Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2199: A World Without Glove

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Trout’s latest season-ending injury, the Orioles’ latest top-prospect promotion, and a tweak to the postseason schedule, and answer listener emails (24:20) about ex-player umpires, eavesdropping on pitchers’ thoughts between pitches, whether and how they’d reintroduce baseball to a world without it, awarding belts or trophies for team […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2199 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaff's. Hello, Meg. Hello. I really tried to follow your advice to forget about Mike Trout. I just tried to focus and put him out of my mind, but he kept coming back because he's not coming back.

No. It's very sad. Yeah. I was going to do a bit like the Jim Downey meme from Conan O'Brien needs a friend where he pretends not to know what happened to Jeffrey Epstein and he says, Jeff Epstein, the New York financier. I was going to do Mike Trout, the former Super Pretzel spokesperson. And that made me wonder, could this be the curse of Super Pretzel? Could it be that no longer being sponsored by Super Pretzel has led to him losing his mojo somehow. Like he's consuming fewer Super Pretzels now that he's no longer the spokesman and that was somehow

having a salubrious effect on him. You wouldn't think of Super Pretzels as the most nutritious food necessarily, but maybe somehow it safeguarded him all those years. And once that relationship was severed, it somehow stripped him of his powers. Well, first of all, I think that pretzels are, they're not like, of all the snacks, you know, that's a pretty okay for you snack, you know? I guess. It's not like a bad snack.

They're worse snacks, Ben. Oh, sure. They're definitely worse snacks. They're less healthy snacks than pretzels. I ate a handful of pretzels before we started recording. I feel great. Well, I mean, I feel extremely tired and my back is trying to exit my body, but other than that, I feel great. And it wasn't the pretzels fault, you know. It seems like a lot to lay at the feet of super pretzels. They're just hanging out being super pretzels and now they're responsible.

Well, not necessarily their fault, but maybe it's Mike Trout's fault for not sticking with this relationship. They were early adopters of Mike Trout. They signed him to this long-term deal in 2012 and they were fans of his and maybe he forsook super pretzels and he's paying the price. Wow. Blame in Trout. Okay, Wash. Boy, do those comments look even worse in hindsight. Yeah, it's true. Yikes.

I emailed a spokesperson from J&J Snack Foods, not to... It's the parent company of super pretzel, not to ask. Do you feel responsible for the season ending injury that Mike Trout has suffered? Cause you should. That wasn't the question. The question was when he actually officially stopped being the spokesperson of Super Pretzel. I wasn't really sure because the closest I could tell is just looking at the way back machine for the super pretzel website to see when trout disappeared from that site.

And as close as I can tell, he was still on the website as of December 3rd, 2021, but had been removed by December 26, 2021. So if we assume that his agreement with them ended around the end of 2021, it's possible that they didn't remove him from the website immediately. And maybe it ended sooner because I guess the timeline there doesn't quite match up because 2021 was an injury year for him.

That was the calf year, right? Where he played barely more games than he has ended up playing this year. So if it had been pre-2021, if like 2020 was his last season as a Super Pretzel pitch man, then I would have said I might be onto something here. But as it is, it probably doesn't quite line up. Yeah. I'll have to find a different God to blame than the God of pretzel. I guess so. The reason why I reach for the supernatural, which I'm not normally inclined to do, is that this is just so inexplicable.

It's just so strange. And each time this happens, we go through this same doom cycle about trout, but this one in particular feels, I don't know, as you were just saying, like it's not career ending. It shouldn't be at least in theory, but it's gotten to the point where it has, I think fully flipped for me from like, you know, will he come back and be the best player in baseball? Will he be the peak Mike Trout again? I'm not even thinking about that now. I'm just like, can he come back and just

stay on the field at all? Yeah, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be career ending, but I think we're at the point where these injuries feel like definitively career altering. And it doesn't help that we have something akin to a precedent for this, right? Like, we know the direction that Griffey's career went once he, you know, went to Sinse. Although, like, he had some good years in Cincinnati. Like, I think that we look at that tenure as being like, you know, just universally poor, but there were a couple of good years in there and now it's like, you're right just universally poor, but there were a couple of good years in there. And now it's like, you're right. I don't know what I feel comfortable asking the baseball gods for at this point.

