Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2182: Finnegan’s Wait

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Edwin Díaz’s sticky-stuff suspension, a new name for the internal brace alternative to Tommy John surgery, Blake Snell’s latest setback, the success and extension of Cristopher Sánchez (and the Phillies’ excellence), Shota Imanaga’s regression and Meg’s preseason prediction about Imanaga vs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kyle Finnegan’s first-of-its-kind clockoff, the […]

Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed. Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2182 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Do you have anything weird on your hands? No, they're soft and smooth and not at all sticky as far as I know. But no one has felt them or massaged them today either, so I can't confirm. I do always enjoy what umpires say when they report

on having felt someone's hands, in this case, Edwin Diaz, who was ejected and suspended for sticky hands. It's always funny when they describe, like, these are just the stickiest hands I've ever experienced. These are stickier than all the other hands that I've felt for the past few years. experience. These are stickier than all the other hands that I've felt for the past few years. It's sort of insulting almost. Boy, your hands sure were sticky. I will always have a significant amount of affection for Edwin Diaz. He used to be a mariner. He's been through a lot. His reputation in the game is that he's a pretty sweet guy. And so I feel bad for him on some level because what a nightmare season he's having. And really, like, year and a half just hasn't been the easiest time for Edwin Diaz.

But I do have to say, Ben, you know, I know there's a lot of consternation among the Mets faithful and faithful and among the Mets themselves, it sounds like. Faithful and fateful or fatalistic, I guess, maybe might be the better word. I get the general vibe, Ben, that they feel a little put upon as a group, that they feel like they might be being targeted, that there is a particular focus on foreign substances when the Mets are in play. And look, there are a number of substances that a pitcher can use that are perfectly legal. And sometimes in combination, they look a little dubious, but in terms of that, they were fine, actually, you know, that they are within the bounds of the rule. I don't want to say that this rule can't be incorrectly enforced. And we have had the conversation on this pod before that we are asking umpires to be able to discern chemical distinctions between things that

really you might require a laboratory to do. All of that said, Edwin Diaz's hands looked like he was an X-Man who was like in the midst of of his mutant powers being activated he was a man of metal he looked like his hands were dipped in concrete there is a a later season episode of the x-files it is not good um particularly in the back half where there is a guy he has been exposed to something he begins to be transformed into a man of metal he accidentally kills some people then he maybe purposefully kills some people and then spoiler alert for a bad episode of the x-files from like 15 years ago he decides that the only way to deal with this situation is to go back to the junkyard where he was initially exposed to whatever this terrifying substance is

and like get crushed uh like cars you know when they've decided we got to junk these cards. I remember upon re-watching that episode of The X-Files within the last year, thinking like, man, those later seasons were not good. Even the Creature of the Week ones were kind of rough, which is too bad because as we've discussed, those are my favorite episodes of the x-files and you know even some of the later seasons that are again not good i had some bangers this was not among those bangers this was a bad banger and at the time i thought to myself am i gonna regret

having spent like 47 minutes of my life concerned with this uh metal man and and it was kind of funny though that he was a metal man because that those were the seasons where the guy who was the terminator exactly yes yeah was was there and so it was like the knowing of it did not improve the plot line but then ben it came full circle for me and i felt like i had in fact not wasted 47 minutes of my life because I sat there on Sunday and I was like, what does Edwin Diaz's hands, what do they remind me of, Ben? What is, what, what am I grasping for? What reference? And then I was like, that bad episode of The X-Files, man. Yeah, you grasped for it and it stuck because your hands are so sticky.

Sticky, just sticky. It's just like a sticky. And I don't mean to say that Edwin Diaz is either turning into metal or had metal on his hands. That seems like it would be counterproductive at a certain point to trying to pitch. But that's what it reminded me of. And so I simply say to all of the Mets fans

and staff members out there, you know, maybe like chill out with the sticky stuff. You guys seem like you run into this problem a lot. And at a certain point, it's just a skill issue. So tuck it into your belt like a respectable normal person dodging the rules. Put it down in your belt and then, you know, get yourself all gooed up when you're on the mound. What are we doing? What are we doing, Ben?

I think this was the third Met to be popped for being excessively sticky. There was Max Scherzer a while back who returned for the Rangers this weekend. He did. And also Drew Smith. But this was not a debatable case. This was not a why are the umps picking on us? No. Yeah.

That episode, by the way, I wish it was a mere 15 years ago. Try 23 years ago. Stop it. Stop it. No. I know you just celebrated a birthday or maybe now you're lamenting a birthday now that I've brought that up. But season eight, episode nine, Salvage, if anyone wants to check it out after that rave review. Again, it's not good. You know, like the first half of it, it's one of the we're just doing this. It's one of those where you you watch the first half and then you wonder, like, did the writer of this episode suffer a family emergency that required them to be away from set in the back half?

And thus they were not there to, like, assist with necessary rewrites. There's a strange tonal shift midway through. They end up being very mean to this poor guy's wife who is just like, hey, my husband's made of metal. I don't understand it either. I am but a lady living in not Vancouver. Try to understand, although those later seasons, a lot of that stuff was shot in LA. So maybe not LA.A., whatever.

Anyway, it's not a good one, but there are good ones. Revisit the X-Files. It'll make you feel a way. Yeah, great show. Sometimes, at least. Mostly, often. Well, when we do these episodes on Tuesdays after not having podcasted since Friday, so much has happened. I have a whole grab bag of topics to discuss with

you. None of which was X-Files season eight, episode nine, but that's where we ended up, or that's where we started. We'll see where we end up. What I want to ask you first, I think, we need a new term for the pitcher repair, the UCL variant surgery that is not Tommy John surgery. I lamented on a not long ago episode that while it's great that we now have this alternative to Tommy John that shortens recovery time, it has complicated the discussion surrounding UCL surgeries where you always want to say so and so had Tommy John surgery or will have to have Tommy John surgery, and then you have to kind of check yourself and say, well, it wasn't technically Tommy John, or it might not be Tommy John. You can just say UCL repair or reconstruction or surgery or something. But if you want to be precise, and you should, because it does make a difference when it

comes to how soon you might see this guy again, but you always have to look up the details. And sometimes the details. And sometimes the details are hard to find if you're Shohei Otani and you're having like this completely unique form of the surgery where everyone was very hush-hush for a while what exactly he had and didn't have. And I think we need some pithy, catchy name for this alternative because Tommy John surgery, what a great name. Yeah. We all know it. It's caught on. It might be the thing that Tommy John, an excellent pitcher,

is best known for. And yet our alternative to Tommy John, when we're talking about this other type of repair, technically, I guess its name is primary repair with internal brace augmentation. Yeah. I mean, that's a mouthful. That is hard to remember. And so you could just call it internal brace repair or primary repair. You can kind of shorten that, but it's just not memorable. So it seems like we have to follow the convention of Tommy John surgery and name it after someone.

But I don't know who, because the thing about Tommy John surgery, it's perfect because Tommy John was, I think, actually the first pitcher to have this performed on him. I don't think there was even an amateur pitcher who had had it performed previously. And he is a near arguably hall of fame caliber pitcher. So he's a well-known guy. And he was a perfect proof of concept for this surgery because he came back and he pitched forever at a high level, right? So he returned to pitch at his previous level and showed that this was viable. So, okay, Tommy John surgery. You could say that Frank Jobe got jobbed by not having his own surgery that he pioneered named after him. It could have been the Frank Job surgery.

But if you're going to pick a pitcher to name it after, then the first pitcher who had it performed on him, perfect, right? Whereas with UCL primary repair, brace, internal augmentation, whatever, like there's no perfect candidate here because it was performed on, I believe, amateur pitchers first. I don't even know the name of the very first pitcher who had this performed on them. And then I think it was performed on a major leaguer or former major leaguer, at least. I think Mitch Harris was actually the first. June 2016, I'm looking at the great online Tommy John surgery database, which now has 45 instances of this surgery. So it's great that it's getting performed more often, but I think that just makes it more imperative that we come up with some better name for it.

And Mitch Harris, I think, was the first. He had it in 2016, but he'd been in the big leagues briefly with the Cardinals in 2015 and then never made it back to the big leagues. And then it's more associated with Seth Maness, who is, I think, really the first established major leaguer to have it performed on him. And he did return to the majors, but only for like nine innings with the Royals the following year. So it's not like he went on to have a long and successful high-level pitching career. So the Manis surgery, the Harris surgery, you could name it after Jeff Dugas, the doctor who pioneered it, the Dugas surgery.

I think George Paletta was the one who performed it on Harris and Maness, the Paletta surgery. I just, I don't know. And so will it become associated with one of the more prominent pitchers who has had it subsequently? Like, will it be the Otani surgery? Will it be the Spencer Strider surgery? Otani has enough rules and things, awards named after him probably, but I'd never turn down another. But it's not really fair to name it after him. He wasn't close to the first to have it performed on him. But we got to do something about this because I've struggled with it. And I saw people in our Discord group talking about this this week.

And Craig Calcaterra mentioned it this week in his newsletter. It's like we need some sort of shorthand here, short elbow. We need something to refer to this thing that's a little less wordy. I think short elbow requires a different procedure altogether, Ben. I'm so delighted that you bring this up because I have not struggled with this for even one minute. And so, it's good to know that perhaps I have like an editorial blind spot. i've just been calling it internal brace surgery yeah you can do that but ben it hasn't been a problem even one time it's it's worked out it's worked out every single time you know yeah because like arguably

i get i get what you mean because it's not catchy i suppose although there are still so few instances of this relative to the number of Tommy John surgeries, certainly like full Tommy Johns. I think we can be forgiven for still feeling our way through the optimal way to refer to it. I also will say, like, you know, it is great that the recovery time is shorter and it seems like guys are able to come back and still perform well. It is interesting to me that there's been this like rush to take the internal brace option if it is available, because I think there are times where they can't do the internal brace, right? Where they have to do the full Tommy, the full Tommy John. It's such a new procedure that I think we don't, we don't actually know what the long-term prognosis is for guys who have gotten it or what the rate of further revision will be.

