Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2093: Like Catnip

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and top-tier Patreon supporter Kevin Peskuric banter about and quantify the difference between the receptions to an @MLB tweet about a Shohei Ohtani cat encounter and an @Yankees tweet about Henry Kissinger. Then (18:48) they talk about Kevin’s background as a baseball fan and EW listener, answer listener emails (32:13) about […]

I'm just a fan who wants nothing less than Effectively Wild. Oh, I, oh, I, oh, I, nothing less than Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2093 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. In fact, I'm doing great because we are joined today by a guest, a Mike Troutier Patreon supporter. We're always happy to have him on. And today we have another one. It's Kevin Piskurik. Hello, Kevin. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Well, we're very happy to have you. And we will go through the whole rigmarole and discuss your

background and how you found us and how you became a Patreon supporter in just a moment. But I have a bit of banter for both of you, which will be relevant to your interests because you are both cat owners who podcast in fear of interruptions by your friendly felines. And I have a question that pertains to two tweets that were sent on Thursday. One sent by the MLB account about Shohei Otani with a cat. And then there was a New York Yankees tweet memorializing former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. What is the connection between those tweets, you might ask? There is absolutely none. They could not be further apart. I was going to say, did the cat do war crimes?

No, not that I know of. The cat seems very nice. But what I wanted to ask you is whether you think there has ever been or could ever be a wider disparity in reception to two tweets related to baseball sent on the same day, mere hours apart. They both sent shockwaves through baseball Twitter, but in almost equal and opposite directions. So you have Shohei playing with, I believe, his agent's cat. And it's sent from the MLB account, courtesy of the MLBPA account. You've seen Shohei with a dog. Now get ready for Shohei with a cat. No one was ready for this. I don't think the internet was ready for this. I also don't think the internet was ready for the New York Yankees to tweet statement from the New York Yankees regarding the passing of former United

States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The Yankees are profoundly saddened by the passing of Kissinger, et cetera, et cetera, which was not, I think, the reaction of much of Twitter when it learned of the passing of Henry Kissinger at 100 years old. So could there be a bigger gulf between tweets and receptions to tweets than this? Have we explored the outer limits? Is this one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum? the outer limits? Is this one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum? I never want to say that we've hit bottom on Twitter because that feels like, you know, inviting the monkey's paw to curl, you know? We hit top and bottom potentially at the same time here.

Yeah. But it is a pretty pronounced skull for sure. Because people, even I think people who don't particularly care for cats were like, this cat. And it's clear that he knows this cat, right? It's not his cat, but like he spent, he has spent time at his agent's house with this cat. Yeah, he's doing baby talk and pet talk to it. Yeah, like in a way that is recognizable to me as someone who's like familiar with the cat, right? But yeah, wow. You know, I wasn't waiting for the Yankees to tell me what they thought of Henry Kissinger.

It was a nice little reminder of the weird connection that there is to the Steinbrenners in that era of American politics. But yeah, wow. What a time to decide to say something, you know? Yeah, that was like that absolutely no one meme where no one's waiting for the thing and then someone says the thing. Kevin, just in case you did not see Shohei Otani's cat, I did paste the link to that tweet in the window that we are using to record here. I will, of course, link to it on the show page for anyone who somehow hasn't seen it. And so when you have had time to review it, I'm curious about your impressions of the cat and about Shohei.

I should have sent you this earlier because there is a sound component to it. Half the fun is listening to the high-pitched voice that Shohei uses when he talks to the cat, addresses it very tenderly. But it's a cute cat. I mean, most cats are. Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that because that was exactly what is happening to me now as I try to manage our cat in this situation. Yeah. I cannot relate to the prowess of Shohei Otani so much, though. Right. Or the earning potential of Shohei Otani, presumably, although you are a Patreon high roller and you're above the Shohei Otani tier. You're in the Mike Trout tier. But yes, I was struck

by the difference in reception here, because while everyone else on Twitter was saying Bernanhell war criminal, the Yankees were coming out and saying, we are profoundly saddened by this, which honestly I enjoyed because I like when the Yankees just lean into their heel reputation, which I feel like they haven't done enough lately. They're not blowing everyone out of the water payroll wise. They're not like the bad Yankees anymore.

I mean, they are kind of bad now by Yankee standards, but not so big. They're still some pretty big guys. Yeah, I was going to say, they got some beef boys. Don't forget they're beef boys. Yeah. But I like when the Yankees have a mask off moment and they just remind you that, yeah, this is still the evil empire. And I say this as someone who grew up as a Yankees fan. I was not profoundly saddened by the passing of former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but then I'm no longer a Yankees fan. I was not profoundly saddened by the passing of former United States

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but then I'm no longer a Yankees fan. But I was at one time. And, you know, Yankees fans will lean into that reputation sometimes. It's like, yeah, we're the bullies, you know, count the rings, right? And this is kind of a count the rings moment in a way. I don't know what this is. This is like, this is like, this is an ownership level mandated tweet, I would imagine, just because of some fondness that Hal must have from enjoying Yankees games at the knee of Henry Kissinger and George Steinbrenner's box when he was a kid or something. I don't know who they're currying favor with this tweet. But there are, I think, multiple ways to judge the reception to a tweet. When people talk about a tweet getting ratioed, they mean multiple things sometimes. Sometimes they're talking about the ratio of replies

to likes. And one way I like to look at it is the ratio of quote tweets to retweets. Because often when people quote tweet, they're doing so to dunk on the tweet, not to be like, hell yeah, this mirrors my sentiments. If that were what you wanted to do, you would just retweet probably, although retweets don't always equal endorsements, as people used to say. But that's two ways you can look at it. Now, I am going to do a stat blast later. This is not the stat blast, but I did look at the stats on these tweets, both from very popular accounts, although the MLB account is even more followed than the Yankees account. Sure.

But here are the stats. here are the stats. So on the Otani tweet, the Otani cat crossover content, we have, according to my phone, the Twitter X, whatever app shortly before we started recording here, 140 replies to 11 and a half thousand likes, which is good. You want to see a lot of likes. Not every reply is bad, obviously, but a lot of replies are like, delete this, right? So no one's saying delete this to the Otani cat content. So 140 replies to 11,500 likes. So that's a ratio of 82 likes per reply. Okay. So 82 people liked that tweet for every one person who replied to it. Now on the Yankees Henry Kissinger in Memoriam tweet, we have 3,860 replies to 2,716 likes. So that is 0.7 likes per reply. And again,

we're comparing that to the Otani Cat tweet, which had 82 likes per reply. So that is 117 times higher likes per reply ratio for the Otani tweet versus the Kissinger tweet. I don't know how that compares to like all time highest related ratios, especially at a single day by baseball associated accounts, but it just, it can't go much higher than that. And it's very similar if you look at the ratio of QTs to RTs. Okay. So the Otani cat tweet has 2,695 retweets to 410 quote tweets. So 6.6 retweets to every quote tweet. Whereas the Kissinger tweet, how we miss you, Mr. Kissinger, that one, that has 6,164 quote tweets to 39 retweet or 0.06 retweets to every quote tweet. And that is a difference in ratio of 103 times. And I should say another definition of ratio is to compare the replies to the likes plus the retweets instead of the likes only. If you do that, then the difference

in ratio in favor of the Otani cat tweet is 126 times. So any way we slice it, the Otani cat content is more than 100 times more popular than the Yankees Kissinger content. What do you make of that, the two of you? Kevin's like, this was not what I anticipated talking about when I came on today. I'm paying for this privilege? Yeah. Well, to be honest, I was not what I anticipated talking about when I came on today. I'm paying for this privilege? Yeah. Well, to be honest, I'm not surprised. I mean, I feel like how could the... I jumped ahead there a little bit.

I'm talking about the tweet, the Otani cat tweet. Oh, okay. Because I'm not surprised that that is as popular as it is, because how could it not be? Not at all surprised by that. And I didn't sign up for anything other than being here to banter. So this is exactly what I was hoping for. Oh, good, good, good.

Just me reading Twitter engagement stats to you. I hope it was worth it. Yeah, so not surprising that that tweet performed well. Also not surprising that the other tweets performed poorly. Although I guess in terms of engagement, they both did great. It's just if you take the absolute value of engagement and do no sentiment analysis about the content of that engagement. I do wonder if part of it is that like, hmm, I want to like, do I need to? I don't need to choose my words carefully.

It's Henry Kissinger. Everybody's fine. Almost everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, look. You might make Hal Steinbrenner mad. while because his various crimes are not disputed at this point. We've just had so much time to get a complete accounting of them, right? The academic record is pretty settled here. Yeah. But balancing that out, I have it on good authority that he is a lifelong friend of the Yankees organization. And he was a frequent welcome guest of the Steinbrenner family at Yankee Stadium. Yeah. I really like how they're wanting to tell us that, like, you know, with their full chest. But so, like, the people have had time, like, to kind of get their heads wrapped around it.

I don't think it's coincidence how many people had that really good Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger just, like, ready to deploy. Like, that was holstered, waiting for that moment. Whereas like Otani with the cat, like that's, we're new to this, right? And so the reaction is perhaps as much about novelty as it is about sentiment. I like to think it means that people are happy about stuff, but I also was pleased to see the dunking that occurred at the Yankees expense. You know, I guess what I would say is that of all the people I expected to have, like, a kind of harsh in PR government brand adjusted terms reaction to Kissinger's passing, like, Biden having a harsher thing to say than the Yankees.

I don't know that I would have had those odds. You know, what a weird, what a weird moment to be alive we're in, you know? Like, do you ever just sit there and think about how profoundly strange it is? And then like how also apart from being anything else, and we can pick sad, alarming, deeply concerning adjectives, but like also how deeply stupid it is. Which is in the weirdest, dumbest moment, potentially, to be alive. So, anyway. Welcome to our baseball podcast, where we talk about Henry Kissinger and also cats.

