Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2187: It’s a Bold Strategy

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a genuine, no-foolin’ instance of “Strategy” (aka a mid-PA pitching change), Christian Walker’s affinity for Dodger Stadium, a Triple-A Waxahachie Swap, the Nationals optioning EW legend Joey Meneses, the Marlins DFA’ing Tim Anderson, and the latest Royce Lewis injury, plus follow-ups about bullpen-cart-driver tipping and fan catches. Then […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats, with Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs. Effectively now. Effectively87 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg Rowley of Fancrafts. Hello, Meg. Hello. Now, I know I started the last episode by saying alert the media, so I don't want to be the boy who cried big baseball news every time. That one was about Jose Ruiz challenging Ryan Webb's record for career games finish without a save. What could be bigger than that? I know you're all wondering. Strategy. Strategy.

Actual strategy took place. We got a mid-plate appearance pitching change, legitimate, strategic, tactical, mid-plate appearance pitching change. Everything I've been talking about, writing about, why doesn't this happen? When will it happen? Would it be good or bad if it happened? Would it work? Now we know, at least in a sample size of one in the major leagues. I'm so excited that this happened. I think I got four or five notifications from Eagle Eye listeners and viewers of that game. I'm surprised it wasn't more, frankly, but it was the night before July 4th. It was a holiday. I'll give people, just cut them some slack, I guess. But I was notified immediately by many listeners who said,

you got to watch the Dodgers Diamondbacks game. Tune in because it's all happening. Alert, alert. It's actually going down. I am just so, so excited. So here was the situation. The Dodgers were down eight to four to the Diamondbacks. It was the seventh inning and there were a couple runners on. And so this was kind of like, you know, we got to hold them here. It was at Dodger Stadium. Dodgers were at home. If any more runs scored, this game is kind of over. It's going to get out of hand with only a couple innings left. So we got to pull out all the stops to keep the score here. And Dave Roberts, to his undying credit, he did. He broke glass in case of emergency. Doesn't have to be emergency, but

no one ever does this. Dave Roberts did this. So Johan Ramirez was pitching for the Dodgers and Dave Roberts comes out and everyone's wondering what the heck is he coming out for? It's a 2-2 count. Corbin Carroll was batting for the Diamondbacks. 2-2 count. Now, there had been runners on first and second when this plate appearance started. Then there was a wild pitch.

So the runners moved up to second and third. And now all Carroll's got to do is just make contact. He'll score a run. If he taps a single, you're scoring two runs. You really have to bear down here. So the wild pitch up and the runners advanced. Then there was another foul ball. And it looked like Carroll was kind of timing Ramirez. And it looked like he kind of had his speed, kind of had his number. So Roberts walks out and I listened to all four broadcasts, English language broadcasts. I listened to the two TV broadcasts and the two radio broadcasts. And three of them were flummoxed, really. They were wondering, what is happening here? They just didn't understand.

They were wondering, what is happening here? They just didn't understand. Yeah, they thought maybe Ramirez was hurt. They thought maybe it was a case of Banda not being ready when the plate appearance started and now he was ready. So Roberts was bringing him in. None of them except the Dodgers TV broadcast sussed out what was happening here. So yeah, all credit to Joe Davis and Eric Karros on the call here. So let me play the prelude to the pitching change. Just the 20 second or so clip as this is happening. Dave Roberts coming out mid at bat here. I mean, I think he feels like the game is in the balance right now he's got two strikes and he's bringing the lefty maybe to face yeah that's what he's going to do bring in the lefty to face Carroll now we come back from the break and here is what happened yeah you got your mind made up of who you're facing you've seen a number of pitches and the crazy thing is now it's you got two strikes.

Yeah. And all Banda has to do is get one strike and. You're done. And he does. Wow. I mean that's some serious management right there and it

really is. And you you very rarely see that. I mean I don't know that the last time that I have seen it especially at the big league level. But I do I love this movie. It's second and third Carol's up at the plate.

Doc comes out makes a move mid at bat where you're one strike away. That is so unsettling as a hitter. And then knowing that. You know walke, get the matchup with Peterson. I mean, that's good. That's some good stuff.

That's some managing, boy. You figured it had to be he didn't like what he was seeing from Yolando. Well, so it's not so much that you don't. You think it was intentional. No, I think it's intentional. Well, once the runners got second to third, and then Carroll, all he has to do is make contact where the game is right now. I mean, that's the thing.

Managing is not just at the moment. You've got to be innings ahead. It worked. It worked. It worked. Spectacularly. And if you watch this, I will link to the pitch for everyone to see. 85-mile-per-hour slider, low and away.

Carroll just waved at a pitch. There was not a strike. Like he just looked like he didn't really see it. I mean, you had a righty in, Ramirez is a righty. And then you bring in a lefty, Banda here, with two strikes and Carroll just doesn't know what to do. And Eric Karros, he was a hitter. He knows just how discombobulating this would be

and immediately sensed like, wow, this is a brilliant move. And if there was any doubt about what was happening here, I did a little research. I was looking for any post-game comments. Did anyone even bother to ask the managers about what was happening here. You know, initially I thought, yeah, it could have been that maybe Banda just wasn't ready in time. Because Banda, he actually wasn't warming though until Carol came to the plate. Right. Because one of the radio broadcasts mentioned there was no one warming. And then just as Carol came up,

that is when Banda started to warm. Right. So it wasn't that they were trying to get him ready and he just wasn't ready in time. And then I thought, well, maybe once the wild pitch happens, you know, if it's one out and runners on first and second, maybe you're trying to get a ground ball and you're trying to get a double play. And maybe they thought, because that was, I think, the case with the initial strategy that I'm referencing that

Joe Girardi refused to exactly explain what was happening. Strategy. There was a case like that where the runners advanced and maybe now you're thinking, we need a strikeout now not a ground ball and i guess that kind of fits because johan ramirez a little bit more of a ground ball pitcher than banda but not really uh banda's not a big strikeout guy either and so that didn't really fit it just appeared to be actually what i've been writing about and talking about all this time that some college coaches do, but just you'd never or very rarely see in the majors, which is just, hey, you get an advantage. You got two strikes on the guy. Just bring in someone else, fresh look, blow him away. So I asked if Roberts commented on this after the game because I didn't see any public reports that he had spoken about it. But friend of the show, Fabian Ardaya, who covers the Dodgers

for The Athletic, he said, yeah, someone did ask him about it. And it was actually Jack Harris of the LA Times. And Fabian sent me the unpublished interview, the recording of Dave Roberts' postgame comments. And here's the relevant bit. Johan, was that just his pitch count was getting up? So, partly pitch count related. And I just said, you know, we're going to change it up and do something unconventional and try to keep him at four. So partly pitch count related. I mean, Ramirez had been in there for a while and maybe Roberts figured he was running out of gas a little bit. But it wasn't just that. He thought Carroll looked a little too comfortable against Ramirez and he just wanted to bring someone in for a fresh look. Ramirez had only gotten two outs, but he'd given up three hits and a couple of runs and a

walk. He didn't look sharp. No, he'd thrown 37 pitches. So that's part of it, yes. But Roberts made clear this was just a tactical decision. This was strategy. And then Tori Lavello, Diamondbacks manager, was asked about this after the game by Alex Wiener and Jesse Friedman who cover the Diamondbacks and here's what Lovello said. I've never seen it before.

Yeah, clearly they had a plan and they executed it and it worked out. You've never done that yourself? No. Not that I can remember. Has it ever even occurred to you to do that? No, it has not. But it might be the next wave of next cutting edge move that comes up in Major League Baseball now. When everybody's doing the opener seven years ago, it was like, what's going on in Tampa? Why are they doing that? So I don't know. I don't know if it worked out well.

So Tory Lovello confirmed non-effectively wild listener, I guess, because a non-Ben Lindbergh reader, because he's like, what? Never crossed my mind that someone could do this. So come on, Tory. This idea has been out there. But it's interesting that he even brought it up. When I mentioned this on the podcast recently, I was like, why hasn't this happened? You know, the Rays did the opener and that was unorthodox. And then that caught on pretty quickly. And this just hasn't happened. I've been writing about this, talking about this.

It's happened in college for years. You see coaches and managers come from the college ranks these days to affiliated ball, to the majors. How has this not crossed over? And Lavello was like, hey, maybe this is the new competitive advantage. Maybe this is the new market inefficiency. So, hey, I mean, I've been saying that for some time, Tori, and here it was, just a perfect demonstration of strategy in action. He's never going to answer this question, honestly. But of the individuals involved in this, do you think

he does this with a higher profile reliever? It's true. Maybe the fact that it's Johan Ramirez, you're not as worried about ruffling feathers with him. Yeah, that could be part of it. And he was struggling too. So even if it did ruffle feathers, I'm sure on some level, he was like, yeah, it's not my night. I'm not having a great time out here. So that might've been part of it. I don't want to yuck your yum, Ben. Like strategy. We saw it. We saw the strategy. It happened. Yeah. And the Dodgers were losing and it was not like super low leverage. Like they still had a shot, but. But they were down by four runs. Yeah. It wasn't like if this backfired, people would be like, oh, he blew it by doing the 2-2 pitching change. It was a good place to test the strategy.

Yes. Because if it goes well, you do, you know, kind of maintain an importantly surmountable gap in the score, right? And if it backfires, then like, you know, you were trying some stuff and you didn't have it anyway, you know. And so it seems like the optimal, there was good strategy behind the strategy. Yeah, there was. It felt like a good time to try this. Right. And also, Cattell Marte was up next, and he's a switch hitter. But historically, he hits better against lefties.

And so Roberts was bringing in a lefty here. He was really trying to just finish off Carroll. Finish him. Yeah, he had Banda ready for Marte and just figured, what the heck? It seemed like this was really targeted. It was off Carroll. It wasn't that he had Bonda ready for Marte and just figured, what the heck? It seemed like this was really targeted at just finishing off Carroll. Now, after he got Carroll, and in the box score, it looks like Bonda got the credit for the strikeout. Then they intentionally walked Marte. Jock Peterson was up next. And then predictably, the Diamondbacks pinch hit with Randall Gritchick. And then Gritchick grounded out. So Bonda got out of the inning unscathed. The Dodgers didn't come back.

In fact, they ended up losing 12-4. But that wasn't the strategy's fault. This is super exciting for me. Now, if they can just figure out how to get Christian Walker to stop hitting home runs at Dodger Stadium, they'll have had all the nuts cracked that they need. My goodness. I mean, look, I got Christian Walker pilled last year. That sounds gnarly in a way I don't mean. Like it's just, you know, you sit there and you watch this guy play first base enough and you're like, he's a good player. And he's in his walk year. And it's not like the Dodgers have a need at first base, but I remember the most sort of immediate parallel

that comes to mind is that when Kyle Seager was a Mariner, he would just go to town on the Rangers in Texas. He had their number, you know, and in a way that the rational part of my brain is able to say, you know, like, is it like a demonstrable difference in skill I mean probably not or at least a predictable one a meaningful one probably not a demonstrable one people who like the Rangers hated Kyle Seager or wanted him to be a Ranger you know there was like no in-between on those things and that's not the situation that Christian Walker will find himself in because you know famously the Dodgers have very good first baseman already, but boy, he sure loves hitting there. He sure loves hitting there. And I've,

you know, now I've hijacked the strategy conversation to talk about Christian Walker. They need a new strategy to combat Christian Walker at Dodger Stadium. They really need a new strategy. 19 homers in 42 career games there. So that's a 73 homer pace. That's a Barry Bonds season record pace over 162 games. That's kind of incredible that we're like, oh my gosh, have you seen what Chris? And it's just, yeah, Barry Bonds did that just over a season. He actually did that. Well, that's a good parry to my attempted derailment. You're like, now I'm going to talk about Barry Bonds. Now what are you going to do, Meg? Huh? any degree of excellence in a single ballpark by a visiting player that would make you even an iota more likely to try to acquire that player because obviously all this you know small sample and randomness and someone's gonna get inordinately lucky or successful in a certain ballpark but

now for christian walker he might be more receptive to the dodgers if they were to pitch him on coming there because he's got to be comfortable he's got good memories there even if he doesn't think yeah I'll be incredible here he still thinks like I'm comfortable I like hitting there you know I like the batter's eye or whatever it is right but for the Dodgers now maybe you could do some math and say like well does his swing profile does it happen to fit Dodger Stadium really well? And so like maybe there's something meaningful here. Not that it would turn him into a 73 homer hitter, but like, would you even bump up the neutral projection for Christian Walker at all based on this? Or would you say, yeah, you know, why not?

