Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2174: Angles in the Outfield

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the showdowns between Paul Skenes and Shohei Ohtani, Skenes’s strengths and weaknesses as a pitcher and an entertainer, the least and most exciting types of strikes, and more. They then discuss the improbable longevity of Aroldis Chapman’s triple-digit pitch speeds, whether the risk of losing the most games […]

What do you call that, effectively wild? Yeah. Effectively wild falls into the category of that guy who's like, as a hitter, you don't know where the pitch is going to be. You're kind of on your heels a little bit. You can't really dig in. One's at your chin, one's at your kneecaps. Next pitch, he paints outside corner.

Not a comfortable AB. Yeah. Effectively wild could also be the new name of your band. That's a good name. I never thought of that. Effectively wild, yeah, I like it. It's got a good ring to it. With a balance of analytics and humor,

philosophical music. Effectively Wild. Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2174 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangrafts and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Still buzzing a bit from Skeens vs. Otani, which was the talk of baseball on Wednesday.

It's funny. A Shohei Otani plate appearance was probably the highlight of the 2023 baseball season, if we're including the World Baseball Classic in the 2023 baseball season. Yes. The Trout-Ohtani showdown. It really didn't get any better than that on an individual plate appearance basis. And you could make the case that the most exciting individual matchup of this season also involved Shohei Ohtani, but on the other side of things, because Skeens versus Ohtani facing off for the first time,

that lived up to the hype, right? There was a lot of hype. It's the young gun, the phenom, the best young pitcher in baseball facing the biggest star, arguably best player, even as a DH maybe in baseball, Shohei Otani. And it really lived up to the billing. You had the strikeout the first time they faced each other. Then Otani gets Skeens back with a homer the second time. Then they

matched up a third time, and I guess it wasn't quite Ali Frazier three. It was Shohei Otani single on the ground into Redfield. But on the whole, those first two plate appearances, that was scintillating stuff. Had a little bit of something for everybody, you know? High highs for Pirates fans and also high highs for Dodgers fans, although I bet they wish the game itself had gone a little bit differently. We've talked about not wanting to get too invested in Skeens because he's a pitcher, famously, you know and um that can lead to

heartbreak because they so often break yes but i think the other part of that is that he's he's a young pitcher you know and really good hitters will adjust to to young pitchers but it is a compliment of the highest order that i was like which China's not going to get him every time. He's going to get him. The him there being Skeens. Skeens was okay overall. He struck out eight and walked one in five innings, so that was good. But he gave up six hits and a couple of homers, including the solo shot.

And he got the win. His team won, and Skeens was credited with it. a solo shot and he got the win. His team won and Skeens was credited with it. So good, but not as great as we have seen him in some previous starts. I will offer though, that like the, the pirates put up seven runs in the bottom of the second.

And so I was sitting, I was watching this game because like, wow, look at this game. And I was sitting watching poor James Paxton get his bell rung in, in the second ending there. And I was like, wow, look at this game. And I was sitting watching poor James Paxton get his bell rung in the second ending there. And I was like, gosh, if you're a Pirates fan, this must be thrilling for you. You know, it's like you're taking it to the Dodgers and all your dudes are doing stuff. In fact, the only thing that you might be worried about if you're inclined to anxiety is that Skeens has been sitting for a little while.

It takes time to score seven runs. And so I do wonder if part of it was just that, like, you know, he was on the bench for a bit, you know, he was sitting there. And it's been really fun to see the traveling roadshow of the Pirates now just everywhere that Jared Jones goes and Skeens. And everyone expected Skeens to be a stud, sort of. But Jones has really surprised people with how great he has been. But just every visiting broadcast crew marveling at those guys the first time they see them. And to see this, to have an early June regular season matchup involving the Pirates be one of the highlights. Just like the WBC championship. That's one thing.

That's a momentous moment. That's as high leverage as it gets. This is just a regular season June game in which the Pirates are playing and yet still super, super exciting. And MLB is making the most of it. I'm just, I'm looking at MLB's YouTube channel now. They have like five or six videos. It's just, just about that matchup or about Skeens. So first they put up a YouTube

short that is headlined 101, 100, 101 winner this round, Paul Skeens. And it's just a 15 second montage of the strikeout. And then they had Paul Skeens versus Shohei Otani. The entire first at bat popcorn emoji is in the headline. And then there's highlights of all games that leads by mentioning Otani versus Skeens, although it says Pulk Skeens still. P-A-U-L-K. Pulk Skeens.

And then there's Shohei Otani homers off Paul Skeens, full at bat. And then some Japanese text as well for the Japanese fans. And then full first inning, all caps for Paul Skeens versus the Dodgers big three, Mookie, Shohei, Freddie. And then every pitch, every at bat, all caps and exclamation point, Paul Skeens, period, Shohei Otani, period. So they've put up like several different videos of this matchup or of Skeens' start. So they're really leaning into this interest. And why wouldn't they? Because it's really kind of cool. One thing I would just say, Ben, is that for some of us who are not allergic to college baseball, getting amped for a skein start in June, old hat, you know, something we're used to.

Yeah, sure. This is a dig at you for not getting excited about college baseball. I know. Well, I've been excited about Polk skeins for some time. Polk Skeens for some time. Polk Skeens. I thought that they were like making a joke about, I don't know, like Polish people and their prevalence in Pittsburgh. Isn't there a big Polish community in Pittsburgh? I don't know. Typos.

Fix them. You know, just fix them. Messes up your player linker if you don't. It's a pretty prominent typo. A lot of eyes on these Polk Skeens videos. Polk Skeens. Polk Skeens. Polk Skeens videos. Paul Skeens. Paul Skeens. Paul Skeens.

Paul Skeens is dating Livid Dunn, I believe. Livid Dunn. I was actually going to say, I'm pleased to discover that none of the highlights were like weird, ogling Livid Dunn. Livid Dunn reactions to Paul Skeens versus Shohei Ohtani. They didn't clip that one. I mean, we made a joke about him being Livy Dunn's boyfriend in his Top 100 TLDR.

But that was in recognition of Livy Dunn being cool. We weren't ogling Livy Dunn. We're not oglers. We're observers of baseball, but we're not ogglers of Polk Skeens or Livid Dunn. Well, I was ogling both of these guys in their matchups. But I listened to the postgame interview that Skeens gave in the gaggle, and a reporter characterized it as a cat versus mouse between Skeens and Otani. And I would not describe it that way. Why are you picking two tiny things?

Exactly. between Skeans and Otani, and I would not describe it that way. Why are you picking two tiny things? Right, exactly. Why is this not being put in terms of like, well, maybe they don't want to invoke the kaiju thing because maybe that feels weird with Otani specifically, but you need like big mythic creatures. Well, you'll be happy to hear that Skeans himself said he likes to think of it as big on big, almost an NBA kind of matchup, right?

Okay, yeah. It was more like that. This was not like faint says someone, you know, it's that finesse, right? This was power versus power. It's a bear versus a shark. It's a – Yeah. It's a – what's another big thing versus another big thing?

I mean, ideally you want them both to be on land. Maybe it's a land shark. It's a land shark versus a bear. It's a, I don't know. It's a jaguar versus a lion. I'm trying to think of big animals, you know. It's a pterodactyl.

Well, whatever matchup it was, I think it was illustrative. Illustrative? Illustrative? Illustrative? Oh, where do we fall? Oh, no. This is going to be another revelatory. What do you say?

Revelatory. You say you're a revelatory guy, right? I think I was at the time. I may have flip-flopped on that. Or primer versus primer was another one with me and Sam. I was a primer. Yeah. You were a primer. I'm a primer. Yeah. You were a primer.

I'm a primer person. I'm still a primer person. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'd go with illustrative, but. Illustrative. It's an illustrative example. Yeah, I guess so.

Illustrative. Although I would accept illustrative. Anyway. I mean, look, there's a lot of ways to be a person. You could, for instance, be a shark or a bear. You could be a poll or a pulk. You could be a pterodact shark or a bear. You could be a poll or a pulk. You could be a pterodactyl or a shark. I guess you can't be a pterodactyl anymore. I don't think

those are still around as far as we know. But it illustrated, I guess that's one way to say it. Yeah, there you go. Non-controversial. It's not even the Friday show and I'm already like this. Who could say what tomorrow will bring when we record? As dominant as he has been, he has not gotten chases. He's not getting people to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. He's getting people to swing at strikes and very often swing through strikes. And so that first matchup with Otani, it was three pitches. They were all fastballs, triple digit speeds, and they were all in the strike zone. One of them was on the very border of the strike zone. It was half in, half out, but they were all in the strike zone. One of them was on the very border of the strike zone.

It was half in, half out, but they were all at least theoretically strikes that could have or should have been called strikes if Otani had not swung at them. And that is how Skeens has succeeded thus far. He's challenging people and he's beating them in the zone. And he's not really making people look silly by just waving at pitches way outside or high or low or anything. And the home run pitch when Otani did get his revenge against Skeens, that was on a fastball in the zone as well, a couple miles per hour slower, which maybe made the difference. But that is interesting to me. I updated some stats that Sam had because Skeens has made a couple starts since Sam looked up the numbers, but it still holds true. If you look at his swing rates, just how often he has induced a swing and and locations down into four attack zones. So the heart, the shadow, the chase, and the waste.

So waste pitches are just way out there. They're never going to be called strikes. You look sort of silly if you swing at them. Chase pitches, probably pretty self-explanatory. It's not a strike, but it's close enough that you could still get a chase. But if you get a swing on that pitch, then you would say that the batter chased. And then shadow is kind of in that no man's land. It's in the nether realm. It's a strike, but it's on the borders of the strike zone. And then heart is in the heart of the zone, right over the plate, et cetera. So if you break it down by those attack zones,

Skeens is in the 97th percentile for swing rate on pitches in the heart zone. So he gets tons of swings and also a lot of whiffs on pitches that are just in the zone, like in Controvert or Bleast Strikes. He's 10th out of 307 pitchers with at least 100 pitches in the heart zone. In the shadow zone, still gets a lot of swings. He's 110th out of 420 pitchers with 100 pitches in that zone, 74th percentile. But then you get to the chase zone. He's in the 17th percentile when it comes to inducing swings on pitches in the chase zone. 217th out of 260, using a minimum of 90 pitches there because he doesn't quite have 100. And then in the waste zone, you only get like 5% swings league-wide on pitches in the waste zone.

