Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2188: I Fought the Wall, and the Wall Won

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s daughter coining a baseball term, how the on-screen strike-zone plot (slightly) delays the rest of the broadcast, Jose Miranda and the surprising 12-consecutive-hits club, David Robertson’s elite relief career, whether Shohei Ohtani should stop pitching, an attempt to quantify players’ smiles, how this season stacks up in […]

Here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's End, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels, Lillian's Asked a Deal, and Mike Trout Hypotheticals. Waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello and welcome to episode 2188 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I I am joined by Ben Lindberger, The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm all right. I was playing baseball this past weekend with my two going-on three-year-old daughter. And by baseball, I mean one of us was holding an umbrella, and the other was holding a small plastic basketball. But basically baseball, just throwing and hitting. And she said, I'll be the hitter, you be the midder. And I had never thought of that term before. I think she's coined a new term for defender, fielder. Why not midder? We have hitter. Midder makes perfect sense because she

knows that a fielder uses a mitt. So why would they not be a mitter? Hitter-mitter. I think that the annoying answer to this question, and first, I want to acknowledge, like, a writer already, Ben. You know, that's what you have on your hands. You got a writer already. A mitter is delightful. But I think the reason is that it sounds too much like hitter. The rhyming-ness of it lends itself well to song lyrics and to the adorable utterances of tiny children, but might make a broadcast, for instance, a little bit confusing. But mitter, that is nice. It also kind of sounds like you're saying nitter. I think that you want to try to avoid rhyming words in moments like this because if you have fast-paced action,

and by that I mean action that, again, no offense to your brilliant writer of a daughter, probably doesn't involve a toddler, and you're a baseball announcer and you're trying to say all that. And you're like, the midder and the hitter, it's going to get jumbled. Like, what are we? What are we? Announcing hockey? No, no, we're not.

How do hockey announcers do it, by the way? What a verbal Olympics marathon. But midder is nice. I like it. I do. I might start using it if I suddenly start dropping midder to refer to fielder and don't explain it. That's where it came from. Maybe I'll make it a thing.

Maybe I'm biased because it came from my cute daughter. But I think it makes sense. I understand how she got there at least. Oh, yeah. It's kind of a logical leap. We have a hitter. Now we need a midder, someone who has a mid. I think that that's quite defensible.

someone who has a MIT. I think that that's quite defensible. And look, there are, again, there are instances where you could deploy MITR and not refer to the hitter at all. And then no confusion, you know, clear, clearly delineated words, you know, separate and distinct from one another. And we need a lot of words because we get tired of saying it's like, you know, I've become very loosey goosey with people's alternatives for like left-handed and right-handed hitting you know if people want to go nuts on that and copy i'm like fine the more the merrier really because we just end up saying the same thing over and over again it's exhausting well we have some follow-ups here to relate before we get to any new business we got a bunch of emails. They've been coming in

since our last episode, especially in response to an email we got from listener Patreon supporter J-Mad, who was observing and complaining about the fact that he at least has not been seeing pickoff attempts, complete pickoff attempts live on broadcasts that the cut to the player who is the recipient of the pickoff attempt, the subject is often caught up midstream or after the fact. So you never see the tag live. And we got a lot of explanations for why that is the case, because we had just speculated live. So first I have an email to share from Rob, a Patreon supporter, who wrote in about the K-Zone plot. And this will actually be related to the pickoff question. So this was one more vote for keeping the K-Zone, that this is actually helpful and beneficial.

And Rob pointed out, a little late to the party on the K-Zone shown on the screen live during games, but one major advantage not discussed is its usefulness in teaching the game to newcomers. Explaining balls and strikes on pitches not swung at is a bit difficult to a beginner, for example, my five-year-old son, but the K zone makes it much easier to see and understand. So I guess that's a good point. When my daughter graduates from coining new baseball terms to describe fielders

and has to figure out what a strike zone is, maybe it would be helpful to see that on the screen. So I don't have to just describe an imaginary rectangle that isn't actually called like a rectangle and say, well, it's as wide as the plate and it's about yay high and here's some shoulders and kneecaps and everything. It's just right there. I guess that could come in kind of handy if you're just watching for the first time. If that's an upside of the K-Zone, there are, however, some downsides. And one of them is actually the explanation for this issue with not seeing the complete pickoff attempt. So here is an email from Andrew who writes in to say, I feel like I can add some insight to the question in last week's episode about missing the pickoff throw on broadcast.

I'm a television broadcast engineer. Certainly sounds like someone who can add some insight to this question. And in 2019, I spent the year working in production trucks, mostly doing the home games for Meg's Seattle Mariners. The addition of the K-Zone on every MLB broadcast unfortunately adds a bit of a processing delay on the center field, aka game camera. The clean feed of the camera is routed to MLB, which then sends it back with the zone superimposed. This is now out of time with every other available angle in the truck, which puts the director at a disadvantage when trying to make a quick cut to the camera focused on first base to catch the pickoff. The audio mixer also has to add a delay to the microphone that is

capturing the ball hitting the catcher's mitt or the bat, and you can occasionally hear that out of sync too. This may have changed in the five years since I worked in this capacity, but at the time I believe the box wasn't even generated locally at the ballpark, but at MLB in New York. Delay times could also vary from inning to inning. One game I was working, won't name team or stadium, had nearly a full second delay on the K-Zone angle, leaving that broadcast no choice but to drop it until it was resolved. What a shame. I'm of the opinion that the zone is helpful, Andrew says, but on replay only.

As a Mets fan, I love that they resisted having the zone on full time, at least until 2020 when they were forced to because they were also providing the away feed. I think this was an MLB mandated thing. So they have to outsource the K zone, essentially. I guess it goes at the speed of light or whatever to New York and then it comes back and then you superimpose the K zone onto the broadcast. But then that means that if you cut to another angle, now you're behind and you have missed the action. So this is why this is happening. I love that MLB broadcasts are like someone who's written something in English and then they put it into Google Translate to make it Hungarian. And then they've translated it to Spanish and then they've translated it back to English. And it's like, this is what you said initially, but there are some pieces that are maybe missing, right? Some nuances that have been sanded down here. And we got a couple emails,

one from Alfred and one from Jack, who pointed out that the answer to this question was already supplied by a previous episode of Effectively Wild. Look, there have been a lot of them, okay? It's hard to remember these things. So Jack wrote in to say, I imagine you've gotten bombarded with this exact email. Yeah, not bombarded, but we had a few. I would like to direct your attention to Effectively Wild episode 2097, in which you interviewed John DeMarcico.

So John DeMarcico, director of the SNY broadcasts, the dreaded cursed K-zone overlay introduces an eight frame delay into the center field camera. I'll just copy from the wiki. Multiple listeners wrote in to paste from the Effectively Wild wiki. Yes. I love that they did that. I didn't do that in this instance.

And the wiki says, John says that the center field camera is on an eight frame delay. So it's impossible to capture a line drive or pick off because by the time you see the ball hit or thrown in real life, it has already been caught. And Jack says, you can see this delay every time a pitcher starts his wind up in another angle, then they cut to the center field camera and you can kind of see him start his wind up again. And once you notice that you never unsee it.

Personally, I wonder why it's not possible to put an artificial delay on all the other angles and the audio feed to bring them into sync. But I imagine if that were possible, somebody would have figured that out by now. And as I said, we had a few other people relating that response. And then we got one person, Dominic, who wrote in to it seems like a lot of people felt seen or heard by the various broadcast-related complaints that we had there, the green screen, etc. But Dominic is really bothered by this issue of things being out of sync that Jack, the previous emailer, mentioned. So I'll just give him the floor here. Dominic says, not only do I agree that pick-off attempts are often missed and that green screen advertisements can certainly hide the ball or players, but I find another issue far more egregious and annoying. I don't know how to briefly describe it other than overlap or maybe rubber banding, but I'm attempting to give a name to the effect given when the camera switches from one angle to another and we end up seeing the same thing twice.

up seeing the same thing twice. For example, they could be getting a beauty shot from the dugout of a pitcher's mechanics from the side, and during the delivery of a pitch, they will return to the customary centerfield camera and rewind time, sometimes pretty noticeably. I understand that pointing this out might ruin other fans' experiences. Sorry that we're inflicting this on everyone else now who's like, I cannot see this anymore. Oh no, this episode is the ring. I do find it annoying. You might see from the side angle,

the pitcher at the apex of his extension as he releases the ball. And then as the camera switches, the ball might still be hidden behind him pre-release. Some broadcasts are worse than others and some plays are worse than others as well. I noticed this effect most often when a runner is attempting to score from second base

on a ball hit past the infielders. One camera angle might show them on their journey around third base switching angles while they're 10 feet past the base, only to cut to another angle where the runner is yet to touch the base at all. I find this increasingly infuriating given the push to make baseball faster. But in reality, it makes it extremely difficult to properly gauge the speed of a runner, the velocity of the ball as it reaches the fielder, and even the speed in which the fielder might collect the ball and unleash a throw home. I suppose the alternative is worse, where the camera may cut and miss a large chunk of the ongoing play, but this doesn't seem possible given the state of telecommunication technology.