Or would that be a trap? I think it would generally be a trap. a trap like you said there can be more rigorous meaningful aspects of a player's profile that would play well in some ballparks more than others like you could lard it up with some realness if you were so inclined but i think that generally it's like a is the player a good player and does he play well that's gonna end up meaning more now i do think and this is an increasingly sort of dying, I don't mean in a literal way, although sometimes in a literal way, breed of owner, I do think that there have been times

where you could have a guy who just really crushes you, and if he were well-represented, could parlay that into big money with the team just because an owner might be like i want to get that guy's i don't have to deal with him anymore i don't know i feel like i'm doing a lot of voices well i don't know man i'm just i'm very excited i can't believe this happened strategy legitimate case don't even really have to caveat it that much this was just inaction proof of concept it worked now as Now, as I've acknowledged, if this

were to catch on, it would quickly become quite annoying. So annoying. The worst. Yeah. And so I'm advocating for it on a limited basis. And then if MLB wants to come in and say this isn't allowed anymore, at least for non-injury related reasons, then there could be gamesmanship, who knows. But yeah, I don't want more pitching changes. I don't want more delays. I don't want more strikeouts. So the end result of this is not good. And yet I'm tickled by the creativity of it, by the fact that Tori Lavella, the experienced major league manager, is like, what? This broke my brain. I didn't know you could do this. So until the novelty wears off, right? Or until it actually catches on to the degree that you need to legislate against it. If it's just every now and then.

For now. It's clever. It's kind of fun. So it happened. I think that that's the exact right level. I don't think it's likely to catch on for all the reasons that we've already discussed. And so we can just appreciate the rare instances where we see it deployed in the wild and he was so roberts was so stony faced you know yeah there was no yeah he wasn't like hey look at me i'm brilliant strategy it would be really funny if he had had like a sign that was like strategy strategy yeah i can't believe he didn't do that you know what's that about to know the origin story was this something the front office recommended?

Is Dave Roberts listening to Effectively Wild? Did he come up with this on his own? Maybe more details will come out if this becomes a trailblazing, pioneering move. Speaking of rare occurrences that I thought we might never see, we got a Waxahachie swap in AAA. Now, in AAA, that tempers my enthusiasm slightly. But the Waxahachie swap, which is named after the wizard of Waxahachie, the former manager, Paul Richards, who became known for the tactic of moving a pitcher to another position and then moving the pitcher back to the mound. Right. And so you'd get the pitcher playing left field or something for a batter or two. And then usually for a platoon advantage.

Right. And so you might bring a lefty in to face a lefty or something. And then you have the righty still out there and you bring the righty back so that you don't have him out of the game. And that was fun because then you might end up with a pitcher having to make a play in the field. And sometimes this would happen in extra innings, like in extremists, you're running out of pitchers, you want to conserve. So this was all but outlawed by the

three batter minimum rule. It just made it much harder to do. And I thought we would never see it again. And we haven't seen it in the majors. However, it happened. I wrote a whole obituary for this. I basically buried it and shoveled in dirt over the casket back in 2020. And yet it just happened in a game, St. Paul Saints, AAA affiliate of the Twins. They were playing the Gwinnett Stripers and they had a Waxahachie swap. And I am just so tickled by this too. So what happened is I'll just read from the twinsdaily.com recap. So Louis Varland was in, former major leaguer. He's been up in the big leagues this year.

Varland continued to struggle as the inning went on. Saints manager Toby Gardenhire went to the mound. Gardenhire, I didn't know Toby Gardenhire, twins manager, AAA twins manager, to make a unique defensive substitution. After a brief discussion with the umpires, Gardenhier signaled for left fielder Chris Williams, who would come on to pitch while Louis made the run to the outfield.

Varland had 42 pitches through two-thirds of an inning, which that's a lot of pitches, and he hadn't even gotten scored on all that much, but he was racking up high pitch counts. So after last night, the Saints' bullpen was tired and the team could not afford a short outing from their starter. So Williams got the Saints out of the inning when Luis Liberato flew out to right field. In the second, the Saints wanted to reverse the substitution and bring Varlin back into pitch. However, the umpire crew insisted that Williams

face a minimum of three batters, even though he got out of the first inning. Gardenhier would argue, but that would do no good. The umpire crew made the decision and Williams was forced to face two more hitters. And I think that's the right decision. I think that's why this is so hard, because the three batter minimum, if you end the inning, then that fulfills your obligation. Right. player pitcher face two hitters. So he walked Sandy Leone and Sky Bolt singled, and that was that. And then he'd faced his three batters. And so he went back to left field. Louis Varland went back on the mound. And right away, there was a three-run homer. And so it didn't really pay off that much. So it cost the Saints the DH spot. So pitchers then had to hit. So this was a throwback

game in any number of ways. And then the Saints didn't actually end So pitchers then had to hit. So this was a throwback game in any number of ways. And then the Saints didn't actually end up getting much more out of Arlen because he worked two and two thirds innings total and allowed two runs on four hits and threw 73 pitches and left down four nothing. Although two runs were charged to poor Chris Williams who had to pitch. But I can't say this unlike the implementation of strategy, which passed with flying colors. Here, this was more of a like, we just need innings here and it's triple A, so whatever. We have an empty bullpen. But it happened. I didn't think it was going to happen again. And it happened. That's very exciting, Ben. What a week for you. I know. Except,

except. Yeah. How could I be any happier? We got a Waxagi swap. We got strategy. But then the Nationals rained on my parade because they optioned my pal Joey Manessis, which I anticipated when we were talking about the James Wood call-up news that might spell the end of Joey Manessis' major leaguer. And also the fact that Joey Manessis was not hitting like a major leaguer, that was the bigger factor. Like really even a little bit, you know, unfortunately. Not at all. I can't complain about this on a performance basis, but I'm sad. Joey Manessis optioned. And look, we'll always have 2022, you know, it's in a sense. It's because it was so improbable that it was so special. What got me so into Joey Manessis is that he had this incredible improbable run in the second half of 2022 or after the trade deadline. comes out of nowhere, or AAA to be more precise, but non-prospect 30-year-old comes up and out hits Juan Soto for the duration of that season. Not like for a week or two, like for the rest of that season, Joey Maness has hit better than Juan Soto. And that remains true. He did that. You cannot take that away from him. And if anything, the fact that he was a replacement level player last year and a sub-replacement level player this year just kind of confirms how incredible and extraordinary that was.

Because it wasn't that he was actually incredible, right? I mean, who knows? Maybe that season, yeah, he probably got a little lucky. He hit the ball hard. It wasn't like a complete fluke, but it was out of character and unsustainable. And so his subsequent performance doesn't make you re-evaluate that end of things. If he had just been as good as Juan Soto from that day forward, well, that would have been amazing too. But I knew that the days of this happening were numbered,

and I was trying to savor it while it was happening. Every day that Joey Manessis remained ahead of Juan Soto, which lasted against all my expectations to the end of that season, was a gift to me personally. Not that I was rooting against Juan Soto. I like Juan Soto too. It was just like, what an incredible, improbable, unexpected, unanticipatable event. And yeah, what has happened since only makes it look more amazing in retrospect. Yeah. Like you said, Joey will also always have that. And I imagine that that means a great deal to him. And I'm sure that Nats fans sort of thank him for his service, but are pretty happy to be seeing James Wood instead. Are you done with your Joey Manessis thoughts?

Have you concluded? I guess the Nationals are done with Joey Manessis. I guess I'm done with him, too. For now. For now. Yeah. You know, sometimes those players who come out of nowhere, they're the ones you remember most fondly, especially if it's a rough season. Right.

You're losing and you just traded your franchise player. And then what do we have to look forward to? What do we have to watch for? Yes. Joey Manessis, right? So, you know, Joey Manessis could probably come back to Nationals old-timers games if they have them for the rest of his life. And he'll get a good hand from people remembering that season. Yeah. games if they have them for the rest of his life, and he'll get a good hand from people remembering that season.

Yeah, I mean, I think that people are inclined to appreciate those who alleviate their burden, who serve as their emotional support for Spaceman, for better or worse. I have a Nationals-related thought. I don't know if you saw this, but James Wood came up, and he was wearing number 50 during his debut and he has already switched numbers. He is now going to be number 29. And per Mark Zuckerman, who writes about the nationals for, for mass and sports.com. They are going to, they being the nationals are going to let fans take their number 50 Jersey to the team store and get a number 29 for free if they want, which I think is, you know, that's like a good bit of fan service.

You know, that's a nice thing to do. But here's what I would say. Would you do that? I was worried you were going to say he switched to Joey Manessis' number. No. I was like, wait for the body to be cool. Yeah, I did Google to make sure. Yes.

Thank goodness. Yeah. 45. No one will wear that. That'll be retired at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Thank goodness. Yeah. 45. No one will wear that. That'll be retired at some point. Yeah. Yeah.

Here's my question to you. Wouldn't you keep number 50? If it were me, you'd have to pry that thing out of my hands, you know, with like something sharp because you're a real head. You know, you're like a day one guy, a gal, person. I get wanting to like have it match. And I'm sure that if you had a number 50, there would be people who didn't know about the number swap thing. Who remembers jersey numbers? We've talked about this. That is not a factoid that sticks in either of our heads very well, but I would keep my number 50. I would keep it. That's like a cool- Yeah. It's like a collector's item. It's like an error card, a baseball card where something's

misprinted and then they fix it and the limited quantity makes it more valuable, right? Yeah. Could be like, I was there. Yeah. I got on the ground floor of James Wood. And granted, to say getting in on the ground floor of James Wood is admittedly kind of silly to say because he's one of the best prospects in baseball. He's not Joey Manessis. Right.

But I'd keep my 50 if it were me. Yeah. Other quick follow-ups. We had another Nationals bullpen cart use. It was Adam Adovino. Wow. Big week for the Nationals on Effectively Wild. Yeah, I know. And Meg, he did not tip. Yeah, he didn't tip. Wait, who took it? Adam Adovino. Oh, Adam.

Seems like a good guy, interesting guy, right? Maybe he didn't know. He might not. Yeah. Seems like a good guy, interesting guy, right? Maybe he didn't know. He might not have known. He might not have known. Yeah, it's true. He might not be an Effectively Wild listener either, and he might not have heard our bullpen cart interview or seen the viral video clip, and he might not know that this precedent was established for the tipping, and it might just not have crossed his mind.

We'll give him a pass on that, I guess, probably. Yeah. But we wondered, would any future players who took the bullpen cart feel obligated to tip? And I guess not. Wow. It's not really fair for that to inform my opinion of a person I've never met. But that doesn't mean it's not informing my opinion of a person I've never met. Maybe he didn't know. I bet he didn't know. I bet he didn't know. Probably not. I bet he didn't know. And also one other follow-up. We talked the other day about that incredible catch that the Orioles fan made on the foul ball.

Yeah. And I said there should be a site, there should be a ranking or something where we can look up the best fan catches. And I don't know how we didn't think of this, but listener Kenneth said, if someone did create a site archiving fans making great catches, it should be named Fangrabs. That's fantastic. That is 10 out of 10 donuts. Can we talk to Appleman? Can we make this happen?

Fangrabs. Yeah. Perfect. Did you see that that guy got to throw out a first pitch? Yes, he did. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, they brought him back and let him throw out a first pitch and everything.

Very exciting. Yep. Okay. And then also when we're talking about players' major league careers possibly coming to an end, I wrote down just a few topics that I wanted to touch on today. And as I was writing down this topic, I wrote Tim Anderson because I was conflating Tim Anderson and the end of his major league career possibly. So I unintentionally wrote Anderson. Tim Anderson, now not a Marlin anymore, not a major leaguer anymore. And man, it has been a swift fall for him. Again, like Manessis, you can't look at his stats and say, how dare they demote him? Because since the start of last season, minimum 500 plate appearances with the White Sox and the Marlins, 51 WRC plus. That is the worst among 258 hitters, except Martin Maldonado. There's always Martin Maldonado to make you feel better

about yourself as a hitter, I guess. But Tim Anderson, man, it's kind of like during his peak, there was a lot of talk about, is this sustainable and can he keep this up? And is it kind of fluky? is this sustainable and can he keep this up? And is it kind of fluky? Because he did it in this way where he didn't walk, right? And he hit for a fair amount of power at his peak, but it was very BABIP dependent. And he had a 399 BABIP and a 383 BABIP and a 372 BABIP. And often the reflex, even with hitters, where you can get more variation in BABIP than you can among pitchers, when you see stratospheric BABIPs like that, and you have a player whose offensive game is very batting average dependent, a lot of people would kind of discount that or say he's getting lucky or he can't keep it up or it's fluky or whatever. And maybe the fact that he had a pretty swift fall

and that at 31 here, he is on the outs. Who knows? Maybe he'll be back. Maybe Manessis will be back. We can hope. But he has really declined precipitously. And I guess you could look at that and say, oh, yeah, we were right. It was not sustainable. But I don't know if you can do that, right? Because I think he made that work for a solid three years at least, right? Or three plus years. And yeah, Babbitt takes a long time to sort of stabilize but i think during the years when he was good he was good yeah i think he was it's just that maybe he he didn't have a lot of margin for error right right and so you start hitting the ball less hard he his power kind of cratered and suddenly those balls aren't falling or whatever changes about your swing path or your spray distribution. And it just doesn't work anymore. You don't really have anything to fall back on because you're not selective. You're not drawing walks and you're not hitting for much power anymore. But I think we can still look back fondly at Tim Anderson when he was good and say,

yeah, he was legitimately good. And he was kind of an outlier in the way that he did it. And he was a deserving multi-time all-star and like a really good quality player. Yeah. He was a good defender for a while. And then that started to kind of taper too. It wasn't enough defensive value to offset the decline in the bat. So yeah, there just wasn't really, there wasn wasn't a like a water carrying aspect to his profile anymore but yeah it did it really fell off wow it really fell off it's too bad but you know yeah he was just a really fun player in personality when he was going good so it'd be great if he could somehow find something yeah but another guy who is at least briefly off big league rosters, hopefully briefly, is Royce Lewis. Gone again, right?