It's like, I dare and say, oh, let him come back and be the best player in baseball. It's just like, let him come back. Like let him have a couple more years where he's like a good player, you know, a good player, Ben. He should be a good player because if he comes back and he stinks, that's going to be such a bummer. But like, put it this way, right now, if his career were to end today by our version of war, and I know that there's some variation, side to side, but by our version of war, Mike Trout has 85.7 wins, which is like, I mean, he's a Hall of Famer.

There's no, like he's a no doubt first ballot, put him in tomorrow kind of Hall of Famer, right? But wouldn't it be nice if he could get to like a nice new increment of five, like put him, put him at 90. Like if his career ended with 90, I'm not even, I'm not even asking for 100. It's just like 90, 90. And the contract goes for so long. There's just so much more left to this deal. Like he is signed through 2030. Ben, that's such a long time, you know?

And so you wonder like, you know, I guess it depends what he looks like in the spring, but like, you know, another meniscus tear, like that's, like, is he even going to be ready for camp? Jared Sussman Well, he should be. I mean, the normal recovery timeline for- Lauren Ruffin Yeah, but that hasn't applied to him. Jared Sussman No, it hasn't, certainly. But even him, I mean, he was ready to come back in, you would think he'd have plenty.

Right, that's true. And then he got re-injured. You're right. Right, and then he got re-injured. But I'm like, what's the recovery timeline if you're just going to get re-injured? There is no recovery. It's just an endless cycle of recurring injuries. It's just so weird because there's no obvious cause here. And that was the thing we talked about this when he tore the meniscus for the first time this year, we spoke about how it was so concerning because there didn't appear to be any particular reason that it tore. Right. It wasn't a contact injury.

No. He didn't even seem to step wrong or his spike got caught or he didn't know. It wasn't a contact injury. Yeah. No, he didn't even like seem to, you know, step wrong or his spike got caught or, you know, he didn't trip or anything. Like there was no apparent cause. He was just playing and nothing happened out of the norm. And then he just felt pain and it got worse. And then it was that, right? And the same thing here.

Like he doesn't know what happened. No one knows what happened. He made it back. He was playing in that rehab game. He came out of the rehab game. He had an MRI that was clean last week. And then he felt more pain, had another MRI and had another meniscus tear in the same knee.

And it's like, what happened in between? He doesn't know. No one knows. That's why it's so scary. It's not even like you can say, oh, it's just a freak thing or he ran into someone or something. He's just living. He's just walking around and can't do that. It's not even, this one wasn't even a baseball injury as far as like he wasn't in a game. I mean, assuming that the MRI last week that showed that there was no terror and that he said it was just scar tissue breaking up, which is, you know, sounds gnarly, but is normal. And it just wasn't a feeling that he had experienced before because he hadn't had this particular injury. Now, I don't know, maybe they missed

something on that first exam and there actually was some underlying problem there. But if not, then he tore this thing without even like getting into a game again. So what do you even do at that point? Like, even do with that bad. Yeah. So you can't even do at that point? What do you even do with that, Ben? Yeah. So you can't even say, oh, he'll just take the rest of the season to recover and then he'll have a full off season and he'll be back at full strength. I mean, maybe, but like, trout at full strength can seemingly just spontaneously generate injuries now. Yeah. Well, and it's not unprecedented for there to be guys where like just the force of their own body is enough to kind of tear themselves apart, right? Because these are

like big strong dudes and they got big strong muscles. But even in those situations, you can normally pinpoint like where it happened. You know, you can say like, oh, he stepped, right. He stepped wrong there. He hit, you know, it's like Corbin Carroll. He hit a home run and the force of hitting the home run tore his shoulder apart when he was in the minors, right? The force of his shoulder was enough to tear things apart. The force of Fernando Tatis Jr's swing

was enough to sublux his shoulder a couple of times, right? But to your point, like we a couple of times, right? But to your point, like we could look and say, ah, that's the swing where he did it, you know, and he comes away holding it and he's winged, you know, that's seemingly not the issue here. And so it's like, is there, I don't even want to speculate about what might, what other underlying health or medical issues this might just be, he's walking around and he gets unlucky. I don't know. But like, it does seem very odd that this keeps happening. Yeah. There were listeners in our Patreon Discord group talking about like, where do

you even set the over under for him war wise for the rest of his career? And people were talking 10, people were talking five. I mean, I don't know because the other kind of concerning thing is that when he has played this year and last year, he was still very good. 135 WRC plus 3.8 war in 111 games, 488 played appearances. But that is merely a very good player, not a really great best in baseball type. Whereas in 2021, 2022, even though he was getting hurt, he was still running like a 190, 180 WRC plus and putting up these big war numbers so that you could say, well, he hasn't relinquished the title of best player in baseball necessarily because we haven't seen him be healthy and play as anything less than the best player in

baseball. But now we've seen that. We've seen that back to back season. So now it's just like, well, you hope he could come back and be even that good player. I'd settle for anything at this point. Right. Like just, just let the poor guy play a little bit. And it stinks because I feel like this is now the dominant narrative about his career, more so than how incredible he was in his twenties and best player ever through to age 27.