It's tangentially related to baseball. I mean, the Yankees were like, we'll make it, you know, interesting to see. Not a lot of stick to sports in that one. Kind of pulls the curtain back on that valence, too. Wow. Kevin, I'm so glad you're here. Yeah. Thanks for supporting us, bud.

I know that the Twitter X view metrics are probably garbage as are all tech company traffic and view stats, at least public ones. Tech company traffic and view stats, at least public ones. But right now, at least, the Yankees Kissinger statement says 8.2 million views, whereas the Otani tweet. I don't know if this refers to the tweet or the video specifically or both, but it's in the same place as the Kissinger tweet, which fortunately does not have video at least. But that says only 1.3 million views. So even though I've talked about how much warmer the reception to the Otani tweet is, if we just go purely by views or whatever qualifies as a view by this metric, then the Kissinger tweet is considerably more popular. Now, it was posted earlier. It was posted in the morning as opposed to the night. So maybe the Otani tweet is still catching up or maybe this tells us

something about Twitter and social media in general. It's just negative polarization and what tends to get the most engagement and get in front of the most eyeballs or it's like the Mark Twain or at least purportedly Mark Twain tweet about a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Maybe the Yankees Kissinger statement can travel halfway around the world while the Otani cat content is still putting on its shoes. But yeah, that's somewhat dismaying, I guess. But I don't know whether 100 times or more, more popular is more or less than one would expect. It's almost like having it be any number is almost less than I would expect. It seems like it should be infinitely more popular, like it should just be undefined,

should be the value for how much more popular on Twitter the Otani tweet is. But that's what numbers tell me. We got to follow the stats here. Do you feel at all that Otani is pandering to pet owners? I mean, maybe he is and maybe it's working, but do you feel pandered to, or is this sort of Bryce Harper pandering to Phillies fans, but doing it so well, so effectively and so endearingly that no one minds? I mean, Kevin, when you see this, I don't know what your personal opinions on Shohei Otani are, though obviously you listen to this podcast a lot, so I have some suspicion. But when you see him with a cat, after having seen him with a dog previously, we now have confirmation he is a two-way pet appreciator. Does that make you appreciate him more? Or do you feel like, okay,

this is too cute now. This is cuteness overload. I think it is completely genuine. I don't think this is any planned pandering. I think it has not changed my opinion of him. I think he's an excellent player and obviously excellent with pets. So just as good on that front. I think it's completely genuine. I think so too. I'd like to think so. I think if he were pandering, first of all, we'd know the name of his dog and we don't, right? And this isn't his cat, right? It's his agent's cat is what we've learned. And that cat was just like, hey, I'm here. Like cats often are like, you know, oh, are you doing something?

Were you trying to do something without me? Well, I'm here. Guess what? So I think that, you know, it seems genuine to me. And some people might be thinking, well, maybe they kind of timed it that way. And to that I say, you're not a cat owner. You know, like if you think you can control what they do, then you've never really lived with one before. So I think it's pretty genuine. Yeah.

It's not like this is a well-timed release right before Otani signs or something. Let's establish that he likes cats, not only dogs. He likes them both. We don't want to anger anyone. I don't think he's going to be getting any extra millions on be any more excited than it already would have been that it's a team has signed the services of Shohei Otani. But it's nice to see. And I just hope that whatever social media person was forced to tweet the Yankees Kissinger statement received some form of hazard pay. Yeah. Maybe just the day off.

They haven't actually, at Yankees has not tweeted since. It'd be funny if that was just their final statement. Like that's the last word from the Yankees Twitter account. They can't go on in a world without Kissinger. But one would assume that there were people internally who were like, world without Kissinger, but one would assume that there were people internally who were like, you know what will happen if we tweet this, right? I just want to, you know, make sure you know roughly what the reception to this will be. And presumably that person was overruled and hopefully has not been checking the mentions over the last day or so, because I imagine that that would be bad for one's mental health. What an active choice. You know, what an active decision. So, Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you find Effectively Wild, for starters?

I found it back in 2018, I think. My wife started listening to it when we were working in Yellowstone, to it when we were working in Yellowstone. And it was very obvious that I was a baseball fan. And we were doing winter in Yellowstone, which obviously is very cold. And I had the brilliant idea to plan an end of season road trip to spring training. And, you know, to chase the sun, chase the warmth, catch some baseball. And she started listening to the podcast in order to, I guess, just learn more about this thing that I was so interested in. And then she really liked it. She really liked the, I guess, the style, the presentation.

It wasn't too, it's good, fun banter, as this episode can attest to. But it sort of became a staple for us. Like we listened to it on road trips, on that trip in particular. And we listened to it, you know, in the background when we're making a kind of labor intensive dinner. It's just sort of become like, over time, just a staple in our audio journey, I guess. I can't claim to listen to every episode, but it is definitely our go-to and it's one that we both share enjoyment in. Oh, well, that's very heartening to hear. One of my dreams as a podcast host is that someday we will hear that we have brought together two people romantically in a way that led to a happily ever after situation. Because I know that a lot of Effectively Wild listeners have formed

friendships, whether internet friendships or IRL friendships. Not that they both can't be equally meaningful. But I haven't heard of, yeah, we were listening to this podcast or we were both wearing Effectively Wild t-shirts. And we said, hey, you're an Effectively Wild listener. And they said, yeah. And then the rest was history, right? I haven't heard that story. Maybe it's happened. If someone has had that happen to you, if you and your partner, your significant other

met somehow through this podcast, then please let us know. But I will settle for just not breaking people apart, I think, because we often do hear from people who are like, yeah, I made my whoever listened to this podcast on long car trips or whatever. And I'm like, I hope that you're both still doing okay. And it sounds like it hasn't hurt your relationship. Perhaps it's even helped. I will say, I think that your podcast has brought two people together, that that has existed out there. It just hasn't made it to the stage yet. I hope. We just brought Shohei Otani's cat tweet and the Henry Kissinger Yankees tweet together. So, if we can bridge that gap, then I think anyone can be brought together by this podcast, potentially. So, what possessed you, as I often ask, to support us at the Mike Trout tier, as you have done, which we are grateful for? as you have done, which we are grateful for?

There's a part of that that's simply that, like I said, it has brought us so much enjoyment over the years, and we happen to be in a position right now that we can afford to do so. And so sort of, I guess, paying back for the years of enjoyment that we've had that we hadn't been able to do that is one aspect of it. But I think that doesn't necessarily explain why we've chosen to support at the Mike Trout level. It's been an interesting year in my baseball fandom. I don't want to get too dark here, but I had one of my best childhood friends pass away earlier this year.

Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. And it was right as spring training was approaching, and we had this tradition that we struck up during the pandemic, which I know there's been a lot of Mariners talk on the podcast lately, and I don't want to make us go down that road too much. I don't want to make us go down that road too much, but we had, I think, found out the ultimate way to be a Mariners fan in the harsh reality that we live in. We both shared basically undying optimism for the team, which is misguided, admittedly. Yeah, that's tough to maintain at this point.

So we made a spreadsheet and we did a head-to-head fantasy challenge. Basically, every two weeks, we would get on a call and we would redraft Mariners only. And we would create the scoring formula for how that period was going to be scored, which would obviously determine who we picked. And it was a fun way to engage in the season after it was clear that we weren't making the playoffs. And it's just something that we would banter amongst ourselves about. There was one time last year, or I guess two years ago, at the end of the season when Jesse Winker made a couple choice errors in left field. And there was a snippet on the Mariners MLB page that said, Winker's errors loom large. And it was a picture of a

distraught Scott Service with that tagline. So I messaged my friend and was like, Winker's tenure with the Mariners really hasn't aged well with that, has he? But it's, you know, those little things throughout the season when you're doing something like that, that you have someone to share it with. And when you lose that, it's, you know, obviously, you know, losing a friend is difficult in itself. But I was at a point when the season started that I was just absolutely not a fan of baseball anymore, which I guess is probably kind of reminded me that there are more than one ways to be a fan of something and that I still found comfort in just hearing the banter on the show. And when you're listening to it, for me, it feels like we're not just listening to you as the host, but there's such a strong community on the show, like the Discord channel and the emails. And so, I found a lot of comfort in that. And so, I think that was

probably the driving force that was like, you know, we can do this. I hate to break it to you, but we're not going to be able to support you at this level forever. But we'll- That's perfectly okay. Get out. But we can do it now. And we thought that now was the right time to do that.

Well, we really appreciate it. And also that sentiment, which I share about the community that's sprung up around this podcast, which has been one of the best things about it, if not the best thing about it. Thank you for sharing that. How did you become a baseball fan and have the misfortune to be a Mariners fan? I don't know. Maybe that's too harsh. I've been a baseball fan essentially my whole life.

I guess I couldn't really pinpoint when it was. And I think it's just growing up. I was in elementary school when the Mariners had Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner. Oh, yeah. That'll do it, I guess. They got you like they got me. Yeah. I mean, everyone was a fan.

Everyone had their favorite player. And then the nail really that drove it home, I think was in middle school when Ichiro came around, then it was like, how could I not be a Mariners fan? And then we had 20 years. Did you grow up in Seattle? I grew up north of Seattle, outside of the city, but near Seattle. Where in the world are you now? Because you're coming to us from a different continent. So if you want to share where in the world is Kevin Piskurik or anything about what you do, please feel free. I'm here because of my wife's work. I'm not doing a whole lot here. I am working. I'm just doing office administration.

But we are here for a couple years, and it's an experience. It was notably an experience when the Mariners played an 18-inning playoff game. Oh, my gosh. And I was determined to watch every inning of it. game. And I was determined to watch every inning of it. So fortunately, it was a day game in the US, so it was like nine o'clock here that it started at night. But we are in Nigeria, and I had messaged prior to the recording, but I just barely made it on. We had lost power and internet one by one, which is not normal, but it came on just in time to make it here. So I'm very thankful for that. Yes.

