Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2195: To Trade, or Not to Trade

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mason Miller’s hand fracture, the extremely slow pitches of Ildemaro Vargas, a Dylan Cease no-hitter, the punchless Mariners, the impending return of Rich Hill, what the teams with the toughest decisions at the trade deadline should do, updates on Clayton Kershaw (good!) and Mike Trout (not good!), Christian […]

Hey everyone, Ben here, a couple updates before we proceed. Meg and I started out the episode you're about to hear by talking about Mason Miller's hand fracture. Initially it was reported by an MLB.com beatwriter that Miller had fractured his hand punching a training table out of frustration. Then that report was retracted, and the same reporter said that actually Miller had hurt his hand by merely leaning on the training table as he was preparing to do some sort of exercise.

That was the latest when we recorded. Before the A's game, however, A's manager Mark Katze clarified what had actually happened. Turns out that the original report was right, and the reporter had retracted it after getting a message from Mason Miller's agency claiming that that original report had been incorrect. But in fact, it was that quote unquote correction that was incorrect. It was an incorrect. As Katze said, there's some speculation the original statement is pretty accurate. Mason's agent might have thought differently and made a statement of his own, how we do things here in

this organization is to tell the truth. Not everyone in the A's organization is known for that, but okay, maybe below the ownership level. The truth is post-game Monday night after being done with his pitching, Mason came in the training room and was going through his recovery. He was reminded that he had a post-game lift to get in. Out of a little frustration, he just kinda pounded his fist down on a padded training table out of emotion. We've all been there, done that. Not sure we all have. Unfortunately it resulted in a fracture in his non-pitching hand in his left hand where his pinky area is. So now you know, Miller did in fact fracture his hand punching a padded surface which is a blow to my proposed solution of padding every area in the vicinity of the dugout to prevent fingers and hands from being broken.

Secondly, we talk about the Mariners and their lack of offense and what if anything they can do to rectify that at the trade deadline? Well, turns out they've already done something. They've acquired Randy Rosarena from the race. So as you listen to our discussion, you can hear just how acutely they needed to trade for someone like a Rosarena. And now I'm gonna get on with the rest of this episode before any other updates are required. Hello and welcome to episode 2195 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaffs. Hello Meg.

Hello. I am relieved because it was reported initially on Thursday afternoon that Mason Miller had fractured a metacarpal by punching a padded training table, which would have been a big blow to my initiative, my campaign to get clubhouse and dugout surfaces padded. That's been my whole movement. That's my platform. I wrote a song about it. So that would have been a real setback if he had punched a padded surface and still broken a metacarpal. And it was confusing at first because it was reported that he had punched the training table after a win.

And not only after a win, but after he closed out a win with a one, two, three inning, an 11 pitch inning. So I was wondering what was he so frustrated that he was punching some surface about? Usually that comes after a loss or at least a bad outing for the player. But then there was a subsequent report. It turns out that he did not in fact punch the training table. He was leaning on it as he was trying to perform some sort of exercise. And that is how he had this fracture of a bird bone. So I guess it

reinforces the these bird bones being a problem. Yeah. But at least it wasn't a punch. I find it so interesting that you find this comforting, right? Because I think you're right that in terms of the potential efficacy of padding, this doesn't necessarily call it into question. Although it doesn't suggest that it offers tremendous protection if the simple force of one's weight is enough to render it obsolete. But what's going on with Mason Miller's bones? That was, cause like, look, Mason Miller's a strapping young guy, he's a big dude. He's a professional athlete, so there's muscle in there, you know?

And as you noted, bird bones notoriously tiny, fickle, prone to breakage. But also, what's going on with your bones, sir? What's up with those bones? Those bones seem more fragile than normal. And look, I'm not a doctor, but I am someone who's willing to say, sounds like too fragile a bone, you know? Sounds like too fragile of your bones. What's up with your bones? I'd be like, hey, I have this break, we got to resolve that. That's the most pressing sort of immediate issue. But long term, do I need to take supplements or like, should I get a bone density scan? And I want to be clear, I'm adopting a playful tone here because as far as we know, as we're recording, there's actually

nothing wrong with his bones other than this one is broken. If there's anything actually wrong with Mason Miller's bones, then I wish him well and hope that they are on the mend literally and figuratively quite soon. But what's up with those bones? He's not that big a guy, you know? No, he's listed at 200 pounds. I guess if you placed your entire 200 pound weight at an awkward angle on a- Wait, did he slip? Did he slip?

Was that- No, that's not the report. Unless this is some kind of cover story or something, we're getting into conspiracy theories, Mason Miller, Metacarpal truthers, but- No, I'm not a truther of any kind. I guess I have at times maybe bruised myself by leaning on something awkwardly, but I've broken anything. So that is sort of strange. Yeah, I guess because it was a padded surface, if you could break a bird bone merely by leaning on one, then that suggests that you could

probably also break one by punching it, I guess. This is what I'm saying. It's not damning, but it isn't great. You feel like you got off the hook, but I don't know that you did. I think you might still be hooked here. Maybe it wasn't well padded. I don't know. Now we're making fun of the AIDS facilities, people.

That could be part of it. Maybe John Fisher didn't pay for thick pads or just meager thin pads. Meager, meager. Anyway, we wish him well. We do. Hope his healing proceeds. Although I guess this takes him off the trade market to the extent that he was on the trade market.

This dooms him, I suppose, to finishing the season with the athletics, at least, if not necessarily making the trip to Sacramento. I think that you're right, but mostly because I didn't think him likely to be traded anyway. There's so much team control involved with Mason Miller and it is his non-pitching hand. It changes the trade calculus some, obviously, because he's not going to be immediately available, but it doesn't sound like it's like a season ending kind of thing, you know? That's like, uh, uh-oh, what's up with your bones? What is up with his bones, Ben? What's up with those bones? Benji His bones are strong enough to withstand

the force of his pitching. So some of his bones must be good. Katie Well, I mean, to be clear, Mason Miller has not always been able to a stand the fourth day of his pitching. Well, that's a good point. But that hasn't really been a bone-related issue historically. I guess it makes sense that soft tissue would be thinnikier. That's hard.

That's maybe so hard that it's not a word. Maybe that's a sign that it shouldn't be a word. I was gonna start before the Mason Miller news broke and before his Metacarpal broke, I was gonna start with the opposite of Mason Miller from a speed perspective, which is Ildemar Ovargas, who is on the Nationals and is not normally a pitcher, but he pitched on Wednesday and he pitched extremely slowly.

And I don't mean his between pitch pace. I mean the pace of his actual pitches. He threw some pitches, the likes of which we rarely see. And he pitched actually a scoreless inning. So he got the job done. He gave up a couple hits, but worked around it and now has four career innings with a 2.25 ERA. So good for him. However, he really tested the lower boundaries of how slowly you can throw. And he threw some pitches.

His slowest was clocked at 32.8 miles per hour. Yeah. And he gave up a single to Donovan Solano on a 33.4 mile per hour pitch, but that was not the slowest that he threw. What is that super slow on base? I mean, that pitch made LeBron Hernandez look like Nolan Ryan. 33 miles an hour. 33? Might be the slowest pitch recorded.

I don't know. It's gotta be close. I'd say in the stat cast era, there's a chance. His max in the outing was 67.6, which, you know, that's probably harder than I could throw so he can get it up there, but also he can get it down there. So his pitches, I'll just, he had threw 12 pitches or no, I'm sorry. He topped out at 72.2. That's, you know, respectable for a position player pitcher.

So he went 41.8, 33.4, 35.3, 33.3, 63.8, which, you know, going from 33 to 63 or 64, that's, he's changing speeds, right? Right, yeah. And, and then back to 32.8. So that's, you know, 30, that's Zach Granke-esque, those changes of speed, 39.6, 38.2, 67.6, 44.4, 72.2, and 51.2. The final one was a slow curve. I guess the slow goes without saying, but he was throwing fastballs in the upper 60s, low 70s, and then Ephesus, Ephi in the thirties or forties. And that is, you know, it's not, I guess, the theoretical limit of how slowly you can throw a pitch, but it's getting there. It's getting close because there was a Bill Simmons tweet, my current boss before he was

my boss, like almost 15 years ago, he tweeted something about a, a bar room debate, just like how slowly could you throw a pitch theoretically and still have it cross the plate. And that prompted a number of people to weigh in, including Neil deGrasse Tyson and Mike Fast, former analyst for the hardball times and baseball prospectus and currently with Atlanta, he disputed some of what Tyson had said. And yeah, there was a nerd fight over this because Tyson said 30 miles per hour. And then Mike said, well, yeah, but he's not accounting for backspin and he's not accounting for how high you'd release the pitch.

And so Mike's calculations were that it would actually be somewhere in the, the 27 mile per hour range, like 26 to 28. But then Neil deGrasse Tyson fired back with a hardball times comment, which I did not notice until this week when I looked at Neil deGrasse Tyson, Heart Ball Times commenter, and he then weighed in and defended some of the assumptions that he had made and said that it was false precision to specify like 27.4 miles per hour and that roughly 30 is the best you could do. So if we assume it's 30-ish or high 20s, I guess they agreed on that much, then this is kind of close to as slowly as you could throw a pitch. And I searched for in the

pitch tracking era on baseball savant, the slowest tracked pitches and Vargas's outing was actually not the slowest that have ever been thrown. Brock Holt, back in August of 2021 against the A's when Holt was with the Rangers, Brock Holt bottomed out at 30.1 miles per hour. So that is really testing the limits. And Matt Chapman singled, it actually kind of impresses me that hitters are able to time this because they never see that. And Matt Chapman, he waited and he waited and he waited and he singled on the slowest tracked pitch that we have on record. Although he then got thrown out at second trying to stretch the single into a

double. Yeah. But it almost impresses me that Solano could single or Chapman could single on those pitches. Because if you're usually seeing 90 plus, and then even if you say, okay, it's a position player pitcher, he's not going to be throwing 90 plus, still to recalibrate and say, I'm going to hit 30. That's actually kind of impressive. And, you know, I'm more inclined to side with Mike fast than Neil deGrasse Tyson, which I probably would have been anyway. Neil deGrasse Tyson, despite being the ultimate pedant and constantly correcting others.