That's not even the story now. The story is that he has just completely broken down. I mean, you know, there's a bit of both obviously, but like if he never made it back, then his career would not be one that people thought of, I don't think as just one of the greatest of all time when he was at his best, but it would be, oh no, lamenting the what if, and if only, right? Like, I guess those things go hand in hand because, you know, how great he was initially makes you wonder just what his career could have been if he had stayed healthy. But I feel like

the latter will be the emphasis. It'll be like a lost opportunity more so than marveling at peak trout. Yeah, I think that it fundamentally alters like the feeling we have about him. I don't mean that in terms of like, I'm disappointed in him or anything like that, but it does cast his baseball story in a sort of tragic light, at least at this juncture. I do worry a little bit about sort of being able to impress upon future generations of baseball fans, like the kind of guy we got to watch, you know, because he was so, he was so amazing. He was the best. He was the best. Like there was just no disputing that. I know there were some MVP votes that maybe did dispute that, but like he was the best.

He was the best any of us had ever seen. The completeness of it was so profound, but because he was, you know, good at so many different things, but didn't necessarily, we've talked about this before, like it's a very balanced game. He's plus across the board, but it isn't, it's not like Aaron John Shadang, a home run where you're like, Holy s***. Like, look at that. You know? And so I wonder what the, not that I think we'll have a reappraisal of his career in hindsight, but you know, I want it to end on a good note for him because I want there to be like a new chapter so that people aren't just always doing this

like retroactive retrospective like, ah man, so sad. And like, here's another question for you Ben. There's so much, so many years and so much money left on this deal and the angels are going nowhere and Trout has a full no trade. So he gets to sit aside in some respects, But like, do you think that he will, assuming he's able to come back and play and stay healthy, do you think he finishes his career in Anaheim? He just hasn't seemed to have any inclination to leave. Just I wish he had by now because part of the reason why I'm sad about this is that if he doesn't

get to come back and have some productive back portion of his career, then what's the highlight you show people, right? As you were saying, how do you explain how good he was? Yeah, you can show the war leaderboard, but what play do you show them or what, like the biggest highlight he's been a part of is striking out against Shohei Otani in the WBC, right? Like, you know, he's he's had some home run robberies and you could show him running around the bases or something, but just that one brief playoff appearance, is that going to be it? Like I just always in the back of my mind, I always thought like he'll get back there, you know, whether it'll be with the angels or whether they move him or he

decides to move finally, he'll get a shot and maybe he still will. But now I'm not at all confident of that. And I don't blame the angels that he seems to be made of paper mache now, but maybe a change of scenery, a change of routine couldn't hurt what he's doing now hurts him. And if he doesn't have another act, I think it would be extra tough to make the case that he was a greatest of all time type because it would just be like, what do you show people? What's the highlight clip package that you put together? So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess the angels would have to eat a ton

of that money to move him and he'd have to be willing to do that and some team would have to be even willing to count on him at this point. It seemed like there was a real possibility that he could get traded this past off season if he had wanted to, but he didn't. And now, I don't know, it just gets less and less likely. I'm reading his statement that he put on Twitter.

Yeah. Since my initial surgery on May 3rd to repair my meniscus, my rehabilitation proved longer and more difficult than anticipated. Not longer or more difficult than some people had anticipated because we already anticipated it would be long. After months of hard work, I was devastated yesterday when an MRI showed a tear in my meniscus that will require surgery again, ending my hopes of returning this season. Playing and competing is a huge part of my life.

This is equally as heartbreaking and frustrating for me as it is for you, the fans. I understand that I may have disappointed many, but believe me, I will do everything I can to come back even stronger. I will continue to help my team and teammates from the dugout as we press forward into the second half of the season." He's turning 33 next week, right? August 7th is his 33rd birthday. August 7th is his 33rd birthday.

