Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2127: Right Down the Dickson

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about recent headline-generating comments by Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon, a Padres position change, and the possibility of another Ronald Acuña Jr. extension. Then (34:11) they bring on Patreon supporter Sean Saxe and answer listener emails (40:13) about the best substitute for Babe Ruth in a remake of The […]

Let's play ball. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2127 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, we're going to do some emails today. We're going to do some stat blasting. We're going to be joined by a Patreon supporter shortly.

Just a bit of banter before we are. I am quite sure that we will be talking about the Angels a lot less this season than we have in recent seasons, thanks to the absence of one particular player whom we have discussed quite a bit. However, there are still some Angels that we have devoted some time and attention to. And two of them made a bit of news when they showed up for spring training. A lot of people talking about two Angels, Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon, Angels, Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon for maybe directly opposite reasons in some respects, right? Mike Trout, he just really, really wants to be an angel.

He wants to win with the Angels. He doesn't want to leave, at least as of now. He said that to ask for a trade would be the easy way out. He said, when I sign that contract, I'm loyal. I want to win a championship here. The overall picture of winning a championship or getting to the playoffs here is a bigger satisfaction than bailing out and just taking the easy way out. So I think that's been my mindset. Maybe down the road if some things change, but that's been my mindset ever since the trade speculation came up. He said he can't predict the future. He doesn't entirely rule out ever wanting to leave the Angels. But as of now, he wants to stick it out. Now, that is pretty tame, obviously, but my Mike Trout standard, some of his comments, I guess, if you're used to reading them in the context of his typical comments, were maybe a bit more pointed than usual in the sense that he says he's been pushing

ownership to spend some money and sign some players. He said that he has pushed and pushed. He's going to keep pushing as long as I can until the season starts or until those guys sign the various agents who are still available. He says he's been in contact with Artie Moreno and the team president, pushing, pushing, pushing guys who can make the team a lot better. So he is urging the Angels to do something. He's not coming in and saying, I think we have a great team and we have a great shot and we're going to go all the way. But he's also saying that he wants to go all the way with the Angels, not elsewhere. And some people have used this occasion to question, does Mike Trout want to win? What are his priorities? Should he be forcing his way out?

Is there anything to this idea of bailing or wanting to do it the hard way? So I've been going back and forth on this because Mike Trout is saying something about himself. Yeah. And we, and by we, I mean like the collective media fan analyst apparatus are trying to interpret it as him saying something about like the game. I don't know that that's quite right. I don't think that there's anything wrong with a player prioritizing for himself playing on sort of obviously competitive roster, one that has playoff ambitions, one that is being invested in by his organization. So we should say that like right here. I mean, like maybe,

but I also think that when you do have really intense competitive drive, the idea that you would be able to shape something into something great for yourself, your teammates and your fans is like understandable as like a human motivation, right? Like everything he's saying here is very legible to me as something that a person who does have a lot of ambition and perhaps feel some amount of satisfaction from persisting and doing something very challenging, even if the promise of it paying off isn't total, that makes a certain kind of sense to me. I think that you can want to do that, that it can be, that can be important to you personally. And it doesn't mean that you're sort of casting judgment on other people's sort of preference to depart in service of getting a ring or being in an organization that has

a better ownership situation. I would not fault Mike Trout for wanting to spend like the back half of his career in a better situation than he's been in. But I also think that like, Mm-hmm. side is going to be able to try to throw their weight around a little bit, it's going to be him. But it's fine for him to try that and want to prioritize that. I don't think that this makes him, you know, a dupe or uncompetitive or anything like that in much the same way that I wouldn't find him deciding to be like, you know what, I'm just out of here to be calculating or cowardly or you know a disloyal you know it can just be you know both things or ben the alternative is it can be like the time that my dad wanted us to walk out of lake placid but was like i've already paid for four people's tickets to see this movie so we're're just going to watch Oliver Platt

like be a crocodile worshiper. And Jane Fonda, Jane Fonda? No, Bridget Fonda. If it had been Jane Fonda, it would have been so much better. Now I'm wishing that Jane Fonda had been in Lake Placid with Bill Pullman because it was Bill Pullman, not Bill Paxton.

And then maybe my dad wouldn't have wanted to leave. But he was like, we've already paid for these tickets. We have to watch the rest of this movie. And I was like, but why? It's not good. But now that I can watch movies with the assistance of edibles, I say, maybe it's actually good. Got to find out what happens to the giant crocodile. You do have to find out what happens to the giant crocodile and the old lady. to find out what happens to the giant crocodile and the old lady. I have been going back and forth when I think of this. If Mike Trout says, and he probably would say that,

he probably has said that his top priority is winning. Yeah. Then I guess it does become, well, do you mean winning where you are currently? Or are you going to drop everything and do anything you can to win? And it doesn't matter where you are and what you have to do to get there? And he could say, not selfishly, he could say, hey, I'm open to a trade. I mean, the angels might be interested in trading him or they might see some value to that. It might make sense for him and for the organization.

If he just said, hey, I'm interested, like explore the options, you know, not even demanding a trade, like he signed a contract, he'll serve it out. But just saying I'm receptive to this, then I don't think anyone would think less of him. Like, oh, his word is his bond. He said he'd be an angel forever. I mean, this is kind of a common thing in sports anyway to begin with, but especially with a great player on a not so great team. So if that really is his sole goal for the rest of his career or his main goal to hoist a trophy to win a World Series, well, he's probably not going to do that in Anaheim, or at least his odds are lower there. He's seen enough to know that by now. And so we kind of have to evaluate, I suppose, what he says in that light, right? I mean, they couldn't win when Otani was there. So if he's just like, hey, go get another free agent. Well, I mean, if they do sign another big free agentani. Are they going to have a good chance with someone else? And gosh, given the history of that organization signing free agents and the fates

that befall those free agents shortly after. So I don't know that I could look at this if I were Mike Trout and realistically think to myself, this is going to change. And all I have to do is just push ownership to spend a little bit more like it's going to happen. It could happen, but he just has limited control over whether it will happen. So if he were to say that my top priority is to win and also my priority or a priority is to stay here and do it here, maybe those things are kind of incompatible at a certain point. Like he had to make a decision. I want to sign an extension. I want to sign multiple extensions to stay here. So winning a World Series could not have been like the number one thing on his mind at that point. It's just not the number one way to maximize your odds. And I wonder when he says like asking

for a trade is the easy way out, does he consider what Shohei Ohtani did the easy way out? Obviously, Ohtani wasn't under contract. He was a free agent, but he elected to go to maybe the team that gives you the best chance of any to win a World Series. And we didn't criticize him for that. We were like, hey, he put in his time. There's nothing more he can do, and it wasn't enough there, and you'd go to a better team. So what? You want to win. That's okay. But Mike Trout might say, no, you got to stick it. Like I don't think you need to be bound by this bad situation you're in just because. I don't either.

It's like a complete accident of fate, you know, like the Angels happened to draft him. Okay. They were higher on him than a lot of organizations that didn't see him as the great player that he would be. But you don't have to really be grateful and loyal based on that at this point. So there's that. On the other hand, I kind of feel like, well, what if his top priority wasn't winning somewhere else? Like that didn't override anything else, everything else. would that be bad? Would I think less of him? Yeah, would you? I don't think so.

Like I don't think I would particularly care. If he's giving his all in any given game and any given season, that's all I care about. You know, like if you're not someone who wants to force your way out to get to a better situation, I don't think to myself like, oh, he's less of a competitor, really. I just don't think that. I mean, he's clearly trying his hardest in games, right? He's trying to help his team win. And so if this doesn't manifest for him in a way that then leads to him hopping to another

team, I don't really think that like says something negative about his makeup or like his will to win or his want or anything, you know? Like he's obviously super competitive. He got to the major leagues and became the best player in baseball in his chosen sport. He's at the pinnacle of the profession or he has been. And so, I don't really make much of a value judgment either way. Yeah. I mean, maybe I'm giving the guy too much credit in a way, right? Maybe there isn't a silent, easy way out for me, right? Maybe it isn't a for me thing for Trout. No, maybe he's judging. Yeah. Yeah, maybe he does mean like some side eye. Maybe he's, I don't know, like we're speculating about his mood because I guess that's, you know, what we do this time of year and like look at everyone and say how trim they are.

But like, you know, maybe he feels a sense of being let down by Otani leaving, you know, maybe there is some vinegar behind the statement. I don't know. There's some vinegar behind the statement. I don't know. You know, I just the instinct for us to look to guys like Trout who occupy such a an important place in the game's landscape, even if they aren't like big stars beyond baseball and say that like what they do needs to take into account not only what's best for them, but for other players, that's a real thing. You know, he's a, he is a leader in the sport. He has a huge contract, you know, him sort of being a good example of, you know, a big leaguer and having an expansive understanding of what it, you know, the sort of appropriate and, and, and good ways for a player to conduct themselves, whether that's going to find another team where they can make a lot of money or going to find a team where they can chase a ring. Like, you know, there's something to that. I don't want to, like, say that that doesn't matter. But sometimes I think, you know, we make so much of these proclamations.

We call them proclamations, right? We think of them as these big statements. And it's like, I don't know, maybe Mike Trout just likes playing in Anaheim and he thinks that he can be persuasive to Artie and he's going to try because it's important to him to win there and that might be a fool's errand and, you know, it might be working sort of in opposition to some of his other goals, but like, you know, maybe that's what he wants to do and that's fine. Maybe he doesn't want to make his family move.