As mentioned in the last episode, I suppose this could be attributed to remote programming. Well, we've solved this riddle of why this is happening. Either way, it's something I noticed often and hope that others share my same disdain for the repeating of time. So now everyone can notice and be bothered by this. But I guess we have to consider now if you're pro-K-Zone and you like some things it brings to a broadcast, then this is also something it imposes upon us. In our defense, that conversation with John was so fascinating and wide-ranging that I think we can be forgiven for forgetting this one tiny detail of it. You know, I think I said last time that I was like, I don't know, I'm going to be squishy about the K-Zone. I'm not. I'm out.

I'm out. I'm anti. Here we are. We're out we want we want to see it is funny to prioritize as an aside the thing that happens far less often than the ball like crossing the plate right like if if we think that there is merit to the the k zone as you know as a like a reality check on what the strike zone actually looks like as a teaching tool for people who are new to the game as you know if if we think that's real then we should do it because there's so many pitches and they're like how many pickoff attempts in a game right like really really but also i don't like it and i don't feel like compromising so i'm gonna say that we were right all along we did get an email from listener and Patreon supporter Vicky. I always say listener and

Patreon supporter, but probably Patreon supporter implies listener, I would think. Not all listeners are Patreon supporters, sadly, but probably all Patreon supporters are listeners, though if you're not. Somewhat, yeah. If you're supporting us but not listening to us, we'll take it, I guess. I don't know what motivates you to be so generous. You say all of that, and I think that you're right. But do you know how many people are in our Facebook group who do not listen to the podcast?

Oh, sure. Well, plenty of those. It is a shocking number. I am floored by it as a phenomenon every time. Why? I mean, I know that people are nice to chat with, but also that's kind of a lot. It's just a good discussion group by the standards of Facebook, so I sort of understand that. But if you're a Patreon supporter, if you're actively funding a podcast that you don't listen to.

Quite surprising. Again, thank you, but why? Yeah, but why? But why? Vicky sent us a couple examples of recent cases where you could see the full pickoff attempt. So I guess on a pickoff attempt, you're not getting the pitch, so you don't actually have to have the K-zone there. I mean, it's superimposed, but it's not registering anything yet. But I guess that feed from that camera is just delayed in anticipation of needing the delay. But at least one of these examples, we see the full pickoff attempt because there's a cut to a behind home plate angle. So you see the pitcher who's getting ready to go into his windup and then you can see the runner at the same time. It's not even a split screen. I guess a split

screen might present a problem with this delay, but here you just see from behind home plate and you can see the whole vista. So you see the lead and then you see the throw and then you see the dive back. But there is one example here where there does seem to be a cut that was in time in a Brewers-Dodgers game. So I guess it's possible it can happen sometimes, but you got to be on top of your game and have a shorter than usual delay. So that's something to be aware of, or perhaps try in vain to forget now that you are aware of it. Too aware, hyper aware, you know too much. Again, it's the girl from the ring. New items on the agenda. Jose Miranda, can we just talk about this 12 at bat hit streak? So I guess we have to specify how to describe exactly what this was, because I saw different

ways of describing. He got a hit in 12 straight at bats, but there was some confusion, I think, when it came to plate appearances versus at bats. This is one of those times when they can get kind of tricky. They can trip people up. We often note when people say at-bat when technically it was actually a plate appearance, but not at-bat, right? In this case, you have to specify the records, right? So he became the fourth player ever to have a hit in 12 consecutive at-bats. And I think this might be my favorite exclusive club for a baseball accomplishment because it's Johnny Kling in 1902, Pinky Higgins in 1938, and Walt Dropo in 1952.

So Miranda, Kling, Higgins, and Dropo. It's not exactly your inner circle baseball legends, I guess. I mean, some of those guys were pretty good players and had pretty good seasons, but you would not expect those four, right? And I saw Miranda's quote when he was told that he had joined this club with Kling and Higgins and Dropo. And his quote was, that was a long time ago. I'm out of words. It's something really special for the game and myself, too. It's great.

It's great to be a part of history. it's something really special for the game and myself too. It's great. It's great to be a part of history. He didn't say the thing that players often say, which is like, just to be mentioned among those names, right? You know, when it's like legendary players, it's like, just to be mentioned in the same breath or the same sentence as Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or Ted Williams or whoever it was. He didn't say like, just to be mentioned in the same sentence as Johnny Kling and Pinky Higgins and Walt Dropo. He said, you know, it's history. That was a long time ago. So it really is so odd that those are the four. Because I was looking at their stats, they were all above average hitters by WRC Plus in the years when they did this, but not by a lot.

They weren't great hitters. And if you look at batting average specifically or on base percentage specifically, they weren't really that good by that metric. So you had Droppo, who had a 106 average plus. This is the Fangraphs metric that's just looking at how your batting average or whatever other stat compares to the league average. And he had a 106 average plus, so barely above average, and a 95 OBP plus.

So he was below average at reaching base. Higgins in 38 had a 105 average plus and OBP plus. And Kling in 1902 had a 107 average plus and a 103 OBP plus. So compared to their respective leagues and seasons, they were all barely above average, like just barely, just a tad above average when it came to getting on base or getting hits, which is the important metric here. So if you average those three, their average was a 106 average plus and a 101 OBP plus, like almost league average at getting on base. Why these three guys? And it wasn't even like they were all doing this in super high batting average years.

Like all time, if you look at just the modern era or since 1901 when the American League started, I think the all time batting average is 261 maybe. And if you just average together those previous three seasons batting averages, it was like 264. So collectively, they were just a tad above the batting average. And if you add this year, which has a low batting average into it, then it's below the end. Then it's like 259. It's below the average average.

So it's neither outliers in terms of the scoring environment in which these records were set or in terms of the players setting them. It's just kind of like the most random assortment of players. And Jose Miranda is having quite a good year. So it doesn't look that strange that he would do this in light of his present stats, which look a lot better than they did before this streak of his started. He has a 155 WRC plus, right? He's batting 332 in a low batting average year with a 373 on base, but he entered this season as no great shakes offensively, right? Like his career WRC plus entering the season in 635 plate appearances, a full season's worth was 102. And he had a 254 batting average entering this year.

So we'll see where he ends up this season. But like, what a random collection of guys to hold this record. Why them? I don't know. Well, there's the like kind of cute answer, right? Which is that baseball, it's so random. You know, any guy can do anything. And, like, there's definitely truth to that. I think that part of it and, you know, my sense of Miranda throughout his career

has been that he is kind of a streaky guy. You know, he tends to have high highs and low lows. And it doesn't necessarily surprise me given that that he would be a guy where it's like he would he would occupy a place in history that is dependent at least in some part on like a lucky heater you know like having a lucky heater which is basically what we're looking at here so that part of it seems weirdly fitting, even though I agree, like from a career perspective, he's like a good,

but not great hitter who is having like an exceptional year compared to what he's been able to muster in previous campaigns. So I don't know, dude, it's like kind of interesting. He has such a carefully manicured eyebrows. Jose Miranda, have you noticed that about him?

No. It's like really well, they're really, they're they're tended to you know there's care put into that aspect of his um his face so but yeah it's it's an odd thing i really enjoy saying dropo that's a great name that's like that collection of names that you trotted out one of the better ones maybe that's the the connective tissue between them really is like Droppo being able to say. Droppo, do you think that Jose Miranda's performance from here on out will Droppo off? I can't make it work. I tried though. It's nothing like bitter. No, but yeah, I guess in that sense, he doesn't really fit. He fits in the sense that he's

not really a star, certainly wasn't entering the season or before that streak even. But name-wise, Jose Miranda, kind of boring compared to the Clings and the Pinky Higginses and the Walt Dropos. So, yeah, he can't quite compare. He doesn't really belong in that company name-wise, maybe. And I guess Pinky Higgins, not a great guy. Racist guy. Walt Dropo, seemingly pretty good guy. Anti-racist guy by the standards of his day.

