Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2078: Drought Conditions

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about saying the wrong episode number in the intro to Episode 2077 and the definition of a title drought, then answer listener emails (18:45) about whether it would make sense to choose a bye in the playoffs if your opponent got to draft a player from the team it […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2078 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. You will notice that I said episode 2078. It has come to my attention. A crisis has come to my attention. Oh no. Oh no. You to my attention. Oh, no. You did the intro last time. Yeah. It was episode 2077.

Oh, boy. Did I say the wrong thing? You said 2076. Well, guess what was at the top of the episode deal, Bob? It may very well have been my fault for writing 2076. Whose fault is that? That's your fault, Ben. So what do we do? I don't know. I feel like, I don't know Ben. So what do we do? I don't know. I feel like I don't know that we've encountered

this problem before. I don't know. We've entered a slipstream. I know. It feels like we've created a branching timeline or something. It's just everything spiraling like I'm watching Loki right now. It feels like the temporal loom is overloaded. We need

to prune a branch where Effectively Wild went off into the wrong episode number now. I don't know what any of that means, but yeah, I believe you. There's like a Ben and a Meg who are now continuing on from 2076 into their own separate Effectively Wild timeline where there will just be a different 2077 over there. And this is 2078. I don't know. I don't know what to do. I mean, we could go back and rerecord it and fix it so that we don't confuse future Effectively Wild listeners.

Yeah. Or it could just be a little Easter egg for everyone who knows. For all I know, this has happened before and I just forgot or never knew it. I just happened to see someone mention it in our Patreon Discord group because they're sharp listeners. Yeah. I mean, I want to establish a couple of things. The first of which is that it is your fault. Okay. I accept your responsibility. I mean, that's not particularly fair of me though because i could i could keep it

straight if i you know thought about it but i i didn't that'd be a lot to ask i think for you to to see that i wrote 2076 in the recording thing and say actually i know intro yeah i just went and checked but wow what do we even you know like what do we so so to be clear what episode are we in this see see this is why it's a crisis this is 2078 now that is that is the real episode right yeah so it's like 2077 never happened i mean but it did i think we should leave it because um you know years from now someone is gonna be, my God, what did they do? And then the next episode, they're going to be like, they got it. They caught it.

They realized what happened. What if we get emails for the rest of our lives, people looking for 2077 and they're like, was this 2077? Am I sure they said 2076? Maybe. Yeah. Won't it be nice if you are projecting a future in which the podcast lives forever and people are still engaging with it years after the fact? I don't see any downside to that, Ben. I feel like everything's coming up, Ben and Meg, if that's the reality that we're living in, you know?

All right. Well, just in case anyone was confused, the last one was 2077. Probably no one was because it says it on the episode title. Right. So that's probably sufficient. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that this has ever happened before. And we've been doing this show for so long. Yeah. That I'm just, I'm rocked to my core. Yeah.

So here we are. We'll somehow try to move forward. rock to my core. So here we are. We'll somehow try to move forward. I don't mean to put so much blame on you, Ben. I mean, like I didn't notice. I could have noticed. I could have been like, is that right? I'll fall on my sword here. I wrote 2076. It's me. Man, I'm not sure what to do now. Well, we'll just muddle forward as best we can. I am. I'm not sure what to do now. Well, we'll just muddle forward as best we can. I guess. I did want to ask you something else that I saw in our Patreon Discord group. I was actually going there to refresh my memory about what the person said, and then I was confronted by this shocking, shocking lapse on our parts or at least mine. But the question—

on our parts or at least mine. But the question. Look, it's on both of our parts. It's just that if we're like apportioning the blame, it's like a 75-25 sort of situation, I think. I'm not blameless. I'm just not blameful, you know? Sure, sure.

So Tex, listener, Patreon supporter, wants to know, what's a World Series drought? What qualifies as a drought? You'd think that we would have talked about this at some point, but I don't know that we have. Maybe we did in some secret episode on the other timeline. In the slipstream. Didn't see an email about

this in our email database. So, when can we say that a team has a World Series drought? This was prompted by Tex reading the Athletic Wind-Up newsletter, which referred to a Diamondbacks World Series drought being old enough to drink. And Tex was not convinced that they're in a drought. Would you say that the Diamondbacks are in a drought not having won since 2001?

Well, I mean, technically the entire state of Arizona is in a drought. You're always in a drought out there, I guess. Very dry here right now. But I am comfortable with calling it a drought on the part of the Diamondbacks. I think that once you get into integers where you might commemorate the distance and say this is the X anniversary of the thing. And I'm not talking about like, you know, your early anniversaries were like paper

and I don't know, leather goods, jam. I don't know what the anniversaries are involved. But once you get to like 15, 20, you know, once the thing could be, if it were through our slipstream technology constituted into a person, could vote or drink or rent a car without penalty, then I think it's a drought. I'm comfortable with that. Just because some franchises go entire lifetimes between World Series rings doesn't mean that we have to limit the suffering to their fan bases. I think that if you're a D-backs fan, 2001 feels like a long time ago. Although some of the first pitch people are the same. So we're forever on a loop. Yeah, it does feel like a long time ago.

It will forever live in my nightmares, but it does feel like a long time ago. And I guess we can safely say that the Rangers are in a drought. Or can you be in a drought if there was never water? Correct. Does there have to have been water at some point? So what is it then? I don't think that you can be in a drought if you have not previously won a ring. You know, the Mariners are not in a drought. They were in a playoff drought because they'd been in playoffs. Correct. But they're not in a World Series drought.

They don't they don't deserve that. You know, it's like so much feister than I really had feeling for right now. It's like Mars right there. There once was water. It once was lush and fertile and now it's just, you know, parched and dry. But it never was lush and fertile for the Mariners or the Rangers World Series wise. So not a drought. So it's just, it's not, is it a streak? Is it a, it's just an offer? It's just, I don't know. What do you call it if it's not a drought? Third circle of hell? I don't, I don't know, man. A curse. I don't know what to call it. I have to think about that for a moment. But I do feel very, very confident that it's not a drought because it, that denotes an absence of a thing that didn't exist, like you know like is the sahara desert ever in a drought

condition now parts of arizona are our desert to be clear and so you might say hey mick haven't you just hoisted yourself on your own petard because you just said that the d-backs are literally in a drought no let's tell you that sometimes this state is not in a drought condition doesn't happen very often and it certainly seems like it's resurging this year, but there is sometimes water here. Whereas like, you know, in the Sahara, I'm sure there's some rainfall. We're going to get emails about that too, but like it feels disingenuous

to say, did you know the Sahara's in a drought condition? It's the Sahara. Of course it is. It's a desert. It's a big desert. It's a title desert. It's a championship desert. Yes. I think It's a desert. It's a title desert. It's a championship desert. Yes. Yeah. I think that's just the permanent state, at least like on human timescales.

Right. So, OK. All right. Well, then the definition of a drought, though, see Texas case for the Diamondbacks not being in a drought. He said, I'm not convinced that you're in a drought if the number of years since you last won the World Series is lower than the total number of teams in the league. So in the Diamondbacks case, it's been 22 years since they won a World Series. But the chance of winning in any given year, assuming all teams are equally skilled, of course, is one in 30. If they win this year, they're outperforming the baseline odds. So that's his case for it not technically entering

the drought period yet. But it's a big honking long time, you know, the thing about it is, and the baseline odds in any given year aren't one in 30. Right. Because all teams aren't equally talented. Yes. Right. This is a tough one. I think it feels droughtish to me. It feels long enough to say it's a drought. And so you will have more teams in a state of drought,

I guess, than that one in 30 would suggest. But I think that's okay. Someone else, Xander, suggested, I think it should be when your odds of winning a World Series in that time frame are 50 50. Like the expected rate of World Series wins is one every 30 years. But it's 50 percent that you win one over 20 or 21 years. So so that's. But then Tex responded and said that makes sense, but at least colloquially, drought suggests something more extreme than the chance of a coin coming up heads. So if the rainfall in my area is 48th percentile over the long-term average, I don't think I'd call that a drought year. Apparently, meteorologists can't really decide on what a drought is either. They're like types of drought and gradations of drought.

