when someone is gonna get hurt that night, like, how severe would the injury have to be for you to do this, if someone's just gonna strain a hamstring or something, like, would you do it for any IL stint? Would you do it for any IELTS? Would you just keep a stash of org guys in your system somewhere just for the purposes

of having them be cannon fodder, basically, and just saying you get the hamstring strain instead of. Yeah, this would this is I mean, he said it was a dark hypothetical. So, yeah. And I'm I am disturbed. All right. Question from Alan. The consensus top two prospects in baseball, the 19-year-old Jacksons, Holiday and Trujillo, were recently promoted to AAA.

Are the prospect promotion incentives likely to affect their MLB trajectories? Surely these guys are too young and unseasoned to go for the Julio prize next year, right? And if so, is there now a bit of an incentive to keep both in the minors all year and go for the prize in 2025? so the idea of teams maybe are more likely to start someone on the opening day roster this year you could get some draft pick rewards for that if they do well and they've been up all season but if you have someone who's not quite ready but could be ready at some point in the season then does this actually backfire do you have an unintended consequence where maybe you'd actually hold them back for the following season, even though they would be ready mid-season the preceding year? Could that happen? I don't know. I guess it's conceivable. I'm so unhelpful sometimes, aren't I, Ben? Just real scoundrel. What's the concern here? That you promote them and you like goof up their development because they're in the majors and not hitting well and feel despondent and then they never recover? Like that you've Zanino'd them basically is the concern? Well, that could happen. I think this concern is you hold them back because you know they're not ready yet.

And so you think that by pushing back their promotion to the following year, then if you think they'll be ready for the following opening day, but not for the present opening day. Right. But they might be ready, let's say, at midseason. Right. at mid-season. So you decide not going to call them up at mid-season because I think I could hold them back for the following year and bring them up on opening day and then when they do well then we can get our draft pick rewards. So

you'd be costing them potentially a part of a season in order to hold them back for a full season that they would be ready for from the start. I feel like I'm not understanding the conundrum of this question. It's like, say Julio. Julio was clearly ready on opening day, right? So they call him up. I mean, credit to them. He was important to their making the playoffs. He was the rookie of the year.

Like he was important to their making the playoffs. He was the rookie of the year. But he was really good. He was ready to be good. Right. So imagine Julio had not quite been ready at that point for opening day 2022. But he would have been worth calling up potentially later that season. Let's say he's ready in August or something. Or, you know, you might bring him up in September for the stretch

run or whatever. Yeah. Well, I guess in September, it might not, he might not get enough service time to affect this anyway, which is why maybe we've seen so many prospects come up lately. So, so let's say mid-season, let's say, you know, if you called him up in April, he just, he wouldn't have been ready. He would either hurt you because he wouldn't be playing well or it could affect his development even potentially. But let's say he's ready in June or July. At that point, do you decide is there any risk that a team would say, OK, he's ready now in June or July, but we could wait until next year and then we could have him on the opening day roster. And then we could reap the rewards of him being the rookie of the year then instead and then we get a draft pick reward you know so could that happen i guess i mean i guess like i just think i think that the way that teams

approach this stuff is they make the determination when they i mean like the incentives are clearly helping and they are compelling but i think that teams would probably real recognize that there's like a limited there's only so far like the draft pick incentives can take you right like at a certain point you just are making a determination is this guy ready or not and i'm sure that there are guys who are like we thought he was running we called him up and now we don't get a thing. But like, you know, like that happens. But I think that the, first of all, I think that teams have a pretty reasonable sense of just have to take that as it lays. Like, if the Orioles have a wish about how Grayson Rodriguez's season had gone differently, it's mostly about him playing better just so that they have a better starter.

