Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2151: The MLB Reboot

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the lack of an uptick in stolen bases this season, which of the teams that are off to surprisingly hot or cold starts has changed their minds the most, analogs to baseball’s epidemic of UCL tears in tennis and women’s soccer, whether MLB would/should allow a hypothetical UCL-strengthening […]

What's the greatest podcast of all? If you love the game of baseball It's effectively wild It's effectively wild With Ben Landbeck And Ben Reilly Ben Lindbergh Rally Hello and welcome to episode 2151 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. Meg, it's not looking great for my bold prediction about how we would have the most stolen bases per team this season since the 1980s. I was basically banking on a further increase in the running game in steals from last year's big uptick after the rules changes. It's not happening. It's really not happening so far. And I'm rapidly losing hope that it will happen. There was a big debate. Will it go up? Will it go down? I was on the upside. I understood the downside, which is basically just, hey, it went up a lot last year. There will probably be some

regression. Things will settle. The trend was down. That's why they changed that rule. And so having not changed any further rules in that area this year, other than the obstruction calling enforcement, which we talked about on that bold predictions pod. But I thought that might encourage people to run even more if they're policing the second baseman, third baseman, blocking the bag even more, even though if you get called for obstruction, it's not actually a stolen base. Nonetheless, the people who thought it was going to go down or at least stay flat seems to be the case. And some thought that runners would adapt more in the second season under the new rules, and they would realize, oh, we can go even more. We were leaving some stolen bases on the table last year, and others thought that pitchers and catchers and defenses in general would adjust more and counter the runners. And I guess that

seems to be happening more, but the rate of steals seems to be slightly down, if anything. So I'm semi-disappointed. I don't quite know how to account for it. I was firmly in the camp that we would see an uptick. I didn't think that it would necessarily be like a dramatic uptick, right? I was prepared for it to be modest. Me too. But I thought that it would be appreciable and that it would start right away.

Because, yeah, I think my takeaway from what we saw last season was that stolen bases were being left on the table, maybe. I expected there to be optimization around that. And no, Ben. No. So far. No. Maybe they're like, it's still cold. And so they're like, oh, I don't want to run and pull a hammy.

I'm not offering that as an actual explanation, actually. Well, I think it was a little lower early last year, which again could have been for any number of reasons. Could have been the runners just not fully taking advantage of the new rules yet. But it ended last season at 0.721 steals per game. And now it's at 0.688. So 0.72 to 0.69. Through the same date last season, it was 0.691. So almost the same as what it is now.

Just a tiny, tiny bit down relative to through the same date last season. The stolen base success rate, it was 80% last season or rounded up to 80. It's 79% now. It was actually 81% through the same point last season. And that was one of the reasons I thought that we would have more steals this year because that's just too high. The stolen base success rate, too damn high. If it's that high, you should be going more often probably. We've said the traditional break-even point is 70, 75%. It fluctuates based on the scoring environment. But this seems too high.

Too high. And yet, it hasn't gone down that much. And to the extent that it has gone down, it hasn't gone down because there have been more attempts or successful steals. So Ben Clemens wrote about this the other day for FanCrafts. And as he noted, pickoff attempts are up slightly. Pop times are down slightly. Both returning catchers who have maybe trimmed

a minuscule amount of time off their throws, but also new catchers who are throwing better. So sort of makes sense, I guess, that after all the emphasis on receiving and framing and maybe the running game going by the wayside a little bit when it came to catcher priorities that maybe in the second season of these new rules, they'd say, hey, we better work on this. Yeah. But I also thought runners would work on things and just go more often.

I had noticed that the steal rate was flat or slightly down in spring training and that gave me pause. I thought, uh-oh. But I wasn't really sure how well that would correlate because I thought, you know, there's a lot of wear and tear with running and maybe you just don't bother in exhibition season.

Plus, last year I thought maybe it was higher because people were testing things out. It was the first season of the new rules, so they were trying things. But yeah, it doesn't seem like there's going to be any major movement here. Maybe it'll change. Maybe they'll get chased by bees. You never know. They could get chased by bees, Ben, and then they have to run because there are bees. That does happen occasionally. Covered in bees. You get bees, you get midges, you get other winged insects.

Terrible insect, midge. Terrible. Yeah. I do think that the steel rate will increase slightly as the season goes on, but I'm losing hope that it will increase further beyond last year's full season rates. Which, I mean, from a spectator perspective, I don't know that I mind that much. I think it was decently calibrated last year, and it could get out of hand if it were just too easy to steal. Too damn high. Right. So maybe this is about right, but it's just disappointing to me personally because of my bold prediction and also because it just seems like it should be going up still. Ben, I'm here to tell you that I think you're right.

I'm disappointed also. You know, I find myself wishing things were different than they are. I wonder if it is just the wear and tear and just a judgment that it's just not worth going that much anymore because you could get hurt. You could snap some fingers. You could break some bird bones. These things happen and it's better to stay in the lineup as opposed to getting yourself an extra base now and then. Yates is right in that base running is just the most thrilling part of the game. You know, the pull, the dance, the strategy, you know, the combination of skill and sort of innate talent and speed. I want more, you know, I want so much more.

I want more. I want more stolen bases more than I care about, you know, us having more balls in play. more than I care about, you know, us having more balls in play. You know, I think that's where I've landed in terms of my personal aesthetic priority. I think that that's where it sits. And I don't know if that's right in an objective way, but that is what I've decided I care about the most. So, there you are.

Well, more balls in play, more base runners, more base running. Right. Yeah, I guess they are complementary in that respect, you know. But if the guys who were already, if the ducks already on the pond wanted to, you know, get chased by bees because that all fits together. Do bees sting birds? Is that a problem for birds getting stung by bees? You know, I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know. I don't know either.

I don't know the answer to that. We're going to get emails and I look forward to each and every one of them. Because I want to know, do they get stung by bees? Can they get caught? I'll do some half-assed Googling as we go. No, don't. When I did, the first result I got was a scientific paper titled, An Accidental Fatal Attack on Domestic Pigeons by Honeybees in Bangladesh.

Oh, every part of that sentence was surprising. I know. That's great. It's an accidental fatal attack. So what does that mean? That these would not normally target the domestic pigeons? But it does say avian species may be more sensitive to bee stings than mammals. So they can and do attack and even kill birds.

Yeah, I mean, birds are small. Maybe they can't weather those stings quite as well as we can. Wow, you learn something new on Effectively Wild every day, Ben. You do. So it's so early in the season that I almost hesitate to bring this up. It's two weeks in as we speak, but there are three teams whose playoff odds have increased or decreased by 20 percentage points or more. And I want to ask you, which of those hot slash slow starts you're buying most, or I guess which has changed your priors most, if any? And just saying none at all is a reasonable answer at this point.

I know, but that won't make for very good radio, will it? Probably not, no. But the Astros are down 21 percentage points. They are off to quite a slow start, 4 and 10. The Royals, I mean, the sweethearts, Kansas City Royals, are 9-4. They are up 21 percentage points. So fun.

Some of their wins have come at the expense of the Astros because those two teams have played. And not by narrow margins. No. Let us emphasize some of these margins. Boy, they are wide. size, some of these margins, boy, they are wide. And then you have the Miami Marlins, who are down almost 25 percentage points, having started 2-11. So they're not playing well, and also the luck that went their way last season seems

to be going against them this season. So Royals, Marlins, Astros, two slow starts, one hot start. And obviously there are some other teams that are not quite at that threshold of changing things. But the Yankees, 10-3, they're up 14 percentage points. Your Seattle Mariners at 5-8 are down about 18 percentage points. Things have not been going so great there. I went on the radio in Seattle, and then they won in extras. So, I don't know.