I'm glad it did. Me too. So what is it like then to follow baseball from afar? Obviously, as long as you have the internet, you're following it in many of the same ways that we are. And if you can download a podcast, then Effectively Wild sounds the same wherever you are in the world. But with the time difference, with, I suppose, the lack of enthusiasm for the sport around you, does that make you feel distant, not only physically, but sort of spiritually from the sport? I guess that's another area where the Effectively Wild community could come in handy in keeping you connected. But I wonder what it's like to follow baseball when it's not really part of the lifeblood of the area you're in.

It has its challenges. I have really come to enjoy a Sunday day game because I can watch those. And with the pitch clock, I can usually watch the whole game, which is nice. But listening, like the Effectively Wild is my main baseball following outlet here. So I very much appreciate that. I do. So when I was mentioning that head-to-head fantasy challenge that my friend and I had done, I continued that in a different way. I have been logging the stats from every game that the Mariners played this season because I can't watch most of them. So I would wake up and keep my own spreadsheet

of all of the stats from the game before and have the feed on in the background and sometimes pick a screenshot from it to share some of the stats with. So that's sort of been my experience being a fan where we are and keeping up with it in my own way i will recognize that it's very i know it's redundant to keep a spreadsheet of those stats because they are cataloged very in-depth but yeah check out fangraphs.com there's something that i enjoy about having my own sheet that has errors in it yeah so, I'm glad that we can be a connection. Although when people tell me that they follow baseball mostly or exclusively through Effectively Wild, I wonder what that means for their perception of the sport.

Definitely means they're well-informed about Shohei Otani. But beyond that, I don't know exactly what it means, but hopefully it's been helpful for you. So we can answer some emails. I just want to note that as I look at the what's happening sidebar on Twitter, Otani and the Yankees are both trending in sports, which probably is not a coincidence. I may know why that is. And also, I want to note that— Wait, do I need to go do work now, Ben? Is that what-

No. The Yankees did not sign Shohei Ohtani, to be clear. I mean, I'm sure some Yankees fans are tweeting that they would like the Yankees to sign Shohei Ohtani, but I assume that's more Kissinger-related than Ohtani-related in their case Oh, boy. Also, Mark Twain was not the one who talked about the lie traveling halfway around the world. That was a much more recent quote. But if you're Mark Twain, it's like, aren't certain people quotable enough? We just have to attribute all the quotes to them. It's like Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain.

They didn't say everything. Marilyn Monroe gets that treatment. Anyway, I'll link to an article about the actual origins of that so as not to slight anyone or to give Mark Twain extra credit. So let's answer an email here from Shay who says, my question is relatively straightforward and probably not possible now that there's a minimum batter's face rule for relievers, but humor me, let's assume there could be an average relief pitcher who would only ever face one batter per game, the worst batter in a given lineup. He would pitch a total of 54 innings each season, but only ever face replacement level guys on average, since the worst bat in a lineup is likely to be somewhere between negative one and one war on a

given day. I imagine this would result in a whip of slightly under one using Andrew Benintendi as an example of a zero war batter. Harsh, but that's where my ability to hypothesize this comes to a catastrophic end. Surely his FIP would be lower than the average relief pitcher who sometimes has to face good batters, and that would inflate his war at least a little bit. But would a career of only ever staring down the worst players in MLB be enough to get this hypothetical player into the Hall of Fame? So even if we dialed down how extreme this scenario is to account for the three batter minimum, I guess this is still technically possible if you were to end innings with this person or something. But let's just say

you have a reliever who just only ever comes in to face the bottom of the lineup. Somehow he's just like your bad batter specialist. And so he has fantastic stats. I do think it would actually be a bit of a loophole for war. Maybe it depends on which war, but we've talked about this before. Most of the wars don't really do an adjustment for opponent quality, at least on the individual level. I believe baseball prospectuses warp when a replacement player does. So probably this guy would not skate by with warp. Warp would see right through him and know that he was facing especially weak batters. But I don't think Fangraph's war makes that adjustment to my knowledge. And I don't think baseball reference war makes that adjustment on that level.

I think what baseball reference war does is adjust for the team quality. It will look at the typical runs scored by the teams that a pitcher faced, and then it will adjust for that. But this guy would get around that too, because he's only facing the worst batters on that team so the team quality wouldn't really be representative of the hitters he's actually facing so yeah am i off on the fan graphs were details there i don't know that this would be no i mean we account for leverage for rightvers, right? And so, yeah, but like that's really what, you know, so we might capture like some of that.

Like if he's often, you know, if you think that like the worst hitter is going to be in low leverage spots, but like that doesn't happen necessarily, right? Like you might just get him in a high leverage spot, right? And then you get some credit there. But yeah, we don't. Yeah, your understanding is correct. Yeah. I guess there's an argument either way about whether that's something that war should account for or shouldn't. Every level of abstraction that you introduce or adjustment, some people will adjust and will say that it's just hypothetical and it's imaginary and it doesn't really reflect what happened on the field.

Right. To me, I'd at least like a version with that. I'd like to see what it says. There have been various reports, I think Baseball Perspectives did or maybe still does have a report where they would show the average OPS or other offensive stats of the opponents that you faced. And if you're a starter and you're pitching a lot of innings, it generally—

It kind of comes out in the wash over the course of a season anyway. Typically, even so. Yeah. Sometimes it can be a separator, like a tiebreaker, if two guys are competing for the Cy Young or something and one was facing far weaker batters. It's not going to be that drastic a difference, but it might be enough to make the difference if it's really close it an oversight or just something that

the designers, the implementers of war have chosen not to factor in in this way. And so, I think he would have a vastly inflated war if he were to do this consistently for an entire career. So, yeah, you could kind of get away with that, except that everyone would know with this guy in particular, probably, right? Like if he's someone you summon to face your number nine hitter only, then you're going to know that that's how he's used.

It would be weird if he were used that way. I don't know why he would be used that way because if he's really good at the bad batters, then wouldn't you at least try him against the good batters? I guess if it's a scenario where like, I don't know, he's just really good at exploiting the weaknesses of bad batters, but the batters without those weaknesses just crush him and he can't fool them at all. Something like kind of like a quadruple A player, except like in the big leagues, sort of. So if you had an extreme version of that,

it's not very realistic. But if that were to happen, then I guess technically you would get someone with a way higher war than I suppose he deserves. So what would you do with this room reliever, Kevin, if he had a Hall of Fame level war or jaws or whatever, and he shows up on the ballot, are you going to penalize him regardless? I don't know how I would vote in that situation, having not voted for anybody on any ballot. but i think we would maybe see surprising

results because if a bad hitter on a team is stepping up to the plate against this guy who we know is only in there to face me because i'm the worst person on here i think if we looked at at bats where batters had sort of a chip on their shoulder, maybe we would see an elevated output. And so maybe that would... Like the idea of when you intentionally walk someone in front of someone, is he going to be like extra out for revenge? I forget what the studies have showed about that. I feel like it probably isn't real or isn't really real, but let's just go with it. Sure. But then I see it spiraling because if you're the pitcher and you start giving up hits and you're like, I can't even get out the worst guy on the team. And then you start getting maybe you start talking about getting the yips or something.

Yeah, that would be extra demoralizing. There's nowhere to go but down. So I guess I've I've answered my question in that response, though, because if they were on the ballot for having done this successfully, then I wouldn't hold it against them because they've overcome that obstacle. Interesting. So that's almost like the argument that people make for relievers in general or DHs sometimes. It's like, well, that's what they were asked to do and that was their role and it is a valued role in the modern game. And so if they excel at that, then they should be recognized as among the best in the game. I don't really subscribe to that view. I don't know. I don't look at it as like penalizing the players or holding it against them, like a positional adjustment or a relief

pitcher adjustment or something. I don't look at it as like detracting from them. I look at it more as withholding credit, I guess. Like if they're not generating that value, then you don't award it to them. It's not so much that you're taking it away from them. So I haven't generally subscribed to that view, but it is a widespread one. So I could see some people interpreting it that way. Kevin, I like how you said that you don't have, you know, you haven't voted for the Hall of Fame. Well, neither has Ben. Well, neither of you, Meg. I know, but I don't have a vote yet. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a vote yet. And so, you know, we're just a bunch of non-voters here. Yeah. A bunch of non-voters. I think probably what would really happen is that this player would prompt a

change in war. It would be like okay, we need to account for this. Or even if you didn't change war for everyone because of this one player, at least there would be a lot written about it where people would make that adjustment for him and

show what it meant. We would do a stat blast about it. There would be fangraphs post about it. So it would be well known, obviously, if this guy stuck around long enough to be a serious Hall of Fame candidate and he was always only pitching to the worst batters in the order, then that would be a pattern that people would pick up on. And I don't think that he would get in. I don't know. I think even if he had really sterling stats, everyone would apply a mental discount to him. Yeah. Like, unless maybe if he won a lot of championships or something, if he happened to be on a bunch of great teams or was riding teammates' coattails a little bit.

But no, I don't think it would be enough. I don't think anyone would be fooled. People would look at this as a flaw in war that should be rectified. It wouldn't just be like, well, we have to hand it to him. That's what the system says. Yeah, we'd get emails for sure. Yeah, I would enjoy this player's career. I hope he comes along.

All right. Question from Pete, Patreon supporter, who is responding to our hypothetical about changing the pitch clock to five seconds, which we discussed a few episodes ago on episode 2089. That question was about what if it was just always five seconds? What would baseball be like if baseball were different in that way? And we talked about, oh, it would be like a speed chess version of baseball, et cetera. We agreed that we wouldn't want it except maybe for fun once. But Pete says, say each manager could signal to the ump and make this rule change for one inning. When would be the best time to deploy it?