It's just Perry Minasian was like trying to put a brave face on it, the angels GM. He spoke to the same thing that we were just saying. There's no event. This is not somebody that is out playing one-on-one basketball. You know how committed this guy is to getting back. I know everybody's like, what happened? Why?

I get it. I have the same questions. That being said, sometimes things happen and sometimes that's the answer. I'm not the emotional type, but being in the room with him and hearing the news was tough. Nobody wants to play more. Nobody cares about this building, this fan base, this team more than he does. He's going to come back. He's going to win the MVP and he's going to hit 70 home runs. Book it. back, he's going to win the MVP and he's going to hit 70 home runs, book it. Yeah. Which I mean, I get that like he wants to, you know, have a vote of confidence for his player, obviously, but that just reads as, you know, come on.

Like we're all in this reality here. I don't think we can book him. I mean, hitting 70 home runs. What are you talking about? He didn't do that when he was healthy. So like, we don't have to wildly exaggerate what the outlook is here for him. If you want to say he's going to come back and be good again, fine, okay.

But just, you know, irrationally exaggerating it makes it feel even less attainable. It's like, what are you trying to sell me here? The tear of the meniscus was evidently in a different spot. So it was not necessarily a retear of the initial injury, but I don't know whether that makes it better or worse. It better or worse. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah. And these are the moments where I'm like, I'm not a doctor, you know, and I want to be mindful of not overstating things. Because like my sense of it is that like this seems really bad and that's bad. He has to get surgery again. But it's like, I don't know what it means in terms of his likelihood for re-injury or anything like that. But it's not, that's not what you want. Yeah. I would like to hear from someone who is a doctor or a genetics expert or something,

because it's not like he never possessed the skill of staying healthy. He did when he was up to his mid-20s. He was playing every day. He was playing 157 games, 157 games, 159 games, 159 games. And I get that as we get older, we get less durable and more prone to injuries and everything. But this, where it's just like spontaneous injuries with seemingly no cause. I mean, I know people joke about that, that when you get into your 30s and beyond, that things suddenly start hurting for no discernible reason. You mentioned your back is hurting at the start of this episode, but I just, for someone who was so durable and so strong despite playing at such a high level to go from that to just like not even having

to encounter any issue apparently to hurt himself. It just seems extreme. I just don't know what to make of it. And yeah, Griffey really only had one season in Sincy where he was healthy and good and played like, and it was his first season there. He played 145 games. He was a five and a half win player. And he was only 30 at that point.

And beyond that, he was either hurt or not that good. Yeah. But people talk about the entire tenure, like it was bad and most of it was, but not- A little bit there. Not the whole thing. Not the whole thing. Shouldn't have played in the kingdom, running around on concrete, probably

wasn't good for his lower body. Yeah. That at least supplies an explanation that we don't have for trout. It's, I don't know. I just, I feel like I have nothing else to say. And then I say some more things, but it's just a deeper and deeper spiral into just kind of giving up hope. So thanks for the memories, Mike.

Oh, God. I know, but I just, I hope he makes more memories for us, but I'm just, I'm not counting on anything at this point. Yeah, but like that was, Ben, that was a little dramatic, you can admit that. Maybe, I don't know. All right, so that's our sad about Mike Trout segments. I guess our last one for this year at least, unless he somehow re-enters himself again before next season.

But I think you should go back to not thinking about him. Yeah, I will try. I'm going to try. All right. Well, we're going to answer some emails. Yes. Anything else you care to bring up before then? I guess the Orioles have brought up yet another prospect, Kobe Mayo. It sounds like this is on the way. Jordan Westberg got hurt. Yeah, broke his hand, right? Broke his hand and they just, they have another one ready to go, it just seems like because now Jordan Westberg was having an excellent season. Superlative. Yeah, 129 WRC+. His projections, according to the FanGraph Steps charts, the Steamer and Zips

were for a 117 WRC+, the rest of the way, and Mayo has a 114 projection the rest of the way. So in terms of the projections, at least the step down there is not great, but I don't know. How do they keep getting away with it? I know. They just always have another one ready to go. So holiday is up and Mayo is up, and we'll see how those guys do. We'll see whether they miss a beat with the replacements for the other excellent prospects who are not playing. I just wonder what it would be like to have guys in your system were projected for like above average lines and then you just call them up and then they just like go do stuff. That seems cool.