Maybe I got to do radio every day, help them out. Well, you do a lot of podcasting, but maybe that doesn't count. But the Pirates, nine and four, right? It's not the first hot Pirates start we've seen in recent seasons. That makes it sound like the pirates are sexually attractive. Yes. But they're up about 14, 15 percentage points. But if we just narrow it to the three over 20,

you got your Marlins, you got your Astros, you got your Royals, which one of those has changed your expectations, your evaluations, even if it's by an infinitesimal amount? I have very low expectations of the Miami Marlins coming into this season. So it feels a bit unfair to say that they are unchanged, but that's not untrue. So maybe I'll do that first, just because I don't have as much that's interesting to say. It was like, yeah, your skill seems to be concentrated in the rotation. A lot of that rotation has hurt. Much of it has hurt in a way that it means we won't see those guys for at the time. We knew, you know, at least in terms of Sandy for the entire season, we were optimistic

briefly for Yuri. That proved to be a false optimism. I don't really have much confidence in that offense to at least perform consistently and certainly not to be able to kind of hang enough given the diminished pitching. So my expectations for them were pretty low. And you know, you mentioned the luck that they had or the good results that they saw maybe is a better way to put it in close and late situations last year. And that just seems likely in close and late situations last year. And that just seems likely to not replicate itself this year. The one-run games, yeah, not going so great this year.

They've lost their first couple. And so Skip Schumacher, their manager, he is probably not going to be the Marlins manager beyond this year. It seems like their team option for him was voided seemingly at his instigation because he was not happy about the way that Kim Eng exited the organization. She hired him. And so as sort of a show of good faith, I guess, they voided that option so that he would be free to leave if things didn't go great this year or he didn't get along with Peter Bendix, let's say. And it doesn't seem like that particular problem has cropped up. But yeah, Marwan's not going so well for them. Well, and they're an odd organization to talk about sort of in terms of the leadership because I don't want to diminish what went on with Kim Ang. Like that whole situation

was just handled very ham-fistedly, whatever else you might say about it. You know, my sense is that Peter Bendix is very well regarded by other front office folks and that he's thought to be a smart guy and, you know, a good guy to work for. And so, it's a weird situation to kind of talk about that front office because I don't know that they necessarily are worse off in terms of just the raw talent there, but also what a weird exit to foist on a trailblazer, especially after a playoff appearance. So it's just like a weird kind of murky vibe, which probably just points to the fact that the ownership there still sucks, you know? So what are you going to do about that other than, you know, nothing at all, probably.

In terms of the Royals, I think they're kind of feisty, these Royals, you know? Cole Reagans is like a really good pitcher. And I don't want to overstate the case after three starts and like what, like 17 innings from him, but even if he doesn't end up being like quite as incandescent as he was when he was traded to after he was traded to kansas city last season like he seems legitimately very talented and like a guy who confront that rotation going forward in a way that's pretty special so that's cool they've had really good performance from their veteran pickups from the season like i think we were all kind of like waka l, Lugo, what's that going to look like? And it's pretty good so far.

As it turns out, those guys have been very strong. Right. Yeah, no, that's the thing. They are leading the American League in fan crafts war by their pitchers. So the number one staff in baseball by fan crafts were the Phillies. Okay, they were projected to be. We sort of expected that. Then the Royals, number two.

Orioles, by the way, number three. But Royals, yeah, it's not just Riggins. It's Waka. It's Lugo. It's, I mean, Brady Singer has been excellent so far. Yeah, he's looked great. You know, Alec Marsh has been good. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Which, again, I was not necessarily expecting that. And also, the Royals' defense wasn't projected to be particularly good. So, you would have thought that would—I mean, they were, by the stat cast projections that Mike Petriello wrote up, they were like 28th in defensive projections. So, it didn't seem like that would help the run prevention. So, it's been pretty impressive thus far. And of course, the quotes are all, oh, the vibes are amazing. It's

the best clubhouse I've been in and everything. Well, yes, of course, when you get off to a start like this, that will tend to, you know, it's the old chicken and egg, which is driving the other. But sure, if it's a good group of guys and they believe in themselves and they think they're good, that's all well and good. So, yeah, it's impressive that they have not really been getting lucky thus far, at least in terms of their results. Like, they are outplaying their opponents. And, yeah, they've featured some weak ones, certainly. Yeah, they've featured some weak ones, certainly, but they have the highest run differential in the majors right now, which, okay, plus 39. Do you know?

It hasn't been a fluke thus far, or at least it hasn't been a fluke in that way. Yeah, I think a game better than their Pythagorean expectation. They're right on their base runs record. So yeah, there isn't like a lot there that suggests that this is like a, you know, an over reliance on one run games or anything like that. And, you know, some of the performances that they've been getting are like kind of a mixed bag in some ways. And if they start to regress, it might be a problem, but like, so like takej melendez mj melendez is like a really interesting canary in the coal mine for me when it comes to the royals because like he's not like the best fielder um and i don't you know i want to be mindful of like he's playing in the corners

like what does that do from a positional adjustment perspective but like you're mj melendez the whole idea was we got to get your bat in the lineup. Your catching is just meh. We want to see what you can do. You know, the version of MJ Melendez you can deal with is the one where he has like a 205 WRC+. It's like, oh, he gives a s*** how he's fielding, you know? And he hasn't looked like astronomically bad or anything in the early going. But it's like this is, you know, there's a limited profile here. And the question was always, is he going to hit enough to continue to profile

in the corner even though he's like not the best out there and it's like if he keeps hitting like this like yeah even if he doesn't hit quite like this and just like hits well like this is a version of him that is like a really productive player for them and you know bobby wood jr is having this great start and like he's really good like salvi's been on this good early run and like they have vinnie pasquantino all-time vibes guy like such such vibes you know i want there to be at the all-star game of vibes off between vinnie and brandon marsh like, let me tell you that guy, that's a glue guy right there. Marsh.

How would a, how would a vibes off be settled? I don't know. Like we just get to hang out and like drink beers and eat appetizers and talk about life and like, at the end of it, I'd be like, you're both all stars in my book. There's, there's no diminishment of vibes. You're both awesome. You know, they're not the only good vibes guys, to be clear.

There are a lot of other good vibes guys, but like those are some great vibes guys. So I think the thing that always sort of puts you in the mode of wanting to buy into teams like the Royals is like, well, they play in the AL Central. So like, how good do they actually have to be? They don't have to be this good to be a team that has taken a step forward and is going to like challenge for the division. Are they going to keep playing like this? I don't know, maybe. But like, I do think that my expectation of them has adjusted upward because I think that the pitching is better than I thought it was going to be coming into

the season. I think the Cole Riggins is very real. I mean, he was always real. Like he's a real person. He's not like a manifestation. But, like, I think that his ability as, like, a frontline starter on a contending team is real. I think that they have the potential to get more out of their offense than I was expecting. They're still a weird org, you know? Like, they're still a strange organization. But I'm also inclined to like them because, I gotta say, not that there aren't other teams that have good PR operations, but you know, their staff is so helpful. They're just like really helpful. They like publish their clubhouse times on Twitter.

They send out their extended rosters. So like, good job, Royals PR. Like you're very helpful and it's appreciated because not every org is like that. You're not the only good org in this regard, but you are one of the better ones. So, thank you for that. It's just useful. Like, it's easy to, it's nice to be like, here's the roster. I don't have to freaking text 10 people about it. Anyway, that's a little thing that only matters to me, but my expectations and my priors have adjusted upward for the Kansas City Royals. Good job, Royals.

And the Astros, not too down on them. I mean, I think. Well, Ben. So, you know, inside every Meg, there are two wolves. And one of them is the managing editor of Fangraphs. And one of them roots for the Seattle Mariners. So, those two wolves are in conflict. are in conflict because the managing editor knows that some of the underperformance that we're seeing from Houston as a result of their starting pitching being hurt. Presumably some

of those guys will get healthy, come back, hopefully be useful. We know Verlander's sort of on his path back to a return. I do think losing Valdez for a little while hurts them, but it doesn't sound like he needs Tommy John, right? We haven't gotten that piece of devastating news, and I missed it, right? Not yet. You know, they'll get Valdez back probably hopefully soon, and hopefully he's okay and pitches well. I do think that they have guys on their offense who are underperforming relative to expectation and will bounce back.

