Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2074: Who Had it First?

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the lack of pitch-clock violations in the postseason, an on-field Phillies smooch, the Phillies’ 2-0 lead on the Diamondbacks in the NLCS, a pivotal offseason for the Brewers, how MLB newsbreakers differ from NBA newsbreakers, the rising percentage of pitchers who’ve had Tommy John surgery, and how different […]

🎵 Or Mike Trout with three arms Hello and welcome to episode 2074 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. How are you? I'm better than the Arizona Diamondbacks. Man, not going great for those guys. It is not. We'll talk about that because we did an ALCS update last time.

And the NLCS had yet to start at that point. So now we can do an NLCS update because there's been no new ALCS action since the last time we talked. So we can get into the somewhat lopsided NLCS thus far. The second game certainly was. I did want to say, you know what we haven't seen this postseason, aside from a Diamondbacks NLCS win, we haven't really seen many clock violations. Do you remember how that was kind of a concern? It was like, okay,

it's one thing during the regular season, but what if this happens during the postseason? What if the worst case scenario happens and you get a postseason game decided on a clock violation, which didn't even happen during the regular season, right? But that was, I think, part of the rationale behind the players' request for suspending or relaxing the pitch clock in the postseason, and it just totally has not happened. So there have been a total of four pitch clock violations in the postseason so far. That is adding up pitcher violations, batter violations, catcher violations, just four. So there was one on Hector Neris, there was one on Michael Grove, and then there was one by Yemi Garcia, and then I think also one against Yemi Garcia that Max

Kepler had. So four in 26 postseason games, which is a really low rate, a lot lower even than the regular season. So during the regular season, there were 1,048 violations in 2,430 games. I'm basing this on the fan crafts violations leaderboard. So this is 0.43 per game during the regular season. And they got rarer as the season went on and players got the hang of how long the clock was and how not to screw that up. So before the All-Star break, it was 740 violations in 1,357 games. That's 0.55 per game. Post-break, 308 in 1,073 games, 0.29 per game. games, 0.29 per game. So a lot lower, but 0.29 per game, still a lot higher than the 0.15 per game that we have seen in the postseason thus far. Even if you drill down to September, October in the

regular season, so the last month when everyone had been playing with this for several months by that point, there were 103 in 422 games then. So that's 0.24 per game. And again, so far in the postseason, 0.15 per game. So it's like halved almost the rate of the least frequent month in the regular season. So I guess it's partly that players have just gotten the hang of it. And I haven't checked to see if these playoff teams avoided violations better in the regular season than the average. Maybe they did.

But maybe it's also just that these moments matter a lot. And so players are really taking care not to take too long. Yeah. I imagine it's a soup in which all of those things are the ingredients because you don't want to be you don't want to be the guy that does a thing with the pitch clock that proves to be decisive people are going to remember that for a long time if for no other reason than there have been so few of these right so baseball has a number of these things like you don't want to be the guy that does the this you know you don't want to you don't want to make the third out at third base you don't want to be the guy that does the this, you know? You don't want to make the third out at third base.

You don't want to be the blah, blah, blah. And I think this is on the list for guys where it's like, I want to make sure not to embarrass myself. And it's so nice because I can't remember if we were talking about this on the main feed or on the Patreon stream. But I just like don't, I really don't think about the pitch clock very much at all. I just, I will go whole games without thinking about it even one time, you know. Even when I see it on the broadcast, I'm like, oh, there's that. Yeah. Moving on, you know.

So it's, I really think we can score to triumph. And the fact that it has not been some weird unanticipated wrinkle in the postseason makes me even more comfortable saying that. Yeah. weird unanticipated wrinkle in the postseason makes me even more comfortable saying that so yeah one thing that surprised me when i saw that there had been so few violations i thought well maybe players are speeding along because they're so wary of the violation but the pace has actually been slower so if you look at fancraft's 18.8 seconds between pitches on average in the regular season 19.7 in the postseason now it got slower post break it was 18.6 pre-break post break 19.1 and as we talked about the game times crept up a little seemingly as players figured out how long they could take but it has been longer in the postseason. I wonder

if that is just because of like more mound visits. Maybe that is probably in the average there because the stakes are higher. So maybe that's getting captured by this because this is probably not just the straight time between. Also, time between pitches, I assume the fan graphs calculation, some people might say, well, that sounds high given that the clock is 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 with runners on.

But that's starting when the pitcher gets the ball back, right? So this is not taking that into account. This is just how long elapsed between pitches. But it has been longer than it was even after the break. So I guess it's either that players have gotten really, really adept at just going down to the wire but not going over. Or, yeah, maybe it is factoring in something where there are more stoppages that are not actually counting against the clock. But yeah, it's not like the games are speeding along even more because players are so scared of going over the line.

Well, and, you know, I think there's probably something to your mound visit theory because, like, think about, you know, think about how some of these games have gone. Like, the Dodgers might have accounted for a lot of that just on their own you know they're inflating the average because of how short their starts were and how often you know their coach went out to like say hey how's it going although not to lance lynn so you know one of them who am i to say what a nice thing to not have to have worried about you know as it turned out it was pretty chill. That's so nice. Yeah.

There was one smooch, though. The rate of smooches per game perhaps has increased, which you've been on this beat for a while. So I know you noticed. I did. And, you know, just in case I hadn't, people were like, hey, Meg, by the way, there's a little kissing, there's a little smooch. And like a very tender, you know, a nice smooch. That's a tender smooch, Ben.

Yeah. All I can say is that I'm so happy that this inspires the same level of vigilance and alert on the part of people who have heard me advocate for this as the pooping. You know, like I was really getting wary wary of anytime a guy might have pooped or farted in a way that we would take note of ding ding ding my my menchies is light up and um you know i to be clear hardly the only person advocating for if they want to if they want to only if they want but if they want to, these boys being able to give a little tender smooch to each other, you know, and that's hardly my beat exclusively, you know, and there are variations on this beat, you know, the motivations behind it, they range in their horniness. So I just want to acknowledge all the many people out here advocating for the exchange of tender smooching if it so moves them.

But boy, it's so nice. Look, I selfishly would like for the Diamondbacks to advance just because it would be very cool to cover a World Series game, but they're not kissing each other. So, you know, what can I say? And, you know, the Phillies going back to the World Series puts the, you know, Fangraphs gets a ring via one of its alums, like, back in the mix. And that's also appealing because I'd be so happy for Corrine.

So all of that to say, this is a little tender. You know, they all seem like they are having a great time. They seem like they love each other very much. City of brotherly love. Many of them have come close to the smooch in the past, but we are getting real smooch. Not like on the lips with each other, but in some ways, neck smooch. I know. Arguably more intimate in many ways.

I was going to say, yeah, this was what, Johan Rojas and Nick Castellanos, right? And Rojas just planted a peck on Castellanos' neck, sort of like almost behind his ear, like a little bit behind and below his ear. ear. And I guess that's similar to the Jordan Maldonado kissing tradition this season, where after Jordan hits a homer, he plants a little peck on Maldonado's neck. So yeah,

it's avoiding the lip area, which maybe isn't so surprising. But as you're saying, I don't know that it's actually any less intimate. Maybe it's a little less obvious. It almost looks like, oh, intimate. Maybe it's a little less obvious. It almost looks like, oh, was he just whispering something? No.

No, I mean, he may have whispered some sweet nothings while he was doing the kiss, but there was a kiss. There was a kiss. It was a very intimate little kiss. And, you know, I just, I want all the, you know, and both parties have to want the kiss, to be clear, you know. But if everybody is down to kiss, I think give each other a little kiss, you know. It's nice to express your love for your friends. They need to know these things. Give a little, you know, only if they want to.

But if they want to, I want them to be able to act on that desire. Because it's nice. It's a nice thing, you know. You got these, it's just like a real range of guys, kinds of guys, archetypes of guys on that Philly team. You know, you got some big boys. You got some kind of sweaty dirtbag guys. Although, like, the archetype of that on this Philly team is Marsh. bag guys although like the the archetype of that on this philly's team is marsh and he just seems like a uh a hug you bro you know is one way that i might describe it he's so happy he throughout

this postseason has not always been like the guy you know they have they platoon him and so he has not always drawn the favorable matchup and has been on the bench and some some guys might sulk at that because they want to leave their mark on the postseason and not brand been on the bench. And some guys might sulk at that because they want to leave their mark on the postseason. And not Brandon Marsh. He's on the top step of the dugout, just like cheering on his dudes. So he seems like a smiley hug bro.

And we like those. Of all the kinds of bros, that's the best kind of bro, Ben. That's the preferable bro. You know, and we've got, you know, they got some very handsome guys. They've got when when are we getting Judith Butler's read of Bryce Harper's presentation of masculinity? I'm just asking for things that would be cool and that everyone would enjoy, you know, and so it's just like a it's a real it's a real range, and the thing that unites them, apart from wanting to unbutton as much as possible, is their seeming love for each other. And I think it's beautiful to have such a positive and affirming view of masculine friendship. What a nice thing. It's been nice to see.