Oh, okay. So wait. I'm going to ask this and I don't want to sound like by the standards of his day or like actual. Well. Because like, look, it's an important period adjustment in both directions, really. important period adjustment in both directions really. But you said that and I was like, oh, did he say things on the record in favor of

civil rights or integration? But if he's just like, I don't know, drop ball. Yeah, he seemed to be a good guy. And I guess it's maybe also the fact that he doesn't

strike out a lot, Miranda. So that's probably part of it. Even if your batting average is not super high, then it certainly helps to put the ball in play a lot. If you want to get hits on consecutive at-bats, then you can't be striking out in any of those at-bats. So he has a 13.4% strikeout rate when the league average is what, 10 percentage points higher than that. And Kling in 1902, well, I guess Fangrass doesn't even have a strikeout percentage on the player pages for that year. But yeah, all these guys kind of put the ball in play. Adropo, 13.4%. That probably wasn't anything special in 1952. Higgins in 38, 9.1%. I mean, it was easier

to do, I guess, in those days just because people put the ball in play much more often. So, that's the thing that Miranda has going for him, but it is still just sort of strange. And I think it does have a lot to do with the randomness just because, you know, balls in play, right? I mean, Miranda almost had another hit when he finally made it out. He flew out, but before he flew out, he hit a ball down the line that was just foul. If we had accepted my widen the foul lines, flare the foul lines proposal, then he probably would have had a 13th hit. Yeah. Another at bat there.

So, yeah, it's just all about is there a fielder there and does it happen to fall? And so I think it's actually pretty appropriate that it would be sort of a random assortment of guys. And now we can remember them. Droppo. I'm looking at Jose Miranda's 15 game like rolling WOBA average in BABIP and it's like

ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da. Yeah. You know, like that. It's like that. And so, yeah, of course it's this guy with the well-manicured eyebrows

and the streakiness and the low strikeout rate and reasonably good average all things considered. Yeah. It's just like ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da.

Yeah. There was Droppo was a great friend of Larry Doby, specifically. I think it's been documented and he stood up for Doby and, you know, opposed other players who denigrated Doby. So that was his qualification for good guy-ness. Yeah. I think that that is an active qualification and not just a time, an era-adjusted one. So good for him. And again, fantastic name, Dopo. Yeah.

But the thing that you have to be careful to specify when you're talking about this streak or this record. So if you go to Wikipedia, it says on the page for Major League Baseball individual streaks, it lists consecutive plate appearances with a hit. And if you go by that, and this is something that came up on a previous podcast, lest anyone direct us to the Effectively Wild wiki on the wiki for episode 1964. Maybe we're just testing people, Ben. Yeah, maybe. Just making sure nothing's getting by you. You're doing your people, Ben. Yeah, maybe. Just, you know, making sure nothing's getting by you. You're doing your homework and your research for the podcast, but yeah. Making sure that you didn't drop the ball.

Sure. So on that episode, we did a stat blast addendum where I mentioned this distinction because the consecutive plate appearance with a hit streak is 12. Kling and Dropo did that, but Higgins did not because he had a couple walks in there. And so Miranda technically did not do that either. He didn't have 12 consecutive plate appearances with a hit because he had a hit by pitch, I think, in there. So that broke up the plate appearance streak, but the at-bat streak was still alive. Alive and well. Yeah. And then he also had a streak, I think, of 13 consecutive plate appearances reaching base because of the hit by pitch, right? And that was maybe a Twins record, but not a record record.

And so there were multiple different ways to talk about this, but it was kind of confusing because at Twins, the Twins Twitter account tweeted when he got there 10 straight plate appearances with a hit, but the graphic said most consecutive at-bats with a hit. I think at that time both were true though, because he hadn't had the hit by pitch yet. So he actually had had 10 consecutive plate appearances and at-bats with a hit, but then they diverged from there. And one was true and one was not. So you have to distinguish, if you want to be accurate and technical and pedantic, between the Kling-Dropo kind of streak and the Kling-Higgins-Dropo streak, and then the Miranda streak. But they all did have hits in 12 consecutive at-bats.

So that does encompass all of them, fortunately. Wow, this is a lot to keep track of. It is. When we get down to stuff like this, I'm like, maybe we should be less pedantic because, of course, people goof up. Like, look how complicated this all is. Also, just want to shout out David Roberts robertson kind of randomly but also not i i think we mentioned him recently he

came up in passing just to note that he has still been good and he has continued to be good and he's never really been bad but he's now at the age of 39 back back to being basically peak Dave Robertson. And I mentioned I have a soft spot for him just because he's one of the last active players who dates from a time when I was still sort of a fan. And then he was the first active player, I believe, that I interviewed when I was interning for Yankees magazine and I just enjoyed him like coming up in his eye-popping peripherals that he had at the time and his strikeout rate. And it did turn out to be predictive of the kind of pitcher he'd be unlike a contemporary Yankees reliever of his Edouard Ramirez, who similarly got Yankees fans excited because he had this extreme strikeout rate, but then it turned out he wasn't really that good despite that. But David Robertson, really good and still going strong. And just looking at the career leaderboards for reliever effectiveness, he's up there as one of the best relievers ever on a per inning basis. That sounds extreme, but I don't think it is. If you look at the career ERA plus leaderboard on Stathead,

so I did at least 800 innings pitched and at least 95% of appearances in relief. David Robertson is eighth all time in ERA plus. Yeah, eighth all time. And the names ahead of him are mostly hall of famers or near hall of flamers i mean players who are much bigger names mariano rivera of course at the top billy wagner kenley jansen joe nathan francisco rodriguez hoyt wilhelm dan quisenberry david robertson right there with a 145 ERA plus. And if you go by ERA

minus, Van Graaff's way of doing that, he is still in the top 10. He has a 70 ERA minus. In this case, lower is better, whereas an ERA plus higher is better. But he's ninth or tied for ninth or tied for eighth, I suppose, in ERA minus all-time with mostly the same names. And if you look at FIP minus, so this is park-adjusted FIP, David Robertson, fifth all-time, fifth all-time among relievers with at least 800 innings pitched. It's Mariano Rivera, Kenley Jansen. Billy Wagner. Dennis Eckersley. David Robertson. With a extremely nice 69 FIP minus.

Or park adjusted FIP. Like he's top 10. Or better reliever all time. If you set the bar. 800 innings. Which I know is not super high. And people say oh Billy Wagner. Not enough innings to be a Hall of Famer. Some people, at least, though he probably will be, it seems like, and soon. But Billy Wagner has 903 career innings and David Robertson has 842 and a third. So depending on how long he keeps going, he'll probably end up with a Wagnerian innings total.

I felt like I needed to Germanize it when I was making that adjective. Yeah, you're like, I've got your ring cycle right here. Yeah, I guess David Robertson, he's won a ring, right? He won a ring, did he win? Yeah he's won a ring, right? He won a ring. Did he win? Yeah, he won a ring in 2009. I was also a co-worker of his as a Yankees intern. Didn't get a ring, though.

I was just about to ask you. Did you get a ring? I never heard of it. It's the curse of the 2009 Yankees intern class. That's why they haven't won a series since then. It's because they cheaped out and they didn't give us rings. Still paying the price. That seems easy to rectify. Yeah, I'm here

if they want to make up. Yeah, make amends. We're here. Don't you often have to pay taxes on the value of the ring, though? Maybe, but I would willingly do that. Anyway, yeah. So, David Robertson is one of the best relievers of all time,

at least by some metrics. And he seems to be about as good as ever. Like, he's striking out almost 14 guys per nine innings this year. Like, he's great, you know? And he's never done it with totally overwhelming stuff, exactly. I mean, by the standards of these days, he's not that hard a thrower really. And he's always done it with like deception and pretty good command sometimes, although he had some walk issues at various points in his career, but he has like a Houdini thing going on, you know,

guys don't see his pitches coming. He's gotten a lot of called strikes and a lot of missed bats, too. I just really like David Robertson. But we should recognize while he's still around, he's just ascending all-time reliever leaderboards, reliever boards. Reliever boards. I wonder, you know, they're not like totally out of it, but I do wonder like what, I wonder if he will end the season in a Rangers uniform, put it that way. Like, you know, if Texas decides it's an insurmountable lead, you know, for the moment by my Seattle Mariners, potentially by the Houston Astros in short order here, they have a lot of guys who obviously are core parts of the franchise they won't be interested in moving on from, but, you know, a 39-year-old reliever, that sounds like the kind of guy you try to move at the deadline if you think that you're fully out of it. So he might be, I mean, we'll just be able to see all of their transactions at some point, but he might be an interesting canary in the Rangers' coal mine early on deadline day. If Robertson's on the move, it's like, oh, maybe they're kind of thinking they're done here.

Yeah, we're getting close enough to the deadline that they're starting to be reporting about some of the teams that have been on the fringes or the periphery, you know, the Nationals. They might be trading guys. The Rangers maybe are weighing whether to do that. So yeah, these next few weeks

obviously will separate the wheat from the chaff, where the teams that consider themselves wheat from the teams that consider themselves chaff. Although, really, there's just a lot of chaff this season. You know, just like a lot of chaff, especially in the National League. And it's a funny thing to say, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Which one will you decide to be? Because they're all part of the same plant, Ben.

They are. We all contain within part of the same plant, Ben. They are. We all contain within us wheat and chaff, really. If you get me right. Yes. But you want to discard the chaff before you ingest the wheat, I guess. Sure. I'm not a farmer, but that's my understanding. You try to, but I think we all know how hard it can be to be our best selves.