So maybe we just need to get more specific and drill down on the droughts. So you've got your agricultural droughts and your hydrological droughts and your socioeconomic droughts and your ecological droughts. So maybe it has to be a certain type of drought. But if it is old enough that you could be a fully fledged adult and have grown up rooting for that team and not have been alive during the last championship. That feels like a drought to me. Feels fairly droughtish to me. It feels droughtish to me. You know, it feels like a, you know, we want to put some rigor around our definitions, even when they are largely about feelings. But like, this is mostly a feeling sort of vibes sort of situation, you know, five years, that's not a drought. 10 years, even not a drought. 15, you're like flirting with a drought. 20, I think you can start to call it a drought. I was home in Seattle in September,

and I saw the Seahawks play the Panthers, and they celebrated the 10-year anniversary of their Super Bowl win. And I was like, this feels amateurish to me. It's nice to see all these guys, and you want people to experience accolades while they're alive, so I guess that maybe that's part of the thing. But I was like, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do the 10 year we should do like the the 20 year you know you should in theory it should be like um the horizon right where it's like you're always i

don't know it's not like the horizon at all but anyway you should just win a bunch of championships if you possibly can but like 10 years it's too that's nothing you know people like have pets for that long you know like and they don't live forever sadly so i don't know it feels 20 is 20 is fine that's it's droughty it's it's droughty you know yeah yeah yeah yeah well is is drought relative to the franchise's level of success are the yankees in a title drought because they haven't won since 2009, which is an eternity for Yankees fans? No, I refuse to acknowledge that because that is indulging attention seeking behavior. And we'd all be well served to do less of that as a society. So it's like their ground has been so saturated by titles that the water table is high or the groundwater or whatever.

I don't live in the West. I don't know these terms. But there's enough moisture still around that they're not in a drought, even though they're accustomed to really having it be pretty wet wet out there world series wise i regret that phrasing on your behalf yeah me too but but they feel parched i'm sure yeah but but other fan bases would feel like this is normal or like the high we haven't come down from the high yet of when we won that year right because it's our only one. So maybe it's relative if you grew up. Like if I were still a Yankees fan,

I might feel like, gosh, this is a drought because when I was growing up, they won every year. So that was kind of my baseline. I don't want to make fun of your emotional pain, Ben, because that's not kind and I like it. We're friends. But, you know, Yankees fans have to relax. Like, you guys just have to chill out a little bit.

You're fine. You're fine. You know, let that in. Let it in that you're fine because you're fine. You're doing fine. You're doing so good. There are people who take as long as it has been since the Yankees won a world series like finish their

phd you know like what what are we talking about here ever since you made an offhand comment a few minutes ago about what the traditional gifts are for each anniversary i've been trying to figure out who decides that and i have not gotten to the bottom of it yet emily post i don't know who decides tiffany and co it's probably some very long dead english and or french person yeah we would be horrified to talk to in modern times we don't really need i don't think in anniversary gift a designated gift for every increment of years i I don't think we necessarily need that. I have occasionally looked it up and been like, that's the gift. Who says?

Why is that the official thing? Why would I even want that? Like seven year is copper and wool. Those are the traditional. And it just says it so matter of factly. Yeah, copper and wool is a traditional seven-year anniversary gift. Victorian tradition, that feels right. Oh, okay.

So did they just map out every, I wonder how high it goes. I need to know more about this. Yeah. I mean, are we at a point where we are perhaps exceeding the parameters because people live longer than they used to? Maybe, yeah. And then they got revised. That's the other thing is that there are the traditional ones and then there are more modern ones that people seem to ascribe to. Associating a wedding anniversary with precious metals such as gold or silver has been documented in Germanic countries since the 1500s.

silver has been documented in germanic countries since the 1500s in english-speaking countries the tradition of associating gift giving with wedding anniversaries became more prevalent in the 19th century in the 20th century increased commercialization led to the inclusion of more anniversaries to a list of predetermined gifts yeah this is like a british royal thing i knew that they were i knew it i knew it this I knew it. somehow there was some kind of consortium and they all got together and they're like, we got to get this year so that we can sell some stuff on that year. And maybe they're angling for the better years that you actually get to. And maybe there's a draft or something and there is some bartering and haggling over who gets what year because some would be more lucrative than others. But I think there must be an upper limit because I just Googled what is the 63rd anniversary gift just to see if there was a 63rd. And the first result I got is a vacation is a very good anniversary gift idea for any couple.

So I guess not enough people make it to 63 for there to be an official 63 or the couple might enjoy items they can use at home. Well, that's not nice. Are you saying that the 63rd anniversary people can't go out? They're spending all their time at home? I thought they were taking a vacation. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a designated official 63rd anniversary gift. Well, I think you get to a certain point where you start taking it in increments of five. Maybe. That is what Wikipedia seems to indicate. Makes sense to me. It was decided by the official anniversary gifts foundation back. It was handed down on a

stone tablet or possibly a copper and wool tablet if it was the seventh anniversary. Copper and wool tablet. Anyway was the seventh anniversary. Copper and wool tablet. Anyway. Should we answer some emails? I don't know. I don't know what episode we're in. I don't know what anything means. I've disconnected from time and space because I haven't slept and it's Friday, but also because we had a mishap with our intro and it just threw us off our game.

So let's answer some emails because we've got a game coming up in a few hours. We do. We can't really talk about the World Series because that game will have transpired, and we don't want to be out of date. So let's just do some timeless, evergreen emails, and maybe some of them will be playoff-themed. All right. Maybe some of them will be playoff themed. All right. Here's one from Andrew, Patreon supporter, who says,

I was thinking about the concept of teams being able to take one player away from a team they eliminate in the postseason to keep for the rest of the playoffs. I believe this is something you discussed on the pod a long time ago. I believe that's true. My question is this. If that were a rule, you could take one player from any team you eliminate from the postseason. Would teams prefer a bye in the best of three wildcard series as the top two in each league receive now, knowing the team they play will be able to add an extra player? beginning of the playoffs, would the Orioles rather play in the first round against Texas, giving the bye to the Rays, knowing if they win, they can add Corey Seager or Adoles Garcia or whoever, or would they rather guarantee the spot in the divisional series, knowing that they're going to play a souped up Rays or Rangers team? And I wonder how great the potential addition is,

how much that would affect the decision. If somehow the Angels made the postseason, would a team be more likely to want to play if they could add a peak and healthy Otani or Trout, as opposed to, say, this year's Marlins, where the biggest prize would be Luis Rize or Jesus Luzardo? So you can only add a player from a team you yourself eliminate? Is that what I'm given to understand here? So they're saying, would you rather take the bye, knowing that the team that you're going to

play will have leveled up because they will have beaten someone and they will have plundered their roster for their most talented player. And so you'll be playing a better version of that team, but you will have gotten a bye. So you won't have had to play that first round. My instinct is that you would still rather take the bye because it's not that adding another really great player isn't valuable. It's, of course, valuable. But baseball isn't an individual sport. And so let's think about what you might do. So you could either add their best position player, and maybe that's a meaningful upgrade on your

lineup. Who knows? But, you know, it's not like that person gets to bat all the time or even when you want them to. So that's a thing to consider. If you add a really dynamic starter, well, presumably they pitched in the wild card, so you're not going to get them right away in your series. Oh, maybe your problem is you're the Rangers, and you're like, I want to play a team that has a great bullpen because then I can pluck a reliever, and that guy might be the most useful just in terms of how often you can use him you

can deploy him when you want to uh and availability wise probably around and useful right away because of you know the travel days that are associated with the wild card so maybe like that's engaging to you but if you don't play in the wild card, you get to rest. You get to rest. You get to reset your rotation, right? You get a nice long layoff, which no one is ever bothered by. Right. You get to have your best starters presumably going as often as possible because of the time off, which I think is probably on average going to be the most valuable to you. And you are playing a team that while they have added talent has themselves had to expend some

of their rotation strengths in the prior series is tired, potentially, or at least more tired than you are. So I still think you would rather take the buy but i could very easily envision specific scenarios where you know you have such a particular deficiency to strength match up with a guy that maybe you think about it but i still think you'd probably rather have the buy does that feel like a reasonable? Yeah, I think you take the bye. You take the bye. Yes. Yeah. Despite the whole conversation about byes and layoffs this postseason, there's no player good enough to improve your odds. And granted, I guess their talent is being added to your opponent. But still, just to be able to skip that first round, which is not quite a coin flip, but pretty close, right?