I also think that they have obvious areas of upgrade if they want to exercise those levers. So I don't know how much we should give Jose Abreu at this point, but if it's me, I'm advocating for it being a pretty short one because I know that he had back stuff last year, and so that surely contributed to the performance that we saw from him in 2023. But it's not going great with breyu and they have guys who are hitting really well like el tuve's having a great start and jordan alvarez is having a great start and janier diaz is like proving that they

shouldn't have stuck with uh you know uh martin maldonado for so long and i imagine bregman will actually they're all and kyle tucker only has a 103 wrc plus and i expect that to change in his favor at some point here jeremy pena 129 you know what good job jeremy we i don't know what you're gonna be when you're all grown up but that's a nice start so i think it'll be fine but also part of me is like that bullpen seems weird what's up with that how's j Josh Hader doing? Is he good still? And the answer is probably yes, but it's been kind of shaky in the early going for Josh. Yeah, we've seen him go through rough patches before and then go back to being unhittable.

But Verlander should be back soon. That'll help if Romber is not out for an extended period. I mean, it's nice to see Christian Javier has started off well, but the rest of that rotation, it's thin, it's shaky. They need to get some guys back. I mean, we knew that that could be a potential problem, but

they are three games below their base runs record, so they have been a little unlucky. And I figure, yeah, they'll probably be okay in the long run. Although it's a competitive division. So a slow start that might have meaningful effects, even if the Mariners are not taking advantage of it. I was just about to say, yeah, Mariners.

Yeah. I think I'm with you to the extent that my beliefs about any of these teams has changed. I suppose it's the Royals, not just because of their record, but because of how well they've played. I still don't buy them as a good team, but I buy them maybe as not a bad team. A better team than I thought. Yeah, a better team than I thought for sure.

And one that's like interesting to watch, you know? Yes, yes. Like, I think that that's a good barometer at this stage. Like, I'm curious to watch the Kansas City Royals. I did not expect to say that coming into this season. I expected to be like, I'm going to watch Cole Reagans. But that's

he's not the only guy that I'm interested in sort of diving in on there. And so, yeah, good for them. And the Twins are not off to a great start. And so, you know, I thought it was a stretch even to say, oh, it's AL Central. Like, you never know, even though they were aggressive

over the offseason, and that was all well and good, and I applauded that. I still didn't think they were good enough really even to contend in that division. They were aggressive in a weird way, too. It was kind of weird, but hey, they kind of went for it. They seemed to think they could get there, and they're on the right track, at least.

Who knows? It could be some marvelous lightning-in-a-bottle season. That would be fun if it happened. Yeah. I imagine there will be some harsh correction coming at some point here, but it's been a nice start. The last time the Royals had a magical lightning in a bottle season, they won the World Series. I guess that's true. Although they had won the pennant previously.

I guess that's true. Yeah. This is a little bit more. I mean, there have been some kind of the Royals and the Pirates. They've each had their own hot starts that fizzled out that come to mind immediately. Sure. But both of those teams, I mean, your bold prediction, Pirates winning the other Central, you know, looking not so bad so far. Although Milwaukee's off to a nice start.

But both entertaining teams, both more entertaining than they have been in some time. And that alone is a victory of sorts. It's a meaningful victory. a victory of sorts. It's a meaningful victory. And I don't want to overstate the case because I think that every team should be pointing at actual victories as much as they can all the time. But also, giving your fans something worth watching, even if you don't end up being the best team in baseball or even a playoff team, that that matters. That's an important, that's an important thing. By the way, we just need Estee Ruiz to be called back up and that'll help our stolen base rates. Maybe that'll, he's only got six in AAA,

but you know, every stolen base helps. We gotta get him back up there. He's actually hitting quite well in Las Vegas. So maybe he hopes that the A's move there full time. He'll be a superstar. He's got a thousand plus OPS in Las Vegas. So maybe he hopes that the A's move there full time. He'll be a superstar. He's got a thousand plus OPS in Las Vegas. Perhaps it's like Superman traveling to the earth, being exposed to the sun's rays. As Derry Ruiz, it's the sun's rays in Las Vegas.

Maybe he has turned him into a great player. Probably not. Do you remember back on episode 2118, I suggested that there should be some sort of central sports authority, some body, some office. I compared it to the Congressional Budget Office, some sort of like nonpartisan authority that is aware of everything happening in all sports and could then make informed judgments and recommendations about things based on sports history. And, oh, this sport was confronting this challenge at this time, and this is what they did, and here's how it worked, and here's a similar challenge in another sport. And I thought that would be really helpful. And it still strikes me that there are too many people in sports silos still,

and I am speaking from within a sports silo myself because I pay much closer attention to baseball than any other sport. Although I am exposed to many other sports. I'm online. I'm at the ringer. I have some inkling of what's going on elsewhere. But one thing I was not, I think, appropriately aware of is the injury challenges that a couple other sports are facing that remind me very much of the pitcher injury crisis right now in baseball. And so I will share what I have learned about this, which probably a lot of our listeners were already aware of and will be like, Ben, where have you been? But I have been probably not paying that close attention to those sports, potentially. One thing that called this to my mind was not an injury-related problem,

but the betting scandal that's going on in the NBA right now with Jonte Porter of the Toronto Raptors, which we've alluded to a couple times, but it's striking that as we're all obsessing over Otani and Ipe and that sports betting scandal, there's a more direct sports betting scandal going on in the NBA currently, not involving a superstar, but still some pretty serious stuff. Allegations that Porter essentially sandbagged, took himself out of a couple games and said he was tired or sick

or something in order to perhaps ensure that prop bets did not pay off, that people who bet against him reaching certain totals did win their bets and taken the unders on those things. And there was some unusual betting activity that got flagged, and it's all somewhat suspicious. And the investigation is still ongoing. But Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, is talking tough about this and is raising the specter even of a permanent ban. I mean, this is the sort of scandal that we're sort of saying the Otani story is a cautionary tale. This sort of thing could happen in MLB.

It's happening right now potentially in the NBA, and maybe we're not as aware of that as we should be. NBA, and maybe we're not as aware of that as we should be. But the injury questions here. In tennis, there has been a rash of arm injuries, wrist injuries, elbow injuries, shoulder injuries. Evidently, this kind of combines two recent problems in baseball, but the players have been complaining that it's about the inconsistency in the balls. So there's no real standardization in tennis balls. Oh, my God. You might play in one tournament and the tennis ball is one model. And then you go play in another tournament the next week and it's a different tennis ball and it's bouncing differently.

And some of the tennis balls are heavier than others. And so you have to apply more force and it's just unpredictable. And the players have claimed that this is causing these injuries. And, you know, maybe it's other things that are going on here. Maybe it's that they're hitting the ball harder too. Maybe it's analogous to baseball in that sense. And velocities in tennis and serve speeds and such, those have gone up over time too. That's partly related to equipment and rackets, but maybe also the ball here. So this is an ongoing issue and people are advocating there needs to be investigations and people are looking into this.

Should we standardize the tennis balls? Is that even what is causing this apparent uptick? So the ATP and the WTA announced earlier this year that they were doing a strategic review of the balls used on the tour as a result of the player input. So that's going on in tennis. Meanwhile, in soccer, women's soccer specifically, there is an epidemic of ACL injuries. Oh, no, really? Yeah, so this became a big story, at least in some circles, last year when the World Cup was going on and a lot of prominent players were unavailable because of ACLs. Not UCLs, but a different ligament in the knee, not the elbow, but the ACL, not the UCL. This seems to have

a number of causes. So, from everything I've read, I read some deep dives, New York Times, Washington Post, etc., lots of experts quoted, and it seems that there is probably some biological basis to this that women's ACLs

may just be thinner than men's. Let's say they may be more prone to this by some multiple. It's not clear exactly what that multiple is because there are other confounding factors here having to do with the conditions of the women's game relative to the men's game. And that's over a lot of different factors. So it could be just the condition of the pitches are not as good for the women overall. And so might be bumpier, you know, there might be potholes in the field, probably not actual potholes, but you know, the turf, it might not be as good condition as well maintained. Also, soccer shoes, apparently, As well-maintained. Also, soccer shoes, apparently, historically, have been sort of designed for men's feet, and women's soccer shoes are just very uncomfortable and they're just kind of used to that because, yeah, I know, right?