But he has not gotten a swing on a waste pitch yet. He's thrown 22 of them, a small sample, not super significant. But certainly seems like that's a thing with him thus far at least. And his approach to pitching and his repertoire are very much still evolving. But I wonder what this means about his stuff or his long-term prognosis. Because he would think, given how many strikeouts he's racked up and how dominant he's typically been, that guys would have a hard time holding off on chasing against him. And yet that doesn't seem to be the case.

It seems like hitters are making decent swing decisions against him and they're able to hold off fairly often on pitches that are not competitive pitches. And yet he still beats them because you can just throw it down the middle and you'll still swing through it. I can't believe that the good folks at MLB didn't decide to call it the right down the dick zone. Yeah, missed opportunity. Cowards, really. Show some courage of your convictions and just call it the dick zone.

Why isn't it called the dick zone? Why? Is it because you're cowards? Probably because you're cowards. They're like, no, we have children come to our side sometimes, Meg. We need to make some choices with that in mind. It is interesting that that is sort of the profile of it. I was watching last night.

In fact, I was watching the Padres play the Angels, and Ben Joyce was pitching. And I don't know if you know this, but Ben Joyce of the Los Angeles Angels throws the ball very hard. He does. But very often has no idea where it is going, which was really an issue last night. For all the velo he brings, it's a very straight fastball. There's not very much movement to it. And like he is often so deep into the waist, not as in like the thing you bend from, but the waist part of the zone, a.k.a. very far from the zone, in fact, that they're just not competitive pitches.

And it's obvious that they're going to be balls. And so they don't get swung at. It's like you think about skeins and you think about the concerns, quote unquote, with him coming out around shape. And is it too straight of a fastball and does it have you know enough movement to it and so it's just interesting to think about in contrast with like a big velo guy he's a velo guy like what does it look like to guys you know what does it look like ben so that's very interesting it's an interesting observation ben joyce boy it looks like it should work know, you watch him and you're like, that's like the platonic ideal of a pitcher. Like he looks like he just like in his body, you're like, he should be able to and it doesn't go well.

Yeah. At AAA this season, he struck out 34 in 19 innings. So, so far so good. But he also walked 11. So, he's prone to that. Gave up a couple homers. People are like, hey, what if you talked about Paul Skeens instead of literally Ben Joyce? Why do I care about that, Meg? Ben Joyce is interesting too. He is interesting,

but for different reasons. Yeah, not quite as many MLB highlight videos about Ben Joyce. They probably spell Ben right if they were, I hope for my sake. But Skeens,

like he throws a ton of pitches down the middle. So I guess it's worked out for him again because he's getting all these chases on pitches. And it's not like he's throwing a lot of waste pitches. He's not. He's not even really going for chases that much. So whether he knows that this is not a particular skill of his thus far, or he's just not trying to pursue that. not a particular skill of his thus far, or he's just not trying to pursue that. There's another stat that True Media has that R.J. Anderson relayed to me and wrote about,

which is just called competitive location percentage. And it's basically how many pitches do you throw, I think, within 18 inches of the center of the strike zone. And Paul Skeen's minimum three starts now is number two in baseball in competitive location percentage. 90.6% of his pitches have been in that little area. And most of the guys around him are softer tosser. I mean, basically everyone is a softer tosser than Paul Skeen's, but not notable flamethrowers. Not Ben Joyce. Not Ben Joyce. It's true.

He's one of the few. Brian Wu is number one in that category. And then it's like Joey Estes and just, you know, guys, Tarek Skubal's up there too, but it's not guys you think of. Ty Black is up there. And yeah, it's a bunch of guys, for the most part, to Tyler Alexander, you know, guys who rely on finesse and command a bit more than Paul Skeens. And yet he's just laying it in there and no one can touch it. So I guess that could bode well if you think, well, he's still a work in progress. He's still tinkering with some pitches. He's still adding pitches. He's still, you know, he's got this change up and he's got

the splinker now and he's kind of figuring out what works. And so maybe this is an early incarnation of Skeens and we will see him adapt and he will get more chases. Right. Because imagine as good as he's been thus far, if he then cultivates the ability to make people chase. Right. Well, then he might be even more untouchable. Or you could say, well, if he doesn't get that ability, then he is very dependent on

the heat and on just beating people in the zone. And I guess if he were to get hurt at some point, or if he were to lose some velo at some point, then maybe he wouldn't be able to be Trixie. He wouldn't be able to be kind of a tactical pitcher as opposed to a power pitcher as much. So I could see either interpretation. I lean toward the former, but it's fun for now. Maybe that Trixie version of him is Polk's Keens. Oh, yeah, it could be. You know, it's like Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines. Was that his alter ego? It was Chris Gaines.

Could be that. Yeah, maybe it's like that, Ben. Will he have like a Frank Tanana phase where he's like a flamethrower, like can't touch him initially. And then he has a later incarnation, the Palkskines phase of his career where he's more of a finesse, you know, get you to chase kind of guy. It's interesting to see which way it goes. But Sam made the argument that it actually for now makes him the epitome of pitching entertainment, basically, the platonic ideal of what we want from a pitcher. Because Sam ranked the spectator value of the different types of strikes that you could have. So you've got four types of strikes.

I wonder whether you would put these in the same order that he did. So you've got your fouls, foul balls. You've got your taken strikes. You've got whiffs on pitches outside the zone, so chase strikes. And then whiffs on pitches inside the zone. So how would you order those in terms of how entertaining they are to watch? So again, fouls, taken strikes, taken strikes, whiffs on pitches outside the zone and whiffs on pitches inside the zone. I would put foul balls as worst. Yes, agreed. And he agreed also.

I would put swings and misses on pitches inside the zone. I would do swings and pitches, swings and mitches, swings and mitches, swings and misses on pitches inside the zone, and then taking strikes. Taking strikes, most entertaining. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So Sam disagrees with you on parts of those.

So he also has fouls ranked at the bottom. Everyone has fouls ranked at the bottom. I don't want to know the sicko who thinks that's the best thing. That person likes committee meetings is really the only way I can describe them. They're like committee meetings and foul balls. Let's go. That's true. Sam described them as momentum killers. I don't think that's always the case. Like if it's a two strike foul and you foul it off to stay alive, that can be kind of cool. Right.

If you're, if you're spoiling pitches, that can be fun. I will say this. I think that when the, when a foul is like the, the ninth pitch of the bat, you know, then it's fine. When it's like a, when it's a duel, you know, when you, when you got a bear and a shark going at it, like bears and sharks do, then it's, then it's a duel, you know, when you got a bear and a shark going at it like bears and sharks do, then it's entertaining because you're like, wow, how long is this thing going to go on? Like, is he going to be able to keep spoiling pitches? Is this going to be like some record setting length in terms of – but otherwise, it is garbage that we have to endure to get to the good stuff.

Yeah. And there have been so many more of them. That's a big reason why we have seen pitch counts per plate appearance climb. There are just many more foul balls. So many. It also takes longer between pitches, which is not as big a deal in the pitch clock era. But especially prior to the pitch clock, you know, you got to get a new ball and everything. And you could wander around outside the batter's box after a foul. There's sort of a

reset that happens there. So he put the next one, he said chase strikes. So pitches outside the zone. He said they lack suspense. And while some have aesthetic appeal appeal they mostly just get us mad at hitters for seeming like flakes so okay yeah it depends like there are chase strikes and and whiffs on pitches outside the zone that are cool that are just like oh wow like he just didn't even see that one like he was so far from that one it's true that it does kind of just make the batter look bad sometimes but it also makes the pitcher look good for making the batter look so bad. That's sort of the version of it I have in mind when I'm ranking it so high is like, whoa, you really fooled him. I think that the common thread between the two that I have ranked the highest is the, whoa, you really fooled him of it all, right?

Like he really got him. So I'm clearly thinking about this from the pitcher's perspective. You fool them the most if you get a chase swing, but I guess if it's clear to you as the viewer watching from center field camera that this is not a strike, then I guess in that sense,

maybe there is a little less suspense because you know it's not going to be called a strike. I don't know if there's enough time to judge that necessarily. Then he has taken strikes next. And he says taken strikes are usually awful, which I wouldn't go that far unless they're front hip sinkers coming back over the plate or curve balls that make the batter buckle. And it's true. A good taken strike. hip sinkers coming back over the plate or curve balls that make the batter buckle. And it's true, a good take and strike, I think that might be the best of all, because that is really pretty, right? Yeah. And just when you lay it in there, in some ways it's even more pleasing than when

you fool the guy so badly he swings at a pitch that's not a strike. Like when you lull them into a false sense of security and they don't think it's going to be a strike or they're just so fooled that they're frozen and it starts out as not a strike and then it comes back. But it's true that it is a bit of a letdown if it is just like a pitch down the middle and the batter doesn't swing. Oh, but see, I love those.

When it's a pitch that's like right down, I'm going to, I mean, we're going to keep saying the word dick, you know, we're just doing that this episode. Go ahead. love those i when it's like when it's a when it's a pitch that's like right down i'm gonna i mean we're gonna keep saying the word dick you know we're just doing that this episode go ahead when it's like right down the dick and the guy's just like frozen that it's that is so satisfying because it's like you know it tells you something about what the hitter like thought he was gonna see maybe or maybe it tells you something about, like maybe that pitch has a little like late something to it. Or maybe it's just like, you know,

maybe it is suggestive of really good sequencing on the part of the pitcher and the catcher. Like, you know, he, he's been seeing all this, you know, slow stuff,

or he's been seeing all this stuff, a crazy break. And then you end it with like, Ooh, 99 right down the deck. and he's like, ah. Yeah. I should have swung at that one. Right.