Like that player is not going to improve your odds by that much or hurt your odds that much if they're playing against that team like your your chances playing the souped up super powered team that now has the best player from from the team that it defeated are still going to be better than if you had to play that first round and get by that and then also continue on even with a a prize that you pluckeded from the carcass of that roster that you defeated. So, yeah, there's no way. And I guess mentioning Trout and Otani was instructive in this question potentially because they are kind of the go-to example for this is how baseball works. It's not enough to be a super-duper star and that's not enough to make your team good. It can make your team better, but it's not enough to be a super-duper star, and that's not enough to make your team good. It can make your team better, but it's not enough.

So, yeah, even if you somehow had a sub-replacement level player at some position, which isn't going to happen that often if you're a playoff team at the end of the year, and there was the best player in baseball at that position that you could take, it still would not be worth it. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. Question from Michael, Patreon supporter. Have you ever explored the hypothetical baseball variant? Don't talk to me about variants. I'm already worried about Effectively wild podcast variants with different episode numbers where a team's manager chose his starters, but the opposing team's manager set their batting order. There are all sorts of interesting analytical and strategy questions invoked, the first and most obvious being, what is the worst possible batting order?

I assume people have looked at this, but I couldn't find anything about it. What would the run environment be in the scenario? Then there are the questions of how do you pick players to minimize the ability of the opposing manager to create a bad lineup for you and whether you would deploy your pitching staff in a different way. So you get to pick the starters and then you just have to hand over your lineup card and they can rearrange it however they want and they can have the most suboptimal lineup possible my understanding you tell me if your understanding is different ben but my understanding is that while you obviously want to have your best hitters hit the most often and thus they should be closer to the top of your lineup than the bottom.

Over the, I mean, in a single game, it's going to maybe matter more than over the course of the season. Like, it doesn't, haven't we determined that, like, lineup order isn't that impactful? Like, it's not nothing, clearly. You know, if you're in this scenario, right, and you're the Astros, and you have handed your lineup to, well, maybe then you end up starting Yonair Diaz more often because you want to minimize how often Martín Maldonado is just batting first, you know, because he'd just be at the top. You would just put that guy at the top.

And again, would it be that big? No. But like, it would matter. You know, it would certainly matter because why is he getting so many at-bats, Ben? Why did he get so many at-bats? He got so dusty. We have a tremendous amount of respect for you. But like that was, it was flummoxing.

Happy trails. Enjoy your retirement. You've earned it. Yeah. But I wonder, Ben, is there a scenario where you, how do we think about substitutions? How could you, if you're the manager, maximize substitutions, right? Do you put the guy in who sucks knowing that you can just pinch it for him after his first? I don't know.

It's not clear to me if you have that power. I guess if you have that power, then you could just hand them your scrubs and then pinch it for everyone. Not that everyone has that many bench players, unless you can count pitchers or something who aren't going to play and you can just stack the light up. That would defeat the purpose of this whole exercise. I'm not sure what the purpose of this exercise was. I mean, are we ever sure? Yeah. So I think your understanding is correct, or at least it's my understanding. I'm always underwhelmed by the batting order stuff, all the kinds of calculations about what would this be worth if you could plug stats and players into. And people will

reference the book, even though the book is almost 20 years old at this point. But all of that lineup optimization stuff in there, and there are certain principles and archetypes that you want to structure your lineup in a certain way. So usually it's about making your lineup better, not as bad as it can possibly be. And I think if you really tried to stack the deck or unstack the deck, empty the deck and have it be the worst possible batting order, it might make a meaningful difference there. a lineup that looks fairly reasonable. Right. Like you're not having your worst hitter bat leadoff. I'm sure that's happened at times. But usually it's like, let's do a little rearranging. Like this is, you know, generally okay. You know who the good players are. It's not the inverse of what it should be.

It's not completely backwards. So, yeah, when it's tweaks, it's always just like a few runs a season or something, right? But if you were actually trying to make it as bad as it could possibly be, the gap between the best possible and the absolute worst possible probably, yeah, it would be meaningful. I assume we would be measuring in wins, not runs, I think. So, but still, it might only be like a few wins or something. It's just, it doesn't matter that much. It matters more how good the hitters are than what order they're in.

And the reason I think it frustrates people so much when it seems like you're leaving value on the table by not optimizing your order is it just it's free runs it's like an unforced error you know it's one thing to commit an error or not be able to hit a pitch i mean it's difficult to do these things but if you're just drawing up a batting order you have all day to do that and you can crunch the numbers and you can make it super optimized and then when you don't do that and it feels like you're just leaving some advantage that would be easy to seize then that's frustrating but it's disproportionately frustrating because it also doesn't matter that much it doesn't matter that much but yeah it does feel like you know we don't like unforced errors they

feel particularly bad and so it can be like, what are you doing? Why is Martine Maldonado? He didn't, to be clear, he always was in like the night spot. So I'm not alleging gross malpractice here. That's what we're talking about here, though. Maldonado would be batting second or whatever, right? Yeah. So that would be bad.

Like we're talking about maybe he shouldn't be in the lineup at all, but at least if he's in there, he's where you would put him if you had to put him somewhere. All right. Question from Andrew, Patreon supporter. This was, I think, from the very end of the regular season because he says, Tonight I was watching the Rockies face the Twins like a sicko

when the Twins loaded the twins like a sicko when the twins loaded the bases albeit with one out after hitting two home runs to tie it it got me wondering about noble tigers nonetheless so you know the the noble tiger which i think was started on a tiger's reddit maybe five years ago and it's no bases loaded, ending with team incapable of getting easy run. So it's when you load the bases and you get nothing. That's a mouthful. It is, yeah. But Noble Tigers, easier to say.

So Andrew's wondering about Noble Tigers probably because, he says, of how often my Rockies seem to commit to them. I came across a conundrum that I'm sure no one else cares about, but I hope you guys would help me figure it out. Say a team hits a home run or scores in some other way with no outs

and then proceeds to load the bases. They then continue on to not get the easy run with the bases loaded. Does that count as a noble tiger? While yes, they did score in that inning, they also proceeded to load the bases and not capitalize on that easy run. So if we go pedantically by the acronym, I'd say yes, this does count.

And we're all about pedantics. After all, it doesn't say no outs, bases loaded, and team didn't already score in the inning. It's just a wide blanket of no outs with the bases loaded. However, the scenario does seem to go against the spirit of the acronym. So I wasn't quite sure what side to take. What say you? So I want to acknowledge that there may be, you know, particular local nuances I am not appreciating here, right? I would not, you know, I would gladly be overruled by an in the know, uh, Tigers fan or Rockies fan for that matter.

