Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 208: Refunds for Losses/More Catching Questions/DHs and Defensive Positioning/Most Pitchers in an Inning

Episode Date: May 22, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about refunds for team losses, catcher receiving, defensive positioning, and more.

I'm sorry. I know our posters say think differently, but our real slogan is no refunds. Good morning and welcome to episode 208 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. Thanks. It's good to be here. Yes. I am Bedlenberg, joined by Sam Miller. Today is Wednesday, so it's the listener email show. I haven't really looked at the questions since they came in the first time, but Sam has, I believe, and has curated the best ones. And we had a ton this week.

Incidentally, this is not something we've discussed. No, not at all. Ben has just intuited that this is something I would do. Yes, I gathered from some emails that were sent earlier that you were reviewing them, at least. And there were a lot this week, maybe the most ever. Yeah, I think certainly the most ever. Well, thank you, people who emailed us.

Yeah, and it's with great sorrow that we won't answer all of them. I genuinely feel bad. Well, okay, so let's just start. All right, so Mark comes through with probably my favorite question ever. So everybody else should feel a little bit bad. Mark says, wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to pay for games that our team loses? It's hard enough to sit through a game in which our team is two hit and nobody reaches third, but to pay for it is just wrong. So here's my idea. Double the price of all tickets. Let people choose to buy either a home ticket or an away. If the corresponding team loses, the ball club

would refund or credit the entire price. No more post game. Our club was a little down today, but that's okay because you guys paid for it anyways. Attitude for the team. Now, I'm going to simplify this a little bit just for the sake of conversation. Well, maybe we'll get to it. Maybe we'll add it back in. But the part about choosing to buy either a home ticket or an away ticket, I would like to put aside. I am absolutely in love with this idea and I'm a little frustrated because I can't make it work. I don't think it's possible that this could work, which is too bad because it is brilliant. It does seem like you're a lot more likely to come back to the park if you leave satisfied, and if you see a thrilling victory, you'll be satisfied.

And if you don't have to pay for it, you'll probably also be kind of satisfied. And maybe it's gimmicky, but there's also a certain logic to it. I mean, in a sense, there's not logic to it. You pay for a product and if you're dissatisfied with the product, unless there's fraud involved, we generally think that it's buyer beware, right? You don't, if you buy something, well, I mean, yeah, basically you can't just, you can't eat a meal, finish the whole thing and then say it was gross and you want your money back.

You have to, there has to be something wrong with it. And unless the team is doing something fraudulent, that wouldn't usually qualify just by losing. But I think it would be enormously satisfying either way. So the problem is there's two problems, I think. One problem is a big one, which is that you would be incentivizing the fans to cheer against you. And I think they might. I actually think that a lot of fans would get there and be perfectly happy to see a loss if it meant their money back.

I mean, they might not actually cheer out loud. But I've had instances where there was some small personal gain in an unfavorable outcome for my team and you really do have to like discipline yourself to not get sucked into thinking well you know it's it's okay i'll just you know it's whatever happens happens or i mean you know you you should really want to go to the park or you should want your fans to go to the park with full-hearted support for you. And so creating any ambivalence whatsoever might be bad. And so then I thought, well, one idea to this might be rather than doubling the price of tickets, you could just raise them somewhat and then refund a certain level of blowout. a certain level of blowout.

But I think every fan, if their team was down six and the money cutoff was eight, I think in that case every fan would be rooting against them because you know you're going to lose anyway. And there's probably nothing more demoralizing than the giddy feeling. I mean, you've been in a park or a basketball arena where it's like 120 points gets you one taco the next day. And, I mean, fans are just dying for this one taco. And so you can just imagine the giddiness, the exuberance,

just the sheer delight that 50,000 people would be feeling while the home team is losing by 6 or 8 or 10 or whatever. So I don't think the blowout thing would work. And the other thing that is a problem is that it would obviously for obvious reasons, it would benefit good teams and it would be terrible for bad teams. If you're a good team, you'd get to keep a lot more money. And if you're a bad team, then you would have to refund a lot more money and that would make it hard to win.