But there just hasn't been- They run like a marathon every game. But historically, there just obviously hasn't been as much attention, as much investment, and the conditions just haven't been as good. And even though there are tons of women and girls playing soccer these days, you'd think. But historically, I guess there hasn't been seen to be a market. The market hasn't been perceived to be as strong. And so now, you know, they're finally coming out with like custom models and stuff. But for a long time, they have not been customized.

And so that could be a problem. And then other things like training programs and travel conditions and just, you know, across the board, if there has been less money in the past invested in these things, you know, there's just not as much emphasis on recovery or not as many resources and training facilities. So it's hard to isolate exactly how much of it is biological, how much of it is just, how much of it is just these sort of systemic institutional differences and disadvantages. But it's become a big problem. Like many prominent players have suffered from multiple ACL tears. And it's sort of similar

because it can happen with no warning. And then you're out, I guess, a little less time than you are with a typical Tommy John. It's like eight to 12 months for an ACL, but there's been a lot of attention on this lately. And it's like, you know, Megan Rapinoe, it's like the superstars. She had three ACL tears in her career and people doubted that you could even come back from that. So it's very, very similar

to the UCL issue in some ways and maybe some ways that could be easily corrected and then maybe some other ways that might not be easily corrected at all. So it's a stubborn issue across sports with injuries and sometimes it is just one weak point that fails somewhere in the kinetic chain. So it's not only baseball dealing with this issue. I don't want to be too parochial and provincial in my view here. It seems like an existential threat to baseball in a way. But other sports have confronted similar things, obviously, like NFL and head injuries. They don't have shoes?

They don't have the right shoes? No, or at least haven't in the past. Look, I'm going to say something, and it's going to sound more controversial than I mean it. This is, again, just like an aesthetic preference of mine. I don't really get soccer, Ben. It's not my sport, okay? And I watch the World Cup when it happens because I like to participate in things that we all do. It's nice to be part of common culture, and it takes less time than watching a prestige series.

So I get it. I know that it is a beautiful game and that people love it. It's just not my beautiful game, okay? It's not my beautiful game. Yeah, baseball is your beautiful game. Right, yeah. I am furious. I am so angry all of a sudden at this. I can't believe this to be true.

a sudden at this. I can't believe this to be true. I have been sold Nike products on the back of Mia Hamm and Megan Rapinoe and all those gals. And they're very talented. They win world championships. Not every time. I know that there's been stuff lately that hasn't gone as well as it has all the time. But they win a bunch. And they were playing in shoes that were just accepted to be uncomfortable? Seems that way. I'm furious. I don't feel like I want to write someone a letter. I'm going to call my senator and be like, Mark Kelly, you know what's going on with these gals and their shoes?

Get on that. You had special shoes in space, I'm sure. I mean, remember, it wasn't that many years ago where it seemed like the NFL and football in general was facing an existential threat with CTE, with head injuries. And that's still an issue. It hasn't gone away. with CTE with head injuries, and that's still an issue. It hasn't gone away. I mean, I know they've changed some rules and tried to minimize that to some extent once they were called on it belatedly, once it really became a big issue.

And I know that for a while, at least, the youth participation was down, but football's more popular than ever. Yeah, it is. Sometimes you can solve the problem. Sometimes you don't really solve the problem, but it just kind of goes away anyway. Yeah, denigration. Like, they have, like, this whole wage suit, right? Right. Like, I knew that they – but I assumed that their shoes were right. Yeah.

So did I. So, I got an email. I am so upset. I am so upset. From Nat, who says, let's pretend there were a new anabolic steroid developed. We can call it Elbowdenone. If injected monthly into a pitcher's elbow, it helps synthesize

new UCL tissue. It reduces the incidence of UCL tears by 50%. It has no negative side effects. Let's say it has no positive effects on performance other than making the UCL less likely to tear. Give it to everyone. Should MLB allow the use of

albodenone under the steroid rules and quit? So here's what I would say. Yes, they should. Not that they should mandate it, I guess. But and I want to be very clear that like, I don't know if the like science that's being described here is like remotely the right way to think about this stuff. I don't know.

I don't know about elbows, except that the shoes don't fit right. I'm going to be stuck on this all weekend. I told you the moon was shrinking. You just got over that. Now you're stuck on the shoes. You have wrecked my world this week, Ben. I don't know. Up from down, it's making me think that all of those Otani conspiracy theories are right. Actually, no, I don't think that. Some of you need to like really in a profound way. I would, if it were me, I would look at this and I wouldn't think of it as a steroid in the sort of sense that we typically mean, which is,

as the email suggests, as a performance performance enhancer, like this feels like a preventative measure to sustain baseline health of the ligament, right? Like, players get all kinds of treatments, I'm doing scare quotes, that are meant to aid in recovery, that are meant to prepare them for the athletic endeavors of the day. That's what they do. And we don't, you know, we don't say they can't stretch. We don't say that. Wow. That's not even good. That's because that's not a performance enhancing. Yeah, yeah. It's not. Depending on the type of stretching we're talking about. Yeah. So, but like they're allowed to lift weights, you know? They're allowed to do all

sorts of things that are meant to prime their body for peak physical performance and prevent injury. And this would feel like it sits very squarely in that camp for me. And it doesn't have to be something, I guess, that's limited to pitchers. Like, there are position players who need to get Tommy John every now and again, right? Even though it is a less, obviously, a far less common ailment and the implications for how long they're out and what they can do are different, blah, blah, blah. But I would say, yeah, like, give it out to whoever wants it because it wouldn't, it sounds like based on the fantastical description of it, completely eliminate elbow injuries, right? We wouldn't see Tommy John go to zero. But if we were able to, with a simple treatment, reduce the number of them that we saw, that seems very worthwhile to me.

It does. Yeah. And of course, we allow LASIK, for instance, which can enhance your natural eyesight. I mean, it could make you see even better than you would naturally, better than 2020. Some people are better than 2020 naturally, but it can bring you back up to a baseline and that's allowed. And so it always sort of a squishy line between performance enhancers that are illegal and performance enhancers that are not illegal. And often, I guess the line is drawn, at least in theory, at, well, it's not actually making you better than you were before. It's just kind of bringing you back up to that baseline or your baseline.

But then there are players who take band performance enhancers and say that that's all that it was doing or that they were trying to do, right? Like you're Andy Pettit and you're Mark McGuire's and, oh, I'm just taking HGH for recovery purposes, right? Just trying to get healthy, not to make me better at baseball. People will claim that. Perhaps they even sincerely believe that in some cases. So it does get a little tricky. But I think given how big a problem this is for baseball and how few downsides it seems that this would have, at least in the hypothetical, and if you're giving it to everyone or it's available to everyone. It changes the sort of competitiveness aspect of the argument, I think, in a pretty important way. Yeah.

And it's it's not like right there are no negative side effects, at least according to the question. So there's no sort of ethical, you know, we're we're making guys risk their long term health for short-term performance or anything. Now, Nat did say, let's make it a harder question. What if El Bodinón allowed any pitcher who used it to also throw a fastball one mile per hour harder? Would the answer be the same?

And maybe it's hard to imagine a solution that really strengthens the UCL but doesn't enhance your performance at all. Like, it only prevents it from tearing but doesn't make it stronger in such a way that you might throw a little harder or be able to recover a little better between pitches or between outings. I mean, maybe it's unrealistic that you could thread that needle somehow. So, if it made you better in addition, like, there'd still be a great temptation just because this is such a drag for the sport and such a drag for individual pitchers to miss all that time and have to go through the rest in rehab. But then if it does enhance performance in a clear and measurable way, well, then everyone would want to take it. I guess, again, if there's no downside or side effects, maybe that's okay. Maybe everyone just would take it, no harm done.