The rule is that you can call for the five-second pitch clock at any point in the game, but it lasts only until the end of that half inning. I think it'd make most sense in the middle innings as the starter reaches the third time through the order, or a middle reliever takes over after they throw a pitch

so they're committed to at least three batters. So this is like the hurry up offense brought to baseball. Man, you're having to think about football so much, Ben. Yeah, I know about football. How about that? Kevin, what are your thoughts? I think that if you had someone who was, I guess, trained to thrive in the situation, I would develop a pitcher to be the closer on my team and to come in and close out the game with that. Like a five-second specialist. Yeah, exactly. And maybe different from the guy who comes in when the opposing manager triggers the five-second alert and everything speeds up all of a sudden.

So, yeah. But then there'd be a penalty to that in that you would have to replace your current pitcher. was going to go to the pen and bring in the five-second man, then you would want to do it at a time when it shortened the opposing starting pitcher's outing, right? Then I guess you'd want to do it early in the game, right? Because then it would be most advantageous. You'd have to force the manager to make the decision, do I bring in my five-second man now, even though I'm pulling my starter and leaving myself shorthanded for the rest of the game? I feel like when a starter might already be fatiguing and granted you maybe hasten things for them in a way that's good, but like just throwing them off a rhythm seems like it would be pretty maximally disruptive. That's true. And yeah, if they're already tiring, then that would be like the final straw. That would be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

What are all the straw related sayings I can use here? But yeah, that would probably be the best time. Although then maybe that's just when you'd make the call. It's like, okay, well, then maybe that's just when you'd make the call. It's like, okay, well, he's already flagging here and now they're calling five second rule on us. So let's go to the bullpen and bring in a fresh arm. Or I guess you just wait for the highest leverage moment. Bases loaded. Now speed up.

Go, go, go. This is, of course, assuming it wouldn't disrupt the batter just as much as the pitcher. But I guess a batter has less to do to get ready for the pitch. All right. Question from Nate, Patreon supporter, who says, I peruse the wiki. I don't think this question has been asked yet. Thank you for perusing the wiki and the emails database, which I link to on all the emails

episodes. I always appreciate when people take that step. Nate says, inspired by the discussion on trading two teams for each other on episode 2069, this got me wondering, what if a team were subjected to a Freaky Friday style body swap where each player appeared physically the exact same, but their mind belonged to a random different player on the same roster? mind belong to a random different player on the same roster. Assume for the sake of argument that they tried to continue playing under these conditions while they searched for the wizard responsible for these hijinks. I'm sure you could have relatively boring scenarios where all the pitchers just body swapped with each other. Right. But for maximum hilarity, I'm imagining like Jordan Alvarez's mind trying to pitch in Phil Maton's body while Jose Altuve's mind tries to hit with a body that has much longer levers than he's used to. How long would it take us to notice

that something was amiss? Would the players immediately be clumsy trying to get used to their new physical attributes while trying to perform a skill they haven't specialized in? Or are these guys all just such incredibly gifted athletes that they would take to their new positions extremely quickly? And most importantly, how could we turn this into a heartwarming new TV series? I don't have to pitch shows anymore. The strike is over. I mean, I think it would be pretty disruptive in the beginning. More disruptive in some of the scenarios outlined by the email, right?

So, like, if you have position players and pitchers swapping, that would be disruptive. If you have hitters swapping and there's big stature differences or handedness differences, like, that would be disruptive. But they all are baseball players. So, it would be less disruptive than it being us going into, like, Jordan Alvarez's body and me having to be like, what is this strength like? What can I do? Am I going to break something? So high up here.

I can see everything. Oh, my God. I have to dust that shelf because gosh, I can see it now. So it would be less disruptive than that. Like you have the context of baseball. than that like you have the the context of baseball and you know as guys come up like a lot of even with specialization like you know it's not uncommon for a guy who ends up being a big leaguer to have experience at some other positions even if it's pretty far in the past and even if it's not at the professional level right so there would be some context for it, but they would all seem off to varying degrees

depending on, again, the parameters of the swap in a way that I think would be noticeable. And I think we'd attribute it to like, everybody is the flu more than like magic. Magic would not be our first guess, but we'd be like, do they have like a bug going through the clubhouse or something?

Because like everybody seems kind of off and they're making mistakes that they don't normally. And it would be really fascinating to observe if you knew what was going on and being able to get like kind of a cool experiment about, you know, muscle memory versus what you're actually having to think through versus, you know what I mean? Like I think it would be revealing of some stuff in a way that would be pretty cool but yeah everybody would be kind of discombobulated plus like they would be you know it's like if you're swapping you know do you do you have to deal with whatever existing sort of language barriers you have like you know there could be miscommunication on that score or like maybe not miscommunication but people would be like surprised by the the sort of nature of their communication

skills and like how they might be different so i think it would be pretty i mean it would be wildly disorienting you would feel like you had gone crazy like you had had some sort of break but then when you're all talking about it together you you'd be like, oh, well, this is a collective psychosis, I suppose. And then you might be like, this is magic. Yeah, then you would, if it were happening to everyone. And I think our minds might go to the magic

explanation before most people, just because we've been conditioned by so many affectable wild hypotheticals. I'm not someone who believes in magic generally, but baseball specifically, if it were something weird like this, I'd be like, oh yeah, we entered an email about this a thousand episodes ago. Yeah. How do you think this would look, Kevin? I agree completely that it would be noticeable immediately. It might settle into something more

recognizable and smoother as people adjust. But I would be really curious to see the post-game press conferences when this was going on. Like, what are they disclosing what's happening? Like, are we seeing like, hey, yeah, Aaron Judge here. And then on the stand, it's just you're looking at Daniel Vogelbach speaking. Like, what are you prepared to disclose at that point? Like, you don't, I don't think that you would think that the general public would believe you, right? Right. No, they would be worried about you probably. But are you asking for help?

Like, are you like, hello, I am Aaron Judge. And we're like, no, you're Anthony Volpe though. So like, what's up? And then Volpe would be like, no, like, yeah, like, would you please help us? We're trapped in each other's bodies. Yeah. That's not what his voice sounds like at all. But, you know, he wouldn't sound like him either in this scenario. No. And would some people be like, I'm not trading back. Like, I'm just here in touch now. you like better. I mean, probably whatever body you were transported into would be just so wildly

disorienting at first that it might make you lose your connection to reality if you didn't already have it. I don't know what this would do to a person. And yeah, we've talked about players when they're kids and they break an arm and they just decide, oh, I'm just going to throw and hit with the other one now. And then they make a great career out of that somehow. But it would be a little bit different doing it, I think, as an adult with the brain plasticity differences. But then like, I don't know how this would work physiologically. Like, are you completely severed from the connections to your limbs and everything? Is it just like a brain that has no connections to like, do you have to relearn how to move, how to do everything? Or do you have built in nerves and connections to limbs so that

you don't have to relearn the basics? Like, would it just be like when you hit a growth spurt in puberty and suddenly you're all awkward and gangly or something like that. I don't know. But yeah, I imagine everyone would be much, much worse in the short term and it would be quite worrisome to all observers and even more so to the players involved. They'd be like, get Jamie Lee Curtis on the phone. What does she know? I feel like we have answered some hypothetical related to this. Maybe it was with I feel like we have answered some hypothetical related to this. Maybe it was with Mike Trout and Hunter Renfro or like how long would it take to tell Mike Trout just based on the data if you couldn't tell from looking at him, like picking out Mike Trout from all the other players just based on the signature in the stats, that sort of thing. We have wondered about that. Yeah. This would be bad news. I would not want to experience this.

They make it look fun in the movies. Right. If it's big. Yeah, but that's because you're a teenager and all of a sudden you have access to like money and booze. You know, it's different when you're when you're a pro athlete. I imagine your life is pretty OK already. You're like, I can just go get a bottle of wine if I want one. I don't have to become Jamie Lee Curtis, you know? Yeah.

OK. A slightly more serious body related question. Like, I can just go get a bottle of wine if I want one. I don't have to become Jamie Lee Curtis, you know? Yeah. Okay. A slightly more serious body-related question. This comes from Elias, who says, this is maybe more for Meg since she's a bit closer to the scouting world. Hey, I'll remind everyone I went to scout school. Yeah, and I'll remind everyone that I'm not like, I don't know anything about that, like, actually, you know? I'm not like, I don't know anything about that, like actually, you know. Elias says, I'm curious about the thought process that goes into how you talk, or maybe how more scouting types talk about players, primarily prospects' bodies. Their bodies obviously have an effect on their projectability and durability and thus their future value and performance. And

so, of course, it is a relevant and interesting subject to those with an interest in prospects. But, and this may come from my background in the endurance sports world, where disordered eating, red S, and also mental health issues are all too common. People's identities, especially athletes' identities, are often tied to their bodies, as we were just discussing in a much wackier hypothetical, including how those bodies are perceived by the others and regularly hearing about their quote-unquote bad body or frame concerns could lead to or exacerbate those issues among the athletes discussed

and also could just generally negatively contribute to a body-shaming culture that is all too prevalent in our society. You're thoughtful and caring people or come across as so on the pod, and I'm not accusing you of talking about guys' bodies carelessly. So I'd be curious to hear how you take that care for prospects, self-perception, mental and physical health into account when discussing or editing pieces that discuss their bodies. I would also be interested in hearing whether that thought process has changed over time. What a good question. I do appreciate the part of the question that allows that we might secretly suck.