And they've had a great season, so it hasn't really hurt them. But you know what I mean? At a certain point, you're past the incentive piece and you're just dealing with the player in front of you. Yeah, I think most teams would prioritize that. Even if in specific situations maybe this happened, I guess it wouldn't be worse than the previous state of affairs where it was very common to leave guys in the minors who were probably ready just for service time related reasons. So it wouldn't necessarily be that you're worse off than you were before. And if you're a

team like the Orioles, that's going to be good, but also probably going to be in another division race next year or the Brewers. I mean, they could certainly use some offensive help. So it's, they could certainly use some offensive help so it's uh would they cost themselves a good chunk of a season when they expect to be contending and when it might make a difference to call up a prospect like this in order to get an extra draft pick by waiting until the following year i don't know that that would be worth it for them so i don't know. Like if you're the Orioles and you've got a zillion prospects and you've got a whole infield full of good prospects, then you could use that excuse for not calling up yet another one and just say like, we don't have room for another one right now. There's no room at the end. But yeah, I don't think most teams would make this choice

anymore. If this guy were so good that that he's going to be like a rookie of the year winner the following year then he's potentially a difference maker for you are you going to cost yourself half a season just to wait and get that draft compensation like go in baseball games i don't know man like and i know that that's dismissive of me because like go in baseball games. I don't know, man. Hasn't been a compelling enough argument to like, you know, forego service time manipulation in the past. But I think that once you've like tried to embrace the incentive and then things don't go well for a little while, like, I don't know, you just navigate what's best for the team and the player from there like at a certain point they have to play and you're only going to know how they perform at the big league level by having them play there so like you want the incentives to exist because we want teams to like feel like they're getting i don't know apparently the win isn't enough so like you have to offer them a special little treat it's like you know the clean house isn't enough sometimes you need a little treat to do your

chores but having offered that like then i just have to grapple with the situation as it stands. Like, Gunnar wasn't good for a little while there. Or at least he wasn't like Gunnar. And then he got over it. And then he was Gunnar Henderson. Now he's going to win Rookie of the Year. No, he didn't have very much time to play with because he was so short of that threshold. All right. I'll give you one more and then wrap up with a stat blast. Here's a question from Steve who says, I was listening to episode 2061 where there was a discussion about player retirement

gifts and the ensuing retirement tours that happen when stars are in their last season, which caused me to think, are there accepted criteria for what pushes a player into the category of good slash famous slash high achieving enough for getting a retirement tour with all the gifts and fanfare? Is it something sanctioned by MLB with press releases and being voted on? Has there ever been a time where some teams give gifts for a player and others don't? Feels like there could be some awkward scenarios. So I don't know if there's any official designation,

like this is an official capital R, capital T retirement tour, and the commissioner sends a memo around to say everyone must give a gift to this player. I don't think it's that formal. It feels like sort of a you-know- you see it, which is largely reserved for legends, right? So I don't know if there have been times of confusion or like, is this guy good enough for a retirement tour? Or some people are giving gifts and others are like, that guy? I didn't think of that guy as a retirement tour guy i don't know that that has come up and do we know that they all definitely

give gifts yeah i'm not sure that they all do i think that there's probably been times when like a team has had like a nice acknowledgement of the player but hasn't necessarily presented him with like boots or a painting or an alligator or whatever you give, you know, like where did they put all this stuff that they get on the tour? As an aside, I'm sure that some of it they probably send maybe some of it they send to the Hall of Fame. Who knows? But like some of the stuff that those guys get, I'm sure they're like, how do I get this back to where am I going to put it? I guess they all have giant mansions and probably maybe in their trophy room, their memorabilia room, or maybe it's just in the basement, or maybe they just throw it out. Who knows? But when I think of retirement tours, I think of Chipper Jones. I think of Mariano Rivera.

I think of David Ortiz. Mickey's kind of getting his due. Yeah. I bet Yachty got stuff, right? Didn't people give things to Yachty last year? Yeah, I think so. And pool balls maybe. Yeah, there's been, I guess, there's been a little less gift fanfare lately, I feel like. I wasn't as conscious of the gifts that those guys were getting.

Part of it is that you have to be great. Right. And also you have to be, I think, famous and sort of revered and respected by players, I think is often the case. Like, I don't know if it's enough to just be very good. You also have to, like, have a high profile, I think, maybe. very good, you also have to like have a high profile, I think maybe. So I guess like Miguel Cabrera, he's getting one. Like if I Google their articles about his last visit to this city and his last visit to that city, I don't see as much about the specific gifts that he's getting, but he's probably getting some gifts. The gifts might not be, that might be just kind of case by case. Just teams decide what they want to do,

if they want to do anything. But it's also obviously contingent on the retirement being announced prior to the season, or at least prior to the end of the season because you don't really get a retirement tour unless everyone knows you're retiring right like did did adrian belchry get a retirement tour he he announced his retirement i think in november i don't i don't think with him it was necessarily like this is definitely his last year. Maybe people thought it would be. Yeah, like he said, November 2018, after careful consideration and many sleepless nights.