And you know, we're pedants too. It's part of our shtick here, but like we have fun with it. You know, I feel like we're, we try not to be scolds. Yeah. I like to think that our vibe is like markedly better, you know? I would hope. Yeah. But DeGrasteisen saying 30, well, Holtz threw through 30.1 and that pitch, you know, it could have been slower, I think. It got there. I think it definitely could have been a few miles per hour slower. So I'm more inclined to think that something like 27 is the slowest you could throw. So it's possible that there was a slower

pitch that just wasn't tracked because sometimes the extremes don't get tracked. Right. They register as errors or whatever. If they're registered at all, you know, if it's, yeah, if at all. And still like they've been close and Dominic Smith, he threw sub 32 Frank Schwendell. He threw a 32 mile per hour pitch. So that's the, the 32 mile per hour club. Roughly. It's a rock hole. Dominic Smith, Schwendell, and I guess Vargas, if you don't

round up to 33. Katie Soule That's amazing. Didn't this inspire Mike Petriello to wonder what exactly that is? Didn't he tweet about these pitches? Michael O'Reilly I didn't see the tweets. Katie Soule Right, to think about that. Someone pedantically was like, it's an ethos and like sent him a link to Wikipedia. And I don't like it when my friends get, you know, like rude, playfully rude mentions on the internet. But I will say that it does make me feel a little bit better when it happens to men too.

It's like when you get emails about your vocal inflection and I'm like, oh, this is no, normally these go to me. I don't know what's with my voice today. I mean, I even inviting more email. We might get one about that last sentence. There's a lot of dispute about EFAS and the correct definition of an EFAS. This I think passes the EFAS test for me because if it's just a slow pitch, that is not enough. But if it's that slow and if it's the right trajectory and a lob really,

then I think that that counts. And yeah, Mike tweeted, I've absolutely never seen a pitch thrown like this before. I think that was part of it. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't just that it was slow or an EFIS. It was the way Vargas released it, which was like, he was getting off of a horse. Yeah. And it was like he was throwing a dart maybe, but even that probably you'd you'd have more force behind the dart throw. It was more like maybe a beer pong release.

That's I guess what I would liken it to because it was like a extremely weak shot put. Yeah. Maybe it was just with the little dismount at the end, you know, yes. And a little like side skip or hop or something. Got put? Yeah. Maybe. It was just- With the little dismount at the end, you know? Yes, and a little like side skip or hop or something. Yeah, it's getting up for worse. And now I'm picturing you playing beer pong and that's also funny, you know?

That hasn't happened in a very long time. Yeah. Yeah. We're respectable now, you know? Sometimes you get to a point in your 30s, you're like, I don't have to do s*** like that anymore. I'm a grown up. I do find it funny that you brought up the nationals and pitching and it's about this

and not them getting no hit by Dylan Cease. But you know, that's on brand for us, I suppose. We both got on mic listeners and we were like, we didn't watch a single pitch at that. Also, I have a, I do have a question for you and you know, this might be the vagaries of my phone I never I never want to assume that this is like a trend and not just my phone or my like engagement with it being goofy and backward, but I feel like I didn't get a Push notification about that no hitter. I didn't I didn't get any like oh to Dylan see snow hitting the Nationals through six So I'm wondering one if that is true And let's just assume it is because otherwise it's just me being like in my late 30s and not knowing how to do technology Which is an interesting have they upped the threshold at which they send those notifications

Or do they just disrespect the Nationals that much Which given some of the guys in their lineup feels unwarranted, you know? Like I get it, they're the Nats, but they got some dudes now. We got to be respectful if that's what's going on here. But I was not informed until someone was like, oh, guess we should figure out who's going to write about that for tomorrow. Matt's like, uh, Dylan Cease just now hit the Nationals. I was like, I was not aware that he was even pitching right now. I have been busy with trade value.

Yeah, it was a day game. We were both doing our jobs, which sometimes involves watching baseball, but not around the clock. Yeah. I guess it could have been a sign of respect for the Nationals, not to send out a premature notification that they were getting no hit, but I would think if anything is worth a notification, then the completion of the no hitter probably would have been, but I cannot tell you because I have disabled notifications for the MLB app and just

about any app that I can manage because I get enough notifications that I cannot avoid as it is. And so I do try to minimize them to some extent. So I would not have gotten one regardless. And I feel like if major baseball news happens, it will find its way to me one way or another. Someone will tweet at me or text me, or it will be on Discord or you will G chat me

or something, right? It will come to my attention. But yeah, Dylan Cease has delivered exactly what the Padres wanted out of him this year. Man, if the White Sox had held on to Dylan Cease, they would have quite a top of the rotation because that's been their relative strength this year with Crochet and Fetty. Imagine if they had a top three of Crochet and Fetty and Cease and they were historically terrible. They'd be slightly less historically terrible if they had Dylan

Cease all this time, but only slightly. Yeah, gotten what they wanted out of CC's been excellent. He's been fantastic. It's really just like, it's less surprising to me now that someone no hits a team than that they are allowed to finish the game. I think that is, that's almost, I know it is a little sad, but that's because it's so commonplace now to be pulled from a no hitter that when it's almost like the biggest challenge is overcoming your own manager's proclivity to pull you. Yeah. Happens to Paul Skeens every other start, it seems like. Right. And Dylan Cease threw 114 pitches, which in this era, yeah, gasp, right? It's like literally gasp-worthy. I mean,

you just don't get a lot of leeway these days when it comes to no hitters. You might get a little extra rope, but not that much. And if you're a veteran as opposed to Paul Skeens say, then that certainly helps a little bit, but you're just not going to get that much extra no-hitter attempt leeway when it comes to pitch counts. And so the margin is pretty small there. I'm just glad we didn't have to have a debate about it, although I would have missed the debate because again, I was not aware he was even pitching. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to quickly stat head just to see what the records for a pitch count this, because even the upper bounds has really lowered this year. Like it used to be that you'd get at least some outliers there and usually they would be in a no hitter, but now it's like even the ceiling, the average has gone down some, but it's really just that the fluctuations around the average has, that's really restricted now. Yeah, actually the max for any outing this year was 115 still is 115. Yeah. Chris Bassett back in April and Zach Wheeler in June, they each had 115

pitch outings and then JP Sears and Wheeler, the workhorse of this era, had had previous 114s. So Cease joins them there in second. And Cease himself back in May had thrown 113. So this was just one pitch more than his previous high on the season. But yeah, even 120 now is like, what? I can't conceive of such a thing. Scandal. Yeah. Which I think is a little ridiculous. I think that we've taken things a little too far when it comes to, clearly it doesn't seem to be working that well. You never know. Right.

It could be even worse if pitchers were throwing max effort and also being allowed to throw more pitches. But then if they were allowed to throw more pitches, maybe they wouldn't throw max effort as much. So it's hard to say that it's suboptimal. It's I think certainly suboptimal from a spectator perspective, but from a health and performance standpoint. But I would venture to say it probably is that there are some pitchers who are leaving pitches and innings out there. For instance, if the Mariners could just have their starters pitch every inning. Wow. Apologies for that. Just sitting here being like, wow, I'm so glad I brought up Dylan Sees throwing a no-hitter. What

a good podcaster I am. I have the thread and then whomp. Because I've seen just a string of fun facts that are extremely unfun for Mariners fans over the past days and weeks that are just like Mariners rotation over the past X days or games, you know, one ERA and yet Mariners like one and 10 or whatever over that same string because the catch is that they do have to score. And also the other catch is that when the starters are removed from the game, then relievers have to pitch. So what I'm saying is what if you never removed the starters from the game? That might help at least they would still have to score. And that might be a sticking point

for Seattle. How are you feeling? Are you reeling these days after the record quick evaporation of the 10 game lead in the division? Then to be surpassed by Houston, Texas is coming up fast behind you, I guess. I have to specify the Rangers when I say Texas, because there are two Texas teams in that division. It's not been great lately. And now you have JP Crawford, who also broke a bird bone and he's on the IL and then Julio

on the IL just as he was seemingly starting to hit. Now he has a high ankle sprain. So those lineups are looking bleak right now. Wow. Wow. You know, I feel I feel terrible Ben because you know, you can make the decision not to watch the Mariners and like, look, I realize I have to maintain a certain level of

engagement with every team in baseball despite the fact I didn't know Dylan Cease was pitching because I didn't know that game had started. Like, you know, I check in on everybody because I kind of got to have a sense of it. Other people, I want to release you from whatever perceived obligation you have because you don't have one in the same way. Like if you don't have to follow the team, you could take a vacation from them. You could take a little break if you need to because they're playing pretty lousy baseball

right now. It's not a good feeling when your favorite team gets swept at home by the Los Angeles Angels who are not good at baseball. So like that's a problem. And then you think to yourself, well, I'll just minimize how much I watch them. But then you go on your podcast and your podcast partners like, hey, remember your terrible, stupid team? How about them M's? I think that it's quite discouraging, you know, because as we've discussed, this is a year where the West feels, it feels winnable, you know, or it felt quite winnable because

despite their recent tear, the Astros are weak relative to prior years. I still think that the Astros are weak relative to prior years and I don't have a ton of confidence in their pitching being able to hold up in October. But, you know, joke's on me because they're closer to getting there than the Mariners are. But it felt winnable, you know, the first half Rangers were not that they were like conceding the first half, but they knew that their like pitching wasn't going to be back and fully healthy until after the break. And notice how I didn't say second half there.

Thank you. Appreciate it. So it felt winnable, you know, and then they had this 10 game lead in the division. So nice, even though they were still not hitting well when they were winning a bunch, you know, they were still like one of the, the poorer offenses in, in baseball, certainly among the contenders. And now they don't have a division lead of any kind. They're best hitter from a true talent perspective and also the guy that seemed like he was kind of getting going and Julio is hurt. JP has a broken bird bone.

And I think the most frustrating part of it from my perspective is that like the fundamental shape of the deadline I don't think has changed and that there's not a transcendent bat really on offer. Like, Louisa Regineer has his moments, don't get me wrong, but like, there's not a, like, there's no Manny Machado in this trade market, right? There's no, there's no Trey Turner available in this trade market. Those bats are spoken for. So, I don't know how much better they're going to get. I have seen some in

the broader sort of Mariners Twitter ecosystem calling for Scott's services job, which I don't totally understand because I don't think it's Scott's fault. So I feel like, well, let's put it this way. Among the things that I care about in the world, I guess the thing cratering being like an objectively less important thing than some other options is good in that way, right? If you have perspective on it as like a human being and a citizen, but as a person who is kind of sick of this s***, you know? That's kind of how I'd put it.