Because, you know, like, who knows, right? You come off as nice people in the pot, but you never know. We might secretly suck. I think, well, I came into this sort of conversation, and I do think it is an active conversation, and I think that's a good thing, kind of late in the game. So there have been many eras of prospect writing. And I think that like a lot of just sort of baseball writing, generally, we are even as it is like an unfinished project, and we are far from perfect at it. Like, I think that in general, the industry is much more careful and conscious of the fact that like, these are people, and they should be described humanely wherever possible. You know, you see that in like the public analytics space, where I think the sort of

financialization of players that we saw in some of the earlier versions of Saber is like, less common now and certainly gets pointed to as unsavory when we see it, right? So, you don't get a lot of assets, right? Right, assets, yeah. You know, that word is stricken, which isn't to say that there's not work to be done there and that, you know, people can't be crafty about sort of conveying the same idea without using that language. But I think in general, we do a better job. I think that like prospect writing and I, like, no offense to some of the prior BP folks, like just a lot less horny than it used to be in its vibe.

That's probably true. Yes. So there's that. And, you know, some of that stuff was kind of fun. But some of it was like, okay, we to think carefully about like how they describe bodies to our readership and like to other folks in the industry. You know, it isn't irrelevant what a guy's body is going to do as a pro athlete. I think that there are a couple of places where there's been sort of growth or progress in this area. The first being that like, we should acknowledge that athleticism,

quote unquote, can like look a lot of different ways. And that it isn't necessarily true to assume that like a guy who's maybe a little stockier can't also be athletic. Like I think particularly as we evaluate catchers, there's been just a lot more care kind of given to, you know, athletic can look a lot of different ways for these guys. ways for these guys. And so just because you see a player who's like stockier or might be veering into quote unquote bad body territory, that shouldn't be like the final answer to your evaluation of him as an athlete. Like you need to keep kind of watching and doing more there so that you can have a good assessment as well as you can without obviously access to these guys' medicals. So there's that piece of it. I think that trying to just be like not unduly cruel about the way you talk about it, like having it be, I can't even think of like earlier generations of like internet analysis where this was often deployed, but like, you know know thinking about how you talk about a guy's weight in a way that isn't unnecessarily mean i think people are better at now trying to be

mindful of this is a little less on like the body evaluation piece but like i know that this is something eric puts a lot of thought into trying to do make sure you're doing cross-racial comps um and sometimes doing like cross-sport comps uh which i think helps to guard against some of the the laziness um that you can see with like every you know short pitcher has the same four comps you know like sometimes that and especially it's like every short you know black player is like this you know, it's just like it can get in addition to being just kind of lazy and and allowing bias to creep in is like it's not descriptive generally. Like you want to actually evaluate the guy as the guy. And so forcing yourself to make those comps, I think, is a good way to sort of short circuit, you know, some bias that you might have that you're not maybe even necessarily aware of. And then cross sport comps are cool because I think they do illuminate something about how athleticism works in baseball players that can be useful to readers if they're familiar with other sports.

So, like, that part can be fun. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I think that, like, it's always good to have other people read your work because, you know, I think that even people who are trying to be conscious of this stuff, like, you might just not realize how something reads or you want to be mindful that someone else is, like, right? That you're trying to write about guys in a way that is humane and that is always like, you know, you're not trying to like take cheap shots. You're only bringing up aspects of the physical profile when it's actually relevant, if that makes sense. Like you might be talking about how a guy pitches and it's like, well, is his weight and body composition actually relevant here is good. And then I think just being mindful of like what comps you're deploying and yeah, I don't know. Do you feel like that answers the question? Like there are a lot of ways to do it. I think most, I got to say, like, I don't think that we're uniquely good at this. I think that most publications that are in the prospect space are trying really hard to be thoughtful about this stuff, both because they want to address these guys humanely and because they know that, like, if you just lean on, like, oh, he's bad bodied, like, that might not tell you enough, right?

Like, you should do more work than that to describe, like, what a guy might project as. that to describe like what a guy might project as. I think it's fine to note that like if a young person is, you know, sort of tracking like a big bodied first baseman that might have implications for what they're like down the line, but you don't know for sure. And like baseball, as we often talk about is a sport that accommodates a lot of different kinds of bodies and sees a lot of different kinds of bodies perform at a high level. So we don't do it perfectly, but it is a thing we try to do. Yeah, I'm sure it's changed over the years. I don't have specific examples, but yeah, I'm sure if you were to look back at old scouting reports, there would be a difference in the language that was used. old scouting reports, there would be a difference in the language that was used. I know that when I got my hands on some old red scouting reports from decades ago and did some studies

based on that for The Ringer with Rob Arthur, and we were reading through all that stuff, I don't remember specific phrases, but there was definitely some stuff that was like, oh, they would not say that today. And of course, that was not intended for public consumption. And maybe it's a little bit different if you're writing an internal report that the player's not going to see. And so maybe the language today, even public versus private is still different. Right. Yeah. And I can't speak to that part. Yeah. And I guess there are some players who they become better known and even beloved because they have a heavier build or something.

You know, Bartolo Colon would be one example. Obviously, there were a lot of reasons that people enjoyed watching him play baseball. But he became known as Big Sexy, right, which I think was a nickname that Noah Syndergaard gave him. And he didn't mind. I think he embraced it and he said, if fans like it, I like it too. But I guess someone might mind having attention drawn to that, even if it's not meant to be derogatory, even if there's affection involved. So, yeah, you got to watch your words with that stuff, especially when it's something critical, but maybe either way. something critical, but maybe either way. I mean, I do think it's useful for us to remember that,

like, I think particularly in an environment where social media can feed stuff to these guys so directly, like you want the analysis to be honest. And some baseball players are better than other baseball players. So it's not like every, and this is true, whether the guy's a prospect or a big leaguer or whatever, right? But like some ballplayers are better than other ballplayers. And you can't say that they're all equally good because that's not true. But they do see a lot of their own press. And so, you know, I do think that we can be, we don't have to placate, but we can be, you know, we can err on the side and not be in a dick, which is probably just a good rule of thumb regardless right and the attention i think there should be special kind of care and attention paid when you're dealing with players who haven't debuted yet and are really young like i know that when eric was evaluating

ethan solace and thinking about putting him really high on his hundred and he is you know he's on everybody's hundred now but but he was mindful of like the hype that can surround these guys and what that can do to not so much the trajectory of their career, but like fans expectations of them. And that can have a negative, that can kind of blow back on players in a negative way that doesn't really have anything to do with their performance on the field, right? Like we saw this this with Jason Dominguez, where he was so famous so early, and his cards were going for thousands of dollars, and everyone assumed that because of that, he was, like, gonna be the next Trout or Harper or whatever, and, like, he wasn't bad. It just, like, took a second to go through the minors,

He wasn't bad. It just like took a second to go through the minors because of course it did. And like maybe we can try as best we can on the writing side to like encourage people to hold their horses a little bit. And we will fail in getting them to do that. But like we can ask to be like, hey, this is a human person and not just the baseball card you want to buy on eBay. So like, what if we treated him like a person separate from the card you're trying to bid on? You know, like it can just be, it can get gross pretty fast. So we got to try, you know. Rob Arthur wrote a recent series at Baseball Perspectives, a couple of pieces where he looked at how handsomeness or facial attractiveness correlates to whether you get

promoted more or whether you get to be a big leaguer with a little inferior performance relative to someone else. And he was following methods that have been used in a lot of other fields of study where I guess you take some headshots or faces and then you have people rate their attractiveness, however they do that. And there's probably some bias built into that, but you have that and then you apply whatever the model says that they're judging that by to other faces or headshots. And then you try to see whether there's any effect there, whether there's any sort of, we're not selling genes here, lingering, you know, kind of halo effect that you might give to someone who's just better looking to you. It's like you say sometimes about like, is he just tall? Right? Like sometimes, you know, you just focus on one physical trait and you let some other traits slide. would suggest was a higher rated face that you would be more likely to be promoted, all else

being equal, taking into account your age and performance and all of that, that better looking big leaguers are like ever so slightly worse, maybe because they had, quote unquote, the good face, as scouts used to say, which is not quite the same as a handsome face, but still is related to your physical appearance in some way. So that stuff just purely like, are you conventionally attractive or would most people consider you conventionally attractive? That probably doesn't have that big an impact, but it might have some small measurable impact. But these other qualities, whether it's height or your build or whatever, that stuff certainly can. And sometimes it should, and sometimes it's legitimate, but sometimes it's not. And one of the nice things about baseball is that they're all manner of

bodies attached to players with varying levels of skill and performance. And there isn't always some perfect correlation there, like bigger is better or not bigger is, and there isn't always some perfect correlation there, like bigger is better or not bigger is better. You can't always judge the player by their cover, right? But even if you do to some extent, then maybe you want to be nice about how you express that, at least. I will regale you two with a couple of stat blasts to finish up our conversation here. Analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to day stop blast. All right, I will start with a simple one. And this one comes from Brendan, who ronin to say, I have a stop blasty sort of question for you. Thanks to a text from my brother. And this one comes from Brendan, who wrote in to say, Cobb, whose 151.5 baseball reference war is 34.5 more than his 117 homers. Are Lajue and Cobb unique here? I imagine there might be other contact speed defense guys like them, but I can't imagine there are players with more war than they have who have more war than homers. Who has the most war minus home runs?

And of the players with positive war minus home runs, who has the most war? I suppose this has to be Cobb. I looked this up on Stutthead. You could look this up easily at Fangraphs too. But Brendan was using baseball reference war, so I stuck with that for this. And yeah, Ty Cobb has the most war of anyone who has more war than homers. We're looking at position players here. So he has 151.4 baseball reference war, 117 homers.