Yeah, their emotions runneth over, their cup runneth over, their run scored runneth over, their home run totals runneth over. So no wonder the feelings are flowing. And so are the runs. of the postseason games this year because they just have not been very competitive, right? It's, I mean, we haven't seen, like it's just, it's four nothing now in the LCS rounds, two nothing a piece, right? We just, it's been a long time since the last lead change. It's been almost a week. As Joe Sheehan noted, we've seen a total of two lead changes

after the fourth inning in these 26 playoff games. The team leading at the end of four is 23-2 thus far. There hasn't been a single game tied after the fifth. It just hasn't been very competitive. Sometimes the final scores have been close, but just not a lot of late intrigue. just not a lot of comebacks, not a lot of win expectancy swings, nothing. So that is sort of disappointing as a neutral. Sure. And also as someone who's looking for analysis and things to say, interesting points to make about these playoff games, when one team wins 10 to nothing, there's just only so much to say.

Like, I know that there was criticism of Tori Lovello for, well, I think there was criticism of him for leaving in Merrill Kelly for too long and maybe also pulling him too soon. So he was kind of taking fire from both sides on that, depending on the person doing the critiques. But that game, it fell apart for the Diamondbacks in the sixth and later, right? And, you know, Kelly came back out for the sixth and he gave up the home run to Schwarber and then he walked Turner and, you know, things gradually got out of hand after that so yeah maybe maybe he stuck with Kelly too long but then again like it's not like the Diamondbacks bullpen has been lights out until very recently and then wasn't in that game and beyond that it's just if you don't score a run yeah it's just not that interesting to go with a fine tooth comb over the pitching decisions of the team that got shut out or barely mustered any offense. You never know if it would go that way. If the game had stayed closer, maybe things would have played out

differently. But it's just, you know, there's only so much grief you can give really when the team's offense doesn't show up i was fine with him leaving kelly in as long as he did i was really glad he pulled him when he did which was a weird push and pull internally for me because i think i have been saying like hey you guys the bad d-bags bullpen pieces are gonna show it's gonna happen at some point. They're going to do some D-backs bullpen stuff because that's what they do. Even with the reinforcements, right? Even with Seawald being added at the deadline. Even with Thompson coming over and being so good. This is a group that over the course of a full season has been quite shaky.

And Ginkle. Ginkle is good. But there have been reasons to fret over the D-backs relievers and so I was I understood the instinct to like try to ride Kelly as long as you could it felt very nerve-wracking it felt nerve-wracking from the jump because he and I'm going to do I'm going to be a bit crude like just kept leaving these fastballs like right down the dick to guys spent like from jump and not all of them got punished as as hard as they should have the ones that did sure did go far but it felt like he was

that it should have been a much larger deficit when he exited than it was. And then, yeah, it kind of fell apart. It felt, games like that are so strange because on the one hand, like, you know, it's three runs. You could score three runs. Teams score three runs all the time. But it did not feel that close, I think, in part because of how narrowly Kelly was avoiding it being worse. And then obviously it got well out of hand.

So, you know, you're right. I didn't come away from that being like, man, this one's on Torrey. I came away from that being like, you kind of have to score some runs to win a baseball game. And, you know, when your bullpen implodes that badly, like what else are you going to do? I liked that he got, you know, he got some guys in who haven't played yet.

It was nice that Jordan Lawler saw some time once it became clear that they weren't going to win. And so, why keep Corbin Carroll in there? I like it when managers do that. I think it's nice for guys to get their feet wet a little bit. But yeah, it wasn't close. Can I say something? I know that Alec Baum is still not a good third baseman, but Alec Baum is like much better.

Like, you know, if he feels like he's had some nice plays this postseason, I don't think it's quite as extreme as like last year when Nick Castellanos was suddenly like a very good outfielder for a stretch. And we were like, where the heck did that come from? Like, boom, it's still not rated well by most of the defensive metrics, but better than in previous years. And it feels noticeable when you want to construct a narrative of like a team as kind of having the little feeling of destiny i feel like little things like that become part of the narrative like even alec baum is fielding while you guys like how could this philly's team be stoppable when alec baum is like playing third base

competently it uh it'll be interesting to see i feel bad for the d-backs. Like, you know, they got these two losses in Philly. Huge atmosphere. They are in a god-awful time slot tomorrow. Yeah. They play at 2 p.m. local time. So I don't know. You know, I got a PR email about how low the ticket prices

are going at Chase. So it's probably going to feel like a marked contrast between the Citizens Bank Park crowd and the Chase crowd. And I will just encourage all the broadcasters watching to remember that it is a 2 p.m game on a thursday you know when people are famously busy doing work in school so you know i feel like that narrative train is lumbering down the tracks toward us but yeah yeah boom is better just the whole phillies team better, as we've discussed.

It's a better Phillies team than last year that wrecked things on the way to the World Series, too. This is just a stronger team. It feels less surprising and more sustainable, which is not to say that they will continue to just run roughshod over everyone the way that they have. roughshod over everyone the way that they have because to this point, Neil Payne just wrote about this for the messenger, but they are basically the most dominant postseason team ever in MLB, just like minimum seven games played in terms of run differential per game. They have outscored their opponents now by an average of 4.1 runs per game this year, average of 4.1 runs per game this year, which is the highest ever over the 2007 Red Sox, who finished at 3.79. They played 14 games. The Phillies have played eight. So if they do continue to, well, we know they'll play at least a few more games, but if they make it all the way to

the World Series, probably that will come down and they won't look quite as invulnerable and unstoppable, but they've looked just great. And I guess it's going to be a unstoppable force meets a movable object thing because the Rangers so far are fourth on that list because they have outscored their opponents by 3.3 runs per game. So they haven't had a tough time of it either, which again, just goes back to what we were saying about not a lot of nail biters here, really. And the Phillies have only lost one game, and it was on those wild circumstances on the Bryce Harper-Michael Harris play. So, yeah, like, I don't know what you can say. They have someone hit multiple homers every game. The team seems to hit several homers for a game. The rotation

is as good as it was cracked up to be. Craig Kimbrell makes me nervous still. He's been pretty unscathed thus far, but he hasn't looked great doing it. So if it does come down to just, I mean, the fact that they're running him out there in the high leverage moments or what has passed for high leverage moments thus far, that would make me a little bit scared because one of these days that high wire act may not work as well. But aside from that, what can you say? Like, what knocks are there? What dings are there? They've just looked incredible. They've played so well.

Yeah. And I think that, you know know you mentioned the rotation being solid like it would be easy after yesterday's eventual score to lose sight of of the effort that nola put forth but like boy did he look really really good he looked so good and when his breaking stuff is playing like that like you know good luck it's it's a tricky thing to navigate. So, you know, we want to – he had a weird up and down year, and it's his contract year. So let us take a moment to put the shine on Aaron Nola

because, boy, he looked real good yesterday. Yeah. So which of the teams that is down 0-2 as we speak, do you feel better about making a comeback here? I guess on the one hand, the Astros lost two home games, whereas the Diamondbacks lost two road games. So that means they're going to go home, which theoretically puts them in a better position. which theoretically puts them in a better position. But do you feel, but on the other hand,

I guess less rotation depth for the Diamondbacks, like the Rangers, you know, they're coming back with Scherzer, right? And they've got the reinforcements, they've got Scherzer, they've got Gray, like they've got a deeper group there, whereas with the Diamondbacks, a little less so. So which do you feel better about mounting a comeback or feel less bad about i would say that i think the astros are positioned better just

because of the you know while i think that their options rotation wise are not like perfect i think they're definitely better than what arizona is going to be able to muster here because you know fought will take the ball for arizona tomorrow then you're looking at a bullpen game and so like you know that's that's suboptimal whereas you know the astros get to throw javier and then they can go to Rikidi and again like you would rather Verlander and Frambois although Frambois has been you know so who knows but I still think that in terms of the starting options that Houston can can put forth they're preferable to what Arizona can do I mean you're in this bad spot where you have fought going on Thursday, you know, you probably can't

count on him to go particularly deep. And then you have to do this dance if you're Tori Lavella, where it's like, how do I balance, you know, he's going to be in Dave Roberts shoes, right? Where he has to win, you know, he doesn't have to win or go home but like you really get like how do you balance wanting to potentially win a fought start with the fact that you're gonna have a bullpen game the next day like how do you deploy your relievers in that scenario it's you know not as dire as what the dodgers faced but like it's kind of brushing up against that. So it seems not awesome. It would have been better for Arizona

to win one of those games if they wanted to. And they have not won either of them, particularly behind their two best pitchers. So, you know, those are my takes, Ben. Yeah, I mean, that's the level of insight we could add in the postseason thus far when the actual moves only matter so much.

Only so much. Two teams are steamrolling here. And, yeah, it just hasn't been that close. I will say, boy, have those home runs that the Phillies have hit gone far. So that's a thing to note. You know, they've been like really well struck. Yeah, it's, I don't know, man. It seems like it's not a great situation for Arizona to be in.

And it's not a great one for Houston either, but it is the situation they find themselves in. Analysis. Yeah. So the Diamondbacks should have tried to win a game at some point and also the home runs went far yeah and you know it turns out that when you have a bunch of guys who are big boppers and are particularly good at slugging against slower fastballs that when you leave 92 or 93 right down the dick they're're going to hit that ball to the moon.