I love that they call it a Tommy John revision. I'm like, yeah, me and that surgeon, we have the same job. We do revisions. I just find that part interesting, not that I think it's a bad thing or a sign of blowouts to come or anything like that. But it will just be interesting to see sort of what the prognosis for these guys' elbows is, you know, a couple of years from now. I think internal brace is fine. And here's the thing about calling it internal brace. We might get closer to understanding what like it actually is though because i think a lot of people when they hear tommy john surgery they don't they know it's the ucl maybe they know it's in your elbow i think that sometimes the like corpse of it all can be front of people's minds although they don't

always have to use you know corpse ligaments often they pull it from they pull from your own body they just you know they frankenstein you you are both Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. I mean, not really. I guess the surgeon is Dr. Frankenstein in this analogy. Do people know what a Tommy John is really? I don't know. I don't know if they know what an internal brace is, but if we keep calling it that, maybe we'll come to understand. I just have not been bothered by this even again, even one time for even five minutes. Like, you know, people will be like, oh, he got internal brace. And I'm like, OK, that's like Tommy John light. Right.

One of those revisions where all you have to do is fix the commas. I don't know. Like, yeah, there have been more than 40 Tommy Johns this year and six of these internal brace repairs. It's just some prominent pitchers have had them. and six of these internal brace repairs. It's just some prominent pitchers have had them. And it's gotten to the point where it's common enough that you have to hedge when someone is going in for surgery and they might not know which type of surgery it'll be.

And then you find out it's like a surgery surprise when they're all sewn up and then you find out, oh, what did they actually have and what does that mean for their timeline here? But I have sort of struggled with it. Maybe we need the doctor themselves. They could try to name it, I guess, although it's not like Frank Jobe decided to call it Tommy John surgery, I don't think. And the other thing is that you can do internal brace repairs on other body parts is the problem. So if you're like in the surgery world, like you could get

an internal brace repair of a knee, let's say, you know, an ACL repair. And so technically, just saying internal brace, it doesn't specify enough. Now, maybe in a baseball context, it's been vastly more common to have it in your elbow, which I don't know whether others said there have been other athletes who've had internal brace repairs on ACLs, for instance. So that will probably come up in a baseball context, too. And then you'd need to say internal brace elbow repair and add another adjective onto there. So but but Ben, do you, you know, because like here's the here's the thing about it.

The reason that we're having to distinguish between tommy john and internal braces because both of them involve the ucl right my understanding of that at least is correct and so if you were getting internal brace surgery done in your knee you'd be getting that on your acl most commonly it sounds like so you would just say you're getting sir you're getting ACL surgery. I think that this isn't a problem. I think you can let it go, Ben. Just call it internal brace. What do you have against it?

It's true. Because, yeah, you have a labrum in a hip and you have a labrum in a shoulder. And sometimes you have to specify which labrum we're talking about. It's pretty important the surgeon know which one. Right, yeah. It would be bad if he were confused. Yeah, yeah. If we could do some sort of variant of the term Tommy John, like one listener proposed we just call it Tom John because it's like a shorter return.

No, that's so much more confusing. It also sounds like a kind of soup. Yeah. Isn't there, Tom? No, it's Tom Yum Soup. I guess if Tommy John himself didn't actually have internal brace, then we can't really just change his name. It should be like. We shouldn't.

Nani John. No. It's not Tommy John. I'm sorry. You are making this so much more confusing. confusing you if you do like a spoonerism of tommy john right as a way of describing internal brace surgery the odds that that gets misreported as someone needing full tommy john and thus inspiring people to misunderstand their projected timeline for recovery go up i think to an astronomical degree yeah why not just call it internal brace surgery because you're gonna you

just specify which one brightly it's like a labrum it's like you said it's like you know you got the and for pictures like quite often we we just if we say internal brace do you do can you get an internal brace done on your shoulder is that a is that a procedure that is involved in the shoulder because then you would just say that you need shoulder surgery and it will be fine, Ben. I'm not sure. It's a medical frontier. They're pioneering new applications for this all the time. So maybe we could just call it the Rich Hill because he had one of these, though I guess

he also had standard Tommy John surgery. He's had them all. So that doesn't even help. All right. If anyone has suggestions and Meg maintains that we don't actually need suggestions, but if anyone has a catchy term for this new alternative to Tommy John, then I would be happy to hear it just so I could incorporate it into my vernacular. A couple other pitching-related questions that I have for you. Speaking of injuries, there's been a development with Blake Snell, who's just had the worst star-crossed season.

It's just been kind of depressing when he's been pitching and when he hasn't been pitching. He's been on the IL a couple times and he is doing a rehab assignment and he had a rehab start that didn't go well. He's on the IL with a groin strain now and he lasted an inning in two thirds, 51 pitches

three hits, two in runs, he walked three, he didn't strike out anyone and then he said afterward, I haven't felt like myself yet it's just, we need you, we need you we need you, it's not like let's get him right and I have to deal with it, so he's kind of criticizing the Giants

here for rushing him back I want to be healthy in 100% and I haven't been. I've just been fighting to rush back. So that's my take. I'm frustrated with that. And you don't get the product of what I should be. And it's just frustrating. I want to go out there and dominate and pitch the way that I pitch, but it's more important than I'm out there. So from his perspective, it seems the Giants are rushing him. I guess they want to get some sort of return on their investment, which they certainly have not gotten much of thus far. I guess I would understand some urgency on their part, having made this investment in Blake Snell and then having him not be ready when the season started. Well, that's because they didn't sign him until the season was starting almost. So I guess they could have signed him earlier if they really

wanted him to be ready to go when opening day rolled around. But also the fact that he's been ineffective as we've discussed, and then he's also been injured a couple of times. And maybe this is just his own frustration boiling over as we've discussed also. It must be extra frustrating boiling over as we've discussed also it must be extra frustrating probably to want to prove that everyone was wrong and oh they should have made the big blake snell splash and they should have signed me earlier and longer term and then he comes out and basically makes it look like no one really made a mistake here passing over blake snell but it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the way that he signed in the circumstances. So, extra frustrating, I'm sure.

Though if it is true that the Giants are pushing him to return when he's not really ready to return, then that also seems counterproductive. Yeah, it doesn't seem like you're likely to get meaningfully good results over a meaningfully long period of time if he's hurt and you rush him back. You're just likely to compound whatever underlying health issues he's having and make him either ineffectual, you know, if he is sort of in a state where he's still well enough to pitch, but not especially good at it, or he'll hurt himself worse and then just be out for the season. Given how his contract is structured, even setting aside the just obvious reality that he's a professional athlete who I think wants to win baseball games and help the Giants win

baseball games and hopefully play in the postseason, his interests and the Giants' interests are aligned in the same direction here, right? Like if he had had a really great season, you know, then he'd have the ability to opt out and enter the market again later and hopefully get a contract that is more in keeping with his expectations when he hit free agency last winter. So the idea that they would rush him is just, I just don't understand that. That makes no sense to me. And, you know, who knows, some of this might just be frustration on his part, but it's enough of a, it's a well-articulated enough complaint that you think that there's something to it, right? Yeah. I understand the urgency on the Giants part because they haven't

been going great. Their playoff odds are down to about one in five chance. They are three games out in the NL wildcard race, just like every other team in the NL. Yeah, that feels like a lot. They could be in playoff position in a few days if everything broke right. But because there are so many teams in front of them somehow, even though they're three games out, it feels like they're falling behind. And I guess they've been shorthanded literally in the rotation. And so, yeah, they need Blake Snell. They got to get like right now on roster resource, the Giants starting rotation lists two people. Logan Webb and Jordan Hicks are the only starters listed for the Giants right now, so that's not ideal.

So they have Keaton Wynn. He's got elbow inflammation now, hopefully not headed for any sort of brace or repair. And then Robbie Ray returning from traditional Tommy John and Kyle Harrison.

You can just say Tommy John, Ben. Just say he's returning from Tommy John. There's no confusion there. And then other people have internal brace surgeries on their elbows. You're making yourself crazy. You don't need to. They have six pitchers listed right now on the IL, or I guess maybe even more than that. But the ratio of healthy starters to

injured starters is not great. So I can certainly see why they're like, hey, we signed Blake Snell to really shore up this rotation and put us over the top and that hasn't happened. And gosh, we need Blake Snell back, but we don't need just any Blake Snell back. You don't need early season sucky Snell back and you don't need Blake Snell back, but we don't need just any Blake Snell back. You don't need early season sucky Snell back, and you don't need Blake Snell with a groin strain back. Oh, no. You need top of the rotation Blake Snell back. Yeah.

Get sucky Snell out of here. That makes you sound like you're in, like, fourth grade. Hey, sucky Snell. You don't want slapdick Snell back, right? If you're in fourth grade, you shouldn't say slapdick, I don't think. That's a little strong for a fourth grader. Although I bet you feel so cool when you do. It's like the first time you swear and you look around and then you're like, I'm going to do it again right away.

It's a word that I may have learned from Blake Snell, as far as I recall. I don't really know. Slapdick? Was that word really? Didn't he end up having to apologize for that? He walked it back, yeah, somewhat, because the slapdick prospect turned out not to be, really. But yes, you want Blake Snell, who's fully healthy and effective. So rushing him back before he is either or both of those things would be harmful to him and to you.

But I understand why both sides would not be pleased about how this arrangement has worked out thus far. I would argue that even if Xavier Edwards were the worst that you still shouldn't call him a slapdick prospect, that's not very nice to him. That's not very nice, no. To be fair, he was not familiar with his game at the time that he said that. Wow, I mean, do your research, Blake. But no, I feel bad for Snell because this has to be going the exact opposite way of the way he hoped it would. Now, things are going better for our man Matt Waldron. So today is Matt Waldron update.

We just do a Matt Waldron update every week because he has another strong start every week. And he had yet another one. And so to update this little streak that he's on since May 11th was really when he started pitching well. May 11th through June 24th, he now has a 1.6 war over that span, 1.95 ERA. He is tied with Tanner Bybee and Chris Sale at 1.6 Van Graaff's war war and then there are only three pitchers ahead of him over that span and i will mention one of them in just a second but he has lowered his era and fip from 5.82 and 4.5 respectively when this nine start streak started to 3.43 and 3.36 now. So Matt Waldron, knuckleballer extraordinaire.

He continues to be highly effective, and we wish him well. But one of the three pitchers who has been better than Matt Waldron or who has amassed meaningfully more, well, not meaningfully, like a tenth of a win more, but more to the point that he's not technically tied out to one decimal place. You got Garrett Crochet at the top, who is basically auditioning for other teams at this point. Pitching well, not getting run support from his White Sox. Tanner Houck of the other Sox, the red ones. And then Christopher Sanchez of the Phillies.