I always make them sound like Muppets. It deprives you of the potential for a ball being put in play. Sure. So in that sense, you know you're not going to get that outcome. I'm concerned that I fundamentally misunderstood what he was ranking them for. I don't think you are. I think maybe you just differ, which I think is totally defensible. I just want to make sure I understood the assignment as it were.

He has swinging strikes at pitches in the zone, number one, most entertaining. He says, oh, that's the adventure right there. The pitcher gives the batter something to hit. What guts, what confidence. The batter takes a mighty hack. What potential. There's a clear contest in those moments between strength and strength. Attack against attack.

And Sam says he fantasizes about an all-star game skills challenge that's like a home run derby, except instead of just BP meatballs, it's just a flamethrower throwing fastballs down the middle. And so it's just like a Bonds-Gagné kind of matchup, like your best against my best. Although I guess if you knew that it was going to be that, then maybe it wouldn't be so entertaining. Because part of it is that you don't know for sure it's going to be a fastball, right? So you might be late on it. You're more likely to be late. You might guess something else. So that's what he says. And I think I was convinced by him in the moment, and then I've been swayed by you in this moment. So, it's not a clear-cut

case or hierarchy in my mind. Yeah. I mean, his descriptions were much more lyrical than mine were. I didn't use the word dick quite so much, but he had more time to think about it. That is true, yes. And Sam didn't, for all his strengths, didn't come up with the shark bear comp. So like, who's to say which is better, really? But his point was that if you buy that ranking and you think that swings and misses on pitches in the zone are the most entertaining kind of pitch, then therefore Skeens is the most entertaining kind of pitcher because that's what he does.

And so he's arguing, yeah, people complain about the rise in strikeout rate, even though that seems to have hopefully plateaued at a very high plateau, to be clear, currently. But a plateau nonetheless. Yeah. And so people complain about that and they complain about the lack of contact. But maybe they complain so much because the types of strikes that we're getting are not mostly the entertaining types of strikes. We're just getting so many more fouls. And maybe we wouldn't get so many complaints if it were just big on big power versus power. Right.

I'm just going to throw it in the zone and you're still going to swing and miss it like we got with Otani and Skeens. This is obviously like the extreme part of the bell curve here when you have two of the most compelling players in baseball, two of the most talented players in baseball going mano a mano like this. So it's not really generalizable. like this, so it's not really generalizable. But if Skeens does keep pitching and succeeding this way, then I guess if you buy Sam's interpretation, then that is arguably a really entertaining way to pitch. So he's not just entertaining because he's good and he's young and he's a phenom, but also because of the way in which he's good. And I guess this game was a good illustration, again, of that. So that's something to watch as we continue to watch schemes. And by the way, I did want to say in that game,

you just gave me a segue because you mentioned like, we have to treasure pitchers while they last because they're hothouse flowers and they're fragile and they could break, especially when they throw that hard. Aroldis Chapman also pitched in that game and he hit And he hit 104. He didn't hit. He's a pitcher. He hit on the radar gun. He touched 104. And he was throwing other pitches, like 103-point something. Now, I don't know that he's a good pitcher anymore. He has not had good results. And his four-seamer and his sinker have been hit very hard this year. Very hard.

Yeah, so he is not fooling guys with his heat the way that Skeens is this year. Did you see him think that he gave up a home run? Yes, yes. Through his glove was just convinced. I don't know why that didn't get out. But anyway, so throwing hard but not particularly well, Aroldis Chapman. Right. But the longevity of Chapman.

Yeah. Look, there are plenty of people who are not fans of Chapman or not rooting for him per se. But the fact that he has sustained this ability to throw this hard for so long, it is incredible. Yeah. That he has done this. And he has not broken, right? Like he's never really had a serious injury. He's had, I think, two arm related injuries that led to IL stints in his career and neither was super serious. He had a shoulder strain that made him miss about a month in 2017. And then he had elbow inflammation that cost him a short stint on the IL in 2021.

And that is it. Right. Like he's had some other parts of the body issues here and there. Yeah. There's been pus. But to have only two arm injuries in a career like his, neither of which cost him that much time. He's never been on the 60-day IL. Yeah.

He is an outlier in terms of how hard he throws, obviously. But he is the outlier of outliers in terms of how long he has sustained this. Yeah. He's 36 years old. I know. And he's been doing this since 2010. Right. I know. 2010 and early in his career, it was all four seamers later in his career. Sometimes it's four seamers, sometimes it's sinkers. Okay. So here we go. So 2010, 105.1, 103.4, 102.7, 101.5, comparatively pedestrian.

That was 2020. Weird year in many ways. Weird year. Then 103.4, then 101.8 in 2022. Looked like he might be losing a little steam there. But last year, back up to 103.8. And this year, now 104.0. And again, his fastball and his sinker have gotten crushed this year on decisive pitches. You know, 237 WRC plus allowed on four seamers and on the sinker 160. So it's not going great, but he's still dialing it up. Now his average velocity

is comparatively low for him. It's like down to 97, I think, for his fastball, which is, I guess, the lowest in his career. But when he rears back, like he still has that top of the scale. No one, not Ben Joyce, not anyone has thrown a pitch as hard as Aroldis Chapman did Not Ben Joyce, not anyone has thrown a pitch as hard as Aroldis Chapman did this season. And that is amazing. He has, and J.J. Cooper of Baseball America wrote about this this spring because much everyone else who's had a streak going has gotten hurt, has broken at some point. Like Trevor Rosenthal had six seasons in a row with a 101 or higher mile per hour fastball, the second longest streak. And then he hurt his elbow and he never threw that hard again. Right. Chapman just keeps going and going. He's like the energizer pitcher. Like they should study his UCL, you know, like they should, like he should donate his UCL to science when he's done pitching. You know, you

don't really need a UCL that much after you're done pitching, I guess, just donate it to science and let's examine what exactly it is about his UCL that has made it so robust. And then maybe we could somehow synthesize that. It's really amazing. I remember when this podcast started a zillion years ago, 2012, our very first episode, I think, was like debating, should a Roses Chapman be a starter or a reliever? And here we are almost 12 years later, and he is decidedly a reliever, and maybe not even that effective a reliever anymore. But still, he is throwing harder when he wants to than anyone else in the game. Just a loose UCL rolling around um yeah it's it's remarkable and i think that you're right to isolate the arm in particular like you look at him and you think maybe like he's a big dude

you know he's like a big imposing guy is this a matter not just of the way that his arm is composed but also like his entire physique facilitating sort of this longevity, but like they're big, strong, hulking guys who blow out, you know, it's not like, as we've discussed several times,

like it is a, an equal opportunity dismantler of a season. Right. And it is pretty remarkable that he has been able to sustain it. You know, he's faced, I can't believe I mentioned the puss and you just like went, you just went on your way, you know? You just rolled along to the rest of your Chapman commentary. The tattoo puss thing was very strange and I still don't completely understand what happened that season. Yeah, and we should be clear, like, As you said, we're not trying to downplay

the many reasons that people might have taken a shoot with Chapman. Apart from anything else, he seems like an odd guy. Whatever else you can say about him, and you can say a lot. Also, some of his Instagram activity, which, you know what? Better not even go there.

But yeah, he is a really fascinating, you know what I mean? The way that his body is working is really fascinating. And I think the fact that he is able to still generate elite velocity and isn't very good, that's interesting too. That tells us stuff about fastballs

and what makes them work and what makes them faulty that I think is important to, from a pitching perspective too. But yeah, it's, it's really, it's really something. If he had been a starter, I wonder whether he would have held up like this. He would have thrown many more pitches than he has per season, at least in per outing. Maybe he would have taken a little off, but would he have had this sort of longevity trying to throw as hard as he does as a starter? Seems like probably not, but then again, maybe he just has an immune to injuries UCL. It's just impervious. So who knows?

Who knows? It's a weird career, man. It's a weird career he's had it's in some ways incredibly impressive the last little bit of it has not been great he has bounced back at various points like yes he has you know he has been ineffective and then was like good enough with kansas city in a short-ish stretch last year that the rangers were like we have to go get him right now like we can't wait until the deadline cole reagan's to give up Cole Reagans to do so. We've got to give up Cole Reagans. Man. I bet they wish, you know, I wonder if they wish they could have that one back.

I bet they do. I would. If I were them, I'd be like, I think I'd prefer Cole Reagans. But they do have a World Series, so maybe it'll work out fine for them. Yeah. By the way, when Chapman throws hard, he looks like he's throwing hard. It's pretty high effort. He gets super sweaty, right? When Skeens throws hard, it's not like that, really. He's pumping 100-101. It doesn't look that max effort. it probably is, but I'm always struck by his follow through when he finishes off his pitch. He kind of it's almost like lackadaisical, like he swings his leg over and just sort of tips off the mound almost. And I was watching one of his pitches and it was weird.

It was like his pitch was so fast, but then he looked like he was moving in slow motion almost like after he releases the pitch and his leg is just kind of like looping over. It's a very odd follow through for someone who generates the sort of force that he does, which again, maybe bodes well, who knows? No one knows anything, but the fact that it at least doesn't look like his arm's going to snap at any moment, it might still, because who knows what's going on inside the elbow. Obviously, the strain is still being imparted there, but it just doesn't look quite as effortful as one might imagine. Yeah, it could be fine or it could be a disaster. But yeah, we don't know anything. I don't even know where bears and sharks live, Ben, you know?