You know who I've been thinking about a lot the last week? Who? All of the Japanese media members who are here. Oh, yeah. To follow Otani and how cool it is

that they didn't have to move. Mm-hmm. Like, that's really cool. Yeah. You know, and I don't know, I don't want to like, you know, we can be a little fawning when it comes to Otani. I'm not saying that he was like, I don't know I don't want to like you know we can be a little fawning when it

comes to Otani I'm not saying that he was like I can't move because I have to think of these guys but um you know I I did think about that this week I was like how nice for you you didn't have to go anywhere that's great it is nice now the other angel who made some headlines, Mike Trout's teammate, Anthony Rendon, who's been sort of a muse for me. We did on an episode last September. This was episode 2061. We went through just like the complete timeline of Anthony Rendon quotes and everything he's ever said about his desire to play baseball and how he regards baseball in relation to other pursuits in his life. And so really his latest comments are completely in keeping with the previous ones. And this is vintage Anthony Rendon here.

This is a continuation of the theme. Yeah, very much so. It's not like he suddenly said something he's never said before. It's just that anytime he says any of these things, it's newsworthy because no one else talks like this, really. No other baseball players. I don't know if they think like this. I'm sure there are others who think like this. But if they think like this, they don't say it.

And it's probably not common to think like this either, right? So he comes in and reports and everyone's asking him about his thoughts about baseball. And he mentions that he was going through old emails to clear out some storage space. And he found a pros and cons list for whether he wanted to continue to play baseball from 2014 when he was 24 years old. So, again, that just shows you this is nothing new here. Right. And so he said, baseball has never been a top priority for me. This is a job. I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before

this job. And then they went on to say, like, is it a priority? It's not your top priority. Is it a priority? And he said, oh, it's a priority for sure because it's my job. I'm here, aren't I? because it's my job. I'm here, aren't I? There's sort of a sarcasm that maybe doesn't come through in print with Anthony Rendon and maybe also kind of a surliness sometimes too. He obviously does not like talking to the press and has not made a secret of that. In fact, when asked if he wanted to be there, he said, I don't want to talk to you guys at seven in the morning or whatever time it is. And then they said, well, do you want to play for the angels? And He said, I don't want to talk to you guys at seven in the morning or whatever time it is. And then they said, well, do you want to play for the Angels? And he said, I've answered your question.

So why do you keep picking at it? He obviously does not enjoy the back and forth here. Now, he had some non-headline getting comments that, you know, he probably just didn't hear because they weren't quite as notable. He said that he wants to be healthy. He wants to contribute. He does not like being injured. That is not fun for him. He views himself as a team leader, he said. And, you know, he's not making it easy on himself here. On the one hand, I admire him for speaking his truth, right? He is speaking his mind here. He is not shying away from how he feels. He's not doing eyewash and saying, yeah, it's my top priority. He's saying my family, my faith,

they come first. I mean, that in itself is not a controversial statement, I don't think. Like, most players would probably say their family comes first. And if they are religious people, perhaps their faith as well. I mean, if you are a religious person, you're probably not going to say like, yeah, it's baseball and then it's God or whatever. Like, you know, you kind of have to have the ranking the other way if you're actually a really religious person. And then are you going to say your job matters more than your family? I mean, that in itself is not unusual, but saying it's not a top priority for me. I mean, I guess top priority depends whether that only applies to number one. Some people will say things are a top priority and it's not number one. It's close to number one. It's up there. It's a priority, right? So, I often wonder like,

well, why are you making it harder on yourself? You know, why not just spout the cliches and say, oh, yeah, I want to stay healthy. I want to get out there, whatever it is. And he does not do that, cannot bring himself to do that, doesn't want to do that. And so every time he makes some comment like this, there's just another round of Anthony Rendon discourse. And of course, it was one thing when he was healthy and productive and one of the best players in baseball. And it's another thing when he is perpetually injured and not coming back and also not speaking to reporters for months at a time or not giving them any sort of substantive comment or update on his condition. Right. So sometimes he makes it hard on the reporters too, and just generally makes it hard on himself, I think, with the way he handles this. And yet there is something I admire about it. You know, you say like, well, why doesn't he just spout the cliches? But we don't want players to spout the cliches. We want them to say what they think. And in this case, he says what he thinks and it does not go over well.

It's so interesting to me that the injury thing casts this into a different territory for people because like he's submitting to examination by team personnel, right? Like they can't just be like, oh, I guess you feel bad today. You know, like he's hurt. He's like hurt. And someone with the angels was like, yeah, he's hurt, you know. I feel like what has happened is that people take the injury stuff as like evidence for lack of want, right? as if the Angels wouldn't have a vested interest in this guy being on the field and being like, hey, you know, it seems like you're actually fine. To me, him being hurt and having this sort of perspective is really understandable because, like, of course he's hurt. Now, I guess people think, like, maybe he's not crushing his rehab because this is just a job, but I don't know. I think it's, I get why people react negatively to this, because there are so many people who, despite the fact that the difference between them and Rendon

is not a matter of want, it's a matter of ability, are like, I can't, I want to do that job and make that money and I can't. So why doesn't he appreciate this more? And it's like, I don't know, man, like, he just, he likes it enough to do it really well. And then he got hurt, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, happens. I get why it rubs people the wrong way. But there are plenty of times where a player does not have the kind of financial security that Anthony Rendon does, and gets hurt. And then it's just out of baseball and is done and never gets to earn that money. And that's the economic structure of the game. And so we could think about this as him, like, getting one back for all those guys. Yeah. I think the one critique that I might

agree with or certainly understand is, well, if he says it's just a job, it's just a living, well, he doesn't really need to do it anymore to make a living is the well, if he says it's just a job, it's just a living, well, he doesn't really need to do it anymore to make a living is the thing, right? If he's just doing it for the paycheck, now, granted, he has some very large paychecks still coming his way. But if he's- Who among us? Yeah, I mean, right. He has 116 million almost still due to him, but he's made 180 million almost. So, you know, if he's saying like, well, it's a living, well, you know, you don't need to make a living at this point. You've already made your living. If your priority, your top priority is your family and your faith, like,

you know, you could just pocket the 180 million and go spend more time with your family and not have to put yourself through this anymore. Like you just retire, you know, that's an option. And so the fact that he doesn't retire, well, are you then just doing it for the money? And do you really need to do it for the money at this point after making as much as you've made? Or do you find some pleasure in at least some aspects of the sport? Like, it's just, you know, it's not fun for people to watch him thinking that he is not liking doing this, right? Like, he's an entertainer. It's entertainment.

Sure. Even if he were productive and playing well, it wouldn't be as fun for fans, I think, if you felt like he was just going through the motions with no zest for this whatsoever. It's like an ordeal. It's a trial for him and he's just doing it for the money. I think many people have done that or are currently doing that in their own professional lives. So you'd think it'd be relatable. Like, yeah, I'm just doing this because it's a living. It happens to be a very lucrative living in his case and a very high profile and competitive field that a lot of people would want to get into, but it is a job. And the fact that he is very good at baseball does not necessarily mean he loves it. Those

things often go hand in hand, but it fascinates me that sometimes they don't. If he loved it, would he be even better? Who knows, right? It's amazing that he's come as far as he has without it being an overriding priority for him. But that would be, I guess, the one critique maybe is that like, well, if you're just in this for the money, you know, you've made a lot of owners treat baseball this way and we don't really get on them for that, right? Like they're not doing it for the love of the sport necessarily. They're doing it to make money purely and they may or may not be enjoying it and they may or may not be as open about it as Anthony Rendon is, but people don't get as upset about them because maybe you don't know down to the dollar what their salary is for one thing. Or, I mean, it affects your team even more, your owner's investment, right? Then your third baseman, your ostensible theoretical third baseman, and yet people are more likely to pile on the

player. So I get it. You know, he's, again, not doing himself any favors. Like if he doesn't want people to ask these questions, then there are things he could say. And so, in a way, that makes it more fascinating to me that he won't say them, that we're getting the raw, unvarnished Rendon here for better or worse. I am sympathetic to the entertainer argument. I do think that that has some merit where it's like part of the job that you are just going through the motions on is to delight you know and to give people a fun day at the ballpark and you know that is a not small part of the job of being a big leaguer and he's you know maybe falling down on that piece of it although like that's a dangerous logic to extend because like there are all kinds of things that fans don't like about players and like are they supposed to kowtow to all of them i don't know ben i don't

know here's the second thing i think which is it is surprising to me that it is such a big deal because no one likes arty moreno so you think that if there were ever a circumstance where a player could be like i'm kind of cashing a check here that people would be like, well done, sir. Right. Doesn't already deserve it, you know. Unless you have the owner who's somewhat on the miserly side or, you know, he's not the most miserly of owners. It's been about who he spent the money on as much as how much money. But also he could spend more money.

he could spend more money. And so I guess if you're thinking like, well, Artie's only going to spend so much and he's spent that much on Rendon, so he's not going to spend on someone else, then it's less like, all right, you're taking Artie to the cleaners here. You're thinking if you're an Angels fan, well, that's $38 million that Artie is not going to spend on someone else now. Right. But OK, so last couple of comments. One, we've already done the Padres preview. So I figured I'd mentioned that they had a notable position change in the infield. So they are shifting Xander Bogarts over from short to second base. And that is somewhat notable because he's been a shortstop his whole career. And obviously, he just signed a big long-term contract with them as one of their many, many shortstops. But they are shifting Hasan Kim back to shortstop. He was a great second baseman, but he had been a very good shortstop in the past. And he's the superior defender. when the more famous, maybe higher paid player shifts over, I don't know whose idea this was, but the star at least has to acquiesce to it. Maybe this is because I grew up as a Yankees fan

and saw Derek Jeter refuse to do that. And A-Rod come over and move despite the fact that he was a better shortstop. And yet Derek Jeter, selfless team player, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. The narratives are so interesting, aren't they? Yes. And so I like that this is happening in that sense. I don't know what it means for Bogarts' long-term value. Presumably he'll be better at second base, but this is notable, I guess, also because Jackson Merrill is hot on the heels of everyone on that team. And he's been playing some center field to potentially move out there as Tatis did. Yeah.