For all I know, I think the Reddit username is this means warm who, who created the noble tiger. So maybe they have already ruled on this and if so, then we'll, we'll defer to their ruling, but I'm not aware of what that ruling is. I get the sense that this is meant to express like the very particular frustration of coming away with nothing in an inning like this. And so I don't think that you could apply it to a scenario where there has already been run scoring in the inning, even if that run scoring feels like maybe you didn't get as much as you should have. I am familiar with that feeling from watching, say, the Seattle Mariners. But I think that there is something uniquely frustrating about getting in a situation where it's all in front of you and you're expected in a sort of vacuum to score runs, right? You're looking at the run expectancy table and you're like, we're going to come away with, well, we're not going to come away with fractional runs because that doesn't happen. But, you know, we should expect to score some runs in this inning.

And then you come away with nothing. and you know not only are you feeling profound disappointment and frustration but the other fan base is feeling incredible relief right they are like whoo yeah we got we got out of that one you know and they are they're looking at each other and they're making the like eyes big face really well i can't believe we got out of that one and they're saying we don't want to see that reliever ever again you know like they're they are going through their own set of rituals that are you know good to neutral and you are just sitting there going i can't believe i can't believe it especially if it's something that happens a lot because your offense isn't effective and they're not particularly good

at sequencing you're gonna go i can't believe this happened again. These Rockies. So I feel like that is a very particular emotional state that the thing is trying to capture. And if you're like, I can't believe we only scored two runs. It's like, well, you know, there are a lot of games where that's the only run scoring that happens. So count your blessings, maybe. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. You got to get skunked. It's not the same if you got anything out of that inning, then you won't walk away feeling as frustrated. Have you ever been skunked, Ben? Have you ever been like literally? Yeah, sprayed by skunk.

No, I've certainly passed by their vicinity and been aware of their presence. But no. Good. Have you? That's nice. No, I haven't. The skunk is the 17th anniversary, I believe. Wait, so Ben, before we do another email, I can't stop thinking about how we got the

intro number wrong. So does that mean that I did the intro two episodes in a row? I don't know. Because if that's the case, then I'd like to revise up my... Your responsibility, your share. Yes. case then i'd like to revise up my um your responsibility yeah yes i think that it i think that it's closer to 50 50 because you know the idea that i would remember what episode we're on uh you know who could say and uh particularly this time of year where i am like very often sitting around going friday today is friday right so like you know but we do alternate intros and um i you know

that should have made my spidey sense tingle assuming that i doubled up and if so i i'm sorry for you i just listened did i you double dipped all right so it's 50 50 it's definitely 50 50 you know you know i don't want i don't want you to carry more blame than you're actually responsible for. That's not fair. It's very gracious of you. Okay. Thank you. I'm sure something.

Nathan says, if we say most playoff games are close to a coin flip and there's a lot of randomness, here's a very bad idea disguised as a thought experiment. What if in each league, the lowest seeded wildcard were eliminated and replaced by a randomly selected non-playoff team chosen after the last game of the season is played? How frequently would one of these playoff lottery teams win the World Series? What other implications would there be during the regular season if everybody on the bubble and outside of the bubble knew there was a remote chance that they would have a whack at the playoffs? So Nathan has has chosen violence here, as they say, I guess. Right. Because everyone is is up in arms about an 84 win team that's been outscored on the season, a wildcard team winning the World Series or winning a pennant at the very minimum. And Nathan is saying, what if we kick them out and put an even less deserving team

in there? How would everyone feel about that? Probably bad, I would imagine. Nathan has, speaking of those Diamondbacks, himself embraced chaos. I think it would, Diamondbacks himself embraced chaos. I think it would, how often they would win, sort of my instincts around that would depend a great deal on sort of what the parameters for their selection was, right? So like if it could be anyone, if it could be anyone, if it could be literally the Rockies or literally the Oakland A's, then, you know, again, it's not that those teams can't beat good teams in a five or seven game series. That can happen. That happens during the year. But like my my base expectation of it would be different than, say, you know, if we're limiting it to teams that were, say, within two or three wins of the last wild card in each league, right?

That kind of changes my expectation of what they might be able to muster in a given series. And again, that doesn't mean that they couldn't advance. We were sideswiped by these Diamondbacks, in part because they run so fast you know but it's not as if like the a's somehow snuck in and then they are in the world series that would be even within a field that has a great deal of sort of noise variance chaos uh would be quite surprising i think so that's i think a lot comes down to like how who gets to be in the you know the spinning wheel where you pull the ball out and it's like oh my god the colorado rockies i would i would not support this as a mechanism because we are already

suspicious of the third wild card and what the potential for being an 84-win team that makes it into the postseason does to sort of the want of teams that are sort of occupying that middle tier. And if you could just get bounced entirely, well then, you know, maybe it's just like returning to the prior playoff format, but worse, you know? But worse. Yeah. No maybe it's just like returning to the prior playoff format, but worse, you know?

But worse. Yeah. No, it's definitely worse. Oh, yeah, worse. I'm sure of that much. Yeah, confident. I'm thinking of everything in terms of what I've been watching and playing this week. I've been playing and I podcasted about Super Mario Brothers Wonder. And the gimmick of that game is that there's this wonder flower, which is basically like some psychedelic of some sort.

And Mario just starts tripping balls or whoever you're playing when you find the wonder flower in the level. And it just changes everything. And it's just this wild card, basically, that's thrown into the mix. Except in this scenario, we're talking about throwing the wild card out of the mix.

But it's kind of whimsical and wacky. And it's like, whoa, the level just looks completely different now. So in a way, throwing the A's in there would be like adding the wonder flower to the MLB playoffs. And it's just like, whoa, this is wacky. This is way out there. Suddenly the worst team is in the playoffs. This is very different because it would be more deflating in a way.

Yes. What if you had a hard-fought battle for the wild card? Yeah. Would you even? Because you wouldn't want to win it. Right. Winning it is your ticket out of the playoffs paradoxically here. So you'd be fighting not to, I mean, that's going to be the big problem

because you're going to have tanking of a NBA kind, right? Of like, not just being a bad team, but like actively trying to lose games

potentially, right? And that'll screw with everything. I think it would be catastrophic. Yeah, because I was thinking,

what if you had a battle down to the wire and then one team wins and then the other team that lost gets to hop into that place and renders the entire battle meaningless? But then they would know that that race was going to be meaningless and they wouldn't want to win the race. And then every team would be trying to be bad. And that would be very bad. That would be bad. Very bad. All the teams being bad would be bad.

Yes. So I think this is a truly terrible idea, Nathan. Yeah, I think it would be catastrophic to the sport. So that's something. Yeah. Now, what if it weren't the lowest-seeded team? What if it weren't the wild card? What if it were a randomly selected playoff team?

So you'd still have to fight to make it in, but you would know. It'd be like a Hunger Games scenario. You know your number comes up. One of those teams in the field, the odds are ever in your favor still that it's not going to be you. Right. But but it will be one of those teams. And so that would not cause you to be bad on purpose because you're still likely not to be the team that gets sniped out of the playoffs here. here, but one team does. So all the teams would still be fighting for their playoff berth, but then once you got it, one of those teams would have it snatched away for an entirely undeserving team. What is the benefit of this? That's the question. Yeah. So I was going to say a couple of things. The first of which is it might not inspire you to be actively bad, but it also, I don't quite understand the purpose of this. We already have a Hunger Games-like tournament.

It's the postseason. Yeah. If the point of this is to prove that baseball is random and anyone can win, I think so stipulated. Right. I think we've all accepted that. So that would be an even starker illustration of it. And yeah, it would be tough for, like, the A's are not going to win it. I mean, it's not impossible, of course.

They won seven in a row, right? But they could win 11 in a row, I guess. Or not even in a row. It doesn't have to be in a row. But they'd all be against good teams. It is pretty vanishingly unlikely that they would do that. So, yeah, I don't know. It would be the ultimate just F you to predictive power of anything, I guess, if this team got to jump the line and win.