Oh boy. Oh no. You said Kikuchi would not approve of that. I made the decision to retire. So yeah, if it's a post-season decision, then you're probably not going to get it because you have to have that certainty of, yep, this is the last hurrah. This is the last go round. And not everyone does it that way. And some players, even if they know they're going to retire, they may not want to advertise it.

They may not want to lap up the adulation and have to do a bunch of ceremonies and get a bunch of gifts they don't want. to do a bunch of ceremonies and get a bunch of gifts they don't want. So they might want to keep it lower profile, even if secretly they know or think that it's over. So yeah, I can't recall a situation where it was like someone got snubbed and was upset because they were retirement touring and one team didn't think that they cleared the bar for retirement tour caliber and didn't give him anything. And it was some sort of like state offense. So. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you, you know, go and have a state dinner and then throw up on someone accidentally. Yeah. That happened one time. I mean, not to me because I'm not the president, but look it up. Yep.

Yeah. I just Googled. Okay. Yeah. Parting gifts for Pujols Molina in farewell tours. Albert Pujols Yadier Molina gets special parting gifts from many teams in farewell tours. So it seems like there's maybe kind of a tendency for hitters to get this more often. Maybe, I don't know, like is Adam Wainwright getting gifts?

Is he good enough to get gifts? It feels partly like it's like players who play more so that you actually get to say goodbye to them. Because if it's a starter and they're pitching every five days and you go in for a series, they might not even play against you in that series. And then it's kind of weird. You don't really get the opportunity to say goodbye except giving them a gift, I guess. But yeah, I'll link to this, but there's a whole page of the gifts that various teams gave to Pujols and Molina in the pregame ceremonies.

So that was going on. And those guys were also really respected, especially Latin American players. Just the standing of those two players, they're so revered and respected by so many of their peers that I think that's a big part of it. It's not just how high your war is. That's a big part of it too, but I don't know that that's sufficient. Yeah. I think that, you know, it's like porn.

You know, when you see it. Did Derek Jeter get a retirement tour? I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Probably. I think he did. Yeah. I mean, I'd be surprised if he didn't. Yeah, no, he probably did. Yeah, I see a September 2014 Rolling Stone article that says, Enough already, Derek Jeter's endless farewell tour. That's great. Bleacher report ranking of the farewell tour gifts that he received. So, yeah.

That's great. Enough already. Yep. All right. Let's wrap up with some stat blasting. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's StatBlast.

All right, so the Stat Blast brought to you this week by our friends at Tops Now, which we have sung the praises of before. In fact, I'm just looking at the most recent crop of MLB Tops Now cards, and there's one for Zach Granke. And it's specifically commemorating that he moved into fourth on the Royals all-time strikeouts list, which, you know, I don't know. It's not the most impressive accolade of his career. But look, this is like a farewell tour gift from Tops Now to Granke. Yes. Okay.

You're fourth on the all-time Royals strikeout list. Really, you know, you're almost done here probably. Like, Granky hasn't officially announced his retirement. Right. And so maybe that's one reason why he's not getting a farewell tour. Also, maybe Zach Granky would hate to have a farewell tour. He seems like the kind who would not, even if he knows, even if he knew on opening day, I feel like he wouldn't say anything so that he didn't have to go through it, you know? Exactly. Yeah.

So, but if you want to enjoy the farewell tour of Zach Granke and have a little gift to give yourself, then you can go get a Top Snow card. Or you can go get a Corbin Carroll card. First rookie in MLB history with a 25-50 season, right? 25 overs, 50 stolen bases. So sometimes, look, it's just a player that did something cool and sometimes it's impressive and sometimes it's not so impressive, but it's a player we like and people want his card anyway. Like Julio, second player with 175 plus RBI and 60 plus stolen bases over his first two seasons. Okay, that's pretty specific. 175 plus RBI and 60 plus steals. But hey, maybe you just like Julio and you want a Julio card, right?