Now, the consolation for Twins fans is that Brooks Lee was called up in his stead. Maybe the top two or three Twins prospect. One of the top prospects in the game. And that's a silver lining. But it is disappointing for Royce Lewis back on the IL. And that's a silver lining, but it is disappointing. Yeah. So he's back on the aisle. And his comments about this were sort of sad because he's been there so many times.

And he said, it's a groin injury this time. And he said, this is out of my control. So what I can control, I'm very happy about. But this is out of my control. I have no idea what. I'm probably not very optimistic, to be honest with you. I'm praying, but it's usually always horrible news. And he had a smile on his face when he said that.

Yes. And it was almost like a rueful smile, I guess, just like, here we go again. Right. But also probably masking some frustration, you know. Yeah. I don't think this is like a long-term thing. No, thankfully not. It sounds like it's going to be pretty normal. don't need to exceed the 10 days kind of thing.

And we have the ulcer break coming up, so. And he was hoping to avoid the IELTS, Dan, and maybe he even thought he should. I saw Dan Hayes, who covers the twins, said that he's been a little frustrated. He's thought that maybe the twins have been a little too cautious with him. Now, you can understand from their perspective, he keeps getting hurt. cautious with him. Now you can understand from their perspective, he keeps getting hurt, but he felt that they were very cautious with his rehab from the quad injury and that it cost him a few weeks. And so he didn't want to go on the IL again. I mean, he's so good when he's on the field. Why wouldn't you want to stay there? But that just tucked at the heartstrings a little

when like with a smile on his face, he said, it's just always horrible. Like it's usually horrible news. How could you not feel that way with him when you feel a twinge? It's like, you know, based on the past precedent, it's not going to have a happy outcome until you get back and then you'll be great again and hit a bunch of grand slams. Yeah, I think that the vibe of the comments is different when you can like see him making them, right? is different when you can like see him making them right like i think you're right that it was you know kind of knowing and rueful and like i'm sure that yeah if you're royce lewis and you feel kind of preemptively defeated by this stuff i think that's very understandable even though he did end up getting good news which was great but it does have a a mildly less devastating quality to it when you can see him up there with his you know human face and smile instead of being like oh my god do we need to like this poor guy and you know this

poor guy like he's been through a lot and he keeps bouncing back but even guys who seem to have you know we can have a conversation about the makeup thing or whatever, but, like, I think that his personality and personhood is, like, lauded in the game. And even for people who seem to have, like, a really good perspective on stuff and an optimistic nature. And I know he's a, like, pretty religious guy and he seems to draw comfort from that. Like, these reserves aren't limitless, right? Like, you can get down and so i hope that when he comes back he's like healthy and healthy for a long stretch and he doesn't have to like keep thinking about this stuff but yeah it's like of course it would be

kind of i don't want to therapize a person i've never met or invoke this kind of language but like kind of re-stimulating really because a lot of the time it is devastating and he then has to like get surgery and stuff which he doesn't to be clear is not the situation here but like you know it's more than just an il stint when you're the guy who has to like i gotta mount another rehab like you know it's exhausting and isolating. And so anyway, be well, sir. All right. Well, we're going to answer some listener emails. And to do that, we have help.

We are joined now by top tier Patreon supporter, Mike Trout tier Patreon supporter, Wayne Teeger. Hello, Wayne. Good afternoon. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for supporting us. And if you've heard any of our previous Patreon guest appearance pods, then you know, I'm about to ask you what could have possibly possessed you to support the podcast at this tier? And how did you find the podcast in the first place? Well, I love baseball content in general, just beyond just the teams I support. And I believe I found you guys on the internet somewhere. I'm not sure

if it was Twitter or Facebook or wherever. And honestly, I think independent journalism is really important and you guys do a wonderful job of that. And there's just lots of interesting content and you guys make me laugh. Oh, well, thank you so much. We do meet that description of providing baseball content on the internet that we definitely do and plenty of it. So what is your baseball background as a fan or just as a general interest baseball observer? Yeah. So I grew up a Mets fan on Long Island in the 80s. So I actually have gotten to see one World Series in my life in the 86 Mets. Yeah. Were you old enough to retain memories of that? I was. I was a young teenager. So the memories of Doc Gooden and that whole team are vivid,

which is amazing. You must be enjoying the Gooden and Strawberry number retirements this summer. Yeah. It's good to see the new owners treat Daryl and Doc really well. That makes me feel good. Yeah, so I grew up a Mets fan. I actually ended up going to Washington University in St. Louis, and I ended up with a job at the Cardinals in the summer while I was there. So I kind of became a Cardinals fan for a few years and ultimately ended up in Seattle about 12 years ago and have been a Mariners fan ever since. Nice. Oh, wow. Okay, cool.

So you're from my neck of the woods and then you moved to Meg's neck of the woods and you went to the school that my mom went to for law school. Just lots of connections here. Oh, totally. Destined to be an EW fan, for sure. Yeah, I guess so. By the way, I don't know if you've noticed, but Ryan Lutis has a 0.0 ERA, and he has pitched in Major League games. Yes, one of our Meet a Major Leaguer subjects. That's good to know. So do you retain fondness for the three teams that you have rooted for? So the Mariners are closest to my heart just because I go to lots of games.

And I've been here for 12 years. And I do follow the Mets from afar. And I do like to go to games with my dad when I'm back in New York. So it's really those two. And if my LinkedIn stalking is correct, you do a baseball-related job of some sort, right? I do. I do. I spent most of my career in tech at Yahoo and Netflix and Microsoft.

And then I left the tech world in 2016. And my partner and I started a company called StrikeZone Technologies, which we've created a device and software that tracks the ball crossing the plate. And it's been really an interesting experience doing a startup from scratch, while also pursuing a passion that we're both really into. And it's interesting is the word, because we started it around 18, 19, and then we raised money in 20 right before COVID. And so that made for an interesting couple of years. But we're going okay.

We have some pretty good customers, mostly umpire groups who use our technology, and we'll see where it goes. Oh, interesting. Are they using it for like training purposes or? Exactly. Well, you're the perfect person to have on here because I do have a few strike zone related emails and responses. We've talked about the strike zone and ABS recently. You can share your stance on those subjects as we get to some of these emails here. So I guess I'll just start with some feedback we got. We talked the other day about the K-Zone or strike zone plots.

And I mentioned at the time that we hadn't really gotten much pushback to our anti-K-Zone or wasn't it nice not to have the K-Zone during the Rickwood game? Most people seem to agree with that. But we did get at least one dissenting voice from listener Christian, who wrote in to say, I have a much different take than you two do on the utility of the technology. This might be relevant to what you do, Wayne. I think it's great. I think it gives viewers a better idea of what the strike zone actually is, which is good. The Rickwood game reminded me of how frustrating it was back in olden times. It was often impossible to really get a good sense of whether a pitcher was throwing strikes,

especially a pitcher throwing breaking stuff. The combination of the off-center camera angle, the fact that you're watching the ball move more or less directly away from you, and the fact that the catcher is catching the ball well behind the plate meant you never really had a good sense of where exactly the ball was crossing the plate. With K-Zone, you do. It's not perfect, obviously. It's not exact. It's a 2D representation of a three-dimensional space, but it sure is better than what existed before, which was nothing. Maybe it works best as something that's only used on replays. I seem to remember that from the early years of its use. And I'd be okay with

getting rid of it on live pitches, but I certainly don't think it's made the game worse, and I don't think its main purpose is to give fans a better opportunity to get mad at umpires. As you all said, we have plenty of opportunities to do that anyway. Just watch fans sitting down the first or third baselines react to an outside pitch that looks from their angle like a strike. If anything, K-Zone reduces that opportunity. There are plenty of pitches that a viewer might think are called incorrectly that when viewed with a K-Zone overlay are shown to be correctly called. Also, isn't the ability to measure and display the location of a pitch this granularly a net positive? We're going to have, hopefully, a challenge system or robo-umps in MLB in 2026 most likely, and I think it's really important that fans have the ability to

utilize the same technology that the actual umps are going to be using. I have lots of thoughts about how this is a sign of the increased thin-skinnedness of umpires, as well as about how I think replay in general has led to umps being less accurate with their initial calls. But I'll save that for another rant. For now, I'll stick with K-Zone as an improvement. One that could be improved even more, for sure, but an improvement nonetheless. Thoughts, Wayne? I don't mind it. I don't mind it at all. I like to see how the pitcher's doing and really on the edges over the course of the game, all the pitchers. And so I don't mind it at all. Keep it up there. Yeah. Does that persuade you at all, Nick? that's a piece of information that I have at my disposal and it gives me a sense of things and I am sympathetic to the idea particularly since not all center field cameras are like right down

main street in terms of their angle that if you're watching it without the k zone that you might have a slightly distorted sense of where the zone is actually relative to both the players and the plates so in that, maybe it does serve a function and we could get over ourselves and not cater to the most easily agitatable among us. But I am easily agitated, Ben. So sometimes I want to be catered to a little bit. Yeah. Well, we subsequently talked about ABS and our thoughts on the good arguments for ABS and the Thank you. to that. One from listener Patreon supporter Joseph, who says, listening to the discussion of full ABS on episode 2185, one of the portions of the argument that Joshian brings up that you didn't touch on is that the majority of misses are balls that are called strikes. The increased

offense would come from having more hitters counts versus pitchers counts. That is 1-0 versus 0-1, 2-1 versus 1-2. This utilized the current size of the zone, which would be a different discussion. So that is true. I, again, think that if you kept more or less the current dimensions and just implemented ABS, that it would help hitters, but not in a dramatic way, but it would help just because of the predictability of the zone. And also because, yes, I think probably more calls go against hitters because of the human-called zone than go in hitters' favor. So another email along those lines from Alex Vigderman, listener, Patreon supporter, Sports Info Solutions analyst. So we mentioned on that episode that, yes, you could shrink the zone without ABS.

on that episode that, yes, you could shrink the zone without ABS. That was one of our arguments, that that alone is not sufficient grounds for implementing ABS because we've expanded and contracted the strike zone many times over the years, and you could do that again. Did acknowledge that it would probably be easier to do that with ABS than to retrain umpires, but Alex points out, I'm in favor of the challenge system. One thing I do think to the contrary is that a fully automated strike zone provides a little more fidelity when it comes to changing the zone if desired. And I agree with your assertion that it might not work to just shrink the zone. First, when the strike zone is changed by MLB rules, there is assuredly a period in which umpires sometimes accidentally call pitches by the old rules for a bit. Because the

zone changes aren't likely to be large, I'm not sure how often these types of errors would be challenged, so you'd have some funkiness with humans that you wouldn't with an automated zone. Second, and maybe more important in my opinion, because it would persist for longer, is that the zone needs to have useful visual reference points for the umpire in order for strike zone changes to be consistently enforceable. If someone wanted to condense the zone a bit at the low end, and we've already moved the bottom edge up to the top of the kneecap, for example, how would you define the change you'd make, short of going all the way up to the bottom of the belt? A robozone can make these fine changes easily and consistently, while humans will struggle to retain consistency if there isn't

a set point to anchor to visually. At SIS, we've seen this in action when visually plotting a ball in play locations off broadcast video. The error bars around balls hit in no man's land, where you might see just grass depending on the zoom, are much wider than around those hit to the infield or on the periphery of the outfield, where there are visual cues to help. So that seems like a good point. If there isn't an obvious visual reference point, then a computer would probably be able to adjust better than a human ump. Because if you just told a human ump, yeah, just call the bottom

of the zone a couple inches higher than you currently do or something, right? But it's not like call it at this specific thing that you can kind of cross-reference, that might be tough. Wayne, when you are using your technology to train umpires, do you find that they're able to adjust to that quickly? So I'll say this. Standing behind the umpires when baseballs are coming in at 95 plus miles an hour, baseballs are coming in at 95 plus miles an hour, it's incredibly difficult to get the calls right every time within this margin of error. And so I actually have a lot of respect for the umpires having to do this. So I'm a big proponent of ABS. And regards to the question

of umpires adjusting, I think it's hard to adjust. I think to say, is it the bottom of the kneecap? Is it the top of the kneecap? Is it the midpoint of the belt and the chest? Or is it going to be two inches higher, lower? I think those things are hard to adjust. Yeah, I think this is a good point. And we got another email from Foster, who wrote in about a real world example we're getting. Obviously, there's been full ABS in the minor leagues at some levels and some seasons, but also the KBO, the major league of Korea, the highest level of baseball there, implemented full ABS this season. And Foster writes in to note how that's going. Your discussion of the impacts of full ABS in episode 2185 was the impetus behind my emailing for the first time after listening for years.