I wonder whether would people root for this team? Do you think like the fans of, of non-playoff teams would be like, oh, they're our champion. They're the, they're the, the last hope for the loser's bracket,

basically. And they would bend behind. No. Okay. No, I think that, that baseball fans would find this like fundamentally offensive. Yeah.

Because it's, if I've learned nothing over the last, if I've learned anything, I don't know what I'm trying to do. I feel very awake right now. So I don't know what's going on with me, Ben. I know you've learned English. You're quite proficient at it. I mean, some days more than others, Ben. I know you've learned English. You're quite proficient at it. I mean, some days more than others, apparently. If I've learned anything over the last couple of weeks in terms of how people have reacted to the D-backs of it all and even the Rangers of it all, it's that we don't like that the postseason reflects something different than the regular season did. On average, fans want this to be the best versus the best. That is the default assumption that something is fundamentally wrong. We have to

change the format, right? And the reason we have to do that is because the teams that are in it are not the best clubs. And so I think that if this happened, there would be riots like it would be destabilizing to the sport. I think that people would demand that Manfred resign. I think that they would they would abandon baseball. They would say shake the very fabric, the foundation of the sport. Yeah. Yeah. They'd be like, look, the NBA is back. There's football and there's so much stuff on streaming and i'd rather watch any of that than watch this pretender team try to advance through the postseason so you know i got that's what i

that's what i think um man i would be we would we would talk about it so much we would we would wear ourselves out talking about how offensive it is we would wear ourselves out talking about how offensive it is. We would be, I'm worked up and it's not even a real thing. Yeah. Okay. Question from Ross who says, I have a wacky hypothetical for you. We'll get in line. Ross teams are allowed to strategically place up to three full size

trampolines anywhere on their home field at the beginning of the season. The trampolines are field level and camouflaged, so only the home players know where they are at the start of the season. Oh no. Where are the most strategic locations to place the trampolines? Would any teams opt out of trampolines? My apologies if this has been posed before. Got to allow the possibility, I suppose, that it had been. Look, I love our podcast, man, because people are like, this seems like the kind of, excuse my swear, weird shit they would have contemplated before now. Oh, yeah. They've definitely done this one. Yeah.

This is so unoriginal of me. I did some searching on the wiki, Ross says, and see that trampolines were a hot button issue in the Jeff Sullivan era. That is true. Yeah.

Hopefully this is a new spin on a controversial topic. Yeah, I think it is because this never would have been admitted to a Jeff episode. He would have struck this down immediately. He would have said, no way, no how, no trampolines anywhere, because his position was and is, I believe,

that they are death traps, essentially. So I'm sure that Jeff would say that all teams should opt out immediately, because he has had personal experience of being injured at trampoline parks and seeing people injured at trampoline parks. And I'm sure that he would not want a ballpark to turn into a trampoline park. So is there a strategic location that would outweigh the injury risk that would help you enough that it would be worthwhile? One thing I'm struggling with is, so it's camouflaged so only the home players know where they are at the start of the season. Right, but does it move? Yeah, does it move?

Right. Like, can you put it in a different place each game? Right. Because once you trample off there, is there a verb to use a trampoline? Once, I guess it's trampoline. But once you do that, then everyone will know where it is, right? So I don't know what the strategic advantage there is. But I guess you would probably just want to put it on the warning track or something, right? So that you could more easily rob home runs or just jump higher and catch balls before they become home runs.

Like, is there, what else? You know, I guess, I mean, if you put one on a baseline or something so that you could trampoline over someone who is trying to tag you. But that definitely sounds like you would die. Oh, yeah. someone who is trying to tag you but that definitely sounds like you would dive oh yeah so they would there would be limbs and broken appendages would be sacrificed for the safe sign there so what like I mean the mounds yeah right or that isn't there's a isn't there a like a Japanese clip of a pitcher on a trampoline throwing a Barry Bonds is one of those things that's always going around but

I mean yeah if you could if you could throw off a trampoline it probably wouldn't really help you I was thinking the mound being higher helps you right but if you're trampolining higher you're not going to be able you can't push off

right you're not going to be able to, you can't push off, right? You're not going to be able to generate enough force, I don't think. If you can go high enough on the trampoline that you're just like throwing at an extreme angle, maybe. So depends on the capabilities of the trampoline, perhaps. Yeah. And like, would you put it near, would you like put it in the base path on the way to home plate in the hopes that somebody like. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So you could just vault over or. Yeah.

Or yeah, someone just be catapulted out of the baseline entirely or, but, but they would know it's there unless you can move it around. Right. Yeah. Yeah. move it around. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And like, the thing is you would know if you put it somewhere like that, in theory, they might find out not just after the first game, but like in the first game, they'd be like, did you guys see that? Was that weird? Is the ground weird there?

Is it weird? Yeah. Oh man. I think you would end up with some weird twisty ankles and all kinds of stuff, but yeah, I don't know. Don't do this.

Terrible idea. Bad idea. No, I don't think you would want to do this unless you can place them in the paths of your opponents. But that seems unsporting. Yeah. Unsportsmanlike. Incredibly. So, yeah, you would probably just want to put it where you could get more air to stop a ball from being a home run, right?

That seems like an obvious solution, but... So you're viewing it as, I love how you're viewing it as like an opportunity to gain an advantage. And I'm worried about people putting it in a place where they could like flummox an opposing base runner. Yeah, you're thinking of it as sabotage, basically. Yeah, I am. Maybe this portrays something about our respective personalities. Worried about that. Yeah.

You're thinking of this as the pit, basically. Like, where would you put the pit? Right. This is the opposite of a pit in that it propels you upward instead of being something that you fall into. But I guess it would be potentially equally disruptive and injurious to your person. So yeah, where else is it good to jump and jump vertically specifically? I guess it doesn't have to be a vertical jump. You could kind of launch yourself. And teams have

trampolines like at their facilities. You sometimes see them doing drills and stuff have trampolines like at their facilities you sometimes see them doing drills and stuff with trampolines but i don't know is that like would having a trampoline at the plate be of any use to you if you were batting if you were catching i can't imagine i don't know probably not probably not that's what i keep coming back to. Probably not. I mean, what if there were, it's just like the odds of it going to any particular place in the park are so small, right? But maybe you would benefit from being able to have a trampoline somewhere in foul territory and like spring up to get a ball. Like as a, you know, if you're the fielding team and it's a problem and you're like, oh, I can spring and grab it. Maybe, maybe like it could help you like propel into the net

in a way that would be useful. And you're like spider manning it over there instead of in the outfield. Yeah, maybe. Maybe, but in the outfield, you have the potential to like snare a run as opposed to just getting an out which is like you know if you're picking between spots you want the spot where you can get the run i guess make the whole warning track a giant trampoline you know there's nothing about the size of the trampoline ben like don't say don't limit yourself you know the whole field could be a trampoline make the whole field out of trampoline.

Build the whole plane out of the trampoline. Everybody would just end up, like, in the middle. You know, like when you're on a trampoline and everybody just ends up kind of congregating in the center. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it would even be, you might just trampoline right into a wall if it were the warning track or over the wall. Yeah, this seems dangerous.

Okay, Ryan, Patreon supporter, says, I'm sure you two saw Jose Abreu tagged out Marcus Simeon in game four of the LCS by touching Simeon's batting glove that was hanging out from his back pocket. I didn't know the batting glove there counted as a part of the body. This makes me wonder what if a first baseman discreetly places some lightweighted but long stuff like a tail from stuffed animals in the runner's back pocket so that the fielders have a more extended area to tag out the runner. How long would it take for the runner and base coaches to realize what's going on in this situation? I'm pretty sure this is against the rule and morally wrong, but is there a section in the rule book to prevent this? More seriously, why do some players put

their batting gloves in their back pocket? Isn't it disadvantageous as in this case? Well, yeah, certainly in this case it was. So yeah, you can't play pin the tail on the runner and then just tag them there, right? Because the rule, I believe, and you know the rules better than I do, but I found a CBS Sports explainer that has the relevant rules that I will link to. A note that says touch to touch a player or umpire is to touch any part of his body. This sounds very tender, very sensual. Or any uniform or equipment worn by him, but not any jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, etc. worn by the player. And then it says touch comment. Equipment shall be considered worn by a player or umpire if it is in contact with its intended place on his person. So that's, I think, a key phrase there, intended place. So it has to be the player's intent, not your intent to place something on the player.