Or how often they match up, pterodactyls. They're not as bad. Do you know her how often they match up pterodactyls they're not as bad still they're terrified do you know how terrifying it would be to see a pterodactyl very i think it would be i swear to god i know it's thursday and not that we're not doing the friday show i'm drinking a water uh grapefruit seltzer we got we got no beer on board but hard grapefruit seltzer okay look just make no beer on board but i have a hard grapefruit seltzer okay look just make a mixed drink why are i understand the portability piece of it but i don't get the appeal of the hard seltzers i i get i get the appeal of the ones that are just like a cocktail in a can where it's like this isn't this is club soda but with actual it's just malt liquor in those hard

seltzers and the instant they are not you you know, sub-zero temperature, they are the most disgusting thing you've ever consumed in your entire life. I never got it. I never got it, you guys. Why did we do that for so long? Why were people? Doesn't matter. Anyway, all of this to say, I think that, like, you know, maybe more terrifying than a T-Rex if you were, like like ranking your chance encounters with a – because it's like they were big, right? They could like lift you up and then drop you, crack you up like a coconut.

Yeah. No. Seems unpleasant to be prey for a pterodactyl. Yeah. I'm glad we avoided that. Yeah. Like with shark, you're just like, I just won't go in the water. And then it's not going to get – and like sharks don't – sharks great we love sharks we're a pro shark get a bad rep they do we're a pro shark

podcast you know and i don't think it's fair to lay it at jaws's feet entirely because like that's a great movie we should appreciate just but the terror it rot like it's a bad thanks for sharks so the top story i don't know if it's true trade rumors right now. There's no really neat segue from that. No, I did not give you one. The top story is about the White Sox selling. Okay. They're open to offers on everyone. Everyone.

And you might think a team this terrible, who would anyone want? But they do actually have a few marketable players. They do. They have Luis Robert, who's back from the IL now. And they have Garrett Crochet. And we talked about this briefly last time that there were rumors about the Padres pursuing Garrett Crochet aggressively. And then they have Eric Fetty, whom we've also, you know, we complimented them on the Fetty signing and Fetty on how well he's performed. So that's at least a

few guys and, you know, there are others in the mix, but those would be the most attractive to contenders. And Jeff Passan reported that they're open to offers on all of these guys and not merely in the we're listening because why wouldn't we listen? You can text us a trade offer if you want. But he characterized the White Sox as open for business, like they're maybe even motivated sellers. And at the same time, the White Sox, as mentioned, truly terrible team. They have lost 13 in a row as we speak. How awful they'd been and whether we bought the projections that projected some bounce back to being terrible, but at least getting to like the 50-something win range. Right. And I think we both doubted that at the time. I certainly doubted that they could recover to that extent even. And they were a little bit better immediately after that.

And now, of course, they have been completely hapless again. And it seems like there's, you know, clubhouse stuff going on, as we've discussed with Pedro Grafal. So I wonder, how bad do you have to be to not be open for business because you want to maintain some semblance of being a competitive baseball team? Do you just throw any talent to the winds and say, hey, we're 15 and 47. We're on pace for 39 wins now. And the Fangraphs Playoff Odds page projects them to be a 4-10 winning percentage team

the rest of the way, which again, like that's pretty bullish, not bear versus Landshark. This is the bull. They're pretty bearish given that thus far they have been way, way, way, way, way, way, way worse than that. Yeah. They, again, 15 and 47. That's a 242 winning percentage.

Can they be 410 from here on out? I don't know. And, of course, those odds aren't taking into account the fact that they are likely to deal some of their few remaining good players. But even if they were to keep them, that seems optimistic to project for them to get to 56 wins. And I know that these are based on historical teams and projections. And on the whole, I side with the projections and with history over just my gut feeling, but I just can't see it happening with this squad. It's just so bad. But like, if you are threatening the Mets and the all-time losses record of 120, I mean, they're certainly on pace to eclipse that, if you can

call it that now. And sure, they should have a little better luck or maybe health. They're four games below their base runs record, which even if they had played up to that, they would be terrible. But a little less so. God awful. Yeah. So you could take that as a justification to say, well, we might as well totally strip it down to the studs. What the heck? Like, what's the difference between 40-something wins and 50-something wins? We're still the cellar dwellers. We're still the laughingstock of baseball. We might as well just get rid of everyone, nothing nailed down here, and we can turn this around a little more quickly. They have recovered somewhat from a farm system perspective because of the trades that they've already made. So why not just go whole hog, just steer into the skids, lean into the failure, embrace it, and make the most of it and get better, hopefully just get to the light at the end of the tunnel sooner.

Or you could say, yeah, but they are so bad that they are historically terrible. They're going to be like on the pantheon of terrible teams maybe. And so do you want to just stay out of all-time terrible, embarrassing team territory and say, let's actually hold on to – and let's give our fans, any fans who are still subjecting themselves to this misery. Even though Jason Benetti is gone and most of our good players are gone, anyone who's still tuning in, at least give them a crochet start or a Feddie start or Luis Robert every now and then who, you know, could be on the next good White Sox team if you held on to them, right? Like, what's your duty to fans to give them something to cling to in the short term or to say, you know what, we're just going full tank here. We might as well because we're in the tank anyway. Oh, Ben, I don't know how to answer this question. It's a tough call.

Because here are some considerations that I struggle with. We have talked about teams that have been really bad in the past. I think my general posture has been that it is almost a duty of the club to offer to fans something to hold on to, right? Some good player, some compelling story, a glimpse maybe at your minor. It would be the worst team ever can be a compelling story a glimpse maybe at your your minor be the worst team ever can be a compelling story but yeah but like you can't market that as a story but like but no but i think look there could be um a knowing embrace of your circumstances um we've seen that before right maybe not we're gonna be the worst worst team ever. Like, I think if you started talking about it in those terms publicly, you'd probably get a call from the commissioner's office being like, hey, we got to, like, maintain an illusion here. Like,

what are you doing? You're committing a crime and then talking about it right so i think i have generally been of the mind that you should give your fans something whether again like whether it's like in this case it would be like louise robert probably right um or maybe you are a team that has been in the midst of a teardown and now you say but hey like come september come September, you're going to seize, you're going to get some good cups of coffee, right? You're going to have some young guys come up from the minors and give you a taste of like the next great core or whatever. I am generally resistant to writing off whole seasons. I also am conscious of the fact that like, there's no papering over the circumstance they find themselves in right now, right? Like like you can't lie to your fans this is a really bad baseball team

and like the vibes are terrible um you know we joked yesterday about how like the phillies vibes are immaculate and it's like that's not why they're winning necessarily i mean it probably helps and then like they keep winning some rides keep getting better and it's like oh my why they're winning necessarily. I mean, it probably helps. And then like they keep winning. Some rides keep getting better. And it's like, oh, my God, they're going to go to the UK and like, you know, convince them to get rid of the monarchy. I don't know. Like, what can't they do, Ben? But that is not what you have in Chicago, you know.

And I think that the really difficult circumstance they find themselves in is that like they also don't have like a great farm system, right? It's not like the next good White Sox team is just around the corner, you know? Like there's only so much improvement that you're likely to see in the next couple of years from this club, which is just so shocking because like they were they were a good team like pretty recently but like colson montgomery can only do so much you know like he can only do so much on his own so i don't know because i think that you get to a a competitive bottom where like maybe the best thing you can do for your fans is to say, fire sale, everything must go, let's get in the muck on this stuff now,

because we are realistic about what our competitive window looks like and how far away it is, and it is in the next county at this point. It is nowhere near, so let's get going on it and see if we can turn things around. They have made some good trades lately. Some. They've made some. They've made some that are kind of more head-scratchery to me. I still don't understand being so enamored with Dominic Fletcher. What's that about?

But also, maybe you go trade for Dominic Fletcher because you think he can play center field and you know you're gonna try louise robert but he's hurt so yeah who cares i don't know i don't know what they should do i also think that there's like this bigger sort of philosophical question that they need to answer as an organization which is like they they got rid of the old regime and they brought in a new regime except it was part of the old regime and they brought in a new regime, except it was part of the old regime. And so like, if you're really contemplating a full teardown, do you feel like you have the people in place necessary to facilitate a successful version of that? And like, I don't actually have a good answer to that question. Like, I don't quite, I still don't quite know what I think about this current version of the White Sox front office. I think the fact that they were willing to move on from anyone is like in some ways a positive sign.

But it's like, are they really like doing the canvassing wide? Are they bringing in who they need? Can you really change all that much with Reinstorf still owning the team? You know, like they are just I feel bad. Like, I think they are in this weird purgatory place as an organization. And I don't know fundamentally that they can like, trade or develop their way out of it with Reinsdorf still around, but they can definitely be better than they are, you know, like, it's not as if the only, if they've really only won 15 games, Not as if they really only won 15 games.

Jesus Christ. Like, it's shocking. Every time you look at the standings, it's just, it's shocking. It's shocking. It is June 6th, and they are 26 games out of first place. Ben, that is shocking. They've won, oh my God, it's only 15 games. Holy Moses. I think if I were a White Sox fan, I'd just want to rip the Orioles did and we could be truly terrible and then look at this wave of incredible prospects.

And that's not something you could bank on necessarily. That's a high percentile outcome of a rebuild or a tank as the White Sox could testify because they were those Orioles almost not that long ago when they had the incredible farm system. And then they were competitive for a while. It just didn't last. Right. And I think, though yet. So you could say he could be the link here. He could give us someone to watch and to market and admire, and he could still be around and not too old when this team conceivably gets good again. Now, for those reasons, he'd probably bring back a lot if you did decide to trade him, but that would be a reason. Even with the injury history, I think that he would,

moving him would bring back a number of players who could be an important part of your next good team for sure. Right. But if we're talking about Eric Fetty, even if we're talking about Garrett Crochet, who's a good pitcher and young and not too much mileage on the arm or anything, but he's a pitcher, right?