Christopher Sanchez of the Phillies. And Christopher Sanchez has been in the news, not just because he has been pitching like one of the best pitchers in baseball, but because the Phillies have reached that same conclusion and have said, hey, we want to continue to be in business with this Christopher Sanchez character. And they have extended him for a deal that covers the 2025 through 2028 seasons with club options for two years beyond that. So it's one of these deals where it's hard to say what the exact dollar figure is, but it guarantees him $22.5 million. And then there's an option year for $14 million and another option year for $15 million, the club options. And then there are also incentives for Cy Young Award finishes, etc.

But the point is, Christopher Sanchez is now right up there with the other pillars of that extremely strong Phillies rotation. And like the more longstanding pillars, the Wheelers and Nolas, they have now secured his services for several seasons to come so that's exciting like the phillies not only have they put together this great pitching staff and this starting rotation but they've made sure that there's a lot of continuity there that wheeler and nola who've been there forever will continue to be there and now sanchez and it sounds like maybe ranger suarez might be next on the extension to-do list. So

they've done a good job of assembling these guys, but they've also done a good job of making sure that they stay put. And Sanchez has been really impressive for them. So right now, the Phillies have an eight-game lead on the Braves, their 14 games up on the Mets. To put their sort of division lead in context, so the Yankees are two games up on the Orioles. The Guardians are eight games up on the Twins. The Brewers are five games up on the Cardinals. The Dodgers are eight and a half up on the Padres. The Mariners, who have not won a baseball game since I turned 38. So rude, disturbing, flabbergasting in a lot of ways. Although, you know, I guess when Brian Wu gets hurt, do the best you can. They have a five and a half game lead on the Astros.

I will know that they were like 10 games up on the rest of the West at one point last week. But who's counting other than me? And I say all of that because I wonder, Ben, take injury into account. That's an important thing to know about this question, right? Condition for the question. As the roster is currently constituted today, and as the 29 other rosters in baseball are currently constituted today

what do you think the true talent gap in number of wins is between the phillies and the next best team in baseball like how big uh that you can think about it we can return to this question later in the episode if you'd like to to sit there and noodle on it because they're very talented and they're talented everywhere and we know that the postseason can be something of a crapshoot we know bad teams can advance the phillies are very familiar with this phenomena having lost to the diamondbacks in the cs last year but that wasn a bad team, but it wasn't as good a team as the Phillies. This is a better Phillies team. I think that they're pretty comfortably the best team in baseball, but I'm trying to decide by how much, particularly with the Dodgers injuries.

It's just like— Yeah, so we're talking literally today without Yamamoto, without Betts, etc. June 25th. Today, June 25th, you know? on this, the 25th day of June, my second full day as a 38-year-old, my third day. But like, you know, I wasn't born at midnight on my birthday. Cut the banners some slack. They haven't won in two days.

That's it. One of those games they lost to the Marlins, Ben. That's true. Yeah, it is true. That's it. One of those games they lost to the Marlins, Ben. That's true. Yeah, it is true. It is true. Now, that game ended on a really nice defensive play. Sometimes you're Julio and you just sadly hit him right where somebody's going to make a great play.

That happens. It happens, Ben. But it had to happen on my birthday. And after I got a nice haircut. What are we doing? Maybe that's the universe saying, hey, don't get greedy. Like, I can't give with both hands. You got a good haircut. Now your team has to lose.

So maybe it's my fault. Anyway, how good do you think the Phillies are? I think they're really good. I think they're really good. Yeah. I think they're really good. Now, I would not have said that they were the best team in baseball coming into this season. In fact, I wouldn't even have said that they were the best team in the NL East, I don't think.

I thought it would be a race. I thought it would be more interesting. I thought they would push Atlanta. But Atlanta with Spencer Strider, with Ronald Acuna. It's a different Atlanta now. Right, it is. And also some of their guys who are there have underperformed and the offense hasn't been firing on all cylinders anymore. So that has semi surprised me. But yes, as currently constituted, I would say that the Phillies are probably the best team team, like they're just going to run roughshod over the rest of the league. I don't think it's like you got 29 giving Shohei a run for the MVP race, like fields a really good player at pretty much every position is really good. I don't know what to tell you, but they feel quite complete.

I underestimated their pitching. I thought that they were being over-projected a bit at the beginning of the season. They were projected very well. I think, if I recall correctly, correctly you know one and one in both the rotation and the bullpen um for our projections but um they're very they're really very good they're very good team so that's cool you know that's nice for them terrible city connect uniforms but you know that's not one on the team's fault really yeah they weren wore those city connects on the day that they like honored cole hamels and i was like that feels rude it feels disrespectful you know that you would put something so ugly

on the field next to such a beautiful man like what is you know maybe maybe it's nice actually maybe it just um the contrast further illuminates like how he is very handsome. I'm allowed to say that. Everyone thinks it's true. It's like, that's just like a fact, you know, that's like an objective. Yeah, you get a lot of disagreement on that. But I was like, wear real uniforms around Cole Hamels. What are you doing? This is rude.

I noticed that baseball references page for Christopher Sanchez, the pronunciation guide spells out Christopher. page for Christopher Sanchez, the pronunciation guide spells out Christopher. It's like Chris-tougher as if, was there a lot of confusion about how to pronounce Christopher? People saying Christopher Sanchez, Christopher Sanchez? I don't think so. Usually when it's a fairly common name like that, they don't bother spelling out the common name. Like if you go to Christopher Morell's page, they don't spell out Christopher. In fact, they spell out Morell there and they have the more capitalized, which in my mind looks like the emphasis

is on the wrong syllable. Because it's Morell, right? Isn't it just like the mushroom? It's not Morell. It's not like Superman or Jor-El or something. It's like More morale, right? Yeah, like the mushrooms. Yeah, this seems backward to me.

But the point is they thought that we would understand Christopher. They kind of took that for granted. Christopher Sanchez, which no one was confused about. There was even less confusion about how to say his first name than there is about Tommy John surgery and internal brace. I think the thing that's really encouraging for Phillies fans is that he was the product of a straight up one for one trade with the Tampa Bay Rays. That's right. The Rays have a reputation for, oh, you don't want to trade for the Rays. They always know something, right? You're going to get fleeced.

Yeah, the Sam Miller tweet, you know, love this trade for the Rays. So who'd they get? Who'd they give up, right? Yep. You're going to get fleeced. was this season, right? Yeah, he's a top 100 guy. Yeah, Sanchez never was a top 100 guy, at least in the main sources I'm seeing here on the baseball reference page. And Meade has been a top 100 guy two or three times, depending on the source. And yet he hasn't really broken through yet, right? He hasn't panned out. I mean, he's 23. He still could, but he's hitting okay in AAA this year, and he's been in the big leagues and hasn't really hit yet.

The point is, if you had to say one side is winning that trade and the book is not closed on it, you would say that the Phillies were winning that trade because Christopher Sanchez has turned into an excellent starter. And that's the thing we noted about the Phillies earlier this season. It's not just that the guys they've broken the bank for have performed, though they have, and that's been an important component of their success. But the reason why they had to keep dipping into free agency or that they did was that they hadn't really developed players internally. That hadn't really seemed to be a strength of theirs. And now suddenly it is. It seems like that generation of Phillies prospects who had sort of stalled, some of those guys really have made the leap. And you have the Sanchezes and the Suarez's and the Boehm's, et cetera. Like these guys are good, not even just complimentary players, but really, really star players in their own right to go along with the Harpers and Turners

and Wheelers, et cetera, right? So, they're kind of doing it all now. I don't know if it's like premature to call the Phillies a player development powerhouse or anything, but like that doesn't seem to be a real notable weakness or deficiency of theirs. It's not just that they're like inefficiently, you know, just outspending their inability to develop talent internally. They are spending and also developing talent internally. So best of both worlds. Yeah. They had a period where they had hired a bunch of people on the dev side and that did not seem to go great with that group. Like it was, you know, a bunch of folks from like pitching,

you know, they had some driveline people, they had some like internet folks and it seems like that didn't go super well and they moved on from that iteration of their player dev approach and then it's gone much better since, you know, they've brought in some new folks and it seems like they have had a good bit more success in helping guys adjust and really exceed their initial prospect expectations.

So that's pretty cool. Sanchez has probably got some regression in store because he's given up 0.1 home runs per nine innings. That seems probably unsustainable. You don't get my great sabermetric insight to tell you that here. But also, like, the peripherals are pretty solid, even accounting for that. I mean, he graduated as a 35 plus for us, Sanchez did. And while I agree with you that he probably

won't keep performing at quite this level going forward, I mean, he's definitely much better than that. He's definitely better than a 35, you know? He has a 2.5, a 2.50 FIP. Yeah, his X FIP, which normalizes the home run rate at 3.13. That's really great too. And he gets a lot of grounders. He's got like a 60% ground ball rate, so he doesn't give up that many fly balls to begin with. Right. So some of that stuff, you know, he might continue to like outpace the FIP there a little bit just because of his approach, but particularly

when you think about what else they're able to do, he is very good, and I don't mean to denigrate his skill, but it's also like when you look at just the total talent on that rotation, it's

something, Ben. You get Wheeler, you get Nolio suarez like turnbull's been okay tywin walker's had kind of a rough year and has gotten roughed up but like when you add sanchez into that mix he doesn't have to be like the number one guy zach wheeler's gonna fill that role but he's he's sure something you didn't react to my australian accent when i said curtis meade's name at all. You were just like, that's so good that I don't even have to comment on it. Like, wow, Meg, she nailed it. Curtis Mead. Totally. Thank you. Also, do you remember your bold prediction this

spring about Shota Imanaga out fan graphs warring Yoshinobu Yamamoto? I do. That is still very much a possibility. I was thinking, well, you might have just nailed that when Yamamoto went on the IL. The problem is that since he has been inactive, Imanaka has probably hurt his case. Imanaka, the regression has come for him a little bit. Like in his past five starts, he's got a near eight ERA. It's a little weird because he's had some strong starts mixed in there with some disaster starts. to his war tally and neither is Yamamoto. But I guess they're pitching to a standstill here. Yamamoto literally standing still. Imanaga just not adding to his war total because he hasn't pitched so well. And it seemed clear again that like some regression would be coming for Imanaga because he had the low home run rate going for him too, even though he is a big fly ball guy, unlike Sanchez. And now

that is no longer the case. That has kind of corrected, I guess, from Cubs fans perspective. It was more correct before, but it fits a bit better now. And he's still been very good on the whole, but he is at 1.8 fangraphs were, and the idol Yamamoto is at two point one. So now I guess it's a race to see will Yamamoto return or will Imanaga write the ship and start pitching a bit better. So initially it was like, wow, who's who's going to go higher here? And now it's like, right, who can go at all higher at all? Who can add to their tally whatsoever? Yeah. Imanaga had allowed three home runs in the first month and a half of the season.