This is also a thing that it would have probably been good for them to avoid doing. But they didn't. Instead, they threw those fastballs right on the dick. I wonder if this has been just the most pleasurable possible experience for Phillies fans and Rangers fans to an extent in that there hasn't been that much tension and suspense because, because that goes hand in hand with your team making the playoffs.

Like that's what you want. You want to be playing at this time of year. And then as you discovered with the Mariners last year, you get what you want. And it's, it's, it's awful. You can feel like your life being shortened with each game and each pitch, right?

And yes, now if you win, if you survive that gauntlet and that crucible and you make it to the end and you win the World Series, maybe the catharsis, the payoff is even better if you really had to gut it out along the way, right? But I feel like this is even better because if you're a Phillies fan, not only do you get to enjoy your team making the playoffs, but it's standards of postseason play and following your team in October, they've just gotten to enjoy this without even fearing for their playoff lives that much. It has to feel incredible. You know, obviously, we didn't, we're not fans of the Arcia controversy because of its ramifications for our friend Jake. a controversy because of its ramifications for our friend jake but like it suggests to me that like they are living in a golden time because not that they invited that controversy the braves invited that controversy by like giving it continued fuel but like when these are the

things that you're like as a fan base making a big deal out of you're sitting really pretty because to the point that you made when we talked about that, that's nothing. Merrill Kelly is like, I don't know, maybe it won't be as loud as Venezuela. And the Philly fans were like, what if we ate your pets? They are rowdy and feral, and they are casting about for anything to be rowdy and feral about and finding

very small things and really you know going to town with them and you only are able to do that i mean i should not underestimate the ability of philly's fans to be rowdy and feral in any circumstance because then they will come for me but like you know these are the these are the the quote-unquote problems and controversies of a team and a fan base that does not have discernible problems at the moment and that's not to say that it'll be like that for the rest of their postseason run you know maybe arizona will surprise us maybe they won't and the rangers will say, hey, we do hit and score a lot, and a lot more than Arizona does, so watch out. They could turn, because these things can turn,

but right now, I envy them. It's nice, though, because Philly sports fans, in my experience of them, can be very nervous. They're an anxious bunch. It's like whenever the you know, whenever the Seahawks play the Eagles based on like a Twitter timeline, you would have no idea who's winning because both fan bases are just miserable. That's a little less true now because the Eagles are so good. But like there have been times in the past where I'm like, I have logged into Twitter and I

have no idea what the score is because both of you sound like this is an apocalyptic trash fire. And then you'll look and one team will be like winning by 20 you're like but can we all maybe relax like we should have a little tea and chill out they're living a good life right now it's a it's a good fun time you know they can't kiss the players but it feels like they're hugging them you know with their with their rowdiness and their desire to kill and eat the brave's mascot you know they're like but we're gonna we're gonna kill and eat this creature and you know what i support that because that flesh monster is terrifying and if we do get a phillies rangers world series which we're still a long way away from. But if that happens, that would be kind of a marked contrast to the regular season of money not correlating to

results and wins, right? Because of the teams in the playoff field, you would probably put the Phillies and the Rangers. I mean, they were fourth and eighth in payroll in MLB this year. I guess technically the Blue Jays and the Dodgers had higher payrolls than the Rangers did. But the way that these teams have gotten to this point has been by spending, it feels like, to a greater extent than a lot of teams. You know, the Astros are 10th in payroll.

It's not like, you know, these are all 200 million plus payroll teams, but there's just not as much homegrown going on, certainly with the Rangers, right? Like they just sort of skipped some steps when it came to developing from within and promoting from within and building a team that way

and that sort of traditional archetype of team building. And the Phillies, too, they did the rebuild and then it sort of stalled out. And then Dave Dombrowski came in and was like, what if we bolster this roster with just some really good and also pricey players? And even after we win a pennant, let's go get Trey Turner and push it even further. Right. Which they kind of had to do maybe for similar reasons, like the player development approach didn't work out so well. It wasn't panning out for them. It wasn't happening quickly enough for the Rangers. And they just said, hey, let's go import some pricey and productive players

to put the finishing touches on this thing, or at least give ourselves a springboard back into contention. And it has worked for both of these teams. The Phillies just snuck into the playoffs last year, and then they made a run. And this year, they had more of a cushion and a buffer. They're just a better team, and now they're making another run. And the Rangers, again, they didn't sneak in quite to the extent that the Phillies did last year, but they were pretty close to missing out on the playoffs, too. Sure, yeah. It came needed to do much more. They needed to basically go get themselves a rotation, which they did. And then when some of their arms got hurt, then they went and got more arms.

We got deGrom up. DeGrom got hurt. Let's go get Scherzer. Scherzer hurt too. We got Montgomery, fortunately. So just next man up, right? And trades and signings. And all you have to do, it's the cliche one of the the many cliches that we just

spout when this time of year arrives is that you just have to get there just have to be good enough to get there and then anything can happen and they are showing that once again and they got there by just sort of spending their way to it to some extent and that has paid off for them so we had this regular season where a lot of the high rollers the big spenders did not get much bang for their buck. But in the playoffs, at least that is shaping up to be the case. free agency and to big contracts. So, you know, it's not just that the payroll is large. It's that the guys who are contributing to that payroll being significant are the ones who are producing and producing at a very high level. And, you know, I learned that the Jimmy World drummers from Phoenix, so I didn't know that, popping off on Philly's payroll yesterday on Twitter after the D-backs loss.

Did you miss that? No, I did. I saw it. I don't know if I realized that it was Jimmy Eat World's drummer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is anyone in Jimmy Eat's world Jimmy Eat World? Jimmy Eat World, yes.

Eat World, yeah, okay. I got nervous there for a second. Is anyone in that band named Jimmy? I don't know. Sound off in the comments. Yeah, I guess, yes, lead vocalist and guitar more homegrown guys. I think they're probably going, you know who's really good at baseball? Corey Seager and Bryce Harper. The point we are making here is that the purpose of a baseball team is to win games and hopefully to win a World Series. And if you give yourself a lot of different avenues of talent acquisition, it's a good thing. It gives you buffer when any of them fail.

And yeah, that's good. The Rangers were happy, I'm sure, that they had the ability to add via trade with some payroll implications involved to, you know, bring Scherzer in when DeGrom went down. You know, it's like they were happy to—Jordan Montgomery didn't cost them as much. But, you know, if you have every avenue to add, you have the ability to bob and weave when stuff doesn't go well either because of underperformance or injury. So there you go. I like that as the managing editor of FanCrafts, your impulse there was to perhaps correct the subject-verb agreement of Jimmy Eat World. Yeah. And maybe add an article in there also. You know, guys.

Eat the world. Yeah. Or at least a world. Jimmy You know, guys. The world. Yeah. Have you thought about that? Or at least a world. Jimmy eats the world, eats a world, eats worlds at least. Eats worlds, yeah. I think that came from a caption on a picture of Jim Adkins, Jimmy Adkins' younger siblings who were always fighting. And so there was a crayon drawing of Jim shoving the earth

into his mouth. And so the caption said, Jimmy Eat World. So it was a childhood thing, a fight between Jim and Ed Linton. And so no wonder it's not quite grammatically correct, but I guess it's distinctive for them. So we don't have to get pedantic about band names because that would we'd be busy for quite a while. Yeah, I can't turn it off. And that's not to say that I am like a perfect editor or anything, but like I can't turn it off. And it is the thing that people have asked me to. I want you to know, listeners, that if you find it annoying, you're not alone. You know, there's a legion that's like, could you not, though?

Well, I've just about exhausted my playoff takes, but we'll be back with more next time. I have a couple lightly related or unrelated banter topics here. One is about an eliminated playoff team, the Milwaukee Brewers, because I wanted to ask you what you think they will or should do this offseason or how you think their plans might be affected by the fact that Brandon Woodruff is evidently out for all of 2024 or most of it with his shoulder injury that kept him out for much of this season. He had surgery, right? So he's going to be done for a while. And then there was already some uncertainty just because of Brewers spending and payroll being what it typically is. So there was some speculation that someone could be traded.

Maybe Woodruff, Corbin Burns. Obviously, there's been a lot of speculation about whether he will be traded or Willie Adamas, perhaps. And then there's the uncertainty about Craig Council, too. So when Brewers GM Matt Arnold spoke about this recently, he was asking about the financial situation of the team. He said, we can never close the door on any trade conversations. As you guys know, that's just the reality of where we are. He said, the short answer is that we're extremely comfortable having Woodruff, Burns, and Adamas on the roster.