Caveating this with the understanding that it could simply be an issue of preferred aesthetics and there's no right or wrong. And you're all perfectly welcome to prefer the challenge system. what we've seen in full implementation of ABS and KBO play is that there aren't issues of many pitchers making miraculous pitches that tenderly kiss the zone so that they are unhittable and called strikes. Overall, league offense and scoring have gone up by meaningful but not absurd amounts. Last year, KBO batters averaged a 712 OPS. This year, it's fluctuated a bit, but right now it's 768. Every time I've checked, it's been at least 40 points higher than last year's number and usually sits around 50 points higher. So I just looked at that a day or two ago. And yeah, it was 50 plus points of OPS and about 0.7 runs per game. to full abs was the largest adjustment and it seems reasonable to assume has had some of the greatest impact on the offensive environment i think that in describing what sorts of pitches will be changed from the current umpire called world you all may have put more weight on the handful of balls that will barely touch the zone and be called strikes than those that wind up

being the majority of calls changed by framing an umpire discretion much more often a pitch that never went over the plate usually away from the the batter, gets called a strike, whether that is because a catcher receives it smoothly or the umpire just didn't see it or insert any reason here. Whatever the cause, we currently see many more rulebook balls called strikes than strikes called balls, so a stricter interpretation with full ABS will largely be beneficial to hitters. It's only if you set up the ABS zone to be wider than the plate that it would impact batters negatively, and I can only hope that isn't how it would be handled because I personally only want strikes called on pitches that at some point have some part of the ball go physically over home plate. So he notes, I just wanted to contextualize a bit how full ABS has played out in as large a sample

size as I know with publicly available stats. There may be the occasional frustration over a pitch barely kissing the strike zone, but it really seems that full ABS more regularly benefits hitters. So it is true that it's not a perfect experiment. There's some confounding factors here because they changed a bunch of rules this year. Yeah, they put a bunch of the rules that MLB implemented last year into effect in the KBO, except with the ABS system also. So they have the shift restriction that we got last year that just went into effect. And also the pickoff step off stuff and the throwing over and the bigger bases, you know, a lot of the stuff from last year, not the pitch clock, but pretty much everything else. So it's hard to isolate just the impact of ABS, but it's probably the biggest factor, I guess.

I looked at the shape of the offensive improvement. And what's interesting is that strikeouts and walks are both up. So last time I checked a day or two ago, the strikeout rate league-wide was actually up about a percentage point. And the walk rate was up like half a percentage point. The big increase and uptick in offense has been on batted balls. So there's been like a 15 point uptick in BABIP and also a full percentage point uptick in home run per contact, home runs divided by at bats minus

strikeouts. So balls in play are going for hits much more often and also going for home runs much more often. So I don't know whether there's something else going on there. I did ask Dan Kurtz and Jiho Yu, a couple of KBO experts and journalists, and they said that according to the league, the ball is the same, that the testing there hasn't shown anything. And that also it hasn't really been talked about much, what the factors are that is causing the uptick in offense. Apparently some good pitchers are hurt too. What else is new? And so it seems like the only complaints really though have been about the zone being inconsistent from ballpark to ballpark. So the league has come in and done testing to try to demonstrate to everyone's satisfaction that the calibration isn't way off from park to park,

but there has been just some adjustment to the new zone. So that's the other thing. There's going to be some period probably where there will be kind of an acclimation to this. And you can imagine maybe that would hurt pitchers more in the short term. So maybe there'd be a short-term offensive inflation and then it would come down. So I don't know that that's all attributable to ABS, but for what it's worth, they are doing it there and offense is up so far. So take that for what it's worth.

You're only really going to see this as a as a potential thing with challenge versus abs but i also wonder like what the real-time feedback of the challenge system will do for umpire accuracy like if you're an umpire who calls the unfavorable lefty strike or the radio equivalent right and you do that fairly often where a ball that is out away from the hitter is out of the zone is called a strike even though it's a ball and it's not a good pitch for the hitter to offer out or even try to protect against especially early in the count but it just gets called a strike and it's frustrating and we all go around we gnash our teeth if you call that a strike and it's actually a ball and the hitter challenges because he is right to think that's a ball not a strike

is there course correction over time like do we end up with a better zone that doesn't require as much challenge intervention because you have that real-time feedback and you're going to see it up on the big board and the fans are going to go, ha ha, he was right. Assuming it's a home hitter, not an away hitter. If the away hitter triumphs, then the crowd is going to boo and gnash their teeth. A lot of gnashing of teeth. I assume, Wayne, that the immediate feedback that you would get from this system or your technology, for instance, is helpful because it's one thing to get a readout after the game, let's say, or be able to look later. But if you're getting that instant feedback, that's been something with players training. If they're in a batting cage and they have some sort of

batted ball tracking tech set up so that they can see immediately, oh, here's the exit speed and the launch characteristics of that ball I just did. I should do that more. Or with pitchers, being able to get instant feedback from Rapsodo or slow motion cameras or high speed cameras, whatever it is, so that they could tweak from pitch to pitch if you're the umpire and you're getting that in your piece. Let's say after every call you make, that's got to be pretty helpful. No, you're absolutely right. In fact, in these umpire training sessions, the reason they like our technology is because the ball crosses the plate, they can make the call, and then two seconds later, it appears on a square on a big screen TV right next to them, and they can see right away, oh, were they positioned correctly to make the call, and was it on the outside or the inside? Was it too high or too low? And they do get the instant feedback. So I do think that's important. What level are you usually working with these umpires? Are these amateurs or lower pros or what? It's minor leagues and college. Okay. What's the difference? Is there a demonstrable difference among umps? Obviously,

I'm sure they get better the higher you go, just like players do. But is there a certain characteristic of better umps? What separates other than just general accuracy? Is there something that less skilled or experienced umps tend to miss that better or more experienced umps don't? Well, I think it's a function of time and practicing and in terms of the entire ump profession overall, right? Guys who spend years and years doing it, they get more comfortable with that outside pitch, whether or not they're using our technology, but we're able to speed up the feedback. So that helps them.

I think one of the interesting things is that a lot of the young MLB umpires who are coming up now have had experiences with ABS right versus let's say out of the hundred umpires who ump in the given year and then MLB maybe 80 of them are regulars and have been there a while or even if it's 70 and they haven't really had the experience with that technology so it's going to be very new to them, but slowly but surely the new umps and the younger umps are going to be comfortable with it when it arrives. Yeah, it must be just a function of seeing thousands and thousands of pitches, right? That

must be a big part of it. Now, if you're a hitter, we know that's pretty important too for developing plate discipline. You just need to get that feedback. The hitter and the pitcher and the catcher, et cetera, are getting that feedback from the umpire. And the umpire, I guess, is not getting it from anyone except for players complaining and fans yelling at them. Except for the majority of the people in the ballpark that are giving you feedback? Yeah. But that may or may not be helpful, unbiased, objective feedback. Yes, fair enough.

That's why you need Wayne or some other trading technology. I was thinking, because on our last episode, when we met major leaguer Jacob Basiokovic, and I was musing about whether it's more impressive to convert from pitching to position playing or the other way around because he was a position player and then he went to pitcher. I'm thinking now that it's probably more impressive to go from pitcher to position player because you miss out potentially on all of those pitches that you didn't see, right? You might have some background as a hitter, but it's like Michael Jordan trying to become a hitter at an advanced stage for a baseball prospect. He did well, all things considered,

and he certainly had the tools, but how do you make up for just not having all of those pitches seen? Or like Bo Jackson, right? Someone who just didn't have the typical developmental pathway, just all those many, many, many pitches to kind of make those neural pathways work. Yeah, it's a lot to backfill. Yeah. One more message that's relevant here from listener and Patreon supporter Jay, who wrote in about the offense to say, regarding helping hitters, it would help me in these conversations

if it were always clear, if we're trying to get more balls in play and reducing strikeouts without significantly increasing home runs, or if we're agnostic about the home run rate, because when I hear about smaller strike zones, I expect a lot more home runs to result, and that does not feel compelling. And the KBO zone that they're using, they have extended that zone just two centimeters off the plate, I believe, which is a little less than an inch. And whatever the reason, if home runs are up there and strikeouts and walks are also up, so it's like scoring has gone up, but also three true outcome rates have gone up, right? So is that what we want? It hasn't addressed the problem of we want fewer strikeouts. We want more balls in play. It's more strikeouts, more walks, more home runs. So it's more offense, more scoring, more action in that sense. But

it's not really taking the shape that it seems like most fans want and that MLB is trying to engineer. Didn't you say that BABIP is also up? Yes, BABIP is also up. So when balls are put in play, they are becoming hits more often. But there are still more strikeouts. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. See, I was like, I had a moment in the midst of all of these emails where I was like, maybe I was wrong, but I feel like I've come back around to confidence that actually I'm right. Because no, I think that if we embrace a version of the game where we get more three true outcome results, that people are going to, they're going to riot. You know, they might riot. They go from gnashing their teeth to rioting. Yeah. Well, one more question on this subject, and this should be right up Wayne's alley,

I would think. This is from listener and Patreon supporter Daniel Carroll, who says, as I listened to episode 21 at 85, I'm thinking about ABS and I have a position or two on ABS that I haven't really heard. I think using ABS fundamentally changes MLB-affiliated ball from all other versions of the sport. I play in a men's league, and there's no way we'd be able to add ABS at that level, and you wouldn't want it in most little league competitions. Framing would still be important at these levels, even if it wouldn't be important in affiliated ball. It might incidentally crush the college level game as a result. Why play pitcher or catcher in NCAA if the job is fundamentally different in affiliated ball? I always felt like challenges add a feature to the game. They don't change the game entirely.

Umpires are still trying to make the right calls after all. They also have the potential to show the skills of the players involved, which I think is a benefit. To put it in terms of other sports, adding the three-point line is pretty easy to do at all levels. Running a shot clock is a bit harder, but it may be worth it. Raising the hoop another foot would require all of the basketball courts in America to make a change to be playing the same game. ABS also affects the umpire pipeline. Umpires, I imagine, are selected for advancement due to their knowledge of rules and their ability to make correct calls. I'd hate to create an inefficiency where umpires are not rewarded properly for that skill. Or you wind up having the best ball strike umpires get advanced out of the league where their

skills are more critically important. If you're not selecting for this skill, I anticipate that umpiring at lower levels would suffer as well, since you wouldn't necessarily have to work at the skill in order to advance into the pro game. I get the instinct to get it right with ABS, but I don't think it's good for baseball as a sport. So what do you think about that, Wayne? Is this going to be prohibitive at lower levels? And if so, what impact does that have on the pipeline? Interesting. Well, I can tell you at lower levels, there's a lot of cheating going on with the umpires where they call... Hold on, Meg. Stop. I'm thrilled. I'm so excited.

Where there's this area called the slot, which is really one ball outside of the strike zone. And at the lower levels, it's hard enough for these kids to throw strikes as it is. So they are calling a lot of those pitches strikes anyway, otherwise these games would go on forever. So I think when you get into the higher levels, I think we may see some issues with the precision and how we see which umpires stay and which umpires go. But for the younger levels, just getting pitchers to throw strikes and keep the game moving

is more of a priority. Yeah. Yeah, this is something that came up when we've talked about moving the mound back. And people have said, well, gosh, you got to move mounds everywhere all over, not just the country, but the world. Obviously, at lower levels, you might have a shorter mound-to-plate distance as it is. But if you have the 60 feet, 6 inches, you're talking about hundreds, thousands of ballparks and fields all over the place where are you going to have to move that back now to conform to MLB or do you not? MLB, they need to move it back there, but you don't need to do that at lower levels. But then those players are going to have to adjust as they come up, if they eventually make the majors or at least the minors, you're going to want to probably have the conditions consistent. So that becomes an issue when it's any of these changes that it's actually like a change, a physical change to the field. If we're talking about moving the foul lines now,

I guess that's fairly easy. Maybe sometimes you just have to redraw the chalk, but something like that, or putting lines on the field for outfielder restrictions or anything else, right? If it's something that you actually have to move something or install something, then that's an added expense and an added hassle. So it's true.