And maybe you want a Hunter Green card to commemorate that he's the first Reds pitcher since the year 2000 with 14 plus strikeouts in a game, which is pretty impressive. The history of Reds pitchers is not that impressive, really. They're all-time pitching leaders,

not the greatest. But point is, you can go get a cranky card, a guy who's winding down his career, you can go get a card for Hunter Green or Julio or Corbin Carroll, guys like that who are really just getting started. And there's a different selection every day. So you go to tops.com and you see what's available that day. And you can add that to your collection entirely or selectively. And then the next day, there will be a whole new selection of cards and players

that you can peruse. So we will link to where you can find that day's Tops Now selection. We think it's kind of a cool thing to be able to rush out baseball cards to commemorate very specific events, as opposed to just waiting until the next set

comes out the next season so i guess we can discuss whether any of these uh stat blasts would be tops now worthy but for instance here's a question from isaac who says the discussion about ian happ in our last stat blast about his on basebase streak versus the Pirates made me think about how Nolan Shinoel of the Angels now holds the franchise record for consecutive games reaching base safely to begin an MLB career. I tried finding who the league-wide leader was for this stat and can only find a hitting streak to begin a career and games reaching base safely regardless of where they are in their career.

So I was interested if you could find that information. So on base streak to start a career. I think Sarah Langs also tweeted this out recently, but Ryan Nelson, our frequent StatBlast consultant, looked it up first and I have it here and we'll put the spreadsheet online. But the record is Alvin Davis, and it isn't really close. He had a 47 game on base streak to start his career. And in second, distant second, is short-time Yankees catcher Truck Hanna, who had a 38 game on base streak to start his career.

So you might think it would be like Ted Williams or someone like that who has the record for the all-time streak and not Alvin Davis, who was a pretty good player. I mean, Alvin Davis was rookie of the year, his first year with the 84 Mariners. So, okay, I guess that makes sense. But that was maybe his best year, probably his career year. Certainly war-wise was way better than he ever was again, and he ended up having a fairly short career. But, you know, he was a catcher for the Yankees before they were really the Yankees, 1918 to 1920, and had a 76 career OPS plus in 244 career games. That's the guy with the second most games of reaching base consecutively to start a career. It's kind of weird, right?

And third is Enna Slaughter, who is a Hall of Famer. So that's 29 games. Dick Houser, 26. George Scott, 26. Gibby Brack, 24. Jim Gilliam, 24. Luis Alisea, 23.

Hank Arft, Arft, Arft, which is not just a sound that a dog makes, but also his last name, 23. Herb Thomas, 23. Pavin Smith of the Diamondbacks, I guess, last year, 22. Dale Alexander, 21. Earl Averill, good player, 21. And then you get to Derek Barton and Del Bissonette, 20. So this is not a storied list of names. There are some good guys on here, but I'm sort of surprised.

Do you have any theories for why this is not a more distinguished? Like Enos Slaughter's a Hall of Famer, Enos Slaughter's a Hall of Famer. Earl Averill's a Hall of Famer. But I don't know. On the whole, it's not as consistently great. Jim Gilliam, a very good player. But, yeah, I don't know. I guess it can be kind of fluky.

What a weird sport we watch, Ben. It is so fluky. Because, like, some of those names are good, but some of them are like, am I going to remember Pavin Smith's career in like 20 years? Right. Probably not. And like, sorry, Pavin. I might remember your name because Pavin, what kind of name is that? Yeah.

Yeah. Gibby Brack, Hank Arft. Great, great names. Truck Hannah on this list. But yeah, like Gibby Brack played from 1937 to 39. And he did have a 111 OPS plus in 315 career games. But he was like a 29-year-old rookie when he debuted. So I don't know. I guess it's just random because like a streak to start

a career isn't going to be as long as the all-time streaks not to start a career. And so if the record holders have shorter streaks, then I guess it's more feasible for some random to come up and just fluke into one of those streaks. I guess that's the explanation. Or maybe, you know, the old theory about, like, first time around the league, the scouting report isn't out on those guys yet, especially if it's 1918. You know, they probably didn't have great advance reports on Truck Hannah, didn't necessarily have his spray charts and his video breakdowns. They were stuck on the name, you know.