You stuck a sign on their back to make fun of them. a sign on their back to to make fun of them so if they intended to place it there as marcus simeon did with his batting gloves and it's in contact with that place then it counts against you right and there is a a parenthetical specifying that the laces on the glove don't count we've answered that one right because they they clarified that in 2016 because there were some replay overturns that just touched the laces and i didn't even know about the jewelry i don't think but yeah yeah jewelry doesn't count but a batting glove is not jewelry it's it's not your uniform it's equipment but when it's in your pocket, it counts, right? So, yeah, I guess there's also – oh, okay. So, MLB actually has a clarification on this in the umpire manual rule, interpretation for touch.

Interpretation for touch is like a good band name. Oh, yeah. It actually is. Yeah. This is like when I was talking about how, you know, physically we can't ever touch anything. You never actually come into contact with anything because of the subatomic forces that are involved. But that's not what the umpire's manual is clarifying here, I don't think. The umpire's manual is saying, regarding the definition of a touch, equipment intentionally placed somewhere by a player should be considered worn in its intended place.

definition of a touch equipment intentionally placed somewhere by a player should be considered worn in its intended place and then it actually says example batting gloves placed in a player's back pocket are in the intended place on his person which suggests to me that maybe this has happened before so they just got ahead of it and clarified that yeah i think semien said that this had never happened to him before, which makes sense. Yes. Or he probably would have stopped doing this. And then he did it again. He put him right back there?

Yeah, he put him right, not maybe in that game, but like there was a shot of him in one of the subsequent games. He reached first. I can't remember how he reached, but he reached for space and he tucked him in there. And for a while, one of his pockets was inside out and hanging out. So he seems unconcerned. And I am surprised by that, just given how, in general, I don't know how this applies to him in particular, but in general, they're such a superstitious bunch that you'd probably be like, well, I can't do that again. I mean, he's been playing baseball for a long time. He's 33 years old and this has never happened to him. And so he probably just feels like lightning won't strike twice on the same batting glove. But why take the chance, I guess, right? Because what is the advantage of putting it in your back pocket

instead of just handing it to the first base coach or someone? Like why? It slows you down infinitesimally and it provides a bigger target for you to be tagged on. It's very, very rarely going to make any difference. I didn't really remember any other specific time that this happened, though I'm sure it has, but it's so rare that it doesn't really matter. But also, why do it, I guess? Especially if you got burned by it once, I'd probably be like, okay, I learned my lesson. Yeah, I think I would be reticent to repeat. All right. Well, maybe he's just, he likes living on the edge. Maybe he's just daring the universe to make this happen to him again. All right. Question from Jameson.

If Aaron Judge or Otani or Mookie or one of MLB's other top sluggers decided that their only goal for the 2024 season was to break Barry Bonds' single season home run record team success, and a well-rounded approach to hitting be damned. Could they do it? Jameson says, I figure the biggest barrier to it is health, but Otani has the perfect opportunity next season to solely DH, and if Judge told the Yankees that he would play only if he could DH, that would be solvable. Maybe the fact that they're pressing, selling out to hit dingers, would pose an issue, as it seemed to when Judge got close to Maris.

But early in the season, no one would care or notice. And late in the season, people would see their pace and maybe start to believe it was possible. What if Otani's devotion was so extreme that he signed a one-year deal with the Rockies to reap the benefits, of course? Oh, now I want that to happen. I mean, I don't because I want Otani in the postseason and I'm realistic, but it would be fun. It would be fun to have him just hitting it mile high for an entire season. I mean, I feel like the odds are, I don't know, low,

like quite low. Seems like they're very low. I imagine that, you know, they're not probably putting it in exactly these terms, but a lot of guys are trying to hit home runs now. And, you know, how many of them have done it the way Bonds has? You know, none of them. The answer is none, zero. And, you know, Judge is probably an instructive case here because he was very successful as a home run hitter in the year that he, you know, broke the AL side of things and was pretty healthy, right? Like my memory of his, geez, that was so recently and I can't. He had, you know, he had 696 plate appearances in 2022.

And I imagine that they were like, we're really going to get you a bunch of plate appearances, buddy, because you're hitting some dingers. But he was super healthy, a very good power hitter, just an excellent hitter overall in that season. We still aren't quite, in my opinion, I get that the home runs are the the headline but he had a 209 wrc plus ben he had a 209 wrc plus in that year yeah that should be the headline of that season i know why it's not but it should be because like

whoa that's crazy anyway and he couldn't do it you know and by like a lot he couldn't do it, you know, and by like a lot, he couldn't do by a lot. You know, he wasn't only trying to hit home runs, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is that how much daylight do you think there is in terms of the differences in approach between like, I'm just trying to be the very best hitter I possibly can be, and I'm trying to break this home run record. I don't know that those are completely distinct approaches at the plate, I guess is the point that I'm trying to make. Yeah, right. If you go up there and you say, I'm the kid who only hit homers and that's all I want to do, then players always say that they usually are not trying to hit a home run and that maybe it's even counterproductive if they do try to. I don't know if they're always being entirely truthful about that. They're certainly sometimes when it seems like they're jumping out of their shoes. But, you know, that saw a fat pitch. They didn't necessarily go up there saying that's what I'm going to do.

And, yeah, they're always, you know, as the cliche says, looking for a good pitch to hit. Trying to put a good swing on it, you know as the cliche says looking for a good pitch to hit trying to put a good swing on it you know so so i guess that depending on the situation you might moderate your power swing because there is a balance sure between power and contact of course so i think there's some guys where it might not make that much of a difference. And there are other guys who probably do really have kind of a hybrid swing or contact oriented swing. And they're trying to find some happy medium. And so if you said, no, no happy medium, just the extreme, just sell out. But the thing is that pitchers would immediately know that you were doing that or not immediately, but pretty quick, quite quickly.

Right. And then they would be able to exploit that. I assume that, I don't know if your plate discipline is eroding here, but in theory, you're just, you're coming out of your shoes every time, right? You're just swinging as hard as you can, I guess is the theory of what you would be doing here. And if you're doing that, then you're necessarily going to sacrifice some bat control and you might have to start your swing sooner and you're probably going to end up chasing more often. So yeah, I don't know that you would hit any more homers. You might hit fewer than you would otherwise but i don't know for sure i'm sure there are times when a player is like reminding themselves hey don't get over eager here don't swing for the fences although these days most players they swing for the fences quite often

they swing pretty hard, yeah, I don't think you could do it. I don't think you could do it. I don't think you could just set your mind to it. Because the idea is that like, because you'd be bad, right? Like you'd only ever hit a home run or pop up or strike out. Right. Or maybe you'd hit one off the end of the bat by accident and get a squibber at some point. But this would be the definition of all or nothing. So you'd probably not be very good unless your team was on board with this quest of yours.

Which maybe the Rockies would be. Maybe. Maybe. So if they were okay with it for promotional purposes, then they'd keep running you out there. But otherwise, I think it would be seen as a somewhat selfish thing to do because it would be. And you would be benched. So you'd have to make it look good. You'd have to make it look like you were just going through a slump that was within

the realm of actual possibility. So yeah, I don't think you can just set your mind to it and say, I will hit that many home runs. I think you might end up hitting fewer potentially. Yeah, I think that if you could do it, if it were as simple as that, it would have happened already. You know, because like Judge was like 20 home runs off. More than that, right? I mean, Barry Bonds hit a lot of home runs that year. He had so many home runs. It was so many. Yeah. And Bonds did that without sacrificing anything. I mean, he had 73 and had a 515 on-page percentage. Oh, that's right. 73. Why did I have 83 in my brain? It was still a lot.