And over the last month of the season, he's allowed seven. So that's more. And obviously gave up three home runs in his last start against the Mets. Only went three innings, Ben. Not the best. It always seemed likely, just based on the combination of the fly ball profile and his home park, that he was likely to give up some number of home runs, right? Because Wrigley can get you. And it's perhaps not an accident that as the weather has started to warm up, that he has had more bad luck from a fly ball perspective.

Bad luck implies that, yeah, he just got got every time. And I'm not saying that that's true. But the home run per fly ball rate has definitely ticked up in the last couple of starts for him. So I don't know if that's where it'll settle. He gets to adjust to it doesn't look as as triumphant of prediction as it did in the early going. I was like, yeah, crush it. And I was being a little sassy when I said that because the projection systems loved Imanaga. Zips in particular was in love with Imanaga and thought that he would be better on a per inning basis than Yamamoto and by a pretty considerable margin, at least in the first couple years of their career stateside. Obviously, Yamamoto has the pretty profound age advantage there. But yeah, it's a little dicier now.

I don't remember half of my predictions. Clemens asked me the other day, he's like, you remember when you took this guy in the minor league free agent draft? He's pitching great in the bigs. And I'm like, I don't even know who you're talking about. Like, don't, no memory of it.

Are you sure it was me? Was another Ben that picked that guy? Who is it? I couldn't tell you right now, Ben. I couldn't tell you who he even asked me about. Don't even know. Well, we will return to that when the stats settle and we see who won. But yes, that projection, prediction, still very much in play, but undecided.

One that is decided, do you remember last year when we did the preseason bold predictions exercise for the first time? One of Bauman's bold predictions was that there would not be a walk-off pitch clock violation, a clock-off. And that seemed bold at the time, sort of, I guess. He thought it was bold. We thought, oh, yeah, there's bound to be one at some point. It's the first season. And then there wasn't one all of last year. And it got less and less likely as the season proceeded because everyone got used to the clock and the violation rate went way down. And this year, we finally got one. Here we go. Three and two.

It's called pitch clock. The pitch clock violation is going to end the game. Jake Cage scores. The Rockies win it 8-7. Finnegan doesn't even argue, just walks off. We have a clock off. It happened. What everyone feared and dreaded, it has not turned out to be a big problem.

But nor has it been entirely without merit because it happened courtesy of Kyle Finnegan, closer for the Nationals, who waited too long. I guess Finnegan's weight. Did anyone use that for a headline? Oh, very good. Thank you. Yeah, maybe that'll be our podcast title here. A little James Joyce joke for everyone. I think you found it.

Finnegan has waited too long, not just this one time. He has been the greatest offender when it comes to pitch clock violations. He's got to get this under control. He said it's something where he intentionally goes down to the wire. He tries to use the clock to his advantage to upset hitters' timing. And maybe that has worked for him on the whole. Who knows? He's been fairly effective. But this time he waited too long and there was a bases loaded walk off,

clock off, game ending, walk off a pitch clock violation. And, you know, he just kind of owned up to it. Like there was no controversy, really. He was clearly a second over. And I saw some people kind of owned up to it. There was no controversy, really. He was clearly second over. And I saw some people kind of complaining about, oh, this is not a good way for a game to end. And I would agree. It's not really that satisfying.

But I wouldn't change the rules or anything because this happened one time or have an exemption for a game-ending situation. Yeah, it makes no sense. I saw some grousing on that score too, and I find it very silly because there are all kinds of rules that can come into play where a pitcher does something that runs counter to the rules and that ends the game. You can balk off, right?

You can shrimp. What is the origin of that? Why is it shrimp when you walk in the winning run? All of that to say that there are all kinds of rules that can come into play and end the game. And I think you're right that it's not an ideal way for a game to end. But I think that the fact that it can end that way acts as a pretty powerful disincentive to lollygag the part of this that surprised me and i will admit i didn't i didn't look this part up i didn't look it up and but like in that moment you see the clock ticking down you're catching finnigan don't you just try to take a mound visit to reset the clock? I don't think that the failure is entirely his. People should, other people on the field should be kind of paying attention to that.

But I remember when the pitch clock was introduced and the league was doing its little tour of spring trainings to talk to media members about it. Like one of the very first questions that Morgan was asked was, are you guys comfortable with a game ending on a clock violation, you know, potentially even like a playoff game? And he was like, yeah, we can't have end of game exceptions for this rule. It sort of defeats part of the purpose and it's hardly without precedent in sports. It had been previously without precedent in baseball. But if you're playing football and you don't get the playoff in time and you take a delay of game, you know, that might not end the game, but it might say take you out of range of a game winning field goal. It might make it too hard for you to actually do anything. actually do anything if you you know i saw them talking about this on around the horn the other day and you know i don't remember which of them brought this up but it's like if you commit a shot clock violation late in an nba game just because it's late in the game doesn't mean they're

like oh you get an extra five seconds it's like you should have gotten your shot off earlier you know this is part of the rule structure so i don't think that it's a big deal. And I also think it's made even less of a big deal by the fact that this is the first one and we're like a year and a half into this rule. You know, we haven't had one of these before. It was a June Rockies Nationals game. So not the highest stakes. I mean, the Nationals, they're in playoff contention, but not the most prominent spot that this could have happened. And also, Kyle Finnegan's outing, he came in in the ninth to try to close out the game, and it went single, single, single, single, and then the pitch clock walk. So it was bases loaded, no outs when this happened. So, and the game was already tied. He probably wasn't going to get out of this anyway, right? So that was the way it ended, but it was probably going to end some other way

if that hadn't happened. Right. I did think it was interesting that the walk-off celebration I was watching to see, like, will this be muted at all? And not really. Like, was there a hint of sheepishness about celebrating winning this way? Perhaps it wasn't the most effusive celebration I've ever seen, but it wouldn't have struck me as an abnormally muted one either. dumped. Like there were, everyone was swarming around the guy who scored the winning run. It was

like, you know, I guess Ryan McMahon was the batter and Cave scored and like, you know, he was getting swarmed and back slapped and butt slapped and everything else like that you usually see. So you would have thought, you know, maybe if the guy just took a second too long to deliver the pitch, it would be like, well, we won, but can we really take a lot of credit here? Can we celebrate this as effusively as we normally would? But yeah, they did. And I think that's something that maybe Sam has written about before when he's studied walk-offs is that it almost doesn't matter how you walk off. And it doesn't matter really that much whether the batter was responsible for it. Like maybe the batter just got the run in but didn't really do anything that spectacular themselves or they were just sort of there when it happened, which was the case here. And yet, no, you still got congratulated.

You still get hailed as the hero, even if it's really Finnegan's weight being the thing that led to your win. And Finnegan's got this. He that led to your win. And Finnegan's got this. He's got to get this under control. I'll be curious to see if his pace meaningfully changes if we do like a before and after comparison. Because he has 16 violations since the start of last season. That's wild. Yeah, that is tied for the most in the majors with Chris Bassett. He's thrown almost three times as many innings as Finnegan because Bassett's a starter.

That's still a lot of violations, though, Chris. Yeah, Finnegan's got 16 violations in like 100-ish innings. Craig Kimbrell also has 16 in I think even fewer innings than Finnegan. But Kimbrell's kind of gotten it under control this season. He only has three, whereas Finnegan has gotten gotten it under control this season. He only has three, whereas Finnegan has gotten even worse with this this season. He's got nine this year, and Bassett is second with five, and a couple other guys tied with five.

So Finnegan's almost lapping the league this year. So yeah, you got to pick up the pace at least a little, slightly here, Finnegan, at least in high leverage spots. I can't believe Chris Bassett has that many. That's, I mean, like, I know it's more innings, but Chris, get it together. Shrimp being associated with walk-off walks, by the way, it comes from the blog walk-off walk, which in 2008 celebrated the first walk-off walk in the history of the site and celebrated that with a blog post that was accompanied by a shrimp running on a treadmill

to the Benny Hill theme, that video. Because the Phillies had won with a walk-off walk and that was just the video that was chosen to celebrate this moment. And thus, shrimp. The internet is a weird and wonderful place. Yeah, remember when the internet was cool? That was nice. I liked that, when. Thus, shrimp. The internet is a weird and wonderful place. Yeah. Remember when the internet was cool? That was nice. I liked that, when the internet was cool.

Okay. Well, now I know. Imagine you're a shrimp and you're like, I got to buy shoes for the treadmill. I bet that's hard to find shoes that fit. I wanted to ask you about this. There were a couple excellent starts by twins starters, and they both came against the Oakland A's. So insert the opponent quality caveat here. But which of these starts do you think is more impressive? So you had Pablo Lopez, who shut out the A's for eight innings, gave up two hits, walked one,

14 strikeouts. Okay, that's pretty impressive. Then you had Bailey Ober, who allowed two runs, four hits, no walks, 10 strikeouts, but he beat the A's with a complete game that required only 89 pitches. So by game score, Lopez is more impressive. So Lopez has a 91 game score. He didn't allow a run. He struck out more. He gave up fewer hits, et cetera. Whereas Ober, 81 game score. So 10 points lower with the game score. And yet 89 pitches in a complete game is very impressive. Like game score doesn't account for your pitch count. And Pablo Lopez threw 102 pitches in his eight innings. And so a nine inning complete game on fewer than 90 pitches, like you don't see that very often. And a nine inning complete game, fewer than 90 pitches with 10 or more strikeouts. Sarah Langs noted it was just this Bailey-Ober game

and David Cohn's perfect game in 1999. Wow. Because, you know, you get a lot of strikeouts. Those are going to take at least three pitches apiece, right? And usually more. So that's going to eat into your pitch count. And so to be that efficient with a double-digit strikeout count, that is pretty darn impressive.

Like, this is not just a Maddox complete game, 100 pitches or fewer. This is 90 or fewer. This is 89 pitches. So from a predictiveness standpoint, I guess you might go with the guy who struck out 14 in eight innings, but, and, you know, shutout innings, no less. And yet, isn't the 89 pitches, regardless of predictiveness, I think that impresses me more. That, like, makes me say, wow, more than Pablo Lopez's extremely impressive line. In some respects, more impressive. And yet, the efficiency of the overstart, I think that amazes me more. I think it amazes me more i think it amazes me more and like you are saving your bullpen an inning which in the grand scheme of things might not matter that much but is is something you're saving right yeah i think i would probably go with the efficiency particularly because of the strikeouts like the combination of it being a complete game with 10 strikeouts and that few pitches like that feels like a special kind of outing.