Now, you might argue that that would incentivize teams to win. And if you think that lack of incentive is a significant problem for pro sports teams, then maybe you would consider that a feature and not a bug. But my guess is that it's not the big problem that losing teams face. And you would just make it a lot harder. So for those two primary reasons, I can't make it work. Ben, can you please make it work? It's also kind of a logistical

nightmare i guess i mean if you if you have 20 000 walk-ups or something uh and then you lose the game and i mean if you have thousands of people who paid cash you can't just refund their card that they use to buy the ticket so you'd have to have a giant line after the game or something of people lined up for refunds. And maybe people wouldn't even bother waiting if they had a cheap ticket. Yeah, it's true. I mean, probably in 10 years, nobody will use cash whatsoever. So as long as we're talking about a plan that you're rolling out in 10 years, that might not be an issue. Also, I mean, I don't know, it could be that you just enter the barcode

of the ticket. And, you know, you get it after the game, you can do this and have it just go straight into your PayPal account or something like that. You can have it debited to whatever account you want online as long as you have a valid barcode, maybe. Yeah, I don't know that I do. I like the idea. i do wish it worked it would be nice to give give the fans some extra stake in the victory or the loss and just yeah i mean that would be nice because i've been at a lot of games that were good games but it seemed like the crowd just kind of wasn't into it for whatever reason and And it sort of saps your enjoyment of it a little bit, I think, even if the game itself is good.

So, yeah, it would be nice if this worked. Yeah, so, okay. So anybody who can figure out a way to make this work, please let us know. And I guarantee you move to the top of the email questions list. Okay. So next we're going to do the catcher framing segment of the show, as we always do. There's actually three that I'd like to get to. And we had even more than that.

So the first one is very quick. What is the origin of the term catcher framing? Is it because the catcher's body forms a frame around the ball like a portrait or because the catcher is framing the batter to look like he just passed on a strike framing, as in who framed Roger Rabbit? I looked in the Dixon Baseball Dictionary. They don't actually give the origin, although the first reference they have to it is the mid-'90s, which is interestingly late to me.

And usually the Dixon Base dictionary lists the first when they give a and you know as seen in they usually give the first that he could find I believe so that's pretty late do you think well I guess it's possible I would have guessed that I knew the term before then but maybe I didn't it's actually it links as well to or refers as well to two other terms for it one of which is uh pulling the ball and for obvious reasons and uh well yes it's not how we normally think of framing anymore but um we think of framing more as being quiet but this was more moving the ball into the strike zone and uh that one actually was used in 1982 or so um And I think the third one is,

I forget what the third term was, but I always took it as like a portrait. It never even occurred to me that it would be like framing as a crime, although it makes some sense, especially when you think about it as coming originally from pulling the ball in which the emphasis is on deception

and not kind of craftsmanship, if that makes sense. Yeah, it never really occurred to me that it was anything other than just kind of framing, yeah, just making it look good, putting it in a nice frame in an attractive package for the umpire, basically. Yeah, so that's our guess. Although if we get confirmation, we'll pass it along. Adam talked about our conversation in which we talked about how catching would change

or whether there would be any sort of catcher skill to framing if there were robot umps. And Adam points out, and i don't have a really response to this but it's an interesting idea if an automated strike zone was implemented you would see massive changes in the ways guys play the position instead of squatting uh with your butt above your ankles to avoid blocking the umps would you see more catchers standing close to a 90 degree angle with runners on to get in a better position to throw out base stealers could you see catchers turn sideways and that's interesting it is interesting it's interesting i doubt you would see any sort of change overnight because i would think that the whatever generation of catchers is around if and when this happens uh will be accustomed to catching a certain way and

and won't just uh immediately be able to change the way that they're accustomed to catching a certain way and, and won't just, uh, immediately be able to change the way that they're accustomed to catching. But I think, uh, I mean, over time, maybe that wouldn't be a factor and your next generation of catchers could, could come up with some innovative way to catch. But I think, I mean, there's, there's a benefit to to presenting a target still to the pitcher that is uh I don't know I mean I think yeah I think you'd see I think you'd see catchers on their knees mostly you'd you'd say because I mean that would be actually quite a big change to the game because catchers would not have nearly the physical toll of squatting 180 times a game if they could just be you know just resting on their knees like you always wanted to do in little league and your coach would yell at you i guess except when there

are runners and when they're on base um yeah yeah so i guess so i i mean i i doubt you would see guys set up completely sideways you you'd still because i think certain pitchers uh like to throw to guys who kind of have wide shoulders and a big target to aim for, and they try to aim for the center of their body. So I don't know. Maybe they could adjust to some completely different way, but I doubt it would change quickly. I wonder what the lowest level of baseball that will...