I mean, I wonder because Kim is not under contract for much longer, right? Like this is his last season, I think. And or I guess there's a mutual option for 2025. and or I guess there's a mutual option for 2025. So if they move Merrill to the outfield and then Kim leaves, then should they just have left Merrill there? Like he has a shot to make this team out of spring even potentially. I don't know. But I wonder how that sets up long term. Yeah, I will be fascinated to see.

I guess part of it's going to be answered this spring as we see Merrill get more outfield reps. Because it could be that they put him out there and then it's like, oh, that's not going to work. But maybe it will be great, you know, Ben. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe. And lastly, speaking of long-term things, Ronald Acuna making some noises about a possible extension of sorts with Atlanta. And you might say, didn't he already sign one of those? And yes, he did.

But much like, remember Bryce Harper kind of floated the idea of like, I want to be a Philly for life. And it was like, Bryce, you are already pretty much. I mean, you know, he kind of maybe wanted to get an extension on top of the very long contract he already had. And sometimes in these cases, it's because you have already been surpassed payroll wise, salary wise. So you want to use that as an opportunity to renegotiate, let's say. Right now, Ronald Acuna says, it's not a secret that I want to be a brave for life.

It's my hope that we can make that happen soon. It's not a secret that I want to be a Brave for life. It's my hope that we can make that happen soon. And obviously, like, there's no acute, immediate time pressure here because he's going to be a Brave for quite a while still, right? He's signed for the next few years. There are team options for 27 and 28. So it doesn't have to be worked out right now. And so what that means is I would like to make more what I'm worth as opposed to what I'm going to be paid, what I agreed to be paid. But his extension was not quite

as below market as his good buddy Ozzy Albee's is. But it is still well below because Acuna is now arguably the best player in baseball. And he is due to be making $85 million total for his age 26 to 30 seasons. If he hadn't signed that extension, he'd be entering his contract year now. And assuming it went okay, he would be in for an enormous windfall that he is now not in for. And so when this happens, it's always a tricky discussion because if you're the team, you're like, well, we took some risk in signing you and you knew this was a possibility and we all went in with our eyes open and it just so happens that you've become incredible and we're saving quite a bit of cash on you here. But a lot of teams having made the smart decision

from their perspective to sign that kind of deal, are not eager to tear up that contract and say, you know what? We won that negotiation by too much. So here's more money. The Royals did that with Sal Perez some years ago.

But will the Braves do that? I don't know that they will do that because they're willing to let guys walk, right? Like Freddie Freeman left, Dancy Swanson left, like they will let you leave. They will not fork over the cash for sentimental reasons purely. That's definitely true. They're not in the habit of that. But I would say the following things about Atlanta's situation, Ronald Acuna Jr. situation, etc., which is they have this loaded, incredible lineup, right? They have this great team. And we still have their payroll,

from a pure payroll perspective, $228 million. Now, someone out there is going, hey, Meg, what's the luxury tax payroll number? And you know what, friend? What a good question. It's 270. So, significantly higher. They've gone through a couple of the CBT thresholds. But I do understand Acuna's request for this far more than I did Harper's because Ronald Acuna Jr. just turned 26. He just put up an eight-win season. He is the best player in baseball. Certainly, I think, the best player in baseball with half of Otani on the shelf, right? So, he is still quite young. He plays right field and not first base, unlike Harper. And again, just turned 26, as opposed to Bryce, who is 31, right?

And will turn 32 this year. So, I mean, Ronald Acuna Jr. will also keep getting older, but Bryce Harper will turn 32 soon. Anyway, there's that piece of it. I think the other thing is that when you look at the Braves as an organization, all of their other guys are basically done. You do have a couple of them coming off the books next year, assuming that they don't exercise club options.

So like $16 million attributed to Marcelo Zuna might be coming off the books. And Travis Darnot is due eight next year. And Aaron Bummer is due seven. And Tyler Matzik is due five. And all of those are club options. due seven and Tyler Matzik is due five and all of those are club eight are club options Morton is a free agent uh in 2025 and is always like close to retiring anyway so they will get some salary relief there and they don't have they have a not very good farm system Ben and they have a not good farm system because they've graduated all of these guys who are incredible and under long-term team control.

But are they obligated to? Do they strike me as a team that's likely to hop right on it? No, but I wouldn't be completely shocked if they worked out a longer-term deal that both sides were happy with because the thing about it is it's Ronald Acuna Jr. You know, you want to keep your superstar. You want to keep them. And keep him just in general. Yes.

And there's a version of this deal where what they are maybe trading is, you know, option years for guaranteed years and then extending a little bit beyond that. And if they do that, they're not getting into like bad years of Acuna in theory, right? So I don't know. I wouldn't be completely shocked if they did it because it's not like they have a big extension candidate. Now, maybe they look at, I don't know, look to next year's free agent market and then are like, oh, well, you know, maybe we want to sign some pitching. I don't know. Like, man, you know what, Ben? I don't know. I don't know.

It wouldn't be crazy. It would be surprising. But it's also a less surprising thing for him to have asked for given the state of the deal he signed and the year that he just had. Unlike Bryce Harper, where it's like, you're just a first baseman now, Bryce. And you're on a $300 million contract. So, like, you know, I don't know. Okay. Let us bring in our Patreon guest. Well, we are joined now by Sean Sachs, who is a top tier Patreon supporter. Meg and I just bantered a bit about Mike Trout.

We have a genuine Mike Trout tier supporter with us now. Sean, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm doing okay. Excellent. And as you know, if you've heard any of these previous Patreon appearances, I always start them off by asking how you discovered this podcast and what could have possibly possessed you to support us at the highest possible level. I think it was actually the team preview series. I want to say early 2017, maybe. Okay. It's been a while. I grew up in Chicago. I was obsessed with baseball as a kid. I liked both the Cubs and the White

Sox, more so a Cubs fan. Went off to college. The Cubs weren't as good for a little bit there. I lost some of the direct connection. I stopped following them intensely. But then they started getting good again. And I think it was the 2015 season where I was like, oh yeah, this is fun. I'll keep following them. So thanks to Jon Lester for that. Yeah, and I think after, you know, 2015 and 2016, I really got more into baseball in general. So I was just looking for podcasts or articles, and I forget exactly how I of team preview pods. I mean, we do 15 of them a year at this point, and we've done them for a number of years. So maybe they're just the single most popular answer when people say, how did they find Effectively Wild? But I think it also helps us cast our net a little wider. I was going to use the term honey trap, and then I realized that was not at all an apt term for this. But what I mean, we entice people into the podcast just with sort of your standard baseball talk. Hey, we're previewing the season. And then things get weird, and by then it's too late.

And then Ben sends them pictures of his feet. That doesn't happen, not even at the highest possible Patriots here. Although, that's an idea. I don't know that I would take advantage of that. That's kind of comforting. So, Sean, where are you in the world? And what, if anything, would you care to share with our audience about what you do? Oh, yeah. So I am in Austin, Texas. I am a software developer, which feels

real Austin of me. My wife is from Austin. We met at college. She's much more of a go-getter than I am. And so she wanted to go back to Texas and I followed her there. I think the second part, what possessed me to become a Mike Trout tier member, just a combination of things. Definitely with the pandemic, I can work remotely. So I started working a lot more remotely, listened to fewer podcasts. But this is one of the ones that I keep listening to. Thanks. Glad we made the cut. Yes. It's sort of been, you know, at this point, seven years now that I've been listening to it.

And we found ourselves in a financial situation where I felt comfortable saying to her around Christmas, is it okay if I spend, you know, $100 a month for a little bit of time? She said, yeah, sure. And then later asked me why, what for? But at that point, I'd already signed up. So you already agreed. Yes. No take backs. Yeah. Well, I can't think of a better cause really in the world that you could devote this money to. So thanks very much. You're very welcome. Yeah. You're not the only software developer in Austin. So thanks very much. You're very welcome. Yeah, you're not the only software developer in Austin, and I don't think you're the only software developer

who has been on Effectively Wild on a Patreon appearance. So probably software developers overrepresented in the Effectively Wild audience, I would guess. Though of the software developers in Austin, I would imagine that not all of them have like a tie in their immediate family to the city. You know, most of them are just out and out transplants. So you got that going for you. That's true. Yeah. Carpetbaggers.

Yes. I've been in Austin for more than 10 years now. And so I, after five or six of those years, I definitely started complaining about how it's changed and all these people are moving here. What's the distribution of Rangers fans and Astros fans in Austin? Is that Astros territory, Rangers territory? Bit of both? Obviously a bit of both, but. Oh, that's a good question. Probably more Astros territory.

The impression that I get is that there's a stronger connection between Austin and the Houston area than there is between Austin and Dallas. I work with someone directly who's sort of an Astros fan, lived in Houston for a while. And I think that's more common that I see people who have ties to Houston, whether family or they live there and they're in Austin currently. Yeah. I found an Austin website that says that technically it's considered Astros home territory. Although I also see a bunch of people asking on Reddit and elsewhere whether it's more Astro's territory or Rangers' territory, so I'm not the only one who

has wondered this. I do have the MLB TV package, and I can confirm I cannot watch either the Rangers or the Astros. Okay. Well, neither, then, is one possible answer. What have your impressions of the Cubs offseason been? Mild irritation. Yeah, that seems quite common. Yeah, that's fair. I'm now forgetting exactly what Sahada Sharma said in the preview, but I do remember the preview. I'm sort of summing up the feelings pretty well. Yeah, I'd say so. Well, we have some emails to get to here, some from fellow Patreon supporters, some not. I have a stat blast to close us out with, but let's start with an email or two.