I think this was before Woodruff's surgery. He said, the foundation is that they're here and they're really good players. Obviously, anything can happen over the course of an offseason. We'll certainly have to entertain a lot of different discussions, but we recognize the value of these players and how much they mean to our franchise. Nothing substantive really said there, as one would expect. But Arnold said, we'll see how it plays out over the course of the offseason in regards to Burns. He said, I would expect him to be here next year. Then there's the question about Council, too, who I think John Heyman recently reported

that Council could be pried away, that the Mets have, I think he said, a reasonable chance of hiring him away with his old boss, David Stearns, perhaps bringing him to New York. Although another source connected to the Brewers said that the organization believes he'll remain with the team as long as he gets paid, quote, what he believes is fair. And as we discussed recently, a lot of reasons for Craig Council to stay where he is. He's been successful there. He's well-liked there. He's a Midwestern guy. He played for the Brewers. Why would you want to go to the Mets? It's just, does that work out well for many managers? Does that lead to lots of longevity? I guess if he went there and he were able to deliver success and sustained success in a championship, then that would be great. And probably he'd be in line for a pay bump. But, boy, it comes with a lot of extra scrutiny and a lot of extra drama. And also a higher payroll and perhaps better players. But better results?

Not necessarily. So, what do you think they will do or should do other than just, you know, keep all your good players and sign some others? Which is, I guess, one thing that we could tell them to do but probably not something that they will do. Where would I rather live? I hate moving. If it were me, I would be inclined to, if I'm the Brewers, I would prioritize trying to get counsel to return. But if I'm doing that, I feel like I'm kind of committing to adding to the roster in a meaningful way. Because if you're a Craig counsel, do you really want to work through a rebuild? Right. Yeah. Those things probably go hand in hand. If he's going to stick around long term, he's probably going to ask for a guarantee or indication of what tact they're going to take.

guarantee or indication of what what tact they're going to take so yeah it would suggest to me that yeah i feel like you really are committing one way or the other you either retain counsel and say hey we know that we have a bunch of guys who are either injured or approaching free agency but we're going to prioritize keeping the dudes we have and maybe adding um significantly to bridge the gap between you you know, where the roster is now, where we think it needs to be to remain competitive because the Cubs are coming, the Cardinals won't be bad forever. You know, the Reds are sassy and might be, you know, kind of bearing down on us as well. I think that the two decisions come hand in hand.

And if council leaves, that's probably a pretty strong indicator of what the rest of the offseason is going to play out like for them. They have meaningful additions that they will have to make here, right? Because they'll be without Woodruff. They have the Miley option. But, like, right now, their starting rotation on roster resources burns Peralta and Miley. And you famously need more than three. You know, like you really do need more than three. Peralta's the only guy under contract beyond next season, I think, really, in that rotation.

Because Burns and Woodruff are free agents, as are Adamas, Adrian Hauser, Eric Lauer, all those guys after 2024. Adrian Hauser, Eric Lauer, all those guys after 2024. So they could totally keep that court together for one more year and give it a go, even though without Woodruff it's a little tougher. But they were mostly without Woodruff this season, and they still made it. And, you know, part of why their roster resource upchart is what it is is because Hauser didn't make the wildcard roster. But, like, yeah, they have some work to do on the pitching side. They have a number of young guys who they're excited about

amongst their position players, but, like, not all of them playing really well. So it does feel like a roster that needs a good bit of work to, like, really remain competitive in a division that is is not as hard as say the east or the west but is more um robust than it has been in a little while so they're not gonna you know i doubt that the cardinals are going to be content with 71 wins again next year although i'm sure they weren't happy with it this year. Right. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. They haven't really been keen on spending in the past. So who knows? Yeah. It's not that there's ever a good time to have a shoulder injury or a shoulder surgery,

but there's especially lousy time for Woodruff. And that's an injury that has derailed or ended a lot of careers. I guess it's the injury that Julio Rios came back from and was still effective after. But a lot of players like Johan Santana and Mark Pryor and Rich Harden, you know, those are not names that you want to be associated with when it comes to having long, healthy careers, right? So perhaps the science of shoulder repair has advanced recently. I don't know, but a lot of sort of scary comps there. And because he was heading into his last ARB year, right? So he was or is in line for a raise. And I don't know how the Brewers will handle that if he's most likely done for 2024 and then you don't know for sure if he'll be compromised after that.

Right. I guess like he could be a non-tender candidate maybe, which would make him a free agent now, I guess. Or they could sign one of those two-year type deals where maybe he gets a lower AAV, but some security. So I don't know how they'll handle it. But yeah, that's his platform year it would have been. And that's really terrible timing for him when it comes to cashing in. Yeah, it's really unfortunate. Yeah. The brewers did get a big infusion of cash for repairs and renovations of their ballpark, which I guess that's one thing, right? The brewers, not that they were ever really on the verge of leaving, but we were hearing just questions about like, you know, threats. So,

well, we might have to look elsewhere, right? And the Wisconsin State Assembly voted heavily in favor of a measure that would give them almost $550 million in funding for renovations and improvements. And I think that would extend their lease through 2050 at least. And most of this is public funding with the brewers kicking in an additional $100 million. I think in this case, I don't know if that's a little less egregious than it is in many ballpark funding examples because the ballpark I think is owned by the state and like leased out to the brewers. owned by the state and leased out to the Brewers. But still, anyway, I guess you're not going to hear much, probably noise now, about the Brewers threatening to leave. But there are still questions about Craig Council leaving or various players leaving.

So they've had a really nice run and they've managed to be a contending team year in and year out and doing it without spending a ton of money relative to the rest of the league. So we'll see if they can keep that going. And obviously, Stearns is gone now, though he hasn't been running the show there for a while. So it's a transitional time. It's a pivotal offseason for the Milwaukee Brewers. We'll see what they do. Yeah.

Another thing I was wondering about, so I have read not one, but two long profiles of Shams Charania in recent days, right? So the NBA newsbreaking battle between Shams and Woj. Of course, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the dropper of Woj bombs. And then Shams, his great rival, his former mentee and protege, who has now just become his rival for every tidbit, every morsel of NBA news. And he works for The Athletic and also Stadium and Vandal and everywhere. Right. And so there's just this cutthroat competition between the two of them for every bit of NBA news to the point that like, they're almost as, as big as the players in terms of like name value and news value. And people are keeping track of who is broken more news, Woj or Shams.

Right. And there's this very intense rivalry where they won't acknowledge each other anymore. You know, it's just each of them is like he who must not be named to the other, even though, you know, initially Woj took Shams under his wing, but then Shams didn't go to ESPN when Woj left Yahoo, and they've just been intense, intense rivals ever since. And I was thinking about how different this is from the baseball news-breaking landscape because you still have people who are competing to be the first to tweet out everything, right?

And I guess you would say that the closest you have to a Shams and a Woj are Jeff Passon and Ken Rosenthal, right? Except that Passon is the ESPN one in this scenario. But there's just – there's a lot more – I don't want to say like – I don't know, comedy I guess among baseball newsbreakers. Like I'm sure there's still a rivalry, of course. Like, each one wants to be first. But there's a lot more courtesy when it comes to, like, so-and-so had it first, right? And they will credit each other very diligently. And it's less concentrated among the top two because Pesce and Rosenthal probably break the most news but but

then there's a whole hierarchy under them you know you got your haymans and you got your moroses and your onlys and yes your nightingales sometimes so there's a i guess kind of a wider a more democratically distributed ecosystem of newsbreakers. But also there's just a lot less, like, maybe it's because no one has quite cornered the market as much as Woj and Shams have. Or maybe it's just because, like, the payoff isn't as big when it comes to MLB news as NBA news, right? Because like there's not as much focus on off the field matters in MLB. Like it's MLB is not as big in on social media as the NBA or there's not as much interest in the off the field, off the court drama as there is in the NBA.

So it's just like people don't really keep track of who breaks these news. Whereas like, you know, there's people who have like scoreboards of did Woads or Shams break more news and they like break it down over a period of years. I don't know that there's a tracker of like are there more Passan bombs or Rosenthal bombs, right? So it seems a lot different. I was trying to think of whether it's better this way or that way. I think I'm kind of happy that it's this way in MLP, that it's not just two guys going to war constantly over who breaks the news, but it's a little friendlier. And it's a little friendlier and it's just it's less concentrated.

It's just a totally, totally different way of breaking and receiving news, even though there is still the competition for who can tweet things out a few seconds faster. I much prefer our our landscape to what I see in among the the newsbreakers in the NFL and the NBA to the extent that I observe either of those. It does seem like the cutthroatness of the competition creates a number of pretty perverse incentives for the newsbreakers over there. And that seems bad so i think i prefer what we've got going and that isn't to say that you can't tell like when say and i'm just gonna like um remain switzerland i'm a neutral party i'm swiss babe but um about this but like you there are times when you can tell like oh that text is direct from an executive or that was copied straight from a text from an agent and you know you said that people aren't tracking them but i have heard hell of efforts been to suss out agent sourcing at the

very least and certainly um executive sourcing so know, like there are times where you get stuff quoted as like breaking news and you're like, that's a copy paste from a text. But it does seem more collegial. I don't think that like Jeff is trying to get Ken murdered. And if you told me that was going on in some of the other circles, I'd be like, yeah, I believe that, you know, that tracks, you know, so that's nice. They're not doing that stuff. Yeah. For those two in particular, I think in general that it's delivered more dispassionately. So that's good. But yeah, I don't know.