Yeah. What did my brain just do? Man, Ben, I don't know. Don't know about Megan this episode. I'm in the slipstream. Megan numbers. Yeah. So Bonds didn't have to sell out for power to do that. He was still an amazing all-around hitter.

But there was only one Barry Bonds, and you know why, right? So I guess, yeah, I think this would be easier said than done, and I don't know if anyone's thinking it's easy, but it's easily said. Well, there's more than one Barry Bonds, because there's the slipstream Barry Bonds. There's more than one Barry Bonds because there's the slipstream Barry Bonds. True. I'm sure there are probably plenty of people named Barry Bonds, but a few others would be incapable of hitting that many home runs. All right. Dan says, I hope that you're both doing well and are enjoying the stretch run.

Thank you. Yeah, we did enjoy the stretch run. You know, sometimes it takes us a while to get to these. Although I do not stretch before I run, just to clarify. I found your conversation regarding Anthony Rendon and his many quotes to be incredibly fascinating. This was going back a bit, right? Yeah. kind of trolling and also is sort of a pain. And he goes way out of his way to not give writers what they want at times. But also, I sort of sympathize with him and his attitudes about baseball and about how maybe it's not the most important thing in the world. And he kind of puts

it in perspective. And then that opens him up to being criticized when he is hurt and doesn't play and it seems like perhaps he is not doing his best, his utmost to get back on the field because he has said at other times that it's not the most important thing in the world to him, etc., etc., right? But I agreed with many of the things that he says, if not always the way that he says them or the timing or the way he puts that all into practice. And Dan says, I found myself thinking along the same lines as Ben, understanding what Rendon was saying about how he liked baseball, but it just wasn't the most important thing in the world to him. What I kept thinking to myself was that I do believe he

likes baseball, but that he doesn't like major league baseball. I found myself listening to his quotes and heard someone yearning for the times when he did enjoy baseball, maybe playing catch in the backyard or playing on his youth travel ball team. And he did say that he loves baseball and he likes playing baseball. But it seems that he likes the game itself, Dan says, but the parts that go along with being a major league player, the fame, answering questions, the feeling that everything he does on the field is the most important thing ever, etc., or that people are interpreting it that way, are what he really has a problem with. And that, I think, is consistent with most of his quotes. He's like, hey, I'm good at playing baseball, but that doesn't make me so special compared to everyone else in the world. So why do you want to know what I think and why do I have to do all this media stuff?

So Dan says, I understand why so many people believe he doesn't like baseball, but my feeling is that he just doesn't like all that comes with being in the major leagues. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the difference between liking baseball and liking major league baseball. difference between liking baseball and liking Major League Baseball? Well, we describe ourselves as a baseball podcast, not a Major League Baseball podcast. Obviously, we talk overwhelmingly the most about Major League Baseball, but we want to leave an opening to talk about any incarnation of baseball, any level of baseball, professional, amateur, international, wherever it is. We've certainly devoted lots of banter and lots of interviews and lots of episodes to other ways to baseball. And I think we're generally fine with any way that you love and come to the sport and find fulfillment in it. There's no wrong way to love baseball,

I think is something we said in The Only Rule Is It Has To Work. So yeah, I think I could imagine being gifted enough to be a big leaguer and not wanting everything that goes with it. Maybe wanting some of those things, but a lot of those things would be a pain. Maybe you just like playing baseball, but you don't want to would be a pain. Maybe you just like playing baseball, but you don't want to be a big public figure. Or maybe you don't want the pressure that comes with a massive salary. Or maybe you don't want to play in front of a huge crowd or whatever it is. Or maybe you don't want to travel constantly around the world and not be home with your family. I think there are probably a lot of cases like that.

And we've talked about some players who had the talent, but not the, I don't want to say drive, because I don't want to make it sound derogatory, but just they didn't have the baseball bug the way that some others did, or maybe they had other issues going on in their lives that interfered with their enjoyment of Major League Baseball. So I could absolutely see how you might get to that level. And, you know, there are plenty of perks that you might welcome and be happy to have, but there are probably also some things that go along with that, that you kind of do pine for when things were simpler and lower stakes? I think that being famous would be terrible. I could see, you know, maybe not to the point that it isn't tolerable to be a big leaguer

because it does have so much to recommend. So, you know, I don't know that there are very many people who would be like, I want Yes. The travel is constant and people are often happy with you, but often mad at you. They have sort of unprecedented access to relay that frustration. So that piece of it, I bet, feels not good all the time. probably does set it apart from other sports in terms of its palatability once you're a major leader is that like you do get to be fairly anonymous away from the ballpark um and i imagine that because of that some of the stuff that these guys deal with on like social media probably feels intrusive in a in a new way relative to you know like you're LeBron, like you can't go anywhere without people being like, that's LeBron James, you know, whereas, you know, with the exception of a couple of guys. Victor Wemba Nyama. Right. Yeah. You're always the object of attention. couple of guys i imagine that like most baseball players are able to pass through non-ballpark

spaces fairly anonymously um especially because a lot of them don't live in the cities they play in in the off season um which probably helps you know there have been times when baseball players have been anonymous in ballpark spaces like zach grinke just sitting in the stands at a game or something you know you put a cap and some sunglasses on, you might not get noticed. And so, like, I think that you probably could be at a remove from it. But, you know, I don't struggle to imagine it's whatever level of attention you're getting still being like taxing and terrible. So I could see you being like, I don't love that. So I could see you being like, I don't love that.

And like the embodiment of major league baseball from the league perspective is like an entity that is openly antagonistic to players at times. So, you know, you might have a relationship to the literal league that is like not the best. So, you know, I can see it. You're going to have the best job. You could have a job that you love so, so much. can see it you're gonna have the best job you could have a job that you love so so much but there's still going to be parts of it that like aren't the best because that's the human experience yeah you know and even when you're doing the stuff that you really love about it you can still feel tired or worn out or whatever so you know that isn't to say that you aren't still in general like stoked on it or that you might um that you don't feel like lucky that

that's the thing you get to do in exchange for, you know, us currency, but, um, you know, it's not always the best. So that's fine. Yeah. There are so many ways to like baseball and experience baseball without having that be through the lens of major League Baseball. I think for many people, most people who love baseball in the United States, at least, they're probably at least tangentially interested in Major League Baseball. But if you just like playing it, that doesn't obligate you to care about who's winning the league. There are a lot of things I do that I'm not familiar with the best people who do that or the highest level league, or I don't watch it or experience it competitively, which I didn't even really like to do when I was a kid. And I like playing baseball just casually, just, you

know, go out with my friends and throw the ball around and hit each other balls to field and just, you know, kind of have fun without even having it be an organized wave of playing. So there's that. Or you could get into the history or all the cultural aspects or the significance to American culture and every, you know, international place that has some baseball presence. So there are very many people who love baseball as much as anyone and don't pay that close attention to Major League Baseball. So there's an infinite number of ways to like baseball

without necessarily liking Major League Baseball. But yeah, I think most people, if they have the talent, would aspire to be in that league because the rewards are the greatest, certainly the monetary rewards. And also, if you are an extremely competitive person, and many of these professional athletes are, then you want to be the best or test yourself against the best. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. This one comes from Kyle, who says, add me to the list of listeners emailing while high, but I would not categorize this as a purely drug-fueled inquisition. I was reading about the KBO in David Lorela's Sunday Notes and recalled that the league, this is the Korean baseball organization, has been compared in terms of talent level to stateside AA baseball. My memory somehow fails me right now in specifics, but there have been decent mid-level contracts given to free agents from KBO, but nothing exorbitant.