So here's one from Monty, Patreon supporter, who says, For some reason, while up with my newborn son at 2 a.m. a few nights ago, I began thinking about the 1993 movie The Sandlot. And after skimming the wiki and not finding any prior discussion related to my thoughts, I thought I'd send this to you all. It occurred to me for the first time that since the movie is set in 1962, the universal love for Babe Ruth throughout the movie makes more sense, given that it is much closer to his career. If Babe Ruth's final season were 1935, that means the movie is set only 27 years after the end of his career. I realize this seems very obvious when written out, but it had not occurred to me before. So then I started thinking about players from the late 1990s who might stand in Ruth's place if The Sandlot were to be set in 2024.

Which leads to my question. If you were to remake The Sandlot in 2024, which professional player would most appropriately stand in for Babe Ruth in terms of accomplishments and recency of their career? Of course, no one in the last 30 years has the stats of Babe Ruth, but maybe Ken Griffey Jr. would be the best candidate. Just my best guess to answer my own question that may or may not make sense to anyone else. I think Griffey would have been probably my first answer here, just because you need the combination of not just a really good playing career, in Griffey's case, a Hall of Fame playing career, but I think you need like a strong sense of a cultural imprint, right? Like having a footprint in the broader discourse, not only around baseball, but around sport. And I think, you know, of the guys in that era who were really good and who were not tainted by PED suspicion, he probably tops the list. And, you know, how lucky was baseball that he was such a cultural force and was so good, right? Because you could imagine him being, you know, charming and on TV and on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and also kind of not being as good as

he was. But he burned so bright, particularly at the start that I think he can be Mike Trout and be really great, but not be a cultural figure. Right, exactly. So I would probably pick Griffey. Yeah, I think that's a good answer. It hasn't even been 15 years since Griffey retired. That's right. It's not actually quite the same gap, but it feels like it is because it's been about 25 years since he played like a superstar like Ken Griffey Jr. like a superstar, like Ken Griffey Jr. So it does sort of seem like the same age gap, even if it's not. It's just that he had a long sort of sad tale to his career, whereas Ruth was great pretty much right up until the end. Sean, anyone else come to your mind as a possible candidate here? I was drawing a complete blank until the question suggested Ken Griffey, and I was like, oh yeah, of course, he's got the cultural cachet.

Yeah, I can't top that. I can't think of anyone else who was that important culturally and also that good, where you could rely on people knowing who that was. Cal Ripken Jr. might have an argument. That's maybe the best other candidate I can think of who lines up. Or Ricky Henderson. Bonds you could consider, if not for the juicing and the PED stuff, as you mentioned, Meg. And also he was great a little too recently to line up perfectly with this 27-year gap. email was that instead of remaking it now, we should just wait until 2060 or so and substitute Shohei Otani in there because he'd probably be an even better comp for Babe Ruth, who he's often

comped to. And then he said, well, would you object to just going with Otani now? And no, I would not. We could just not wait. We could just remake it while he's still active. Yeah. I don't know. There is something about the, like, you know, that movie is so steeped in nostalgia to have an active player feels like it, it kind of rubs up against that in a weird way, but I don't know. They've, you know, they put LeBron in Space Jam. Yeah. I wonder whether this could happen because on the one hand, everything gets rebooted and remade now. On the other hand, everything gets rebooted and remade now. On the other hand, they don't really make baseball movies so much anymore. So kind of

caught in between there. I also wonder whether if Ken Griffey Jr. came along today, he would be any kind of cultural figure if he were exactly the same guy with exactly the same skills, but baseball now instead of baseball in the late 80s, early 90s. I wonder whether he would resonate. I mean, Otani is kind of your best case scenario, right? And he's probably not as big as Griffey was then. Yeah, but like, I don't know. Otani is still a really big deal. And I don't say this as a knock on Shohei, but like having sort of a guy like that with that level of charisma and sort of that interest in being a participant in broader pop culture and sports culture who can speak English, I think would allow for some amount of that, right? Like,

I do think that there is, you know, something to that if you're wanting to incorporate him into TV or film, which again, they can do with Otani. It's not like he's precluded from that, but there is an ease, you know, if you have a guy who seems more inclined to do that stuff. I don't know. Mm-hmm. Question from another Patreon supporter, Julian R. Brace yourself for some slightly off-color language here momentously urgent point of pedantry for pitches that are quote-unquote right down the dick yeah whose dick are we talking about the batter the catcher or the umpire whose dick is it oh man i'm kind of surprised we haven't gotten this question before it's something i never

really thought about even though we have used and discussed this expression in the past. Well, it tends to be more of a Meg-ism than a Ben-ism, so that might be part of it. I think that if I were forced to answer, I guess I would say the batters, which is sort of having a more metaphorical understanding of the taking question right because like i don't know that that is from a you know if you're lining up the zone and the pitch with the dick is that the dick i don't know i don't know i kind of think of it as like all being mushed over a collective dick i i agree that it's yeah it's it's just a combination of all the because it's middle middle is down the dick right that's the thing right sean do you think of if you think of this assuming you have ever thought of this which why would you have

yeah would you would you say batter's dick yes whenever i hear the phrase right down the dick i i think of the batter's dick and then. Whenever I hear the phrase right down the dick, I think of the batter's dick. And then I feel extremely uncomfortable about a ball actually being right down the dick. Yeah. Well, that's why you wear a cup. You don't really want it to be down the dick, but just in case. But yeah, I think it's the batter's dick. But then it's weird that it's middle middle specifically, right?

Because the batter's dick level doesn't tell you whether it's inside or outside. Like is a pitch that's perfectly like dick high for the batter, but on the outside corner? Is that down the dick? No, right? No. But why? I think, you know, it's a poetic dick, Ben. It's one you're not meant to take literally.

It's supposed to be a squishier concept. I love your job. Yes, I do think that that's right. And I think maybe this evolved from related expressions. So Wikipedia, for instance, or I guess Baseball Almanac maybe mentions that Ted Williams used to describe certain good pitches to hit as being at cock level. Did he really? Now, that's from Wikipedia, but there doesn't seem to be a citation, but I would believe it. The Ted Williams?

He was quite profane when he wanted to be, which was, I think, usually. Yeah, I mean, like, cock level is a way more intense turn of phrase than down the dick. And also more specific because that specifies that we're talking about height, right? And where it is vertically, not horizontally, laterally. And if you look up at Baseball Almanac includes the expression down the cock. Oh, my God. And also you can find, you know, cock shot. Sometimes you will hear two.

And that's sort of the same, like belt high or I guess cock high fastball down the middleixon says that there is a an entry there for down the cock in the dictionary in the baseball dictionary which makes it very official and the entry just says synonym of down the middle and that book which i think the most recent edition of dixon was from 2011 and it doesn't seem to say down the dick it seems to me like cock shot and cock high and all these cock related expressions maybe preceded the dick versions and that the dick version has gained popularity over time because i wonder if that just maybe or it just reflects the greater prevalence of of dick relative to cock as a synonym for a penis in culture at large, possibly. Like, I just checked Google Trends and put in dick and cock.

Good deal. And the interest over time, it would appear that at the beginning of this span, like in the mid-2000s, they were neck and neck. And now it appears that Dick has pulled ahead of Cock, which is quite a way to say that. So, there seems to be some separation there. So, maybe Dick has gained on Cock just in general, and that's how we've gone from cockshot to down the dick. I mean, the alliteration is so much better. Yes. That's true.

Yes. Yeah. Excellent point. Yep. Yeah. Cockshot is satisfying to say. But down the dick is better than down the cock, I would say. Thank you for opting for satisfying to say instead of mouth feel in that particular moment.

Appreciate it. Okay. Well, apologies to any parents listening in the car with their kids. Working blue. It was technically like, I don't know if this is explicit. I mean, we're not even swearing here. This is not like a bleepable situation. I don't

know, Ben. I do think Down the Dixon should be the episode title, though. I think you found it. It's a good suggestion. Aren't you happy you chose this episode to appear on, Sean? Always. I mean, at least I don't have to talk about Henry Kissinger. I guess this is not really unrepresentative of an effectively wild email show. I thought you were going to say not unrepresentative of a conversation about Henry Kissinger. I knew what I was getting into.

This is somehow expected. This is what you paid for. Okay. Brendan, Patreon supporter says, I'm headed to Arizona in March to catch some cactus league, not cactus league, cactus league ball with a friend and realize that I'm looking forward to watching MLB games without the artificial stomps,

claps, and assorted hype noises that go with the usual stadium experience. What is the origin of this phenomenon in baseball? What is your opinion of the elevated decibel level of MLB games? Are certain ballparks worse offenders than others? For example, Yankee Stadium. Yes. Is there a ranking? Has it been quantified?

Well, I do. I don't want to disappoint, but it's not as if, you know, spring training ball is devoid of that entirely. Right. Like there's there's a let me hear hands clap. You know, there's there's going to be some of that. But it is, I think, a little less frequent and forceful. Although, you know, we still do the, that's me clapping into the mic. People are just like, that Pavlovian response is hardwired at this point. Is Yankee Stadium really bad for that, Ben?

You had such enthusiasm behind your answer there. Yes, it's impossible to get into at times. And then when you get into it, you may be deafened by it. So at least that's been my impression. I've heard that common complaint, but this is a common complaint almost wherever you are. So I don't know for sure that it is louder. It seems louder to me subjectively. This always seems to me like a complaint that each successive generation has, maybe, that it didn't used to be so loud. I mean, it's sort of the same complaint that you get about kids and their loud music these days, right? It's just like the genre of music changes. I don't know whether the volume level does or whether our tolerance for it does.

You'd think like as we get older, maybe our hearing gets less acute and we wouldn't be as bothered by the loud sounds. But if anything, we're maybe more sensitive to the loud sounds. Sean, are you bothered by loud noises at sporting events? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know anyone who likes it, who's like, yeah, bring it on. Like, I want to be just completely, I want my ears to be ringing after I leave the stadium. But like that's sort of the experience seems tailored for that age group.

