Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2149: Protective Eyewash

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about White Sox manager Pedro Grifol’s anti-eclipse eyewash, the shrinking moon, an eyebrow-raising quote by Blake Snell, the latest signature Elly De La Cruz game, the hot starts of Mike Trout, Anthony Volpe, and Tyler O’Neill, how this season’s converted relievers (including Garrett Crochet and Jordan Hicks) are faring, […]

I mean, here's a guy, right? Perfect example. Joe Boyle, 44 balls, 42 strikes. He's not throwing a ton of strikes. He throws hard, and he's going to be in the majors for a while, you'd imagine, because he's got swing and miss stuff. Effectively wild. That's it.

Also a great podcast, and I'm sure we'll use that clip. 6-0 Oakland with the lead. Effectively wild. Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

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Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild

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Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Billy 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. Sometimes we use the term eyewash on this podcast, and not always do people know what we mean when we say that, because it is a term that is often used in baseball contexts and not as often outside baseball contexts. So if we have to give an example of eyewash next time we use the term, just in case anyone is in the dark, so to speak,

that was not even intended wordplay here. But the example I think I would give is White Sox manager Pedro Grafal and his comments about the eclipse on Monday. Did you see what he said about the eclipse? I did not. I missed that. He was not interested. Oh, okay. I was going to say,

I haven't been paying super close attention to the White Sox. I don't know if you feel like that's a defensible position. That much is understandable. But he was not interested in the eclipse, it turns out. So he was asked, I guess, about witnessing history,

being present for that. And he said, I'll see about witnessing history, being present for that. And he said, I'll see videos of it, see what it looks like. But there's baseball. I probably shouldn't say that, but family and baseball. People don't believe it, but I live it. That's all that matters. So no time for the moon passing in front of the sun in a way that blocks it out because baseball. He's too busy with baseball and also family.

Don't forget family. But the White Sox were playing Cleveland and the Cardians opened up the park. They were in the path of totality. I won't say once in a lifetime opportunity, but it's a rare opportunity. You have to be in the right place at the right time. This is the last total eclipse in the contiguous U.S. until 2044, and that's only in states that don't have Major League Baseball teams. I'm just saying, you could make a few minutes, maybe. I'm not saying you have to be interested in the eclipse.

You don't have to be into it, although I find that people who think they're not into it often are pretty into it when they check it out because it really is incredibly cool. Yeah, it is but if you're not into it you could just say you're not into it for some other like you know you just you don't you haven't caught eclipse fever like you're happy for everyone else but you're not super into it or like i'll check it out or you know i'll check it out later or something but but to be like no no time for the total eclipse. Right. Baseball and family. Those are my only two priorities. Everything else, there's no room for an eclipse because baseball. That, to me, is eyewash.

That's like I grind so hard that there's no room in my life for anything else but baseball and family. anything else but baseball and family. It strikes me as particularly silly when like, Pedro, buddy, the eclipse is like asserting itself into your life, you know, like you are somewhat required to like take a little pause here. So just, you know, get some glasses and then look up and see what you think of it. I'm with you. I don't want people to feel pressure to enjoy things they don't enjoy, I guess. And I suppose we can ask ourselves,

like, how genuine and sort of authentic is the experience of awe if we are pressured into feeling it, right? But I also would submit the following to skeptics. Think about the eclipse like broccoli when you're a little kid, right? You think you don't like broccoli. You're not basing that on anything, though. You're just sitting there kind of going, like, I don't like broccoli. Maybe you do. And unlike broccoli, which is admittedly a weird thing to compare the literal solar eclipse to, solar eclipses don't come along all that often, you know. It's a special thing. And so, if only to defer to the rarity of the experience, I feel like you should give it, you know, a little try and see how it is. This suggests to me,

actually, I'm going to try to take this from a different angle, which is perhaps less about eyewash and more about like a profound concern and insecurity on his part that like, we're going to look around and say, well, and that's how, you know, critics talk. They have a voice. Yeah. How serious can they be? Now I sound like Jimmy Stewart. How serious can they be about their season? These White Sox, if they are, you know, taking time out of their day to look up and to Pedro

would submit the following, which is like, none of us think it's going well. And none of that is because you looked at the eclipse, bud. going well and none of that is because you looked at the eclipse bud like you know a lot of the problems on this team are not your fault you know they're just not and and no one is gonna reasonably blame you for them they might unreasonably blame you fans are fans right but but i don't think anyone is looking around going you know if only he had kept his nose in his iPad, if only he had poured over the scouting reports a little longer, they might have done something. But he decided to appreciate this incredible astronomical event. And then, you know, also your season fell apart after that. Nobody.

Your season's already in shambles the only the only thing you can say about the white sox is that i think garrett crochet might be a good big league starter and that's very exciting you know like if i were a white sox fan i would be hanging so much of my my emotional well-being on care crochet which might be ill-advised because who knows how long it'll last but like he seems like a good big league starter. Very cool. The rest of the team is in shambles, and your most exciting and talented position player might be hurt for quite some time. So, you know what, buddy? Enjoy the eclipse, I think, because you might not have a lot of other stuff to enjoy, you know? This incredible astronomical coincidence with astronomical odds that we just happen to have a moon that is the exact right size and distance from our planet to block out the sun perfectly when these circumstances align. And we don't know of any other place where that's true.

Not that we know of any other beings who would be able to appreciate it if it were true. And it won't always be true because the moon is getting slightly smaller and further away, though definitely not in our lifetimes. Wait, what? Yeah, the moon is getting smaller.

This is not like Nick Gordon, was it? This is not some sort of hoax. I don't think the moon is real. I don't think they landed on the moon. You didn't hear this on Coast to Coast? No, this is real. Just like the tidal effects, the moon is moving farther away, and also it's compressing as it cools further. And so it's, you know, some many, many millions, I think maybe hundreds of millions of

years from now, we will not get a total solar eclipse anymore. Well, that's okay. Jerry Reinstorf won't own the team then at that point. So, you know, that's beyond the purview of the current White Sox. I don't know. Jerry Reinstorf seems eternal. It's getting smaller? It's getting smaller. I'm just saying, appreciate it while it lasts. This amazing coincidence occurs and you miss it because you're, what, pouring over the White Sox lineup, which no longer includes Luis Robert Jr., who's hurt again. They all suck. Spoiler alert.

Like, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Andrew Vaughn, still not a big league, you know, he's not a first division regular. It's still true. Wait, I'm sorry. We have to go back. It's getting smaller? It's getting smaller. It is getting slightly, gradually, increasingly smaller. Yeah. You know, 99.9% of the time, I am so grateful that you and I are on the same page about the unnecessary shift podcasts have taken to video in the last couple of years. You and I,

we're like, we're right on, you know, we're on it. We agree. The Venn diagram is a circle when it comes to our opinion. This is the one time I wish that we did video because I so wish that you could have seen my face reacting to the fact that the moon is getting smaller. It's getting smaller. You did the head exploding gif. I grabbed my face with both my hands and just, it's getting small. Like, by how much? Don't panic. Don't be alarmed.

You won't notice. I'm not alarmed. I'm, I'm, I'm, see, see, this is the argument for taking pleasure and finding awe in the natural world because I am flabbergasted. I am, it's getting like how much smaller? Just a tiny little bit. Just bit by bit. Enough that it's not going to be a complete solar eclipse? In a very long time.

Will it just reduce to nothing? How small is it going to get? It's not disappearing. Is it going to become a little cheese snack that we can just pop in our mouths and be like, oh, here's our little moon cheese snack. And then who will get to have the cheese snack? Oh, the tides would be all screwed up if there was no moon. On a long enough time frame, we will probably

be consumed by the expanding sun. So then there will definitely not be a solar eclipse. Except in the sense that we will be just consumed by the sun, which I guess is sort of an eclipse. Wait, I'm sorry. I have to say one more thing. I have to say one more thing, and then we can go back to actual baseball. My high school physics teacher, which he was great, Mr. Moose. I wonder

if he's still teaching. He was wonderful. What a good teacher. I learned so much from him. And he had a very dry sense of humor. I don't know if I've shared this anecdote on the pod before. I apologize if I have. But he was the one who introduced me to the fact that if the sun spontaneously went out, like it just extinguished, it would take like seven, eight minutes for that information to reach us because of the distance, right? Yeah. And how light travels. And he was like, so you should just worry about that all the time. He was a great teacher, but he might be why I have an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, I'm realizing as I share this anecdote on mic. Yeah, could be eight minutes away from total blackout.

Total blackout. And you know, things would go very badly for us as a species after that. Would we keep making the podcast if someone went out? It'd be tough eventually to have power, I think, to do that. But yeah, as long as we could, we'd keep churning them out, I think. Yeah, I'd like to start a line of little cheese snacks and make it about the moon. The upshot is that he did ultimately watch the eclipse. So he said he wasn't going to, and then after the fact, after the game, he told reporters that he had watched it. Okay. Now, he was already taking some—

I don't know. I didn't see a review. I'm not sure that he said what he thought of it, but he did see it. Maybe he just bowed to peer pressure. Maybe he was trying to save some face here because there was a backlash to his Eclipse comments. So, I don't know whether he actually watched it or maybe he just changed his mind, in which case, great. Glad. And I hope he enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the not-quite-total eclipse that I saw from New York City and very much enjoyed the total eclipse that I saw from a minor league ballpark when we did an Effectively Wild event several years ago. So highly recommend it. So cool. Don't really recommend watching the White Sox. Do recommend broccoli. I've always loved broccoli. Oh, I love broccoli. Yeah.