You wouldn't need this everywhere though. I think you could just say like, yeah. You wouldn't need this everywhere, though. I think you could just say like, yeah, we don't need it at that level. But then do you even bother teaching kids? Yeah, here's the proper receiving technique that if you don't advance, you don't really need to know. But then the vast majority of kids who play baseball, they're not going to be big leaguers. I mean, they might hope to be, but they're probably going to max out at playing in elementary school, grammar school, high school, whatever, right? And just playing in a softball league on the weekends and then it might still be helpful. So maybe it wouldn't change that much. I don't know how much it would change. I mean, I think it's fine for there to be some

differentiation between amateur ranks, even high level amateur baseball and pro ball. But it's a pretty meaningful delta to introduce between affiliated ball and the amateur ranks. I don't know that it would change the incentives to become a catcher or become a pitcher. But I do think that you would end up with a pretty meaningful adjustment for guys but you have a pretty meaningful adjustment for guys anyway like it's just the leap you have to make even when you're a very high level good amateur player is like pretty substantial to begin with and I think that you're going to have sort of a reconsideration of the catcher position from a pipeline perspective regardless of whether it's challenge or abs because because we're just seeing, I think we've already seen this shift, right?

Where it's like the guys who were really unable to frame at all are getting pushed away to other positions already because we've already put value there. So I don't know, man, like it's a tricky thing. I don't want little leaguers worried about ABS. What are you talking about? Worry about catching the ball. Just worry about catching the baseball when you're a catcher at that level. Like just, and it is funny to watch. Like if you watch the little league world series and you see those little,

little guys trying to frame, that's the cutest, that's the cutest thing there's ever been. Yeah. They're like way outside. Yeah. That's the best thing there's ever been. Just the yanking way outside. That's the best. Yeah.

That was what Ryan Domet was like in the big leagues. Yeah. No one knew that was so bad at the time. All right. Well, we got plenty of emails on this subject, and I'm sure people will keep them coming, and we welcome them. And we've got years to keep mulling all of this over, right? All these other just ancillary

effects of will it impact the fan experience because you won't just be able to celebrate immediately when there's a strikeout pitch and you're running off the field and nope wait we gotta wait for the challenge you can never be sure that it's a strikeout or will there just be constant challenges and high leverage moments or it won't be distributed that way or there are just so many things to wrestle with so we will uh continue to wrestle with them can i offer one thought and then we we really can move on i do look forward to us sort of settling this question not only for like its implications for the big leagues but jerking guys back and forth between abs and non-ABS contests

at different levels over different days, people have muddled through. And I think the argument of, won't anyone think of the prospect riders is probably not a super compelling one for either fans of the game or Major League Baseball. But there is some kind of developmental effect that is going on here for guys, both catchers, some kind of developmental effect that is going on here for guys, both catchers, but primarily hitters and pitchers and having some consistency in that dev environment, deciding this is what we are satisfied with. And we can kind of move on from this constant yanking around, I think is preferable to our current situation. Like we've had a lot of muddling through and it will be nice to be able to be done with that muddling in a kind of concrete way. So let's sort it out and then

we don't have to keep having this, oh, I need to actually mentally adjust this guy's strikeout rate or walk rate or whatever, because he's moved between levels and he's dealing with a fundamentally different zone in one place versus the other or a meaningfully different zone maybe is a better way of saying it than a fundamentally different zone. So let's make a decision already and be done, please. Yes. And get the call right when you're making the call to implement this. Right. Yeah. I'm glad that they're taking their time to test this and work out all the kinks, both in terms of will this actually call all the pitches reliably? But I think more importantly, because this is probably a bigger issue, just what do we want the zone to look like? And in KBO, there have been some pitches missed, but a very small number.

I read it was like 20-something pitches, I think, on the season out of many, many, many, many, many thousands, right? Dozens of thousands. So that hasn't been a big issue, but the consistency of it and where is it going to be set? Like with the pitch clock, you'd think that wouldn't have taken that long to implement. It took several years of testing and, of course, decades and decades of that technology being viable and just not being used. But once they finally rolled it out in the majors, it just worked. It just worked right away. And yeah, you can make some small tweaks after that, like they did this season, lop another second or two off, which has achieved the intended effects. The game times have stayed low. So maybe you assess how the strike zone is going, challenges to MAPS, and then you can change. Be nice if you didn't have to change mid-season because that would screw up a lot of things, not only players but stats.

So, yeah, just make it consistent. And then if people are exploiting something, then you can mull further changes. Okay. A few emails here, not about strike zones, but about technology here. So this is a question from listener and Patreon supporter J-Mad, who says, I realize this is a very nerdy old man yells at cloud question to ask, but in all the baseball you've watched this season, has either of you seen the end of a pickoff play at first as it happens live?

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the directors have gotten slower with this. We see the pitcher make his move to first, and then the broadcast cuts to first base just a second or two after the tag is applied to the runner, and I feel like this is a relatively new problem. I watch most of my games on Masson as an O's fan, but I watch a fair amount of MLB TV as well, and I feel like it's a league-wide issue. I also feel like the centerfield camera shot is a split second delayed ever since the remote broadcast of the COVID era, so maybe that's a factor. Just wondering if you've noticed this also, I swear I'll throw a party when I see my first actual pickoff play live in its entirety this year. Has either of you noticed this?

I feel like the cuts are just longer across the board. I'm sure there's variation sort of broadcast to broadcast. Maybe I should go back and rewatch some Nationals games. Because you know who's getting picked off at first base a lot? C.J. Abrams. C.J. Abrams getting picked off. Yeah, he does. The Nationals make a lot of outs on the bases. Seemingly every other game.

And granted, have I watched a ton of Nationals games this year? I mean, well, more now that they've been kind of good and also have their top prospect up, but he gets picked off a lot. I feel like I've seen him get picked off multiple times in the same game, but I just think that the cuts are longer, you know, sometimes you notice it the most in, you know, wanting to see a guy who might actually be putting signs down, put signs down and then can't see it because they're cutting away. I don't know, man. It just seems like the cuts are long.

We've got some missing action. We're missing frames. It's hard to get run times. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. What's going on? I'll give you my conspiracy theory. Yeah.

I think because the producers know that there's cameras fixated, ready to go for the instant replay if it's really close, then they don't have to be perfect and live in real time. Could be, yeah. Or I wonder if just because pickoff attempts and successful pickoff attempts are less common, C.J. Abrams aside, just because you have restrictions on the number of pickoff throws, right? just because you have restrictions on the number of pickoff throws, right? So I assume the total number has gone down. I haven't checked that. You're certainly not getting many, many throws over in the same plate appearance where you're used to it and you're like, okay, he just threw over. He's going to throw over again.

So maybe people are rusty or unprepared or something. It's just not happening as often. Maybe. I don't know if other people have noticed this right in. Now, here's something that multiple listeners have written in about, and I've also seen other listeners independently note this in the Facebook group, in the Discord group, et cetera. So I'm going to read two emails about this.

This one comes from Brandon. Subject line, current state of ads in baseball. I find the current state of digital advertisements during baseball games this season to have reached a tipping point for me. Ballparks are already coded in ads, which for the most part blend into the stadium, but this year especially, whether it be green screen replacement, the massive patches on uniforms, or especially the computer-generated ads plastered on mounds and backstops that result in glitches and clipping of players, and sometimes they're

even on top of other ads? Is either of you as bugged by this? Is there anything fans can do? I really hate to say it, but I'd begrudgingly pay to get rid of this. There's going to be a Patreon feed for MLB Games. Just remove all the ads. Yeah. Or am I just slowly becoming my father as I groan and moan at the TV until I fall asleep? Now, another email we got about this, specifically about this green screen issue from listener Zachary, who says, I'm writing not with a question, but to complain about something that I haven't yet watched a game in Oakland this season, but I was dismayed at how awful it was to watch. They had green screen advertisements behind home plate, which frequently would cause hitters or even the pitcher to look like people on Zoom calls with fake backgrounds. Even worse, the ball became very difficult to see when it crossed the plate. This is awful. Baseball has to be good to watch on TV. I had a similar but less bad issue at another visiting park this year. I think it might have been the Astros, but I'm not sure. Please spread the complaints, a la the zombie runner. And then we got another email just a couple hours later, also from Zachary. Update, it's happening at the Royal Stadium too. Ah, the ball just flickers as it approaches home plate. How is everyone not talking about this? So I have seen some other people bringing this up in our various groups.

It's like you have your in ballpark ads and then they're paying for ballpark exposure, right? But some of them, I guess they're local advertisers. So MLB presumably wants to get some extra revenue. You're reaching, visiting people who knows, I mean, I guess those would be on the local broadcast too, but maybe you're reaching a national audience or MLB TV or whatever. Like you can double dip and get a digital advertiser and a physical advertiser. And so you sort of layer in, you know, it's like it's filmed on

the volume, like a Star Wars show or something. It's like layered over the actual ads that are there. And, yeah, sometimes you see these things superimposed or like blurred out from the mound. And sometimes, occasionally, it can get in the way of the action. I've seen this in other sports too. Like I think in hockey maybe when players are like along the boards, sometimes that sort of thing will happen too. So they got to get that fixed. Because a lot of times I won't notice, but if it is one of these examples where it does look like just bad CGI, that's not good. These are fairly new technologies that are using. And so

we have to have faith they're just going to get better at it. My sense of the in-between inning ad experience is that it's pretty consistent with prior years. I think that my level of annoyance has much more to do with the individual ads that are in like heavy rotation, which do seem to cycle through. And some of them are worse than others. And you get ones that are terrible. And you're like, I will claw my own ears off my head before I have to listen to this again. Or like, you know, some of the MLB interstitials can be better or worse than others. Like, I'm not the first person to remark upon this, but I feel like the plot has been lost on the baseball Zen ads. Not Zen enough anymore. No, some of them are so loud or like they're really annoying noises.

Like why are we doing the drone one? What's, why that drone sound is terrible. I've also been bothered by, there's a Google Cloud AI thing that constantly shows commercial breaks on MLB TV. It kind of cuts off the end of the inning and beginning of the inning commentary sometimes. And also it's for this Google Cloud AI and it just shows the leaderboard for hard hit percentage, which is not something you need AI for.

It's like I can just go to Baseball Sabata or Fangraphs and look at that. And it's always like weeks out of date. You know, I was just seeing it the other day and it's July and it was like through June 20th. Here are the hard hit. It's like if you're Google Cloud AI and you're trying to advertise, first of all, give me something I can't just look up on multiple sites on a standard leaderboard, but also give me the up to date stats. Give me to the moment or something if you want to advertise the potential power of this

technology. So maybe actually they are worse. You've talked me into them actually being worse than they were and also i'm gonna use this in a gendered way but like astrology girly is something that applies to all the genders really but like the horoscope ads look i feel like i and i'm not an astrology person it's not for me and if it's for you, that's great. We all have our fun, right? Like, if that's your fun, then keep rocking. But I, oh, God, the horoscopes. I just feel pandered to.

Like, I feel like they think it's for me and it's not. So I could do without those. That's just a personal preference thing. But the green screen thing, I think, is out of control. And I notice it a lot. It's worse on national broadcasts than it is on the local ones. Because I think on the local ones, you're just getting off the actual behind home ads, recycling. So it's less noticeable there.