Yeah. And then, you know, as soon as I got past that point, I was very irritated by it. Yeah. And maybe that's good if that's something that gets kids into it. Sure. And you hook them, you make them sports fans, then maybe it's worth deafening everyone else. Because I, yeah, I had sort of similar feelings when I was a kid. Now it was an earlier version of Yankee Stadium, then perhaps

it wasn't quite as loud, but when they would play Black Betty or whatever, or some of the other music cues that they did then, I thought that was fun. So maybe, I don't know whether it was not as loud or whether I just didn't mind it as much. Yeah. The last two baseball games I've been to, one was a Round Rock Express game this past year with my kids who were five and I think, yeah, five and two at the time. And that was a very different experience. Also, I only saw three innings of that game because they retired and we left. But the game I went to before that, I went to an Astros-White Sox game in Houston, which was the first time I'd been to an Astros game. And for that game, I sat in silence for the entire game. I was somewhat rooting for the White Sox, but not enough to actually cheer. I'm not a very vocal attendee anymore. But, you know, so for that game, yeah, any noises or songs that played, you know, I mean, they loved when fireworks went off after a home run.

They loved just all the noise and things that were going on. And so even as they get older and they can actually pay attention to the game, which did not happen, I think a lot of that stuff definitely sort of keeps them more engaged. And so I'm simultaneously irritated by it, but also especially at the minor league games. I know the vibe they're going for. And so I don't begrudge them that. I feel like kids are not, you know, like there are all kinds of different kids, right? Like people have different levels of sort of introversion and extroversion even at a young age. But I feel like when you're like a kid, you are much more likely

to be simultaneously bursting with sound and movement. And so having an environment that facilitates the sound and the movement, right, is exciting. So, yeah. Yeah. Or if you're maybe a casual fan, then you need to be hyped up because you're not pre-hyped. You're not invested as it is. I don't know exactly when this started. Michael Clare at MLB.com did a history of the walk-up song a few years ago,

and he pinpointed it as around when Ken Griffey Jr. came up, like late 80s, early 90s. That was when it really became prevalent, at least. Of course, before then, you had organs, you had pep bands, you had people making other sorts of noise. But of course, there was a time when you just didn't have a PA system. But it is too much for me at this point. It's not a baseball specific thing. Yeah. No, definitely not. sporting venues, you can find a bunch of rankings, but I don't know that they're at all scientific. And some of them have decibel levels. But again, I don't know whether that is really that scientific either. I found some articles about this, like in 2011, the New York Times did an article about this stoking excitement arenas pump up the volume. And they quoted some people who did actually seem pro-volume. But they explained that it has to do partly with stadium construction these days,

that it's just louder than ever. They wrote, the proliferation of luxury suites into which patrons often take cover from the noise has put greater emphasis on the size and clarity of sports sound systems. Rings of spiffy mezzanines force conventional seating rows to reach far higher and farther from game action. And so if some people are just farther from the action, then you have to jack up the noise even more to reach them.

And you deafen everyone else who's between them and the sound system. And there are experts in this article who are quoted saying, like, this is dangerously loud. It might not do damage if you're just going to a game every now and then. But if you're a season ticket holder, if you're a player, then it actually could potentially take a toll long term. you're indoor and you get ricochets and echoes, then that could be even worse potentially. So that's not as much of an issue in some baseball places. But yeah, like, you know, the old Metrodome or the Kingdome, like these places were loud. And then sometimes you get like vuvuzelas or whatever, and it's just out of control. And then also I found another article that said that stadium and arena architectural design has included a mission to amplify sound for decades to just make the events over the crowd noise. And then it becomes this kind of feedback loop where one thing just makes the other thing louder and then you have to make the other thing louder and it just gets louder and louder and louder. We also have minor league hockey in town and I

like going to that, but taking my kids to that, I feel like would be making sure I have headphones with me so they can, you know, handle the noise that's inside versus the outside baseball stadium where it's loud, but not quite to the same level as an indoor arena. I don't know that I even mind the sheer volume, although I do after a while mind the sheer volume. I do just find that as I age, like my ability to do simultaneous auditory processing is declining. And so, being able to carry on a conversation while, like, I can make your hands clap or whatever the lyric to that song is. It's just everywhere. Constant.

Although, one of the nice things about going to Chase is that the sound system there sucks so bad that it's sort of like at a lower register just innately because like the speakers are bad so go to chase that's the answer there you go it would be nice if there were more regularly throwback just quiet nights or quiet games i'm sure that happens somewhere at some point league ben well yeah this is why, yeah. This is why you got to come to Fall League. Because then it's so quiet. But I mean, in the big leagues, that'd be fun if they were just like, it's just a. That's not nice. They're making all kinds of noise because the fans are still committed.

Yeah, they're chanting sell the team there. But no, if they just said, we're not doing a PA system in this game, or maybe we'll announce who's batting, but that's it. No other noise. Just nothing. Nothing to pump you up. No fake decibel meters that exaggerate how loud it is. No make some noise.

Nothing like that. Just a nice pastoral scene. I would go to that. Yeah. That'd be nice. I want to say the UT baseball games are pretty quiet compared to professional games. I haven't been to a ton, but I've been to a few. They just felt a little more chill.

That would make sense to me. Yeah. Okay. All right. Question from JJ, Patreon supporter, who says, From JJ, Patreon supporter, who says, Lewis Hamilton shocked the world of motorsport when it was reported that he'll be leaving Mercedes and joining Ferrari in 2025. This would be like Jeff Passan reporting that Mike Trout is leaving the Angels to join the Dodgers beginning in the 2026 season. Will never happen.

Mike Trout will never leave the Angels. However, the seasons in advance or midseason report of team change is common in F1. But how would the baseball world react to knowing free agent moves years in advance? So if we knew that someone was signing, but not now, just at some point in the future, what would that do? How would that work? Well, we kind of have a version of this in baseball. It's less specific, right? But there are, you know, when we talk about really good players who are repped by Scott Boris, we tend to assume like that they are going to hit the market and go, mostly go somewhere else than their current team because Boris guys don't tend to do extensions

and this and that. So we have that as, as I think maybe the closest proxy and people, and by people, I mean, fans of the team that that player plays for currently seem to dislike it very much because they don't like to, you know, no one likes to plan for what happens when, you know, Juan Soto isn't on your team anymore, but like probably not going to be on your team anymore. Yeah. We know that player is going to scrutinizing every injury and, you know, like usage decision to be like, we must preserve the health and production of this future insert, you know, team name here. It would be madness. I'm so grateful you specified it was F1 because I was like, I don't know who that is. I don't know what sport that person plays. Due to my own motorsport ignorance, I asked JJ why this happened.

And he said, A, he thinks it's the limited number of seats. Two, the lack of a U.S. style uniform player contract because seats are at a premium and teams are finicky. Drivers and their agents will want to ensure that they have a seat rather than have a clean break with a team and pitch themselves to the free market in the offseason. With Hamilton, his current contract was reported initially as two years covering 2024 to 25, but the 2025 year was revealed to be an option year for Ferrari. If they could secure Hamilton now, why wouldn't they? So there's no chance Mercedes can impress him enough this season to get him to stay. So that would be like to name a Boris client that you just mentioned, like what if the Yankees traded for Juan Soto, but teams are worried that, oh, they'll convince him to stay and sign an extension. And so some other team could jump in

and now sign Juan Soto preemptively for 2025 so that you know he's just playing out the string With the Yankees which is what Yankees fans Are worried about anyway And I asked well aren't they Worried that he won't give his all For his current team Because he knows he's going to be going to another team Like wouldn't there be divided loyalties

And a conflict there And JJ said with Hamilton I don't think so Generational talent natural competitor More often the team principal will be frostier, usually by prioritizing the other team driver in a tight race. But because there's two champions each season, a driver and a constructor, there's still an incentive to perform. You know what I'm realizing? Someone could tell me that any words related to F1 mean something. And I'd be like, yeah, okay, I guess that's how words work now. I don't know anything about Formula One. I mean, I know about the stock car driver episode of Poker Face, but that's it.

Yeah, I saw that too. Well, that makes some sense to me that you'd be a little less worried about the divided loyalties there. You'd be a little less worried about the divided loyalties there. But in baseball, like if the player has already made their money and gotten their contract, like if they were somehow promised to a team and yet they still had to play well in order to get the money or something. Because, like, what if they've already signed their next contract? Yeah. What do they have to play for other than just, you know, personal pride and everything and wanting to support the team, except that you know that's not going to continue to be your team. And it might even be the rival of the team that you have signed with in advance. Yeah.

So I don't think that would work very well. Mess. In addition to, I mean, when we did that mercenary scenario, the email hypothetical about the player who just team hops, goes from team to team, the signs for a week or a day, we figured, well, would you root for that guy? What would it be like in the clubhouse? Like you'd be seen as sort of a deserter probably if you had already agreed, not just to test the market,

but actually signed with someone else. I think that would probably be pretty untenable. Yeah, unless you could make it about how you're quiet quitting and then you might be a hero to a certain demographic. Yeah. Quiet quitting king. Yeah, no, don't think that would work so well in baseball. All right, well, how about this scenario from Wilson, Patreon supporter? Let's say the entire players union gets together and decides they want to reset the market by ensuring that a player, not a two-way player, gets a humongous contract and free agency. They pick a guy who's youngish in his last year under contract and who has a track record of reliable all-star level production.

And they all universally agree to make sure this guy's stats are great. If it's a hitter, pitchers take a few miles off and throw middle-middle, down the dick, or hang breakers a little more often. Fielders don't quite hustle to balls in the outfield, allowing for extra bases, and catchers are a little slower getting the ball to second during steals. You can probably imagine what it looks like if it is a pitcher elected to be the designated guy, although that seems riskier because what if your designated pitcher springs his arm in May and then the whole conspiracy is out the window?