Right. But I don't know. Then you are putting pressure on people to use it because if they didn't use it, then they are actively falling behind. They're at a disadvantage. Yeah. I mean, I think that you do have to have sort of a safeguard against that, but if it really isn't, if it's not altering your sort of baseline performance about sustaining, well, you know, that seems fine. Yeah. They do have artificial

ligaments. I mean, those exist. Like, I think mainly for— Where do they pull them from? Cadavers? I guess those aren't artificial. Yeah. I think they don't use—they're made of, like, synthetic polymers or something. And I think they're mainly to replace the ACL. And I don't know if they're up to the task of, say—

Laffy taffy. Yeah. And I don't know if they're up to the task of, say, yeah, I don't know if they're good enough to be a solution for professional athletes. Right, right. And probably we're even further away from that for UCLs. Like, because the UCL is such a specialized thing, too. Yes. I mean, ACLs, people just tear those in the normal walk of life, right? And then they can't walk because of the ACL. And

that, I think because there's a big market for that, that's probably why that's the one that it's more prevalent that artificial alternatives exist. You're probably never going to have a market for artificial UCLs because people who aren't pitchers wouldn't need them, right? Like you can generally have a normal life and go back your business, even if you have torn your UCL as long as you're not trying to pitch. So probably not much of a demand for that. And so maybe that wouldn't ever develop.

And maybe it would be complicated given the forces involved and attaching to the bone. It seems like it would be tough. But if you did manage to develop an artificial UCL, like at some point, probably we'll have bionic body parts and elbows. And then that will become a whole issue to legislate too. Like, do you have to have a bionic league

and a non-bionic league? Right. I feel like we've answered a question about that before. Yeah, probably. And also, yeah, like, would you have the procedure preventatively? Would you mandate that you could only get

the artificial UCL if your natural UCL has already torn because you wouldn't want maybe people to opt for this as an elective proactive procedure? Or maybe you would. Maybe it would be fine

if you did, but that'll be a whole thorny set of issues, right? Yeah. Because then you'll feel pressure to go under the knife, too, to get the artificial ligament. Potentially, yeah. And I don't want people to feel pressured to have surgery. But then again, if it's to forestall a future surgery and there's no side effect, seriously, I mean, there's always some risk of side effects with any, even routine surgery. So, it's a thorny issue, but it's a thorny issue currently, as we've discussed. It's thorny.

That brings to mind another hypothetical that has been stuck in my head here, because we got a question recently from a listener named Jeff, who said, let's imagine that Major League Baseball has played for another 500 years. In the meantime, teams keep retiring the numbers worn by their best players. At some point, there will be no single or double-digit numbers left. What will baseball do?

Go to three digits, use negative numbers, un-retire numbers, allow players to identify themselves with other symbols. Maybe we get emoji on the back. Yeah. How would you handle this if you were a major league owner? And we've talked in the past about the future of triple digit uniform numbers. We talked about this on episode 1975, 1976.

I think we postulated that triple digit numbers would probably become more common. And we have already seen that many unused high numbers in Major League Baseball have been claimed in recent years. They're just more players, more numbers needed, but there's less of a stigma about those weird non-traditional numbers. And also in other leagues and Asian leagues in particular, it's pretty common to see triple-digit numbers. So that's the boring answer. I think that's probably the most likely way we would deal with this. But here's what I have been wondering, because in my response to this listener via email, I proposed this and just sort of tossed it off and thought I'd forget about it but didn't. Is there any scenario where MLB does keep going for centuries, let's say? Okay, good news. So optimistic, yeah.

Yeah, I know. We get a lot of questions about when will baseball end and how will it die and what are the scenarios, but let's assume that it continues for a long time. Can you imagine any circumstance where MLB decides to essentially reset its continuity? So, you know, or may not know, but this happens fairly often in comic books, right? Sure, yeah. So, yeah. So, you get, you know, Ultimate Marvel, for instance, or you get DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths or New 52. You know, it's basically just a rebrand.

It's sort of a fresh start. Yeah. You take established characters in many cases, and you have some variant of those characters. You just wipe away the old canon. And this can be done for a number of reasons. It's often done just to juice sales, and often it does. And also because the canon, the continuity in comics, it can get so convoluted. Right. It's burdensome to new storytelling. Yeah. because the canon, the continuity in comics, it can get so convoluted.

Right. It's burdensome to new storytelling. Yeah. There's so much backstory. It's hard to keep things straight. It maybe repels potential new readers. And so you say, okay, we're just wiping the slate clean here and we're starting over and maybe a comics run that is numbered in the hundreds or thousands. It's like, okay, this is issue one again. So you can get on board and maybe you have some new storyline, some crisis on infinite earths,

some events that spans the various lines and books and everyone can get into this big event. And inevitably then that peters out and then they do it all over again. That's just kind of the way comics work. And Disney did this with Star Wars, right? After George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, there was a rebrand of the old expanded universe. And it's now Legends. And so the Star Wars expanded universe that I grew up with is now Legends. And it's non-canon, though it's certainly fondly remembered by many, including me. And it also has been rated and plundered for things in the new continuity that are now canon. So,

you can bring in old elements into the new. But can you imagine this ever happens with baseball? Because baseball already has more history than the other major North American sports. And that's more history than the other major North American sports. And that's generally seen as a selling point, or at least it is for many. You know, you prize the baseball tradition and history and national pastime and all the old names and legends. But you could imagine at some point there being an unmanageable amount of baseball backstory. I mean, already, if you want to get into baseball and kind of catch up on what you missed,

I mean, you'll spend your whole life, you know, familiarizing yourself with earlier eras and you'll still never get there. So if baseball were to go on for centuries to the point where today's stars are as remote to modern viewers as early baseball, you know, mid-19th century stars are to us today or even more so, would MLB or whatever exists at the time just wipe that clean and say, okay, let's rebrand. This is new MLB. You know, we're starting from scratch.

Could you imagine MLB or whatever it's called at that point doing that to bring on new people? I wouldn't imagine that they would do it in quite that way. Like, I think the way that it would manifest would be to say, look, we have all of these records that we want to maintain. We have this, like, understanding of the sport. But, you know, we're unretiring everyone's retired numbers, except for, like, you know, you probably keep Jackie, right?

But we're unretiring everything else because we just have to reset the jersey component of it at the very least. But I don't think that they would have much interest in moving on from all of the history and i don't know that there would really be all that much pressure to because even though you have this like long continuity you know even now how much do we really talk about like early baseball right we talk about early baseball when we have a sense of like newness and discovery like i think part of why there has been this like uptick in the lay public's understanding of an interest in the negro leagues is because in addition to like the the social

urgency around acknowledging this as a part of the game's history these are new stories that they get to learn right but like how much time do people really spend thinking about babe ruth other than whether or not he lit his wife on fire right like so it's a little sub tweet from me meg um but i i don't think that there is as much call back as we maybe think there is. We have this appreciation for the long history. We're glad it's there. We like that we have this continuity. But I really do think that as time goes on, the window of sort of reference shifts to stuff that like the oldest fan can actually remember. And that means that we're not in the earliest days anymore.

And like, we're going to keep shifting forward in time. And it's not that that stuff isn't important, but you know, if you think about it, like you would imagine your US history class, you spend a lot of time on the revolution. So you get like the very earliest days and then you like skip ahead to like the industrial revolution. That's not true. You do a lot on the civil war, get like the very earliest days and then you like skip ahead to like the industrial revolution that's not true you do a lot on the civil war but like you know like there are these like discrete periods that you revisit but there's a lot of history in between

that you kind of let slide and then you're like ah we can't talk about world war one we gotta get to world war two you know and that's silly because there's a lot that happened in world war one that ended up being kind of important for World War II. But, you know, like, you can only do so much in AP U.S. history. Can you tell that I started drinking a beer in the early part of this episode? What are you drinking? I'm just drinking a Bell's Two-Hearted, which is an IPA, because I had to make room in the beer fridge for other stuff. And so I didn't want this to get warm. And what? I'm going to put it in the

normal fridge bed? I'm not like drunk or anything, but I am enjoying this beer on a Friday at 1.36 p.m. So, here we are. I don't have to edit today. I'm done. Well, I think I worry about this or think about this with culture in general, not just baseball, because now that we have so much recorded history, just the literary canon, the cinematic canon, all of these things keep expanding to the point where if you want to familiarize yourself with the great movies, even if you're just like watching the best picture winners, not that those are always the best movies from their respective years, but that's a longer project. Man, remember Crash? That was wild.