You know, I will admit I did not watch that one. I did see some of the Pablo Lopez start, though, and I was like, he looks pretty good. That's very impressive. I find that very impressive. It also feels like the kind of outing that would be like a part of a practical joke on someone who's mad that pitchers don't go deep into games anymore. Where you're like, you don't like the room. Right. You're ready to go pitches and they'd be like, boo. And it's like, but it was a complete game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe my perception is colored by the fact that I think of Pablo Lopez as a superior pitcher to Bailey Ober.

Yeah, that's at play for me too. Yeah, this season that is debatable, I guess. But in the past, certainly, Lopez has been one of the best pitchers in baseball and Ober not so much. So I think of, well, if I had to have one of these pitchers going forward, yeah, I'm going to take Pablo Lopez. Or if I had to win one game, I'm going to take Pablo Lopez. But it's definitely, from a rarity standpoint, the extremely low pitch count game. That is, I think it's just more scarce and more impressive. And yes, if it were, like if he'd had, you know, five strikeouts or something and it was just happened to be a bunch of Adam balls and got a lot of help from his

defense, like it'd still be quirky and cool, but it wouldn't be, you know, you'd feel like, oh, there was a lot of luck involved here. There were just, you know, a lot of balls hit right at guys. Whereas, yeah, if you got the 10 Ks, you're doing your part here. Yes. That suggests a guy very much in command of his own start in a way that makes it, I think, really, I think it's really impressive. I find that.

I also find Bailey Ober to be like a satisfying name to say. Bailey Ober, you know, that's just like, it's like, that's nice bailey ober does b ref have a pronunciation guide for bailey ober's name christopher i guess like sometimes people put a little flourish in the way they say christopher but that one feels fairly straightforward i mean really they should put pronunciation we i don't i'm not trying to target b ref with this i'm singling them out. But like, ideally, you should just have pronunciation guides for everyone. Because like, you know, for like native Spanish speakers, when they see that we require pronunciation guides, they're like, come on.

Like, don't you know how to say that? And it's like, I'm sorry. So, you know. They do, in fact, have a pronunciation guide for. Do they really? For Ober. That's great. For Ober. That's great. For Ober.

Ober, yes. Hey, I mean, look, you can just be a doofus about this stuff, even if the name is one that is typically rendered in your native language. See me not being able to say Kyle Bradish's name right until you got Tommy John. Regular Tommy John, right? He didn't get an internal brace. See, now, Ben, now you're in my head because I'm going to be – I felt I had clarity before, and now I'm going to feel confusion. I can't believe you were like, let's do a spoonerism.

That'll make things clear. What is wrong with you? That is a wild way to approach that problem. Just say internal brace, man. It's going to be fine. I see now that Ober's complete game first won with 89 or fewer pitches regardless of strikeout count since Sandy Alcantara more than five years ago, May 2019. Cool. And he had eight Ks in that game. So, yeah, I'm going to go with, you know, sometimes we're talking about what's retrospectively more impressive.

And we're not talking about predictiveness necessarily. And this is one of those times. I miss watching Sandy pitch. Get well soon, bud. Normal Tommy John. Normal. I'm pretty sure normal. Oh, boy.

I am glad, by the way, that Stephen Kwan is okay, because I felt a little guilty after we did our rave review. Oh, our appreciation of Stephen Kwan. Isn't he great? Isn't he fun? His offense, his defense, he does it all. This was in early May, episode 2159, published May 3rd. And he'd been excellent to that point. He had a 360 batting average.

He had a 164 WRC plus. But then a few days later, he went on the IL. And some people were jokingly guilting average. He had a 164 WRC plus, but then a few days later he went on the IL and some people were jokingly guilting us. Oh, you broke Steven Kwan. Right. And so much to my relief, not only did we not break him, but he's, he's backting.457 with a.254 WRC+. That's so silly. He's walked 11.1% of the time, struck out 6.2% of the time. Stephen Kwan is unstoppable, at least fingers crossed. Wow.

He was stopped for a few weeks there after the last time we talked about it. But you can't stop him that long. So he's down to a mere 389 average. I'm not saying we need to be on 400 watch or anything. We did that last year. Like, it's impossible. You know, it's just let's not get our hopes up to the point where we're disappointed if he ends up batting 350 or something. Because, like, he could very well end up doing that

and that would be quite a level up for him too because like you know he he had 268 last year he had 298 as a rookie right he hasn't been an extraordinarily high average hitter and he's put it all together he's walking more often than he strikes out. He has a near 200 isolated power. Like he's hitting, you know, by Stephen Kwan standards, he's hitting for some serious power. Like he's hit seven home runs this season. That's a career high for him in a single season. He had six as a rookie. He had five last year in, you know, full seasons, 50 games. He's got seven bombs already. Like he has found a way to hit for some extra base power without sacrificing his contact quality whatsoever. I was a little worried in spring training when I read about how the Guardians were trying to turn their contact

guys into power hitters and like telling them to selectively swing harder. And Stephen Kwan was like, I don't know how to miss the ball. So like, how do I even do this? Like, you're telling me it's okay to whiff, but I'm like constitutionally incapable of doing that. He's found a way now just to keep making incredible contact. He's a career low strikeout rate this year and his strikeout rate was already low. And he's like a defensive star in left field if there is such a thing. And, you know, I think he's probably playing a bit over his head right now. And he has a 400 BABF. And I don't think that's going to last.

But he's just a complete player and just a total outlier other than Arise. And it's just so much fun to see him do his thing. Yeah, the only thing that is down relative to his prior seasons is sort of his base running value but given that he had a hamstring injury it's like you can be careful sir just be just be ginger with yourself that's fine to be ginger with oneself when you've had a lower body thing and know that you have lower body things yeah like you know if you cared about college baseball the other day when i was like pack 12 hitters it just hasn't been great lately thing and know that you have lower body things yeah like you know if you cared about college baseball the other day when i was like pac-12 hitters this hasn't been great lately you could

have been like well may what about steven kwan but you didn't know that ben and so you couldn't sass me about it it's such a cool and interesting step forward i think you're right that he's probably not you know gonna be a 400 babbitt guy it is interesting that he has managed to like sustain that while also being maybe a little bit compromised from a lower bodybit guy it is interesting that he has managed to like sustain that while also being maybe a little bit compromised from a lower body perspective so it's just like he's just great he's just a great he's ben he's great he's a great player he has certainly put a a dent in my theory that the the cleveland outfield is just forever cursed after they refused to give brantley the qualifying offer. And,

you know, I think that that's delightful. The way the Guardians have powered up this season as a whole, not just Kwon, but after being dead last in baseball in home runs and isolated power last season, they're now doing quite well in those categories. They're in the top 10 for home runs. Yeah, they're ninth in home runs. They are seventh in isolated power, tied for seventh with the Braves. Could you imagine that before the season? Yeah, the Guardians and the Braves will be tied in isolated power in late June. That's pretty incredible. It's incredible.

Now, there is seemingly some sort of wind tunnel effect going on in progressive field because they made some changes to the outfield stands in right and left. And there was speculation that it would lead to the wind blowing out and propelling fly balls farther and that there'd be more homers. And there does seem to be some merit to that. There was a baseball prospectus study on this by Jim Albert and Alan Nathan just last week that showed that fly balls are traveling farther in progressive field this season, even though they're not traveling farther league-wide. In fact, they're not traveling as far league-wide. And so there does seem to be something going on in progressive field that's probably helping, but it's not just that. going on in progressive field that's probably helping, but it's not just that. They're not purely a product of this wind tunnel effect because even on the roads, their power stats have been way up from last season. Last year, not only were they last in the league in terms of home runs hit, they were like 30, no, they were like 25 home runs behind the Nationals, Ben. They were just a completely juiceless offense.

They were thumpless, as it were. They had 124 home runs all of last season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Ben. How many do they have so far this season? They are well ahead of that in terms of pace. They have already hit 89 home runs.

Yeah, they're going to catch up to that by like the all-star break or something. Like it's pretty incredible. Yeah, and they're not even into, I mean like it's been, don't get me wrong, it's been plenty hot. It's been plenty hot, especially everywhere. But, you know, including in the Midwest. On the road, just looking at away stats purely, they're 13th in homers and 10th in isolated power. So, again, like, they've really made hay at home here, but it's a big increase even aside

from that just in approach. Like, they've improved. They've, you know, incorporated some guys who just hit for more power. Daniel Schneeman, a meet a major leaguer guy has been a nice little jolt for them. So yeah, it's this offense. This is not like the dinks and donks and, you know, death by a thousand cuts,

like Guardians offensive a couple of seasons ago that was like good enough with good pitching and defense but was never really a strength even though people kind of made a lot of it because you know it was fun and it was noteworthy that they were doing it that way but it was more like something that they were you know doing other things well enough that that worked for them than that that was exactly a strength. Right. And, you know, they're still contact, like they're 26th in strikeout rate, by which I

mean they have the 26th highest, as in they have a low strikeout rate still. It's not quite as low as it was, but they still make a lot of contact. Yeah. And, you know, they're like middle of the pack base running wise and base stealing wise. They're seventh. So nothing spectacular there. But yeah, they have become much more of a all around offense than they were. Yeah, it's really very impressive.

And, you know, we might have our issues with some of the approach to payroll and whatnot. And, you know, I think that that stuff is all fine to consider, but when you're thinking about how does a team like this sort of get itself in a position where it's competitive and where they're not, you know, they're still winning more than you would expect them to. If you look at say their Pythagorean record or their base runs record. They're like eight games over their base runs record. But I think that relative to some of the teams that have sat atop the AL Central in recent years, this is a much realer one than some of those other clubs have been so if you're gonna be a team that takes this approach you have to get star level contributions from your guys making

the league minimum and that includes guys like steven kwan i mean like that's how you do it i don't love it as an approach but it is you know it I think, one that is working for them at least now. Although, candidly, the part of their team that is doing okay that I thought would just be totally in the tank, especially after Bieber got hurt, is their pitching. And, like, their pitching's been okay. It hasn't been great, but it's been okay, you know? It's been okay.

They're, like, 13th in the league in pitching war by our accounting of war. So they're like sitting in the middle and then they have this offense. It's cool. Good for Kwon. I mean, he'll probably be an all-star, right? Stephen Kwon's got to be an all-star. Yeah, one would think. One would think, Ben.