How good would the boosted players' numbers have to be before a team is willing to break the market rate enough to have residual lifts across the league? Does he need to break Judge's AL home run record, Bonds' MLB record, steal 100 bases Oh. team. Would a potential watchdog notice soon enough to prevent a balloon contract and confidently enough to figure out that there was foul play afoot? Not just that this guy happened to get a lot of meatballs if we're going with the hitter as the designated guy. Do we think that one season would be enough to affect this sort of reset? Like this player is good, right? That's part of the idea is that this guy has been very good. But like we are, you know, like even assuming that you are able to sort of influence the performance the way that you want to in a way that wouldn't look fishy to people. Would one season be enough, do you think?

I think the walk year, the platform year does matter quite a bit. And if it's just a guy who's already good having a career year, he's going to get paid. He's going to get paid. But is he going to reset the entire market? Maybe not. But if he's young, he had some baseline level of high performance and then he just has this otherworldly year. Yeah. Then I could see him breaking a record, maybe. So I don't know how much that really helps everyone. Like, does the rising tide lift all boats?

Does the superstar resetting the scale at the upper level help everyone else who's way down there directly. There's maybe some sort of residual effect there. I don't know exactly. But if we stipulate that it would even be worth doing or that it would work, do you think it would actually pass muster? Do you think it would be convincing to teams? I feel like there would be a Fangraphs article in May being like, what's going on with this player? Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say the same thing, because there'd be a lot of scrutiny on this player who's having not only a career year, but maybe an all-time great year. And some of this stuff would be tough to quantify, like given the data we have. I mean, if fielders were just not routinely making good plays on him, I guess he would maybe be able to tell that there was like a certain expected. They were moving. Yeah. Or you would know that he was far exceeding his expected weighted on base stats, right?

Like his WOBA would be way higher than his ex-WOBA because you would expect that he's not hitting the ball better than anyone else. It's just that the ball keeps dropping. Fielders mysteriously don't get to it. Even if they could make that look convincing, it probably would not convince StatCast. And so teams would probably already pump the brakes a bit because they'd say, well, this is unsustainable. I don't know whether they'd think it was a conspiracy, but I think they might think he was getting a little lucky at least.

And there's like a base. I mean, I know we're again, assuming relatively high baseline performance level for this player, but like there are some things you can't you can't fake in that way right like it would be hard for you to artificially inflate the like the defensive performance of a fielder you could maybe i don't know you could slow down i guess and like get thrown out but like i think that you couldn't do it convincingly very well. So I don't know. It would be an odd exercise. Plus, if I'm so like, let's imagine you're an outfielder and you're here to help opposing player A. We can just call him Juan Soto, right? Because like Juan Soto is a great player who's in a walk year and is hoping to really cash in and free agency.

to really cash in and free agency. You're really putting a lot of faith in that guy's walk year, booing everyone because you're going to turn in a less good performance and you're getting paid off of that. Yeah. Everyone else is going to be dinged slightly. Everyone who faced him. Right. Yeah.

If you're a pitcher also just taking something off when you face him, that would be clear too because you can look on a Fangraphs page and you can see the speed of the fastballs that some hitter has faced. And this guy's going to be getting a ton of scrutiny. Everyone's going to be writing about how is he doing this. And I think it's going to be pretty clear that he's just not seeing the same stuff that everyone else is. If his average fastball velocity is like three or four miles per hour lower than everyone else's, that's going to be pretty, pretty sketchy, right? that this was happening in an intentional fashion. It wouldn't just be, oh, he lucked out and he happened to face a bunch of soft tossers. You'd be able to tell that the pitchers he was facing were actually taking something off.

And that would be the smoking gun right there. I also think that there are plenty of players who, like, you know, they're good union men, right? They're not, there isn't anything nefarious going on with their sort of allegiances here who would be like, I'm not doing that. Like, I want to be in the room. And I say this as someone who knows that he was like,

is very involved with the Players Association, quite outspoken on these things. But I want to be in the room when somebody goes to Max Scherzer and is like, listen, buddy, you got to be less good so that this guy over here can get paid. I don't think he'd do it. And like, I don't think we have any doubts about his like labor bona fides, you know? Yeah. It would be tough to get people to do this for some nebulous indirect. Maybe this will benefit everyone collectively in the future, although

we won't be able to quantify exactly how well it worked or whether it worked. And it might not help me. And I have to impair my own performance. Yeah, this would be tough in any number of ways. I think given the data that we have, I think it would be very difficult. Like people have done analyses of the Black Sox in the 1919 World Series. And, you know, we don't have footage. And so we can only really rely on game accounts and stats. And so you look at like Shoeless Joe and people point out, oh, he had

great stats during the series. Yes, but then you can break down the leverage. And when it really mattered, did he do well? No, he didn't. And also there were some sort of suspicious sounding plays like there's all sorts of breakdowns that leverage modern stats to look at. Did those guys do worse than usual in the clutch when they had good hits? Was it only in the games when they weren't trying to throw them or were in low leverage situations, et cetera? If we had the footage and we had the stack cast and we would know like, okay, what's this outfielder's burst speed and jump and top sprint speed and all that stuff, you could know whether someone was not running as fast as they usually do or not having the same pop time that they usually do or not throwing as hard as they usually do. I think this would be very tough to get away with on a seasonal level. It also seems, I don't know, maybe this is more so other sports, but I feel like when players are disgruntled and it seems like they're not trying very hard, it feels like people point that out really quickly.

Yes. Oh, this person's not trying. Yes. I'm thinking actually Chase Claypool on the Bears. In theory, I'm a Bears fan. But there was tons of stuff this year about, oh, he's this, you know, theoretically important player. And he's clearly not trying right now. Yeah. Or if you're Anthony Rendon, then people will say that about you, too.

Again, a thing of quiet quitting. I know quiet quitting's not real. I'm not. Okay. Let's finish with some stat blasting here Nå er vi på veien. Okay. So Meg, last time we talked about the Midwest. Ill-advisedly, perhaps. We talked about the Midwest ill-advisedly?

I started it. Sir. Can I say, I was born in Cleveland. Oh, okay. I grew up in Chicago. I would consider Cleveland the Midwest as well. Okay, yeah. Well, so did our producer, Shane.

I don't know whether people listened to the outro, but he clarified that he thinks it's Midwest and just that it's more Rust Belt maybe than Midwest. But I also have had conversations with some Wisconsinites who have mentioned that growing up in Wisconsin, they sort of get the impression that other states which consider themselves Midwest aren't actually Midwest. I forget what, like, even like Indiana. You know, I went to college in Indiana and I had a conversation. They're like, yeah, growing up, we didn't think of Indiana as the Midwest. So, it may be that portion of the Midwest is more skeptical of the

other states. I say this as someone who spent time in Wisconsin while in grad school and has a lot of affection for that state. But there is sort of a, they have a way about them, about these sorts of things that could, one could interpret as being snobbish if one were inclined to be ungenerous toward the good people of Wisconsin, which I'm not saying one should be inclined to be. But if one were, no one even does crime. Well, there was a lot of discussion about this predictably in our Patreon Discord group and elsewhere. And people shared surveys and census data and polling like, you know, do people in certain states consider themselves in the Midwest and what the percentages are. And as you might imagine, like on the edges, on the parts that aren't so middle, it kind of peters out, right? And in the thick of it, in the real middle, the middle middle, down the dick of the United States, the numbers are higher, right? So there are some borderline states. And Ohio, for what it's worth, in the Census Bureau Middle West Review survey, 78% of Ohioans said that they were Midwest, which is like lower than kind of the core Midwestern states, according to these numbers, but higher than any of the others, too. So I bring this up again, not to wade into that dangerous and divisive territory, but because Tex, one of our listeners, he waded into it and he crunched some numbers. Tex Paisley, who is a Patreon

supporter, he wrote, like many other listeners, apparently, I took great interest in your episode 2126 banter about what MLB teams are located in the Midwest. I'm from Texas, but have lived in Chicago for a while. So we sort of did the reverse Sean Sachs, I guess, as an American geography enthusiast slash nerd. And thus, I'm particularly interested in Midwestern geography slash cultural identity. Thus, before listening to your episode, I already knew that the Middle West Review had published the results of two polling surveys last October and this month asking respondents about whether they self-identify as Midwestern. The October 2023 survey polled individuals across 22 states.

The February 2024 focused on four crossroad states, Colorado, South Dakota, Missouri, and Ohio, to get a more granular sense of regional identity. The first survey simply asked the respondent whether they were a Midwesterner, while the second survey forced the respondent to choose between Midwesterner or other regional identity specific to the state, e.g. in Missouri, whether they identify as Midwestern or Southern. to the state, e.g. in Missouri, whether they identify as Midwestern or Southern. The individual survey results are published online with the zip code for each respondent, so I figured I could analyze this data to see whether respondents who live in a metropolitan area with an MLB team consider themselves Midwestern. The gory details are all posted to a GitHub repository, which is public and you can link to if you talk about this on the show. I will. But here's a rough outline of what I did.

Number one, first, I combined and normalized the answers across the two surveys. The most difficult, least interesting part, but it gave me a single table with about 22,000 normalized survey answers sorted by zip. Second, I identified the census designated metropolitan statistical areas for the 12 MLB teams that play in a surveyed state and used this HUD crosswalk table to match each MSA to a zip code. As the name suggests, the MSA approximates the larger metro area around a large city and provides us with a rough proxy for fans of each baseball team. The 12 teams are Rockies, Twins, Royals, Cardinals, Brewers, White Sox, Cubs, Tigers, Guardians, Reds, Pirates, and Phillies. Total, they represent 11 MSAs, given that the White Sox and Cubs play in the same MSA, Metropolitan Statistical Area, and published the final definitive argument ending list of which MLB teams are truly Midwestern. The compiled results, along with individual survey results for each team, are in a Google sheet, which I will also link to. The results, as you can see, Tech says, are quite definitive. Six teams, Brewers, Twins, Royals, Cardinals, Cubs, and White Sox, all poll at greater than 90%, while three others, Tigers,

Guardians, and Reds, poll above 85%. It would be hard to argue that any of these teams is not Midwestern based on this data. The Rockies receive 30%. Hate this. Have an opinion. Have things to say. Pin that. While the two Pennsylvania teams each poll around 10%.