But there are times where it's like, yeah, this is, I don't know, we've been doing green screen for a while. I know it's a lighting thing. Like if it's not lit right, then it's a more obvious break and on the national broadcast it can be there are times when like guys just whole arms will disappear because they have a sleeve on and so it is like eating their arm into the ad also can I like distract us for a moment have you guys been seeing these um they're they're the the jesus he's just like us ads have you been seeing the ones about how umps are our neighbors lately what is going on with those there's a lot about those that we could say sometimes they are

genuinely very funny like they're not great but sometimes they are genuinely very funny but that one i'm losing my i'm losing my mind at that one that one is something between innings ads are always annoying and we just have to put up with them everywhere except for effectively wild no ants here thanks to our patreon supporters like wayne but everywhere else it's a necessary evil and uh this is the way capitalism and commerce works and people need to get paid and we understand that and i don't know whether that is worse or it's just always been annoying and we just have an inclination to think that things are always getting worse even when they're usually not so the green screen though that that is worse because they didn't used to do that and now they do that and it's not great and yeah it looks like at the

end of the amazing spider-man 2 where paul giamatti son of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, shows up as Rhino, and they just have Paul Giamatti's face, disembodied face, head floating in the Rhino suit, and it just doesn't look at all like he's actually in the suit because he's not. And this was whatever, 2014 CGI, and it just looks bad, and they were going to maybe fix it for Amazing Spider-Man 3, which never got made. So we got deprived of even more Paul Giamatti in the rhino suit. But that's just an example of like, that doesn't look like that person is there. And that's just a head that you have CGI'd in. And that's the effect that we get sometimes with balls or baseball players being green

screened out of scenes. So yeah, gotta tighten that up, as Aaron Boone says. Ben, have you guys noticed there's actually, it seems like there's more ads during at-bats as well? Oh yeah, they cut away for a quick message from our sponsor. Both radio and TV. And I mean, I think the Yankees are notorious for things like this. You know, Rizzo steps out, grabs some dirt, and this pile of dirt is brought to you by Home Depot.

Yeah, those almost amuse me. That's like a shtick sort of. But yeah, when it's like the picture-in-picture split-screen thing, where it's like, let's mute the game broadcast, and then we'll show you this five-second ad. Now, there was a lot of that pre-pitch clock too and now i guess it's harder to do there's just less time between pitches but once that was in that was you know genie out of the bottle sort of situation so they'll just shoehorn that in wherever they can all right this is a question from a mariners fan that is sort of for mariners fans and i have two on this call right now. So Daniel, Patreon supporter, says,

during the 2023 World Series, I think, I asked some of my fellow Mariners fans about the Rangers-Diamond Bucks matchup. I wanted to get a sense of whether or not Mariners fans would care about their postseason opponents in a hypothetical deep playoff or World Series run. I don't have the figures in front of me, but my recollection is that most people didn't care and just wanted to see the M's do it. For me, though, I really want to see them slay some dragons. I feel like to have the Mariners knock off teams like Houston, the Yankees, or even frequent playoff opponent Cleveland on their way to the World Series. Then to beat a team like the Phillies, Braves, or Dodgers would be really special in a way that you just couldn't capture by beating, say, the Twins. Ouch.

Orioles, and Brewers on the way to a title. Mariners-Brewers. I mean, that would be a fun World Series. Come on, you know, each one going for their first time. Mariners, first time in the World Series. That'd be fun. I feel like the baseball world is relatively meh about the Rangers World Series victory

last year. And to some extent, that actually bums me out for Rangers fans, since it's the team's first and they had those two painful World Series losses as prelude. It ought to be a big deal, but I feel like the baseball world just shrugged, said, well, that was weird, and moved on. I'm curious to get your take on the possible reasons why they might be. Is that because the Diamondbacks, though they earned their trip to the World Series, were not the marquee franchise coming out of the NL? Was the World Series destined to be overshadowed by the Otani sweepstakes? Is it just that the Dodgers became the offseason main character with their acquisitions, especially because the Rangers didn't make any real moves to improve? Was Bally too big a story? Is it the relative weakness of the Rangers record in the

first half? I suppose it's probably a bit of everything, but what do you attribute it to? And yeah, do you think it matters who you beat or how you get there the first time it happens? No. No. I'm with Meg. No. Beggars can't be choosers. Yeah, I get the intellectual argument of being like, you want to really show it, but every World Series win is hard every single one is difficult and i guess part of it is like how do you understand the win in terms of your like the way you interact with the world who is it for right because like i do have some sympathy for the idea that there are like world series wins that have a bigger sort of cultural impact than others like um my former roommate is a white sox fan and like their win against the astros i don't think a lot of people think about that world

series very much like it was sort of an unremarkable series and like whatever and that bothers her but also i when she would say that i'd be like what are you talking about you've seen your team win a world series in your lifetime. Like you've seen that. I have not seen that. I feel like I have to summit the mountain before I can complain about the view. So maybe that's part of it. But if your favorite team wins the world series, like you just get to feel well,

first you get to feel incredibly anxious and stressed for like a whole month. And then you get to feel happy. And like, I don't know that I need other people to like validate that by saying oh it was a really hard path or like if someone says you've had an easy path to a world series win like i guess there are ones where you could beat bigger badder teams but like it's just hard it's just like this really incredibly hard thing and it seems like it's been harder for some franchises than for others. Why are we trying to up the degree of difficulty? It's just going to be hard.

They can't keep hold of a 10-game lead. What are we talking about? What are we talking about, even though? I will say, yesterday on the 4th, I watched the Seattle Mariners beat the Orioles. It is very funny that the game they won in that series was with literally Corbin Burns on the mound. Of all the ones they were going to win, I was like,

they're not going to win that one. But they did. And Julio hit a big home run, and it felt like this catharsis. And they pulled out ahead. They added more runs. They ended up with a comfortable margin and i was just sitting there and i was like guys i want to stay up here you know i don't want to go down there again even if you win if you take me low i'm going to be annoyed

because i felt low about you for a while so like keep me up here and they mostly did that it felt really good and i was like you know i wanted to like tweet everyone like where were you when the seattle mariners like established my mood you know where I wanted to like tweet everyone like, where were you when the Seattle Mariners like, establish my mood, you know, where were you? You were at home. So was that, but, uh, what are we doing? Like you gotta win one and go be in one, you know, just even be in one. They've never been, they've never wait. They've never been there.

They've never been there. Jason Tucker, baseball's really, really hard. And if you remember that 18 inning astros playoff game oh my you're reminded how hard it is i'm never members i was there me too i was there smoky that's oh my god that was the night that's right the smoky night but it's so hard and so you know any way you can do it you do it and you don't worry about picking your opponents because guess what those teams are playing well too, whoever they are. Even if it's only for a stretch, they're playing well, right?

Like even if they are a less worthy team. And as an aside, the real flip of this question is like, let's imagine that the Mariners make the postseason. Okay, we're going to keep that reality in front of us for now. In all likelihood, even if they make it to october they will not win the world series like i would just take the field and it's not even really a knock against the mariner it's just the reality of the postseason right maybe you give them a little bit of an edge because like they have great pitching but they cannot as they are currently constituted hit very well so like you're in all likelihood they make it to october and then they do not win the world

series some other team that passes them by to win the World Series, what are we going to knock them for having conquered the Mariners' kind of crummy offense? No, we're not going to nitpick. We're going to be like, wow, you made it through the pitching. There's at least one part of the team for every opponent that is going to just be something of a problem, even if it's only for a little bit. So, like, no, we just like are people not in the Rangers World Series? Are we not? I don't know.

I don't know. If that did feel at all underwhelming. And I don't know. I'm sure for Rangers fans, it didn't. But no, they were very excited. Yeah. Maybe the fact that, yeah, there was a lot of discourse about how did these two teams end up here, right? And this is improbable. And maybe it was that the Diamondbacks weren't seen as the most formidable opponent. Maybe it's that it wasn't a classic year, right, didn't retroactively make them seem like, oh, yeah, they were the World Series competitors just because as we speak, neither one has a winning record. Neither one is in playoff position, though Diamondbacks creeping up there.

Creeping. Yeah. But maybe that is part of it. But yeah, I think if you're a Rangers fan, if you're a Mariners fan, whenever they get there, I will say when, not if. But when that happens, then yeah, you're going to be pretty oh, you didn't face the good teams. Like if you happen to have kind of a relatively easy route to the World Series or some other condition, then they could hold that over your head. But again, I don't know that anyone's really going to care that much. I won't care. Here's how much I'm not going to care. If they went World Series in my lifetime, can you imagine how much not good fanatic stuff i'm gonna buy it's gonna be unreasonable and i'm gonna do it happily

i'm gonna buy a dvd or whatever medium we're using you know and i'm gonna watch it my most recent playoff experience has underscored for me that like actually being a fan of a team that is in the postseason hunt is terrible like it feels bad most of the time that you're doing it even in the games you end up winning it feels terrible you're so nervous you're convinced that they're gonna lose in my, that has been true every single time eventually, right? But you feel it's like when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. It took a while for me to be able to re-engage with the game where they beat the Niners

to go to the Super Bowl because that game was so stressful. And like it has the tip at the end and it's amazing. And you got, you know, Richard Sherman and it's the whole thing. But like it was just like I felt my entire spirit leave my body and then reenter it. And it was terrible. And that will happen again. Like there is a weird relief that comes when your favorite team exits the postseason and you're like, well, I now you know it still feels lousy to be clear but like you can at least go like okay fine i think part of it is the emotional investment that we put in for six months and then the playoffs begin so i think that's what makes it so draining and i mean exciting and and also the stories right te beat up on Tampa then they

beat up on the Orioles and then they won four to three against Houston and finally got rid of Houston right and Arizona beat up on on Milwaukee and then they beat the Dodgers three nothing and then they beat the Phillies four three where I think they didn't they win the last two games in Philly to go to the World Series am I I remembering this correctly? They won the last game in Philly. Okay, Game 7. The D-backs, yeah. Right, right, right. So I thought it was two really good stories. I'm sorry it's not the Mariners, but those were two really, really good stories. And so as a baseball fan, hopefully you can appreciate what those teams had to go through. Yeah. Variety is the spice of October too. CJ Abrams has been picked off six times this year. That's a lot.

That feels like a lot. Now, why I can't get this in a leaderboard, that might be a Meg problem, but doesn't that feel like a lot? It does. Meg, do you feel like Julio's getting a little bit too close to getting picked off too much? I'm just always so thrilled when he is actually on base.

Oh, that's sad. It was like yesterday. So he hits this beautiful, no doubt home run. You can just see how much relief there is in him and everyone else. And then like in the very next half inning, he like rolled awkwardly

catching a ball that was in the sun. And like you could see the trainer had to go out. He was like clearly shaking his thumb. And I was just like, oh my God, if this poor guy finally hits a freaking tank and then he has to go on the injury list. He hit a double after that. So I think it's fine. But it was a, it's just a stressful place. You know, it's a stressful place with him. I still don't know what's wrong. I don't know what's wrong. I can't. I found the leaderboard, by the way. C.J. Abrams, he does lead MLB with six pickoffs. Baseball Reference has pickoffs and pickoff caught

stealing separately. And he leads in both in either one. He's got six pickoffs, five pickoff caught stealing. And he has a two pickoff lead in either category over Bobby Witt Jr. and others. So yeah. That's a weird stat. There yeah, there we go. There we go. There it is. There it is, Ben. I found it. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, just so many times. And I feel like I've seen all of them, which is weird because again, how many Nationals games am I watching? Carter, listener, Patreon supporter says, in the Cardinals game against the Pirates, the Cardinals found themselves down a run in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and backup catcher Pedro Pajes up to bat. The Cardinals then pinch hit Ivan Herrera, who had an off day. This prompted the Pirates pitching coach to visit closer David Bednar on the mound to discuss the new hitter, as I feel like always happens these

days when there's a late pinch hitter in a tight spot. It then occurred to me, could the Cardinals not then pinch hit a different bench player and negate the mound visit? The Pirates could not do another mound visit without removing Bednar. The Pirates could not do another mound visit without removing Bednar. A better plan could have been instead to first pinch hit Dylan Carlson, which would seem plausible even if for the catcher because they could substitute Herrera if the game went to extras. Presumably the Pirates would have still visited Bednar, so then the Cardinals could have gotten Herrera the at-bat with no prep for Bednar. The only cost to the Cardinals is burning Carlson in a game one out from over.

Assuming this is technically allowable in the rules, do you think there's any value in preventing the reliever from getting the scouting report? Is it ever worth burning a bench bat to do this? Do you think you could only get away with it once if teams held back on a mound visit because they were aware of the threat of another pinch hitter? Doesn't that sort of accomplish the same thing? I mean, is the bench able to signal the catcher what to call? You mean like a pitch? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do that in college, right? It's kind of the norm, but you could probably communicate that somehow. I mean, isn't how you combat that from the pitcher not having the scouting report is that you just go

bench straight to catcher for that at bat? I guess so, but they must think there's some value in the actual mound visit, or they would just do that, I guess, right? Now, I would ban all the mound visits, so this would not be an issue as we've established. But I guess, so once you're announced into the game, then the batter you replace is out, but you don't have to bat then. You can have the pinch hitter, no plate appearance that Sam Miller has chronicled that I think is less common these days, but you could do it, I guess, if you weren't at all worried about the game going to extras or something, right? Like if you're trying to tie the game or you're trying to come back, then there's always

the possibility that you might have to play an indefinite period and then you might burn a bench bat that you might actually need at some point. So how do you weigh that against the advantage of depriving the pitcher of the mound visit or even confusing them? You're filling their head with all sorts of scouting intel that's not applicable to the hitter he's actually going to face and then maybe he'll be flustered. So I don't know. Maybe there's something to this, but probably limited applications. Just how much do you think a mound visit helps or matters? And I've always wondered about that.