I just question to what extent you can- Right, he doesn't have too much mileage on the arm or anything, but he's a pitcher, right? He's just, I just question to what extent you can- Right, he doesn't have too much mileage on the arm because he was hurt. Exactly, right. Yeah, so can you really build around pitchers? Can you count on them enough to refrain from a trade, right? So yeah, I think it would be everything, not necessarily must go, but everything can go aside from maybe Robert. And if you blow me away with an offer for

Robert, where you give me back some high ceiling, high floor guys who are close to the big leagues, and you can give your fans something to enjoy soon, then I might be willing to make that move too. And if they do make those moves, then even if there is some positive regression, there's also going to be a decline from the talent level on the roster sinking further. And then they might really make a run at being the worst team of all time, which the odds are still against it, but you know, it's not that improbable as things go. Oh, it's so 15, you know,

and it's like a number that it's a weird special particle of a number because on the one hand, it refuses to stick to my brain because it's only June 6th and they're 26 games back already. But it's June 6th and they have only won 15 games, Ben. Like, that is, you know,

that is shocking. Man, that's, that is shocking. Man, the Rockies are really bad, too. How are the Rockies, doesn't matter. How are they only 16 back? That's funny. That's a funny thing. That's funny. Anyway, not the point of this particular segment.

So it's like, it's a number that, like, refuses to stick to me because it's so bad. It's such a bad number, but it's also a brain worm of a number where it should be all I can think about. It should be so deeply rooted in there that I can't. Maybe it's just a brain worm of a number because it's like really deep in there but it's eating its way out and so I'm losing stuff. I don't know. Well, it's dire and

one way in which it's dire, of course, is the offense. It's pretty dire in every respect, really, when you're that bad. But their offense is awful. They have hit 217 217 278 337 as a team that's a 76 wrc plus oh my god 278 wow on base percentage lord which i i bring up to say that it's not solely this team's fault that league-wide offense is down. It's certainly

not helping, though. But that is notably bad. I'm going to look up how historic that would be as we speak. I got to stand at this because that's just got to be one of the worst of all time. Of all time. It simply must be one of the worst of all human time. Yes. And that is a contributing factor to the overall offensive decline. But why I wanted to bring this up, that offensive decline, which we've talked about recently, and there does seem to be a bit of deader ball going on. Again, not dead ball.

Historically, I think the ball is actually like this is a sweet spot. This is arguably like Goldilocks ball. It's not too lively. It's not too juiced. It's not too dead. I think the ball is fine. It seems dead in comparison to recent seasons, but those seasons, some of them were too lively ball, right? So this is okay. It's just that the rest of offense is kind of cratered because pitching is great and defense is great. And that's what I want to talk about specifically, the defense. We started out by talking about Paul Skeens and how great pitching is now. Well, defense also. Russell Carlton just wrote something this week for Baseball Prospectus about outfield positioning.

And this is something that's come up before. Rob Arthur wrote about it years ago for BP. We talked about it then probably multiple times. It seems like a hidden driver of the decrease in offense and on base percentage and BABIP this year is an improvement in outfield defense, probably as a result of outfield positioning improving. And I say hidden driver because it's kind of hard to see that. It's not as obvious as it was with the infield shift where you could see, oh, that person's playing out of position. There are three guys on that side a second. That's weird. That's not the way it used to be. It's pretty obvious.

And not only is it obvious just at a glance if you're at the ballpark, but you would see it at least semi-regularly on broadcast. They don't always show you where the infielders are positioned, but you get a look at that more often than you get a look at where the outfielders are lined up prior to the pitch. So if the outfielders are shifting and prior to the pitch. So if the outfielders are shifting and it's not something super strange, like you had in the past five-man infields or four-man outfields,

or if two guys are playing in one field and one field is empty or something, okay, that's obvious. But if it's just guys playing deeper than they used to or shading one way or another, not that shading is a new thing, like outfielders have always shaded in one direction because of some polar opposite field tendencies or perceived tendencies of the batters. But all of that is more precise and data-driven now.

And so outfield BABIP has cratered. And that seems to be driving a lot of the overall decrease in BABIP. There was a BABIP rebound last year after they restricted the infield shift. But this year, at least so far, it's way, way down as we talked about recently, like lowest since early 90s. I mean, it's been decades. It's 288 right now. That might recover as the season goes on, but probably not to the heights that we've been accustomed to where it was 300 or close to it. And that might be because of outfield positioning being optimized. And that's hard to see, it's hard to track, and it's hard to restrict, I think. And so if you think that this is really one of the culprits

behind the lack of hits, and it's really all kinds of hits, extra base hits, also singles, but the ABAP has gone way down. And as Russell said, there are only so many variables here. It could be because the fielders have just gotten better, more skilled.

They're faster. They're better at tracking balls. That could be to some extent. It could be because the fly balls or the balls in the air are getting more hang time with launch angles being higher and guys trying to hit the ball over the fence. Maybe those are leading to some higher flies that are hanging in the air longer and letting outfielders get to them. It might be some of that, but it really also could be just where you're starting, where you're lining up. And so if it's that, what do you do if anything about that? If you determine that that's one of the things that is suppressing offense,

and we've seen MLB make moves to try to counter those things, well, what do you do to counter that particular development, if anything? I would do nothing. I would eat it. Okay. overly perturbed by the idea of restricting shifts in part because i thought the learning shifts were maybe like less effective than we yeah we're led to believe which we talked about a lot so we don't have to re-litigate that but i was like you know it's it's goofy but i find it unoffensive and there's something about like the idea of maybe restricting outfielder movement that i find way more troublesome like from like a philosophical perspective and i'm trying to think to myself what what is importantly different about those

things that would make me fine with one and not with the other and i wonder ben if it's just as dumb as there being a second base that is a clean line of delineation for where the folks should stand versus the beautiful rolling hills of the outfield where you should just be able to romp around the pasture as you see fit and call it good. I think part of it, too, is that my brain is like, but it's big out there, you know? And so, like, if they can do cool stuff, even if it's at least partially the result of good positioning, well, more power to them because they got so far to go. It's big out there. I feel like a not particularly sophisticated part of my brain is really driving my reaction to this. But I think that both of those things are a big part of it. One, there's a place that draws a line in the sand easy and also big out there, you know? Well, no, that is, I think, pretty important that to restrict outfielder positioning, you would really have to draw some lines somewhere.

Yeah. Yeah, you would have to mar the pastoral greenery with lines. I don't care for that. And we have some lines on the field already, but we would have to have more lines. Yeah. And this puts me in mind of a proposal that I think was the subject of our past blast for 1907, back in episode 1907, which was the Unglob arc, right?

I don't know if you recall this, but I linked to it at the time. I will link to it again. But this was a proposal by Bob Unglob, who- I will admit, I remember the name and nothing else. Yes. Well, he proposed the Unglob arc, which I will read. And again, this was happening in an era where there were some concerns about low offense, as there are now, and often the same suggestions and solutions get trotted out. So this is Brooklyn Citizen, January 21st, 1907. And it says Robert A. Unglaub, the crack first sacker of the Williamsport Tri-State Club, who was recently awarded to the Boston Americans by the National Commission, has devised a rule which he says would produce more long hitting in ball games. In order to give the heavy hitter his due advantage over the light hitter, Unglaub says the outfielder should be limited to a certain territory. He suggests drawing an arc, the Unglaub arc, from one field line to the other at a distance of 80 yards from

the home plate, using the plate as a center. This will give a quarter circle, every point of which is 80 yards from the home plate. Outfielders are to play on the inside of this circle until after the ball has been hit by a batter. The batter who can drive the ball 100 yards or more will have an opportunity to get a long hit instead of having the fielders judge his hit and pull it down at a point more than 100 yards from the plate by a phenomenal catch. Ungob says that the fault of the present rules is that the long hitter has only a slight advantage over the light hitters because nine times out of 10, the fielders will judge the batter's manner So, same rationale, same reasoning, and maybe same solution. Yeah.

It would be a change. And maybe same solution. Yeah. It would be a change. I mean, it wouldn't be, I think, as shocking a change now that you've sort of broken the seal by restricting where infielders can stand. Maybe it's not that large a leap to say, okay, we're going to do the same for the outfielders. But you're right. It does feel a little less organic. It feels more intrusive and obvious. And it's not something as clear as with the shift

where it was like, oh, this is about making baseball go back to looking like it used to, more of a traditional alignment. And I guess that's the case in the outfield too, but no one really notices that it's strayed from that because, you know, if guys are just playing deeper than they used to, it just doesn't really reach right out of the screen and hit you over the head. Yeah, it doesn't register in the same way at all. Yeah. Yeah. Unglob.

Unglob. That sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. It does. Unglob arc. People were pointing this out. pointing this out, we probably mentioned it before the shift restrictions, which was one of the reasons that I think a lot of people, us included, maybe thought that it was kind of flawed reasoning that led to the idea, oh, this will solve the problem, the shift restrictions. And maybe it was more the actual problem was like, people don't like this. It just looks unnatural to

baseball lifers who grew up when people didn't stand there anymore. But it was more about the aesthetics maybe than the root causes. And it's important to improve aesthetics where one can too. Sure, totally. So, you know, it bothers me more on a philosophical level than an aesthetic level because I kind of like just the freedom of being able to be positioned anywhere. But I haven't been as upset about it in practice as I thought it would be, even if I still kind of object to it. But this is an interesting thing where this is sort of like the silent Babbitt killer that might be having much more of an impact and might be tougher to address. Mesothelioma.

Yeah. It shocks me to no end, really, that we've learned that positioning was seemingly so suboptimal for so long. I mean, for decades, more than a century, people were just not standing in the right place. It's like, it really boggles my mind. And it's, it's not just the, oh, I stand on this side of second instead of that side. It's like, you weren't deep enough. You weren't playing deep enough. How did you not know that? I mean, you'd spend your entire career playing baseball. All these people are really good at playing Yeah. How did you not know that? Yes. You spend your entire career playing baseball.