If robot umps ever came in to play to call balls and strikes i mean i'm not saying it's going to happen necessarily ever or within the next 75 years but if they do i wonder how low in the game they'd go if it would just be the big leagues or if colleges would eventually have them or what all right i guess i don't know teams would probably want to extend it as far as possible to just acclimate their catchers to the situation that they're going to face in the majors. Yeah. I mean, it seems daunting technologically right now, but presumably I guess nothing is daunting technologically in the future. All right.

And then Matthew asks about whether we're focusing too much on catcher framing, although he has the disclaimer that he is not a catcher framing hater. But he basically offers the idea of base rate fallacy, which, quote, happens when the values of sensitivity and specificity, which depend only on the test itself, are used in place of positive predictive value and negative predictive value, which depend on both the test and the baseline prevalence of the event. I don't really know what that means, to be honest.

I tried, but not great at it. But fortunately, Matthew helps by, he says, in this case, the questions we need to be able to answer in order not to have been suckered into this fallacy are, how often would a given pitch, though we know it to be outside the strike zone, be called a strike anyway by an average jump with an average catcher behind the plate? How many missed calls either way are really left once we take out the standard variance in umpire performance? We have so much data these days it's sometimes difficult to sort signal from noise. Is it possible the alluring specificity and nuance of catcher framing is distracting us from the fact that most stolen or lost strikes

are the result of umpires, random chance, or twitches that don't actually reflect a catcher's baseline receiving skills. So I guess what I think what he's saying is that every catcher framing evaluation depends on a counterfactual and that it's possible that what we're measuring is not framing at all, that we're excited by the fact that we have these specific statistics, but that they might not actually be telling us what we think they are. What do you think are the chances that catcher framing statistics are actually just noise? Very, very low. I mean, pretty much insignificant. I mean, it, it certainly

seems, I mean, one of the most convincing thing about these framing statistics over the last couple of years is their, their consistency and their stability and their reliability just from year to year and the high correlation, um, between, uh, you know, a catcher's framing performance in one season and his framing performance the next. And I think if it were just noise or largely noise, you wouldn't see the same catchers showing up on the top of the leaderboard or the bottom of the leaderboard year after year. That's kind of what gives me confidence that it's real,

just as it gives me confidence that Miguel Cabrera is actually a good hitter because he is every year. But Colin Wires has made the exact opposite point regarding defensive stats, where he says that if there's a correlation from year to year for a player's defensive stats, it might be that the defensive stats are great. It might also be that there's a persistent bias that actually strengthens the more that you measure something and that it might actually not be a positive thing at all. So if a catcher does well four years in a row in catcher framing, it might be because he's really good at catcher framing

or it might be because the bad measurement that we have picks up something intrinsic in him that is not actually real. Now, I'm not suggesting that's true, but I'm suggesting that that's a thing that Colin might say. Yeah, it's conceivable. I mean, I guess it's hard to think of what that bias would be. I mean, when Colin has… Well, the pitcher, right? It would be the pitcher, right? Yeah, I guess, which is, I mean... And there is, I mean, it is more difficult to tell

if a guy has been throwing to the same pitchers over and over and he's only played for one team. But for most people, I mean, they move around enough and pitchers change enough that all of these variables are constantly changing. And the umpire is changing all the time and the pitcher and the batter are changing pretty often. And there's no real measurement bias as far as, I mean, Colin has looked into, you know, other fielding stats are charted by people who are watching the game on TV. And it's hard to do that.

There's often there's no real frame of reference. So a guy who has good range might show up as having even better range because you can't really compare it to anything. And maybe you can't even see where the base is and you can't see how far he went before the play to get to that point. And there's just a lot of sort of assumptions that you have to make because of the way that data is collected. And I don't know whether that would apply to, to catcher framing, which isn't really, I mean,

it's measured the same way for every catcher, regardless of how good he is or what team he's on pretty much. So that would seem to minimize the possibility of there being a persistent bias like you can see with, say, batted ball stats or defensive stats, I would think. I mean, it's possible that we're missing something, certainly. I've been pretty convinced. And I mean, I think when Matt says, are we focusing on it too much? I think, yeah, probably relative to its importance. I mean, I've been writing about it all the time.