It seems like really dangerous over there. It does, yeah. Like they wouldn't want to be, you know, find each other in a bar at whatever the NBA equivalent of winter meetings is, you know. Yeah. Because that might lead to

a shiving or something. It does seem that way. Yeah. Yeah, it seems pretty bad. It's still possible for local baseball writers to break news about their teams. That happens. Whereas in the NBA, it just seems like everyone else has given up because it's just they have so dominated the market that like there are examples. story, these profiles of these two guys. And it sounds like sometimes a local NBA reporter will try to confirm something with the team. And then moments later, Woj or Shams will tweet it out. And it's like, just by trying to confirm it with the team, whoever the sources of Woj and Shams

are with that team will then immediately go to them and we'll have them break the news instead. And I think there are a lot of sort of bad things about this. Now, whether you call this journalism or not, I guess it is of a sort, but a lot of people have lamented that this is just sort of useless from a consumer's perspective, right? Like both of these guys are just, I mean, trying to tear off any little bit of meat on the bone when it comes to transactions, but all this stuff is stuff that we would find out anyway. And so all the competition for who can tweet out this transaction a moment before the other, what stories are not being told and reported on, what favor is being curried here. It's not like they're breaking news that teams don't

want out there in the sense that, I mean, yeah, they are in the sense that sometimes these things leak before teams would want it out there, but it's going to come out anyway, as opposed to things that might never come out if you had someone digging there who was not sort of enthralled to their sources, right? And I think, and maybe I've mentioned this before, but another big difference between MLB newsbreakers and NBA newsbreakers, and maybe even NFL, is that there really is a lot of journalism done by the top MLB newsbreakers. Like, Passan and Rosenthal are writing all the time. And I don't agree with everything they write, but I think they're both, for the most part, fine writers who really put a lot of effort

and work into their columns and their pieces. It's not like they're only just trying to be the first to tweet something. Like, look at the volume of copy that Rosenthal pumps out. He's writing every day. And Passon writes a lot too. And there's a lot of care that goes into those pieces, whether you love every one of them or not. Whereas like Woj was a successful columnist at one time, but now he's just tweeting basically, or doing just very bare bones, like news summaries of what's in his tweets, essentially. And Shams

is kind of like a legendarily convoluted writer, right? He's not really known for his writing. He comes from that generation of when we had MLB newsbreakers who were like kids in school, you know, for a while. And some of them have gone on to have careers in baseball journalism, others sort of fizzled out. But he was breaking tons of news when he was in high school and has gone to turn it into this lucrative, high-powered career. But he doesn't write that much or he's not known for his writing. Right. Whereas in baseball, you can't just be someone who tweets transactions. And those guys will report meaningful things about the game, too. Not just

who signed who or what the trade rumors are, but like, you know, deeper underlying issues that sometimes don't reflect so well on the league. Like, I'm not saying that they're, you know, total bomb throwers who are going at MLB about every issue, but like, Rosenthal was, you know, parted ways, let's say, with MLB Network over the fact that he was critical of Rob Manfred and his work at The Athletic. And Manfred, the league reportedly didn't like that and didn't want to bring him back. Right. So so it's a little less buddy buddy. And I think there's more journalistic value to what the baseball newsbreakers bring. the baseball newsbreakers bring.

Well, and in that New York Mag piece, like there's this bit in there where they say, the longtime front office executive told me that information from insider reporters could even help a GM save a buck. Wojroszoms might say, hey, don't get levered up on Player X.

He's not going to get an offer from his team. The executive said, there are times when they have information that has prevented me from making a mistake in terms of the magnitude of a contract offer or the inclusion of a specific asset in a deal. And it's like, what are you doing if that is the price that your access is predicated on?

Like, you know, I agree with you. Like, we, you know, we don't always agree with what Jeff or Ken will write. There are times when we've been critical of their work. But, like, I can't recall an instance where i thought that that was what was at play no i think that there might be some other news breakers or there might be a little more transactional arrangement going on who could even you know who i'm mumbling can you even understand me couldn't even hear that accusation like you couldn't even hear it but um you know the idea that you are engaged in how do i want to put this i feel like very often if not in general in the

mlb sort of scoops ecosystem there's there's clearly competition. You know, I think that there's a lot of pride taken in breaking big news and doing it first. But I do think that in general, there's a better job done of sort of zooming out from that and being able to sort of appreciate what your role in that ought to be want and that role being one of a journalist who is breaking news not like a horse trader so i think that that's an important distinction um and i think that you're right to say that you know the you know jeff and ken and all these guys they're writing fairly often and i think that because the work that they're doing is grounded more in actual journalism and not just tweeting, it tends to be more principled and it tends to have a broader view and it tends to be less obsequious. And all of those things are to the benefit of certainly our understanding of the game and our readers understanding of the game so i think that that's a good thing and like you know we're saying all this nice stuff about jeff and kit makes me

very uncomfortable you know surely we must take them down a peg but like you know i do think that there are meaningful differences there even as there's room for everyone to continue to like grow and improve in terms of how they balance access versus journalism because this is like a constant thing that you have to do it's not like you get good at it and then you never have to reconsider those dynamics again like i imagine that it is something that is evolving and changing and even if it's not always done perfectly i think that there is a commitment to that process on the mlb side that i like just i I don't know. I don't know either of them. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but like, you know, Woj, Shams, you know, Schefter on the NFL side, like, I just don't get that same sense. It feels much more. strike me as being interested in their own celebrity in a way that is orders of magnitude different than what anyone on the MLB side is interested in. And I think that once you've

crossed that Rubicon, it's a big problem. Because then you're not trying to be a news person. You're trying to be, you know, you're trying to be a guy. You're trying to be an actor in the space. And that's fundamentally different than being someone who reports on it and observes it. Yeah. And Rosenthal and Passon both started out as newspaper guys covering teams and Woj was a newspaper columnist type guy too. And that's not to say that you can't come up just through digital media the way that Shams has and not be like a great, accomplished journalist. But yeah, I would be a ridiculous thing for certainly for us to say. Yeah. No, absolutely not. I don't think that the only, it's not like legacy media is the only avenue through which to become a credible and sort of ethical news gatherer.

Who would imply or suggest such a thing in October 2023, right? Who would cast aspersions upon younger digital media members these days? It is so annoying how young he is, though. You know, I'm going to tell him that in person. I'm not, I'm going to, I'm probably is, though. You know, I'm going to tell him that in person. I'm not. I'm going to. I'm probably going to see Jake later today and I'm going to be like, you stupid young guy. No. Yeah. And also, in my experience, at least, like Jeff and Ken are nice guys, you know, like they're they're relatable. They're personable. Like they will they will help out younger reporters and, you know, give their time to them and that sort of thing.

Whereas Woj, it seems like everyone's just scared of him. I mean, you know, I'm not saying he's not a nice guy. I don't know him. But but everyone's like anonymous quotes in these pieces because they're afraid to go on the record to to talk about these guys. to like go on the record to talk about these guys. And meanwhile, Shams just is absolutely like a prisoner to the news cycle that he himself is creating. Like he's so tethered to his phone. I mean, I work a lot and I get a lot of screen time, but reading about Shams' life,

like it sounds miserable to me. I mean, there's a, you know, it's lucrative. It leads to a lot of attention and prominence and everything. But the guy, like, cannot put his phone down for a second. I mean, there's a story in New York Mag about how, like, you know, he would play pickup basketball

from time to time, but now he's given that up because he missed breaking a bit of news while he was playing pickup basketball one day, or, like like he went on a vacation recently and went down from 18 hours of screen time per day to like 13 or 14 and he was proud of that and and also 14 hours a day on vacation it's just non-stop i'm i forgot that nugget. Yeah. And part of the way he does it, like he's pretty open about,

and these stories certainly make clear, like he just pesters people. He just hounds people. He is just sending out hundreds and hundreds of texts per day. And like, you know, he'll send people like happy birthday texts and like happy father's day. He sent someone, the New York mag story said that he sent

someone a happy labor day text. And it's just like, like he must just have these pre-programmed where he knows everyone's birthday and he knows who's a father and he just sends out these texts. And if he's trying to wheedle some little bit of information out of you, then he'll send like 20 texts in an hour and you might just, just give him something to make him go away. I would block his number. I would. Yeah, I know. I wouldn't give him anything. I would be like, here's the thing, blocking your number now. Right.

Well, you'd think, except that, you know, apparently there's a power dynamic there where, as you said, like they learn a lot from Shams and Woj because they talk to everyone and they have their own morsels of information to dispense. And so, yeah, I mean, you don't hear that so much about Paston and Roosevelt. I don't know exactly how they operate. And, you know, they've been on the podcast and I remember talking to Paston on either this pod or the Ringer MLB show about how he breaks news and what the deadline is like for him. Like, those guys are famously high powered, busy, working all the time too.

Those guys are famously high-powered, busy, working all the time, too. Yeah. When you go to winter meetings and everyone else is chilling out for the night and at the bar and three drinks in, those dudes are on their phones. Like, they work very hard to try to, like, track stuff down. But they – I don't know what their work-life balance is like, but they have lives. Like, they're family men, you know? Like, they have lives. Like, they're family men, you know? Like, they have families. Like, Shams, in one of these stories, says, like, he doesn't, you know, like, he goes on dates.