So I don't know, man. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. So I neglected to wish Shohei Otani a happy 30th last week. Yeah, I know. We recorded on Otani's 30th birthday and, you know, I was going to tip my cap. Sorry for making you work on a holiday. Yeah, exactly.

That's the one that everyone was celebrating. That's why we had sort of a long holiday weekend, right? It was Otani's 30th. Before you talk about the joys of Otani, can I offer a take? This might be a preview of the Patreon pods for those listeners who haven't. Look, I understand that July 4th commemorates a particular day, right? It's like Christmas in that respect. It's not like, you know, Labor Day or Memorial Day where it's like, you know, they put it on. But here's the thing. We should observe it on a Monday or Friday. The fact that the 4th fell on a Thursday, it's not the biggest problem our country faces right now, but it is on the list of problems that our country faces because I understand that a lot of people are able to just sort of roll that into a four-day weekend. And for those people, I am so happy. I'm so thrilled for you that you had that. Maybe your workplace is cool. And like, they just like took it as an office holiday and you didn't even have to take a vacation day. Or maybe you got to do that thing where you're like, I'm going to work from home and your boss is like, me too. And then you wink at each other and then everyone doesn't do any work. Yeah, there's a lot going on of that. Yeah, arguably, right. That could work out in your favor if it's kind of just like, you know, Wednesday, Friday, are they off

days? Not exactly, but everyone's kind of treating them that way. This is why I actually liked working the day after Thanksgiving when I was still in finance, because the market was open, but it was an early close day because you can't, you know, apart from weekends, you can't keep the market closed two days in a row. So you we'd go in but we were really just there in case something blew up and so we would just end up sitting and like shopping the online black friday sales and then leaving at like one in the afternoon but some of us work at places where the expectation is that you you know if it's not a holiday and it's not the weekend that you just publish and so you do and then then you're like, why am I working today?

I'm just saying we should treat it like Labor Day. It should be like on a – you should pick the most proximate one and it can float around. And it's really an idea, man. We're not attached. It's not like – anyway, so um the fourth on a thursday what's up with that you know it's not the worst day it can be the worst day that the fourth of july can be is a tuesday because you can't take monday off and do the sneaky fake long weekend thing like that doesn't work and then you're off in the middle of the week and then you got to do three days and that's basically a normal week. So it's not the worst day it could be.

And Wednesday, arguably just as bad. It's not the worst day it could be, but it is one of the worst days it could be. And so it should be instead always on a Monday or a Friday. Thank you for listening to my TED Talk. You're welcome. Okay. Shohei Tani, turned 30. I can't believe he's younger than me. He's so tall. Took the words out of my mouth. Yeah. Shohei was a Friday birthday.

That was the actual day. And it did sort of sneak up on us, I guess, that Shohei is 30, you know, mark that milestone. Because A, he had himself a whole career before he came to the States, before he debuted in MLB. And he was still so young when he made it to MLB and was what, in his age 23 season, his first year. But because of the time that he's missed, various injuries and 2020 and everything else, it kind of crept up quickly that he's 30 already. You know, I don't want him to age. Clearly, he's still in his prime. He's better than ever,

at least offensively. But it is one of those sort of taking stock moments of a player's career when they turn 30. We did this with Mike Trout a few years ago, right? And now it's Otani's turn. And yeah, he's accomplished quite a bit in his 20s and before. And obviously, I hope that he'll prove to be a bit more durable than Mike Trout has been in his 30s, let us hope. But I bring this up not just to wish a happy belated, but also because the gift he got was an actual article about whether he should give up pitching. We talked about this recently. I alluded to it.

You questioned whether anyone was actually making this case or asking this question, should he give up pitching? I said, I'd seen a few mentions here or there, but nothing really prominent. And I said, I'd save my response until there was actually something to really respond to. Right. And now there is. And it's coming. The call is coming from inside the house here. From one of my dearest friends, in fact.

Friend of Effectively Wild's. Betraying everything we stand for. All right. Writing for the Wall Street Journal. The great Lindsay Adler, should Shohei Ohtani give up pitching? Now, look, she didn't say that he should. She's just asking questions, right? She's just asking questions. And if we go by Betteridge's law, then you might even expect that the actual article would say, no, that he should not give up pitching. It didn't really

say. It didn't come down on either side. It didn't really say, it didn't come down on either side. It just said, hey, you got to kind of think about it. And I guess you do, or probably a lot of people will. This will probably open the floodgates. There will be other people writing this article. And I'm glad Lindsay wrote it first, or at least the first recent incarnation of this column for a mainstream, prominent, reputable paper, because I think she did it responsibly. Of course. She considered the pluses and the minuses, and it is a legitimate case to be made.

I can't deny that there is a on-field argument for Shohei Otani not being a pitcher anymore, Shohei Otani not being a pitcher anymore because he's one of the best hitters in baseball, maybe the best non-Aaron Judge department or possibly Soto. And why jeopardize that if he is this great a hitter that he could be an MVP or certainly a strong MVP candidate just as a DH? And you figure with his natural athleticism and all his physical skills and his now distant but past professional outfield experience, there would seem to be nothing standing in the way of Otani being a plus, let's say, corner outfielder, right? Or even infielder. He could be a first baseman. I think he could, for now at least, be a good right fielder, let's say. Certainly has the arm for it. So if you did that, then he would add whatever defensive value he'd accrue on top of the offensive value that he is already accruing. rule out or at least make less likely that he will have another UCL replacement or just a little less wear and tear on his whole body. And maybe he could stay in the lineup more often. And war-wise,

perhaps he might be even better that way. It is certainly possible, right? If he's a good defensive outfielder and he also carries over the way that he's hitting, then he is the best player in baseball, even if he doesn't pitch, right? So that's the argument, I guess. Now, the opposite side, it's almost not really for me a war-based or value-based argument. It's more of just a fun-based argument. I guess that's what I'm saying. Ultimately, it's silly even to discuss this because it comes down to what he wants to do, probably. And to some extent, the Dodgers will have input. I guess nothing we really discuss here matters for the most part, but this especially doesn't because it just comes down to Shohei Otani's preference. And at least in the past,

he's been consistent about saying he wants to do both. He likes doing both. He thinks he's better when he does both. And as far as we know, that hasn't changed. So that will be what decides it. But from my perspective, I feel like we don't need to push him or rush him into this because the reason why he is such a transformative figure, the reason why he is a transcendent celebrity by baseball standards, modern baseball standards, is because he's a two-way player, right? Like that's pretty much it. Yes, he is an international star and he is personable and he's funny and he's handsome and he's charismatic. He would be a baseball star regardless if he were

just a good right fielder. But he would be a star the way that Aaron Judge is a star or maybe the way Juan Soto is a star, right? He would not be a star the way that Shohei Otani is a star. He would have the global or international reach, but he wouldn't stand out in a way that would get non-baseball fans or casual baseball fans excited the way that what he is doing and the unprecedented nature or not precedented in the past century or so does. And so that's, I guess, my argument just from a spectator, fan, what is best for baseball, what is most interesting perspective, I think it would be a loss. Even if he were just as valuable war-wise, even if he were more valuable war-wise, it just would not be quite as compelling if he were good in the way that other players are good, right?

Good in the way that other great players are good, but not in a unique way. great players are good, but not in a unique way. I think that that's a perfectly defensible position. And I feel like, Ben, you've been granted something of a reprieve because, you know, I think there's an argument that you could make that because, you know, it's not good that he's needed to 1.5, 1.24 Tommy Jones, right? Whatever the discount rate is on whatever version of a revision he ended up getting the second time around. But, you know, that's not good. And it does suggest that he might be more prone to elbow injuries going forward. But maybe you say, well, he doesn't have those innings on his

arm so like maybe it counterbalances that slightly i don't know that that's like a great argument but it is an argument one could make and not be like completely grasping for straws to keep him pitching i think that here's here's the the better argument from my perspective for him to continue to try to do both because he's had this season right where he's been just a hitter and he's been so magnetic and so good at the plate and has been like a an incredibly valuable member of the dodgers even though he is only dhing like you might say as many are like oh you should you should just do that but here's the thing he can all he can he should just do that. But here's the thing. He can maybe always just do that. He's doing that on the back of, again, whatever version of an elbow revision he ended up getting. So if

you have that card, right, if you have that bat in your bag, club in your bag. He's got bats and gloves. Right. Yeah. He's a midder and a hitter. He's a midder and a hitter. Except this year. He's not a midder this year, I guess. He's only a hitter this year. I mean, here's a, sorry, digression on the midder thing. Would he be a midder if he were a hitter who played the field? Would he be a midder and a hitter in that instance? Because he would have a mid. Yes, I think so.