It's a longer project than it used to be, just to catch up. I mean, when I was a kid, I went through a phase where I watched all of AFI's 100 years, 100 movies, and just combed through that list. Well, now it would be a longer list. I'm not even that old, but it's more than 100 years, a lot more than 100 years now and a lot more than 100 movies. So I guess every generation, of course, forgets and, you know, then the previous generation says, how can you not know whatever? But of course, that generation doesn't know the touchstones of the previous generation. I mean, there's always a forgetting that goes on. But if you want to familiarize yourself with popular music or what, like there's just so much more of it now and so much more of it recorded and it's just constantly going to compound and compile and there's going to be more and more and more to the point where you'll never be able to know everything that went before.

And maybe, yeah, functionally, you just forget and you stumble across some things sometimes, but mostly you live in the present or the near present. And you're right that most people follow baseball, pay attention to baseball without knowing that much about earlier eras of baseball, and that's fine. But I could imagine, you mentioned records, for instance, and we've talked about, we've lamented the fact that there aren't a lot of records being broken now. Well, what if MLB decided, gosh, it'd be more fun if there were more records being set? They wouldn't do it.

But would anyone care? Like, what if they just said, hey, like, you know. Oh, people would care. Are you kidding? But I'm not talking about Sabre members. I don't think it would just be Sabre members, though. Like, if they just said, hey, look, I mean, 19th century baseball, that's not real baseball. You know, we've said things to that effect. We've had discussions on the podcast about, like, well, what is real baseball? Sam always used to say, maybe semi-facetiously, but not really, that, like, real baseball Sam always used to say maybe semi facetiously but not really that like

real baseball is 1988 on and we've talked about well what is the modern era the modern era can't be the same thing now as it was years ago people say modern era is like you know early 20th century when you had AL and NL maybe it's 1900 1901 well that's a lot less modern than it was even when we were first getting into the game. So at some point, you just say, this is so old that this is functionally a different thing. And yeah, you'll have some hardcore people who really love the history and they're scholars

of the sport, and they will be up in arms. But they'll still be able to say that that history existed. It's not like you can wipe away something that actually happened. You'll just say, this is a new timeline. We're starting fresh and new records can now be set and then broken because we're clearing away the clutter here. We have to tell new stories. We have to have new exciting record chases. I don't think we're anywhere close to that point now, but I could imagine the sport getting to that point if it continues, which I hope it does. I think that people would come out of the woodwork to be mad about this, though.

I think that they would be furious. I don't think it would just be nerds. I think it would be, I mean, people, average fans do know milestone numbers. Like, that is a real, that's a real thing. People know that stuff. And I do want to be clear. I don't think that it's good that we forget all the other stuff. But I do think that it relieves some of the burden to think you have to be able to put your arms around all of it.

Hopefully, you're kind of cultivating and curating what you need to know about the sport. But what I was going to say was, like I just don't, oh boy, wow. You can't, like it's a record. People know it. You can't say it doesn't count anymore. We contextualize it with era though. Like we do that now. We do.

Right. Yeah. So what if you did that formally and just said, look, the conditions were so different. No. This was essentially a different thing. That's how this is different from comics canon. Obviously, that's fictional. Wait, it doesn't exist.

Yeah. It's not real. Right. This is the multiverse. This is another universe. This is whatever, right? Whereas baseball actually happens. It happens.

These were real people. They played the game. So you can't say that didn't happen. But you could draw some sort of artificial boundary and just say this is MLB 2.0. We already have a mechanism for this. We just call it a different era and everyone kind of mentally adjusts. And that's fine. That's all we need.

That's enough, Ben. That's enough. We want people to remember the history and having that lineage is important and having an understanding of the evolution of the sport and how it's changed and adapted and what matters and what skills are valuable. Like having all of that is important to our understanding of it, too. Yeah, I'm not advocating for this because I like the history as much as anyone. I'm just saying on a time horizon that we're not even contemplating here, like baseball series. They're not going to be humans then. It's fine.

I mean, it won't be fine. It'll probably be terrible, but like, we're not going to have to deal with this issue. Baseball will survive, but I hope that humanity will survive. And maybe now, I mean, we think of baseball as being ancient history, but it's not really. I mean, you stack a couple long-lived people together, and that's basically how long baseball has been played, at least professionally, right? So I'm talking long timeframe.

I mean, recorded history only goes back so far. Like if things keep going and we keep playing baseball in some form and we're talking centuries. If we're talking a millennium, I mean, it might just seem so primitive and so archaic that at that point, really a vanishingly small number of people would care. And more people would be into new record chases, new highs, new high scores. highs, new high scores, you know, I think there could come a time when that happens, even though baseball would probably be the most resistant to doing something like that, just because of how much it prizes its history. But then again, there's so much history that you might just say, clear away the cobwebs. Let's start fresh.

I don't know. I just really like the idea of in the future, as folks sit around the campfire from a long day of fighting the water wars that they're debating whether or not you know it should have been mike drought or miguel cabrera for mvp like we need that continuity it makes us human yeah probably it would not be a good sign if they resorted to this it would probably be like a last ditch effort to drum up interest you know the fading failing sport okay reboot this is new super exciting baseball it's not like the old baseball those old dusty record books they don't count anymore right I'll be bad it would be bad probably would be bad but and I think if the sport survives

long enough I think it'll get there again not hoping it gets there, but hoping it survives. Yeah. I mean, it, us, you know. Yeah. All right. We'll end with a little stat blast. All right. So the other day, I called into question some fun facts, or at least I raised some questions about fun facts. And when I raise questions, I like to try to answer them or at least enlist the assistance of someone who can answer them. power speed display where he hit a very long home run and also hit an inside the park home run in the same game. And I cited a couple fun facts that to me seemed almost overdetermined. It seemed like they were including too many qualifiers or it would have been just as impressive to me with less strict cutoffs. And I questioned, well, did they need

to set those strict cutoffs? Probably they did. So what are they hiding here? All fun facts lie, as Sam used to say. So there must have been someone, they had to set the bar that high, or else there would have been someone who made the fun fact sound less impressive. And Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBuzz consultant, find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. He ran the numbers. He sort of reverse engineered these fun facts at my request. And I now have some answers to my questions. So one of the fun facts about Ellie is that he 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 since 2015. And I thought, gosh, did they really have to set the bar that high?

450? Does it happen that often that someone hits an over-the-fence homer and an inside-the-park homer, which some of our listeners suggested we should rebrand as quadruples to distinguish them from regular home runs, over-the-fence home runs over the fence home runs since you were saying hard to look up inside the parkers and find sort of a statistical distinction there so maybe we rebrand them as quadruples to distinguish them anyway open to it i thought this must be rare enough that people hit these two types of homers in the same game that gosh did you really have to go 450 foot plus to isolate ellie in the stat cast era which we homers in the same game that, gosh, did you really have to go 450 foot plus

to isolate Ellie in the StatCast era, which we're only in the 10th season of that now? Turns out, yes. Yes, in fact. Really? Had to set it at 450 foot plus exactly or else Ellie would not have been the one. So there are 179 games on record dating back to 1916 where a player had an inside the parker and an over the fencer in the same game. Most of them were a while ago because even though over the fence home runs have become more common, inside the park home runs have become a lot less common. It's like triples. You got smaller outfields.