The angels would love that. My trout gets hurt. You bring up, I guess, Joe Adele was supposed to be that and that didn't pan out. I turned on an angels game the other day in time to watch Joe Adele at home run. So I don't know what you're talking about. I think Joe Adele is great. Yeah. Okay. Let's answer some emails. So here is one from Chris who says, is it taboo for a former MLB player to become an MLB umpire? Former players have always tended to the coaching front office media post-playing jobs, but

I don't know of any umpires who had MLB careers. Is this frowned upon? I think taking ball strike skill out of the equation that a former MLB player would at least be able to handle the player umpire confrontational aspect of the job better than most, the short fuse, not able to communicate effectively, et cetera. So I think it's telling here that Chris is not aware of this happening at all. That's how long it has been since it happened, but it used to be quite commonplace for this to happen. In earlier decades, early in the 20th century,

it was very common for this to happen. Baseball Almanac has a list. I don't know if it's a complete list, but they have 39 former MLB players who went on to be MLB umpires, including some legendary umpires, but it hasn't happened in quite a long time. The last guy to do it is Bill Kunkel, who he became an MLB umpire. He was a relief pitcher and became an umpire in 1968 and then was an umpire

through 1984. I believe he had cancer sadly and died young in 85. So he could have carried on this tradition longer otherwise, but he was the last to do it and no one has done it. Now it's been 40 years since the last former MLB player to umpire in the big leagues. Kunkel was actually an NBA and ABA ref as well as being an MLB ump. So he, uh, lived a full life in a sadly, fairly short life, but it's odd, I guess that this went from being quite common to not happening at all. But

I guess I can explain it, right? I don't know if it's taboo. I don't know if you would say there's anything against someone doing it. It's just that probably the incentives are not really there, right? Just like for salary reasons. Right. They make more money now. I feel like that is probably the primary explanation that you tend to just make enough money in the course of your career if you have one that's, I mean, that's not true of everyone certainly, but I think that guys are more likely to just make enough to like have a nest egg that they put in the hands of some financial planner and then they don't have to like go suffer

the indignity of being an umpire. I would think that's just about all of the answer. Now of course there are plenty of players who could retire and not do anything and they choose to be coaches or managers or media people. But most of those jobs at least have the potential probably to pay better than being an umpire, which even if you don't need the money, I guess there might be just kind of some ego involved or something. And also those jobs are a little more glamorous, I guess, or a little less onerous.

I mean, it's just hard to be an umpire, right? Yeah, it's hard. And major league umpires make decent money, obviously, but just not by the standards of a former major league player. And of course, you have to come up through the ranks as a minor league umpire, and you're not going to be making much at all doing that. So if you're a manager or even a coach or a prominent broadcaster or something, you still get to be around the game and you still get to be someone people will want to get quotes from and you still get to be someone who fans care about and

are interested in. And it's just a little bit different from being an umpire. Being an umpire is just really hard and it doesn't pay the same way. Yeah, I think that it would feel, this is maybe overly dramatic on my part, like psychologically damaging to go from being a player to an umpire just because if you're a player and you're, especially if you're in your home ballpark, even if you're not doing great, you have at least one person in that ballpark cheering for you.

You know, like really being like, let's go buddy, come on. That's not true if you're in a pirate. They're not cheering for you, they're not. They're not. Even when they call almost perfect games and then disappear in the shadows of a gambling scandal. That one's cheering for umpires. Yeah. So I guess it's probably mostly on the players and the lack of desire to become umpires,

but there probably is also something if there were an ex-player who was interested in being an umpire, it might be harder to do that than it once was also because the umpiring pipeline, I would think is more rigorous and formalized now. So you can go from playing to managing very quickly. Like Steven Vogt retires and then he coaches for a year and then he's a manager the next year. You couldn't do that umpiring, right? Maybe a former player would have a quicker than usual transition to being an umpire,

but you would have to go down to the minors and you'd have to work your way up and you'd have to prove yourself and be good at it, right? Whereas it seems like even now being a former player, that gives you a lot of credibility and a coaching, managing role, and you can make that transition fairly quickly. So I would think that's all just more standardized than in the early days of baseball when you could probably retire and become an umpire in short order. And umpires weren't as good, I would think, as they are now just as players are not.