And the amount to which I am writing about it nowadays is not really proportional to its importance, I don't think. I mean, if I wanted to just write about the most important thing, I would probably, I don't know, I'd just write about who's a good hitter or something. something. I don't know that the amount which I've been writing about framing is reflective of its actual importance relative to other aspects of the game. I think it is important, but I've been dwelling on it a lot just because I feel like it's an area that is new and interesting and in which we can still sort of discover some things and learn some things. And there are questions that haven't been asked. And there aren't really that many areas of the game that it's as easy to look into and that haven't been looked into over and over and over again. And, you know, we can't write about hitting statistics as much because it seems like we have a pretty good handle on that and we've had a pretty good handle on that so i'm probably writing about framing too

much and neglecting say uh you know game calling or something but i don't know how to measure game calling so if there comes a point when we are able to measure that then i will probably write about that a lot i'll write about whatever, wherever I guess that I think I can add the most value or convey the most new and interesting information, I guess. And it seems like, I mean, whenever I write about it or we talk about it on the podcast, we get a ton of questions about it and lots of people reading it. So in that sense, the audience has kind of voted in favor of us continuing to write and talk about it. There does seem to be interest out there, not just me. Well, yeah, nobody was attacking you then.

Did that sound defensive? I don't know because I worry about writing about it too much. I don't want to kill it by writing about it all the time, but it just seems like an interesting thing that we can actually say some meaningful stuff about. And I don't know, it's hard to come up with topics where you can have the same sort of insight, I feel. So as long as I still have something to say,

I'll keep saying it. All right. Uh, Lane asks, this'll be a very quick one. We've all heard of a team batting around and having every hitter in the lineup bat in the same inning. Has a team ever pitched around and had every member of its bullpen pitch in the same inning if not what's the closest a team has ever come um and so the quick answer is that the record is according to the internet uh is six pitchers in one inning by the oakland a's three full years before tony larusa took over by the way um and uh that's a Tony La Russa joke and it was in 1983 in September they gave up 10 runs in an inning the most it was the ninth inning and they blew the lead which is seems to be important to setting this kind of record as you it has to be a close enough game that you're going to want to do all the complicated and clever relieving at some point before it gets out of hand.

And the most interesting thing about this inning, as far as I can tell, is that both Dave Beard and Ed Farmer pitched in it. And Dave Beard and Ed Farmer seem like two fake names that you would give to the same person. And you know exactly what the person looks like with those two names. So like I could imagine that you're sitting around a restaurant with your friend and you know exactly what the person looks like with those two names. So I could imagine that you're sitting around a restaurant with your friend, and you're like, wow, look at that guy over there. Yeah, look at Dave Beard over there. And the other guy goes, yeah, check out Ed Farmer. So they both pitched in the same inning.

But that was September, which means September call-ups. And my guess is I actually didn't read the question close enough. I was thinking every pitcher, so every reliever plus the starter all in the same inning. And the starter actually did not appear in that inning. He'd been pulled before that inning. So it was six relievers, all relievers in that inning. But my guess is that that is not their whole bullpen that they had. I was going to say, I mean, bullpens were considerably smaller then.

They were five. Yeah, you'd have a five-man bullpen. And so, yeah, I don't know for a fact that they had other guys on the roster. I could have looked it up. But my hunch, my very deep suspicion is that this was specifically a September thing going on and that if this had happened four days earlier, they probably would have used maybe four, which you do see more commonly. All right. So let's see. I want to get to this one because I haven't noticed it, but why does Ben use so few contractions when speaking?

I hadn't noticed that either. I just used one in that sentence. In that sentence you did, yeah. I think we both do. And I certainly use a lot fewer than I do in real life. And I think my guess is that it's a forced formality to try to keep from saying something dumb it's a it's a way of slowing ourselves down without saying like and yeah and you know it's it's just basically a tick that i think we use to stall because we're both slightly uncomfortable speaking in this format i think if you and i were speaking on the phone it wouldn't be nearly so stiff and rigid probably i was yeah i was watching uh an episode of star trek the other day where where data does not use contractions i just didn't use one and then i did

uh but his his evil twin robot does use contractions and that's that's one of the ways that they're able to tell them apart. Wow. That must have been hard for the actor. But Anthony also asked another question, which is another quick one. Has a team ever DH'd for a player other than the pitcher? I don't mean pitch hit, but pinch hit, but let the pitcher hit and regularly bat for a position player on a team with Brennan Ryan and say the 2013 version of Wes Farrell.

It seems like it would at least be an option. You know, in my head, in my brain, in my memory, this happened when I was a kid. But it didn't because it's not legal. And I guess what I'm probably thinking, I'm probably conflating this with some combination of the time Rick Roden batted sixth for the Yankees or something along those lines, and like my own brain thinking this would be a great idea and that they should do it. But in fact, it's totally illegal, 100% illegal.