I'm sure you hate that too. Wait, both Pennsylvania teams? Excuse me. Wait a minute. Oh my God. So Milwaukee is most Midwestern. The Brewers, 97.4. Then Twins, 96.95.

St. Louis, 96.3. Royals, 95.6. The Chicago team is 93.95. St. Louis, 96.3. Royals, 95.6. The Chicago team is 93.1. Cleveland, 89.5. Detroit, 86.3. Cincinnati, 86.2. Colorado, 30.9. Oh, my God.

I'm going to lose my – I'm losing what is left of my mind. 11.5. And Philadelphia, 9.7%. No. No. No. That is No, no, no. That is just, no, Ben, no. Tech says, if I had guessed which teams would get over 50%, my guesses would match these answers. However, I was surprised that the St. Louis and Cincinnati percentages were so high and that Pittsburgh was so low, I would have thought that would have beaten out the Rockies.

And he goes on to express some opinions, some personal opinions about the Midwest. But what I said to Tex— That sounds ominous. I'm sure they were well-informed, probably more so than mine. But what I said to Tex, I was sort of surprised that there wasn't more variation, more separation among those top nine. I mean, I'm not surprised that they all qualified as Midwest, but I was surprised that they were all like 85% or higher. And Tech said, me too. He anticipated tiers along the following lines, like greater than 90% would be Chicago, Milwaukee, Twin Cities, greater than 75%, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, greater than 60%,

Cincinnati, St. Louis. And he said I was right about the top but didn't anticipate the enthusiasm from the other metros. So I will now clear out and let you rant about the Rockies and Coloradans. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here's the thing.

In my humble opinion, and I say this as the daughter of a mother from colorado family is a lot of them are there you in my opinion can refer to the state of colorado as occupying one of two geographic areas in the united states the plains or the rocky mountain west but the idea that it is the midwest is like a downton abbey ass understanding of this country because one the idea that it is the Midwest is like a Downton Abbey ass understanding of this country. Because one could say that it is in the middle of the country, shading West. Okay. But that's not what anybody means when they say Midwest. Because if it is, then the entire state of Ohio would not be the Midwest.

That's not what we mean. That's not what we mean, Ben. Right. Are we talking geography are we talking cultural it's it's it's cowboy country what are you what are we doing it the eastern part of that state is is is the plains and then the western part of that state is the rocky mountain west because of the rocky Mountains. What would John Denver say? He'd be horrified.

He's spinning around in his grave right now. Yeah. So upset. According to this graphic. And people from Philadelphia being like, it's the Midwest. That's just a contrarian position because neither God's geography nor the culture of that place are remotely Midwestern. And I say that as a compliment. That is not a dig.

I am all worked up. My goodness. Yeah. There was a recent Wall Street Journal article just from last month. The headline is, it's amazing how many Americans think they live in the Midwest when they don't. They don't. Which is a provocative headline. But that included this percentage of respondents who consider themselves in the Midwest here based on this data. And 42% of Coloradans apparently said Midwest.

And there were some Coloradans in our Discord group. First of all, is it Colorado or Colorado? I grew up saying Colorado. Right, because you I grew up saying Colorado. Right, because you also grew up saying Oregon. Yes, and Nevada. And so I've had to school myself to say Oregon and Nevada and Colorado. And it just feels extremely unnatural for me to do that. But I'm trying. That marks me as a Northeasterner, I guess. And I shouldn't get so worked up. I mean, I can get worked up about the Oregon thing, but like I shouldn't get so worked up about Colorado because I'm not from there, although I did live there for a while as a child.

But like many of my people are from there and they do not identify as Midwesterners. Yeah. I mean, Nevada comes from Spanish. Like they say Nevada. Like I speak some Spanish, learn Spanish. I'm inclined to say Nevada comes from Spanish. Like, they say Nevada. Like, I speak some Spanish. I learned Spanish. I'm inclined to say Nevada, not Nevada. So, I don't know.

It's the Nevadans who are wrong is my position, I guess. No, the people who live there get to say what it is. Yes, I suppose so. But which people who live there is my question. Anyway. And to be clear, that's a good question, right? Like, you know, the names that we picked were not, you know, there's stuff there, right? But if you are a Coloradan who says that you're a Midwesterner, then you do not get to say that, according to me.

No, because that's insane. I mean, sorry, that's not a very kind way of saying that. It is unhinged there. That's nicer. Okay. Well, there were some Coloradans in our Discord group who also expressed shock that their fellow... See my people. Yeah.

As a Midwesterner who took a train through Colorado, I can say, yeah, we don't have mountains in the Midwest. No, famously not. It's disqualifying. You know what? That is a good. That's it. I wonder I'm doing this for the benefit of the Colorado folks in our discord. Maybe it's just the Californians who say it's the Midwest. See, they're going to go, Meg, she sees us.

I don't have anything against Californians, but like this is a this is a thing in the West. I insulted my wife shortly after. thing against californians but like this is a this is a thing in the west in the west i i insulted my wife uh shortly after we started our relationship by stating that texas was not in the south it was in the west and boy that was incorrect yeah i think that people both from the west and from texas find that to be a bad turn of phrase from different directions. Yeah, apparently it's Lyndon Johnson's fault. Okay, well, I would not have gone back to this well, except that Tex submitted a stat blast.

Yeah, and a very good one. Yeah, so I had to bring some clarity to this. You sort of requested that we not receive emails on the subject, and mostly we didn't. We got of requested that we not receive emails on the subject, and mostly we didn't. We got a few that were apologetic. You know, people just couldn't help themselves. I just know that it is a whole kettle of fish. It is a whole can of worms. It is a Pandora's box and left to its own devices will inspire a fervor much like the one I just surprisingly displayed. Yes. My impression of the Midwest is places that I go that feel like they're familiar.

Yeah. So, I wasn't surprised to hear that some amount of Pittsburghers feel that they're in the Midwest. Sure. Because it felt very much like other Midwestern cities. I think the Rust Belt distinction is a meaningful one. I don't want to

deny anyone's experience. I get what people are going for. The Philly thing is nuts though. That's nuts. Loud. You got your Rust Belt, you got your Appalachia, or at least I say it Appalachia, but you can do a Nevada, Nevada with that too. I think a lot of people

there say Appalachia, but it could also be Appalachia or Appalachia. Anyway, it's a big country out there. It is a big country. And part of the problem that you run into the further west you go is that, you know, we just, the states get so big, you know, and so it is not surprising to me that people living in different parts of them would have sort of a distinct understanding of themselves as people with a particular sort of regional identity and that that might not mesh with everyone who lives technically within the boundaries of their state because we just make them very big. You know, you guys on the East Coast, you have all these little teeny tiny states. It's so small. Why? What was that about? You know, you're like, we must make these tiny subdivisions.

Why? Well, there weren't as many back then. So that was the whole country. Right. Right. Okay. So let's go back onto safer territory here that will probably not make people as angry.

Colorado is the Midwest. Now I'm just thinking about Lord Grantham telling what's-her-name to be like, go to the Midwest. Find a cowboy. Shake us up., to be like, go to the Middle West. Find a cowboy. Shake us up. And it's like, oh, you're an earl. So, you know.

I love Downton. All right. I love Downton. Here's a question. Sorry. Have we talked about how Gilded Age got renewed for a third season? I don't think so, but I was pleased. Oh, Ben, I'm so excited.

I'm so happy that Gilded Age got renewed for a third season. I was very nervous that it would not end. Boy, do I love that dumb show. I think we've talked about that on a Patreon. So if you want our hot content on Gilded Age, you can get it there. Okay, here's a question about a player who played for a Midwestern team for many years, which we have now established beyond all doubt, and also played for a Texas team, Corey Kluber. Andrew says, Corey Kluber, who just recently retired, happy trails, Corey,

was the opening day starter in his last season. Is that rare? It might depend on whether an Ace Emeritus still receives the opening day start as an honor or if the duty is eventually passed down? So I put this question to Ryan Nelson, Frequent Stat Blast consultant. Honestly, I had forgotten that Corey Kluber got the opening day start in 2023, which was as much a function of the Red Sox rotation as anything else, probably, because, I mean,

in retrospect, it looks even stranger because we know now it was his last season and he had a 70 RA and he wasn't coming off the greatest season in 2022 either. So it was sort of a paucity of superior options for that honor. Right. You know, and he said at the time, Kluber, it's definitely an honor. There's plenty of guys in this clubhouse who could have taken the ball on opening day, which technically is true. Anyone on the team could have taken the ball and started opening day. But there weren't really that many other options who made sense as a capital O said that because he hadn't started a lot, like they just gave him the day to sort of settle in and he could pitch the second game. And he was only going like three innings, I think. So they tapped Kluber to make this start. And I would guess that that is

one way that this happens, that you end up making an opening day start in your final season, is that there's just no one else around, really. Anyway, Ryan looked this up, and he cut it off a few years ago, because you get into recent times, it's tough to tell whether someone's active or whether it was their last season or not. But he looked up through 2019 and this happens fairly frequently, actually. Like in 2019, Andrew Kashner made the opening day start for the Orioles in what was his final season, which again said more about the Orioles than it did about Andrew Kashner. But that happened, if you had forgotten. In 2018, James Shields made the opening day start for the White Sox in his final season. In 2017, there were two. Ricky Nolasco got the opening day honors for the Angels, and Scott Feldman got the opening day nod for the Reds. Now, in 2014, Cliff Lee was the opening day starter for the Phillies. In 2012, Johan Santana for the Mets.