I'd say I'm sick of this s***. You know? Yeah. That's kind of how I'd put it. I'd say I'm sick of it. Yeah. It is frustrating even not as a fan of the team to see so much starting pitching excellence going to waste. Right? Yeah. It's frustrating for fans. It's frustrating for starters, but it's frustrating for me even to see Mariner after Mariner pitcher. Don't care about them, bud. Yeah. Just throwing gems, twirling excellence,

and then being removed from the game and not having a lead or watching that lead evaporate because the bullpen blows up. So standing cows have been great lately. I mean, I think that the kind of, we'll set aside the bullpen stuff for a second. Cause like, you know, that is just like both the thing I think they have a better chance of being able to address and also a thing that's sort of more inherently volatile. So being able to precisely thread the needle there, I'm willing to give teams and not just the Mariners a little bit more of a pass when it comes to that stuff. They've had some injuries, et cetera.

Here's what I will say about what I hope to see from a future Mariners offense. Not this one. I'm realistic about this one, but I don't think that it is sustainable to ask your starters to perform flawlessly or near flawlessly and expect that you will be in the playoff picture. But more to the point, I think that you should have an offense where you can weather a blow up or two from a good starter and still win the baseball game. You know, that's like a, is it aspirational? Yeah, but here's the thing.

When I was like really blogging about the Mariners, it was 2015. It was a bad baseball team. It was a boring baseball team a lot of the time, but it was a bad baseball team. They went through a stretch, Ben, where they would just win and then lose and then win and then lose and then win and then lose and then win. They like had a perfectly weird 500 stretch for a while. It was maddening. And one of my fellow bloggers at the time, Colin O'Keefe, would say, I can't believe

that they have to play baseball again today. This is what would go on in the Lookout landing slack. We were just like, I cannot believe that they have to play baseball again today because they were bad and guess what that offense was better than this offense that offense had a team WRC plus of exactly 100 and do you want to know where the Mariners offense sits today it's at a 93 that is worse yeah Ben it's where you had to listen to this rant because you brought it up. I wasn't going to bring up the Mariners.

I was going to say nothing about that because I'm mad at them and I think that they should have to sit with that. Like the guys hitting on the team listening to this podcast. But you know. Meds disapproves of us. We feel Meg's disappointment. They should have to sit with it, you know, feel my wrath. Well, I hope they get at least some timely hits one of these days and bail out their starters, get some wins, give you a break. I don't know.

I don't know that they will, but if there are moves to be made, I'm sure Jerry will be on the lookout. I'll look outlanding, if anything. I look forward to Jerry continuing to acquire whatever the new version of Abraham Toro, Dylan Moore, Jose Caballero. You know who would be helpful to this team right now? Jose Caballero. Yeah. Sucks. Could get Thai France back.

It's not great. Poor Thai. I do. And like, look, look, no one's having a worse time than the guys on the team, you know? Like they make a lot more money than I do though. So I get to just be grumpy about it. That's my compensation. That's my restitution, you know, is to just be like grumpy about it.

You know who is available apparently on the trademark, on this free agent market? Forget about the trademark. I can't believe it took us this long to get to this point. This is not a player that the Mariners would presumably be interested in, but Rich Hill is in play. Podcast icon, everyone's fan favorite, Rich Hill, apparently he is proceeding with his plan to make a wheat season debut. So it was tweeted out by Pete Abraham earlier on Thursday that he's available, that the Dodgers and the Yankees apparently are interested and who wouldn't be?

I'm certainly interested. I almost, I hope that he doesn't sign with the Dodgers or the Yankees because he's been a Dodger and a Yankee. And so he hasn't been a Yankee in post like return peak Rich Hill, but he's been a Yankee. Those are two of the many teams he has played for. And I do think that some team that has not had the pleasure of employing Rich Hill owes it to all of us really

to just cross off another box on his bingo card. But I will be happy to have him wherever he suits up cause I was starting to lose hope because we knew that he had mentioned that he was interested in a half season or it'll be considerably less than a half season. And there was an update in May that said he still was entertaining that notion that he was, I think coaching and following his kids little league team. And so after the little league season was over, he would get backed up to speed. And so hopefully, presumably he has warmed up

and ramped up and he's ready to go more or less by the time he's signed. Cause if he hasn't, then I imagine teams might have some concerns about how long that would take him. And it might take so long that he'd barely be back in time for the playoffs, but hopefully he's been throwing and working out. And we might soon see Rich Hill riding into the rescue.

So that's super exciting for his 20th major league season. And I think a lot of people would probably breathe a sigh of relief who thought they were now older than any active major leaguer. And Rich Hill will return at age 44 to say, no, not so fast, not yet. I am still older than you. Your youth has not dissipated. And I look forward to that happening. And I was just on the Off the Pike Ringer local Boston podcast talking about the Red Sox needing pitching help. And I was like, well, you're old pal, you're old buddy, Rich Hill. He's out there again. The Red Sox could sign him as a free agent for a record eighth time, as

determined by a previous stat blast. He already holds the record for free agent contracts signed by one team, by one player, that is a seven, but he could extend his record. He could be acquired by the Red Sox for a fourth time in a separate stint. So that'd be a fun reunion. But wherever he goes, it'll be a fun reunion for all of us, former Effectively Wild guest and all time favorite, Rich Hill. How did the podcast folk take that suggestion?

Did they feel like it would satisfy their needs as a team? I don't think he was number one on the board. I think they were setting their sights a little higher maybe, but they've been linked to James Paxton, who was DFA'd by the Dodgers, but could still be traded. And I think of James Paxton kind of as like Rich Hill light, like a younger Rich Hill, just in the sense that he is also an oft injured lefty who has been quite effective at times, though not so much this season. Yeah, throws harder than Rich Hill did, but- Well, yeah, who doesn't? Yeah, okay, but other than that, yeah, I get you. Ambition from Red Sox fans. That's dangerous.

Well, they just signed Alex Quora to an extension and, uh, yeah, they're only a game out of playoff position as we speak. Very interesting team as the trade deadline rolls around. Yeah. I was actually going to bring that up because there are a bunch of teams that are on the bubble. It is, uh, funny. It's almost ironic that the Red Sox are almost exactly in the same position.

They were the last two deadlines where they were kind of caught in between and Heim Blum took some flack for not really picking a lane and trying to be a buyer and a seller at the same time. And they didn't really make any impact moves. And then they faded, which I guess you could say was justification for not making impact moves, but you could also claim was a result of that inactivity. So here they are again, and Craig Breslow, I think, eager to avoid the same, at least, perception mistake that Heim Blum made has said that they will be picking Elaine and that they

will be trading for, they will be trying to add rather than subtract, though you never know, there could be a bit of both. But which teams now do you think are really with less than a week left until the trade deadline? There are clearly some teams that are looking to add, that are leading their divisions or close to it or are in solid playoff position. You've got your Orioles and your Mariners. I mean, the Mariners looking to add, as we just covered, the Guardians, the Astros, the Phillies, the Brewers, the Dodgers, the Yankees, who could certainly use some help these days,

the Twins, the Royals, the Red Sox could have been kind of a bubble team, but Breslau has said that they will be adding the Braves who, gosh, I mean, they are hurt by injuries and are sort of struggling. The Mets, the Cardinals, all of these teams I think are pretty clearly in the, yeah, they're going to go for it. I don't know how aggressive they'll be, but they'll certainly be in the markets to trade for some players. And then you have the teams that are way out of it and have been way out of it for some time. The White Sox, the Marlins, the Rockies, the A's, the Angels. Then you've got the Blue Jays who I think at this point, we kind of got to call it, right? I mean, they've said that they are not going to trade Chris Bassett and Kevin Gossman, but there are other players they could trade.

There's Yusei Kikuchi, you know, Vlad has been mentioned, but I don't know how likely that is, but they seem to be in the category of, okay, they're far enough out of it now that they will probably have to make those moves. And then you've got the Nationals who are not so far out of a playoff spot, but realistically, they just got no hit. They're a losing team by several games, right? They're probably done. And so, you know, I don't know how much they have to move, but

they could move somebody. Then you've got some other interesting teams like the Reds, for instance, the Giants, the Rangers we just covered. I think the Rangers are probably pretty clearly not selling certainly, right? Like they're close enough and they're the defending champs and they have reinforcements arriving. I don't really see them selling. I mean, they are, they're five games out in the wild card race as we speak, which, you know, and there are three teams to climb ahead of, but then again, as you said, kind of within striking division in the division too. So if you take the Rangers out of the selling category, you've got, I guess, the Giants, the Reds, the Cubs, who also, Jed Hoyer has signaled

that they will probably be selling to some degree. Barring a wild wind streak between now and then, although it's Thursday and the deadline's Tuesday. So the doors probably closed on that. Yeah. So Red's Giants, Cubs, and I think the Giants also said like, this is a big make or break trip for us and then it hasn't gone so great. So I guess that's more of a break than a make. Then the Tigers, right? And the Rays and at one point you would have said the Diamondbacks, but the Diamondbacks are like,

you know, they're right in the thick of things wild card wise now. So yeah, I mean, they're, Hey, they're above 500. They can't sell now. Yeah. They're 53 and 50 and they're just a game out and you know, they've played better probably than the Cardinals who are ahead of them. So, okay. So we take them out of consideration and certainly the Padres, I think at this point are, they're going for it. And then the Pirates, you would have said at one time, you know, maybe a seller, but they're a game and a half out and they're above 500. Yeah.

Even Nutting has suggested that they will add, adjust for ownership there, but to some degree. Right? So if you take them out of the seller, like all these teams that you might've said they might sell, they might be out of it by the time the deadline rolled around, the Red Sox, the Pirates, the Padres, the Diamondbacks, the Rangers, they're probably not in that category. So you've got Nationals, Reds, maybe Giants, and Tigers, and Rays potentially.

It's like a handful of quasi-incontention teams and then a handful of terrible teams. And that's about it. So what would you do with those teams? And even within those teams, they're selling and then there's really selling, right? And if you're the Tigers, if you're the Rays, maybe even if you're the Giants, I don't think you look at your current roster and next year and say, oh, well, we're embarking on a rebuild, right? So it's like, not only do you have a limited sort of group of teams that are in the cell

category, but who they have to offer both in terms of like the correctly perceived shallowness of just like the seller talent pool because of who's on those rosters. And then it's going to be restricted further because you're not going to try to trade your best guys to restock with a bunch of top prospects if you think you're going to be back in it next year. And so I think it is a very small pool, which means that both Vlad and Scubal will move next Tuesday, is what me saying that means.