You didn't have to twist my arm to eat my broccoli. Yeah, me too. I was a veggie kid. Yeah. And the Guardians shut out the White Sox as fully as the moon did the sun. The White Sox did not score. They are very bad. But while we're discussing questionable quotes, I have another one here from Blake Snell,

who made his debut as a San Francisco Giant. We have another one here from Blake Snell, who made his debut as a San Francisco Giant. It was an extremely Snell-like debut, at least stylistically, not results-wise. But first inning, he faced four batters. He went to full counts on all of them. 26 pitches, got out of that inning unscathed. Extremely Snell-like. And then ultimately, he did give up three runs, and he went three inningsnings and he threw 72 pitches, just kind of vintage Snell, except worse, right? But after the game, he said,

and I quote, I was being more careful than I usually would. Usually I would just throw it over the plate. Then I was really amped up too. I was really excited to pitch. Bad combination, I guess. I don't know what he thinks he pitches like, but usually I would just throw it over the plate. That has not been my experience of Blake Snell's approach to pitching. In fact, you could say that he does that less than anyone else. There were 221 pitchers last year who threw at least 30 innings as a starter, and Blake Snell had literally the lowest zone rate of any of them, 42.5%. Granted, some of those pitches might have been over the plate, but too low or too high to be in the strike zone, but I doubt that's what he meant. So, does Blake Snell think that he's like a strike thrower, that he's usually just firing it in there, but he was being too tentative this time?

Or does he just not want to reveal to Giants fans that this is sort of his usual M.O.? Oh, that would be so funny. I mean, like, it would be terrible because, like, they're going to figure it out. Yeah, I think so but maybe what he's doing maybe what he's doing is trying to like forestall that conclusion until like the results can match because he didn't have a great night but like also i think we kind of expected that it might take him a beat to get back in stride given how long his free agency lasted he didn't really have a camp you know so like maybe he's just like i'm gonna i'm gonna do a little misdirect

but then by the time they figure it out they I'll be pitching better and they won't care maybe that's the maybe that's the goal

yeah by the way it occurs to me that probably bad teams are more prone to eyewash or to this grind set mentality

you know because oh yeah because if if Griffo's a manager of a really successful team no one's gonna give him grief like as you mentality, you know, because if Griffo's a manager of a really successful team, no one's going to give him grief. Like as you were saying, you know, maybe you're worried that people are going to pile on because it's the White Sox and oh, like I have to make a show

of working really hard because we suck, you know? And so don't give anyone extra ammunition. It's like one thing for a successful team to enjoy the eclipse. But if the White Sox are doing it, then someone's going to get on them like, you guys need to be outworking everyone else because you don't have good players. And here you are just lollygagging, enjoying the total solar eclipse. And so maybe you have to go even further out of your way to make it seem like you're just constantly, you know, we're in the lab, like we're working on solutions for this problem, right? We can't acknowledge that we are ever relaxed or thinking about anything other than baseball or family. I think that that is right. Although like the galaxy brain take would be maybe the people who

are successful are just more persuasive with their eyewash. Maybe we're fooled by their eyewash and we're like, they're so successful. No, that's not true because the Dodgers actually win baseball games. It's such a inconvenience to have like a record to look at and be like, no, some of these teams are better than others. Weird. Yeah. So while we were all enjoying the eclipse or afterward, I guess, Ellie Dayla Cruz put

on a show as well. He had one of these already sort of signature Elie games that he has where he combines power and speed in some super flashy way. And in this case, he hit a 450-foot homer and then he hit an inside-the-park homer. I forget what the sequence was, but he did both of those things in the game. He also singled and stole a base. One thing is that inside the park, Homers, I enjoy them. They're fun, but also most of them are realistically singles and three base errors. You could score them that way a lot of the time and no one would be upset about them. Because they're a combination

of talent and totally screwing up on the part of the defense in most cases, as was the case here, just like a completely misjudged line drive to center under the glove, rolled almost all the way to the wall. So it takes a combination of the batter doing something good and a defender doing something very, very bad, usually. And then the batter has to have enough speed to capitalize on that. It's true. But it's not purely the batter runner's accomplishment. But it's still really impressive.

And he made it sub-15 seconds around the bases in that. What would we call it? We can't call it a home run trot when it's inside the park. It's a home run. Yeah. it's inside the park. It's a home run. Gallop. Yeah, gallop, sprint. Gallop, sprint. Yeah. but also it's so few steps so it just is like it's so fluid and big and he's so tall

gallop feels right to me because it it seems to imply the appropriate stride length you know like trot is wrong for a number of reasons not the least of which is that he doesn't trot he glides like it's like a he's like the silver surfer or something i don't know i don't really remember if that's a good i don't know if that's a good comic book comp but yeah well he's like amazing surfs so oh okay but is it does he have to move his legs at all right but he's glad it was so he's glad he's gliding it's true yeah i think gallop is right i think he's galloping you know because it's like speed and stride length you know know, like he's a marvel. Yeah. And he hit those two homers from opposite sides of the plate, which is fun, too.

And the fun facts that I saw about this almost seemed overdetermined, like too restrictive. Like I just wanted to know when the last time someone hit a over the fence and inside the park inside-the-park homerun in the same game was. And I have not stat blasted this myself, but no one was giving me that stat. I was getting stats that were like more impressive feats, like even more selective groups, like Sarah Langs and Jason Bernard found that this was the first player with a 450-foot-plus home run and an inside-the-park home run in the same game in the StatCast era. I just want to know any distance of over the fence. Like, there can't be many people who have done that. Feels like it's putting the emphasis

on the wrong syllable, as it were. Yeah, Optistats tweeted, Ellie De La Cruz, first player in MLB history to do all of these things in the same game. Home run from both sides of the plate, over the fence homer and inside the park homer, four plus runs scored and a stolen base. That's four. Like, do we need to keep stacking and layering? Like, home run from both sides of the plate and over the fence and inside the park in the same game?

Like, doing those two things, that seems really impressive. Like that's got to be a pretty select group. But we had to add four plus runs scored and stolen base on top of that. Like to me, I mean, fun fact should, I think, disclose the less impressive version first. Like they should answer questions, not create them. And when I read this, I'm like, well, wait, who was the last guy

who had home run from both sides of the plate, one being over the fence, one being inside the park, and four plus runs scored, but didn't have a stolen base? Did we need to add these on to have him be the only player, or are we adding them on just for fun?

I need a follow-up tweet here about the sample with fewer qualifiers here because it seems like pretty impressive without any qualifiers. Yeah, I think you want to hone in on the home runs because the contrast of goes very far as in over the wall and doesn't go very far, but goes real fast. Like, that's the cool, that's what's cool. Right. You don't need the other stuff.

I don't really need the four plus runs scored. We know he had to have at least two runs scored because he hit the two homers. Right. You don't need the other stuff. No, and that's contingent on someone else driving him in at least two other times. So, that doesn't impress me so much. Anyway, I have questions. But I think as great as it would be

if Ellie just completely breaks out and is one of the best players in baseball, and he's certainly off to a fine start in terms of the surface level results, he has also struck out 17 times in 41 plate appearances. It's amazing. I'm in love with his line so much. I know. It's beautiful. I'm in love with his line so much. I know.

It's beautiful. I know. It's just magical, man. If we could do our little fun facts, probably about like 150, the only player to have a 150 WRC plus with a 40% or more strikeout rate, right? Yeah, 41.5, Ben.

41.5 as we're recording. He has a 500 BABIP, which might be a bit high even for Ellie. I know he's fast. Probably not that fast. But it's such a fascinating study in contrast that, yeah, I hope he gets it all together. I hope like he completely harnesses his talent, that the plate discipline and the contact improve, and that he pairs that with the speed and the power, and he's just an unstoppable force. But in a way, it would be just as fascinating if he doesn't. Like, imagine if he's like this his whole career, you know? Just like putting on these incredible displays where you watch and you're like, no one else could do that. Like,

he is the only player who could do these things. And yet, like, what if he's not that good? You know, like last year, right? I mean, he thrilled us, he amazed us. And ultimately, in terms of value, he wasn't valuable, really, on the whole, because of the flaws in his game. I believe in his talent and his youth, and I think he will sort of sand down the rough edges and improve. But imagine if he didn't. Imagine if his whole career was just like being the fastest and the strongest and also not being that good at baseball. That would be so weird. It would be so weird because like we've had, you know, we've had very fast guys before who haven't been very good at baseball you know there's like a a long tradition right of the very fast guy who is you know the rest of his game is wanting is maybe the way to to put it but like the the speed tool is such that you're able to like really be like oh but what if he just a little bit you know

and we've had very very strong and powerful guys too. Yeah. Like Willie Mopena, just to name another Cincinnati Red. Guys who can hit the light tower shots, but just don't make contact enough. But usually at least they don't have the speeds. They don't have the full skill set that Ellie has. Yeah. The combination of those two things is really wonderful and delightful.

Now, I'm sure Reds fans listening to this are going, no, I'd really like it if he kept hitting 297, please. Like, you know, it would be good if the strikeouts came down. And I imagine he will be a guy who runs higher than league average BABibs for his career. Like, you know, the speed is just so undeniable that, you know, when you're doing that sort of mental adjustment of, hey, this guy's running a Babib of X, so it seems likely the regression is due soon, you're probably going to do a less dramatic mental adjustment for someone like De La Cruz because of how fast he is.