You got more symmetrical outfields. You got better defenders, perhaps. So inside the parkers these days make up a vanishingly small percentage of all home runs. There are maybe 10 to 20 inside the park home runs per season at this point. There used to be more, even when there were fewer teams and games. Of course, in the dead ball era, they were quite common. It was a significant percentage of all home runs. There are 17 players who have done the inside the park home run and over the fence home run in the same game multiple times. The two time guys, Travis Jackson, Ken Caminiti, Joe DiMaggio, Gus Zirnial, Gary Carter, Earl Averill, Duke Snyder, Dick Stewart, Bob Johnson, Billy Williams, Babe Herman, Andre Thornton, Andre Dawson, and Al Simmons. There are three, three time guys, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Adcock. It most recently happened

in 2021 when two players did it, Ahmed Rosario and also Eric Haas, which, you know, not to dedicate Eric Haas, no offense, Eric Haas, but a little less impressive when Eric Haas does

something like when Ellie did it, it's like, wow, only Ellie could do this. Oh, Eric Haas does something like when Ellie did it, it's like, wow, only Ellie could do this. Oh, Eric Haas did it in 2021? Well, that takes away from the luster a little bit. But Eric Haas hit a 362-foot over-the-fence homer, so not nearly as impressive as Ellie's 450. However, there have been 12 games with an inside the parker and an over-the-fencer

in the StatCast era since 2015. And guess what? One of those was Brandon Nimmo of the Mets in 2018. He hit an inside the parker, 396 feet, and he hit an over the fence homer, 449 feet. So, had to set the minimum at 450. Exactly. One foot different from Brandon Nimmo's. That's why it was 450. I mean, yeah, it's a round number, but also that excluded Brandon Nimmo. Otherwise, you would have had to say it's the first since Brandon Nimmo on June six years as opposed to just the first in the StatCast era. One foot of difference. So, you know, look, you have to do what you have to do to come up with a fun fact. But we're pulling back the curtain here. To be fair, Brandon Nimmo's 449-footer was at course, so you do a ballpark adjustment. I guess Ellie's is more than one foot more impressive,

but still, yeah. JT RealMuto did it in 2015. Aaron Altair, Gene Segura, Brett Laurie, Nick Castellanos, Nick Delmonico, Brandon Nimmo, Aaron Hicks, Rugnet Odor, Andrew Stevenson, Eric Haas, and Ahmed Rosaria. So some stars and good players in there, but not all superstars. So it is possible to do. Now, the other even more elaborate fun fact that I was wondering about came from Optistats. And as you recall, they tweeted, Ellie De La Cruz's night for the Reds, home run from both sides of the plate, over the fence homer and inside the park homer,

four plus runs scored, stolen base. He's the first player in MLB history to do all of that in the same game. And I wondered, you needed all of those qualifiers? Really? Someone else has done three of those things? Homer from both sides of the plate, one of them being inside the park, one of them being over the fence, four plus runs scored and stolen base. But it seemed curious, like why would they tack on the stolen base and the four plus runs scored unless they needed to, right? Well, we have

answers here again, courtesy of Ryan. So there are five previous players who have done the first two of those things, the home run from both sides of the plate in the game, an over-the-fence homer and an inside-the-park homer. So Maury Wills did it in 1962. Willie Wilson did it in 1979. Devon White in 1992. Ken Caminiti in 1994. And Carlos Guillen in 2004.

Okay. Now, Maury Wills had a stolen base in his game. Okay. So, we could not say that stolen base alone separated Ellie. Maury Wills also did the stolen base. However, none of those players had four-plus runs scored. Okay. So, they did not need the stolen base.

Yeah. By Ryan's calculations, they could have gotten away with just the homer from both sides of the plate, the over the fence and the inside of the park, and the four plus runs scored. That alone would have sufficed. So stolen base as the third thing

would not have sufficed because Maury Wills did that too. Yeah. But four plus runs scored, they could have just done that. On its own would have been enough. Yeah. They could have just done that. On the zone would have been enough. Yeah. They could have dropped the stolen base.

So that was one qualifier more than they needed. Wow. So I don't know why they tossed that in there. I don't know if their data differed or if they just thought it was fun. It made it more impressive that Ellie had the stolen base on top of everything else. But that was indeed slightly overdetermined, which does reassure me somehow. Because thinking that someone had done all of those things

to the extent that they needed to tack on the fourth thing, that almost, it rocked me to the core. So now we know that was one too many qualifier. I mean, it didn't rock you as much as me finding out that the moon is shrinking. No. It was close. Or the shoes thing. The shoe thing.

Oh, I just remembered that now. I'm mad about it all over again. The shoes. They run like a half marathon, a marathon. I don't know how many miles they run. It's a lot. Like, you know, soccer players are fit. They're like really fit.

And they're running all that way with shoes that aren't optimized for their feet. It's the patriarchy. It is the patriarchy, Ben. It is the patriarchy. I'm going to get some of the folks at Bryn Mawr on this, and we're going to get to the bottom of it. What's going to make us a sports school. All right. We got a question also from Matt who says,

after the Yankees versus Blue Jays game on April 7th, Connor Foley, a Yes Network writer, reported on Twitter that the Yankees threw 66 pitches at least as fast as the fastest Jays pitch all game. Okay. That seems significant to me, but maybe I just didn't know. And yeah, Connor Foley's tweet said, Yankees pitchers today threw 66 pitches that were faster or as fast

as the fastest Toronto pitch. And this is kind of a classic fun fact that sounds impressive, but it's kind of hard to tell. You know, it sounded impressive to me at first. Like it seemed like, okay, that's worth tweeting. That's worth noting. But I didn't really have a handle on this. How unusual is it for one team's fastest pitch

to be slower than that many other pitches in the same game by the other team? Well, not that unusual, actually. So got some help here from Lucas Apostolaris, semi-frequent stat-blast consultant of Baseball Perspectives. You can find him on Twitter at dbitlefty. more lopsided total for the Yankees because the Yankees, the very next game, April 8th, I guess, were on the other side of it where they had Nestor Cortez pitch eight innings. And meanwhile, they were going up against the Marlins who had Jesus Lizardo starting. And Lizardo throws hard and Cortez doesn't throw that hard. And he pitched almost the whole game for the Yankees.

And so in that game, it was like 69 pitches, like the Jays 69. Nice. Yes. Fastest pitches were faster than the Yankees fastest pitch. And that was the very next day. So that kind of tells you that maybe the 66 wasn't actually that special. And Lucas found that going back to 2021, the top game, lopsidedness-wise, which he actually remembered well, was another Yankees game. It was a Yankees versus Rays game, Garrett Cole versus Ryan Yarbrough.

And it was the Yankees' 116 fastest pitches in that game were faster than the Rays' fastest pitch. So the Rays' average, I guess Yarbrough's max velo was like 88.1 in that game, I think. And then, you know, Garrett Cole was going on the other side. So that was extremely lopsided, but it wasn't the most lopsided. So Lucas went all the way back to 2008 when we have PitchFX data first and did a little manual cleanup, but he found that the top games here, so that Cole Yarborough game that ranks 12th all time,

many of the top games though are knuckleballer games, which makes sense. In many cases, knuckleballer complete games. So, for instance, April 15th, 2009, Red Sox, the late lamented Tim Wakefield, RIP, he threw 70.9 max speed against Oakland. And so it was 166 pitches, apparently. The A's 166 fastest pitches. I don't know if that was all the A's pitches in that game, but pretty close. We're faster than Boston's fastest pitch. And then the next game on the list, May 28th, 2008, another Wakefield game, this time against Seattle, 138 pitches. And then next guy, another knuckleballer, though not one with a UCL, R.A. Dickey for the Blue Jays, September 2nd, 2015 against Cleveland. against Cleveland. That was 137 pitches because it was a max of 84.4 for Dickey, I guess.

Then you have a 2010 game, Jamie Moyer for the Phillies against Atlanta. Not a knuckleballer, but velocity-wise, almost, basically. Then another Wakefield game, 2011 against Seattle. Then a Dickey game, then another Dickey game, then a Barry Zito game in 2012 for the Giants, late career Zito against the Rockies. Then a Chris Young game 2008 for the Padres against the Giants, another Dickey game, Stephen Wright, another knuckleballer, and then you get to that Cole Yarbrough game. So yeah, it is not common, but not that uncommon for there even to be triple digit lopsided totals here. So yeah, something in the 60s sounds impressive and certainly leads to a different spectator experience in that game. But historically speaking, it's not actually that impressive. So in retrospect, I guess that was a fun fact that maybe didn't even clear the bar of this should be tweeted. I don't know if Connor Foley went back the next day and pointed out that the next game was even more lopsided in the other direction

or whether he or anyone else noticed that. But I guess that kind of hammers home that that wasn't actually that spectacular. But when I saw it, I thought, huh, that seems unusual. That seems notable. So it stood out to me too. But that's why we do StatBlast. That's why we do it. That's why we put in the work, Ben, or I listen and you and other people put in the work sometimes. And lastly, last StatBlast here, Ryan helped out with this one too. This one was inspired by a recent story told by the great trailblazing sabermetrician and also historian Craig Wright, who writes the Pagers from Baseball's Past newsletter, which I am a happy customer of and subscriber, baseballspast.com.