Yeah. Well, I guess it does mean that if you're one of the few teams that is in that category of, yeah, I guess we're going to sell, then that does make the value of those players you're holding higher potentially because there's just not a lot of supply to meet the demand of all the teams that are trying to get better. But does that mean that you trade a Scoobble? That's kind of a different proposition than trading Jack Flaherty, for instance, right? So I mean, Scoobble under team control for a long time and homegrown guy and everything. Well, Scoobble's not under team

control for a long time. Well, that's true. Yeah, because he got hurt. Yeah, so... Scoobble's under team control for two more years, I think. Yeah. If I remember my editing of the Trade Value series correctly, yes, he is a free agent entering the 2027 season. Let me remember and stuff. I didn't remember that the Brewers have been bad at pitching, but I remembered that.

Right. No, that's a well remembered. I overestimated the team control because he was missing in action for a while, but he's back and he's great. And so do you do that? That's really tough because your fans have been waiting for like, Oh, we're going to have Manning and Mize and Scoobel and they'll all be together and we're going to have Torkelson and Green and it's gonna be great. And the hit rate, the success rate on those guys

has not been the best. Only really Green and Scoobble have fully fulfilled expectations thus far. And so do you take Scoobble, the guy who's panned out and turned into a top of the rotation pitcher and deal him. But yeah, I mean, he's gonna turn 28 in November and yeah, only a team controlled for a couple of years and injury issues in the past. So there's an argument to be made, I guess, but if you're the, the Tigers, like

you, you hope to be good again pretty soon, right? So it would take a lot to pray. It would take a lot. And because of the things that you just named, the team control being, you know, you get him for two more years after this, that's not nothing. For a guy of his caliber, that might be sort of like an extreme upside actually scenario for some of these guys in terms of dudes who are like team controlled for long enough to motivate a team to acquire them, but not for so long under a big extension that it limits

their market significantly. But if I'm the Tigers, I would keep him. I would keep him and I would hope that next year goes better. That's what I would do. So I think it's going to be quiet, which means that I'm going to end up working till midnight next Tuesday. What are we going to pod then? What should we pod next week? Sound off in the comments folks. We'll see how the deadline develops, but yeah, we forecasted that it would be slow a while ago and with low confidence because I'm never confident about how the market will develop, but I still have the same outlook as of now. And it's been slow thus far. There haven't been

many moves in the lead up to the deadline and even the rumor mill has been fairly slow. And a lot of it has been about, actually, it'll be hard to get this guy. Like, you know, Garret Crochet might want an extension and who knows if he'll run out of gas by October. So yeah, I just, you look at those teams because like the A's were terrible. They have some guys, Mason Miller, not one of them now, but they have Rooker and they have others who might be of interest and then there was other teams, you know, the White Sox, we've covered extensively their trade players who could be dealt and then the other

teams that are terrible only have so many guys and the Rockies and will they actually deal McMahon and you never know what the Rockies will do if anything, right? And so who's actually out there? And so you look at these teams that are kind of like in no man's land and you say, okay, will the Rays decide to sell? Like should they? Because they do have some guys returning

and they've played a bit better of late, but they have also been outscored by almost 70 runs on the season and they're 500 and they're in a tough division and they're four and a half back in the wildcard race. And we know that the Rays will also, will always do the difficult thing or the thing that fans might not like if they feel like it will help them in the long run.

So do they sell? And if so, how does that change the market or the Reds who are, I guess in sort of a similar position, wild card race wise, but it's just such a crowded field there that they're four and a half out, but there are three other teams between them and the closest playoff spot. I think that they will, they being the Rays, will like sell a little modestly, but probably largely stand pet. I think that's what they will do. I don't know what the Reds are going to do, man. And the Giants are a half game behind the Reds.

I guess the question is, pretend you're the Reds. Congratulations. You employ Ellie De La Cruz. That seems like it would be so much fun. I would have, weird. I think I'd have more confidence I would have, weird, I think I'd have more confidence if I'm the Reds than if I'm the Pirates. Am I under, am I over rating the Reds? Am I under rating Pirate Sitters? I know I'm not doing that. They need some bats, man. They do, yeah.

The Pirates have been outscored on the season despite their young, excellent starting rotation. I think if you're the Cubs, we know which way they're going seemingly. And if the Cubs are willing to do that, which they're five and a half out now. And I think they were maybe even closer. They were like three and a half when Hoyer was like, this is looking like selling, which I kind of feel like if you're that close, even if you're not a good team, even if you haven't played well, if you're a team that expected to win and tried to win and you're that close, you just need to get hot for a couple of months and you don't even have to be good really.

You just have to be not bad, the least bad of the mediocre options. Sure. But if you're five and a half out and it just has not clicked, okay, maybe. I think that like, again, I'm maybe drawing this distinction between selling and really selling like selling opportunistically versus preparing to tear down. And like none of the teams that we've listed here, I think are in tear down territory, right? Like, cause there are explanations like the pirates are kind of on the come up even though they really do need hitting. The Cardinals, I don't know what to make of the Cardinals, man. Like they're, they're old.

They're really, a big part of it is that they're old, you know? Yeah. Although I guess the, yeah, the patch together rotation of innings eaters, that part has kind of gone okay. That part's gone fine, but like, if you looked at Paul Goltzman's hitting line, it's not great. It's really not great. So you have that, but like, Sensi is an interesting one because I think that their pitching has been, like they definitely need another starter. I don't know that they'll get one at this deadline, but like some of the hitting issues that they've had is that, like they have guys who are good and are hurt, right? And so like, you're not going to tear down around that, right?

Jared Sussman No, not a tear down. It's just a short term step back retrenchment, whatever you want to call it. Right. Retrenchment. We're in persuasion now. We must retrench. It's one of the better Austins. That's what I'll say. Everyone's like, oh, you know, and I get it, but like, go read persuasion. All of this to say like, from a record perspective, I think like, if you're the Diamondbacks, for instance, I don't see the Diamondbacks selling because there are three games over 500 They're only a game out of the second wild card and they have all this pitching that's gonna come back in at some point Theoretically will all of it be good. I don't know Jordan Montgomery was like not good when he was healthy, but like, you know, they have Eduardo Rodriguez coming back

They have Markeli coming back Monty will be coming back at some point. So they all have this pitching coming back I think the Pirates are some point. So they have this picture coming back. I think the pirates are likely maybe to be strategic sellers and that if they have guys who are nearest to free agency on expiring contract, whatever, they might like move a couple of guys, but they know that they want to really contend in 2025. And so I don't think you see any of their core pieces going. Cincy I think will be in largely the same camp. I think the same will be, it's just going to be a quiet deadline, I think. I think my conclusion is it's going to be a quiet deadline because if you're Chicago,

and by that I mean the Cubs, not the White Sox, the White Sox should be holding a fire sale. Everything must go because that organization is rudderless and needs so much help. Their farm is bad. Re restock, just do it. They've been burning for a while. That's a tire fire, but they can continue the fire. They can stoke the flames. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, the Nationals, like they're kind of doing something. They're not, I think, going to do something this year. They famously just got no hit. I don't know

if you know that, Ben. Did you know that's only the second no hitter in Padre's history? Yeah, I guess I knew that, because it was a thing for them for a long time that they hadn't had one. Right, they hadn't had one. Musgrove. Right, and then I forgot that.

It exited my brain. Right, once you get one, it's not a thing anymore. It's not a thing anymore. And Cease has been living in Musgrove's house or something, right? Like they're roomies. Yes, I think that's right. I think that that's right. No hitting was contagious. I think if I were the Pirates, I would go for it. I mean, to some extent, because they're a game and a half out. Go for it. Yeah. I mean, go for it to the extent that Bob Nutting ever goes for it. I

just, you know, don't get worse, I would say. Because yeah, they don't have a, they've been outscored on the season. Their playoff odds, according to fan crafts are 22%. So they're, they're kind of long shots, but also they're a game and a half out. And I don't think they're worse than the Cardinals really based on performance. But who are they moving Ben? Who are they moving to do that? You know? I don't, yeah, I don't know, but I would also want to capitalize on all the excitement and

the enthusiasm about Skeens and Jones and just everything that's going well for them this year. And I don't know if they're wary of like, what if they make the playoffs? Are they then, what's the expression? The dog that caught the car, right? Like what happens if they make it to October and then are they going to have to think about like, do we want to pitch skeins here? Like what's his innings limit? I mean.

And Jones too, for that matter. Yeah, sure. Right. But I would like for them to be pitching in competitive, meaningful games down the stretch. That would be a fun story. And if you're that close and you've been bad for a while and things are looking up, I feel like that's a, you know, try to make some mire move,

at least paper over some weakness and see if you can hit a little to support those pitchers. Yeah, I think that that's right. Okay, well, we'll see. Yeah, if the Giants will be in the mix too, and I don't know. It's just, it doesn't seem like it's shaping up to be super exciting, but we've been wrong before. We'll be wrong again.

What are you doing to me? First, you spend time striking at my heart, you know? And then you spend time striking at my sleep schedule. I have nothing left. I have so little now. I am very worried about Christian Jelic, by the way. I know. We both did it though. That was a joint- We talked about how good he had been. That's a joint curse. Sorry, everyone. Sorry, Christian. We did it. It's us.

I guess when we talked about him, he had already been experiencing some back issues. Yeah, but it was- After we talked about him, it's- It was zero to 60 in like the space of 12 hours. Yeah. And it turns out it's serious. And for now, at least he's trying rest and rehab and delaying surgery at least until the off season.

But even if he avoids surgery for now, you have to think like, how good is he going to be if he's compromised with a back issue? That's just never a good sign. And he's been the one really star level hitter in a good, but not great rest of Brewer's lineup, which just again, no weak spots, but no real strong points other than Yellich either. And so you kind of got to assume he's not going to be one either. I think that he is absolutely, you're right, but you're also being, you're being at least a little bit rude to some of their other guys. You're being at least a little bit rude. They have above average guys in that lineup, just not star level guys like him.

Yeah, but like I'm just saying, extend some courtesy to the contrariases and ordezes and adonises of the world is all I'm saying. Don't make me do my whole speech about balance again and then be like, oh, right, the pitching sucks. Sucks is maybe strong, but only a little bit. Matthew F. Kennedy Ritchell hasn't played for the Brewers, right? I don't remember. Ritchell hasn't played for the Brewers.

Has he? Is that right? Beth Dombkowski Oh, I don't know. I don't think so. I thinkers. Has he? Is that right? I don't know. I don't think so. I think you're right that he has not. That would be so fun. Oh gosh. They have all these young hitters, all these young dudes, and then they bring in like Rich

Hill to make a Biden joke, but I don't have it in me. Wow, Reese Husskind's only has a 100 WRC plus. What's up, Reese? I'm also speaking of recurring injuries that have been aggravated. Mike Trout, I spoke too soon. So I talked- LS You did. That one's on you. CB Yeah. I talked about how Queen Kershaw and Mike Trout are going to be back and Kershaw, he's back and he pitched and he pitched pretty well actually. And that is very encouraging against the Giants.