I know that's on Russell Carlton at Baseball Perspectives on his long-term to-do list is, do mound visits help or do they matter? And it's just hard data-wise to get that information, but that would be nice to know. Yeah. It feels a little too cute by half, but I don't know, maybe there's some small edge you eke out. I'm not sure. Yeah. Worth a shot, perhaps. All right. Last one from Preston, listener, Patreon supporter. I was reading a musing on pitching wins by Ben Siegel at AZ

Sneak Pit, and that got me thinking about a replacement counting stat for pitchers that's relevant that could replace the romanticism of pitching wins and actually be an individual accomplishment. I got inspired by cricket. Batters in cricket are recognized for reaching 50 or 100 runs in an innings. My proposal, begin treating 10 strikeout games by starters the way pitching wins used to be treated. 10 strikeout games could be the new 20 wins. It has been accomplished 85 times since integration. And 20 10 strikeout games could be the new 30 wins, accomplished 8 times since integration. For relievers, I initially thought 5 strikeouts, but that leaves out so many options.

I switched to 3 strikeouts, no walks. This looks like it rewards the best relievers. The best seasons are by Brad Lidge, Josh Hader, Billy Wagner, Andrew Miller, Kenley Jensen, Edwin Diaz, Dick Raddatz, and Tom Henke. The best career number belongs to Craig Kimbrell, followed by Kenley Jensen, Hoyt Wilhelm, Aroldis Chapman, and Raleigh Fingers. There are not really any attainable individual pitching accomplishments that can be rooted for on a game level. Batters have home runs, but a single strikeout is not nearly as valuable as a single home run. Thoughts on 10k games as a stat? I mean, I think it does capture a thing. I don't know that I want to keep leaning into strikeouts as like the only way. Yeah, that was my reaction too. You know, like, because it's just we're enough with the strikeouts already. So that's my hesitation is about strikeouts and being so into strikeouts. And boy, look at all these strikeouts. Right. Because there are high strikeout games that aren't actually good. Right. You might walk a bunch of guys. You might give up some home runs. You might get knocked out of

the game. That does happen on occasion these days. So then can you really celebrate it? Because yeah, then you're reducing the only goal of the pitcher is to miss bats, which is increasingly how pitchers and teams operate. But this would only reinforce that, right? What if pitchers now are getting paid in arbitration based on their number of 10K games or whatever, right? Then they're just going to be trying to miss bats even more. And we don't really want to incentivize that even more than it's already incentivized. I guess there are some alternatives. I mean, you could quality starts of some sort, or some people will suggest a reformed, revamped quality start that maybe is reserved for more impressive outings because some quality starts aren't that great. Or you could have like win probability added, something based on that.

Or game score, right? I mean, game score is still handy. It's not something you see commonly cited, but number of starts over a game score of X, that would still be good. And all these things would need to be era adjusted, but then so to win totals and everything. So I think there are alternatives. I get the impulse and yeah, if you wanted to boil it down to one thing, then maybe that's the most logical, but I don't want to boil it down to that because I want pitching to be about more than that ideally. What do you think, Wayne? I feel like what's in the best interest of the team's long-term, and I think it's for the starting pitcher to go as far as they can go because every out that that starting pitcher gets

is one out that you're not asking your relievers to get. So especially over the course of a series, if your guy can go six instead of five, then you're really protecting your relievers for the rest of the series. So I'd like to see something that, I understand why quality start has its issues, but something to express

your gratefulness for the longevity of your starters who can go, let's call it the anti-Blake Snell stat, you know, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, while we were recording, literally, we got yet another email about strike zone stuff. And it does contain one little thing that I will just throw to you. This is a question from Damon, who writes in to argue about how ABS would actually hurt hitters and pitches that would be unhittable, etc. But also said there are other issues with ABS, which I think you understand. Calibration and drift are close to unsobbable. Hey, have you ever had an engineer on to talk about that stuff? I think you understand. Calibration and drift are close to unsolvable. Hey, have you ever had an engineer on to talk about that stuff? I think it would be enlightening. Well, Wayne, you're here. Can you tell us about calibration and drift? How big an issue is that

for you? In our particular technology, we haven't noticed it to be an issue. One thing I do worry about is if this is all electronically controlled, what happens when you have a fiber cut in the top of the ninth inning with two outs and the umpire better be paying attention because the ABS system doesn't register the 3-2 pitch? So that's the type of thing that worries me more than calibration. I think there's enough people involved that they can go through the steps before each game that the technology is calibrated correctly. But I am worried about loss of service mid-game. Yeah, because you can tell umpires, hey, be ready just in case, right? But they won't be, you know, because if it is an extremely rare event, you're not going to be dialed into every single pitch the way that they are now.

It's just not possible, right? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to leave you with one single solitary stat blast here. Stat blast. And then they tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it in length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. It's still a waste. This is a question that I asked Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference, a semi-frequent StatBlast consultant correspondent, because I got curious about the highest number of former major leaguers on a non-major league team. Because has either of you seen what Robinson Cano is doing this year in the Mexican League?

Yeah. It's pretty ridiculous. Robinson Cano in 266 plate appearances, 58 games. He's hitting 456, 504, 701. Robinson Cano at 41 after washing out of the majors. Now it's a high offense league. The average OPS is 809 and 5.6 runs scored per game. And it's the Mexican league. it is not major league caliber obviously but still those stats are pretty eye-popping and it's got to be kind of cool like if you're robinson keno and you've been a superstar and a hall of fame caliber player who probably won't get in because of ped stuff but was that good a player and then once your skills slip or you can't get a job you just go to another pretty high level league in another another country, and suddenly you're Superman again. You know, it's like the Yellow Sun's rays just turns you into Superman in that league instead. That must be, it's like, oh, this is what it used to be like for me to play in the big

leagues. Not that he had a 1205 OPS there, but also on that team, you have like Llewyn Diaz with a thousand plus OPS and Franklin Barreto with a thousand plus OPS. So that does kind of calibrate things. But looking at his stats and seems to be working in that league. They have a 53-15 record and a 15-game lead in the South Division of the Mexican League. By my count, they have 18 former big leaguers on this team. And you see a lot of former big leaguers in the Mexican League, but this is a lot even by those standards. So they have Arsene Di Sacchino, lot even by those standards. So they have Ars de Di Sacchino, Franklin Barreto, Jose Briseño, Luis Diaz, I mentioned Cano, Ramon Flores, Jose Marmolejos, Jose Perella, Jose Rondon,

Trevor Bauer, Ronald Bolaños, Alex Claudio, Jairice Familia. So they're just collecting character guys really on this team. Arturo Lopez, Connor Menez, Daniel Ponce de Leon, Danny Salazar. Wow. I didn't know he was still around. I remember him somewhat fondly as a pitcher. And Jimmy Iacobonis. All these guys are on this team this year. So that made me wonder, is this like a record? Is this a lot? 18 former big leaguers on a non-big league team? Turns out not even remotely close. Is Winter Ball going to take it? Well, yeah. So it depends. So if you include affiliated teams, the record is 59 for Big Leaguers set two years ago by the Sacramento Rivercats.

Oh, sure. Yeah. So AAA affiliate of the Giants, 59 guys. Now, they are all former, so I made sure he was looking at guys who had already been in the big leagues before that season. So it's not counting future big leaguers as well. But some of those guys were going back and forth still at that point, whereas most of the Mexican league guys are probably gone for good from the majors. The Rivercats, though, 59 former major leaguers, and they had a 65 and 83 record. They weren't even good somehow. Now, if you include Winter League, so among unaffiliated teams, we have the 2013 to 2014 Tigres del Dice. So they had 14 former major leaguers on that Winter League, Dominican Winter League league team they were 29 and 21

they finished third out of six teams now if we leave out affiliated ball and the winter leagues then we get the 2009 newark bears of the atlantic league right and they were maybe still are i mean you see a lot of former big leaguers in the Atlantic League, obviously. It's the highest level domestic independent league. And Newark especially seemed to be collecting those guys. Tim Raines was the manager of that team that year. And I guess maybe I'll just read the names. It's a long list of names, but this will be our remembering some guys for today. And it worked, I guess, for them more or less. They were pretty good that year, the Newark Bears. They had a 74-66 record. I mean, not that good, but good enough. So here are the former major leaguers on the 2009 Newark Bears. And thank goodness,

baseball reference puts these names in boldface type here marlin anderson mike caruso alberto castillo ramon castro jason de hierro de hierro i don't even remember jason de hierro carl everett jay gibbons bobby hill d'angelo jimenez charlton jimmerson i always like that name jock jones rob mcoviac felix Felix Martinez, Donzel McDonald, Ramon Navar, Abraham Nunez, Willis Otanez, Tim Raines Jr. Oh, Nepo baby on the Tim Raines managed team. Tyke Redmond, Pete Rose Jr., Kevin Thompson, Michael Tucker, Daryl Ward. So those are all the hitters. Now here are are the pitchers I don't know if there were any position player pitchers who will be double counted here but Carlos Almanzar, Willie Banks, Armando Benitez, Ryan Buckvich, Hector Carrasco, Alberto Castillo I mentioned him already, Sean Chacon the legend I remember his work with the Yankees, Jason DeIro, I mentioned already. Keith Falk was there. Wow. Aaron Fultz, Steve Kent, Shane Comine, Ramiro Mendoza, I remember fondly as well. Franklin Nunez, Scott Rice,

Cindy Rial, R-L-E-A-L. That's very hard to say. Rial, Rial. Victor Santos, Real? Real well? Victor Santos, Alay Saler, Chris Sperling, Sean Tracy, and Scott Williamson. Wow. Okay. So, yeah, the Diablos Rojas thought that was a lot of former big leaguers, but no, not even close

really. All right. Well, thanks to me for the question, and thanks to Kenny for answering it, and thanks to you, Wayne, for your support support and also for joining us today. Anything you care to plug, your company, your social media, your website, whatever it may be? No, I'll just say thank you for having me. I am a really big baseball fan, and I hope that the league continues to figure out how to make it more entertaining for fans, because that's kind of one of my biggest worries is that the game is drifting away from fan entertainment. And I hope

that they can keep that in mind with all of their different role changes. Well, good luck with all your endeavors. And Wayne didn't even ask me to mention his company. I did that myself. This was not SpawnCon. I didn't know if you were even going to bring it up, but how could I not? When we were talking about strike zone stuff, it was incredibly relevant. Yeah, it worked out really well. Thanks again for your support. Pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. All right, we're going into extra innings here because we have a holiday weekend treat for you. It's been a while, so this is almost a blast from the past, but it's actually a blast from

the future, a future blast. Once our past blast series caught up to the present, we started doing dispatches from an alternate timeline future with the year corresponding to the Effectively Wild episode number. Back on episode 2074, we switched to a format where we do an occasional future blast in a radio play style format, voiced lines and production and sound effects, the whole deal. Our last blast was on episode 2093 from the year 2093. I think it's been this long because there was a time dilation effect involved. You know, what with faster than light travel and all.

So this latest story, which runs about 15 minutes, comes to us from the year 2187. Just like last time, this future blast is co-written by Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball, and Alan Smale, an author and astrophysicist. The text for the Future Blast is linked from the show page, but we will start with a quick reminder, and then we will give you the next installment in this continuing baseball sci-fi story. Episode 3 of the Felix Chronicles, The Splendid Splinter, previously on The Future Blast. When last we visited with the jovial, well-traveled alien baseball fan named Felix from the planet Harmony, he and his human companions, Ollie Olsen, Lily May Lynn, and Randy Garrett, were leaving Earth orbit and headed toward the Harmony home system.

With a couple dozen ballplayers, they'd recruited as a barnstorming team to introduce baseball to strange new worlds. Months later, after traveling faster than light, they made landfall on Harmony and started their own version of spring training, getting used to the lower gravity and air pressure so the ball really flew off the bat and pitchers struggled to make their curveballs curve.