The rule specifically, well, the rule names the pitcher. Once the game pitcher is switched from the mound to a defensive position, this move shall terminate the DH for the remainder of the game. So, sorry, I read that out of order. I was supposed to read the other one. A hitter may be designated to bat for the remainder of the game so uh sorry i i read that out of order i was supposed to read the other one a hitter may be designated to bat for the starting pitcher and all subsequent pitchers in any game without otherwise affecting the status of the pitchers in the game uh and then it specifically um ties the the spot to the pitcher um well so here's what i'm thinking like i actually

don't like this rule i i like the idea that positions are just a social construct and that, in fact, it's just nine guys on a field and a shortstop is just a guy who's standing near shortstop. He could move over to second base and he could be standing over there. It wouldn't change his being or anything like that. I mean, you could have seven guys stand at third base if you really wanted to. There's nothing illegal about having seven guys

all standing at third base, and yet we would assign them all positions anyway. Only one of them would actually be the third baseman, but they could all stand there. The third baseman could play in left field, and the left fielder could play in third base. It would technically be true, even if

the official score enforced some tyrannical position system on them but uh i like that idea i like the idea that that it's very fluid and undefined and pitcher is a pitcher breaks this and this is the one rule uh this is not the one rule this is one of two rules in which it is explicitly made clear that the pitcher is different than the other players and that he therefore breaks the fluidity. The other rule being that you must face at least one batter when you step on the mound. But you could have argued that at least that rule. That rule is specifically about the mound and maybe it still wouldn't change my idyllic vision of players being at whatever position they want.

But this specifically makes it clear that a pitcher is a pitcher, and you have to do it. So the other rule that comes off of this is once the pitcher is switched from the mound to a defensive position, this move shall terminate the DH role for the remainder of the game. So that makes it clear that the pitcher cannot wander over to second base and play second base without losing his pitcher status. It is a very clearly defined status. And that's a little bit disappointing to me, but nobody else listening cares.

It's funny. Zachary Levine wrote an article on Tuesday at BP on the shift and how the shift kind of has an image problem or a PR problem and that every sport really has an equivalent to the shift and it should just be the new normal in baseball and eventually we won't even think of it as the shift. We'll just think of it as defense. And Matt Trueblood, who just asked us that catcher framing question,

left a comment on that article saying, or asking how far into the future before the notion of set position seems silly. And that you just kind of put your best defender where he's needed most, depending on the given batter, and people just kind of move around and and they go uh where you sort of most expect the ball to be hit and so then it is it's less of a constant um one guy assigned to one position and colin wires answered that that comment and pointed out that the the trouble is that you have base runners which sort of dictates a fair amount of your fielder positioning, and that certain guys kind of have to be in certain places at certain times to make sure that runners can't just run all over the place.

That's just part of the calculus. Yeah, I guess so. Anyway. I mean, like I saw yesterday, I saw a team playing the, you know, doing the, what do you call it, when it's runners on first and second and there's going to be a bunt and they do the wheel play. Yeah, so the shortstop starts out at second base. He's standing on second base, which is not where the shortstop plays, but it's at least basically where the shortstop plays.

And then the pitch comes and he sprints. As the pitch is coming, he sprints to third. And so by the time the ball would be in play, he's standing at third base. He's, you know, he's playing the third base position. So, uh, you know, I guess in that sense, the shortstop is still playing within range of shortstop. Uh, but you know, even in that case, he's there's, there's a certain there's movement allowed. You don't have to be in a circle. I mean, can you imagine if it were actually that there was a predefined zone? Like in basketball, there's the three-second rule,

and you can't be in the box for three seconds. What if there was actually a circle at each position, and it could be big enough that you could wander a little bit, but you weren't allowed to leave that position in the field of play? It would be awful and in a sense the rules have put a uh a circle around the pitcher's mound and and declared uh declared none of us free yes and i value there would be no jeter flip play exactly there'd be like i mean if i mean jeter like what if there were like electric fences, like Hunger Games style? He would just jump over them.