You knew it wasn't going to be a super long outing, but he returned, he pitched four innings. He gave up a couple runs, six hits, two walks, six strikeouts, which is encouraging through 72 pitches. But Mike Trout not holding up his end of the bargain because he played in one rehab game and didn't even make it through that one game. Played like he got one play appearance, I think, a couple innings in the field because he played in one rehab game and didn't even make it through that one game.

Played like he got one play appearance, I think a couple innings in the field and then was pulled from the game. It seemed like it was day to day. He might DH, but no, he was then recalled back to get, I don't know, an exam imaging, see what's going on in there. It was the knee that he got surgically repaired. It's like, I've just gotten to the point now where you almost have to assume not only that Mike Trout will get injured, but then when he does, that it will be a season ending injury. Like whatever the injury is and whenever it occurs,

you just kind of have to like brace for season ending and then hope for the best because he had the season ending calf injury, which was like early in the season. And it was like, okay, it's just one for me. It's like, it's just a cap injury. Surely he'll be back. And then he had the ham eight injury where he returned briefly, but then went back on the AL cause like the angels were kind of out of it anyway. And it was still sore and bothering him. So then he missed the rest of the season after his,

his brief fake out return. And now the knee and look, it's, it's still July. I mean, he does still have a couple months here to return, but my level of confidence that he won't just continue to suffer setbacks and that they will not just be careful with him because what are the angels playing for anyway? But it's like, why be careful with someone if he's just going to break the next year anyway? It's like, oh, let's just give him time to rest and be healthy and then he'll come back at full strength next season. Well, will he though? So I hope that this is premature, but I just really embracing myself for the worst now

with Trout. Here's a strategy for you, Ben, to manage your expectations and disappointment. What if you just forgot that Mike Trout exists? And I don't mean that when he does return to the angels lineup that you have to be like, who is this Mike Trout? I've never heard of him. I'm not suggesting like a full men in black style wipe. I am suggesting a more targeted inception-like intervention where you like just forget about

him for right now until he makes it back to the majors. Like you'll see a tweet from Sam Blum being like, Mike Trout has started a rehab assignment. You'll be like, I don't know who that is, you know? Like, who could say who this Mike Trout character is? I'm familiar with his work. Until he gets back to Anaheim. And then you can be like, ah, he's back. And you might still be met with disappointment, you know? Because I think you're right that he is very firmly in the injury prone bucket now, which like, get out of a bucket first of all, that seems like it's not going to help you. But yeah, like forget about him, just forget, you know.

Jared Sussman Okay. And then it'll just be a bonus if he returns at some point. Laurenie Because famously Shohyotani doesn't play for the angels anymore. And as much as you are engaged with Joe Adele in a way that I think you should talk to somebody about, I think you can just forget. And then like, it's all gravy after that. I don't know if gravy, he could put gravy on his knee and maybe like, you know, cause it's like, it's greasy and so maybe it'll, it'll move up the joint. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.

It's got to, it's got to soak in the, it's not a real thing. I just got to baste him for a while. Just maybe that'll help. Yeah. It does. It just, it makes me appreciate someone like Carlos Santana, who I've just been thinking like, Carlos Santana, you know, he's still trucking along, you know, like he's aged well. I mean, he's, he's 38 years old, 38 years young, Carlos Santana. And he has a 119 WRC plus and he's played in 94 games for the twins this year. He's having his best offensive season since 2019 when he was still in his fairly early thirties.

And here he is. Yeah. Not just hitting well, but fielding well, seemingly. He has a plus 10 outs above average rating at first base. It's been one of the best fielding first baseman, plus five defensive runs saved. It's like, why can't they all just age like Carl Santana where you almost forget about him. He blends into the background because he's just, he's always there.

He's always like, he plays a lot of games, you know, when there's always a trivia question of like, who's played the most games since X season. And it's always Carlos Santana. Cause he's always playing like 150 plus games a season and just getting lots of plate appearances because he's just steady Eddie, he's just steady Carlos. Like he's just, he's always there. Nothing spectacular, but career 116 WRC plus. And he is still performing like that, if not better in his late thirties. And I love to see that. I wish everyone could age as gracefully as Carlos Santana. And it's always satisfying when older guys like that do

have sort of like a resurgent season and you get to, you know, for maybe for younger fans who aren't, weren't familiar with their work early, you can be like, see, this is why we were so excited. Now, Carl Centena is like a less extreme version of that, but this is part of why like Pouls's final season was so satisfying. It wasn't just like, oh, he gets to write off into the sunset, having like, played like we, you know, like a version of himself that we recognized from when he was really good. But also you get to say to the youths, like, this was the guy, you know, there was a reason that we were all like obsessed with this dude and, and, and talked about him with the reverence that we did. Like he was amazing. This is what it, you know, this

is kind of what it looked like at Sun, he's not, you know, a bright young boy anymore, but like he's, this is what it was, you know, and that's exciting. I was at the store yesterday and I overheard someone working there say to their coworker, have you heard of this band, The Offspring? I wanted to turn into a pile of salt and blow away. Have you heard of this band, The Offspring? At least one of them had heard of that. Yeah, but with the tone that like, hey, I was given a suggestion by whatever music service I use and I kind of like it, you know?

And then I'm 9,000 years old and then I was like, am I going to sit here and defend the offspring? Like, are they a band that I feel I need to, like, they were not that serious, but like, maybe they were underrated. Maybe I was anyway. BF Yeah, I've always been reminded, I find it very satisfying that he has had such a similar season. AMT We're talking about Carlos Santana and not the offspring now. BF Yes, and not the guitarist either. But about Carlos Santana and not the offspring now. And not the guitarist either, but Carlos Santana on the twins, he has had a very similar career to Victor Martinez, who was kind of a mentor to Carlos Santana because he came up and they

were teammates when Santana was young and then there was kind of a passing of the torch. And actually I think Santana's uniform number was a tribute to Martinez. And they've had very similar careers and Martinez was pretty productive late in his career and they played some of the same positions and just sort of a very similar trajectory and very similar, I guess, value overall, or offensive stats. I mean, both those guys are like in the 30s career war-ish and Martinez was playing into his very late 30s and had some productive times with the Tigers late in his career.

So I like it when two guys who kind of overlapped like that and also were close and had a meaningful relationship then had careers that kind of mirrored each other in length and consistency and value too. But am I right to think, Ben, so like we remarked upon the fact that Carlos Santana is having sort of this resurgent year in the field, but like, you know, before he started

to enter his 30s decline, like my sense of watching Carlos Santana is having sort of this resurgent year in the field, but like, you know, before he started to enter his thirties decline, like my sense of watching Carlos Santana was like, Oh my God, he's like a plus first baseman. And I don't remember ever thinking Victor Martinez. And I know that there were some years where he graded out better than others. But also then he- But they both were catchers, right? And then, you know, for Spaceman DH, so they had similar trajectory, but, but maybe, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It wasn't all the positional adjustment, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Right. Okay. Couple quick things. Uh, one of my, my favorite, uh, bits, one of my favorite flavors of banter is returning to previous banter to see what has changed, if anything. And sometimes we find out that someone who is slumping has been hot or vice versa. One thing we talked about early this month was Aaron Judge seeing lots of pitches in

the strike zone and how weird that was because he was such an otherworldly hitter and the Yankees had gotten terrible performance from the hitters behind him. And we noted that it was kind of lineup protection from the front that Juan Soto was preemptively protecting Aaron Judge by getting on base, thus forcing pitchers to throw to Aaron Judge because players were on base ahead of him. But it still seems strange that Judge was seeing so many strikes. And when we talked about this, which was, I believe episode 2185. And, uh, so it was through the games of July 1st, when we talked about this and

Judge at that point had a 50.3% zone rate, which was like average-ish. So he was kind of in the middle of the pack. More pitches than not that he had seen had been within the rule book strike zone. So since then, if we do, let's say July 2nd on Aaron Judge has seen 47.9% pitches in the zone. So he has seen a few percentage points less and he is 34th lowest percentage of pitches in the zone among the 177 qualified hitters since then. So pitchers have gotten the memo to some extent, they have indeed thrown him fewer strikes. I was inspired to check on that

because he walked four times in a game the other day. He's been doing that a lot lately. So yes, he has seen fewer pitches in the zone and another guy who has seen fewer pitches in the zone or has seen few overall, though maybe largely in his case, because of discipline issues, is O'Neill Cruz, who we talked about on an episode late May, episode 2168. We talked about how O'Neill Cruz had been very pedestrian.

He was having kind of an average year, and he was much more so than Ellie Dela Cruz, who's kind of put things together this year. O'Neill Cruz was really the mismatch between the top tier tools and the pedestrian production. And Cruz, to that point, when we recorded, had a 103 WRC+, and since then then he has a 110 WRC plus. So, you know, it hasn't really changed that much. He has continued to have a kind of okay season. He is a 106 WRC plus on the season and he's struck out a lot and you know, he's been healthy.

He's been available. He's been below average as a shortstop, but maybe not by so much that you think he can't hack it here, depends on what metric you look at, but yeah, he's been, you know, like a slightly above average player overall, which is nice, but not what you think you're going to get when you see him hit a ball 470 feet or whatever. So I think he is the, the reigning holder of the title of like, he should

be better than this if you only look at how hard he throws and how hard he hits and how fast he runs and what position he plays and everything. It just, it hasn't completely come together yet. It has not. And we get these like, we get these windows into it, right? We get these like stretches where we're like, oh, he's doing it. It's like coming together. Like, JJ, I feel like that piece. And then lately it's been like, no.