I say that like I'm worked up about it and I'm not. I think it'll probably be fine. Yeah, I am worried about my man Tristan McKenzie, though, because he opted for neither the Tommy John nor the repair. And things have not gone great for him lately. So I don't know if it's just delaying the inevitable there, but I'm a fan. But I just want him to be good. Yeah, I think we're all fans. Yeah.

I just, to be good. I think we're all fans. Yeah. Speaking of the Guardians crushing balls, did you see the foul bomb that Josh Naylor hit that was snagged by a fan at Camden Yards? No. Which was, okay, I'm going to send you the link and link to it on the show page for everyone to see.

I think this might be the most impressive fan catch I've ever seen. And that's a whole genre of highlight, the fan highlight catch. Yes. You know, they're the ones where someone caught the ball and didn't spill their beer, right? Or they caught the ball in their beer. Or they caught the ball and didn't drop their baby. Or, you know, like there's a lot of variations of this.

There was no beer or baby involved in this catch. Josh Naylor whacks one down the line and way foul. And caught by the one guy up there who's got a drink and a phone in his hand. What? Got it in the hat? No, he just barehanded it. That's insane. Did he like grab it off the side of the building? No, he caught it on the fly. Wow.

Yeah, it's an amazing catch. This was like an upper deck, like way foul, but absolutely crushed. Like it was going to be out of the park. It might have been off of the warehouse if it had been allowed to fly that far. But this guy who was like alone, like he had no competition. He does have a baby. Wait, he has a baby? Not in his arms, but there's a stroller by him. There's a stroller behind him in the... Well, wisely, I guess he placed the baby down before this ball came, but maybe he was just taking the baby for a walk.

I think he might have just been taking the baby around for a little walk and was like... Boy, that's quite a walk unless he was already sitting in the upper deck. Because this is like as far as you can get. Like this is not quite the nosebleeds, but almost. Like he's way, way out there. Way, way out there. There's no one in that section. So, he didn't have to fight anyone else for this ball.

He had to fight physics, basically, because this ball was crushed. This was, like, hit 108.5 miles per hour or something like that. Oh, I bet his hand hurt so bad the next day. Now, by the time it got to him, I'm sure it wasn't traveling nearly that fast, but it still had some pace on it. And the degree of difficulty here, it was like a home run robbery, basically, except like a foul home run robbery, because this thing was either going to hit off the warehouse or if he had missed, like I fear for him, the warehouse or if he had missed, like I fear for him, if he had become unbalanced here, there's not that high a railing. And he was like reaching over his shoulder almost. It's hard to tell from the angle, but I mean, it looks like he's braced against the low fence, which is like knee height,

hip height, lower than hip height. And he could have taken a topple into Utah Street here pretty easily, but that's the degree of difficulty that we're talking about. And he reaches out nonchalantly, like it's pretty casual, you know, and he barehand grabs it one-handed, reaching out his utmost wingspan here and just corrals this ball. It's really kind of an incredible catch. I'm very impressed. I am so glad that you noted the peril that this man was in because I really don't like it when people are by the edge of the thing and they reach for the thing. People have fallen to their deaths people have fallen people have fallen and like obviously if you fall and i it is the worst for you and your family but it's also

something i'm very keen to not see myself you know like i think that would be oh my god and it's hard to tell this is part of why i wish we had a better angle on this, because it is a little hard to tell from the angle we are seeing exactly how far he is from the edge on the outer railing side. of optical illusion here. But here's what I will say. Sir, you have a baby with you. You can't be falling over stuff. Who's going to take care of that baby? Yeah, right. I mean, it's funny. I said there was no beer, no baby. There's definitely a baby. There might be a beer. He actually does have a beverage. I think he has like a sport drink or something. I don't think that's a beer. It's a plastic bottle. Yeah, I think that's like a soda or a sport drink or something like that.

Yeah, he has some sort of beverage and his phone in his other hand. In his other hand. And reached out with this hand and he milked the moment for a moment as well he should have. Yeah, I would have been telling, I'd be telling that story to strangers. I also appreciate that this is a man with confidence to go gray, you know. It's fine. You don't have to dye to go gray. You know, it's fine. You don't have to dye your grays. You look distinguished.

Yeah. I think we need like a fan pantheon, a fantheon. A fantheon. Of great catches. Because I remember seeing so many great fan highlight catches. But how do you find them? You know, if you want to look up, oh, that particular one where he did that or they did that, you can't find them. It's hard to search for.

There should be some kind of archive, like some place where all these are collected and ranked so that we determine the best fan play. And it doesn't have to be purely baseball. It could be any sport. Although baseball, I guess you get the most plays probably in the stands, which is a nice thing about baseball. Yeah, your opportunities are much higher than they are in other sports. This is up there with the highest degree of difficulties that I've ever seen of a fan catch and just wanted to applaud that. I love that.

I mean, I'm assuming this is his baby. Someone might have just put their stroller over there to get it out of the way, but I think he's over there. There's no one else in the area. With a baby. To be clear, I assume that if there is a baby in that stroller it is his baby i'm not alleging that this man stole the baby you know i wouldn't i'm not saying that i'm just saying i'm assuming there's a baby in the stroller and that might be a faulty assumption on my part um but yeah like this is quite good i will say fantheon sounds like a chemical that they would like have sprayed on neighborhoods in the 50s that like kids played with and played in.

And then we find out later that it does like terrible damage to human beings and also the environment. Raytheon. Yeah, it's too close to that maybe. Okay, I have one question for you and then one thing to tell you. The question is what's up with Julio? I don't know, man. It's weird, right? What's going on with Julio?

Because I know he's been a slow starter in the past, and that's not really a predictive thing. Neil Payne looked at that. It looked at other players who've been slow starters like Julio has been early in their career, and they didn't remain slow starters for the rest of their career. But we've seen that before with him, and it looked like he might be turning it on earlier this month. It was like, oh, weather's warming up. Julio's heating up. It's happening. No, not really. The month's almost over and he's got a below league average WRC plus on the month. So, I mean, he was ice cold in the first month, right? Like 79 WRC plus March, April, then 102 in May, 95 in June. So it was looking like, okay, below average, average, ticking up above average. But no, now he's back below average again.

And the Mariners need some offense. That is their weakness. And they really could use some from when assumed, presumed would be their best hitter. Like, this was a popular MVP pick. Might have been my MVP pick. I don't really recall, but quite possibly. And, like, he was on fire late last season after his slow start. Basically the entire second half.

Yeah, yeah. And then he like rebuilt himself over this offseason, which sort of surprised me because he had finished so strong. But like he did make mechanical changes in his setup and everything and his selectivity. And yeah, like he was good in spring training, I think. And it looked like that was paying off and panning out. And boy, he's getting out, and panning out. And boy, he's getting out, not panning out. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of hitters in the league, like all of his expected stats are sort of above his actual stats. So some of this is just like, I don't know, the broader offensive malaise perhaps, but it's not just that now, is it? It sure isn't justise, perhaps. But it's not just that.

Now is it? It sure isn't just that, Ben. His expected weighted on base is 334, which is a lot better than his actual 291 WOBA, but would not be spectacular by any means. It would be better, though. It sure would be better. I don't have one for you, Ben. i don't have a i don't i don't have one for you ben i don't

have a good explanation it's confounding you know it's not great i mean he's still playing good center field defense so that is really keeping him afloat but like even his like base running doesn't look as good i mean he's still stealing still stealing bases, but he's not on base as much. I don't have a good explanation for it. I do wonder if he overcorrected, but I don't have a good... I don't know, Ben. I don't know. Yeah, just got to figure it out.

Got to figure it out. I mean, not me personally, because I don't work for them. So they probably themselves want to figure it out, because I don't know. Yeah. If I look at baseball savant minimum 100 plate appearances, and I sort by Woba minus ex-Woba, so players who have ostensibly overperformed based on their quality of contact alone, Stephen Kwan at the very top of that list, 72 points difference between Woba and ex-Woba. And of the 357 qualified hitters on this list, Julio is 324th with a 43-point gap.

So that's good news. Like, you know, he's underperforming. But also, yeah, it's just not what you expected and hoped for from him. It's not what you were expecting, you know? It's really not. Like, he's still hitting the ball hard, but seemingly not optimally. Like, his sweet spot percentage, like, his rate of sweet spot contact is down. It's blue, Ben, you know, on those sliders. It's blue. Everything about the Mariners' current position feels really precarious. And I don't want to overreact to things because they are leading the division.

You know, they are leading the division. You know, they are currently in first place. And so it's not as if they have no margin to work with. And the rest of the AL West is sort of down relative to what it's been in recent years. And I know the Rangers just got Scherzer back. But, you know, things aren't going great for them. It sounds like Verlander is going to be out for maybe longer than was initially hoped for the Astros his neck is still bothering him he hasn't started throwing so a person who hasn't lived their lives in the shadow of this franchise would say they've got margin to work with you know they've wiggle room and that's like objectively true but also a person who has lived in the

shadow of this franchise their entire lives just now is now 38 years long, would say, sure should win the AL West this year if you can, guys. You know, like this sure seems like the year to seize it because it's being made an easier project for you than it has been even in the very recent past. So all of that to say, I hope he figures it out. Julio is not going to be the Mariners' all-star representative this year. They might have, among their pitching staff, might have a couple of dudes. But I don't think they'll be sending any hitters. Not even the big dumper,

who has mostly just been a good catcher and has hit some good home runs. In the most recent update, by the way, Kwon was fourth among AL outfielders in all-star voting after Judge Soto and Kyle Tucker. Yeah. That we nicknamed him multiple times. He's getting more support. So he's getting his votes. He's just behind some superstars there. You mean old Ichabod? Is that who you mean? Is that what we landed on?

Ichabod, okay, that's what I've landed on. I know that other people like Mother Tucker, but I still think that my objection that it would feel discomforting to see a tiny child yell, Mother Tucker is- Tuck Everblasting was another- Tuck Everblasting. Tuck Everblasting is good, but it's also a better sign nickname than it is a spoken nickname. You know, you can't... Tuck Everblasting! I guess that rolls off the tongue fine.

I'm saying it like a child would. Yeah. Well, I have faith in Julio. It's just... Look, he's 23 years old. He's going to be fine. He'll figure it out. I just...