But, yeah, yeah like i love it i want the high wire for ever i do love that he has more stolen bases than ground into double plays that's fun he has been caught the one time i don't have any memory of that i think that's that's fake news you know probably a data error yeah yeah that seems like somebody miss miss made a mistake they made a mistake. They made a mistake, you know, that's all there is to it. I wish that we did a better job of tracking inside the parker separately, you know. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. I think that in the same way that we, you know, we track walks and intentional walks, we should track home runs and inside the park home runs. You know, it's a subcategory that is meaningful. I agree because it is a different process. It's a different aesthetic experience. It's a different skill set in most cases, not in Ellie's. But, you know, it takes a screw up, as I said, but it also takes some speed. It doesn't necessarily take hitting the ball particularly well.

So, yeah, it's a whole different experience. I agree, it would be nice. And then I wouldn't have as many questions after reading these fun facts. So, a couple other things. You mentioned Garrett Crochet off to a fine start with the White Sox. Checking in on this season's converted relievers. I think that's what I'm going with,

converted relievers. They're relievers who were converted to starting. So, they are converted relievers, even though they were converted into starters. So I guess you could say converted starters if you want, but yeah. No, I think you have the direction arrow facing the right way on that one. Thank you. So Crochet's off to a fine start. Yep. Jordan Hicks off to just as impressive a start. Yep. Jordan Hicks. Yeah. Off to just as impressive a start.

Then you have Reynaldo Lopez, who had one good start and is starting after we record this on Tuesday. Then you have A.J. Puck, not off to such a great start. So three out of four, not bad. I wasn't sure that all these guys would actually end up starting because there was a lot of buzz about people going from the bullpen to starting this offseason. And I speculated that, well, maybe it's because there's just less of a distinction between relievers and starters these days. And so, yeah, you could kind of go between groups more easily. Maybe you're not expected to go super deep into games if you are a starter. But I still thought, is Reynaldo Lopez actually going to end up in that rotation?

You know, because there were some guys like Brent Suter was talked about as a possible starter. He's not starting now. But Crochet, who, yeah, we kind of had some fun at the White Sox expense that he was their opening day starter. But he has looked and pitched the part thus far. And Jordan Hicks, whose previous starting experience did not last long and did not go well, he seems to have taken to the role. And Ben Clemens wrote about that for FanCrafts on Tuesday. That's going great. And Lopez, again, also pretty good the first time out. So, yeah, they are silencing the skeptics thus far. They are addressing the doubters, which I was one to some extent.

I'm still a doubter. Yeah. Just because, well, I think I may be most a doubter about Jordan Hicks. I may be most a doubter about Jordan Hicks, you know, and my doubt emanates from the same place that I think Ben's doubt emanated from, which is like, we, we've tried this before. I mean, not you and I, we don't employ Jordan Hicks, but it has been tried with Hicks before and it didn't go well. And obviously this, this time is going better and it seems to have taken an approach that he's taking too, so that's good. But I'm still skeptical, but I want to be proven wrong.

There's an optimism to my skepticism, which is that I want things to go well for these guys because if you go from being, if you are a converted reliever, a successful converted reliever, you get to pitch more You know, you get to pitch more innings, you get to make more money, you get to, I mean, like Hicks signed a free agent deal, so he's kind of like locked in. But, you know, it's like you get to be a different kind of guy in the game. And boy, we need some starters, Ben. We need some starters. They are thin on the ground at the moment. So, I want of the season. Because stuff can, you know, the stuff can change. Guys can adjust, you know. If they can adjust such that they become starters, then surely hitters can adjust in a way that

makes them want to go back to the bullpen. So we'll just have to keep an eye on it. Yeah, the changes that Hicks has made as Ben documented are kind of encouraging because it's not just, oh, so-and-so has had two or three good starts. It's you look at the repertoire and the arsenal and the approach. And if those are different in a meaningful way that seems like it should lend itself to success,

then that's more encouraging. So as Ben noted, he is throwing a sinker now. He seems to have taken some speed off of his pitches to improve his command, which how often do we see pitchers making that tradeoff these days? I mean, even going from relief to starting, anything less than max effort, I welcome. And he's also working in a splitter now to help against opposite-handed hitters. And so he's doing some things differently, and he was never a big strikeout guy to begin with,

or at least not as much as you would think based on how hard he threw. How hard he throws, yeah. But that really reassures me. That kind of encourages me. I know it's N of one, a small sample here. But even just that he was willing to do that, to get out of that mindset of I throw as hard as I possibly can on every single pitch, especially when you're Jordan Hicks. And I mean, he's had injury issues, perhaps he's chastened by those, but also like he's been famous

for how hard he throws. That's the thing that people know most and best about Jordan Hicks. And oh my gosh, look at the radar reading on that pitch that he threw. And so the fact that he has managed to suppress that mindset in service of going deeper into games, that's kind of encouraging to me. If he could do it, maybe others could do it too. Yeah. I mean, I think that he is in a nice position to try those things, right? Where it's like he's with an organization that's willing to try him as a starter, even though, again, there's already this like failed experiment in his past. He has some salary security with the free agent deal. But yeah, it's not what you typically see.

guys who, you know, when you look at their average fastball velocity, aren't throwing like 99 or whatever, like they still seem to want to throw harder, even if it's not hard in comparison to, you know, the guys we think of as having like a really blistering heater. So yeah, to, to be willing to take it off a little bit is good. Cause I, I want there to appear to be viable avenues through which you can approach pitching. And I want them to not all be you open the little door and it's like, they're harder. Because are we going to talk about all of the hurt guys now? Are we on our way? Yeah, we're heading there.

There's, I guess, one more happy thing. Okay, let's do the happy thing first. Yeah, let's do that first. Yeah, it's not uncommon for guys who go from one roller or the other to add or lose speed, obviously. But in his case, it seems like it is really a conscious thing. So I hope it keeps working for him. So, yeah, before we get to the injuries, I was looking at the best hitters in baseball, as one does, just looking at the qualified hitters, WRC Plus leaderboard. And, yeah, small sample, but hey, number three is Mookie Betts.

We've already talked about his fantastic start to the season. Number four, Mike Trout. I know. Nice to see Mookie and Mike Trout just next to each other toward the top of that leaderboard. Mike Trout doesn't have an inflated BABIP, although I guess, you know, home runs. No, his is 250. Yeah, no, he's just hitting lots of home runs. It's not in play, really.

Right. So I would love for him to keep this up. Like the plate discipline has been great. Everything looks like vintage classic Mike Trout. He also just looks great. Like his body looks great. He looks great. And I'm ready to be heard again

by Trout being heard again by some like season ending calf strain next week or somehow. But until that happens, I'm going to pretend that it won't and keep enjoying

this look at peak Mike Trout with us once more, at least for now. So yeah, you have Mookie3, Trout4, number two, Anthony Volpe, and number one, Tyler O'Neill. Those guys are raking. Now, we talked about Volpe and his new approach and his new flatter swing on our Yankees preview. And man, that is paying off. It's not just that he is like hitting for average. He's walking like he's hitting for power too. Like it doesn't seem like the new swing has sapped his power at all.

I mean, you know, we're talking 40 plate appearances here. So don't want to make too much of it. But encouraging, I think, to see him doing so well with a new approach. And Tyler O'Neill, who is just kind of the classic change of scenery candidate, and now the scenery is different, and so is he, seemingly. He's been fantastic so far. So, I'd like to see the usual suspects toward the top of that list. I always want Mike and Mookie to do well, but I'd like to see guys like O'Neal and Volpe at the top two. Yeah, again, this is the time of year where you're like, will any of these things stick around? I don't know. But you can construct, I think, a pretty compelling narrative for some of them. Volpe taking a step forward in his sophomore season seems really realistic to me, not just because

of the change in his bat path, although that seems like it will help quite a bit, but also just like he was being asked to do this incredibly challenging thing. And so it's not surprising to me that it would take a little time for him to adjust to big league pitching. I mean, like, he's playing like a gold glove shortstop, and he's a good hitter, you know? So, like, I think that that's very exciting. I don't know what to make of Tyler O'Neal. He keeps, you know, he always

starts hot, but he's, like, started really hot, and, you know, that Red Sox team, which is, what a weird team they are right now, right? Like, what a strange team, because, like because like they're seven and three and the vibe as of today is just like so sad. Yeah, just like injuries. I mean, yeah, just like a really rough time. Yeah. And like stories. Look, I'm not a doctor. Among the on list of things, I'm not a doctor is definitely one of them. But when he went down, story that is, in that game, I was like,

I think that's really bad because, you know. Yeah, I was like probably a fractured glenoid on that one. That's what I thought to myself because I was very aware that that body part existed. I thought he had the, I had no idea. In fact, if someone were to reveal a couple weeks weeks from now that that was a made up body part, I would be like, yeah, sure. Fine. You got me anyway. No, I I was worried that he had dislocated it and like torn stuff up in there. Not that he had broken something.

Kind of did that, too. But yeah, yeah, he did it all. Yeah. So what a weird team. But Tyler O'Neill, you can you can hang your hat on Tyler O'Neill, you know. And also the pitching on that team, which was not expected to be good because it wasn't great last year. And then they didn't do a whole lot other than sign Lucas Di Alito, who immediately got hurt. It's sort of the same staff. And yet they have made some pretty dramatic wholesale changes to their pitch mix.