So sometimes we talk about someone who's been mediocre and they remain mediocre at least for a while. I also just- I'm not injured. No, not injured. That's progress. I also just saw that one of the hitters who's seen the fewest pitches in the zone over that stretch is Juan Ypez of the hitters who's seen the fewest pitches in the zone over that stretch is Juan

Ypez of the Nationals. And we got an email about Juan Ypez the other day. And I had not really thought a whole lot about Juan Ypez, but got an email from listener Jeff who said, we're all saddened by the demotion of Joey Meneses. His second half after the Nats traded away Soto is for the history books. But you know who the Nats brought up after sending down Menessus and how he's hitting Juan Ypez is slashing 367-436-571 for an OPS plus of 189 in 13 games with the Nats. It's certainly too soon to tell if Ypez will carry

some sort of torch from Menessus, but I wanted to put him on your radar just in case something special is about to happen that only effectively wild listeners will care about. So, at YDPES actually threw 15 games, I believe he carried a 191 WRC plus into Thursday's game, but then he was on the Nats and the Nats as we've established were no hit. So he now has a 177 WRC+, but you know, that's not bad. So maybe I know that Meneses is not dead. He has not been reincarnated, but maybe like he passed that post All-Star break post-trading deadline spirit onto the player who maybe took his spot on the roster. Juan Ypez, who is similarly not someone you expected a whole lot out of. So that'd be fun, but not as fun as the initial outhitting Soto, because nothing will ever be as fun as that. LWI? I mean, you'll always have it and so will he.

CB? Evandrelic of the Athletic Friend of the Show reported the other day that there's a slight change being made to the way that luxury tax, or competitive balance tax dollars are being apportioned. They're now going to get funneled to teams that have lost some local TV revenue. MLB and the Players Association have agreed to amend the CBA slightly so that the league can use its portion of the CBT proceeds to give that money to teams that have lost some money due to the the Bally bankruptcy and everything and they can now give those teams up to $15 million each with a limit of $75 million or so league-wide. So in the past, they split those proceeds, the CPT, they go like half to the league and half to the players, and the players use that largely to fund pensions and payments to retired players.

And then the league, that money, it's not completely clear how that's parceled out, but it hasn't been funneled in this intentional way to teams that lost local TV revenue. It's kind of like, you know, teams that get revenue sharing money would would get that money before and now it's more intentionally marked for teams that have lost that TV revenue. And the players association was in favor of that change because they think and hope that it will give some of those teams that could have cried poor or, you know. Less reason or less excuse to do so. Right. And, you know, not just cried poor, but also been a little bit sure if not actually poor.

And, uh, then they can get this, this little backstop here to get some cash there so that maybe they will spend that on players and, you know, you're supposed to spend this on players to get better. Though we know that there are teams out there that will nut instead, and we'll just, uh just pocket that money. But it's interesting that Rob Manfred said last week, he talked about the reach of the broadcast that the league handles, but also acknowledged that that is less and it's translating to less revenue than the previous arrangement, which is not really a surprise, but he came

out and stated it pretty plainly. He said, San Diego is kind of the leader in the clubhouse there, approaching 40,000 subscribers, which is a really good number, his words, not mine. Having said that, from a revenue perspective, it is not generating what the RSNs did. The RSNs were a great business, lots of people paid for programming they didn't necessarily want. And it's hard to replicate that kind of revenue. So this is something we talked about many months ago about this looming threat to the existing business model of baseball and all sports, really. Just the fact that the cable bundle fails and suddenly you're trying to get your own fans to sign up maybe for streaming

and get access to that team. And you're going kind of direct to consumer and consumers will support that, but it's hard to replicate basically getting money from a lot of consumers who were not choosing to pay for your service. They were just kind of being railroaded into it because they wanted other channels. And so even if you get your 40,000 subscribers and you get some ad revenue on top of that, it's just, it's tough, you know, and Manfred's always going to spin things in a way that is favorable to owners and owners are always eager to paint themselves as poor and to have a built-in excuse for not spending. But there is a legitimate deficit here relative to the good times when the cable money was

rolling in. So a $15 million payment, that helps, but I don't know if that makes up for what they were getting and maybe there's no way to make up for what they were getting and maybe there's no way to make up for what they were getting. And maybe that does lead to not only exaggerated claims of not being able to spend, but also some actual real reduction in spending power. And so I wonder how that will affect things because I don't know if this is like an existential threat to the sport, but it is maybe a threat to business as it's been conducted lately. LS. I think that there are two questions that we have to answer here, or two considerations to grapple with. I think that the decision to deviate toward teams that have

a legitimate, demonstrated, real revenue issue is good and defensible, right? Because these are clubs that sort of had a particular expectation of what their budget was going to look like and now have a diminished number relative to that. And how much they sort of constrain their operating budget in response to that is like partially a result of the size of the decrease in revenue and partially like an expression of competitive will on the part of the owners, right? Because there's nothing that says like, hey, you're a billionaire, you got all these billions of dollars, like you could just spend some of those billions of dollars on payroll if

you wanted to, even if it isn't being covered by baseball sort of revenue. But it's definitely a mix of both things. And to discount the effect that the changing cable situation has on team budgets is like, I think, to ignore a pretty important thing at our payroll. So it's not just these guys don't want to spend. There's some of that because you can just make decisions, but it's also a budgetary reality that I think they have to grapple with. And then there's

this question that I think applies both to this and to sort of revenue sharing in general, which is, do we feel like the sort of mechanisms and accountability that are present in the CBA right now are such and sort of sufficient to ensure that money that is given to teams under one of these sort of schema is actually making its way onto the field, right, in the form of payroll primarily and other sort of resources and sort of dev expenditures more generally. So I think that we need to be very interested in the second consideration and it's one that I think isn't where we want it to be, right?

You have a grievance process and the union does file grievances and it's not like there's no mechanism at present, but it does feel like the persistent behavior of the nuttings of the world would suggest that those are perhaps not stringent enough to actually inspire spending. So I think you got to think about both things. And the first thing is really two things. So you got to think about three things, but I think sort of on its face, defensible decision and one that I understand these guys sort of coming together to figure something out around. And I do find it, I don't want there to be labor peace just

for the sake of labor peace. I do think that there is so much money in baseball that we ought to be able to have a contentious knockdown, drag out, CBA negotiation that results in a deal that is reasonable without a work stoppage. I don't anticipate that we will get that the next go around, just like we did in the last go around. But when there are these moments where there can be some sort of reasonable communication between the parties and they arrive at a solution to a problem that they both agree is a problem, like that is encouraging because it suggests that it's not, that the relationship a couple

years after in the CBA negotiations isn't so fractured that they can't even do that. So again, I'm not saying that like the union should take a bad deal or anything like that, but you want, eventually people want to play baseball and you want to do that under fair terms, but you got to have two parties to that conversation. Yeah. And the union was in disarray seemingly for a little while there too, with kind of a power struggle or at least a challenge going on. And so the fact that they're able to at least get things together and do things and come up with a plan, I guess that's a good sign. But yeah, this piece also has a photo of Tony Clark. And I know you mentioned that his beard was still looking great when you were at the All-Star Game,

but man, it's really amazing. Yeah, it's tremendous, I think is what I would say about it. And just like very well maintained. He's got a whole look going. Yeah. It's pure as the driven snow. It's just- Yeah, it's very stately. Yeah. It looks like when my daughter takes a bubble bath and she has a bubble beard, it kind of looks like that except like way better groomed and manicured. I've never seen a better maintained beard. It's like not a single hair out of place.

And he kind of has like the mustache above it, which is like not snow white, it's kind of still graying. And so the contrast between the upper lip hair and the below the mouth hair is very strong. It's just, it's striking. It's like, it's a long beard, but you wouldn't call it bushy because again, it's just so well manicured.

It's just, it's really fantastic facial hair. Yeah. It's a, it's a great beard, you know? Um, yeah. All right. We've got a guest for you and it's a fun one. We are about to be joined by Richie Flores, who is both a player and a leader in the National Beat Baseball Association.

a leader in the National Beep Baseball Association. So long time listeners might recall that back on episode 1080, Jeff Sullivan and I spoke to a listener who was a volunteer for a Beep Baseball team. And this is a brand of baseball played by blind and vision impaired people and the baseball beeps and the bases beep, hence Beep Baseball. And the Beep Baseball World Series is being played this week and Richie is on the scene. And so because we last talked about Beep Baseball or at least had an interview about it seven years ago and 1100 episodes ago, and it wasn't with an actual participant and player,

it seemed like high time to talk about Beep Baseball again. So we will be back in just a moment with player and podcaster and executive Richie Flores. First please. Third. One. The Beep Baseball World Series is in St. Charles this week. Those with visual impairments can be competitive and work towards being a champion, and the

games are being broadcast thanks to the Mind's Eye organization. 20 teams and nearly 500 players are competing. Our whole lives, right? Facing challenges in different areas of life and it culminates into this, a world championship in beat ball. And it's like a world championship is saying that, for me it's saying that I will overcome anything

and everything that tried to get in my way in life. Well, we are joined now from a suburb of St. Louis by Richie Flores, who is very well qualified to talk to us about Beep Baseball because he is a longtime host of the podcast, The Big Noise of Beep Ball podcast. He is a player for the Bayou City Heat out of Houston, and he's also on the board of directors of the National Beep Baseball Association as the second vice president. And he has just returned from the field, freshly showered and podcast ready. Hey Richie, how's it going? Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm having a great time here at the World Series of Beat Baseball in St. Charles and yeah, good to talk with you, Megan and Ben. So the World Series is

ongoing. We are speaking on Thursday evening. Tell us where we are in the series, what has happened, what is still to come. Well, we started on Monday with our opening ceremonies where General Wilson was our national anthem singer. General Wilson is local to the St. Louis area and has sung at NBA playoff games and various football games. So it was pretty cool. We had that. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, also a former Olympian, threw out the first pitch for our all-female exhibition game that was on Monday night. And then the game started on Tuesday. We had a round robin. We have 20 teams from across the country. There's five divisions and everybody got to play three games on Tuesday. That set up the double elimination bracket on

Wednesday and that's where we're at now. There's only two undefeated teams left. They are the Gateway Archers from St. Louis and the Indy Thunder. And then there's a few teams that have one loss, which mine is one of those. Yeah, basically there's six teams still in the tournament officially. But tomorrow we'll have placement games for all the folks that have been eliminated from seventh through 20th or 19th.

So that's kind of where we're at right now. It's been a really great weathered World Series. Last year we were in Oklahoma. The year before that we were in Beaumont, Texas. And the heat is nothing like that. So we've been able to play all our games. There hasn't been any heat advisories. The fields have been immaculate. And so that's basically where we've been at for at least the baseball tournament and play is concerned. There's also been, you know, a general assembly, we vote on our bylaws and rules and we had another election. And so there's also some, the organizational stuff that we have to take care of as well.