I would love to know what a date with Shams is like. No, you know what it's like, Ben. It's someone in their phone the whole time. It must be, right? I mean, he must just be, like, hopefully he's just like, look, this is the deal. You know, like, I'm Shams. Like, you know, you know going in, if we're're going to date, like I'm going to be on my phone half the time and I guess take it or leave it. I don't know.

But like they, you know, they have families and kids and everything. I'm not saying like you should want to or that you have to do that. But like they've at least made time in their lives for that. Whereas Shams is like, I don't know how anyone does what I do and like has a family and like a life like that. And granted he's 29 years old, so maybe his priorities will change over time. But to this point, it just leaves no time for anything else. And it just, it sounds like, you know, just rolling the boulder up the hill again every day. Like I would wake up and be like, oh my gosh, I've got a thousand texts to send today. you know, just rolling the boulder up the hill again every day. Like I would wake up and be like, oh, my gosh, I've got a thousand texts to send today. You know, I just would not ever want to do that no matter how much you paid me.

But, yeah, it's such a different dynamic. And I guess it reflects the fact that there's just not as much of a soap opera aspect to MLB. And maybe it's just, you know, younger people, people who are on social media just don't care as much about baseball. And maybe that's a bad thing. But I don't know if it's a bad thing that they don't care about it in this particular way that kind of has created these monsters when it comes to the news breaking. I mean, like, I feel like we have like designated periods where things get really busy and wild, but they're fairly predictable. And yeah, I just, someone has to break the news, right? There's like value in us knowing when

these things happen. But I think that, you know, when I think about the work from, like, from Jeff and Ken that has had, like, a big impact on the industry, it's not breaking sign stealing, right? Like that was a big reported labor of, of, you know, journalism that they did. You know, you think about- The team and the league would have preferred never to come out, so. Right. You think about like the stuff that Jeff has done and like, you know, there are a lot of things,

like the, you know, the Porter revelations that he and Mina sort of co-bylined, you know, that was an important, that was important work that, again, a team would has value, but its value is that it facilitates other work and analysis. or that you're like looking around saying, oh, this person is like contributing something meaningful to our conversation around the sport. And, you know, that maybe is reductive. And, you know, for all I know, like Ken and Jeff would object to that characterization too. But I don't know, man. Like, you know, I want to know what signing Garrett Cole does for the Yankees. I don't, like, need to sit and ruminate in the fact of who broke the signing first.

Like, that doesn't matter to me. I know it matters to the folks doing the news breaking because, you know, they get to sort of leverage that into greater exposure for their work. you know, they get to sort of leverage that into greater exposure for their work. And, you know, it's suggestive of all of this. It's sort of the front facing result of all of this other work behind the scenes. But like, you know, it's always so funny when those big signings break because you'll get like, generally it's it's Ken or Jeff, but you're right there. There's like a whole ecosystem of folks who do this stuff and then like you get the follow-up tweets. Yeah, all the details. You know, Jeff had it first and it's like, okay, you know.

Can confirm so-and-so. Right. And there's value in the confirmation, right? Like there's value in that piece of work because we have seen times where like, you know, someone has gotten it wrong and the follow-up elucidates that no, actually this player didn't sign with the Padres or whatever. Who's the one that got goofed a couple of years? See, I don't even remember. It's hard to remember these things.

I don't even remember. Yeah. So, you know. And sometimes it's a collaborative effort where like five different reporters will break a signing because someone will break like they signed him. And then someone will be like, here's part of the terms. And then here's another part. And here's an option that's in there. And, oh, there's an opt out.

And it'll just, you know, come out in dribs and drabs like over several tweets by several people. Yeah. So, like, you know know this is a process for for folks and i don't want to denigrate the work but i think that what makes some of the folks on the the baseball side in particular like highly respected within the industry is that they they use that to springboard into further analysis. They use that as, you know, that is one manifestation of other deeper reporting

that they're doing. And I'm grateful for that being the structure of the ecosystem on our side, which isn't to say that it's perfect. And, you know, it's not to say that like everyone is doing access journalism correctly in the baseball space because we can, I'm sure I'll think of instances where that is not the case. You know, it requires constant work to kind of get right,

but I think we start from a much higher baseline in baseball than in other sports. And I also want to say like that isn't to suggest that there aren't journalists doing good reported work on the NBA or on the NFL like that stuff exists. But you're right that it seems like there is a gap between the newsbreaker contingent of that and the journalist contingent of that. And that, you know, those sit right next to each other a lot of the time in baseball in a way that I think is good. Yeah. Yeah. If it's news that would come out via a press release from the league or the team, then is there much value to it? Obviously, there's an appetite for it because these guys have millions of Twitter followers and high salaries. And obviously obviously their outlets see some value in the attention that they bring. But in terms of what we would not know that we know because of them, it's not that much really. We would just have to wait a few minutes more, right? It's like Woj pre-ESPN breaking all the draft picks before the draft, which happens in MLB too, right? Like Eric will sometimes tweet out who's going to draft whom before the actual pick is made.

There's not nearly as much attention paid to that because, again, it's the MLB draft as opposed to the NBA draft. People don't care as much. And he's doing it in a chat at Fangraphs. I mean, he's definitely not doing it on Twitter. No, absolutely not. But, yeah, that's just, you know, he happens definitely not doing it on Twitter. No, absolutely not. But yeah, that's just, you know, he happens to learn about those things. That's not like the entire value proposition of Eric Langenhagen or any other draft expert. It's a very small part of it.

No one's ever accused him of like not offering supplemental words. Yeah, no. He's only in it for the likes. Yeah. Yeah, no. He's only in it for the likes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, that's the first thing you think of when you think of him. You're like, internet celebrity, social media personality. Yeah.

Yeah. And also, I mean, I guess part of it is, yes, the value of the news breaking or not. Part of it is, yes, the value of the news breaking or not. And, you know, there's kind of an entertaining aspect to their rivalry. Like, look, I inhaled both of these long form features on these guys and I'm not even a basketball fan, really. So, like, I'm intrigued by all of the backroom dealing and the palace intrigue and everything. and the palace intrigue and everything. And so if Effectively Wild were a basketball podcast, we would probably talk a lot about Woj and Shams and who's breaking what news

or who screwed up or whatever it is. Whereas we don't really do that. We might talk about things that Passan and Rosenthal reported, but we're not like, ooh, he was first on this one. No one really remembers except those guys and maybe their employers. So it's a very different experience of following the news. And there's value to the league, potentially,

these stories suggest, and the fact that these guys are just the pipeline to the fans because everyone is following them. And so if you want to get the word out about something, you kind of funnel it through one of them, right? And they're also just these intermediaries in this weird way for front offices, like to get around tampering rules. Like if you can't talk to someone, well, you could reach out to them through Shams or Woj. It's just, it's so strange. And I don't know that that never happens in baseball,

but it just doesn't seem to be nearly as prominent. And then there are all the concerns about like a journalist or whatever Shams is being employed by FanDuel and, you know, a sports book. And we talked about this when there was concern about him tweeting about a draft pick going to one place potentially and then moving the lines on that. And then he turned out to be wrong. But it's like, well, could you game this? And now that he's a New York Times employee, a lot of New York Times employees have been like, hey, this would never fly for us. Like, why are we letting him get away with this? And maybe it's because he has more Twitter followers than any other Times person. And because he kind of, you know, came in through a side entrance

via the athletic and everything. And he has this other deal worked out. So that's a whole other concern that you don't hear about as much with MLB, but you still hear about, there are still like, you know, sports books trying to get information from MLB newsbreakers and that sort of thing. But, but because no one wields the clout that Woj and Shams do, maybe that hasn't been as big a deal thus far, or at least it hasn't been known to be. If we were NBA analysts,

whoa, what a weird podcast that would be. It would be so, would it be different? Is there an analytics infused with whimsy podcast for for the nba i think there are some probably right i see in our facebook group all the time people requesting like what's uh the closest effectively wild equivalent for my sport of choice and sometimes there's a perfect parallel and sometimes not so much but yeah we'd be we'd be talking we'd be lamenting how the playoffs are too predictable and the favorites always win. Oh, yeah.

And we would 100% be talking about the obvious conflicts of interest that exist with James' situation. We talked about that on this podcast and we're not NBA people. podcasts that were not NBA people. Like, it is a wild problem. And I cannot, I still am floored that it is allowed to persist the way that it is. Like, it just seems like such an obvious, looming issue. And, you know, I think that one of the, when you're a newsbreaker, like, you have to avoid impropriety, but you are establishing a relationship of trust with your readers and so you should avoid the appearance of impropriety also and i would not score that a w for him um when it comes to the sportsbook piece of it like i i don't know why it's not a bigger problem for him than it seems to be i would'm flummoxed. I've been bamboozled.