I look forward to the season when he's just on a roll right from the start because it's going to be one of these years where he's been like a 5-6 win player the past couple of years. And because he broke in as like a 6-win player as a rookie at 21, you're like, oh, my gosh, sky's the limit. And then last year he had the slow start, but he came on strong. And you thought, okay, he can just pick up where he left off and he'll be incredible.

That didn't happen. But one of these years, that will happen. And he'll put it all together and he'll be great from start to finish. And it'll be like an eight or nine or something win season. He has that in him and that he's young enough that this has not really dampened my hopes that that will happen. I think the only thing that would really change my long-term outlook on Julio is if you told me that within like the next year or so, he like had to move off of center, which I don't think there's any need for that to be true. So as long as he continues to play a plus center field defense, I think that he gives himself a really strong floor.

But I think that when a guy has shown you what he is capable of, it's just hard not to have that be your baseline expectation, particularly when it's a guy who is like, you know, effervescent and like really fun and seems to be able to you know shoulder being sort of face of the franchise guy like i i want that for him and i want that for seattle and i want that for that mariners team and i think that you know if you get if you get a just white hot mvp caliber even if he doesn't win but mvp caliber season out of him in a year where they still have like really good quite young starting pitching like you know that if the way that Cleveland wins is to get all-star level production out of guys making the league minimum Seattle it's not that they can't make the postseason without him playing this way again they are literally winning their division right now but like this franchise just on average is gonna need him to be the guy because he's the guy you know he's he's their best homegrown position player i think just on a

true talent level since a rod so he needs to be the dude and i think i do worry a little bit that like he knows that and you know even really really talented guys who seem to enjoy doing the fan stuff and you know it can that's a lot of pressure you know this is part of why i hope that the um financial fortunes of that franchise change in a way that persuades ownership to spend because i think him having more and better help you know i was talking about this with someone it's like they're such a strange team for me right now because i do think that they're like part of the problem last year was that their bench was so bad that wasn't the only reason that they didn't end up going anywhere but like they didn't have big league quality complementary pieces and i think some of that is better this

year right like they're getting a good productive season from like dylan moore off the bench and like bliss has filled in really filled in really nicely for polanco while he was down and you know i'm still lukewarm on uh locklear because i listen to eric about prospects but you know, I'm still lukewarm on Locklear because I listen to Eric about prospects. But, you know, it feels like they have guys. They have some of those complimentary guys. And now it's like, okay, where are your stars? And one of them sits out in center field. He's just not hitting very well.

In closing, I have to tell you about a baseball movie. Okay. So, I did a Netflix monster movie double feature this past weekend. I watched Godzilla minus one, which I know you liked. And how did you like Godzilla minus one? It was really good. Yeah, man. That what a great, what a great flick. If you if you're listening and you haven't watched Godzilla minus one, even if that's not your genre go watch godzilla minus one and don't watch the dubbed what put the go fix your audio settings netflix is gonna give you the dub version as the default in the u.s but like go go put the subtitles on go listen to it in the original japanese it is so

oh what a great movie oh what a great time i had uh and i yes and we didn't know anything going in when when we saw it. And then like to be able to like just have like a really wonderful theater. Oh, Godzilla Minus One. Oh, what a treat. Oh, I'm so, had you not seen it? No, somehow I hadn't. Oh, Ben, I'm so happy for you.

Yes. However, be doubly happy because tough act to follow Godzilla Minus One. Then I watched Ultraman Rising, which is an animated movie also on Netflix, a new release. It's pretty popular. It's been in the global top 10 films on Netflix lately. And this is in the Ultraman franchise, which is almost as old as the Godzilla franchise, though it's not as well known in the West. It goes back to the 60s. It's a sci-fi franchise. Also, Kaiju. So, it's Ultraman. It's like almost Superman in Japan. It's that omnipresent. But it's basically like aliens just called the Ultras, you know, extraterrestrials

come to Earth and they're superpowered and they help protect Japan from kaiju, right? So that's the idea. Cool. But this is kind of a fresh start or reboot. It's appealing to American audiences who might not be that familiar with the whole history and lore of Ultraman going back to the mid-60s. You can start here not knowing anything about this character or franchise. I bring it up because it is a baseball movie and not just by our kind of jokey, effectively wild definition of baseball is mentioned or seen at all. It's like a real

baseball movie. I think it could qualify. It's very heavily baseball inflected. And I think you could argue that it certainly would not be the same movie without baseball in it. And essentially, it features this character named Ken Sato, who is a professional baseball player. He's a star. He was born in Japan, but then he went to the US and he's been playing in MLB for a decade. And he says he is the greatest living player. So we were all just talking about who's the greatest living player now post Willie Mays. Well, apparently it's Ken Sato and he has the stats to back it up, but he moves back to Japan. His dad was the previous Ultraman. He's no longer able to be Ultraman. So now Ken has to come back and take up the mantle of Ultraman. And he's transferred to an MPB team now as he is becoming

Ultraman. And it really hit the sweet spot for me, not just because I like baseball and kaiju movies are fun, but also because the conceit is here. He adopts a baby kaiju. Essentially, he has to rescue a baby kaiju and become the dad to this tiny, cute kaiju. I mean, 20 foot tall kaiju, but tiny by kaiju standards. cute kaiju. I mean, 20 foot tall kaiju, but tiny by kaiju standards. And so as a father of a young daughter who's trying to figure out how to handle all my responsibilities and everything, it really, it resonated for me because he's like, you know, in over his head and swamped and the kaiju is cute and he manages to make it work in the long run. Right. So that's the basic setup for this movie.

And the baseball is good. Like you see a lot of action. You see an opening press conference where he brags about being the greatest living player. He's kind of egotistical and arrogant at the start, but like he can back it up because he is really good. Now, please join me in welcoming him back to Japan. The newest member of our Giants family, Ken Sato. Thanks for waiting, folks. All right.

Who's first? I do it for the fans, you know? It's all about fundamentals. No, no, no, no. What I said was I am the greatest living player. Well, Tani can say whatever he likes. And you see a lot of game action of him playing in Japan. And like you see a highlight where he mid plate appearance, he switches sides.

He's a left handed hitter, but he switches over to the right side because he hurt his shoulder fighting Kaiju as Ultraman. And so he switches to the other side of the plate and he hits a home run, which, you know, that's not against the rules. You can do that. I have no objection to that. Anthony Rendon homered lefty as a right-handed hitter. So why not Ken Sato going deep from the right side? Totally okay with that. My one nitpick is that when you see his career stats in MLB, when he's playing his first MPB game, you see his career home runs, his first NPB game, you see his career home runs, batting average, and RBI. Okay. Now he is a career 420 hitter. Okay. Which, which is, look, it's improbable, but that's not my objection. Okay. Because, uh, Hey, he's the greatest living player. Like he's the best player of all time.

He's Ultraman. Fine. I accept that he is so great that he has a 420 batting average. He has 434 home runs. Okay, fine. He has 989 RBI. Now, when I saw that, I thought 434 homers and he has only 989 RBI with a 420 batting average? Yeah. How is that possible? Again, my objection is not that he has such a high average.

Fine. I'll go with that. He has too few RBI. Exact. Too few RBI. I can suspend my disbelief about the high average, but you have to make it internally consistent here. Consistent. Yes. Yeah. If he has that high an average and that many homers, then you got to give him an inflated RBI count too. Right. So this is like something you see for a second in a corner of the screen. I had to pause and like go up to look at the stats. It's not like they make a big deal out of it.

I may have been the only people of the million. So you were like, I'm going to choose to be annoyed today and I'm going to do some work in furtherance of that goal. Yeah. And I decided to do some incredibly inconsequential reporting about this. And I inquired, I tried to find out why 989 RBI, because it just, it doesn't really make sense. Because I did like a mini stat last year.

I looked at the 400 home run club. So there are 58 players who have hit at least 400 homers in MLB. Sure. The average ratio of RBI to homers among them is 3.19. Okay. And the ratio for Ken Sato here is a mere 2.28. It is just, it's not high enough. That might not sound like a big difference,

but it is because the lowest RBI to home run ratio for any member of the 400 homer club is Mark McGuire at 2.43. So he has 583 homers and only 14, 14 RBI. And then it's, it's low batting average guys who have the lowest ratio. So it's McGuire, Adam Dunn, John Carlos Stanton. They all have ratios of like 2.5-ish. But even that is higher than Canzado, and he's the ultimate high average hitter. Like if you divide the 58-member 400 homer club in two, so you have the 29 with the highest batting averages and the 29 with the lowest batting averages. In the high batting average half, the average RBI to homer ratio is 3.32.

And among the low average hitters, it's 3.04. So you can see a significant difference there. If you're getting lots of non-homer hits, then you're also driving in runs that way. And you're going to up your RBI count. Stan Musial had the highest ratio, 4.1 RBI per homer, and he had a career 331 batting average. So it doesn't make sense that he would have this1 RBI per homer, and he had a career 331 batting average. So it doesn't make sense that he would have this few RBI. So I followed the director, Shannon Tindall, on Twitter, and he followed me back. Big mistake. Because then I could send him a DM.

Oh my gosh. And he's an accomplished director. Like the people who made this movie have quite a pedigree of previous animated movies and shows. They know what they're doing here. So, I messaged Shannon Tindall, and I was complimentary, and I said, you know, I really like the movie, and it appealed to me as a baseball fan and a father and a fan of this kind of thing, and I'm going to recommend it. You know, I made it clear. I didn't come out – I didn't come in hot here with my RBI complaint. I buttered him up a bit first, you know, sincerely

because I genuinely liked the movie. But 989 RBI, for comparison's sake, Dave Kingman, career 236 hitter, 442 homers. Even he had 1210 RBI. So come on, how are we getting 989 RBI here? So Shannon Tindall says, so happy you enjoyed the film i'm from kentucky so i'm more into college basketball but our editor brett marnell and our head of animation are absolute baseball geeks so i relied on them for the stats brett went over everything with a fine tooth comb so he's kind of passing the buck to Brent for his editor, I gotta say.