The whole group from Earth took infield and batting practice every day to get used to things, and even Ollie managed to hit a few long fly balls. After two weeks of intense training, more or less in seclusion from the rest of the planet, the ballplayers were ready to play their part in a series of special live exhibits of baseball history. They'd be dressed in the uniforms that hailed from a famous moment in baseball history, and in their supporting roles, they'd roam the field as those players had done. The ever-inventive Felix would provide the star player for the day. Their big intro to the locals. Play ball! Ollie Olsen, space pilot extraordinaire,

shook his head in wonder as he stood next to Felix and looked around in amazement at the girders, the green wall, the strangely deep right field, and shallow left. Wow, you've outdone yourself, Felix. This Fenway is impressive as hell. I'd swear we were in the real box seats behind the real Red Sox dugout in the real Fenway. Except for all those distant fences. It's amazing. Nothing to it, dear friend Ollie. This is your Fenway Park, reproduced exactly from September 28th, 1960, with a few nods to local conditions. Felix settled into his seat, a large one built to accommodate a six-foot-tall, three-legged body dressed in a vintage Red Sox uniform, with the red piping on the sleeves and down both sides of the buttons. He had no name or number on his back.

Just yesterday, Lily May Lynn had talked him out of using the number one, which would be forever Bobby Toer. Ollie hadn't quite understood that, and he wasn't enough of a Sox fan to get the significance of that date either. But Lily sure did. Lily arrived in their row with four beers and a boxed holder and said, Hi, neighbor. Have a ganset. And handed a beer to Felix and one to Ollie.

Felix got the joke and laughed. Ollie didn't. Lily said, September 1960. This is the game where Ted Williams ends his career, right, Felix? The one where he... Felix held up his webbed hand to interrupt her. No telling, Lily.

Big surprise for everyone. Aha. Of course. Big surprise. Right. She stood there, shook her head, took a sip of her beer, and mumbled, Everyone. Aha. Of course. Big surprise. Right. She stood there, shook her head, took a sip of her beer, and mumbled. No one knows their darn baseball history. Sheesh. Then she looked at Felix with a smile.

All right, Felix. Mum's the word. Oh, and let me say, this is a heck of a mock-up. You're sure it was the real Fenway, made extra, extra deep in the outfield. We're glad you like it, friend Lily. So much importance here. The green monster, the ladder, Duffy's cliff, the scoreboard, the Morse code, the red seat for Williams,

and the blue one for Don't His Blast in 2062. Good fun. Say what now? Ollie murmured, but didn't really expect anyone to answer him. I know, I know. Lily said as she plopped down into her seat. The stands are so real, Felix. The paint's even peeling on those darn girders, just like in the old days.

I grew up in Worcester, Mass., and went to a lot of Red Sox games. It was a straight shot on the commuter rail to Lansdowne Street and Fenway Park. What a great way to spend a summer evening. She took another breath, looked around, and said wistfully, Wow, this is damn near perfect. All it needs is... Felix raised his hand. Say no more, dear friend Lily. Your every wish, etc., etc. He waved his hand, and there was a brief moment of shimmery dizziness.

And then the players on the field were dressed in Baltimore Orioles gray road uniforms with Baltimore inscript across the front. They stopped and looked at each other. They laughed. That Felix. What a guy. Now there came a thunderous applause from the empty ballpark. It was a piped-in standing ovation that went on for a full minute.

Then another. An invisible crowd applauding steadily, almost politely, as they waited, knowing who would come out of the dugout. Lily looked around, laughed, and said, This is probably recording from that actual day, right, Felix? Exactly, dear friend Lily. A figure emerged from the dugout in front of them, a player with number nine on his back.

Tall, fit, staring straight at the pitcher as he walked toward the plate, carrying two bats and giving them a swing, then turning to toss one of them back toward the dugout. He was dressed in his home whites, the red piping down each side of the buttons, the stirrup red socks over the white sanitaries, the navy blue cap with the red B. Lily, who'd been standing and applauding, asked, How did you find such an exact lookalike? She knew her famous Red Sox players, especially this one. Easy, said Felix. Exact copy. Splendid splinter. Watch him at the plate. She did. She'd seen so many

pictures and videos of Ted Williams. His stance. The way he settled in for that last at bat. Amazing. Is this the third at bat? she asked. Just so. Felix said proudly. Teddy Ballgame says goodbye. So much fun. Fenway was my favorite of all the ballparks I visited. Wait, said Ollie, who was putting two and two together. Hold on now, Felix. You visited Fenway? You'd been to the Earth before you came with us? That's not what we thought. Now you tell us? Yes, dear friend Ollie. I thought you knew.

Of course I visited several times. Many ballparks old and new. But, but... Ollie stammered. Many ballparks old and new. But, but... Ollie stammered. Lily narrowed her eyes skeptically. Seriously, and no one noticed you? I mean, no offense, but you're kind of hard to miss, even in a crowd. You would be surprised, friend Lily. We are excellent at fitting in. Really? Lily asked, thinking Felix could barely fit into the seat he was in,

the one that had been expanded for him, much less fitting in with a human crowd. And then came another few shimmery moments, and the upsetting sound of bones cracking and skin tearing, and now a matronly woman wearing a nice hat with flowers in it was sitting in that seat. See? The woman said, her voice a pleasant contralto. Oh, gosh, said Lily, and... Ah, well, that explains a lot. Said Ollie.

There were a few moments of capacious silence. Then Felix continued. Dearest friends from Earth, I sat in this very seat when I was newly hacked on my first Earth tour. Ted Williams was just back from flying warplanes in Korea. A warrior and a baseball player. He was my favorite then. On the field, the air shot splintered. He was my favorite then. On the field, the ersatz-splinted splinter was at the plate,

and a pitcher who only Lily recognized as Jack Fisher was delivering the first pitch. Ball one. Wide. The matronly version of Felix went on. I thought you understood, dearest friends from Earth. I thought that was why you came to visit my ship the very first time. We like Earth so much to save. Ollie frowned. Save?

Felix had reverted to his original form, this time mercifully in silence. Yes, dear Ollie. My people copied Fenway for me while saving so much everywhere on Earth. Pyramids, great walls and green ones, golden gates and tall towers and statues to liberty and palaces and museums and libraries and all the rest of Earth, all over the place. He laughed. Took so many years, hard work, many centuries. I've never seen the pyramids, Lily said. But why on Earth would you, Ollie started to ask when a loud,

Wow, this is great, came from Randy Garrett, who joined them with his arms full of boxes of popcorn. He shook his head as he handed them out. Amazing, Felix. And just for us? Fenway's stands were empty, except for the four of them. All here now, said Felix, and he stood up, holding his beer in one hand and waving with the other, and whoosh, a breeze swept through the four of them, bringing dust from the infield. They turned their faces and covered their eyes. The breeze died down, and when they opened their eyes, Fenway had some fans. Not a lot of them, but they were all harmonics, squeezing those big bodies into those small Fenway seats. The place was two-thirds empty, which seemed a little strange, but not to Lily. Ollie and Randy, in unison, said, how the hell? But Lily, the true Sox fan, said,

This looks about right. Attendance that day was a shameful 10,000 or so. Pretty weird, huh? Yes, said Felix. Very strange, dear friend, Lily, for Ted's last home game. I wondered even then. Wish I could have been there, Lily said to Felix. I mean, what a day. What a great finale. What a... Felix held a fat finger to his lips and said, and Lily fell silent. Ollie, still frowning, said,

So, Felix, you're telling us that you and your people have been visiting Earth for centuries and making copies of whatever you found interesting? Felix nodded. Exactly. The Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, or Fenway Park as it was on September 28, 1960, a great moment in baseball. At the plate, the faux Ted Williams tapped his spikes with his bat, twirled it a bit, stepped back into the box, and stared out at the ersatz Jack Fisher. In came a breaking ball. Williams swung and missed. Strike one. That explains a lot, I've got to say, said Randy. You know, I believed in UFOs when I was a kid, and I believed in the Church of Baseball back then, too.

You know, following Jalen McLeod's career, joining a fantasy league, all of that stuff. Back then, I thought all of that really mattered. It did matter, great friend Randy. Look around. Here you are on Harmony watching baseball. Yeah, pretty crazy, really. Not so, said Felix. We have liked your earth for a long, long time. So much action. Live broadcast from our ships back through the wormhole to viewers on Harmony. Walls and strife, deserts and mountains and oceans, and baseball towns like New York and Los Angeles and St. Louis

and Boston. I watch games. We left telescopes around to watch your progress. We talk with humans all the time and talk with your dolphins and whales and octopuses. Sorry you didn't know,

but we had them all sign NDAs. Ollie and Lily and Randy looked at each other. Oh, said Ollie. But why this? Why Fenway reproduced today? Why all this baseball stuff? Asked Randy.

Isn't it a bit, well, gimmicky? Felix looked genuinely shocked. We are collectors, dearest Randy. We preserve what might otherwise be lost. Does that not have value? Well, yeah, I guess, said Lily. But what otherwise might be lost? At the plate, it was the bottom of the eighth, and Jack Fisher was looking in at Ted Williams. At age 42, still a dangerous hitter. Fisher looked in for the sign, gave the slight nod, went into the windup, released the pitch, a fastball. A

lyric little band box of a ballpark. Right, Lily? Felix said. Wow. Lily said. You've read John Updike, too. Why am I not surprised? All of his baseball writing, dearest Lily. Felix said, and then he leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. And some of the writing about golf, too, but don't tell anyone.

Lily laughed at that as she watched Fisher's third pitch come toward the splinter. And just as she knew he would, Williams took that perfect swing and sent the ball soaring to right. The right fielder, one of the players brought from Earth, now dressed in Baltimore gray, trotted back to the wall and was ready to leap for it if he had a chance. But no, this final hit of Ted Williams' career was a home run that landed in the Red Sox bullpen, bouncing off the canopy that protected the pitchers. The crowd roared with delight as Ted touched the bases all the way around,

but he kept his head down, paid no attention to the crowd, and didn't touch his cap to acknowledge their applause. See that, Earth friends? said Felix. He doesn't say thank you to his fans. Still mad about how they booed him once when he dropped an easy fly ball and left, said Lily.

Just so. Gushed Felix and gave Lily a high five. Aw, he likes you best, Lily, said Ollie with a laugh. No kidding, teacher's pet, said Randy. Cut it out, you two. There's a great line from Updike on that, in that same New Yorker story about the final homer, about why Williams didn't tip his cap. Ah yes, tell them, said Felix. Listen and learn. Updike said, gods don't answer letters.

The crowd around them was still applauding. One long minute, then another, then another, then one more before they finally gave up. Ted wasn't going to come out of the dugout and wave his cap and acknowledge their love. That wasn't Ted. Even this ersatz Ted in front of this ersatz crowd. There was another minute or two of waiting, and then the watching harmonics started winking out of existence, disengaging from the game. As they left, the ballpark itself started to shimmer and fade, until all that was left was an infield and outfield, and a couple dozen earthies standing out there in the shoes, gloves, and uniforms they'd brought with them from Earth or L5,

the ones who'd come to Harmony to play their parts and see this strange new world. Felix looked at his friends. Tomorrow you will play? He asked. Willie Mays in center field. The catch. 1954. Great fun.

Heck yes, said Lily. And this'll be the polo grounds, right? Vic Wertz. Long fly ball. Mays, over the shoulder catch. Wonderful. Put me in, coach. I can't wait to see this. I mean, we're actually going to get to play as well, right?

Randy said. Not just watch baseball's greatest hits. Of course, of course, we'll play some games, said Felix. But some historical moments first to lure them in. Randy nodded. Sure, I just want to play. I played in college. I wasn't too bad at first base. I'm looking forward to getting back out there. You did? said Ollie. How did I not know that? We did all those round trip runs from L5 out to Mars and you never mentioned baseball at all. Randy smiled. It just didn't come up. I guess I didn't think you'd be interested,

but I led the Ohio Valley Conference in doubles one year. That was fun. Wow, cool, said Lily, and reached over to give Randy a high five. Lily asked, Dearest friends, tomorrow will be great. A perfect Willie Mays will make that catch and turn to throw to second and hold the runners. And I have a big treat for you. A treat? Lily asked. Don't tell me, Felix. That glove is in Cooperstown. You didn't steal that, did you? Felix shrugged. Not exactly, he said. But it's an interesting story. More tomorrow, Lily. Teacher's pet, Randy mumbled again. Ollie, as lost as ever, just shook his head and said, We'll be here, Felix. Maybe I can be the Batboy?

The end. Thanks to Rick Wilber and Alan Smale. And thanks to all our regular cast members for reprising their roles. That's Fangraph's own Dan Cymborski as Felix, listener Amy Lee as Lily, listener Chris Hannell as Randy, and producer Shane McKeon as Ollie. Also, you may have recognized the narrator. That was me. And thanks to John Updike, too. He wrote Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.

Now we bid you adieu. That will adieu it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support Effectively Wild by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners, Jeff Bramhall, Scott Sutmeyer, Teresa Gallagher, Noah Woodward, and Sam Perrin. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include, well, potential podcast appearances like Wayne Teegers,

as well as 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 fancrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at Fangrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast

platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB Ballparks. Thanks to Zachary Goldberg filling in for Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. This is Effectively Wild.