That's a gap of 34.4. But there are some other non-Cobb, non-Lajue, extremely high war guys who have more war than homers, mostly from the same era of baseball. So you have second on the list, Tris Speaker, third, Hannes Wagner, fourth, Eddie Collins, and then Nat Lajoie, George Davis, Luke Appling, Ozzie Smith, Bobby Wallace, Fred Clark, Willie Randolph, Richie Ashburn, Billy Hamilton, the original slide-in Billy, Richie Ashburn, Billy Hamilton, the original Slidin' Billy, Shoeless Joe, Jackson, Jack Glasscock, the famous Jack Glasscock, Billy Herman, Joe Sewell, Sam Rice, Joe Tinker, Elmer Flick, Dave Bancroft, Nellie Fox.

Lots of really good players here and some good names. I should have mentioned the next one, Heine Groh, if I'm going to talk about Jack Glasscock. Heine Groh? Heine Groh is a great one. Heine Groh. Oh, boy. What a, man. Human names. What a gift. What a boundless gift. So, obviously, this was easier to pull off and excel at an earlier time when there were fewer home runs and it was more about speed and defense and putting the ball in play and all of that and less home run centric. So yeah, not a lot of recent names on there except for, I suppose, Ozzie, who was a defensive all-timer. I guess if we were to look at the biggest gap between Warren homers, that's actually Eddie Collins. Eddie Collins,

between Warren homers. That's actually Eddie Collins. Eddie Collins, 124.2 war, 47 home runs. So that's a gap of 77.2. So that's the biggest ever by far. And then Ozzie Smith, Bobby Wallace, Johnny Evers, Richie Ashburn, et cetera. But lots of Hall of Famers on that list. It at least was possible to be really good at baseball while outwarring your home run total. All right. This one is slightly more complicated, but there's a question from Jacob who says, I was listening to episode 2067 when it was mentioned that the NL Central was a weaker division than the East and West. In reference to the Cubs and Mariners disappointing seasons, I looked up the divisional record and the NL Central tied for third with the

NL West with a record of 404 and 406 behind the AL East 449 and 361 and the NL East 423 and 385 and ahead of the AL West and the AL Central. This got me wondering how to think about relative divisional strength now with the balanced schedule. Is relative divisional record a good measure? Should we only look at the strength of the top teams in the division? How should we as baseball fans think about relative strength of divisions? And I think, and you can tell me if you disagree, but I like out of division records. I like the inter-division record of each division. So how did that division's teams collectively perform against teams in other divisions. And this is the way that

our friend Rob Means at Baseball Prospectus typically looks at this when he will look at divisions that were historically strong or historically weak. And he just this week wrote something about the AL East and AL Central's pursuits of history. And they're at opposite ends of the scale, much like the Otani cat tweet and the Yankees Kissinger tweet. One is at the top and one is at the bottom. I don't think the disparity is quite that great. But the AL East this year was historically excellent. So outside of the division, AL East teams went 193 and 127. That's a 603 winning percentage, which is a 98 win pace over a full schedule. And that is the second best interdivision record ever after a division that you both know well,

the 2001 AL West. Although in that case, only four teams and a very top heavy division. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the Mariners were on top at the time. If you count that, then that was technically the highest just ahead of the AL East this year at 6.05 instead of 6.03. But I think it's harder to do it with five teams, probably. So I think you could give the nod to this year's AL East. And this year's AL Central went 131 and 189. That is a 409 winning percentage outside the division. That's a 66 win pace over a full schedule. And that is the second worst interdivision winning percentage after the 2018 AL Central, which was 125 and 205.

That's a 379 winning percentage, 61 win pace. And that caught my eye because Rob had a leaderboard or a laggard board for the best and worst divisions. And there was a lot of central on the worst division, a lot of AL Central specifically. He even mentioned that of the top 20 or I guess the bottom 20 worst divisions, I think nine of them were the AL Central, which that doesn't reflect well. I guess it's not particularly surprising because that is a repeating pattern here. I asked him just what that looks like over time. So, cumulatively, not just going year by year, but I asked him to send me those interdivision records for the 30-team era. So, since 1998 and then also since 2013 when we got balanced divisions, same number of teams in each division. Here are the numbers for the respective divisions, okay? So since 1998, I think Rob excluded 2020. Best division, no surprise, it's the AL East 527 interdivision record. Then the AL West at 517, the NL West at 509, then the NL East at 502, then the NL Central at 490, and finally,

bringing up the rear, the AL Central at 456. That's like a 74-win pace over a 162-game schedule, and that's since 1998. So collectively, the AL Central has been basically a 74 win team, whereas the AL East has been more like an 85 win team collectively. Now, since 2013, AL East still on top 534 interdivision winning percentage, then the NL Central at 520. So maybe that's a little surprising to some people that the NL Central actually has been the second strongest over that time. Then the AL West 507, then the NL West 504, then the NL East 486, and finally the AL Central at 459. So what are we going to do about the AL Central is my question. What are we going to do? Like, should they get relegated?

Yeah. This can't go on, but it has gone on for so long. And it hasn't really been any less pronounced lately, this disparity, this East AL Central or just AL Central relative to everyone, really. It's kind of, we might lump the centrals together since 98. I guess that's kind of fair in that the NL Central is second worst, but it's a distant second worst. Yeah. AL Central has been far worse consistently than the NL Central. So what could change this? Do you two have any ideas about when this might change, how it could change? Because it doesn't really look like it's going to change in it could change, because it doesn't really look like it's

going to change in 2024. No, it sure doesn't. But someday, maybe someday, it's got to be different. But I wonder just like, could whatever institutional advantages and disadvantages have caused this to happen? Could that shift enough that we will see an overturning of the traditional hierarchy here? I think it would come down to one team sort of channeling something like the 2001 Mariners, like some fantastic season that just turns that year upside down and garners a lot of new interest in that team. And then I think that teams would have different strategies on how to cope with that. But I think to an extent, the competition might try to rise to meet that level for some teams in the division, which could result in a trend towards higher in

that pack. Yeah. So that's the common explanation for why we've had this disparity is that you have the Yankees in the AL East, you have the Red Sox, you have these high spending teams, and then the high spending teams force the other teams to spend also, or at least to be good without spending much in the Rays case. And everyone just has to raise their game to compete within the division. Whereas in the Central, you've just had some sad sack teams, sorry to say, you know, you've had the Royals who were terrible and then had a couple really excellent years and then have been terrible since and other teams that just haven't had high payrolls. And we've seen that. It's like no one's pushing anyone, you know, like the Twins

just won that division. And then it's like, well, we're going to trim payroll. And you look at that and you're like, well, they could maybe get away with that because there's just no other great team in that division. There might be up and comers, but there are some pretty terrible teams too. Yeah. I'm wary of being convinced that shame in the face of like a really strong competitive team elsewhere in your division is going to like motivate you because we've seen a lot of teams be pretty shame proof but i do think it would take something like that and they should have aspirations to like compete against the playoff field more than their own division like i think that that sort of reorientation of perspective would be useful but i don't know how you necessarily

do that because you could require a salary floor, but ownership's not going to concede to that without a cap and the union shouldn't accept a cap. So you're kind of relying on market forces in a way that I think is likely to not result in much progress. I feel like we're more likely to see dilution in other places by virtue of expansion than we are necessarily to see the essentials be like, ah, we're embarrassing. We got to do something about that. You know how all the pobos make that sound, ah. I guess it's bad for one division to consistently be the seller dweller, right? Because you're never going to have perfect parity across teams or across divisions. But if one division is always lagging behind, then those teams, you know, you're going to get weaker teams making the playoffs. Typically, you might get,

say, the Twins having an extremely long losing streak in the playoffs. I'm not saying that's exactly why that happens, but maybe it kind of contributed to it. If you're not going to ever have really great teams coming out of that division because they're not forced to be great by their closest competition, then maybe that waters down your playoff field a little bit.

So it's probably not great. One division that over decades is that far behind. And I don't know what will change unless it's just some sort of radical realignment that just does away with the current division structure or rearranges things somehow so that it would just be different franchises in The Central if there were still such a thing as the Central, right? That might be the only way that this ends because this has persisted for quite a while. Not to say that you can't enjoy AL Central baseball or have fun rooting for AL Central teams,

but it is hard to deny that long-term trend. I hear a cat. Whose cat am I hearing? Oh, that's mine. Sorry. Hello, Kevin's cat. No, don't apologize. What's your cat's name? Ophelia. You don't have to. Okay, Kevin's cat. No, don't apologize. What's your cat's name?

Ophelia. You don't have to. Okay. I was going to say, you don't have to tell us. Ohtani hasn't revealed his cat's name. Ophelia. As we've learned, cats, great content. Hopefully on podcast too.

We have two. I would be a terrible cat owner if I didn't say we had a second cat named Gwendolyn. Ophelia is the one that is wanting to make her presence known. Well, she has. Congrats. I have learned so many people listen to the podcast, Ben, because they're like, how is Pepe at his butt? And I'm like, oh my God. It's a way to know, you know, it's a way to learn things. It is. Ophelia is a Mike Trout tier supporter in a way as well. So she's entitled to make an

appearance. Okay. So this question comes from Jonathan, who is a fellow Patreon supporter, who said, saw this note in an old issue of Baseball Weekly 1998, as one does, and thought this would be a fun stat blast. On May 13th, 1998,

David Bell became the first hitter to swing and miss in the game, which came after 145 pitches. All other pitches were either taken or contact was made. I would assume this has to be a mark, whether to start the game or not, that hasn't been approached in a while. But I'm curious as to whether this is anywhere near the record in the pitch tracking era. And I asked Jonathan to send me a picture of this just so I could see this item.