Haven't plugged it as much lately because he's actually winding it down soon. I will be sorry to see it go, but he's still telling fascinating stories. And one of his recent ones was about a player who won way more often than you would think, or at least his teams won way more often than you would think. The stat blast inspired by this is highest career winning percentages for a player's team in that player's starts. Okay? So, highest player winning percentage, I guess you could say. The highest winning percentage for a team in a player's starts. Now, the top ones are starting pitchers, typically. For instance, the number one guy by career winning percentage in starts is Sam Lever. One of these guys who you might not think of much if you're not a scholar of fairly early baseball,

but he was a turn-of-the-previous-century player. He pitched for Pittsburgh for a lot of the good Pirates teams with Hannes Wagner. They were some of the best teams in baseball at the time. And so in Sam Lever's starts, his teams went 163 and 65. That is a winning percentage of 715. This is a minimum 200 starts, by the way, though I will put the spreadsheet online for anyone who wants to set their minimums wherever they want. But Sam Lever, by that measure, the winningest player of all time. And he was a good pitcher, and he also pitched on good teams. You kind of need a combination of both.

And I guess he didn't have a longer career in part because he was a school teacher for like seven years before he – so he was nicknamed Deacon or he was also nicknamed the Goshen Schoolmaster because he was Goshen High School, Goshen, Ohio, his hometown. He was a teacher there for several years and so he didn't break into the big leagues until he was 26, wasn't a regular player until he was 27. He didn't break into the big leagues until he was 26, wasn't a regular player until he was 27. And so even though he pitched through his age 38 season, he only had 13 years in the big leagues, but made the most of them winning-wise. After him, it's some more famous players, some Hall of Famers. You got Whitey Ford, who had a 683 career winning percentage in his starts. Lefty Grove, 670. Dizzy Dean, 665.

Clayton Kershaw is sitting at 665 right now. I've heard of him. Yeah. I mean, one of the best pitchers of his era, if not the best, and also on a perennially excellent regular season team. Yeah, that helps. Yep. And then another lefty, another Yankee, Lefty Gomez, 663. Then, though, the first non-pitcher on the list between Lefty Gomez and Sandy Koufax, and this was the player who was the subject of Craig's story, Lou Klein. In his starts, his teams, 249 starts, according to Ryan's numbers, his teams went 164 and 85.

That is a 659 winning percentage, which seems pretty darn impressive given that Lou Klein had a career 97 OPS plus. He was, on the whole, kind of an okay player. He was a star early on. So when he was a rookie for the Cardinals, 1943, wartime obviously, but he was a six and a half win player that year. Somehow only 23rd in MVP voting. Maybe he was outshined

by his teammate Stan Musial, but he was a really fantastic player there. Not an incredible hitter, a little bit above average, but a very good glove. He was a shortstop initially, then played second base, and he was excellent at it, and he was a star that year. Never had another year like that for various reasons. One, he missed some time in the Coast Guard during the war. He was in military service. Also had eyesight issues because in 1942, they kept Klein, the Cardinals, in Columbus in the minors in part because he was blocked by Marty Marion,

who was a star shortstop for the Cardinals at the time. He was an MVP. In 44, he was an eight-time all-star. And because of these things, you know, butterfly effect, someone is blocked and they spend another year in the minors. And then that year in 1942 in the minors, Lou Klein got clobbered in a collision with Hall of Fame catcher Gabby Hartnett, who was a player manager. Lou cracked a bone in his right thumb and was hit hard in the right side of his head. He initially came back hitting well, but as the season went along, he started struggling at the plate and complained of headaches and double vision, kind of classic concussion symptoms. And then also an eye test showed that his vision had declined in his right eye. So he had to start wearing glasses and then started doing eye exercises to improve his vision, but it seemed to decline as he aged. So who knows? He was a big prospect and Branch Rickey put a huge price tag

on him when other teams inquired about him. So might've been an all-time great, who knows, if not for being blocked by Marty Marion and being in the minors and colliding with Gabby Hartnett. But because of that, he didn't have a long or very distinguished career. And yet he played for good Cardinals teams that were reaping the rewards of playing during wartime and Branch Rickey's farm system. And thus, he was extremely successful. And he had a reputation for even when he wasn't very good, the team would win. And maybe it was partly that he was good at defense and partly it was luck or who knows what. It was some unquantifiable Lou Klein quality. But whatever the reason, Lou Klein is the answer to this question of highest winning percentage in a player's starts.

So who knew? Now you do. And Ryan also looked it up by team stint instead of overall career numbers. And if you look at that, it's still Sam Lever up on top and Lefty Grove and Three Finger Brown and Harry Steinfeld and Whitey Ford. And Pedro Martinez with the Red Sox is right above Luke Klein with the Cardinals. But also Luke Klein's teammate, catcher Walker Cooper, is just ahead of him on that list. So it wasn't purely just a Luke Klein quality.

It was also a quality of those Cardinals. But I like that because when was the last time you thought of Luke Klein, if ever? So now you know some fun trivia about Luke Klein. This is why we have to maintain canon continuity so that we can look back. I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting like that it's like some weird, oh, new novel thing is the only reason that people are interested in Negro League stuff now. It's because like this is important baseball history and there's all this great work around it. But like I do think that getting to learn a new thing

and explore a new thing is exciting and thrilling to people and that it has social impact is like a really important ancillary part of it. But I do think sometimes the motivation is like, I didn't know that before. Like I didn't know how the moon was shrinking or that the shoes were wrong. We like to enlighten people about a whole lot of subjects

that are effectively well- Or distress them. Or that, yes. Simultaneous, I guess you can have both Mm-hmm. We like to enlighten people about a whole lot of subjects that affect the world. Or distress them, you know, like- Or that, yes. Simultaneous, I guess you can have both at the same time, can't you? Yeah. I mean, look, the moon is not falling. It's not Moonfall, the movie. It's not that scenario. What a great dumb movie that was, Ben. Yes. Wow.

It's the opposite of that. The moon is receding. It's getting farther away. Moon, right? Like there was like a spirit in the moon. And it was like a sentient moon, right? Like there was like a spirit in the moon. There was like an intelligence in the moon. Yeah. It was not natural causes purely, right? But it was that in that movie, there's like a conspiracy theorist who thinks the moon is like a artificial structure that was created and then it turns out that I guess that conspiracy theory

was right. It was like a Dyson sphere and there was like a... I don't think I remember the plot of that movie. There was like some AI and like a white dwarf in the middle of the artificial moon and the conspiracy theorists were right in that case. There was something weird about

that moon, but not about the moon. Something weird about that moon. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember the details of the plot of that, but I don't think that the movie really wants you to. It's kind of comfortable with you being like, I don't know, something weird happened with the moon and then they ran around for two hours.

Yep, and it fell, just as it says in the title. Oh, boy. Okay, just a quick note, because a few of you have asked about this. I know Google Podcasts shut down recently and some of you who were using that now have switched to YouTube Music. You can't find Effectively Wild on there if you search, and we can't add ourselves on there without making all of our old podcasts into video, which would be a huge hassle for not a lot of gain. However, you can add us manually, and it's very simple. I'll include a link to the instructions on the show page, but you just go to the YouTube Music app, tap Library, tap Podcast at the top of the screen.

In the bottom right corner, select Add Podcast, then select Add a Podcast by RSS Feed, and then you just enter our RSS feed, which you can find at the bottom of every podcast post at Fangraphs. It's blogs.fangraphs.com slash feed slash effectivelywild. Should take you 30 seconds, but if you have any trouble, let us know. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening.

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