This is another thing that was the topic of a FanCrafts article this week, right, by Chris Gilligan, just about their pitch selection. Andrew Bailey and Craig Breslow and co., their run prevention unit there, have taken the same guys, and they have really ramped up their sweeper usage, really ramped up their cutter usage, dramatically reduced their four-seamer usage, especially for guys who didn't seem to have great four-seamers like Beo, for instance, and Hauk. And it really seems to be paying off. They have pitched really well. Again, don't know if that will continue, but they have pitched really well.

And also, they signed Cedan Raffaela to an extension, another sedan delivery in my mind. And in addition to the Bayo extension, you know, if you're not going to spend any money on outside players, then I guess it's good that you spend some of it on players you already have. So, that's something. The Red Sox didn't used to do that. Like, they didn't sign a player to a pre-arb extension from 2012 to 2021. And now they're doing it. I guess those years also coincided with like spending on free agents and having high payrolls. So this is probably part and parcel with that approach. But, you know, you'd rather be the Orioles and not have

really signed your young guys to extensions but have every prospect in the world than to have the red sox who don't have as many but at least they're locking them up but sign your young guys if you're not going to sign anyone else it's some consolation yeah i mean i'm sure the fact that they were able to do it for not very much money had a lot yeah but this time famously when the Red Sox try to get extensions done with guys who can command a lot more, it doesn't tend to go very well, and then we never let them forget it.

We're scamps in that way, aren't we? Okay, so I don't want to be a broken record about pitchers, but pitchers keep breaking, so how can we not, right? I looked at MLB trade rumors over the weekend, like Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you know, they have their recent

stories and then they have their top stories, presumably by traffic. And for like a solid two or three days there, the top seven stories on MLB Trade Rumors were injury-related. And I think it was like Strasburg retires, which is indirectly injury-related, right? Spencer Strider diagnosed with UCL damage. Shane Bieber having Tommy John surgery. Jonathan Loizaga having season-ending UCL surgery. Can't forget about Loizaga in the lady of all the other guys. And then there was another Strider story about how he was having an MRI.

So the top five stories at MLB Trade Rumors were all pitcher injury-related. Then the sixth one was Trevor Story getting hurt. The seventh one was Loizaga going on the IL. Then there was one about the A's moving to Sacramento. Okay. Then the White Sox signed Mike Clevenger. And then finally, Uri Perez undergoing Tommy John surgery. One more.

So like seven out of ten were injury-related stories. Six out of ten were pitcher injury-related stories. It's just inescapable. We were already talking about it a lot and I was writing about it. But then when you had this flurry over the weekend of Bieber and Strider. Flexor tendon strain from Rivaldez was scratched from a start with some elbow pain. Chase Silseth is on the I.L. now with elbow issues. It's just every day at this point. It feels like we need to start shooting a cannon every time an elbow goes sproing like when a tribute dies in the Hunger Games or something. Or maybe we need a Futurama Simpsons-style days-since-last-elbow-injury-counter somewhere that we just keep constantly resetting to zero.

But I mean, I don't want to have to talk about it every week in every podcast, but there's just a whole new crap of injuries every time. So, it stinks. Yeah, and it's you know, it's causing us to have to

watch the game without some of its best players. It's causing discord between the league and the union. It's causing all sorts of discourse you know I feel about discourse Ben yeah and I think that the really frustrating part of it and we've talked about this in our very last show is that you know some of the things that are undoubtedly contributing to this rash of injuries and And we can talk about, you know, what percentage of the problem is attributable to velocity versus year-round training versus all of the mileage

that players sort of rack up when they're young, before they've even entered affiliated ball. I know that people have sort of rolled their eyes at the Players Association for suggesting that the pitch clock has anything to do with this. I mean, it seems like an understudied potential contributor to me, so I don't know why we're being quite so sassy about that. I also understand why people want to latch onto it as a potential explanation, because we can actually do something about that, right? Like, in theory, you can course correct on the pitch clock in a way that you can't on all the other stuff. But like, you know, it's just, it's very frustrating because I don't know how it changes. Like,

we just have to undo 15 years of player dev, right? To try to counteract this. And even if we were to do that tomorrow, I think it would still result in, you know, a bunch of injuries in our existing player population. And then this philosophy of pitching has already permeated down through the ranks. So there are young guys who are amateurs who are doing damage to their elbow right now in service of a big league career that may never materialize. And what do we do about that? You know, like, what do what do we do about any of this? Because people, I think, understand the role that velocity has in being an effective pitcher. Now, we've learned a lot even just in the last couple years about like, what sort of good optimal velocity means and how that isn't enough on its own, right? Like you have to have a good fastball shape and you need to have all this other

stuff. So it's not just that, but like our entire pitching ecosystem is sort of predicated on this central piece working. And so undoing that is going to be a really big challenge. And I don't know that there is an easy solution to that. So I get why people are sort of prickly about the whole thing, I guess, because what do you do? You just like accept a certain amount of attrition here, I guess. Like that's really what we're being tasked with. And that's an unsatisfying answer and a really concerning one from a labor perspective. Right. I'm not the first person to point this out. And we've talked about it before, but it's like, what do you do there? Are you building in safeguards and salary protection for these guys?

I know I've seen a number of people be like, our pitcher's going to go the way of running backs, and if for no other reason than they're half the playing population, I don't think that that's going to end up being a a workable situation right like we can't just have all of the money concentrated in position players and none of it concentrated in pitching like why would anyone do it why does anyone i mean like why does anyone do it now really is a question that we could ask but yeah it's it's a real problem i think that it's going to require collaboration in a way that I'm skeptical of being possible between the Players Association and the league to try to address this because there being sort of this endless chain of vaguely anonymous relievers who all throw really hard and then go down with injury and then you just call the next guy up like that makes for a less compelling product but it makes for a better salary situation from the owner's perspective so like there's a lot of forces sort of pushing and pulling here in a way that i i worry will delay any kind of progress but i don't know how much progress there can really be i know that sounds fatalistic but i don't know ben yeah well i will be a little sassy about the pitch clock stuff.

Okay, be sassy about it. I don't know if I fundamentally disagree with you, but I will say that I really do believe that people are making too much of the pitch clock as a potential cause here. And so, I mean, to me it feels like everyone just got goldfish brains about the fact that this has been a problem for quite a while, you know? I mean, like, Jeff Passan published The Arm in 2016. Dr. James Andrews said that there was an epidemic of pitcher injuries in 2014. This was long before the pitch clock was instituted at any level. I mean, Spencer Strider had Tommy John surgery in 2019 at Clemson, you know? So, like, why are we connecting that to the pitch clock?

I mean, could it potentially be playing some part along with things like the sticky stuff crackdown? I suppose. But we certainly don't need that as an explanation, I don't think, you know? Like, if we had no idea what was happening, if it was just we were completely in the dark and we're just flailing around for answers and we seized on pitch clock because it's something that was put in place fairly recently, I would get it. But to me, this just seems like kind of the human tendency to want to glom on to a single cause and a simple cause and the most recent cause.

It's like, oh, guys are getting hurt right now. They put a pitch clock in place a year ago. It must be because of the pitch clock, you know, like cause and effect. And it's just not that simple at all, you know? And I think, yeah, should we be looking into it? Should we be entertaining it as potentially a contributing factor? Absolutely. I encourage there to be more research about this, but for the PA to put out a statement in the wake of this that's like kind of exclusively about the pitch clock, you know, where Tony Clark puts out the statement where, you know, despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the commissioner's office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December. Just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades.

Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified. We're talking about what? We trimmed two more seconds in some situations from the pitch clock. The league's unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset, the players.

If you want to say, we need to do more research here, we should be looking into this more, by all means, do that. But to put out that statement in the wake of those injuries, this flurry of injuries that got everyone talking about that, that sort of sends the signal that you're blaming the pitch clock. And I just think that that sidesteps the real

issue here. If I had to put percentages on the causes, I have no idea. There's no point in even being as precise as percentages, you know, because we don't know. But I would say the majority, probably the vast majority, is just everything we've been talking about. The max effort, the velo, not just in the pro ranks, but all the way from when you're a kid

and you're throwing in showcases, the whole system is but all the way from when you're a kid and you're throwing in showcases, the whole system is set up that way. And so to draw attention to the pitch clock when you already have people drawing that, in my mind, kind of facile connection between the two, to me, it's just, you know, and I don't know that MLB's like firing back at this is great either. MLB said this statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend over multiple decades of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries. I basically agree with that, but it's kind of like Garrett Cole said. I'm just frustrated it's a combative issue.

It's like, okay, we have divorced parents and the child's misbehaving, and we can't get on the same page to get the child to behave. Not that the players are misbehaving, but we have an issue here and we need to get on the same page to at least try and fix it. So when you have the Players Association firing off a statement about implying that the pitch clock is, you know, at least significantly contributing to this problem. And then you have MLB firing back with there's no evidence of that. And, you know, there's a study out there that didn't find any evidence. And MLB is doing research and trying to study this with like, generally, I agree with that, like, I'm more aligned, I think, with MLB than I am with Tony Clark here when it comes to the actual root causes of this issue. But I don't think it's great that they're just kind of sniping back and forth at each other when this is exactly the sort of problem that you would like to see a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort

to address it, which, you know, to be fair, MLB is currently doing and has been doing since last year, as we discussed recently i think the place where i maybe can understand the posture of the union a bit more because i agree with you that at the end of the day this is something that i don't know that's an existential threat to the sport but like the ability for continued pitcher injuries to have a meaningful impact on fans enjoyment of the sport and knock-on effects for potential youth participation in the sport, I think are very serious and they ought to bring all parties together.