Yeah, and his stat cast. So I guess maybe that might have allowed some lesser players to take advantage of the first time seeing players, perhaps. But yeah, I don't know. It's a fun list to be on, I guess. And Nolan Shanawale, I guess at least like he's polished, right? It's impressive because he came up so quickly, but also he was supposed to come up

more quickly than anyone in the draft class, just maybe not quite that quickly. All right. And here's a question from Paul, Patreon supporter. This was on September 17th. He sent this with today's game, the Blue Jays and Red Sox

finished their season series with every series being a sweep. The Sox took the first two, seven games total, and then the Jays took the last two, six games. This feels like it would have been pretty unlikely to have happened between divisional opponents until the new schedule this year, but is it actually the first time? Pauly from Calgary. Thanks for the question. So Ryan looked this up as well, and he found that it is pretty rare. So there were zero season series where all games were part of a series sweep from 1990 through 1969 because season series were longer and series themselves were sometimes longer. So there were more series per

year and more games. So it was harder for them all to be sweeps. But since 1970, there have been 23 season series of four plus individual series, all of which were sweeps. So it happens, I guess, I guess, I don't know, every other year almost, basically. He says the 2010 Orioles Blue Jays series was the only time in history where two teams had six series all sweeps. The Orioles went 3-15 against the Jays that year. The Orioles swept the fifth of the six series and got swept in the rest. The 1971 A's Senators and 1972 Orioles White Sox were the only five series seasons to meet the criteria. So, yeah, it's weird, but not unprecedented. All right.

Here's one I thought of because last week we did a stat blast about power speed seasons, like the most combined homers and steals by a player in a season. Like Corbin Carroll. Yeah. I mean, that wasn't our test case, but hey, it's one. It's a case. He's got a lot of each. Yeah, and then I spun that into looking up who has the highest ever Bill James power speed score, which turned out to be Ronald Acuna Jr. this season. And then I just got curious about what's the highest power speed season. I wondered whether this would work on a season level, too. So the power speed number that Bill James came up with

in the 1980 baseball abstract, it's the harmonic mean of the two totals. So it's like two times homers times steals over homers plus steals. And so it's designed so that you have a higher number if you do well in both categories, but also if you are pretty balanced in both categories. So if you have a ton of homers, but not a lot of steals, or a ton of steals, but not a lot of

homers, then you'd really have to have a lot of one of them to rank highly. So I wondered how the seasons would stack up on that metric. So if you sort the seasons by just combined homers and steals, and what I did was I prorated every season to a current schedule, so like 2,430 games. So I just multiplied by the appropriate factor for seasons that were shorter than that. And so if you do it that way and put them all sort of on the same baseline, then we are already, I guess, going to have the most homers plus steals ever this season, which I guess makes sense because homers are not at an all-time peak as they were a few years ago, but not that far from it. It's still one of the highest Homer seasons ever and stolen bases are way up. And then like 1987 was second, 2019 was third because 2019 steals weren't high then, but home runs were. That was the all time home run record breaking season. So if you just do Homer's plus steals, then 2019 shows up third. However, if you do the power speed number, which accounts for the balance between the two numbers as well, well, 2019 doesn't do so well then because there were a ton of homers that year, but not so many steals. So then it doesn't actually show up anywhere close to the top of the list. It's like 40th, I think. So if you go by power speed number, which prioritizes both balance and being good and prolific at both, then the number one all-time season by power speed number is 1987, which was the rabbit ball year.

Home runs spiked kind of unaccountably. I think it's generally believed that it was a juice ball. And I believe it was a juice ball. And they deadened the ball after that and home runs went back down. But that was also the 80s. So people were running a lot. And so you had a relatively high home run rate year and lots of steals. And that gives you the highest adjusted power speed number. And this season is second. 2023 is right behind 1987. home runs are being hit. This is wild. But it's all about what the scoring environment has been up until that point, right? Because it seems extraordinary if it's been followed by lower homer seasons and it seems like a wacky outlier and everything seems out of balance. But actually, you could argue that things were great that year, that that was the perfect balance, that you had a lot of each. And that's kind of where we are this year too, right? Because

it's still a lot of home runs, historically speaking, but no one's fretting about how many home runs are being hit now. Right. Because it's down from the extremes of a few years ago. Yeah, we got desensitized by 2019. Right. And meanwhile, steals are up. But because steals were down so much prior to the season, it's not like they're at some historic high, but they're high, at least success rate is high. So this year, maybe they've kind of nailed it.