When he's in the field, he'd be a midder. When he's in the field. So really, the only exclusive hitters are DHs by our understanding of your daughter's definition. Okay, I just wanted to make sure I understood her, you know? Like, I wanted to make sure I got what she was going for. All of that to say, like, because there's sort of this proof of concept, and he is so talented

in so many different facets, right? He has, I think, a lot of room to maneuver in terms of how his particular skills as a hitter will age, because he can do a lot of room to maneuver in terms of how his particular skills as a hitter will age because he can do a lot of different things well he's not you know he's not purely dependent on power he's not just a non-base guy he's fast but like it's not the only thing he can do because he can do all this other stuff like i don't know that there's much downside to them trying to have him

start which they clearly i think want to do and i i don't imagine that even though he's had this great season that it's really if you're the dodgers that you're really moving off of that because like you are constantly reminded that you just need more pitching you just always need more pitching even when you're the dodgers you need more pitching you could maybe construct your roster to need a little less pitching but you're still going to need pitching because they just get hurt all the time. So you let the guy try. Now, here's the thing, Ben. Here's what I think. I think if he comes back and he pitches and he pitches well, and then he gets hurt again, I don't think you see him come

back to the mount. I think in that instance, they will be be like we have given this a good college try but we don't want this guy to be constantly having to undergo like revisions or whatever yes and we we think it's time for him to concentrate solely on hitting and maybe we try him in the field sometimes but you know right I think that that's the reality of the situation. Yeah. He's on his third UCL now, I guess, or it depends what fragments they saved of the last one or whatever, but hopefully third time's the charm. And if it's not, yeah, maybe you say, this is the last UCL and we'll see how long it lasts. And then if it goes, the only counter argument I have to the he's good at this thing, let him focus on this thing is that he's doing what he's doing right now while he is recovering

from a pitching injury. So it's not as if when he gets hurt as a pitcher, he is unable to continue contributing offensively. He is doing that. He has done that before. So if it were the case that a pitching injury took him out of action entirely, then I think this would be a much stronger case because then you'd be saying, well, is it worth risking not having Otani at all for a season or more in order to maintain the two-way play?

In this case, though, you're not really losing. All you're losing is the potential for him to also play defense on top of being one of the best hitters in baseball. And that's something, right? But if he's an MVP-level player as a DH, that's the floor. That's the downside here. that's the floor. Like that's the downside here. Ultimately, I guess what it comes out to,

we've been gifted this once in a century, once in a lifetime player who does this thing that no one else can do. Let's not be in a rush to make him more conventional, especially the Dodgers don't need another win, you know, like, because the thing is as a two way player be one thing, if he'd never

shown that he could do it at a high level or in MLB, and it were all still theoretical and hypothetical, but it's not. He has been an eight to nine to 10 win player three years in a row as a two-way player pitching most of the time, right? So that's really the ceiling for him probably if he were a one-way player, even if he were playing in the field and hitting, he's not going to be better than that realistically or much better than that, right? So if we're just talking, the Dodgers could eke out another win or two here, usually they have more wins than they need, Usually they have more wins than they need, at least in the regular season, right? So I'm not eager to make this great draw, this great conversation subject a more normal player, just in the interest of min-maxing, just squeezing out the last bit of value from him at the expense of making him this incredibly entertaining spectator experience, especially when the downside, at least so far, is not that steep. It's just, oh, well, he DHs and he's still incredible.

I am sympathetic to that notion. And I think even if it doesn't end up driving every single decision or being the deciding factor driving every single decision or being the deciding factor on every single decision, like having the entertainment value of baseball as part of our decision matrix for these sorts of things, that is a worthwhile endeavor because sometimes we can lose sight of that, particularly when, as you said, we're trying to optimize perfectly and we're all obsessed with this like fractions of a win. And by the way, the Dodgers don't need to consider that. They could just consider what is best for them.

Although obviously having Otani be a big item of interest, that is of interest to them as well, right? They don't care just about the war. One reason why they signed him and why he has the kind of contract he did is that he's a big draw. He sells tickets, he sells sponsorships, et cetera. And a lot of that is because he's a two-way player. You know, if he's just your run-of-the-mill nine or 10 win player, if he's just Trout, but like better looking, sorry, I'm not saying my Trout's bad looking or anything. It's just, you know. I mean, you're just looking at them, but sure, we're not here to judge. Okay, so Ben, I've let you say all of that. And I've granted that it is compelling.

I will say, I think you are being a little optimistic. Perhaps you are leaning into the answer that you want a touch when it comes to the, oh, well, he's just he can DH and he can just do the pitching rehab on the side. I think that you are downplaying the amount of time and attention that rehabbing back from a major elbow injury takes. Right. Like it is it is taxing. And perhaps it would be something that another time around he would find more taxing. Also, he's 30 now. I don't know if you've heard. And like your ability to sort of bounce back from these things as you age might take a dip. I don't know. Like he to to try to apply like a typical person's experience of these things to a guy who is wildly atypical is perhaps silly but i do think that we should remember that like this is you know for a lot

of guys like coming back from a major injury is just all they do and it's like a full-time job on its own so let's not be hasty and assume that it would be completely fine. No worries when it might, you know, maybe like a little worry, like maybe you have a little bit of worry, you know? So I just, I'm just like, you don't have to, but like offer, you know, I'm offering a little bit, a little bit of like, Hey, whoa, whoa, Ben, hold on. Oh yeah. It's true. Yeah, the older he gets, the more mileage there is on his body, the harder it will be for him to come back from injuries

or just to do the two-way thing at all. So I do understand that at some point, he will probably have to specialize or cut back or do something more sparingly. We've kind of forecasted when and how that could happen in the past. I'm just saying for now, you know, don't kind of push the pitcher Otani off the stage until, yeah, it's time for him to go. And the last thing I guess I'll say on this is that he was an incredible hitter last year. I think this would be more persuasive to me if he had really reached

a new level. And to be clear, he's having a career year offensively, but only by a little bit compared to last year. Like he was incredible last year. So if he were like a 150 WRC plus guy, as he was a couple of times as a two-way player, and then suddenly leaped up to 180, 190, now you wouldn't know for sure, well, did he just get better because he got better or because he is not pitching and it's a lighter workload? You wouldn't know, but you could at least say, huh, well, it's certainly suggestive, right? Could be a coincidence, but maybe it's because he's just hitting and that's it. Except that last year he was almost as good while being a two-way player for almost the entire season. So if he can manage a 180 WRC plus as a two-way player, I'm willing to settle for that compared to his current 188 as a DH or as a non-pitcher, right?

And it seems like his slight improvement this season relative to last, as Lindsay noted in her piece, seems to be because he's not chasing as much. His play discipline has improved. And while you could chalk that up to less fatigue, more practice, whatever, she also notes that this is something that the Dodgers have specifically worked with him on going back to the beginning of the season. And I would also be inclined to maybe chalk it up to like Dodgers hitter development compared to Angels, right? So, yeah. So, it's not clear to me, I guess, that he can't maintain his current offensive performance while also pitching and being one of the best pitchers in baseball. So, I'm just saying, let's see if he can do it. Let's let him prove that he can't before we usher him

out. And people might say, well, he has proved that he can't. Like his UCL failed twice. So that's proof enough. And I guess that's understandable. But yeah, we got to give him one more try, right? We just got to give him one more try. And then if that one goes wrong, Eve and I may come around to accepting the inevitable. I am skeptical that that is true, but I will say this,

I won't hold it against you if you change your mind in the event that that happens. And look, we're not rooting for it to happen. So hopefully what we get is next season, we get a fully healthy, fully healthy, happy, no scandals in his even immediate environs, Otani. And he pitches great and he hits great and everyone is thrilled. And then we don't have to have this conversation for at least a year, right? Hopefully that's what we get. And if you get that for a little while and then he breaks and you're like, but I've seen it and I can't forget. And now I simply must have him being awesome and doing both. I'll be like, I understand, Ben. I mean, that's what I'll say. Yeah. Okay. Well, Lindsay asked the question. We answered the question. And so that's settled. We've nipped that conversation in the bud and no one else

needs to propose that this will happen. We'll just, you know, return to it maybe in a year or two as warranted, but glad we could get in early and settle that debate for all time. Just the thing is that like, it's been a pattern throughout his career. Whenever he does well at one thing, whenever he's, it's like the seesaw, right? Like it has to be perfectly level almost for someone not to be calling for him to specialize because when he's down on one end, when pitcher Otani is going well and hitter Otani is not doing so well, people call for him to just be a pitcher, right? That was what we were hearing when he first came over to MLB, which seems

absolutely ridiculous in retrospect and seemed somewhat ridiculous to me at the time. You know, just slow start, bad spring training. Oh, he's not a major league caliber hitter. Give me a break. But people thought, you know, scouts thought, oh, he's more of a pitcher, right? So he should just be a pitcher. And if he's a great hitter and he's heard as a pitcher, oh, he should just be a hitter, right? So he has to be good enough at both to

kind of quiet that debate. And whenever one side gets a little ahead of the other, suddenly it's, should he just specialize? So it's not the first time someone has asked this. It probably won't be the last. It's just kind of a constant in his career that up until now, at least he has answered by saying, yeah, I'm just going to keep doing both because I want to. And I'm amazing. You're so funny because you have a tone of voice that you only employ when you're talking about this man. Like it is just delightful. You are like, you know, you got a particular way of talking about your dude. There are times when you sound a little frantic about it as if I am pushing back with arguments

I'm not deploying in a force that isn't... No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't restrain my... I did invite you to consider that you were being a little overly enthusiastic, but it is just nice, Ben. I'm happy you're happy and stressed out, I guess. You do seem a little stressed about it. And you know what? I think it's okay. I think it's going to be okay. I think you're going to have a version of Otani that you can enjoy for years to come, you know? And I'm confident you'll find a way to love the Otani you have.