I do have sympathy for the frustration that the Players Association feels here, even though I tend to agree with you that the things that are contributing the most, and I won't hazard to put percentages on them either because what the hell do i know but is some combination of velocity and very little downtime from a training perspective right where rather than using the off season as a period of rest a lot of guys are using that as an opportunity to ratchet up velocity right so? So they are not just a shooing rest, but they're working even harder maybe, right? So I think that those things in concert with one another

are probably responsible for a lot of what we're seeing in terms of an increase in injuries. But I also think that, you know, while I have lauded the league's willingness to engage in rule change in a way that I think enhances people's enjoyment of the sport. I also think that like they are in a position to, because of the composition of the committee that decides these things, essentially make unilateral decisions when it comes to rule

changes and for them to do that for two measly seconds when you've already gained so much time back as a result of the existing pitch clock and to not you know satisfy labor's concerns around this stuff even if it's simply to say you know on average those two seconds don't really make much of a difference um the pitch clock is fine actually suggests to me a callousness with this because they are the ones who can make the call now if they had come together with the union and said you know we're comfortable with two seconds fine but i think it's important to view those decisions within the context of over the last year, the player saying pretty loudly and pretty unanimously, slow down. We've made this big change. Let's see how it goes for a while. And he may be, you know, within the context of the postseason, we'd like to see a little more

time added to the pitch clock to take time away. And then you see all this stuff. I agree with you, like people are reacting in a way that probably betrays recency bias. But I think that the union is right to take the opportunities they have to push back on the idea of unilateral rule changes without, you know, a lot of research that makes us comfortable, even if, like, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's probably not going to end up making that much of a difference and the suggestion has been made by those who work for the league's outlet i will i will also mention that like the union is ignoring the velocity question and i don't i just don't think that's supported by what tony clark has said on you know the question of you know max effort and velo and stuff in the past so i i do want to push back a little bit there was the the statement a little bit sassy? I mean, yeah, it was indeed a little bit sassy. It is the statement of a man confident in the quality of his beard. But I also think that there's an important element to this that is right, even if it was a little bit ham-fisted in its delivery. So, wow, we finally disagreed on something, Ben.

The listeners will be thrilled. They'll be so excited. I appreciated that some players sort of strayed from that line and even critiqued that statement and that critique. I mean, Cole, who is a former member of the union's executive subcommittee, kind of critiqued both sides. And he said MLB's statement was short-sighted, or at least it was short-sighted of the two to be fighting in this way. He said, I know it's not black and white, like both of the statements. He said, players felt our opinion has not been considered, but he also termed Tony Clark's remarks a combative statement that was narrow and didn't include all the other factors that may have contributed to it as well. And he went on to say, we have the ability to teach more break and teach

new pitches and we can do it within one month. But what kind of effect does that have on a pitcher going forward in terms of one year out, two years out, three years out? We don't really know. What we do know is when guys were more healthy, we weren't able to go to a pitching lab and concoct a new pitch and then use that at a 35% clip for the next six months and only have practiced it two months before we roll it out. So he said that. And then there were statements also, there was Justin Verlander came out. Some of them were, you know, he called the pitcher injuries a pandemic. He said the game has changed a lot. We need to teach him the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic. He said the game has changed a lot. We need to teach him the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't know. Yeah, probably we can't call it that. It's not everyone in the country and the world suffering. It's true too. But he said, I think the game has changed a lot. It would be easiest to blame the pitch clock.

In reality, everything has a little bit of influence. The biggest thing is the style of pitching has changed so much. Everyone is throwing as hard as they possibly can and spinning the ball as hard as they possibly can. He said he rewired how he pitched and everyone did. And he said, I don't know how we rewind the clock. And by that, he meant not the pitch clock, but just the way that people are approaching pitching now. And he said the ability to naturally throw hard because he was talking about people who have stayed healthy and throw hard and kind of including himself, although he certainly has gotten hurt too. But he said, everybody's built different and my mechanics are different. It's

like the gait of a horse. Comparing this to horse running as well. You got to find your own gait. You got to find your own way to a baseball. If that naturally leads you to be able to throw hard, great. If not, that leads you to an end road wherever that is in your career. Then you go find help, but not before. There was also a thread by Alex Wood,

which was a quote tweeted approvingly by Jameson Tyone. And Tyone said, I think players are hyper aware of what teams value, velo, swing and miss, metrics, and they chase it. And you'd be crazy not to. And Alex Wood said, yeah, the huge number of players now throwing at moderate to high intents close to year round. number of players now throwing at moderate to high intents close to year round. When I first came into professional baseball in 2012, as soon as the season ended, I usually wouldn't touch a baseball until at least December and definitely wouldn't be off a mound until at least sometime in January. I know a few veteran players who wouldn't even throw their first bullpen until they got to spring training in February. If you told a young player today that they had to take

eight to 10 weeks off throwing in the off season and couldn't touch a mound until at least the middle of January, they would think you were crazy. The other aspect is the competition part. Guys are pushing the envelope like never before. When I first came into the league, if you were dedicated and hardworking, it was an advantage because, in my opinion, not everyone was. Now, if you aren't hardworking, disciplined, completely dedicated to the game, you are not lasting. And with that, the level slash amount of training has grown. Now guys have tangible blueprints to be able to try and increase velocity. They have tangible blueprints to create new pitches.

But most of this is done on the mound. And the more you're on the mound, throwing at higher intent levels, the more risk you're taking on in the long term, right? And the crazy thing is that all these guys pushing the envelope like this, probably not a single one of them would change a thing because they're doing what they think they need to do in order to have a long, impactful career. So it's like your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should,

except the science is pitch design. And I think that you could say that maybe it's not great to take the entire off-season off and then have to ramp up again. That could be part of the reason why we see so many injuries concentrated in March and in April. So there might be a maintenance level of throwing that is actually good and protective. But if you're doing like max effort or close to max effort and you're throwing off a mound and you're trying to design pitches and you're going to facilities to try to – And everyone's going, yeah, bro! Right, exactly.

And you're like, you know, it's like, okay, guys. Yeah, that seems like it's going to do to try to, yeah, bro. Right, exactly. You know, it's like, okay, guys. Yeah, that seems like it's going to do damage, right? I mean, even like, you know, Shane Bieber, he had lost velocity and lost some effectiveness. He went to driveline. He got a bunch of velocity back. He was looking great this spring and in his first start. And now, sproing.

Now he has to have Tommy John. It's not necessarily because he went to driveline and he started throwing a lot harder, but it could be. And, you know, he was not pitching as well. And so I get it. Like, hey, he's entering his walk year. He wants to make an impression. He wants to get his stuff back. Well, now he's done for the year and he's entering free agency coming off Tommy John surgery. That's not good. So, you know, it's

short-sighted, but also like totally understandable because of the incentives, because teams are not saying, yeah, take a little off unless maybe you're Jordan Hicks going from the bullpen to the rotation. But all of these things are pointing to this is why this is happening. And it is a really thorny problem. And I just think derailing the conversation, I guess I would regard it that way to some extent by making it so much about the pitch clock,

just sidesteps what I would consider the core issue. And if we're all arguing about the pitch clock, and I don't think you're going to undo the pitch clock either, just because it's been so successful in terms of shortening games and arguably in terms of attendance and ratings as well. But that's at least something where you could. There is a simple solution, which is turn off the clock, you know. But to me, it's like this has been going on for decades.

I mean, the games were getting longer and longer, and guys were getting hurt more and more. So, you can't just draw a line at 2023 or whenever this went into effect in the minors and say, oh, see, this is the problem. Like, maybe it's making it slightly worse, but how much worse, I is is my question like it's not well and I think that that's part of Tony Clark's question too right like yeah and that's part of the frustration here is that I think that that is a a still understudied question which doesn't mean that the again like this part I agree with you on I don't think that the pitch clock is going to be revealed to have had all that much to do with it. I think on the edges, having less recovery time between pitches probably does contribute to some amount of fatigue, which can contribute to injury risk. And it's hard because all of these guys, we know on average what contributes to injuries, we think.

But also, all of these guys have their own special little ligament in there, right? It's their ligament. And what's going to stress that ligament to the point of tear is going to vary guy to guy, you know? And so it can be hard to prescribe sort of generalizable training regimens and say, this is going to keep you from TJ. We just don't know. We know kind of in a general way, right? But we're not in much the same way that we don't know that the 100th pitch or the 120th one is the one that's going to do somebody in, right? Like, it's going to depend on the guy. But I think it's okay for the union to say, hey, we said this was a bad idea and you didn't study it to our satisfaction and now guys

are hurt. So maybe we should look at that again. Like, I think that's OK, even if it's delivered a little sassily. And it is kind of rich for the league to be like, no, it's velocity stupid. And it's like, well, who's asking them to throw harder, sir? Yeah, well, I'm all worked up. Necessarily the league. I mean, I know. But you know what I mean, Ben? You know what I mean? Yeah, no, it is.

It is the league's role to step in and do something about it. And it is arguably now, or at least is trying to figure out what to do about it. But that could have happened at any point in the last 15 or 20 years or something like these trends have been developing for a while. So if Tony Clark came out and said, why are you just now paying attention to this? Why haven't you stepped in and legislated some rules change? Except, you know, maybe the players will push back on to just self-regulate when it comes to throwing hard. And the teams are not going to either because they're all looking at, hey, velocity makes you better until you break. And teams, yes, teams may also not care as much because it's next man up and we'll just call up some other guy who also throws really hard until he breaks. And then there will be another one behind him.