All I said was, Shannon says, I want him to be like Jordan before he learned he needed the team to win big. Big personal stats, but not the wins he'd see later in his career when he learned that playing the game for the team was more important than just playing for himself. And that was my headcan canon actually coming into this. That was how I had kind of retconned this for myself to make it make sense. You know, not just the, well, they probably just didn't pay any attention to this, but the in-universe explanation for how mathematically it would probably be tough to have a 420 average in that many homers in that few RBI,

but I guess you could do it like if you were totally unclutch and you were just, you know, great, the greatest of all time with no one on. But then you were terrible with with runners on base. And because Ken at the start of the movie is so out for himself and, you know, they even mentioned that he hasn't won a championship, even though he's such an accomplished player. So that said to me, OK, maybe he's incredibly unclutch. Like he's the ultimate stat patter, you know, and he doesn't care about driving in anyone else. And he comes up empty when there are runners on, but he's great when the bases are empty. And that's how I kind of made it made sense to me. But the director, Shane Tindall says, you know, this wasn't really my department. It was Brett Marnell. So I emailed Brett Marnell, the editor of Ultraman Rising. So I emailed Brett Marnell, the editor of Ultraman Rising, and I shared this question with him.

And Brett Marnell, he sent me a 600-plus word response. So he took this in the spirit in which it was intended. He recognized a fellow baseball pedantic and stat head, and we connected. And he said, Ben, this is awesome, and I love it. And he said, when it comes to the baseball of Ultraman Rising, I did have a lot to do with what's in the movie. I'm a lifelong baseball fan, and I wanted to make sure we got things right, or at least as close to it as possible when up against other filmmaking considerations. And we understand that sometimes those things get in the way of Ultraman ultra-realism. Of course, Brett said, making a movie is a very collaborative effort

and not all of my suggestions were adopted. I mean, after all, it's not a baseball movie. I would argue that maybe it is, but not solely a baseball movie. And sometimes my focus on those details needed to bend a bit, understandable. So he says, the first thing I did was to ask Shannon approximately how old Ken was

when we first see him as an adult in Tokyo. Then I backed that up to see how many years he could have realistically played in the MLB. MLB, before moving to Japan, I figured he skipped college and maybe played only one year in the minors, debuting with the Dodgers at the age of 19. With that in mind, there were some stats that were written in the original script, but they didn't make a whole lot of statistical sense to me. So I tried to make things fit with Ken's ego-driven character and the team history over a 10-year career. I felt the original batting average was too high, and we bumped that down a bit. So apparently he had an even higher average than 420 initially.

Wow. But I think my suggestion was to push it down more around the 405 mark. I liked him averaging over 40 homers a year, and I originally suggested something around 1200 RBI to go along with that. But I think for graphics purposes, they wanted to keep the RBI total at three digits. So 989 was chosen. Okay. Yeah. So this makes me feel so much better. Like someone was thinking of this. Originally there was a more realistic, you know, maybe arguably still a little too low, but much more realistic RBI total. And then they decided 989 looks better, I guess, you know, maybe four digits would have been too big or it would have looked worse

or something. But there was a thought process here. And Brett continued, when I looked at the high stolen base stats, which Shannon had always written into the dialogue, it made me think that maybe for Ken's first five or six years playing, he might have been batting at the top of the order, hitting solo shots, or getting on base and stealing a bag or two. So that was how I justified only averaging 98 RBI with the high home run total. He goes on to say there was a lot of other fun baseball stuff, like when Ken switches over to batting right-handed before he hit his home run. First, I wanted to see if that was in fact legal. Then I had to inform the production of the problem that this movie was going to create

with Ken's one-ear flap helmet. Was he going to run back to the dugout to switch helmets? Then I remembered seeing Jed Lowry of the A's sporting's one-ear flap helmet. Was he going to run back to the dugout to switch helmets? Then I remembered seeing Jed Lowry of the A's sporting a two-ear flap helmet, and I sent a couple of pictures of him and his helmet to Shannon and the production team, and they modeled a new helmet for Ken. Okay, impressive. Yeah, attention to detail there. I also added the announcer line that I've never seen this before in the middle of an at-bat

as Ken stepped across the plate just to help explain the uniqueness of this move. Then the next thing I saw in dailies was that every batter and base runner was now wearing the two-flap helmet. And I had to say, no, no, that's just for Ken. Another funny thing was they had the base runners playing by little league rules with no lead-offs and the position players needed to move around in the field so that it looked like they knew they understood the game they were playing. And then he concludes, Shannon was an amazing collaborator and really accepted the input to make sure that the baseball action, on-screen game info, announcer dialogue, and stats all seemed legit. I think in the end, we were pretty successful in doing that. I'm glad it worked for you, and I hope my explanation of how we arrived at his stat totals helps.

So there's a backstory here. There was originally a higher RBI total. They had to bump it down for aesthetic graphic related reasons. And, you know, I'm okay with that. As long as it was not thoughtless, then I'm fine with it. Because so often we wonder, like, was anyone paying attention?

Was there anyone involved in the production who knew anything about baseball? Right. And we're like, hire us, like we was anyone paying attention? Was there anyone involved in the production who knew anything about baseball? Right. And were like, hire us. Like, we'll be your baseball consultants. Well, in this case, no, there was at least one, maybe multiple baseball real fans and stat heads who were paying attention to these little details. So it was not something that just slipped through the cracks.

You know, they made it less realistic for a reason. Right. And that I support. This had intentionality to it. Do people know he's a superhero? No. So he's like, this is like a secret identity kind of situation? Okay, so it really is a lot like Superman in that respect.

It takes a toll on his play because he's raising a newborn kaiju and he's fighting other kaiju and he's trying to play baseball and he's got dad issues and he's exhausted and he's not getting any sleep and it hurts his on-field performance. But then he becomes a team player, not to spoil too much, and it's kind of a heartwarming arc for him. But this is great. Sure. It's kind of a heartwarming arc for him. But this is great. And again, it's about the internal consistency of it for me. Because so often, like, people will critique something in, you know, Game of Thrones or Star Wars, and then someone will inevitably be like, oh, the disbelief. This is a world with the force. This is a world with dragons. There's magic, okay? It's different from ours. But having established those rules that are different from ours, then you have to ask, okay, is this internally consistent? Do characters act in a way more or less, you know, characters can be inconsistent because people are inconsistent sometimes in real life. But is this kind of hanging together with the world building that you have previously done? And so I will accept a 420 batting average, but you got to give me the high RBI total to go along with it, or I'm going to raise an eyebrow. But I'm just, I'm so happy that I got to the bottom of this and that there was some substance there. Yeah, there's a good

reason. I mean, between this and the X-Files we have opinions about stuff i was hoping that you were going to tell me that under paris was actually a baseball movie that's my knowledge i started under paris and uh i was like well there's a lot of jump cuts in this and i was not in the right headspace for it so i watched madam webb and boy was that bad Wow Sometimes Ben what happens is You think that the latest Kong vs. Godzilla Movie is available to stream And so You take certain edible delights

With the intent of watching a silly thing And then you realize no no it's not It's only available to purchase And you're like I'm not spending 20 bucks on this And then you're in a certain headspace And so you're like oh I'll watch Under Paris bucks on this. And then you're in a certain headspace. And so you're like, oh, I'll watch Under Paris because you think it's going to be like The Meg. And then you're like, no,

this seems like it might legitimately be kind of scary. And so then you have to pivot to something that is going to let you sit in your silly spot. And that ends up being Madame Web. And even a little bit stoned, you're like, the dubbing in this is terrible. The ADR was just like out of control. So that was a weekend I had.

Yes, we had an article at The Ringer like, is this a movie that would be fun to watch high at least? Yes. No, not really. Well, see, I would argue that, I mean, like, no, what you really want to watch is the latest Godzilla vs. Kong movie where he has weapons and a spear maybe? I don't know.

I'm going to find out, but not for $20. I need to rent that. How is it not on Max already? I've learned the name of the service, so surely they should give me the movies I want. But anyway, I'm not saying it's great. I am saying in some ways it is less

comprehensible, that being madame webb um but it is also i think the only way that one could watch that movie and actually finish it so those are my thoughts i did by the way ask ultra man rising director shannon tindall why make it such a baseball movie if if you aren't such a big baseball fan is it just that well he has to go between us and japan And so it's the only sport that would have worked as well. And he responded, I love baseball, but I'm not an obsessive fan. In Kentucky, you're raised with a basketball in your hand. So that was my obsession. I never wanted Ken to be part of a science team like the Ultraman series. Too much to explain.

I needed him to have swagger and the kind of swagger that's accepted and even expected. If he'd just been a normal guy with a chip on his shoulder, I think it would have been more off-putting. So a pro athlete seemed like the ticket. And since baseball is big in both countries, it felt like the perfect fit. And I do think it was. And this will appeal to audiences in both countries.

And again, I do recommend it. And if you watch Ultraman Rising on Netflix, they do hope to make some sequels so your streaming hours could help. Then you will now be aware of the backstory behind the RBI. We're breaking some news here, an exclusive on Effectively Wild about Ken Sato's RBI total. Now you know. Now we know. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. And thanks to all of you

who wrote in in response to our conversation last time about Buck Showalter talking about butts. Just to say, Butt Showalter? Look, did I consider titling that episode Butt Showalter? Yes. But I showed some rare restraint. Not all of you did. And for that, I am grateful. Also, we did a stat blast last week about the longest stretches that a team has spent within a game of 500? That question was prompted by the Red Sox flirting with 500, really being in kind of a committed relationship with 500 for a span of this season. Listener Patreon supporter Josh wrote in to note that the Padres have also been at or around 500 quite often this year. They finished right around there last year, too.

They've already had 25 different 500 records this year, same number of wins and losses. And the record in a season for number of times at 500 is 35, the 1959 Cubs. So the Padres are ahead of that pace, though it's easy to fall off the pace for this. Once you get a few games above or below 500, you're not going to add to your tally for a while. Finally, some of you wrote in to draw our attention to the freaky fun Justin Turner play the other day when his helmet tumbled off as he was sliding into a base and blocked the tag. He was safe. This was the correct ruling. I can't recall seeing a play quite like this before. It seems like the sort of thing where there should be a rule against it, but it doesn't really happen

often enough for there to be a need for such a rule. I would refer you all to a recent edition of Pebble Hunting, Sam Miller's substack, in which he talked about players whose helmets fly off and considered whether there could be some strategic advantage to that. He was thinking maybe you throw down your helmet to deflect a ball so that a throw caroms away and never reaches its intended target, but this might be an even better example, though certainly an unintentional one. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get themselves access to

some perks. Mild Sagan, Hillary Kirby, Eleanor, Richard Ford, and S.H. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message

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You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page or the links in your podcast app for information on upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be

back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. through all of the stats and players in your head isn't it wild to repeat them to all of your indifferent family and friends they'll keep you company they'll keep you sane on a long bike ride or a slow work day Making bed waxing about a playoff race A bruised bat's hide It's effectively wild So stick around You'll be well beguiled