And if that Otani changes and becomes a hitter only, you'll still be pretty excited about him if for no other reason than like you've stayed pretty excited about him this year and he's only doing the one thing. So I think it's going to be okay I think it's going to be okay.

Yeah. Just, you know, don't take the toy away. I understand. He's not a toy. He's a human man. He's a human person. I assume he's human, but you know, if the toy breaks, then you can't play with it anymore, but don't take it away. While it's still functional. Granted, not currently functional.

Maybe this is the wrong analogy to use because he did break and sometimes you know you do you do take the toy away so that it doesn't break again right you know like you're you're the parent not me so this is i'm just speculating but like that is my understanding of what you do with children sometimes yeah i think otani's a human man but a dog though i don't know about that dog. All right. Forget I ever brought up the toy analogy because I think that hurt my argument, if anything.

All right. I wanted to shout out a little fun research that I saw from Thomas Nestico on Twitter, at TJStats. He tried to quantify the smiles of Major League Baseball players using computer vision. So he ingested all of the headshots from the MLB website and then taught his computer to register their smile, you know, to kind of draw the wideness, the degree of their smile in their headshot, and then quantified the area

of their smile, like the mouth wideness, how open, how wide is the smile, and then stacked all of those measurements up against each other and ranked all of the players by smile plus, which is just, you know, the player's personal smile over the league average smile. And so he has ranked everyone by smile plus top to bottom. And I, I wonder if there's anyone who stands out to you as having a good smile or a white or being a very smiley player. If, if anyone stands out in that respect to you, I could tell you where they rank in Smile Plus because Thomas put his whole Smile Plus spreadsheet online, which I will link to on the show page. But it's every active player. I think he did only

active players, but everyone's smile is ranked. Now, obviously, it's only their smile in their headshot, which was taken in spring training, presumably. So that may or may not be representative of overall smiliness. We would have to see. This is like, you know, not an in-game environment. This is like the antiseptic, the lab environment of photo day, where the pants are transparent and maybe you're worried about your pants showing and what's under your pants. Yeah, and maybe that reduces, maybe that dims your smile somewhat.

But just going purely based on photo day smile. And I'd imagine there might be some correlation between your smile in posed photos and your actual natural smile. I know that a lot of people, myself included, have trouble with just fake smiles in photos. Like I have to be made to laugh somehow or else it just kind of looks weird. And I'm not that, I kind of, I think because I'm sort of a low affect person, I think I give an impression of like not being that smiley, but I am smiley. I'm a good natured guy.

I smile. I chuckle. I laugh a lot. You're a good natured guy. I mean, I think you're right to describe yourself as sort of low affect. Not low effect. Very effective person. Very effective Very effective Oh gosh who's Smiley

I don't know who's Smiley in their In their photo Like in their roster photo I don't have like a great Who's at the top The number one player by Smile Plus Is the Cleveland Guardians John Kenzie Noel

Who has a by Smile Plus is the Cleveland Guardians' John Kenzie Noel, who has a 360 Smile Plus. So, like, 360. Like, that much percent above the average smile. So, it's scaled like WRC Plus, right? Yes. He's showing a lot of teeth. Like, you can see all of his top and bottom teeth in the smile. It's just, you know,

now there are limitations to this method. So I would suggest, and you can look at John Cantinoel's headshot smile. I would say it doesn't fully encompass his eyes necessarily. Like he's showing a lot of teeth, like his mouth has pulled back to reveal the teeth and it's clearly a smile. But I don't know, it's not quite as beaming as you would expect, like in the eye area, I think, for the number one overall smile. It's still, it's a good smile. It's a nice smile. It's just,i Noel, number one. And then number two on the Smile Plus leaderboard is Adiel Amador of the Rockies. You know, it's not necessarily the most famous players at the top of the Smile Plus leaderboard. But then number three, Adley Rutschman. And here's the thing. Number four, I would say if you're constructing a smile plus leaderboard using computer vision and you want to check that kind of with the eye test and common sense, you have to have Francisco Lindor high on the smile plus leaderboard, right? Like it's pretty much invalidated if it says that Francisco Lindor does not have a good smile.

I guess it's not a qualitative judgment necessarily. It's not good or bad smile. It's just like most or least smile. Well, wait. It prioritizes big smile. Big smile. Yeah. Yeah.

So not necessarily how natural or how, yeah, just does it make you want to smile? Yeah. Right. And you could have like a, you know, you could have a coy little smile. And this would not reflect your coy little smile. Right. And you could have like a, you know, you could have a coy little smile and this would not reflect your coy little smile. This would only, and look, some of us feel like we're normal looking and then we see pictures of ourselves and we're like, is that what I look like? Right. You know, so like maybe you're self-conscious on picture day or to your point, like maybe you are aware of how sheer your pants are.

Although maybe like you see your sheer pants and you like what you're working with and you're like, Hey, you know, and you have a big smile. It's a recent smile. Yeah. Yeah.

If you have like a Mona Lisa smile now, you would have to say the Mona Lisa has a high smile. Plus, I mean, her smile has captivated people for centuries. Right. But by this method, I would think that she would have a very low smile.

Yeah. Cause her, her lips are almost pursed. You know, you can't see any teeth. It's like an enigmatic smile. It's a hint of a smile. And some of us have thin lips, you know? We have thin-ish lips. And then are we supposed to feel bad about that?

We spent our teenage years trying to teach ourselves not to feel bad about that, you know? We had to, like like do work in therapy. And Thomas mentions in the Medium post that accompanies this that there are a few limitations, not only the fact that we're dealing with a small sample smile here. This is one single smile and it's not necessarily representative of all of your smiles. But also even on picture day, not even all of your picture day. Exactly right. This is just a snapshot. Literally, it's a moment in time. of your smiles. Right. But also. Even on picture day, not even all of your picture day smiles. Exactly. Right. This is just a snapshot, literally.

Right. It's a moment in time. But some of the limitations, A, facial hair can sometimes be an issue because sometimes the computer vision method might register like a goatee as part of the smile. Like a beard even. That would be so great. Which throws things way off. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, Thomas had to do

a little manual checking because there were some players who were like off the scale even though they weren't smiling at all and it was that like their goatee was registering as part of the smile. That's so funny. So there's that and then lip thinness can sometimes cause complications and also

if your lip skin color matches your overall skin tone, like if the lip tone versus the skin tone aren't very differentiated, then sometimes this model would have trouble distinguishing and thus mapping the exact boundaries of the smile accurately. So, the exact boundaries of the smile accurately. So all of these things can cause complications, right? But on the whole, I would say the results look fairly reasonable, just scanning the top and bottom of the leaderboard. Clearly, it's directionally right, I would say.

Right. So you've got Francisco Endor number four. Now, how fitting is this? Ryan Bliss of the Mariners is fifth. I mean, how could Ryan Bliss not be high on a smile? Come on. You should call it Bliss Plus, right? And then you have Nathaniel Lowe, John King, Nick Allen, Andrew Monasterio, Ryan Lutis.

He just keeps coming up over and over. We met a major leaguer and he smiled right back. Walker Bueller, James McCann, Randy Rosarena, Tristan McKenzie, Corey Jolks. You know, just good smiles, good smilers. Obviously, you wonder, well, who's not smiling? Who's at the bottom? And at the bottom, we have Francisco Alvarez. So there are, I guess, a few guys with a – actually, several guys with a zero smile plus.

So they're just tied at the bottom. As far as the model is concerned, they're just not smiling at all. And most of them, that's fairly accurate. Some guys, they just, they don't really smile in the photo days, you know, and sometimes it varies based on the year and what kind of mood are you in that day. And so Francisco Alvarez, Joe Kunal of the Blue Jays, and Slade Ciccone, and Chris Stratton, Raymond Burgos, Graham Pauly, Chase Anderson, Cole Wynn, Cody Bradford, Zidane Raffaella, and Ricardo Pinto. Oh, and Nico Horner. They're all zero smile plus. And there's some variability. Some of them, I would say, are certainly not smiling at all. They're purely zero smile plus. And there's some variability. Some of them I would say are certainly not smiling at all.