All these people are really good at playing baseball. Yeah. And I guess it's partly that, well, you don't want to give up that shallow hit and you don't like the feeling of giving up the little bloop single. And so you want to cut that off. And then the ball over your head, it's like, well, that was well hit. So it kind of deserved to be a hit, right? And you can kind of forgive if a guy hits a ball on the warning track, it gets over someone's head. That's one thing. Whereas if it falls in front of you, it's almost more, it gets your goat. It's like, oh, I could have had that. It wasn't even good solid contact, but really amazing. You know,

like I get when we couldn't chart every batted ball precisely, you didn't know everyone's tendencies, but that's just a general thing. Like people were just playing too shallow seemingly for all of baseball history. And again, maybe earlier eras it made sense, you know, deader ball, guys didn't hit the ball as deep. They weren't swinging for the fences. And so maybe back then it made sense to be shallower. But then the game didn't really adapt until we figured out like, oh, this is where they're hitting the balls. And maybe they should stand there instead. It seems so simple, but there's just so much inertia going against playing what would have been considered out of position. too where it's like you just imagine being like you know a guy standing in the outfield playing like maybe playing a division rival a team that you see with some amount of frequency so even if you don't have you know you're not looking at a positioning chart before you take the field

between innings like you kind of know where guys hit it because you see him often right and just standing there being like he sure hits it over there a lot anyway like what you didn't just you didn't just say and some of them probably did right yeah there was shifting it just wasn't as pervasive right but you didn't go you know you didn't go back to the dugout and go you know the next time he's up do you mind if i just stand over there a little bit further and see how it goes? Like, is that going to serve me well? It is a funny, it is a funny thing. You'd think just from sheer repetition on some level that you'd get a little closer. You would think, yeah. And we've answered the time travel hypothetical, probably multiple time travel hypotheticals, but one is just like, well, if you could go back and run a team from an earlier era,

like how good would you be just knowing what we know now? And gosh, even if you knew, even if you had no particular scouting acumen, even if you didn't have the data, obviously at your fingertips that we do now, you'd have to gather it and it would be hard to gather it. You didn't have the technology, but just the general principles that we know now, some of them are just such low-hanging fruit in retrospect, where it's just like, walks are cool. Walks are valuable. You should, you know, it's actually valuable and a skill to get walks. So maybe players who do that are not to be shunned. And then, you know, like play deeper maybe and stand over there instead of here. Like you could go back and if you could convince people to do it without making them think that you had lost your mind because you were claiming to be from the future.

But like it would be an easy way to pick up many wins, one would think. A lot of those hypotheticals seem to center around a concern that you'd be thought to be a witch. So maybe that is a pressing problem. But yeah, I don't want to tilt too far in our goofing on that because I think that another thing that we often notice, particularly as we get stat cast based metrics that measure, you know, how the ball itself performs. that measure, you know, how the ball itself performs. There were plenty of people around the game who had an intuitive sense of things that we now use like very expensive technology to measure and then realize is good. So I don't want it to sound like, ah, they're all a bunch of dummies. Like there were plenty of very smart baseball people back then. And even if they couldn't say, you know, here's the run value of this particular thing, like they knew ball, right? Yeah. Also, sometimes it's like, no, when something's weird with the ball. I think

arguably we're even overreacting to that now because we just have this granular data that we didn't. And it was such a sensational story for a while that the second something changes, which doesn't mean I don't think it wouldn't be nice if we could just have a ball that played the same every season and everything was totally transparent when we changed something. Yeah, that'd be nice. But also there's this thing, this outfield positioning factor, because you mentioned that ball that Teoscar Hernandez hit off of a role as Chapman, right? Where it was hit like 107.2 miles per hour, 29 degree launch angle. Oh, yeah.

And then it just dies at the warning track and Chapman reacted like he had just given up a homer and then it just dies at the warning track. And Chapman reacted like he had just given up a homer. And then it was not. By the way, it was funny when Skeens gave up the homer to Otani. He knew right away. He knew immediately. Yeah. He was like, that's a home run.

He got me. He almost smiled a little. It's like, okay, I got you last time. You got me, right? Yes, 100%. But this Teoscar ball, that got a lot of attention because it was like, you know, other balls hit at that trajectory, at that speed, had been homers and gotten better results. And then this one wasn't. Now, you know, I think like there was maybe a lot of backspin and it was PNC and it was wind and atmospheric conditions and everything.

Right. So I think probably in any individual ball, I mean, you might get one dud in there, I guess every now and then. It doesn't necessarily mean that something's going on league-wide. I think a little something's going on league-wide, but don't sleep on outfield positioning. I'm not advocating for an arc,

but I'm just saying, if we want to really address that problem, you might really have to consider that. That would be the actual route, in addition to the fact that pitchers are all witches and throw incredible pitches, and we should move the mound back. But that's another conversation. All right. A few last things. One thing that goes hand in hand with the offensive outage we've seen recently, the Braves' shutout streak ended. They were shut out. Been a lot of shutouts lately,

a lot of perfect game attempts, if you can call them that, going five, six innings. Scoring's been down. And one manifestation of that is that the Braves failed to score in a game for the first time in a long time. They had a streak of 182 games without a shutout. And when we marked the end of the Orioles streak without being swept, that was the third longest ever. This Atlanta streak of not being shutout was, I think, the fifth longest ever. So you had the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig, 1931 to 33. They had a streak of 307 games without a shutout. And then the Yankees in 2018 to 19, they had a streak of 220 games. The Brewers in 78, 79, Harvey's Wallbangers, they had a 212 game streak.

And then the Reds, 2000 to 2001, 208 games. And then these Braves. So it was a historically relevant streak. And it's sort of similar to that Orioles' sweep-less streak, because again, it doesn't mean that you did well in all those games. It just means that the worst thing didn't happen. You didn't get shut out. It's not like the Orioles swept or won all those series. They just didn't get swept. They lost a fair number of series during that stretch. And the Braves lost a fair number of series during that stretch and the Braves lost a fair number of games during that stretch. And they had a lot of games where they didn't score that much. They just scored something. They scored a run at least until this streak ended. They were shut out by Boston on Wednesday. So I guess that's a sign of

the times like these streaks for the most part, we're in high offense eras, right? Early thirties, rabbit ball. And then 2018, 2019, you had another form of rabbit ball. You had the big Homer ball and, you know, 2000, obviously you're having a ton of scoring at that time. So the fact that this ended, you can't directly tie it to the fact that offense has been down, but it's probably partly a product of that. Yeah. All right. So we salute the end of Atlanta's streak.

And also I will salute an Atlanta player for a moment. Did you see the clip of Adam Duvall? Yes. Hitting the beer cup. Man of the people. Amazing. Amazing. So Adam Duvall, who's just like, Neil Payton just wrote about this in his sub stack. hitting the beer cup. Man of the people. Amazing. Amazing.

So Adam Duvall, who's just like, Neil Payton just wrote about this in his sub stack. You know, he's, he's your perpetual fill in, right? Like you don't necessarily want him to be your first string starter, but when someone goes down,

if Adam Duvall's around, sometimes that's a good thing. So like Ronald Acuna went down 2021, the Braves go get Adam Duvall. Well, here he is. And a late signing by the Braves this spring. And now he is basically replacing Ronald Acuna again. Poor Tentius.

Yeah, it's not ideal unless it's 2021, in which case I guess it was ideal. They won the World Series. We'll see if that happens again. He was good that year. Didn't he have an RBI title that year? Maybe. Yeah, he was good that year. Didn't he have an RBI title that year? Maybe. Yeah. He's good sometimes. Like as Neil noted, he has hit 30 or more homers three times, which more times than I probably would have guessed if you had asked me how many times has Adam Duvall hit 30 homers. He's done it three times. But of anyone who's done it three

or more times, he has the fewest homers in other seasons combined. That's amazing. Yeah, it is. That's great. So it's like he's good sometimes. And then other times he's like a part-time player or he's not that good. He hasn't been that good this year. Yeah.

But he was good in this particular play where some people, fans out in the bleachers, out in the outfield, in left, they built a beer can pyramid. Yes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 beer cans, six layers of cans. It's like $500 or something. At a baseball game, probably. Yeah. But they built this edifice to man's intoxication. Yes. And they were shouting at Adam Duvall to try to get his attention to see if he could like a carnival game, you know? Yeah.

Like throw the ball, knock down some pyramid of beer cups. And he did it. He did it. He casually turned around and he just flipped the ball up there. Yep. Pinpoint aim. Yep.

Like it looked like he was barely putting any effort into it or anything, just like a casual throw. And he destroyed the pyramid. Yes. I mean, he threw a strike here basically. Like all but the bottom layer of the pyramid went flying there's like a 16 foot wall there and it was a few rows back yes this is not easy no and he did it like it was nothing like baseball players are good at baseball i guess yeah they tend to have pretty good aim they are i think also like a a population in general that's like game for stuff, you know, and inclined to say, I can do that.

You know, even if there's no prior evidence that they can. But yeah, it was, you know, like dudes being bros, you know. Yeah. I survived. It was good. It was good. It was. This is why I said last time that if we're talking skills competitions, I'd be maybe most interested in seeing this or more interested in situational hitting. I'd be interested in seeing situational throwing.

Yeah. Not even how far can you throw, which might be interesting, but could also lead to some injury risk theoretically, but just target practice. Yeah. You know, like how many times have you heard stories about like, oh, Satchel Paige, you know, throwing a ball through a hole in the fence or throwing it through the same ball sized holes like three times or whatever. Right. And anything involving pitching, I guess there could be some risk, but like a command competition or just a fielder position player. It's not even like Adam Duvall is known for being a defensive whiz.

I mean, he's a pretty good defender. He's a surprisingly good defender when you look at him. You think he's going to be a worse defender than he is just because he's like kind of a, you know, he's like a burly guy. You look at him and you assume. Yeah. Right. He's like a burly guy. You look at him and you assume. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And yet, he's not the guy you would choose if you wanted a champion to, you know, in a competition for accurate throws against the aliens who are for some reason good at accurate throwing.