Everyone's in a hot dog suit. Yeah, right. I understand the internet so much better after watching. I think you should leave. Wow, so great. It just seems to me like with the pitch clock, I mean, there have been some studies on it that have not found anything. Sure.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And I think we should continue to study it as we develop a bigger sample here. Like it was tested for years in the minors. NLB at least at the time said that it had not increased injuries in the minors. You kind of have to take your word for it, I guess. Like we don't have great injury data down there, but that's what they said at least. And then, you know, they keep citing this Johns Hopkins study, which is in peer review. It's not actually out there yet, so it's not that helpful. But from my understanding, it was basically the same thing that Dan Szymborski did at Fangraphs last year. Or Baseball Perspectives has done a study too, and that hasn't turned up any clear correlation here.

Just kind of looking at who increased their, who increased their pace or accelerated their pace the most? And was there any correlation between like change in pace and injury rate? And there doesn't seem to have been. And there was like an initial flurry of injuries early last year, but then things settled down. And on the whole, it wasn't really that much different from the year before pre-pitch clock in the majors. So there's no no smoking gun there,

but sure, by all means, keep studying it. But this to me, I don't know, it read a little like trying to score some points or kind of like Tony Clark is embattled recently in his own union, put a statement out, make it seem like, oh, it's tough talk and we're doing something here. We have the players' interests in mind, as they should, obviously. But I don't think it advanced the discussion. Like, I was already sort of, you know, miffed about the fact that under every tweet about some guy got hurt, you know, you'd see 10 replies that were like, it's the pitch clock. And I just don't think that conclusion is really warranted. I just don't think that conclusion is really warranted. I get why people jump to that conclusion because it makes sense in theory that, okay, if you're kind of rushing pitchers along and they have less recovery time and they get fatigued and you get fatigued, maybe you change your arm angle.

Maybe your muscles are tired, so you put more stress on the ligament. Like it makes sense in a way. It's just that there are so many other factors here, and this was happening happening pre-pitch clock and so I just don't find it super convincing. If there is a study that comes out and shows that there is a clear connection, I will change my mind. And I guess, you know, again, if the idea is let's just keep studying this, fine. But that just felt like kind of a gotcha, you know, dunk, like, oh, we told you so. And I don't think that that is warranted by what we're seeing here. Also, like, Players Association has analysts, you know, like, could they do some analysis here?

Like, if they're so concerned about their pitchers as they should be, like, you know, can't they do some research or like suggest an avenue of research or something they should but i also think that when you're the one who gets to change the rule it's kind of on you to do to provide the evidence one way or the other like you know if you want the ability to make those unilateral changes i think you need to substantiate them and like if people are saying hey don't do that we don't want to and you do it anyway i don't know maybe anticipate you're going to get whacked with it. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I objected. I can't believe the moon is shrinking. I know. Thinking about that the whole time we've been recording.

I know, you're going to be looking up in the sky like, is it smaller than it used to be? Is this why I can't photograph her right? I objected just as strenuously when it was MLB trying to tell us that the uptake and home run rate wasn't about the ball. I'm not trying to. No, I'm not saying you are. I'm just trying to establish my credentials here as like, I'm an equal opportunity critic here. You're a good faith actor, Ben. Thank you. You're welcome. I just want to get to the bottom of this. I know you do. I hope you don't feel like I was suggesting otherwise. No, not at all. I know your heart's in the right place. You want these guys healthy and on the mound. I get it.

It's a very frustrating thing. I think part of why it is so charged for, well, for these players, it's charged because it's their livelihoods and careers. And that's just an obvious thing. Plus, like, you know, like we've talked about, I think because TJ is so successful on average now, like we do tend to underrate how lonely and isolating the recovery process can be like that rehab is a hard one. And so I get that. And baseball is worse if we don't get to watch Spencer Strider. Like it just is, you know, it's the loss is less deeply felt for fans certainly and it has a less direct impact on our lives but like we're all worse off for not being able to watch these guys you know it's such a you know it's such a shame like bieber looked great he looked great you know and it was so exciting to see him look so good after he had struggled and it felt like he had found something and he was going to have this great platform year into his free agency. And now that's all kind of murky. So I get why it's charged. And part of why I'm as I'll admit

this part, probably part of why I'm so keen to kind of defend the PA is that like, I just, part, probably part of why I'm so keen to kind of defend the PA is that like, I just, I do see a lot of people who work for MLB.com, like popping off about the union's motives. And regardless of what the union's saying, I just find that fundamentally inappropriate. So like, you know, some of this is, is maybe meta media analysis on my part that is, is leaking into my defense of Tony Clark, but I get why it's,'s it's a rough. I mean, like, what do we do? What do we do, Ben? Like, this is every day we're getting a new guy. You know, Julian Merriweather has a stress fracture in his rib

and he's going to be like shut down for like a month and we're going to miss a whole month of him. Right. And who knows how long it'll take to come back? Because he has to build back up after that. But I saw that and I was like, oh like oh thank god it's only a rib injury yeah you know it's only which as an aside i'm sure it's just like so uncomfortable when you have a broken rib like that is just like a super in your day-to-day life uncomfortable kind of injury but i was so relieved because i was like well it's not his elbow you know it's not his shoulder We're in this terrible spot where it's just like, I'm afraid to open Twitter.

I know. I know. Which maybe that's for the best, but. We didn't even talk about, yeah, Devin Williams with his back stress fractures. All these things just sound awful and probably are awful. But I think part of it is that, I mean, this is an ongoing problem, but it's a problem that you can ignore some of the time and then you get a flurry like this. It's almost, I mean, like- It's like Boeing planes. Yeah. It's like Boeing planes or it's like climate change or warming or something. It's happening. It's a problem. It's an existential threat.

But you can go for a while without talking about it, or at least some people in some parts of the world can. And then all of a sudden, you get an extreme storm or something. And that may or may not be directly attributable to climate change, but we know there are more of them at least. And so a bunch of that happens in a short span of time.

And we go, oh, it's right. It's not just like a line on a graph somewhere that the temperature is going up. Like this has real ramifications. And so a lot of the time we can look at the line on the graph of velocity going up, but you don't feel it as acutely. Whereas we get this little flurry. And this is not the most injuries ever. I saw Travis Sochik tweeted something based on the Tommy John database online, and he looked at most Tommy John surgeries, MLB pitchers in the first hundred days of a year. And when he tweeted that, at least it was nine

this year. There were 11 in 2021. Okay, that was a weird post-pandemic year. There were 11 in 2014 when this became a big deal. 2015, there were nine. So, like, it's a lot. It's elevated, but it's not necessarily unprecedented. So it was, oh, Yuri Perez and now Bieber and now Strider. It's like every day. Oh, my gosh. And it's also not just the number, but not just the quantity, but the quality of the pitchers, too. These happen to be really prominent pitchers, some of the best pitchers. And, you know, there's a correlation between velocity and performance and also between velocity and injuries. So I guess on the whole, if you're good and you throw hard, you're more likely to get hurt.

But when it's like Spencer Strider, maybe best pitcher in baseball, and then Uri Perez, maybe best young phenom pitcher in baseball, and then Bieber, former Cy Young winner, that I think draws attention to it in a way that, oh, we can't ignore it. It's like this was just as much a problem two weeks ago as it is now.

But we're all talking about it because all those injuries just happen to happen at the same time. So, you know, if the injuries subside at some point, which hopefully they will, again, like these things tend to be at their worst in March, April. So I hope that we don't get to August, September, if these things cool down a little bit and, you know, we stop talking about it because we should continue to talk about it because we have to figure something out. I think the short-term solution would be someone sign Rich Hill. How are all these pitchers getting hurt? And Rich Hill is not currently employed to pitch for someone because, you know, Rich Hill's indestructible. His elbow will just be fine. He's had Tommy John

and he also had an internal brace repair, which I always have to check myself now when someone has to get a UCL repaired or replaced or reconstructed. You used to be able to just say, oh, Tommy John, he's having Tommy John. Now you never know. It could be internal brace repair.

It could be some hybrid surgery like Otani's apparently is. And there's a real difference there in terms of the recovery timeline. I'm glad that there is an alternative to Tommy John that has a faster recovery when it's applicable. But it does make it more complicated to talk about. You can't just say TJ. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel worn out now, Ben. I know. I just don't think it's that much of a mystery why this is happening. It's a mystery how we fix it. But, you know, I just don't think we have to cast about like the hot dog sketch that, you know, like we don't have to do the wondering who did that. We could wonder who did it, but we kind of know what did it. Like, it's just, it's the throwing heart. I really what did it. Like, it's just the throwing heart. I really think it is. Like, cricket bowlers don't get Tommy John surgery because they have to keep their arms straight or they're allowed like 15 degrees of flexion or something. So, maybe we should all just mandate that pitchers can't bend their elbows anymore.

Their elbows can't break if they don't bend. So, we'll just have that. And maybe we can then institute bouncing. So you can have cricket-style bouncing, and that'll make up for it. So we'll just go to straight arm deliveries and bouncing. And that will fix the elbow injury crisis, at least. Yeah, it's a pickle. I don't think, though, that it is going to be a speed limit.