They're purely impassive. And others, there's a little bit of a smile there, but just not a very wide one. So there's some variability, I think, in the accuracy. But on the whole, if you scroll up very quickly, you have one of those flip books with the pictures in it, and it shows a moving image as you flip. If you sort of scroll up very quickly, it looks like the smiles are getting wider as you go. So I think Thomas is on to something here. I think that Ryan Bliss has a very kind face.

He has a kind looking face. I think this is one of the better stats i've ever heard of um i think that one thing that a great stat does is give you grist for the mill in terms of conversation and what what better you know than something like this i do uh also appreciate when the creator of a stat acknowledges its limitations and we've anticipated several of them the lip skin versus like face skin color thing makes me think that we should ask all of them to wear lipstick on picture day you know because then you don't have to then you have like a you have a you know consistent canvas right and everybody is wearing it has to be the same color and i know that the same color isn't going to complement everyone's skin tone and that's a sacrifice

they'll have to make for science um but uh they have to be clean shaven they have to uh wear a lipstick and then um and then they should smile in the way that feels natural because I'm sure that those environmental considerations won't change the way that they feel in their own bodies at all. Right, exactly. Bringing up the lip tone, skin tone thing makes me think, I mean, sometimes when you have these computer vision, facial recognition technologies, they have kind of a built-in bias to them, right? Against certain

races, let's say, because it's like trained on, you know, and it will like be more perceptive with white faces, let's say, than with black or brown faces. Like that sometimes is something that you need to correct for. And so I wonder whether that's an issue here with SmilePlus. It doesn't, I can't tell that that's the case, just scanning the leaderboard. It seems to be a pretty diverse group at the top and the bottom. But that's something you always have to be vigilant for. And I don't know whether that would lead to bigger or smaller smiles or just more variability or inaccuracy in the results. But yeah, I'm sure that's something that could be taken into account

with future versions of this. Not that there needs to be a future version of this because we didn't even need a present version of this necessarily if this is one of those. But why, though? I guess there are two reactions. There are people who would see this and say, but why do we need to quantify smiles? Because we can recognize a smile. Like that's one of those things that's pretty hardwired into most people. You know, you can do smiles and recognize smiles. Most people from a very early age, because it's pretty important evolutionarily speaking to see if like someone likes you or hates you. Right.

And so why do we have to put a number? What is with this incessant drive, this desire to quantify absolutely everything when it comes to baseball? That's one reaction you could have. And then another reaction you could have, which is our reaction is, oh, this is so cool. We put a number on smiles now. It's not because we couldn't recognize smiles and the wideness thereof previously. We were able to do that, but something about attaching a number to it and ranking and producing a leaderboard, that just tickles me. Why is the skin on your mouth different than the skin on your face? Oh, I don't know. Why is the skin on your face different than the skin on the rest of

your body? What's up with that? Probably different kinds of skin, different textures. Well, yeah, I thought they were different kinds of skin, Ben, but I'm wondering why are they different? The lip skin, you know, it's got to be moist all the time. I guess the really important question is this, Ben. Why is your lip skin different than your butt skin? You know, like why is it different than your skin? Why is your lip skin different than your butt skin?

You know, like, why is it the same skin? We're going to get emails, and I'm a little apprehensive about the content. Look, sometimes you have a question, and you have to ask it because you don't understand. You just don't understand. I don't understand. Like, why? Anyway. Okay. Well, we've raised that question and answered others and i guess uh i'll share one

stat of my own here we've been getting a lot of emails and we even did a stat blast about teams hovering around 500 this season because there are just so many teams seemingly in the vicinity of 500 especially like in the National League. You know, people won't separate themselves from the pack in either direction. So you have a bunch of mediocrity in the middle there. I guess you always have mediocrity in the middle, but it's an extra wide middle. Almost everyone's in the middle these days. because we kept getting these questions and even answered some about what it was the Red Sox and the Padres and the Rays and the Pirates and the Mets, maybe like a lot of them have spent a lot

of days at 500 and maybe even a lot of consecutive days at 500. And I thought, gosh, we've gotten this question about several different teams at this point. Maybe it's just a league-wide effect. What with all that compression, is this just an especially 500 season? Like, are we going to have a record number of total team days at 500? And I put that question to Frequent Stat Blast correspondent, Ryan Nelson, and he had data back to 73 and just looked at that as kind of a gauge of whether this is an extraordinarily 500-ish season. And he looked at the percentage of team days ending at exactly 500. Of course, you could do within a certain number of games of 500 and that would change things, but exactly at 500. And he said, shorter seasons tend to have higher percentages because it's easier to be at 500 exactly earlier in the season, which makes sense. I think, you know, once you fall far below or you soar high above, then you're not going to be back at exactly 500 for a while. And so 2020 is the record in this time period for this reason, this past 50 plus seasons,

because it was short. But 1974 was second and wasn't a season that was shortened like that. And so 7.1% of total team days ending at 500, that would be the mark to beat. And as of now, That would be the mark to beat. And as of now, the number through Monday's games is 5.9%. So we're up to 159 days at 500 as of today out of 2,673 total games. So, or, you know, I guess that's for both teams, right? So 5.9%, but that sounds like, you know, a fair amount, not a record, but it would be, it's fourth in the timeframe if you compare to other full seasons, but we're still just a little bit past the halfway point. And so

it is dropping and it's actually not that notable for this part of the season. So it looks like we're on track to not have that extreme a total team 500 days season. And only the Rays, Mets, and Diamondbacks have been at 500 for any day this month. So I guess there are only a few teams that are really actively adding to that total. And so the percentage is falling and falling. And I guess it could always come back up again, but it looks like we're not actually on track for some extreme outlier days at 500 season. So I guess it's mostly a few teams that have generated all of these discussions of like, we can't break free of 500, but it's not really that notable on the whole. 1974, that was the most 500 full season.

Okay. Yeah. I bet if you broke it down some other way, a certain number of games within in one direction or another, maybe it would look a little more notable. And maybe we'll revisit it at the end of the season because there will certainly be, I think, a compressed race and compressed standings. If not, you know, a lot of things have to go right to be exactly at 500 instead of just barely off. So there's just sort of some happenstance that comes into play here. Yeah, that makes sense. The Diamondbacks were at 500, and then Paul Seawald lose third save in a row, and then they were not

anymore. They were going to go over, and then they went under instead. Well, last thing here, I've got what I hope will be a treat for listeners. I hope it will not be an assault on their eardrums, but this will be a little something out of the norm for us.

We got some emails and tweets and I got some cheap chats from people who are on padded wall watch over the weekend because we had yet another instance in a long line of instances of a player punching a wall and breaking a hand. How many times has it happened? Dozens, as far as I can tell. Yeah. And really, any time that this happens is too many, because as we have covered, it's avoidable, or at least theoretically avoidable. So the latest, can you call him a victim? I mean, clearly a victim of his own crime, victim and perpetrator in this case. Colton Brewer of the Cubs had a not good outing, gave up a few runs, although I think only one was earned and there were some errors involved, but it was a sloppy outing and it put the Cubs further behind and he was frustrated with himself. And so he came back into the dugout,

and he punched the wall. And as often happens when a hand punches a wall, the wall won, and the hand lost, and the hand broke. And now Colton Brewer is out for quite a while. He's on the 60-day injured list. And he did have the foresight not to use his pitching hand, right? He did have the foresight not to use his pitching hand, right? So he took the Crash Davis, Bull Durham advice, and he used his other hand. The thing is, though, that pitchers, they're not hitters, but they are mitters, right? They're pitchers and mitters. And the thing is, if they break their non-pitching hand, that's still their fielding hand.

You know, they still have to wear a glove on there. And so they still can't pitch if they have a broken hand, even if it's their other hand. Although I guess now that I think about it, that's kind of an interesting calculus. Like, what if you could pitch without a mid? Right. And you just, I mean, it's not like pitchers have to field that many balls and some of them are slow rollers that you could barehand, except that the catcher is often throwing balls back to the pitcher. a liability if anyone's on base, how are you going to get the ball back to the guy without the runner taking the base unless you're throwing it hard enough that you're then going to sting the pitcher's pitching hand and then that will affect his pitching? Trying to find some way out of this, but I guess there's no great solution, right?

But Colton Brewer, he is a right-handed pitcher. He broke his left hand, but that will still keep him out of action for a while. And look, he, as many players who have done this in the past, they're always contrite after the heat of the moment and they apologize. And Brewer said, emotions just get the best of us sometimes. What comes to mind the most is letting my family down, friends, teammates, people of Wrigleyville. It's kind of heartbreaking to me right now. Craig Council said Colton, after he came out of the game, made a mistake, clearly out of frustration. It's something that he regrets, clearly. It's something

you don't want to have happen. It's unfortunate. And now the consequence is you're going to find yourself with a broken hand and on the injured list for quite a while. Yeah. And Craig, I've got great news. If this is something you don't want to have happen, you can do something to stop it from happening. As we have said multiple times in the past when this has happened, pad the walls. Yeah. Just pad the walls. We've said if you don't want to pad the walls, you could put up a punching bag.