You probably wouldn't select him first. I don't know. He's, let's see, he's 71st percentile in arm strength this season, 61st percentile in arm value. You know, he's got a good arm, but it's not the greatest of all arms. And yet he did this. Now, granted, like there was some luck that went into this presumably. And if he had missed, maybe we would not have seen this. Maybe it would not have been as viral a

clip. Definitely not. Who knows how many times players are aiming at beer can structures and completely missing and we just never knew. Right. So maybe this was a lucky throw. But this just confirms that this is, I think, what I want to see in the skills competition, because these guys, they've got skills skills i love that we envision a race of aliens that has like genocidal intent toward people on earth but is also like we're gonna give you a thing that you you can win at you know like we're we're gonna let you off the hook we've observed your sports and deemed this a thing that a lot of people practice at. And, you know, good luck to you. It's sporting of them to give us a sporting chance, I guess.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. By the way, Skeens' percentiles, I didn't talk about his StatCast percentiles, but they kind of back up what we were saying about what he excels at. So he's at 56th percentile in chase rate, which is higher even than I would have thought

based on the stats I shared earlier, but he's 98th percentile in K rate, 91st percentile in whiff rate, you know, 99th percentile in fastball VLO, sixth percentile in average exit speed. So I guess when you do hit Eskine's pitch, you might hit it hard because, again, he's like always around the middle of the zone. Yeah. That's kind of correlated too. So, yeah, I'm going to be so fascinated to see. He doesn't get like incredible extension or anything, but it's not a totally flat, hard

fastball either. Right. Like there's some deception in there maybe with the release angle and everything. Yes. So I'm just going to keep returning to Skeen's every now and then because it's, it's, there's some deception in there maybe with the release angle and everything. So I'm just going to keep returning to skeins every now and then. Cause it's just, you know, so compelling. Do you mean to tell me that you are interested in the career progression of the number one overall pick last year, who is one of the best prospects in baseball. And at this point, the best pitching prospect in baseball, I don't know, Ben, like make

a list. Yeah. I was going to say like, I don't know, Ben. and we'll talk about Paul Skeens. Like we're equal opportunity talkers here. We'll be off the beaten path and we'll talk about some stuff that you'd think no one would care about. But we'll also talk about the things that everyone cares about. We care about those things too. Yeah, like which of the dinosaurs are the most terrifying?

Were you to happen upon them like without expecting it, you know? I do think a pterodactyl ranks like really high, especially because we know that velociraptors are like tiny now. We've learned that they're like small. I don't know about that. I, you know, I want science to tell us the things it discovers because then we know more about the world and ourselves.

But I didn't need to know that the velociraptors are actually small. You know, like I could have done without that piece of information. There's something about predators that operate or operated in realms where we are not comfortable that I think makes them even more intimidating. Like the sky and the sea? Yes, exactly. Right. Like on land, I'm in my element. Now, that doesn't mean that I can outrun a T-Rex or a Velociraptor.

You're like, so I can take on a T-Rex, you know? Like, what does that guy even have on me? Come at me, bro. Nothing. But you can sometimes. I mean, there are some bears at least you can yell at and you'll scare them, right? But you can't. I mean, I guess with a shark, you're not supposed to kick and make a scene, right? Like they'll think you're flopping fish or something, right? But some land animals, you could scare them off or you could run or you could hide or

something, right? But you can't really hide in the water, right? And you can't see under there very far and you can't move very well. And if it's an airborne predator, I mean, we can't fly famously and unfortunately, and granted they have to come down to our level to pluck us off the ground, but still they're swooping down. Right. Only temporarily, Ben. Only temporarily do they have to do that. The rest of the time they can just lift. And those, they're big,'re big. They can lift you and throw you around. It's hard to fight that. Yeah. We're just out of our natural habitat there.

But we can take a bear, though. We can take a bear or a moose. People, you know what? Be afraid of, I think the plural is just moose, right? It is, yes. People, you know what? Be afraid of, I think the plural is just moose, right? It's just moose. You should be, don't mess with a moose. You know, people are like, oh, it's a big cow. No, they will kill you.

They will mess your day up. So will bears for that matter. Whatever Ben is saying. Yeah. You know, I don't want to speculate about what actually keeps you the most safe in a shark attack because I reiterated the thing that I was told as a kid, which is that all else, if you don't have access to a table to get understand in the doorway in your house during an earthquake, and then someone emailed us and was like,

that's not a real thing. And I was like, tell Tommy Lee Jones in the great scientifically accurate movie Volcano that that's not, because he's an emergency official and he's like, get the doorway with me. Young Gabby Hoffman. She's in that. That movie's great.

People do say, you know, like you can punch a shark. I mean, you know, there are just like punch a shark in the nose and that might work, but you got to be careful because their nose is close to their mouth and their teeth are very shark. Shark? Their teeth are shark. Sharp is what I meant to say. They do also have shark teeth, but also shark teeth are sharp teeth. But yeah, like I'm reading some advice about repelling sharks. I mean, best to avoid them. And they're not that naturally aggressive.

That's why you're saying they get a bad rap. There aren't that many shark attacks. And we're in their area. And every now and then they might- We don't belong, like you're saying. They might stake us for something that they would naturally feed on. So you might just want to avoid them. But you can punch a shark in the nose if it comes to that.

And that has worked sometimes. It's just, you know, it's dangerous. Ben is out here fighting a bear. He's just like, I'm going to fight this bear. You know, it's got nothing on me. Speaking of the sea, this is sort of a segue, I guess. I was going to ask you, because we were talking about the skills competition, All-Star Weekend. All-Star ballots are up now.

If you're someone who votes on All-Star game players, you can do that now. And if you do, you will see that those ballots are sponsored by BuildSubmarines.com, which has been one of the most prominent sponsors for Major League Baseball this year. And I just, where does that rank among the most random or just like, wait, why is this a natural partnership? Because we've had Doosan, right? Right. We had the Camping World sponsorship. Right. And then, yeah. And,

and the, like the good Sam thing, which was like the good Sam club, which is not for good Sam's like Sam Miller, but, but the good Sam club, Sam, Sam goody,

not Sam's. Yeah. Not Sam's club. And not Sam goody, which was like a, Sam goody. No. Yeah.

You're right. The good Sam club is kind of a mix of, of Sam's club and Sam goody,, which is like an electronics retailer. Yeah, you're right. The Good Sam Club is kind of a mix of Sam's Club and Sam Goody. But it's the Good Sam Club, which is the world's largest organization of RV owners. What? Yeah. And so that was a partnership with MLB that was like part of the partnership with Camping World. I was going to say, is that separate from Camping World? I think, no, it was related,

but, but now we've got build submarines.com. Yeah. And look, I like submarines like Michael Bauman. I'm semi obsessed with submarines. One of my main interests was submarines. No.

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. I have a lot of interests.

It's one of them. One of your main ones? It's up there or down there, I guess, as the case may be. Oh, my God. I'm crying. I'm crying. Something just fascinates me about submarines. Because again, like we're not supposed to be there.

I mean, you know, you can cop space and the sea in a lot of, they are very alien realms that we have not mapped completely. And, you know, you look at the deep sea life forms and they look like aliens. It's a very different environment than we're accustomed to. It seems like it should be a different planet, but it's the sea. It's right under us. Right under us, right there. And with submarines, we can go down there. Not all the way.

No. To go all the way, you need a submersible, which is different from a submarine. This is not buildsubmersibles.com. A submersible from like a real company. Yes. I don't want to laugh. I'm trying to like bring down the register of my voice so I'm not still in laughing territory because like those people did die and like one of them was a kid. That's it.

So like but yeah, some submersibles can go down. All the way. Yeah. All the way. That amazes me. All the way. Yeah. And that amazes me. And, you know, just reading like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was a kid, you know, I've always been into that stuff. And then submarine fiction, submarine movies, submarine books. I love it. I can't get enough. One of your mainar, it just always gives me chills. The hair stands up.

You know, it's just one of my main interests. So buildsubmarines.com, I was quite receptive to. Buildsubmarines.com is like, I appreciate the URL is exactly what it sounds like. They're not dressing this up as anything else. It's like, are you interested in building submarines? We'll then go to build submarines.com. That's,

that's the purpose of the site. And this is like, is it like a trade union? Is it a, it's like to reach workers who can literally build submarines, like in partnership with the Navy. Okay. And so it's like to recruit manufacturing workers to work on Navy subs.

So if you're like a master welder, you might be someone they would be interested in talking to. Yeah. You might want to build a submarine, which you can do if you go to buildsubmarines.com. Again, like, I don't know what that has to do with baseball. I guess you think, oh, you know, a lot of baseball fans out there, a lot of people looking for jobs, a lot of people in demographic categories that might be interested in building submarines. So sure, why not? But it's up there with some of

these ones where it's like, they'll take money from anyone. Not that this is like FTX or something. It's not like a disreputable fly-by-night operation or anything. It's just like, why? Why? And in a way, I guess it's good advertising because it is memorable. And we've just been talking about it. If it were just a car company or something, it would probably be in one eye and out the other, in one ear, whatever orifice I'm sensing things with. But I wouldn't remember that because it's like, oh, yeah, okay,

some normie company is sponsoring baseball. All right, I wouldn't even remember that. But build submarine camping world? RVs, submarines? Okay, wait, hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, we got to pause again because for a guy who says that submarines are one of his main interests, you're putting RVs and submarines in the same category of vehicle?

One of those is meaningfully bigger than the other. That's true. I have always been interested in RVs, too, despite not being able to drive. I've always thought if I did drive, I might get myself an RV. You would drive the biggest vehicle you possibly could get your hands on? I like vehicles I could live in, I guess. Sure. Okay. That's the common I guess. Sure, okay.

Maybe that's the common theme here. Sure, sure, sure. So it's funny still because like one of these things is something that a suburban dad could buy. And one of them is like a thing that you put Sean Connery in and then say, I don't care about your accent because the sub's so cool, you know? Yeah. So were they the high bidders?