Because we've talked about that multiple times on the show and we've gotten recent emails about it. And I've seen a number of people proposing it elsewhere on the internet. And I just don't think so. I just don't think that's the way to go. I mean, it would be, I guess, sort of a short-term fix. It's like, oh, how do we solve everyone throwing 98? Well, we say it's illegal to throw 98 now. And it's just –

Right. It sounds, again, like deceptively, alluringly simple. But I just – I don't think it's great. I just – I don't think it's good really from a spectator perspective if you're constantly getting results results overruled, like flag on the play, there's a pitch called or a ball put in play, and then suddenly we're calling everyone back because, oh, that was over the speed limit. I know that we have that to some extent that's been introduced to baseball because you have replay reviews and overturns and everything. But it would be, I think, more prevalent if you mandated some speed limit. And I feel like I'd be watching with one eye on the velocity reading constantly, which just doesn't seem like the best way to consume the sport to just be like, was that over 95 or 98 or 100 or whatever it is? I just,

I don't know. I think you have to, I mean, how many times am I going to say, I think you need to limit the number of pitchers on the active roster. You need to close some of the loopholes when it comes to reshuffling your roster and constantly calling guys up and sending them down again. And that way you will, you know, unobtrusively, not heavy-handedly, you will indirectly encourage teams and players to hold something in reserve, to pace themselves, to go deeper into games because you only have so many pitchers available. And it won't be as obtrusive as like you can only use so many in a given game or you can only throw a pitch this speed. It's sort of an elegant solution in my mind.

And I think it would have an effect. As you were saying, it would take a long time for that effect to manifest itself all the way down because a lot of this damage is done when kids are in Little League, when kids are in high school, when kids are in college. But I think if you set the tone in the majors, because everyone's taken their cue from the majors, typically, I think, you know, like they're pitching like the big leaguers are. If they aspire to be big leaguers, then they're doing that. So I think if you change the way that pitchers pitch in the majors, then that will eventually trickle down, even if it takes some time. I think that would change pitcher evaluation and development and scouting and the whole shebang.

teams have to feel a roster and what kind of narrative gap does it leave in the sport to not have starters who can you know pitch reliably and pitch deep into games and you know there's all of those concerns both you know physical and psychological and aesthetic that i think are important but i think that the reason that people at least on the player side get so animated about this is that they feel like they're in this bind right they have to throw hard if they're going to make money right that's the the belief that they have and that belief has been borne out by the guys who've been rewarded in free agency versus not and so it might be that we're going about this kind of in a backwards way like what what other assurances could we offer that they can still make good money with this injury concern rather than them having to throw max feel i don't know

like that's a hard thing too because if you're trying to get them more money you need something from the owners as a way of offsetting that and maybe that's a trade they aren't willing to make but i do wonder if maybe we're kind of coming at this from the wrong side because if you can address the money part you know if you can just make the money part make sense, Ben, it's so easy. Yeah, right. I didn't mean to yell at you, Ben. Did you feel like I yelled at you? No, not at all.

We did get a suggestion that maybe you just have like a variable speed limit for pitchers. This was, I think, from a listener. Like a school zone? Yeah, like Patreon supporter Drew was writing in to us about just having the same speed limit for everyone. But then, yeah, what if you had just a variable limit where like let's say in spring training or when the season starts you establish your max for a particular pitcher. And then like maybe you have some percentage of that max that each pitcher is allowed. So the guy who can throw 102, he gets a different speed limit than the guy who tops out at 94. And they would have some incentive to throw as hard as they could when setting

that limit. Although maybe they'd blow their arms out just trying to throw as hard as they could on that one pitch. So, it'd have to be like a certain number of pitches or something. And then you could just kind of police it that way instead of having everyone be bound by the same speed limit. But I think in that case, I mean, imagine from a spectator perspective, kind of confusing if like the rule is changing every time the pitcher changes, you know, and they'd have to be like, okay, the speed limit for this guy is 94 and for this guy it's 97. And then you'd really be with your eyes glued on the velocity, just like the screen would have to, the broadcast would have to constantly be showing what that guy's personal speed limit is. So that just seems complicated. And maybe you could lower the mound, I guess, as people have suggested.

That might have some small effect. It does have some effect in the force that is transferred through your body and ultimately through your ligament. And maybe you solve some strikeout rate issues in the process. But, yeah, I don't know. I think it needs to be something bolder. I think it needs to be like an 11 pitcher limit, something like that. So we'll see if they get there. And we'll also see, like, if the players are amenable to that because Max Scherzer, he said this spring something has to be done.

Like we need to have some sort of rule change here in order to change what we're seeing here. We need to incentivize keeping the starter in the game longer. He said we're going to have to come up with rules to do this. It's not going to self-correct. But then he called the 12-pitcher limit a terrible idea. Well, you got to do something, you know. And if that's a terrible idea, you got to suggest another idea. There's got to be some solution, not just, you know, why haven't you solved this problem yet?

Like, we need some proposals here. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thorny one. It is a thorny one, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. It's a thorny one. It is a thorny one, Ben. Yeah. As I've said, like,

there's just no warning, you know? Like, there's, I mean, sometimes it can be bad if you lose speed. It can also be bad if you gain speed suddenly.

Right. You know, like, in retrospect, at least, like, Bieber having a velocity boost. Oh, maybe that's kind of concerning. Certainly losing velocity is kind of concerning, but there's no

gradual descent to Tommy John surgery. Like, I mean, yeah, sometimes you get the little like IL ballet with the flexor strains and the forearm strains and, you know, we're going to try PRP and rest and rehab and ultimately you get the surgery. But in terms of in-game, Strider in his most recent start, he was losing speed and he was not effective. But, you know, there was no sign like the previous start that anything was wrong. So it's, even though there's cumulative wear and tear on the elbow, it's not like you just get progressively slightly worse. Often there is kind of an inciting event where, yeah, there's strain, but then you reach a breaking point, a springing point where you actually get hurt. And that could happen at any time, you know? So, some guy looks-

With the sun going out. Yeah. At least we have some warning in those cases. You know, they didn't used to. And so when there was an eclipse and you didn't have people charting that, it was like, oh, we need to sacrifice someone or this is like we need to depose our ruler or whatever. It was that kind of event. Now we anticipate that the eclipse is going to happen. And Pedro Grafal is like, eh, you know. But with injuries, we just don't have warning. And so it's even more shocking when it happens, except not shocking at all, because this is like a daily occurrence at this point. I know. You can't get attached to anyone

because the UCL will not stay attached. So you're like, oh, I can't wait to watch Spencer Strider and how many strikeouts is he going to have with his new pitch? And then it's just snatched away. And so why ever love again? You know, it's like you have to harden your heart. Like, oh, well, I hope that pitcher will be good, but I'm not going to count on it. And it's so sad too because it's like,

it makes you question all sorts of things. Like, you know i i was like so excited because the d-bags were playing so well and you know cattell martin had another home run and it was like oh look at this heater that cattell's on to start the season and he's still on a heater but you can't enjoy that when it's like oh well actually spencer schrader is hurt you know i was sitting there i had like finally figured out how I wanted to describe his pre-pitch motion that he looked like a ballet dancer getting off a horse like I figured it out Ben I finally you know I was like yeah crushed it I I can you know cuz he he turns out he turns out

and he has those thighs and he looks like he's just got off a horse you know and and now he's hurt. And I can't enjoy it. And if I say that to people, they might get offended because it sounds like I'm making fun of him and I'm not. I just am so delighted to be able to describe it in a way that makes sense to my brain. But it sounds like I'm making fun of him and he's hurt. And so that's, it's really quite upsetting, you know. And then I have people

on Twitter telling me I should be happy on the podcast. And it's like, our heads are falling off, you know, our pet's heads are falling clean off. I think I said this on our A's preview when we were talking about Mason Miller, but it's nice when we can delight in someone really running fast, hitting hard, like we did with Ellie, you know, It's like, oh my gosh, sub 15 seconds, he ran around the bases in 450-foot homer and he hits the ball so hard. And with pitchers, now we can't do that. We can't say, oh, he throws so hard. We used to do that, but now it doesn't excite me. It concerns me. I see someone throw triple digits. I'm like, oh no. And so we're conditioned. I mean, people have always been excited about loud tools with baseball players,

but especially with StatCast, right, where it's like, oh, wow, we have the exit feel, we have the sprint speed, and, yeah, we have the pitch speed too. But you just feel so conflicted when you see someone throw hard that, like, bodes well for them in one way and just bodes badly for them in another way. So I want to just enjoy the excellence and the incredible skill on display. And I can't, I just, I have some reservation because when I see that, I think, oh no, this is, this is Icarus. This is Jacob de Grom. Your wings, the wax is melting. This is not

good. I want to sit here and think about how the moon is shrinking and book forum drama, and I can't because I'm worried about Spencer Strider. That's a little aside for the book girlies out there who are having quite a Tuesday. Oh my God. I've been following that as well. Oh man. Oh, Ben, we got to talk. On our last Patreon pod, we talked about low stakes drama that we well. Oh, man. Oh, Ben. We got to talk. You know, on our last Patreon pod, we talked about low-stakes drama that we were really enjoying.

And I feel like we jumped the gun. Although I am still very invested in the drama on Farmer Wants a Wife. Yeah, I'm watching Farmer Wants a Wife. What of it? Yeah. You're all missing out on the Patreon pods is what Meg is saying here. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

We'll link to Lauren Euler reviews if you're interested in that. That's what Meg is talking about here. So I will leave you with this. We no longer do past blasts formally, but I received a little bit of a past blast from Richard Hershberger, one of our past past blasters. And in his never-ending research, his combing the newspaper accounts of 19th century baseball, he sent me an excerpt from a piece from Sporting Life, December 10th, 1892, which was a proposal to ban position player pitchers. So this is how long that has been going on here. This is from just before the first season when pitchers threw from 60 feet, 6 inches.