Right. And that is padded in effect. And players could take out their aggression on the punching bag potentially. And, you know, we've had, I'd say, a nuanced discussion of this subject where we don't want to condone the punching. Ideally, you would prevent the emotions get the best of you or those particular emotions. Find some healthier, less destructive way to channel that frustration and just don't punch. Don't punch at all. But if you have to punch, punch something soft. And if you're a team or if you're Major League Baseball and you're interested in player health and safety, you could even say the Players Association, the union. You want safe working conditions. Your members, they keep punching hard objects. And we know that this is going to happen. You can't prevent it from happening, seemingly, or at least teams have not managed to do that yet. So why not try to treat the symptom then and put up pads on the walls?

That's all. Like there are pads on the benches because you put your butt down on those and you don't want to sit on a hard bench, nor do you want to punch a hard wall. And so since you're sometimes going to be punching that, why not just put some pads up? Like it doesn't seem that hard, you know? It really doesn't. It doesn't seem like a big expense. It doesn't seem like a huge hassle. This has been happening for decades, typically with pitchers, but sometimes position players too. Why can't we do? What's the resistance?

What do you think is the, like, if it prevents one fracture, one broken hand, which it surely would have. Because this has happened multiple times since we started advocating for the solution. If it just saved one Colton Brewer, it would be worth it. I mean, just do a dollars per war calculation, if not a human suffering one. What's the downside here to padding though? The punching bag, we acknowledge maybe that encourages aggression. Maybe it sends the signal that aggression is okay. Maybe you put up the punching bag and then people are more conditioned to let out anger that way and they will punch in context where there is no bag. Maybe it makes the problem worse in some way, but just padding

the walls in the dugout, in the tunnel, in the clubhouse to be safe, lockers, right? Why not? Give me one good reason why not. I don't have one. I don't have a counter. Yeah. You could provide the, if not opposing, at least a tempering viewpoint when it comes to Shohei Otani's future. But when it comes to just padding surfaces in the vicinity of the dugout, I just do not see an argument against it. And I think the padding surfaces sort of lets you thread the needle because like, you know, you don't want you want people to have healthy expressions of feeling and you don't want them to hurt themselves. And you want to sort of equip them with the tools to be able to feel the feeling without being controlled by the feeling. Right. Like you're you're frustrated. That's real. We don't need to pathologize frustration. That's a normal thing to feel, but you need to be able to feel it without it becoming

something that completely overwhelms your ability to do other stuff or to, you know, treat yourself with kindness and care, right? So like, I sound like a really freaking terrible TikTok therapist, but like, that's what you're aiming for, right? But also, we should acknowledge that these are hyper-competitive young men. Yes. And sometimes the moment is going to overwhelm them. And so I think if we have padding, then you are helping to sort of protect them from the moments when it gets away from them. But you're not like with a punching bag, you're not actively encouraging it, right? So I think it threads the needle really nicely.

And who wouldn't mind? The only possible pushback I could see is if it seems like you're infantilizing the players, like, oh, we know you can't control your impulses. So we're just, you know, like padded walls in some sort of institution, right? Like we know you're going to hurt yourself. You're, you're unable to exercise restraint. And so we are going to pad the walls. Right. But it's kind of true. But then you point to precedent and you're like, Hey, you know, like, um, I'm not saying you earned the reputation, but I'm saying that some young men like you have earned it for the entire category. And so let's give people a soft landing as it were, you know what I mean? Literally.

Yeah. Literally. Yeah. And aesthetically speaking, I don't see any problem with the pads. So again, I mean, you could say it's a health and safety thing.

You could say it's a competitive advantage, however you want to frame this to make teams or players or, or the league. So isn't it just nice to lean against if you're in the dugout and it's soft back there, like, oh, comfy. Yeah. Or in the clubhouse or in the locker. Maybe it would get wet, you know, like maybe they're worried about, but then you just replace the foam. Yeah. It doesn't seem like a big deal. Anyway, we've made this appeal previously verbally and that hasn't worked.

And players are still punching and they're still suffering the consequences. And I thought, well, maybe if we express this in the form of a song, maybe that will get through to people. And so I was moved musically over the weekend when I saw this Colton Brewer news. And I said, I have to just speak or in fact sing from the heart. And so I'm going to record a song here. I'm just going to play everyone a little tune, a little ditty. They will, I think, recognize the tune. It's a famous one. I didn't write it.

It's set to the tune of the famous folk country song, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, recorded by countless artists. And now I'm among their number, except that this is kind of a Weird Al version of that song. It's Will the Bird Bones Be Unbroken. So we have to bring everyone up to speed. I guess that the bird bones, that's a term you coined for the little bones that players break sometimes. Often we say this in the context of a hit by pitch, you know, you get hit by a thrown ball and you break your bird bones, but you can also break, yeah, you can break bird bones by punching them into a wall, you know, your metacarpals, your phalanges, et cetera. Or kicking them, right? Like I think of bird bones the way you think – you might think of labrums, right? Where it's like you have some in your shoulder, you have some in your hip. I don't know why it sounded like that for a minute.

You have bird bones in your hands and you have bird bones in your little feet and ankles. and you have bird bones in your your little feet and ankles so sometimes the bird bones you break are your your little fingies and sometimes the bird bones you break are like the those weird what's with those weird bones on top of your feet you know like the those ones you know well they're so stupid and they wear a guard there you know um not everyone but a lot of guys they'll wear a a guard over their their foot um you foot, at least the front side foot. But yeah, sometimes, man, you break your little bird bones and they take a long time to heal. They can really get you, even though they are tiny, they are destructive when damaged. Yes. And there are instances of players kicking, kicking caused fractures in the dugout, Jared Kelnick, Pat Zachary, et cetera. But I'm really limiting the scope of my who have had this befall them and came up

with about 20 actually. And all of them that I've been able to locate thus far will appear in the song. And I guess that's probably enough buildup. So I'll just treat you to this tune here. I'm going to get my Gillian Welch, Johnny Cash, Carter family on, except I guess it's really the Lindbergh Barber family because I'll be bringing in my lovely wife, Jessie Barber, who is the composer and performer of the Meet a Major Leaguer and Stat Blast songs.

So this will be me on vocals. I've got my guitar here and Jessie on harmonies and violin. Colton Brewer gave up three here and Jesse on harmonies and violin. Will the bird bones be unbroken? Why oh why, Leek, why oh why? Never patted, who else awaited? Please just try, Leek, please just try.

Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson, Sean Rodriguez, Phil Natal, Tim Worrell, Dwayne Walker, Drew Stalbrant, Doyle Alexander, and Nick Cagadon. Will the bird bones be unbroken? Why oh why, League? Why oh why? Never patted Who was awaiting? Please just try, League, please just try Hunter Strickland

Darren Dolphin Khalil Green Edwin Nunez Oscar Rendoa Bronkberg, Yancey Cull your green edge with New Year's Oscar and Noah Brock, Bert, Kent, Tyler, O'Neal Brian, Matthews, Julian, Tavares Will the bird bones be unbroken? Why oh why, Leek, why oh why?

Never patted who was away Oh, why? They're panning Who else are waiting? Please just try Lee, please just try I'm not counting Kicks, cuts, or bruises Just fractured forearms Fingers and hands They can't help it

It keeps happening So it's time to take a stand Will the bird bones be unbroken? Why oh why, Leek, why oh why? There were padded o'er us awaiting Please just try, Leek, Please just try, league Please just try In the dugout In the clubhouse

In the tunnel Lockers too Make them softer Put up a punching bag MLB It's the least you could do Oh, will the bird bones be unbroken? Y-O-Y, League, Y-O-Y. Never had it. Who else will weigh it in? Please just try, League. Please just try.

Please just try Thank you, darling. My pleasure. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you did, wouldn't blame you if you didn't. And considering the way Colton Brewer has pitched lately, I know some Cubs fans may not miss him. But hopefully you feel for his hand, at least. If you did skip the song, you can find the lyrics linked on the show page.

And hey, congrats to Jose Ruiz of the Phillies. 90 second career game finished on Tuesday. 13 behind Ryan Webb. I think I feel another song coming on. And so that's probably my cue to end this episode. If you'd like to support the podcast and all of my musical endeavors, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Help pay for some guitar lessons.

You can do so by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild help pay for some guitar lessons you can do so by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks damon jeff bramhall brandon nick tabor and john calicious thanks to all of you patreon perks include access to the effectively wild discord group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check podcast at vangraphs.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 or your podcast app for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. super une fête je pense que c'est effectivement cool je pense que c'est effectivement wild effectivement sauvage effectivement sauvage