It's always nice when Mother Nature cooperates with outdoor events. Ben shared some of your bona fides within the community, but I wonder if you can tell our listeners about how you came to play beat baseball and sort of what your journey within the sport has been. Yeah. So I grew up as a totally blind child. I lost my sight to cancer at the age of two. Growing up blind in the social setting,

especially in Texas, sports was, I was a fan. I was a fan of sports, but I had a hard time always being included in the competitive parts of sports. In my mid-20s, I found beat baseball when I moved to Austin, Texas. And just a friend of mine invited me to a practice that he had been playing for a couple of years.

His name is Adam Rodenbeck. And I just always salute him and give him love because it's been 18 years of nonstop World Series each year. I used to play with the Austin Blackhawks for 10 years and won a championship with them in 2014. And I had to move to California in 16. And so then, since then, I've just kind of, I helped start a team in San Antonio for four or five years and we played in three or four championships and lost them all.

And recently, the last two years, I've bounced around with a couple of teams since I don't have one in my local area in Berkeley, California. So I've been playing with the Bayou City Heat the last two years. I have two sisters in Houston and so I get a little double whammy of like coming down and practicing with them every other month or something, and hanging out with my family. And so, yeah, no, beat baseball is a big part of my life, and it's really kind of helped me in my leadership stuff,

building confidence within myself, practicing various fitness things. You know, if you're trying to be trained, you have to be healthy to come play five games, five days of beat baseball every year. And can you tell us a little bit about the organization and about beat baseball itself and its history? Sure. The National Beat Baseball Association was created in 1976. So this is our 48th World Series.

You know, it would have been our 49th, but we had to take a break with everybody else in 2020. But we've been around and basically in the 1960s, this gentleman, he built a ball for the School for the Blind in Denver, Colorado, or in the Colorado area. And he just wanted to have a beeping ball for blind kids at school to play with. And that 10 years later evolved into the beat baseball game. And that is where you have a beeping ball and two buzzing bases and six players on each team. So six players of offense,

six players on the defensive side. The pitcher is on your team. So the point is for actually to you to hit the ball instead of strike out. So pitchers work with their blind batters on developing the perfect rhythm. So and the, you know, practicing to put the bat in the same spot. And so you've got to get a hit. And one of the bases buzzes either first or third at random. So that's another adapted kind of different thing than normal baseball.

Either first or third will buzz. And the offensive player is basically off to the races to try to get there as fast as he can before his hit ball or their hit ball is possessed by the defense and presented to the umpire. They have to capture it and have it off their body, off the ground, in their hands. And that's either, you can either make a run by making it there before

the defense finds the ball, or if the defense captures it and shows it before you make it to the base, you're out. And you can also strike out, which is one more adaptation in beat baseball, is you get four strikes instead of three like in regular baseball. And then, but, and you can only take one pass. So one ball, like, you know, there's usually four balls and three strikes in baseball. We have four strikes and one pass. Maybe that's the solution to the rising strikeout rate in MLB. Just teams can pitch to each other and we can try to make contact.

It's more like it was in the 19th century. Yeah. It's easy to strike out a blind person. It's harder to have them hit a ball. So that's what makes it so exciting. And how large is the playing surface and is it always played outdoors or can you play indoor beat baseball too? No, most of us play outdoors on grass soccer fields.

So it has to be real grass. When we play on turf, sometimes it's not as convenient and it doesn't play the same way on beat baseball. So we really try to find grass soccer fields to build about at least either 12 fields. Since we have 20 teams we're gonna have 10 games going on each you know pretty much each session here but it's a 200 and i think it's 200 by 200 uh a space and they use that so it's it's basically soccer fields that we use and we line them up with our beat baseball diagram

and our beat baseball lines and things, but it's 170 feet to hit a home run. If you hit a home run and your ball lands over a line at 170 feet, that's a home run. You get two points for that. Yeah, there's a 40 foot line from home plate. The ball must pass that 40 foot line for it to be fair. So it'll also be foul ball if, you know, if it only goes about 30 feet.

Going into the World Series, were there teams that had that folks had particularly high expectations for? Is there a Dodgers or Yankees of beat baseball and has the tournament sort of unfolded in the way that you were expecting from a competitive perspective? Yes. So the last, since 2016, a team from Indianapolis has won the World Series. So we're always going in to be like, which team from Indy is going to win? That's usually the expectation.

But when the St. Louis Lighthouse and the Mind's Eye Radio groups here in St. Charles got together and said, hey, we want to have the World Series in St. Charles. And so we also want to build our beat baseball program here so that we have a competitive team for 2024. And they've worked on it for the last three or four years. And the Gateway Archers really performed well in the offseason. They picked up players from around the country that are kind of high-performing athletes and they've built a team and they're, like I mentioned earlier, they're undefeated. So for the first time in a

long time, the undefeated game is different. For a while it was always an indie team and San Antonio Jets, a team that I helped build with my friends from 2016 to 2021, and we lost to indie three times. And so we're happy to see a new team in the undefeated game. And then also there are some game. And then also there are some upsets today and that's something that doesn't happen very often either in beat baseball. There's definitely a top eight out of the league and then there's like a bottom nine through 20. And that's kind of just because of various programs and different training things and various athletes that are built. And there's programs that are competitive, some that are recreational. But the Cleveland Scrappers, I'll give them a shout out here, they were not expected to

be in the top 10 and they're playing for seventh place tomorrow because they knocked off the Boston Renegades who were projected to be at least in the top five. And they knocked them off today and they gave them their second loss. And so I wanted to shout them out. Those were unexpected things that happened. We have a new undefeated game, opponents match up here, and then the Cleveland Scrappers definitely surprised the league today with two big wins. Why has Indy been such a hotbed of Beep baseball?

You know, I will shout out another book. There's a book called Beep, The Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind. And it's written by David Wanchek. And there's a chapter in there about Indy and about Indianapolis. And just I don't understand what it is. I think there is a tie to Just there's an adaptive sports program the United States of Association of blind athletes that is Headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana

And so they do a lot of promotion and awareness for adaptive sports in general And so I think that might have a tie, but there's also a couple families. There's the Woodard family in Indianapolis, where it's a blind dad and his son is a pitcher. And then there's Darnell Booker, who is a coach. I'll also shout out their documentary. There's a documentary called Thunder Rolls, because it's the Indianapolis Thunder, and a documentary made about them in 2017, following one of their championship runs.

So they just have created quite a dynasty there with various teams. And the last two years, the Indianapolis Edge is kind of a cross town rival. And it's just, I think they just had too many beat ball players to make one team. So they all just started making two or three. I think there was a, I don't remember what year it was, but we had three teams from Indy

and they're not, you know, all Indianapolis, but a lot of, a lot of them are though. They also have hosted a regional tournament first weekend in June for the last 20 years. So for the last 20 years, they've had to have a team there. And so it's really worked out really well for them. Darnell Booker, also the Michaels family, Steve and James Michaels, they're the leaders and heads and captains,

coaches for the Indianapolis Edge, who are champions from last year and the year before. So yeah, basically the Thunder or the Edge have won the last seven championships. And when you're winning, it's popular to, you know, it's really popular to kind of join your team to join that team. You mentioned that there's, in addition to the actual games being played, there's sort of official business that needs to be done. This is a big organization.

There are a lot of teams. I'm curious what some of the most sort of pressing issues facing beat baseball are these days. What are you guys sort of sorting out as you come together for the World Series? I want to say there's a couple of bylaws and rules that we voted on this past week. One of them was we're raising our team. You have to register your team. And I think it's like only $25 or something.

It's been that way for 1976 or maybe to the 90s, right? But I think it was time. So we're like, okay, we're going to vote on, you know, whether we're going to raise this to 50. You know, if you want to be a team that is part and affiliated with the National Beat Baseball Association, and you want to create a team in your area, it's $50. And that was one of our bylaws that we all had to agree upon. And I believe it passed. So I think we're good on that. And then there is a, in our rules,

we don't have anything that says what qualifies for visual impairment. And so we added some language to our rulebook now that says that you must be qualified as a visually impaired person and diagnosed with a certain limitation of I think it's 20 over 200 to be legally blind and 20 over 70 with correction to be visually impaired, something like that. That's not my strength or specialty really, but rules and bylaws because it gets a little minutiae, but I do like reading them and I do care and a lot of folks who write them really care about it and so I support that. But you know the details, those are basically the two rules and bylaws that were voted on. We have a pretty lengthy process to get rules even brought to the floor at General Assembly

and so a couple weeks ago we had a committee meeting for the rules and bylaws and you know, team sent a contact person and they vote because you know, we actually had like nine rules that were written and only two made it to the floor. So there is a pretty cool process that at least helps us from not like having to vote on like 11 things every year, you know. And regardless of the level of visual impairment, everyone is blindfolded, right, when they play, or there's something to obscure their sight so that everyone's kind of playing the same game.

Exactly, yeah. That is one thing I fail to mention, is all players that are on the field and that are batting have to be wearing a blindfold. And there are certain times when you don't have enough blind players on your team, then a sighted person can just put a blindfold on and they're allowed to play. And I assume the umpires are sighted? If so, where did they come from? Well, the umpires are a part of our league as well and so we have to recruit them. So the way that we recruit blind players the same ways we need to recruit our sighted pitchers and then there's also some sighted supports in the defense as

spotters and so our officials are a big part of our membership and you know in addition to any of the other volunteers that are more helping us run the game, administer the game, officiate the game, and not necessarily be a player, but we need all of them for the game to exist. I think we had numbers of, I think, 530 folks who came to the World Series that represented all these 20 teams, and it's almost half and half on blind players and volunteer membership.

So there are 20 teams you mentioned. How many teams are there just across the country who are affiliated with the league? And then I guess how big is the beat baseball community that is not part of the NBA and how has it expanded over time? I think we had 32 teams across the country register and actually maybe even one of them was Taiwan Home Run. Taiwan Home Run found beat baseball in the early 2000s and they used to send a team pretty regularly.

And the last time we've seen them is 2018, but they continue to interact with us, at least by buying equipment and still practicing out there. And they would really like to figure out how to get the funding and stuff again to come back and make us an international tournament again. But yeah, there's 32 teams this year that paid us $25, you know, and who registered their team. So I'm hoping we still at least get 32 that will do the 50 next year. There's a lot of teams in Texas. There's two teams in Indy.

There's from the East Coast in Boston and Long Island, New York and Philly to West Coast, San Gabriel Valley or Pasadena, California. So teams all across the country. And are there recreational teams and leagues? I mean, if someone wants to play, but doesn't want to play seriously, is there a way to do that? This was our busiest, what we call our regional tournament season, because they're not necessarily, we don't sanction, the only World Series or the only tournament that the National League Baseball Association sanctions is this one, the World Series.