Maybe this is perfect. If you subscribe to the idea that you want both power and speed in baseball, which I do generally, I do. and then 1996, 1997, 1995, and then 86, 94, 98, 2001. So almost all of the next 10 or so are like the baseball that we kind of came of age watching, like late 90s, early 2000s, which at the time everyone was like, gosh, seems like a lot of homers, right? But that was before teams got super selective about stolen bases and being efficient with that. So people were still running at that time. And there weren't quite as many homers as there would be in 2017 and 2019.

So maybe in that sense, we had it good, other than the fact that perhaps a lot of players were on PDs. But beyond that, the actual brand of baseball was pretty good, scoring environment-wise. It was not bad at all. Yeah, I agree. And people talk about the 80s and sing the praises of 80s baseball, but that was more skewed toward speed than homers, which, again, you might like,

and there were certainly more contacts back then. But if you want a lot of each and also them to be in balance, then really you wanted like late 90s or that one wacky 87, or no, we're in the golden age for the power speed number league-wide. That implies the existence of a non-wacky 87. Where's that one? Yeah, I don't know. We didn't get that one.

All right. Well, Meg mentioned at the top of the episode that she was packing a bag. She has just had to depart for the trip she was packing a bag for. So I will just wrap up with a couple last blasts here for you. The first is a follow-up to last week

when we talked about Tommy Edmund's selective switch hitting, his switch switch hitting. He picks his spots depending on the pitcher to actually face some pitchers from the same side, even though he is typically a switch hitter. I followed up on that with some data and some precedents, and it doesn't seem like there really are many, if any, for primary switch hitters who have deviated from that as often as Edmund has for non-injury related reasons or also not reasons related to extreme struggles. Anyway, it does happen at times that switch hitters will decide, you know what,

I'm going to try facing this particular pitcher from the same side. Edmund is just doing that more often than those players typically do. But Lucas Pasteleris of Baseball Perspectives, effectively Wild Listener, sometimes StatBlast consultant, he decided to turn this around and look not just for the hitters who have done this most often, but for the pitchers who have caused switch hitters to do this most often. So the pitchers going back to 1995 wildcard era who have had the most plate appearances where they were facing a regular switch hitter who decided not to switch hit against them. And you're going to notice a pattern when I

name these names. Number one, far and away, 502 batters faced, Tim Wakefield. Number two, R.A. Dickey, 229, with 83, Steve Sparks. Then 36, Tom Glavin and Steven Wright. 34, Jamie Moyer. 32, Mariano Rivera. 31, Tom Candiotti. 27, Andy Pettit. 27, Sean Markham. And 20, Charlie Hager. So those are mostly knuckleballers. Because of the break or lack thereof, the unpredictable break, sometimes switch hitters will decide to hit from the same side against knuckleballers. Also, some guys with good changeups and curves, pitches with big reverse platoon splits, and cutters, Mariano Rivera. Some switch hitters said, I'll try my luck from the same side against this guy for all the good it'll do me. I'll put the full list online, but the only other guys with double-digit batters faced, Kenny Rogers, John Halama, Mike Marath, Chuck Finley, Charles Nagy, Dennis Springer, Al Leiter,

Pedro Estacio, Alan Embry, Trevor Miller, Russ Ortiz, Bronson Arroyo, and Mark Hendrickson. And our final stat blast for this week was inspired by listener Dennis in our Patreon Discord group saying, podcast hasn't talked about Jose Abreu in quite a while, and he sure is having a lousy season. It's true, he is, and we haven't discussed him since an episode we recorded on May 29th, I believe. Now, through May 28th, he had a 49 WRC+, and just one homer. In fact, we talked about his first home run trot. He was homer-less until May 28th,

so we talked about how bad he'd been to that point. Since May 28th, he's had some back issues, but when he's been in the lineup, he has a 101 WRC+, which is not great, but is also not that noteworthy, so we haven't noted it. His season-long WRC+, is is not great, but is also not that noteworthy. So we haven't noted it. His season long WRC plus is up to 81 now. And Dennis was wondering where his fall off from last year to