In 2012, Carl Pavano for the Twins. In 2009, Brandon Webb for the Diamondbacks. 2008, Odalis Perez for the Nationals. 2007, Kurt Schilling for the Red Sox. And you've got also that year, John Patterson for the Nats. Paul Wilson for the Reds in 2005. Pete Harnish for the Reds in 2001. A lot of Reds on here. John Smiley for the Reds in 1997. The Reds have not had a whole lot of great starters in their history, but you can see it's a mix of things. In some of these cases, it was someone who just got hurt, who was fairly

effective up until the end, but then just had some career-ending injury. You have your Santanas and your Lees and your, I don't know who else. I just read Brandon Webb, right? Guys who were not super old, at least. Like Brandon Webb was not even 30 when he made his opening day start. He almost was. Then you've got your guys who were pretty good right up until the end, like Schilling with the Red Sox in 2007. He was 40 at that point. The average age for these opening day starters in their final seasons is 34. So, you know, you're getting on there, but there are some younger guys who just got hurt. Like J.R. Richard was an opening day starter in his final season of course he had a stroke and that was just his last season for the astros in 1980 so lots of those guys then lots of guys on just not so good teams for the most part and some guys who actually were pretty good up until the end. But yeah, it's a mix of those.

So, you know, it's a lot of guys. This is Ryan identified like 93 cases of this. It looks like going back to 1901. So it happens really almost every year. Just on average, there's someone in most seasons who is doing this. And I guess the oldest would be, or at least the oldest on record here, Excel has trouble with dates before 1900, but Charlie Huff in 1994, who came up recently on a stat blast, he was the opening day starter for the Florida Marlins in 1994 at the age of 46.2.

So he was the oldest of this group. Tommy John in 89 for the Yankees. Gaylord Perry in 83 for the Mariners. So, yeah, lots of not so good teams looks like because Ryan broke it down into buckets of two years and the most common age to be for these opening day starters in final seasons is between 31 and 33. And then 29 and 31 is next most common and then 35 and 37. So lots of just struck down in their youth in the prime of their careers type of pictures we're talking about here too. And then final question here. This is one that has been in the back of my mind for almost two years at this point.

I just have not stopped thinking about it, but I had trouble getting an answer to this question. It's one where the answer is going to be pretty short, but it took a lot of work to get that answer, although I did not do the work. This is a question from Ranger, who sent this back in May of 2022, and I thought it was such a fascinating question. Ranger said, I was watching baseball with my wife, who is a physical therapist. She pointed out that players who bat and throw from the same side are always twisting forcefully in the same direction. She speculates that this could lead to physical imbalances and perhaps injuries over time. Is there any evidence that switch hitters or players who bat and throw with opposite hands miss fewer

games due to injury or have a more gradual decline than players who bat and throw with the same hand and are always twisting in the same direction? What a great question. What a good question. Yeah. I had never thought of this and it made me excited. I was like, oh, we're going to make a discovery here about baseball market inefficiency, you know, better to be opposite hands with batting and throwing.

That would be fascinating if it were true. I came across an article from 2018 about Shohei Otani, and it talked about just like how he does the two-way thing, and it's amazing. And Marco Gonzalez was quoted in this piece, and he pointed out that maybe Otani lucked out here. The piece says Otani lucks out that he throws right-handed, but bats left-handed. So he's not rotating on the same hip every time. If he was having to rotate on his left hip every time, I think that would be dangerous for him because there's a lot of corrective work in between to try to unwind your body. Gonzales said, my hips and back are all misaligned just from going one way the whole time.

So he lucked out hitting left-handed, which I had not considered. Obviously, that has not helped preserve his UCL, but perhaps it has helped preserve him in some other ways. So is this true? Is this a thing? Marco Gonzalez, by the way, was quoted because he was a two-way player in college. Right. A thing. Marco Gonzalez, by the way, was quoted because he was a two-way player in college. He pitched and played first base, and he said he never, ever could continue doing it in the big leagues, in part because of the wear and tear. And so Otani, maybe a little less wear and tear. He's not twisting in the same direction every time. So, this is intriguing, but tough to answer.

Intriguing, but tough to answer. I put this question to Jonathan Judge, the brilliant Jonathan Judge of Baseball Perspectives, who has done a lot of work with aging curves over there, which I will link to. His methodology is probably above my head, but he has explained it in articles. just asked him to make some aging curves for one non-switch hitters versus switch hitters. And then secondly, for players who bat left and throw right and players who bat left and throw left. So from the same side, we didn't do it the other direction, players who bat right and throw left and bat right and throw right, because there just aren't a lot of players who bat right and throw left and bat right and throw right because there just aren't a lot of players who bat right and throw left, as we have discussed. The backwards guys, as you call them, right? The sinister righties, the Ricky Hendersons of the world.

There just aren't really enough to have a big sample there. Weird asses. Yeah. So we did it just for switchers versus non-switch hitters and then left-handed hitters who throw with the same hand or the other hand. So basically like the Ted Williams' and the Barry Bonds'. Both of them aged quite well, but Ted Williams batted left through right, Barry Bonds batted

left through left. So for the switch hitters versus non-switch hitters, it does look like switch hitters age a little bit better. And Jonathan was doing OPS relative to the league average weighted by plate appearances. So basically, like, how does your production hold up relative to the typical player over time? He was going back to 1977 here, so we didn't study injury days directly. That would be an interesting way to look at it, just didn't have great data to use for that. And he found that it does seem that switch hitters age a little bit better. They have a little bit of a more graceful decline than non-switch hitters. We speculated there could be other

reasons for that, though. It maybe isn't just the swinging from two sides to balance things out. But, you know, maybe it's platoon effects or something like that, right? You're always having the platoon advantage. It could be other things. And it's not like such a huge difference that we really need to like, oh, we need to teach everyone to switch it who isn't already capable of that because they age so much better it's like a slight difference maybe i'll link to the aging curves for people to check out but they're almost overlapping just not quite when we did and by we i mean he did the aging curve for the left-handed hitters who throw left throw right it is like almost identical. It's like exactly, exactly the same

until just the very tail end when the samples are tiny. So there appears to be no difference whatsoever in how as a group left-handed hitters who throw with their left arms and left-handed hitters who throw with their right arms age. So I think we have to confirm the null hypothesis here, probably, that there's nothing to this, but no publication bias. We're reporting our not-so-sexy results, not finding, in effect, here. Jonathan put a lot of work into determining the not-that-interesting answer, that there doesn't really seem to be anything to it. But I'm glad to know that there isn't anything to it, because for the past to know that there isn't anything to it because for the past year and a half, I was tortured by the idea that maybe this was some great profound

discovery about baseball and that everyone should learn to do this or that we should be, you know, bumping guys who do stuff from opposite sides up our draft boards or whatever. Doesn't appear that there's any compelling evidence that that's the case. That's disappointing, but it is good to know. Yeah. Yeah. My curiosity is sated here, even if I can't report some mind blowing effects, but, but that is now something we know or, or can confirm seemingly about baseball.

I remember an anecdote from Cubs broadcast this year that Marcus Stroman will repeat his, I think it's he repeats his entire performance from the left side after he finishes pitching in the same vein as what Marco Gonzalez was talking about, trying to not just do everything one way. Huh. I wonder how common that is because you would think, yeah, it might balance out the wear and tear, but then it would also be more total wear and tear and would tax you in some other ways,

just time, energy, et cetera. But yeah, that lends credence to the idea that players think there's something to this. Maybe it's just that batting and throwing are not really the same degree of force and strain, right? Like, if you're Otani, maybe, and you're swinging from one side and you're pitching from the other side, then yes. But if you're just a regular player who bats from one side, like, that's a lot of torque and strain. But throwing, I mean, depending on what position you play you might not have to

throw at all really right maybe we should if we wanted to get really granular we could drill down and you know positions where you throw a lot or you're expected to make forceful throws you know if we did like right fielders in third basement and not second basement in first basement or something maybe there'd be a difference but But even then, you're not throwing that frequently, probably. You're swinging way more, even just in batting practice and everything, let alone in games. So a pitcher is throwing a ton from that side, but a position player is swinging a lot from one side, but it's not really throwing that much from the other side or throwing that much from the same side, right? Throws are fairly sporadic. So maybe it's just not enough strain for the typical player on the same side for it to make much of a difference. I mean, Marcus Stroman got hurt this year too.

So, you know. Yeah. Didn't help him, I guess, or at least didn't help him enough. Yeah. When I heard that quote from Marco Gonzalez, it immediately made me think of that too. So I do wonder if it's a common thing that players do. Yeah. For Marcos and Marcuses at least. Okay. Sean, thank you for joining us. Thank you for supporting us.

Is there anything you would like to plug? Anything you'd like to direct our listeners to? No, not at all. Okay. Well, that was quick. All right. Well, thank was quick. All right. Well, thank you to you for coming on. And thanks to your wife for unwittingly permitting you to come on.

Yeah. I texted her when she was working. So that was a good way to get a smile. She was distracted. Okay. Well, thank you so much. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. If you too would like to support Effectively Wild on Patreon, you can do that by

going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. John Tolbert, Ryan Moore, Winthrop Rummel, John Tancredi, and Andrew Maritko. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch, and ad-free Fangraphs memberships,

and prioritized email answers. So much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but everyone is welcome to contact us via email, send your questions and comments to podcast at fancrafts.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 effectivelywild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit

at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll get back to team previewing next time with the Diamondbacks and Brewers. Talk to you then. Don't want to hear about pitcher wins or about gambling odds.

All they want to hear about might try to fight a call. And the texture of the hair on the arm Going out of one's head Gross, gross Gimme, gimme, gimme a fact of the wild Gimme, gimme, gimme a fact of the wild Gimme, gimme, gimme a fact of the wild

This is a fact of the wild