Like they outbid everyone else? Build Summer and we got to get in bed with Major League Baseball. Like this is going to be good for our awareness and our impressions are going to skyrocket. Yeah. And they probably are. It's good exposure. But really? I guess.

Buildsummerings.com? I'm sure like MLB, you know, as long as it's not something seedy and seamy and even then it might be like, well, if the check's clear, which with FTX, they might not, but with anyone else. Right. But it's just it's and there are so many like local partners. Right. And more obscure partners. Yeah. We've we've joked many a time about the official this or that,

sort of the official beer, the official cerveza, different categories, right? But these are like jewel event sponsors, right? Right. These aren't just the official niche category of Team X. This is like presenting sponsors for the jewel events of Major League Baseball, right? Right. And that's why it's weird. It's weird.

Maybe it's good advertising because it certainly does stand out. I mean— Even if you don't know what it's advertising or you don't take them up on the offer, you will remember it. On the one hand, I agree with you. But on the other hand, every time I see one of those ads and I feel like they were in heavy circulation leading up to opening day. And then there was like a lull and now they are back with a vengeance. Like I feel like I'm seeing the build. And I feel like I'm being told like go build.

And I'm like, I can't fit one of those in my house. Like where am I? I don't have room for that in the garage. Where am I building the submarine? I live in the desert. the submarine i live in the desert and so it does feel less like job recruitment and more like hey have you been searching for a hobby as an adult person who realizes she can't just say that she reads because like that's not that is my hobby you know it's like reading that's kind of what i do your main interests oh boy ben you know friendship is beautiful because you feel like you know everything about someone.

And then you find out you didn't know what one of their main interests is. And it's submarines. It is. Well, I also like reading. And sometimes I read about submarines and I combine both of our interests. That's our common ground, our meeting of the minds. Yeah. I don't know if, I don't think BuildSubmarines.com is presenting the London series. I combine both of our interests. That's our common ground, our meeting of the minds. Yeah.

I don't know if, I don't think buildsubmarines.com is presenting the London series. I think Zoom Workplace is presenting the London, which that makes a little more sense, right? Like we're crossing an ocean. That's far away. It's a remote setting, you know, Zoom, okay. We're going to be watching via video from afar, thematically. Makes more sense. What doesn't make sense, though, maybe you saw this. There is a t-shirt being sold.

Okay. It's like a Hawaiian shirt that has Mets and Phillies logos on it. The two teams that are matching up in the London series. As far as I can tell, this is an officially sanctioned product. It was tweeted initially, it came to my attention from a Twitter account called MetsJr at MetsJr69, which the handle says bootleg Mets goods for diehard Mets fans. But this appears to have been on display in a new era shop with official merch and gear in London. And it's this Hawaiian shirt that just has a whole

lot of Mets insignia and Phillies insignia, just all in a big jumble. I'm trying to figure out what the market for this is, because you'd think any Mets or Phillies fan would instinctively recoil from this. You do not want to be wearing a rivals logo on your shirt. And we have, I think, talked at times that we've poked fun at sometimes in ads, you'll see someone who has like a cap or a jacket or something with like every team's logo on it, or like the national league teams and the American league teams. And we've talked like who's a fan of every team who would be wearing this. And occasionally you'll see that. But this, unless you have split loyalties in your family, which happens sometimes, you might have one side of your family is rooting for a rival of another team

or your kids betrays you and roots for a rival or something. Betrays. Maybe you want to represent all affiliations. Yeah. But otherwise, why would anyone want this? I wonder what's the market for this? I'm not defending this shirt because apart from anything else, it looks kind of cheap. And I'm sure it's not.

No, that's the other thing. It apparently costs 145 US dollars. No way. 114 pounds for the Mets Phillies Hawaiian shirt. What is it made? Well, okay. So I'm going to ask you a question. Do we know that it is understood by the people who made it to be a Hawaiian shirt?

Or is it just a linen shirt? It could be. Yeah, I've seen it described as Hawaiian shirt, but I don't know that it's marketed that way. It doesn't have like flowers or vines or, you know, any of the things that you might typically associate with a Hawaiian shirt. It does look like it's maybe made of like a summer linen or cotton. Part of why I'm saying it looks cheap is that I think it's just sort of like a little askew on the hanger. And so it looks like it is not symmetrical, which I think is just the way that it's hanging on this particular hanger. I'm not defending it.

It's not nice to look at. It's famously not in the colors of either of the teams that are playing in this series, which is a weird choice. that are playing in this series, which is a weird choice. Yeah. I do wonder if the target audience for this is just British people who are going to what might be like baby's first baseball game and are like, you know who played there? These teams. Yeah.

Well, there is also official merch that is more commemorative of this series. Like I say, you know, London series and Metz Phillies, and it's more obvious that it is kind of a collectible from this series. The shirt appears to have, it has a sticker, like a gold embossed thing on a lapel that says Metz Phillies London 2024. I can't tell. I think it's like a patch. It's like sewn on there as opposed to just a sticker or something. So there does have that, but it wouldn't be immediately obvious that you were commemorating this event, I don't think. Yeah. Well, maybe you want something subtle,

though. Maybe you are interested in something that you, wear to a cheerio kind of event, you know, like a garden party where someone's wearing a, you're wearing this shirt and other people are wearing fascinators. And you're like, I was recently at a baseball contest. I'm not going to try to do a British accent because it would be insulting to a lot of people. But like, you know, like, what if maybe it's that? It's just not that appealing to me it looks like kind of a dan flash's shirt which i know you understand that reference now having uh watched i think you should leave but but it's like a drab dan flash's yeah shirt the worst of both worlds

maybe it's supposed to read as as sort of like regal because it's got like gold – it's got like a kind of gold color to the Mets logo. But then why is the Philly P being rendered in some sort of like almost khaki color, you know? It's a head scratcher, Ben. It is. I think it's kind of a cursed item and I don't know whether someone might wear it ironically. I would wear it ironically. I mean, no, I wouldn't. I know too many Phillies fans.

Are you kidding? Are you kidding? I couldn't do that. I did see in the replies, there were some people who were saying that in England, sometimes people will wear scarves to soccer football matches that have both of the competitors on there. And other people are like, I wouldn't wear one of those because I don't want to wear something representing the team I'm trying to beat. But that's a thing there that you will see like certain matchups will be marked on an item of clothing.

So maybe it's more in the tradition over there and it wouldn't seem as strange. Or maybe it's just almost like preying on people who know no better. They don't know that these are division rivals or something. It's like, I like the look of those logos. I'll pick this shirt up. Maybe you could give it to a bear and then the bear wouldn't want to fight you because it would just be very confused and it would say, I can't focus on fighting. I have to get to the bottom of this weird shirt mystery. Lastly, we got another Kyle Tucker nickname submission.

I'll run this by you. This was from listener Andrew who says we should nickname him Mother Tucker. Yeah. So every time he hits a homer, you can yell, it's gone, Mother Tucker. You can say, yippee-ki-yay, Mother Tucker. You just swap out the a for the r mother tucker you know so many possibilities i i appreciate the cleverness of this and i think that fans of opposing teams might want to get on board but i think one of the things about a really great

nickname is that it can be uttered by everyone. And, look, it would be funny to hear a child say this, but it would also be kind of off-putting, you know, because that's a child. And why are they saying a thing that's making a joke about, like, truly one of the most aggressive swears, you know? Like, if we're ranking the um the aggressiveness of commonly used like that's really high that might you know it might take the cake in fact so i think it falls down on that on that score because you can't have a tiny i mean actually the smaller the child the funnier it would it would be admittedly to have like a really tiny child they wouldn't know why that was yeah but then they're like gonna go to school and they're gonna say that he loves his mom

that's not what that means how dare you um and his actual nickname then would be mother, I guess. It would be Kyle mother in quotation marks. Imagine him making that like stricken Jennifer Lawrence face like, ah, mother. Wasn't she in mother? I didn't see that. It looks too scary. Yeah. Or yeah, you'd get the like the Taylor Swift mother is mothering memes about Kyle Tucker when he hits a home run. Yeah.

I don't know. It's kind of clever, but there are some drawbacks. Much to consider. All right. Well, I said I was going to tell you where the White Sox abysmal on base percentage ranks historically, and then I neglected to. So I will make up for that now, but I should tell you that their on base percentage actually fell since we were recording because the White Sox lost yet again. The Red Sox beat them 14 to 2. So the White Sox have now lost 14 games in a row, which is a franchise record. And in this 14-2 loss, they had four hits and a walk,

so that did not help their average or their OBP. According to the live stats at FanCrafts, they're now down to 216-277-336. That's a 75 WRC+. So in the so-called modern era from 1900 on, American League and National League only, 277 is tied for seventh worst. But of the eight previous teams with a 277 on base percentage or below, seven were from the first decade of the 20th century, dead ball era. The only exception is a Mets team, not those 1962 Mets that the White Sox are chasing, running away from, Not those 1962 Mets that the White Sox are chasing, running away from, but the 1965 Mets, 277 OBP. In 1965, the MLB average OBP was almost exactly what it is today, so pretty comparable environments. The 1965 Mets lost merely 112 games.

They went 50 and 112 with a couple of ties. Going to be tough for this team not to be even worse than that. Guess the good news is that a 75 WRC plus only puts you in about the bottom 30 teams over that same span. Also meant to mention in that same New Era store in England where they were selling the combined Phillies Mets shirt, they also had a display in the front window of three Mets relievers, Adam Adovino, Reed Garrett, and another Reed, Jake Reed, who has not pitched for the Mets since 2022, barely pitched for them then and in 2021, and is now not with any major league organization as far as I can tell. Not sure how he ended up in that display or why even current Mets relievers would be used to psych people up for this series. Might as well have added Addison Reed and Rick Reed while they were at it, but the store did take that down after people made fun of it online.

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We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. A baseball podcast Analytics and stats With Ben and Meg fangraphs