I don't know. I don't understand why this is a thing that is allowed to persist. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And by the way, one of the valuable bits of Judaism that Jeff Passan did was write a book called The Arm about Tommy John surgery and elbow injuries and the epidemic of those, which is still raging many years after he wrote that book. What did that come out in 2016, I think. And I saw a tweet this week by John Roggeley, who maintains the Tommy John surgery database. And that is such a valuable resource. And it's kind of wild that we rely on just like independent researchers to keep track of those things. It's like sometimes you see like, you know, crime statistics or gun violence statistics and they're maintained by some media outlet or some other organization.

It's like, shouldn't we have an official figure for that? But, you know, the FBI or the government has dragged its feet on compiling and releasing those things. Much lower stakes. But in baseball, often we're relying on media outlets or individual writers or researchers to maintain these very valuable resources that we all rely on. And I saw a tweet from John this week about the percentage of MLB pitchers in each season who have had Tommy John surgery. So this is pitchers who pitched in MLB or spent the entire season on the injured list, not including position player pitching. And this year we reached a new high in the time that John has been tweeting and maintaining this, 2023, 35.3% of all MLB pitchers. So that would include, I think, everyone.

But at any point in their career, not in that calendar year, right? Yeah, not this season, but just at any point in the past, they've had Tommy Jones. And presumably that includes relievers who came up and pitched in one game or something and so more than a third 35.3 percent which is up for well it was it's up from last year it's up from the year before that it's been sort of slowly but steadily increasing so like in 2017 it was 25.9. Or when Jeff released the arm in 2016, it was 27.4 percent. Now it's 35.3 percent.

So it keeps creeping up and up and up. And maybe it's possible that the return to play times have been reduced. Because, you know, you have repairs instead of full reconstructions and you have the internal brace. So like there have been advances made when it comes to improving the outcomes and shortening the time to return to the field. But man, just no sign whatsoever of this epidemic receding, like just more and more pitchers. And maybe this is because it's become more common at the minor league level and in amateur ball. And so those guys are getting to the big leagues now. But yeah, like more than a third of the MLB pitchers who threw a pitch this season, if you could look at the elbow, you would see that telltale scar there. It's just, it's kind of incredible. And it just reaffirms my belief that this is maybe the biggest issue facing baseball injuries and pitcher injuries and arm injuries specifically.

And I don't know, maybe despite Brandon Woodruff's injury, maybe shoulder injuries have decreased over this period. You know, some things we've gotten better at preventing the injury or treating it. And then it just moves down to the weak point in the kinetic chain and it's the UCL and there's only so much you can do about that. But boy, it's just more and more every year, just the rising tide of TJs. Yeah, it's a real problem. Shams isn't writing that book.

Probably not. Woj isn't writing that book. I don't mean to pick on Shams, just amongst the two of them, but he's the one with the gambling thing. So that's why he got a little more attention. Yes. Do you have time for one email?

Yes, I have time for one, but only one. Yes, you've got to go to a workout day at Chase. All right. Jonathan says, if all regular season series were like playoff series, how would baseball be different? What if the series was over once a team had won the series? So for a four-game series, if a team wins the first three, series is over and both teams get a day off before the next series starts. Would the team be missing too many games at the end of the year? Would the schedule have to be

adjusted to account for missed games? Could you have a live schedule, the back-filled games that were missed so that teams still played 162 and the pitcher-catcher battery still got all of their plate appearances? Everyone still qualified with so many counting stats involved. I imagine this would overcomplicate the schedule. What would the benefits be for winning a series since both teams would still get a day off? How would a season look if teams had stats for series wins and losses? That would be a more fluid way to transition into the postseason since teams would be playing this style of baseball all season long. Teams with the best series win-loss records would advance to the postseason. Perhaps their overall win-loss record could act as tiebreakers.

Even better, what if they still played all of the 162 games but the standings were made by series win-loss rather than total win-loss record could act as tiebreakers even better. What if they still played all of the 162 games, but the standings were made by series win-loss rather than total win-loss? The schedule would have to be adjusted to convert four-game series into five-game series, but this would reduce the amount of traveling overall and would make for some interesting adjustments and strategy that, again, would be more like postseason baseball. And he says, I'd be very interested in watching a season of baseball like this so would you and this this feels like a if baseball were different how different would it be it feels like it'd be pretty different if if this were put into place it would be so different it would be i mean we'd have to get tiebreaker games back i, you know, who would be able to just look at a record and say, oh, yeah, okay. It would be so weird.

We couldn't do it. The teams would play different amounts of games. They'd play different numbers of games. And like, it would be a total mess. It would be a mess. Yeah. For the stats, it would be just a nightmare. Oh, my God.

How would we? Yeah. You'd have to lower, I guess, the qualifying thresholds. But even then. I mean, it's just like, how would we, oh. Yeah, you'd have to lower, I guess, the qualifying thresholds, but even then, even then, yeah,

there'd be such disparities probably in just the number of team games played. I was, I was going to say, I mean, would, would the better teams,

I, I guess like, because the, the really good teams and the really terrible teams probably would play fewer games than kind of the middle of the pack teams, right? Because like if you're sweeping or getting swept a lot or, I mean, would we even call it sweep? We'd have to have that conversation again that we just had for the postseason. losing or winning the first two of a three-game series as opposed to splitting them more often.

You just have fewer games played total. So like, man, but the samples would all be smaller, obviously, so we'd have less confidence in any of the results and true talent estimates would be hazier. And yeah, you wouldn't have to worry about people complaining about layoffs in the postseason because that would just be a constant bug or feature of the schedule.

So you'd have to, maybe you could do some prorating or extrapolating or adjust per X games, you'd compare the rate stats or something because it would just be so hard to account for. It would be a mess because we intentionally, when we're evaluating guys' careers, it's not that we don't think about what they did in the postseason,

but when we talk about their stats, we mean the regular season, and we pick that because they all play in a in in theory they have the opportunity to play the same number of games and i know they don't all play the same number of games because you know the guys get hurt guys get rest guys are starters guys are relievers you know guys are whatever but like they have the opportunity the to play a set number of games and then the postseason is a so-and-special separate thing that we are like that that's over there.

And then if you were to, and they wouldn't play all the games, then how would poor, can you imagine poor Jay Jaffe trying to, having to construct a Hall of Fame case on guys who've played here and there, cats and dogs living together? It would be a total, it would be such a mess. It would be a total mess. Yeah, and there'd just be a lot less baseball, which would be bad. There would be such a mess. It would be a total mess. Yeah.

And there'd just be a lot less baseball, which would be bad. There'd be so much less baseball. Yeah. I mean, the feature of the regular season for a lot of people is that it's a constant. It's always there. So it would be very annoying and deflating. You'd be happy if your team won the series and then got to take a day off and rest and recuperate. But then you don't get to watch a game that day. So that stinks. And you wouldn't be able to plan around it. Just it'd be

bad for attendance. Like not only would there be fewer total games, I guess the individual games might be better attended on average, but you couldn't make plans like months in advance and say, hey, I'm going to get tickets to this game. I guess you could if it were the first or second game of the series or something. But you could never bank on going to a game after that because it just might not be played at all. And imagine the headaches for the team when it comes to traveling. Yeah, I was going to say, the poor traveling secretary. Yeah. Underappreciated in our time and, like, probably wanting to quit in the time being proposed here. Yeah.

I guess they could make the same plans and then if you don't have to play a game, you just have a day off in that city on that day, right? You just, you know, you stay in the same hotel. You just don't travel until you were originally scheduled to travel. But if you were a player and you had an extra off day, and let's say you had a homestand coming up, you'd probably want to go home and get started on that. So maybe with charters, if you're just going home, you could do that if you don't have hotels booked oh man what a what a mess that would be and then schedule wise yeah like i guess there'd be the question of does it actually hurt you to have too many off days if it's just so sporadic and stop and start no we'd have rest discourse

so much yeah and like do you do you actually want to to end the series early or do you want to? Because, man. And then could you count on like you couldn't ever count on not having to play a game, but it would affect how you used your your pitchers and your relievers and everything. Like, if you knew or you thought if you won the first game of a three-game series and you're trying to finish off the second one, then you'd know, like, hey, if we win this one, we don't have to play. We get an off day the next day, so I can use all my good bullpen guys now and not hold them in reserve. Or, like, do you—maybe starting rotations would be more fluid and flexible than they are currently because they kind of used to be in earlier eras of baseball. So maybe you bring that back a little bit. There'd be so many headaches. This would be kind of chaos. And I don't think it would be better because it would just be a lot less baseball. And I'm not in favor of that. But I guess there would be some interesting, strategic, tactical considerations potentially. But on every other level, it would just be a total hassle not to be able to depend on. It would be a hassle.

It would be a mess. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. Okay.