My question is, if every player who finished the minor league baseball season in double-A automatically became a free agent, what do you think the salary scale would look like for those players? Upper tier prospects, mid-level prospects, comparable to KBO free agents, higher or lower? How much difference

does it make money-wise that these are players, teams, scouts have seen way more times and presumably are more confident in their valuations? How much would the top rated prospect in AA go for?

At least 100 million total, more or less so i guess kyle is asking if kbo if if the highest level league in korea is double a level and you would spend some exorbitant amount on a free agent AA prospect, right? If some great AA prospect were suddenly available to the highest bidder, then they could command an enormous amount of money. So why isn't that the case for Korea if the caliber of play is as high there, right, in general as in AA, let's say i have a couple of thoughts um i think one important consideration is probably average age uh so when players come over from the kbo i think that they are probably it depends on the the guy, right? But like a lot of them, because of the restrictions around age and signing and stuff, are going to be older than your average AA guy. And so you as a team might be like paying for years of less, in theory, might be paying for years of less prime production.

I think that some of it is probably like, do I think that this is true? I was going to say, like, how much of it do we think is about what you are seeing in terms of on the hitting side and maybe on the pitching side to both the velocity you're seeing in the velocity you're throwing, even at AA. Is that part of it? Yeah. Yeah. I think probably a big part of it is just the projectability. Right. Because you could have a top prospect in AA who is currently as productive as a player,

let's say an average player in KBO, if that's a double A level league, but you expect the double A guy that's a prospect, right? I mean, you could have an org guy in double A who's not going to command an enormous amount of money, but is a double A caliber player. So, it's all about what do you think they can be? What do they project to be? Physically, talent-wise, it's certainly possible that scouts and teams are still underrating players in Korea, and there have been many fine players to have come out of there. And we'll see what Jung-ho Lee goes for when he's posted. But yeah, I would guess you can have a high caliber of competition, but just not a lot of ceiling there.

And a scout is going to be paying for the ceiling because if your ceiling is double A, then they don't want you, right? But I do think that, and we've talked about this both in terms of i mean i think more specifically we've talked about in the context of players coming from npb but i do think that we need to and by we i mostly mean the public side and fans like we are probably at this point not quite properly calibrated in terms of the quality of play uh over there like you know we we throw around quad a for npb um and there's something to that i guess but i think the quality of that league is pretty high and we should probably adjust our prior up on it so yeah and

yeah there might be like a level of competition that is that caliber, but the skills might not translate or they might be perceived not to be as transferable. And yeah, it's been a theme on the podcast. Like, hey, look at how all the NPP stars are really good at Major League Baseball, too. Even if maybe they had to acclimate to the league. And KBO players too, of course, having fantastic seasons this year. So sometimes, yeah, it's a language barrier and a culture barrier and also just a different ball

and a different style of play and different speed and everything's different. And so not that Hasan Kim was bad when he first came over, but, you know, give him a little time to get used to it. And so he's a star. So, yeah. Yep. All right.

Last one. This comes from Steven, who says, a basketball podcast I listened to mention Roger Clemens at the end of his career signing midseason and only playing a half season. So would this be the optimal way to get Clayton Kershaw through his last season or two or however long he has? Should he want to come back if both he and the Dodgers are prioritizing postseason health and success? I figure this is a half-baked idea with consequences I'm not thinking about. So he's saying, I guess he's saying maybe we could, instead of having Clayton Kershaw be hurt and diminished in the second half of the year, we could just have him rest for the first part of the season and then he won't be so worn down by the time we get to

the end of the season maybe this would be a way to enable him to play at the high level that he's capable of without breaking down potentially because because yeah clemens did that at the very tail end where he had just a very limited list of teams that he would go to and they had to meet his price. And then if they did, he would warm up and he would be ready by a certain point in the season. And he had a special arrangement where he didn't have to be around the team all the time. And it was, I shouldn't say shot in the arm when it comes to Roger Clemens, probably. I don't know where he was taking shots. I don't know where he was taking shots, but it was a boost when Roger Clemens shows up in George's box. That was an exciting moment. So to get a reinforcement like that, the cavalry arrives mid-season and it's some legend like that. So if that were Clayton Kershaw, if he were willing to entertain that, is that something that might work for him, do you think?

Maybe. I mean, like, I think that there's a, you know, there's a difference between managing sort of general fatigue versus injury proclivity that is probably important to our understanding of how well this would work. Because like you could, like, let's say that you could sort of figure out the right program for him. So you know when to start building him up so that he is able to go in the postseason. He gets some amount of acclimation to seeing big league quality hitters. He could just wake up one day and his back is screwed up and we're done. And like, we're done, right? So like, there is a piece of it that is unpredictable, just because of the nature of some of the stuff that has gotten in Kershaw's way in the last couple of years. Like, it's not just generalized fatigue, right? Like, sometimes his shoulder is screwed up like right now, or his back is weird or whatever. It's not just innings, but you could probably design a program to manage the innings piece. I wonder what Kershaw's appetite for something like this would be, though, because like he doesn't strike me as the kind who's like, yeah, I'll sit out half the year. Yeah. Like, you know. Yeah. He's taken his time to see how his body feels and how he's feeling, but not that much

time. Yeah. he is quite competitive. Rich Hill was, at least for a while, saying that he was entertaining the notion of doing this in 2024, of just playing a half season, because it's less hard on his 40-year-old bones, right? So I could see it work, maybe. I could also see it potentially backfire. Like I was just writing something about Mick Jagger and how Mick Jagger sounds incredibly impressive still. And one reason is that he is kind of constantly gyrating and dancing and singing wherever he goes.

So like there is kind of a use it or lose it aspect to the voice, I think, at least at that age, or a lot of people say that and think that, that maybe there's some atrophying that will happen, you know, like you might think, oh, this is good. I could take some time off, but then you kind of lose it. And maybe your body's like, okay, I don't need to do this anymore. And so I don't need to maintain my instruments in that sense. And so I wonder whether that could happen with a player where they might say, oh, it'd be so restor too. Like he had to go through this, you know, like a whole spring training basically, like after the season had started and then rehab assignments and everything. And I could imagine the older you get,

maybe it's like an object that rests, remains at rest maybe. Right. So maybe it's harder and harder to shift yourself into gear again. If you fall out of the rhythm. Maybe you just you need that sense that like, oh, it's February. It's time for me to report.

Oh, it's March. It's time to start playing games. Oh, it's April. It's opening day. And if you fall out of that after having been in it for your entire adult life, I could see that just being so disruptive that it throws you off kilter and suddenly it's worse for you. Yeah, I mean, we saw some of that following the COVID year, right? Where it's like you're, or even into the season that we did get in 2020, where it's like these guys have been thrown completely off their axis. And some of them talked about that being pretty profoundly destabilizing. Yeah. And you got to build your arm back up again and all of that

and bring yourself back into the mindsets and the psychology of competing at that level. But maybe like he does kind of consistently break down at some point every year. And so it I see the appeal of like, well, if he's going to break down at some point, could we just backload that? I shouldn't say backload because maybe that's the problem, but just like delay that time shift, the injury a little bit. Maybe if he starts later, then that breakdown would happen later, but the season would be over by then. So maybe, maybe it would work that way. But he'd probably have to keep himself in shape and have the right routine and be working with the trainers and everything that whole time just to make sure that his baseline was high enough that he could ramp up again quickly enough. Yeah.

Well, I got my wish. I got an extra inning game, and it was a good one. Of course, it came during our Patreon live stream. But hey, only a couple extra innings, which might be a good thing, given those two teams' bullpens. Mercifully free of any runners on second base starting the inning. Just a beautiful sight and an exciting game. And a comeback walk-off Rangers win, 6-5. An excellent start to the series.

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