This is pre-pitchers mound. Okay, so here's what it says. Manager Buckenberger of the Pittsburgh Club, in conversation with a Pittsburgh reporter the other day, suggested an idea for the consideration of the rules committee relative to the changing of pitchers by a side that is hopelessly behind in a game long before it is finished. Mr. Buckenberger is quoted as saying, Every season, there are games wherein a pitcher is thoroughly knocked out in the first, second, or third inning. The nine to which the pitcher belongs falls so far behind in the score that the manager does not care who is put in to relieve the knocked out pitcher. The latter may be a good

man and is consequently taken out of the box so as to try and get into better shape for another day. When he is taken out, an infielder or outfielder is put in to finish the game and the contest becomes a burlesque. The spectators become disgusted and the game is injured. I remember one occasion when there was a very close fight for the association pennant between the St. Louis and Brooklyn teams, the Brooklands went to Baltimore to play and Barney took several of his regular fielders out of the game and filled their places with pitchers and catchers. Of course, the Brooklands won easily. Now, this is something that a rule should prevent. And I suggest, in fact, I have suggested to the rules committee that they make a rule providing that when a pitcher is

knocked out, as we term it, another bona fide pitcher replaces him. Further, that no matter how far a team may be behind, that no player be changed so as to palpably weaken the losing side. What I want is something that will tend to make a losing team play right to the finish just as earnestly as if they were in the lead. This, of course, cannot be absolutely guaranteed, but something can be done to make things better than they are now. And this is another one from the nothing new under the sun, the solar eclipse department.

And I guess we have finally had some rules meant to curb position player pitching, though it hasn't really had that much of an effect. And I guess pitchers and non-pitchers... Tell that to the Seattle Mariners. Well, yeah. The I guess pitchers and non-pitchers. Tell that to the Seattle Mariners. Well, yeah. The lines between pitchers and non-pitchers were slightly more porous in 1892 than they are now.

There were more two-way players. But no, this is a complaint that is very familiar to our modern ears and eyes. And we're still legislating this, which doesn you know, doesn't give me much hope about the pitcher injury situation because on the one hand, it's reassuring to know that complaints and crises of today are also the complaints and crises of, you know, 130 years ago and the sport is still standing. On the other hand, it can be kind of demoralizing because it's like, this was a problem then and it's still a problem. We still haven't figured that out. That's not good because we got to get on these things. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't nearly as much of a prevalent practice back then, I don't think, as it is now.

And yet, as soon as it was instituted, people were like, oh, this is kind of making a mockery of the game. And yet, nothing was done, and the problem was allowed to fester for more than a century until we end up where we are now. But we might not need to outlaw position player pitchers now because they might be the only ones left soon. We might need the position player pitchers when all the real pitchers get hurt. Yeah. I go back and forth on it, Ben. There are days where I feel fundamentally optimistic about the world, and I think, well, the fact that these issues have recurred throughout history suggests that they are survivable in a way that is very good to hear, and that perhaps we ought to put them in a different kind of perspective than we have now, right, in terms of their severity. a different kind of perspective than we have now, right, in terms of their severity.

And then sometimes you live in the state of Arizona and you realize that stuff from the past can just come up and bite you. And it's really terrifying. So, you know, I'm like a little bit of column A, column B on this Tuesday as we record. Yeah, it'd be nice if we learned from the mistakes of the past. Maybe, you know, we're doomed to repeat them. We'll see. I feel like I've yelled a lot on this pod. I don't know how I'm going to feel about that later, but I don't tend to go back and listen to our episodes.

So, maybe it'll just remain a mystery for me forever. All right. Well, wear your protective eyewear, but not your protective eyewash. Check out any eclipses. Very good. In your area, just to bring things back to the beginning. I think protective eyewash is just the name of the episode. I think you found it, bud. All right.

Let's do it. All right. A few follow-ups for you. First, on the topic of Shohei Otani's interpreter and the kerfuffle about whether Otani had claimed to have met with the fans who caught his first home run as a Dodger or whether he hadn't actually said that. Email from Jimmy, who says, I live in Japan and while my Japanese is good enough, I'm going to language school for it here in Tokyo. My fiance is Japanese and obviously a native speaker. While I understand what Shohei said, it's still hard to trust yourself for something like this. So I asked my fiance what she thought. She said that while she understands getting different interpretations, especially with the subject of the sentence usually omitted in Japanese, as a language teacher of Japanese to foreigners and

English to native Japanese people, it was obvious on her end that Otani was saying that communication had happened. He didn't point out that he had met and interacted with the fans, just that it happened with someone. I know everyone wants to get the translation right, but there's no such thing as a one-to-one translation between Japanese and English, so that makes it hard. Also, good question from listener and Patreon supporter Kevin, who says, I'm struck by Otani's interpreter using the pronoun I. Wouldn't the interpreter have been present with Otani had he met with the couple who caught the ball? Assuming the meeting didn't occur, it would seem that he should have taken far more caution in his interpretation into English. That is a good point that had occurred to me. Why would he say I

if Otani hadn't met with the fans? Because he would probably know that he would have had to been present for Otani to have talked to the fans. So if he wasn't, then he would have known that Otani wasn't speaking from firsthand experience. That is kind of curious, but maybe he wasn't thinking that way

as he was trying to interpret on the fly. He was just saying what he heard without thinking about the import. If I've learned anything lately from Shohei and Shogun, it's that precise interpretations are pretty important. Also, we talked about the potential pandering of Juan Soto choosing Empire State of Mind as his walk-up song. Couple responses to that. Scott says, things are a little lower key in the Twin Cities media market, but Carlos Correa has been seen eating Juicy Lucy's, visiting the state fair, and at a

hockey game. Take that for what you will. Also, listener Patreon supporter Tim says, in response to our discussion of Soto and Harper pandering, I feel like it would be remiss not to mention Shota Imanaga and his efforts to endear himself to the Cubs fanbase, of which I am part, and the Windy City as a whole. For one, his first words at his first press conference as a Cub were a lovely spoken word rendition of our somewhat hokey victory song. That I was aware of. But the moment I really want to point to came when he started last week and they played his walkout song Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis. Most people who have been around Chicago since 2010 know this song because it's played at the United Center whenever the Blackhawks score a goal. And on their hot streak during the early

2010s, it was everywhere. Even if people don't know what it's called, everyone knows the song. When he was asked about it, Shota said more or less that he heard it at a Blackhawks game and thought that fans would like it, which is so straightforward that it makes me feel totally fine being pandered to, especially with the past couple starts he's had. And if it didn't seem like he could be trying any harder to win our hearts, he had both starts during very cold, windy, and rainy days appropriately for it, as most people would define appropriately, I love the idea that not wearing long sleeves is something that can endear you to a fan base. I guess if we're mentioning player pandering, we should probably note that new Atlanta Brave Jared Kelnick said last week, I think I will never get sick of the chop. It's such an iconic thing. That's the sort of pandering that will do the opposite of endearing you to many

others. And also, since we talked about Joey Votto and cursive writing and whether that's something that younger players would still do now or will still do in the future, was alerted to the fact that just last fall, cursive writing was reintroduced in Ontario schools. Here's a piece from CTV News Toronto. Cursive is making a comeback. Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September. The education minister said, the research has been very clear that cursive writing is a critical life skill in helping young people to express more substantively, to think more critically, and ultimately to express more authentically. That's what we're trying to do to create a very talented generation of young

people who've mastered the fundamental skills like reading, writing, and math that are the foundations of any successful, productive life in the country. So cursive reintroduced as an expectation starting in third grade, or as they say in Ontario, grade three. One teacher is quoted saying, I think it's long overdue. Cursive should never have been taken out of the curriculum. There isn't a lot of research specifically on cursive writing,

the teacher acknowledged, but the work that has been done shows that it not only teaches students the skill of writing that script in and of itself, but it helps to reinforce overall literacy. The more that young writers, beginning writers are using their hands, they're using another modality to form the letters. That kinesthetic reproduction helps them to think more about the words that they're writing. So it actually reinforces their reading as well as their writing. I guess that would apply to any form of writing manually, but the story also notes that handwriting with a

printing style as opposed to cursive costs more working memory each time the pencil lifts off the page. All right. It's the cursive comeback, apparently. You can support Effectively Wild and learn more about cursive in the curriculum and the moon shrinking and receding 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. Jordan,

Darren Bode, Reese Glidden, Brett Hoban, and Ross Wallace. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the effectively wild discord group. Lots of discussion there about pitcher injuries in recent days, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes,

playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts, memberships, prioritized email answers, and so much more. Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. One way or another,

you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments to podcast at Fangrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. You can also sign up for one of the many remaining

Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks this season. The Seattle meetup has happened. The San Francisco meetup has happened. Many more to come. Check the last link in your podcast description. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Thanks to the great Jason Benetti, friend of the show, for our intro clip today that came from

the Tigers broadcast on Sunday. And he was right. He said we'd probably use that as an intro clip. And we did. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Here's hoping the UCL

stays strong until then. It's effectively wild and it's wildly effective at putting baseball into perfect perspective. Impressively smart and impeccably styled. We'll see you next time.