this year ranked. He mentioned OPS plus, but sticking with WRC plus, he has fallen from 137 to 81. It's a substantial 56 point drop. So I looked up the biggest year-to-year decreases in WRC Plus in consecutive seasons among players who qualified for the batting title in both of those seasons. And it turns out that Jose Abreu right now would rank only 48th on that list. There have been much bigger drop-offs. So the top names here, and I will exclude seasons that came after shortened seasons, such as DJ LeMayhew in 2021. Very top of the list, Bryce Harper in 2016 had a huge drop off after his fantastic 2015 MVP season. So he went down by 86 points. And that is the record. I went all the way back to 1876 here. After Harper, it's Rogers Hornsby in 1926, 75 points. I think Hornsby had some physical problems that year and was also managing, player managing for his first full season. Then we've got Chris Davis in 2014, 73 points. John Mayberry, 1976, 72 points. Adrian Beltre, of course, 2005. After his big year with the Dodgers, that was 71 points.

Skipping some strike years, we get to Willie McGee, 1986, 66 points. Brooke Jacoby in 88, 66 points. Alan Craig, 2014, 66 points. Dick Johnston, not Dick Johnson, which would be even funnier, but Dick Johnston, 1889, 64 points. 2007, Ray Durham, 63 points. I'll link to the full list if you want to check it out. And of course, so as not to leave you on a down note, I'll give you the guys who increased their WRC Plus the most year over year. Al Kaline in 1955, up 80 points. Mookie Betts in his 2018 MVP year, up 78 points. Mookie Betts in his 2018 MVP year up 78 points. 2004, Adrian Beltre, 75 points. What a wild swing that was for him way up and then way down. 1998, Scott Brocious, 73 points. I remember that one well. 2000, Darren Erstad, 69 points. Nice. 2010, Aubrey Huff, 67 points. 98, Sammy Sosa, 66 points. 2012, Alex Rios, 66 points. 1984, Chili Davis, 65 points. 92, Mark McGuire, 65 points. 1989, Kevin Mitchell, 65 points.

As always, check the show page or your podcast app for our data sources. I'll leave you with this PSA from a listener who alerted us to something that I don't really have anything to say about, but I also enjoyed and you might too. Jake Berger's gum chewing is intense and he has a big head. The combination of the two, when he bats, his helmet bobs up and down. That's my favorite thing about the Miami Marlins 2023 season. As far as I can tell, the helmet didn't move when he was on the White Sox and Miami City Connect helmet doesn't do it either. It's a Black Marlins helmet specific phenomenon, which makes it even better for me. He sent a video that shows this. I enjoyed the video. I will link to the

video. Jake Berger's gum chewing with one specific helmet makes his helmet bob up and down. And lastly, if you're looking for a reading recommendation, something to check out this weekend, I would endorse the ESPN piece by Tim Kuhn on the A's stadium situation. I know what else is there to say. It's a mess and everyone knows it, but you might not realize how much of a mess it is unless you read Tim Kuhn's story, which is headlined Oakland versus the A's, the inside story of how it all went south to Las Vegas. And very often I will read stories that are described as the inside story, and I will be left disappointed by how outside they are. This one feels pretty inside. He actually talked to John Fisher, who very rarely talks to the media.

He talked to the mayor of Oakland and a lot of other people who work for Oakland and were involved in the negotiations. And I think you will come away with perhaps even less positive feelings for A's ownership, if that's possible, was the part where Fisher whines about how much he has to pay draft picks that did it for me. And it also calls into question the entire undertaking and the decision they made to go with Las Vegas and where that stands, which really seems pretty tenuous and not well thought out, go check it out. It's not behind a paywall or anything, and I will include the link. Also, speaking of farewell

tours and Miguel Cabrera specifically, evidently the A's gave Cabrera a $90 bottle of wine, which is both cheap and probably inappropriate in that Cabrera is a recovering alcoholic. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening and a special thanks to those of you who support us on Patreon, which you can do 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 aside from our sometime stat blast sponsorship and get themselves access to some perks. Jacob Pribnow, Brittany Bollet, Zander Stroud, Michael, and Brian Pfeiffer.

Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free fan crafts, memberships and podcast appearances, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site,

but anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. Send us your questions and comments and podcast theme songs if you want to join our intro outro rotation. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild. 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 next week. Effectively Wild is the only show I do. Hosted by Ben Lindberg and Meg Riley. I want to hear about Shohei Otani. Or Mike Trout with three arms.