He probably would have fallen into the pit too while he was over there. All right. So last question is not that baseball-y, but it's from John Schaefer, who is a podcaster himself. He podcasts a video game. Sorry, I don't think they call it video games. He podcasts a video game. Sorry, I don't think they call it video games. He's a game designer. He's a game designer and he hosts a podcast on game design called

The Game Design Roundtable, I believe. I just think that you're not supposed to say video games anymore, right? Nobody says video games. I say it sometimes. I guess it sounds like you're talking about something a kid would do and now everyone does that. So it does sound a little weird.

But there are other types of games, so sometimes you have to specify. So he says, as you've noticed several times, having a career involved with baseball has altered your relationship with the game. I was wondering if, and he italicizes this so you know it's important, hosting this podcast for the last 10 months has had a similar effect. As the co-host of a podcast, I can say that's happened to me, but I can see how this might not be the case for you guys as you've already had to change your perspective in this manner. And he also relatedly asks, do we aim to avoid covering the same topics on the podcast that we write about? So the answer to that one is that I guess we don't aim to, but we both feel like once we've said something, it works more the other way, which is I'm looking for a topic at 8.30 at night

and I find something. And normally without the podcast, that's something that I would probably develop and turn into an article because I'm always looking for article ideas too. But once I've talked about it, I don't really feel like uh repeating myself it feels it feels weird like i remember being very disturbed when i found out that stand-up comedians weren't making it up as they go that they were just repeating it the next night and just acting like they thought of it that moment like they were just acting spontaneous uh so i have a even if

i tell a story i don't know if anybody else is like this probably everybody else is like this but if i tell a story to my say mom and then like four hours later i see say my wife and i tell her the story i have to preface it with i was just telling my mom i always acknowledge that it's not an original thought yeah even though nobody knows. So I think we hardly ever do the same topics, but not because we think it's wrong, just because it feels weird. And occasionally we'll talk about a topic on here,

but that doesn't happen very often. It probably happens once a month. Yeah, I try to avoid it just because I feel like our listeners are our readers to a large extent. There's a lot of overlap between the two. So I feel like if we write about something we talked about or talked about something that we write about, those people will either not read the article or will not listen to the episode. And I want people to read and listen to us. So try to avoid it. We know though. to read and listen to us. So try to...

We know, though, we know there's not a lot of overlap, right? I mean, we see the difference in the traffic for each one. We know that a lot of you guys don't... Yeah, there are a lot of listeners who are not readers or not readers of any given article. And presumably a lot of our readers just aren't podcast listeners. Yeah, there's some overlap. It's not a huge amount of overlap. And presumably a lot of our readers just aren't podcast listeners. have an idea that I kind of want to develop by talking to you about it and then write about it, except yeah, then there's that risk that I'll feel like I have nothing left to write about

after we talk about it. Um, so yeah, it doesn't happen that often. And I, I guess I would say I try to avoid it or at least, yeah, I would rather avoid it. And has it changed your relationship to the, to the game at all? avoid it. And has it changed your relationship to the, to the game at all? Uh, I don't think so. I don't know. Other than the constant dread that sets in on both of us when we start trying to think of topics every night and don't immediately have one. Um, probably not. I guess it, I don't know. I guess it's just made me more open to, well, there are certain things that I would not write about that I will talk about. So I guess it's made me more willing to consider those things or more aware of those things. In the past, I just might have dismissed them because I wasn't

going to get an article out of it, or I didn't feel like I could write 2,000 words about it, but I could talk for 10 minutes about it maybe. So I consider topics for the podcast that I would not consider for articles. Yeah, I think I probably expose myself to a bit more of the news of the day. I'm not typically all that – well, it's not that I'm not interested in the news of the day. But it's not that I'm not interested in the news of the day. It's that I kind of found it a bit too time-consuming to keep up on the 40 things that happen that are all sort of semi-interesting every day. And now I do. I at least skim the news so that I know what's going on. And I find myself more interested in it in it because yeah it is all potential fodder in

a way that it wasn't before so i do feel more generally just more informed probably than when we started so that's that's a good thing i mean it i don't know people i think generally know that you and i don't talk about these things beforehand and therefore we're always scrambling a little bit to respond to each other. But I mean, I'm probably like, I don't know, a third of Ben's topics are totally new to me and I'm like, he's talking about him and I'm listening and nodding along and thinking,

Oh, this is interesting. And then it comes to me and then it comes to me and there's a, there's a moment of panic. But, um, uh, I mean,

I definitely, uh, learn from, from Ben a lot Ben a lot just talking about this. That's nice. Okay. All right. So we're done. We have a couple more shows this week.

We will be back tomorrow with one of those shows.