Did you feel a breeze? When the Indians' David Bell struck out in the fifth inning at Baltimore May 13th, he was the first player in the game to swing at a pitch and miss. The first 145 pitches thrown by Orioles starter Doug Drabeck and the Indians' Chad OJ had either been taken as a strike or ball or been hit by a bat. Bell's whiff was the game's first. So naturally, first thing I did was look up the play log for this game to confirm that this was true. And immediately we run into trouble because we have a disagreement about the whiffs that I do

not know how to resolve satisfactorily. Okay. So I did some research. I looked at some other contemporary newspaper accounts. You know, there's no stat blast rabbit hole that I will not willingly leap into all the way. I found a couple mentions of this in papers at the time in a Sheldon Ocker column who was covering Cleveland. This was in the Akron Beacon Journal. The story for this game has a note that says, weird stat. Until David Bell struck out to end the top of the fifth inning last night, no batter had swung and missed at a pitch for either team, a total of 146 pitches. And then I saw a similar brief mention of it in an AP account. I don't know whether that was picked up from Sheldon Ocker's account or noticed independently, but they both claim that that was the first whiff in that game.

Now, it is true that that was a whiff, that he struck out swinging to end the top of the fifth and that it was the 146th pitch of the game. So, so far, so good. that it was the 146th pitch of the game. So, so far, so good. However, the baseball reference play log, which is based on Retro Sheet, says that not only was that not the first whiff of that game,

it was not David Bell's first whiff of that game. Yeah. So the Retro Sheet-based play log says there were three swinging strikes in the game prior to that. A pitch from Doug Drabeck to Omar Vizquel in the top of the first. There was a pitch from Chad OJ to Jeffrey Hammonds in the bottom of the first. And there was a pitch from Drabeck to David Bell in the top of the third.

So what to do? How do we resolve this? Well, we can't completely yet. yet. I know that the RetroSheet pitch-by-pitch data, which in its complete form goes back to 1988, and there's some stray data from some years before that, and it's not perfect, especially in the earlier years. It is potentially prone to some mislabeling, so it's possible that that's wrong. I would not have thought that three pitches in three different innings would be mislabeled like that, like a different sort of strike or whatever it is. But I suppose it is possible. Now, of course, I considered, well, should I try to get in touch with Sheldon Ocker, who is a reputable reporter?

He won the BBWA's prestigious award for career achievement several years ago. He's retired now. And I thought about contacting him, but then I was like, well, what would I say? Right. Are you sure that there wasn't a whiff in this game in May 1998 in the first few innings 25 years ago? silly question to ask and probably be similarly silly if I were to try to track down Doug Drabeck or Chad OJ or Jeffrey Hammonds or David Bell or Larry Young, who was the home plate umpire and scrutinize whether there was a swinging strike or a called strike or a foul or whatever.

Players, sometimes they say, I remember every pitch I ever saw, right? But I think after 25 years, probably the trail has gone cold on that. So I have emailed a producer acquaintance at MLB Network just to inquire as to whether they have that archive video in the vault somewhere. I looked on YouTube. I searched around. I didn't see anything. But MLB has archives. I assume that they have Indiana Jones style warehouses. And if they have this game and if it's digitized and if they would share whether some of those alleged whiffs were whiffs, then perhaps we could have no way to answer this, which I thought it's kind of interesting either way, because this is not ancient history. This is 25 years ago. We were all watching baseball at that time, right? And it's inaccessible to us. It might as well have been before games were televised. Like if it was life or death, maybe we could get someone to answer this somehow. It must be somewhere on a VHS or something, but there's really no way that we can easily ascertain

this information, even though it was within fairly recent living memory. So one takeaway from this is just that, you know, if it's not like the last few years, then might as well have been a century ago as far as being able to verify these things. The other thing is that very often, and we've talked about other examples, stats would just be wrong. You know, they'd just be misreported and no one knew because what were you going to do? You couldn't look it up. There was no baseball reference at the time. There was no MLB game day even at the time. That wasn't until the early 2000s. And so you could just kind of claim whatever you wanted

and who was really going to check you on it, you know? And I don't know whether some writers would cite stats in good faith and just think it was right, but it wasn't for whatever reason, or whether they would just knowingly make it up and say, well, no one's going to call me on this. But Dennis in our Patreon Discord group posted an example of this the other day from a 1985 newspaper article that says, stat from the past, Mickey Mantle went to bat 63 times against Boston reliever Dick Raddatz and fanned 46 times. And that is not remotely true. He didn't come to the plate nearly that many times against Dick Raddatz or fanned that many times.

And so you kind of have to wonder like, well, where did they get that? Why did they think that? Was this like a game of statistical telephone where this was written somewhere and then it was passed on and it was exaggerated and it was blown out of proportion? There's a stat like this that Sam Miller wrote about in his substack about Clem Labine retiring Stan Musial some ridiculous number of times in a row, which wasn't true, but just got repeated everywhere. So you couldn't verify this information for most of baseball history. So I have some sympathy, but I also wonder, what did they think when they were citing this? Why did they think that this was right? We're spoiled. We're used to being able to look stuff up, which is why it's

frustrating that I cannot verify that David Bell whiffed before the fifth in that game in 1998, at least as of yet. Yeah, we're spoiled. We're definitely spoiled. And when I don't know how to look something up, I can just go bug other people who do and they can find it for me generally. Exactly. Which is what I did here with frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson, who's on Twitter at rsnelson23. And I asked him, well, if this is true, then is it a record or anything? You know, would 146 pitches into a game before the first whiff, would that actually be notable? Is that a weird stat? Is that unprecedented?

And Ryan determined that the median number of pitches into a game that the first whiff comes on is nine. And the mean is 13.7. So usually you're seeing a whiff, I guess, within the top half of the first. And I'm sure that over time it's become earlier and earlier as we have a more whiff-tastic brand of baseball. But if this were true, if the 146 is legitimate, then it would be in the top 10. So that's something. But the record, at least according to the data, which again, it might be off, but if the data is accurate from RetroSheet, the record is 191 pitches into the game. And this happened on September 16th, 2000. The Rockies were playing the Dodgers, surprisingly in LA, not in Coors Field. The starters were Julian Tavares for the Rockies

and Eric Gagne back before he became a closer and a guy who got a lot of swings and misses. And the first whiff of the game came in the bottom of the sixth, no outs, 2-2 count on Todd Hundley, and Tavares struck him out. So 6th inning, that's pretty far into the game, 191 pitches. There's 181 in 2nd, and then 180, 162, 162, 155, 147, 147. Those are all the ones that would be ahead of this, 146. Some of them came in the 6th inning, some of them came in the sixth inning. Some of them came in the seventh. So it looks like the latest that it has happened is the seventh inning on July 21st, 2007. Rockies again at Nationals. Rodrigo Lopez and Mike Bassick were the starters. And the first whiff came with two outs in the top

of the seventh. Troy Tulewitzki struck out swinging against Luis Ayala with the runner going, but there were fewer pitches in that game than in the record game. So yeah, it would be weird, but not quite a record. However, worth putting in the notes section of your column if in fact it is true. It would be weird if it weren't true because like why would you have put that in your column?

Why would you put it in there? Yeah. Did you just fall asleep during the first inning and miss a couple whiffs or something? So if I'm able to confirm this somehow, I will follow up and let you know. But for now, it is an enduring mystery, although probably not one that people will be losing a lot of sleep over. Wow. Well, Kevin, I hope you've enjoyed being on Effectively Wild today.

Before we let you go, would you care to plug anything where people can find you or anything else that you'd like to bring attention to? I just want to thank you for allowing me to join you on the show. It's been great. I'm not really on anywhere. If anyone wants to find me in the Discord, though, and the Mariners Fantasy Challenge is active and anyone can participate. Instagram, you can reach out to me for details on that. But other than that, yeah, no, just it's very surreal to be on here talking to you guys and I appreciate it. Well, you earned it and I guess in a way we earned it, too. So thanks again for the support and for joining us.

And thanks to your wife as well. And of course, thanks to Ophelia and all of your menagerie. Okay, I have a parting treat for you. I hope it'll be a treat. It's a future blast. Haven't had one of these in a while. Once our past blast series caught up to the present, we started doing dispatches from an alternate timeline future with the year corresponding to the Effectively Wild episode number. As you recall, back on episode 2074, we switched to a format where we do an occasional future blast in a radio play style format, voiced lines and production and sound effects, the whole deal. We got a great response to that one. People said, we want to hear more,

and now you will. So just like last time, this future blast is co-written by Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball, and Alan Smale, an author and astrophysicist. The text for the Future Blast is linked from the show page, but we will start with a quick reminder of what happened last time, and then we will give you the next installment in this continuing baseball sci-fi story. Previously on The Future Blast, Alien Baseball in Deep Space, November 2074. Aldi Olsen and his crew were making a close call now too as they approached Oumuamua, the strange rock that had first visited the solar system in 2017 and then gone on its way. There were gullible people back home on Earth and the Moon who thought this ugly hunk of rock was an alien visitor. Space Force Roamer 14 was a scout vessel with a crew of three.

His co-pilot Lily May Lynn. Wait a second, Ollie. That rock is slowing down. Incoming radio message. Island 2? The space habitat they'd launched from. Not Island 2. Greetings, people of Earth.

I have waited to say that for so long. Randy Garrett, the navigator. It's coming from the rock. I am Felix. This is now a first contact situation. Behind Felix's voice, they could hear commentators from Redbird Field as the seventh inning recommenced. Felix, you're following the game? Of course.