I think we've answered a question about like what if series were decided by run differential in the series, as opposed to do you win and lose each individual, but like cumulative, do you outscore your opponent in that series? How would that change things? I think we've done that one. But this is a whole different ball of wax. So yeah, I don't think so. But thanks for the question, Jonathan. All right. Before we leave you today, we have one more treat for you. I hope it'll be a treat. It's a future blast from the year 2074. It's been a while since we've done one of these. We stopped them as an everyday feature after episode 2060, but we mentioned that we might try it again in some form. Some people have been asking whether the future blast would be back. The future blast from the past, if that makes any sense, were short little dispatches from the year that coincided with the episode number, relating a little information about what's going on in baseball in the world

in that year in this timeline. But this one will be a bit different. So the one we're sharing with you today is more of a short story produced in the style of a radio play, an old school serialized audio drama. The story is co-written by our regular future blaster, Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. It is also co-written by Alan Smale, who is an accomplished and prolific science fiction author in his own right, as well as an astrophysicist and astronomer. It's about seven or eight minutes long. It's called Alien Baseball, and it goes a little

something like this. St. Louis, Missouri, November 2074. It was another balmy November night in St. Louis, where the Cardinals were holding on to a one-run lead in the top of the seventh in the sixth game of the World Series. The London Monarchs had their designated runner on first, replacing the lumbering Jackie Stewart, who, enhanced or not, could get only a single out of the line drive to the corner and right. The runner was Letitia Lindsay, the super Scott, the holder of the world record time in the 100-meter dash in the Canberra Olympics, where she broke the 10-second barrier with that amazing 9.95. She was taking a long lead off first and would no doubt be heading to second

as soon as Cardinals reliever Hector Clark threw another 110-mile-an-hour fastball homeward. Lindsay had stolen 154 bases in the regular season, despite missing a month participating in the Olympics and bringing home the gold for Scotland. She was looking to add another theft or two here to her post-season tally of nine steals. In deep space, approaching Oumuamua. Space Force roamer pilot James Ollie Olsen was watching as that first pitch came in and Lindsay stole second.

Late jump, close call, but safe. Ollie Olsen and his crew were making a close call now too, as they approached Oumuamua, the strange visiting rock that had first visited the solar system in 2017 and then gone on its way. There'd been no way to visit the rock back then. Now there was. Ollie clicked off the video and went to audio only.

He needed to keep his eye on the target for the next little while. There were gullible people back home on Earth and the Moon who thought this ugly hunk of rock was an alien visitor. Oh, sure, he muttered. If I was going to build an alien vessel, that's exactly what it would look like. The cigar-shaped interstellar rock tumbled end over end

just a click ahead of them. The elongated asteroid was a reddish color, clearly rocky, and about 500 meters long and a little under 100 meters across. Though, you know... His co-pilot Lily May Lynn checked her calculator. If that sucker really was chock full of aliens, that rotation rate would give it a close to 1G Earth normal gravity at the ends. Randy Garrett, the navigator, snorted. Yeah, sure. And my Aunt Minnie pitched a perfect game for the Yankees, right?

She made the big club for a cup of coffee, Randy, said Ollie. I saw her pitch twice in relief during that pennant race of 2060. She had pretty good stuff, my friend. Yeah, yeah, said Randy. I know, I heard about it all the damn time. She gets better every telling, and that's my point. They moved closer to the tumbling rock. Amuamua certainly dwarfed their spacecraft.

Space Force Roamer 14 was a scout vessel barely 30 meters long with a crew of three. Usual Roamer duty involved fixing satellites, cleaning up space junk, and puttering around outside Island 2, the space habitat at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point, equally distant from each. Occasionally, they'd check out small asteroids for potential mining. But today, SFR-14 was coming to take a look at this mysterious visitor, rendezvous with it at its spin axis, and grab a couple of surface samples for science and a whole bunch of photos for the world media. The target was a little unusual, but matching trajectory and spin rate for the encounter was typical slow, deliberate work of

a type they'd done dozens of times before. Not exactly rocket science, even though it was, technically. Ollie turned off the game to concentrate on his approach. They needed to touch down on that rock long enough to do a scoop and run. For a few seconds, he forgot about the ball game back on Earth.

Let her steal all the bases she wants, he said, mostly to himself, though they could all hear him. What the? said Lily. Wait a second, Ollie. That rock is slowing down. Ollie eyed the approaching space rock. Doesn't look like... spinning down, she said. I'm positive. Incongruously, Ollie thought of a curveball, but by now he could see it was true. That end-over-end motion was nowhere near as brisk as it had been just moments before. Uh, outgassing? Like comets

do? Must be. And there she goes. Randy Garrett added, leaning back in a luxurious stretch. Lindsay swiping third, out though this time. Ends the inning. Lily suddenly sat forward. Uh, incoming radio message. Island two? The space habitat they'd launched from three days before. Not island two. Lily pushed buttons. The loudspeaker boomed. A pause, and then in a much lighter tone. And behind these words, the SFR-14 crew heard the unmistakable tune of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Mei Ling stabbed more buttons. Oh, come on. Which one of you jokers?

It's coming from the rock, Garrett said. It is not, said Lily. Cannot be. They all looked at Garrett suspiciously. He raised his hands. Okay, swear to God, I am not doing this. Olsen shook his head. Junior, talk to me. Junior, their AI

co-pilot, who'd been quiet to this point, spoke up. The signal is coming from the rock, but the background noise is from the game on Earth. People of Earth? Came the voice over the loudspeaker again, sounding a little plaintive. Olsen flipped the push to talk on his console. Uh, yeah, hi. Who's this? Good, good.

Hello, people of Earth. I am Felix. Felix? Okay, then. Olsen took his finger off the button. I don't buy this for a second. Pushed to talk again. So, uh, Felix, you seriously expect us to believe you're aboard Oumuamua? Yes, yes, the traveler you call Oumuamua. I am within. But the game is about to begin again.

I will make ready here all. You will park your craft between the lights, yes? Graveler you call, Oumuamua? I am within. But the game is about to begin again. I will make ready here all. You will park your craft between the lights, yes? And then we will each other greet as friends, yes? No time lag, said Maylin Sadovoche. The signal is local. In the background, behind Felix's voice, they could hear commentators from Redbird Field as the seventh inning recommenced.

Olsen shook his head. Felix, you're following the game? Of course. The loudspeaker went dead, and two red lights lit up on Oumuamua, about three-quarters of the way from its center to its far end. And in the next few moments, Oumuamua came to a complete stop relative to SFR 14. Wow. Lily Mei Ling said, inadequately. Ollie Olsen sat up straight. Guys, this is now a first contact situation. He swallowed. Did I really just say that out loud?

Olsen used the last two innings to his advantage. His quick call back to Island 2 was met with incredulity. Aliens? Right. Olsen asked if he should abort, back off, await a larger contingent of, oh, politicians or whatever? Negatory, said Island 2 Control. Bring us back unequivocal evidence of aliens, and then we'll talk. Until then, let's keep this to ourselves. And also, double-check your environmental control readings, and do immediate medical checks on one another. Olson chose not to take that last advice. He was too busy maneuvering SFR-14 in between the red lights and into dock in a steel-lined tunnel with a huge, rubbery-looking far wall. It was obviously a far-from-natural berth. Ollie and his crew watched through the cockpit windshield as that rubbery mass reached out to grab the roamer and sucked it into a firm grip.

In the top porthole, they could see a connector coming down to latch onto their top hatch. Come on! He heard through his earpiece. Get the bat off your shoulder! Ollie looked at Lily and Randy. They looked back. They stood up. Earth's normal gravity here?

Go figure. Ollie reached up to undog the hatch. Play ball. All right, hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for listening, and thanks to all involved, including Rick Wilber and Alan Smale, who wrote it. Shane McKeon, our producer, who produced it and also voiced James Ollie Olson. Thanks to Effectively Wild listeners, Patreon supporters and Twins fans, Chris Hannell and Amy Lee for voicing Randy Garrett and Lily Mae Lynn, respectively. And if you recognized Felix, that mysterious voice over the loudspeaker, that was Fangraph's own Dan Cymborski. Thank you, Dan. And I, of course, was your humble narrator. This was somewhat labor-intensive to write and record and produce, so if you'd like to hear more like it, please let us know. If not, please let us know that, too. Maybe we will continue to do these sporadically, extend the story into the future, but it's up to you and your interest level. So we look forward to your feedback. After recorded on Wednesday, the Astros beat the Rangers 8-5, a little bit more of a high-scoring effort by both teams at least, though still no lead changes.

Max Scherzer, not so great. Astros' offense, very good, even with Jordan getting robbed of a home run. And by the way, there was a pitch clock violation. John Gray was called for one, which takes us up to 5 in 27 postseason games, or.19 per game, roughly. Still low relative to the regular season. We'll have more to say about that series and the NLCS next time. For now, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. J.I., unless that's a lowercase l, not an uppercase I, Tom M., Maxwell Elkis, Sarah, and MCS, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, access to playoff livestreams, one of which is still ahead this month. Access to monthly bonus episodes, discounts on merch and ad-free

Fangraphs memberships, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but you don't have to be a Patreon supporter to contact us via email. Send us your questions and comments at podcast at fangraphs.com. 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 effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for extra editing and production assistance today. We will be back to talk to you a little later this week. To all of your indifferent family and friends

They'll keep you company, they'll keep you sane On a long bike ride or a slow work day Making bandwags about a playoff race And lose bad side It's effectively wild So stick around You'll be well beguiled It's effectively wild

Like Nolan Ryan was Sometimes