So there's a lot of folks, like I mentioned earlier, the Indianapolis beat ball bonanza the first week in June. And so there's basically like this year there was like seven weekends of different regional tournaments for different teams to sign up for. They're not 20, you can't come, but it's like the first four or the first four or the first six or the first eight, you know, and then you get re-invited, right? There's invitationals and things like that. And so, yeah, I believe we had one in Vegas for the first time. We had one, of course, in India and Chicago, Texas had their first tournament. And then for the last, I think, six years, there's been two tournaments in the East Coast

called the Beast of the East and only the East Coast teams can join that one. Nobody else is invited. But yeah, so yeah, we had, this was the busiest time. Yeah, I guess because we added Texas and Vegas, you know, really helped in getting more teams to get some practice. And yeah, that's, that's the one thing one thing is when we practice at home locally by ourselves, or with our own teammates, it's hard to get a game going. And so it really does help to show up to the World Series if you have at least played a couple teams and scrimmaged and stuff like that.

And what have some of the highlights of the tournament, that you mentioned some teams that maybe outperformed expectation coming in, but have there been any standout players, any new players who have emerged as sort of really excellent beat baseball players that you weren't expecting? Yeah, so we've had, I want to say we've had two home runs for sure. Maybe actually three home runs that have been hit. So I told you earlier, 170, this is a one pound softball with electronics. And they, you know, we've had three different folks who have hit it over 170 feet this week.

We've had a couple of years ago, one of the rules that someone submitted was if someone catches a one hop ball, I don't know if you understand where, somebody hits the ball and it just bounces once and you capture it and you catch it. If somebody were to do that, that's a double play. And so that's been implemented maybe only two or three years ago.

And so it hasn't been done that often. Interesting, because if you do catch on the fly, which rarely happens, but it has happened, then the side is retired, right? Yes, yeah. We have it in the rule book that if you were to actually catch it in the air, you know, it's either a triple play or it ends the inning, you know,

depending on where you're at in the game. And this one's a double play. And the same thing, if it's the last out, you just get two outs on your defensive stats as a player. So we've had someone do that twice. He's just a good, he's just good. Randy George of the New Jersey Titans has done it twice this week.

So he's a specialist, a double play specialist. So, shout out to him. So, those things are cool. And the St. Louis Lighthouse and the Mind's Eye Radio really set us up really well. Not only that they bring, you know, cool dignitaries to our opening ceremonies, but they're giving awards for that stuff. Like, you know, they're like, the first recognized award is going to go to Tucano's Brazilian Steakhouse, you know, they're like, the first recognized award is going to go to Tucano's Brazilian steakhouse, you know, for a full meal of two or whatever. And the double play, Randy's has like two, like two or three nights of meals places now. But, but yeah, the other standout thing, and actually, I got to shout out my own teammates. There are two of them were the ones who hit two other home runs. So Alex Gonzalez, who was a, you know, this is kind of his first year really playing in

the World Series, playing a lot. He's been part of the team for a while, but he hasn't really made it out that much. And he hit a home run today. And so it has Tanner Gears, who has been playing since 2008. And he's telling us he's one of the most all like all star Hall of Fame players in beat baseball. And he's telling us that he's retiring this year. And it was just so cool that he hit a home run in his quote unquote, I don't like to say it because you never know. I know athletes, you know, they'll retire and right, you know, Tom Brady kind of stuff, right?

And Tanner is one of those guys and he hit a home run. So Tanner Gears and Caleb Wright of the Indie Edge, who is a young, you know, growing, learning beat baseball rookie at like about 19 years old, crushed a home run on Tuesday. So he just did it on Tuesday, like right off the bat. So just shot off those players for the double plays and the home runs. And the age range is a little wider than we would see in Major League Baseball, right? So you mentioned a 19-year-old, so you could be that young, but you can last a long time, right? You can play for decades. You mentioned you've been playing 18 years, right? I mean, you can play into your 50s potentially,

who's kind of the oldest beat baseball player. Another program that we ran on Monday was called the Kids of Our League. We call it the Cool Clinic, Kids of Our League. And it was our biggest one yet. We've had, we've tried to run the kids of our league at the World Series, and basically try to invite blind kids from around the area, the local area, and show them beat baseball,

and do some little stations with them, and hang out. We had 28 kids show up. And I think last year, we were at like, you know, in the single digits. So a lot of kids showed up and were learning beat baseball on Monday with us and those age ranges were definitely in the you know six to seven years old. You know I think we cut it off at 16 and we had 28 of those kids come and

hang out with us and play some ball on Monday. But in our league and in our membership, and another standout player, and I wish I knew his name, but I was told today that there was an 11-year-old who almost scored his first run at his first World Series in his second at bat. Wow. You know? Cool. And he almost got, he's 11.

And we have a video of it. I think we have a picture of it and I need to find out his name. But he's, I think, our youngest. For a while, the New Jersey Titans Damian Gonzalez, I think he may have started at 11 as well, but now he's like 16. And so he's another person for a long time. He was kind of just our youngest player, but it's looking like we're getting a lot more from various other teams. And I have a player on my team who is a wounded warrior, blinded veteran at 72. And he didn't score

at this World Series, but when we were at the Texas tournament on Memorial weekend, when he's memorializing some of his fallen brothers and sisters from military, he made his first run in his whole career at 72 years old. And so that's how wide it is. I know that it's advantageous to hit the ball in the air, right? Because if it's not usually caught, you can run while it's in the air until it comes down. And so I guess, you know, it helps to hit the ball up in major league baseball too, but I guess especially in beatball. And I know that there's shifting that's gone on in the league as well. Are there other strategies, saber metrics, innovations, tactics that have gained in popularity recently? I'll shout out the Boston Renegades. They got knocked out by the Cleveland Scrappers, but they have probably been the best at keeping stats

on their team. And I think it's blindcitizens.org. You can go click on Boston Renegades and you could read about their stats for the last 15 years or so, maybe more. But their coach Rob Wiseman is a member of our stats and our stats committee for the World Series. And yeah, so we're trying to get a lot better. We have a scorekeeping system. Everything ends up on a final spreadsheet

at the end of the week. But yeah, we do our best to keep really good stats because that's what qualifies individuals to become part of the Beat Baseball Hall of Fame if they reach a certain level of all-star recognitions and things like that. And also in regional tournaments, if folks compete well there.

But there are teams that are really good at defense and there are teams that are better at offense. But the ones that do best have a good balance, right? They have a really good defense and they're high contact rate on the offensive side. And they've got a lot of speed usually gets there. It's a hundred foot to get to a base. So that's another adaptation. It's not 90, like in baseball, it's a hundred feet. So most folks either at the fastest

do it in a little under five seconds. Most of us are in the 5.5 to 6.5 range. And then some of us like me maybe be in the seven. So yes, I have to hit the ball hard and in the air to give me as much time as I can to get to the base. But, but yeah, there's different pitchers that have different strengths and, and they know their players really well and they can start placing the ball where they find where there's holes in the defense and you know, they can hit you know, go to the opposite field and hit it to the right and hit it to the left or you know,

maybe hit it softer and you know, folks aren't running up to get it, you know, stuff like that. So there are there is some competitive spirit. There is some tactics. Most teams try to keep theirs to themselves or they have their own methods. But yeah, there are some tactics, but mostly is you gotta have a good balance of high performing offense and defense with speed. And how many games would you typically play in a season,

I guess in the regular season leading up to the World Series? That varies because not everybody is, you know, can afford to go to these regional tournaments. All teams basically fundraise year-round to just make it to this World Series. So I would say the majority of our league probably gets all their playing time here and has a couple scrimmages. So you can probably get anywhere between seven to I heard Cleveland's going to play in their tenth game tomorrow. And so that's kind of where it ranges at least at the tournament at the World Series.

You know, probably the teams that finish lower only get seven or so, and then the higher competitive teams that are fighting for the top rank get a few more. And then during the regional season, you basically, you know, only the Beast of the East, like only the East Coast teams could play in that one, so they get some action. It's looking like now that Texas has their tournament, only Texas teams can go to that. The Indianapolis tournament is an eight-team tournament. I would say about half of our league, ten teams out of our league, probably get anywhere between four to seven games before they come to the tournament. I would say the bottom half of our league struggles either economically to make that happen or there's no openings at regional tournaments that they want to go to and stuff

like that. This might be a contentious topic, but is there an acknowledged GOAT greatest of all time of Beep baseball? Is there a Babe Ruth of Beep? Again, I refer you to David Wanchik's book, Beep, The Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind, because I believe he puts in there that one of my teammates on my team right now, Lupe Perez, is quote unquote, the Babe Ruth of Beep Baseball. There's also another player named Darrell Minor, and they've been playing since they were 15 years old.

And I think they're like in their fifties now. And they, I think together, one of the two have been competing on who has scored the most runs ever in beat baseball. And I think Lupe has it by less than a hundred runs over Darrell. And I would say between those two, you know, one's the Babe Ruth and one's the, you know, Jackie Robinson or the Mickey Mantle or whatever,

right? But there are a few there and then there's good defenders that are, like I mentioned Randy who's our specialists, right? And so I would say Lupi Perez. Well, is there anything else we should know that we haven't touched on about the history or the strategy or the league? Anything else you'd care to mention? No, I mean, mainly just to find out more about us and to consider either creating a team or learning more about beat baseball and how it advances the lives of blind and visually impaired people, you know, come to nvba.org. Find us on Facebook. We've been live on YouTube all week. So I think our games tomorrow are 11 p.m. or 11 a.m. Central and 2 p.m. Central tomorrow. But we're on YouTube and you could go look at our stuff later.

This isn't live or whatever. Come know, come watch our games from the world series, learn what beat baseball is, share it with your friends. Um, and there's always somebody somewhere around the road, down the road that you might meet that's blind or vision impaired and beat baseball could be. You know, one of their, uh, go-to experiences to help them kind of, you know, adjust to that blindness and to that blindness and practice some spatial awareness and be part of a team for the first time or we're trying to find it in a long time or whatever that is.

And we will also link to the book you mentioned, Beep, as well as your podcast, The Big Noise of Beep Ball Podcast. I'm sure you'll have a breakdown recap of everything that went down this week when you finally get some time to talk to people other than us about it. So thank you very much, Richie. Good luck with the rest of the tournament. Yeah. Thank you, Ben. And thank you, Megan. Well one deal went down after we recorded AJ Puck going from the Marlins to the Diamondbacks. I almost bantered about Puck today, but instead we will next time. That and more coming on our Friday episode. But for now, you can support Effectively Wild

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