In the top porthole, they could see a connector coming down to latch onto their top hatch. Come on, get the bat off your shoulder. Polly reached up to undog the hatch. Play ball. 2093. Felix at the Bat. A lot had happened down on Earth over the past 19 years. Wars and famines, the last of the glaciers, the end of the Gulf Stream, killer heat waves in Europe, hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in California and Italy,

tsunamis in the Philippines, danger and worry everywhere. But none that had bothered the growing number of residents of Island 2, the L5 habitat in permanent orbit over the suffering Earth. Here on Island 2, the few thousand inhabitants of a dozen plus years ago had become the 15,000 souls of today, and most of them were watching as Felix of Harmony ambled up to the plate, settled in on those three stout legs with the backward knees, and said, The score stood 4-2, but with one inning left to play. His voice was amplified as he dramatically knocked the dirt out of his ludicrously huge spikes,

and the crowd roared. It was nice to have their favorite visitor back in the ballpark. Felix had been playing an exhibition game almost two decades ago at Island 2 when he'd stopped in the middle of a double play, seemingly listening to something, and then walked away, back to Amuamua. Within a half hour, he'd undocked, edged away from Island 2, and sped off. An hour later, orbital telescopes saw a moment of bright flickering around the rock, and then it was gone. And now he was back. He'd arrived a month ago out of nowhere, Amuamua appearing within a hundred clicks of Island 2 and Felix asking if he could dock and whether anyone would like to play some baseball. He'd

been holding tryouts and playing pickup teams of one sort or another every day since. Felix, it turned out, was a good hitter with a great glove, strong arms, and a mesmerizing running style that sent his legs flying every which way on his headfirst slides into second, third, or home. In the front row of the box seats behind home plate, Ollie Olsen sat with Lily May Lynn and leaned over to say, Never gets old, Lily. Right? He's a real showman. Show being. Whatever. Lily laughed. I have to admit, I missed him, Ollie. Missed you, too. It's been a while.

You're still flying roamers, right? Ollie asked. Yeah. Me and Randy, back and forth from here to the Red Cities. Boring milk runs, really, but they pay the bills. You're still private? Yep. Ollie said. The high rollers like me as their chauffeur, so up and down I go.

Here, Luna City, Mars, the Moon, that new Venus station, even Earth now and again. Same old conversation every time. You know, what was Felix like? What did he eat? Where was he from? Was he nice? Scary? All of that. I always tell them, read my book. And they laugh. Read a book? Just drive, they say. And then about an hour goes by, and they want to know if Felix has a sense of humor. Stuff like that. Like you say,

it's all pretty boring, but it pays the bills. At the plate, Felix of Harmony, he of the good sense of humor, settled back on his hind leg. It was always outside the box, but special circumstances prevailed. The pitcher, a lanky ex-minor leaguer from the Cubs organization now working under contract on Island 2, where he sat at a desk during the day and played baseball in the artificially contrived evenings, looked in. Close by the sturdy Felix, the ball unheeded sped. That ain't my style,

said Felix. The umpire said. Ollie laughed. Good old Felix. Always the joker. Always with some baseball reference he'd looked up. It was like nothing had changed in the years he'd been gone. Boo! Ollie yelled, backing up the poem. Come on, Blue, that was outside. Felix looked back at Ollie and smiled that singular smile, where one side of the face moved up. Then he nodded to Ollie and Lily and stepped back in. Lily was shaking her head. Why am I here, Ollie? I was surprised to get the invitation. I didn't think he'd remember me at all. Felix and I hit it off pretty good during the tour back in the day. We were barnstormers, picking up local players and putting together games. It was fun. He talked about you, me, and Randy all the time.

He thought we'd make good ambassadors. New Vladivostok on the moon, Brozberg and Watneyville on Mars. All of those were couched as diplomatic missions. Earth system rolling out the red carpet with baseball games all over the place from ancient Fenway to brand new Burroughs Field, putting on a show to prove it was ready to join that interstellar space pack that Felix talked about

when he quit bragging about his slash line and all those exhibitions. Lily smiled and shook her head. And then he left without a word to any of us, Ollie. Not sure if that was his fault, Lily. I mean, baseball? What a weird thing. Maybe his superiors had had enough and called him home. Amuamua sure got out of there in a hurry.

And now he's back and we don't know why, said Lily. There was rustling behind them in the aisle, and then came a raspy voice they both knew well. Move over, you two. This aisle seat is mine. It was Randy Garrett, the third musketeer from the good old days. Mind if I join you? Randy, said Lily, who stood up to give him a hug. Ollie did the same. The three settled in, Randy laughing. I never thought we would see Felix again, but here he is, taking his swings. Ollie brought Randy up to speed. Yes, he seemed to be the same old Felix and still loved the game. No, they didn't know why Felix had brought them all here, but yes, they were sure it had something

to do with baseball. Speaking of which, at the plate, Felix signaled to the pitcher, and once more the Dunn's fear flew. But Felix still ignored it, and the umpire said, Fraud! yelled Ollie, laughing. Why were you late, Randy? Lily asked. I've been busy, he said. Got us a new contract while I was in Luna City. Island two to Burrows and back. Six runs, good money. Good news, said Lily, but somehow her heart wasn't in it. And now, as they watched, the ballpark became less bucolic and more historic. Full sense hollows disappeared and reappeared.

Everything got hazy for a moment. And then it was Wrigley Field, 1932, game three of the World Series, Yankees versus Cubs. Felix waved his bat at the pitcher, who was dressed in a 1932 Cubs uniform with number 12 on the back. That was Charlie Root's number that year. Here are the final highlights of the great battle between the Yankees and Chicago Cubs, with Governor Roosevelt showing out the ball for the third game. First inning, Babe Ruth up, Combs on second, Sewell on first,

and now for the slaughter that blasted Charlie Grimm's boys. Ruth lets go the fatal throw, and the Babe sucks it into the bleachers for his first homer of the series. A mighty smash, bringing his team a lead of three runs, and starting the avalanche, which gave the Yanks seven and Chicago five when the game was over. Felix pointed his bat toward right field. Ollie laughed. Calling his shot now.

Hilarious. Ollie yelled out, Bambino. And Felix looked back to see his pals and said, loud enough for them to hear him, Watch me. Lily asked, What happened to Casey at the bat? I thought that's what he was going for. Ollie shrugged.

I think he wanted a happy ending. And sure enough, they watched as Root looked in, shook off the sign, shook it off again, then went into his windup. The crowd, the thousands of them there in that oddly shaped ballpark, rose to their feet, laughing and chanting. Felix! Felix! Felix!

Root delivered a fastball. Felix turned on it, met it on the meet, and there it went, off toward right field. It was crushed, certain to be out of the ballpark, probably landing on Sheffield Avenue. But this wasn't really Wrigley. This was L5, Island 2, and there was the Coriolis effect to consider. Island 2 was an O'Neill colony, a huge rotating cylinder with its population and living space and ballpark all situated on that inner curved surface. And all that rotation did a big number on balls in flight. The ballpark was lined up so that the pitches ran parallel to the rotation axis, so they weren't affected. Once the batter hit them, though, watch out. Ollie had started to explain it to Lily early in the game, so she'd

know what was going on and wouldn't be surprised. See, when you hit the ball upward, it's heading toward the axis of rotation. So the Coriolis force shoves the ball to the left and then back to the right as it comes back down. And if you're hitting the ball to left field, well, then... Lily might not have been a sports fan, but she was a spacer too. She'd cut in. Hit the left, the Coriolis force shoves the ball down more quickly than you'd expect. Hit the right, the opposite, the ball stay higher for longer. She smiled sweetly. If I have that right. He grinned back. Yep, sure. Now up went Felix's ball, swerving to the left as it approached the top of its arc. The right fielder was off and running, his eye on the ball heading for the fence. But he was running too long and too far left. Here we go. Lily leaned forward. Look at that thing.

Physics in action. Felix was running as well in that endearing three-legged gallop. He wasn't really faster than your typical designated runner, but he sure looked faster with that extra leg. He rounded first and kept going. Meanwhile, the ball skewed to the right as it started coming down. The right fielder skidded on the grass as he tried to correct. The crowd was going nuts. Nope, said Randy. No, sir, he won't get it. Players who'd been on Island 2 a while had learned to cope. The noobs and space rookies, though, their instincts were all wrong, and Felix's ball had stayed high, then dropped short of where the fielder had expected. Ollie opened his mouth and then closed it again. Lily knew what air resistance was. The right fielder crashed into

the fence, and the ball landed behind him and took a funny bounce. By this time, Felix was rounding third with that huge smile, hopping up and down as he ran for home. And that is how he does that, said Ollie. And inside the park home run, thank you, Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis and Felix of Planet Harmony. Felix stepped out of the box, raised his right front arm to call time, turned around to face the crowd and took a bow, taking off his cap with a flourish. The crowd got even louder. Felix trotted back to the box seats, that strange three-legged gait of his almost making it a canter. Dear friends, he said to Ollie, Lily, and Randy.

He opened the gate to the field and beckoned them out to stand with him. Wave to the crowd! They turned and waved. On the big board in center field, the feed showed the four of them together, posing. Felix was hugging all three of them, his expansive arms over their shoulders as they stood close by. My favorite humans! He boomed for all to hear. My baseball friends!

My travel team! Willie whispered to Ollie and Randy. Travel team? Baseball friends? What the hell? Randy said. Ollie answered. Well, it won't be boring. And it wasn't.

All right. Thanks to Alan and Rick for writing. I was your humble narrator. And reprising their roles from the previous Future Blast were our producer and editor Shane McKeon as Ollie. Effectively Wild listener, Patreon supporter, and Twins fan Chris Hannell as Randy. Listener, Patreon supporter, and Tigers fan Amy Lee as Lily, and Dan Zimborski of FanCrafts as Felix. Thanks also to TyOpps on freesound.org for the intro music, and to Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun for the umpire strike one and strike

two call. Meg will be at the winter meetings in the coming week, so we will record when we can. Perhaps we'll have some major transactions to talk about. Until then, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Jeremy, Asher, Ilya Silverman-Essrig, Jack Ballard, and Ben Roth. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only,

monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, and, as you heard with Kevin today, potentially podcast appearances. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Even if you're not,

though, you can email us your questions and comments at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Effectively Wild Secret Santa registration is open until December 10th. Check the last link on the show page. An extra special thanks today to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance, as well as his voice work.

We hope you're enjoying your weekend and we will with Ben and Meg from Fangraphs.