It's just become more specialized, I would think as they are now just as players or not, it's just become more specialized, I would think. Right. So back then it was probably like, oh, they've been around the game. They can command people's respect. Sure. You could just walk right into that role. I don't think you could do that now. And that's going to make it even not only harder, but also that's going to dissuade any player from wanting to do it. Because it's like, maybe if I could go from playing to being a major league umpire the next day, sure. But what, I got to go down to A-ball and start, no thank you. Right. So that's just, it's not going to be glamorous at all. But yeah, you would think that former players would make good umpires, not knowing anything else, just the fact that, well, they've been around the game.

They know that relationship, not that players can't have short fuses too, but having been on the other side of things, you, you might think that might help with the communication a little bit and at least, you know, then probably going to be, uh, athletic guys who can get into good umpiring position and would have the stamina to do the job. And if they're a hitter, at least, you know, they're going to have good eyesight and can see pitches clearly. And they've seen so many pitches maybe as a hitter that they could be good at calling pitches, who knows. So you think that the skill set would transfer over fairly

well if anyone wanted to do it. Yes, but I think to your point, like, it's a lot of work now. It's a lot more, it's a lot more work now. I don't want to say it wasn't work before, but it's a lot more work now. And if I had completed a successful big league career and had a little bit of money. I would not be keen to come like sweat my ass off in the Arizona Complex League so that I could earn my keep as an umpire. I'd be like, no, thank you. I'm out of the ass sweating business. That's what I'd say.

Yes, me too. I meant to mention, by the way, MLB announced the postseason schedule for this year. They did. And it's fairly standard stuff, but there was one little wrinkle here, which is that we don't know when the World Series will start. I know. It is scheduled to start on October 25th, but it might start sooner. So if it starts on October 25th, then it could run into November as has become customary lately,

even though the postseason's starting a little earlier, right, the regular season is actually ending in September, which is nice, as you've noted, because we can refer to October as a stand-in for the playoffs, and it will actually be technically accurate this year. But there's a flexible World Series start time. So if the NLCS and the ALCS both end by October 19th, so neither of them goes longer than five games, then they will bump the World Series up

three days to October 22nd to avoid a very long layoff, like a week long layoff between the Championship Series and the World Series. If either of those series is still going on after the 19th, then the World Series will start on the 25th. That is likely to be the case because since the LCS went to best of seven in 1985. Both series have ended in either four or five games, only five times, most recently in 2022. So odds are this will not happen. But I guess it's good that if it does,

that if they both wrap up early, then we don't have to wait as long for the series to start. Sure. I look at the month of October as the thing that just happens to me, you know? So I'm like, I'm along for whatever ride. I've settled on one thing that I think about the postseason and its schedule. Only one thing. I don't think they should play on Halloween. We should get to have Halloween off. Halloween should be a scheduled off day. You know what?

I think that's the case this year. I don't think there is. I am so excited. Yeah, you can hand out candy. People can trick or treat. We've talked about this. I love Halloween. I love Halloween and it's like a big deal in this neighborhood. So like people show up for Halloween. I love it in a way that I feel embarrassed about, right? Like I don't want to go to Matt and be like, hey, can you cover the gamer tonight? Cause I have to do Halloween. This is a 38 year old childless woman.

So, you know, but I love it and I want to do it. And now I don't have to ask for a coverage. So that's so nice. Yeah, that's good. I guess the complaint about the long layoffs and the playoffs is mostly when it's uneven and then people get upset about, oh, is this going to affect one team?

Is it advantageous to have time off and rest and recharge? Or is it not because you get rusty? And then when one team that had a long layoff, if you have a mismatch between the length of the layoff heading into the series, then you have kind of a built-in excuse or grounds for hand-wringing and fretting. And you could still get that this year.

You could still get uneven lengths. But if both of the series, if both of them end early and then both teams have a week-long layoff or something, then no one has an excuse because they were both off for a very long time. Although I guess it could still theoretically affect the quality of play in the World Series. But yeah, might as well just keep the momentum going if we're ready. Let's not have a whole week. Although then again, you're just going to have a longer off season. So one way or another, you're just going to have pretty much the same number of days without baseball, sadly.

Nicole Zichal-Klein Do you think that if they stretched it out, that they just keep delaying the election for however long? Pete O'Loughlin Oh, yeah, I guess. Nicole Zichal-Klein Do you realize how little time we have between the end of one thing and the start of another thing? It is not a lot of time. Pete O'Loughlin The World Series will have concluded by election day one way or another, unless, you know, there's some sort of strange weather issue happening there. Next question comes from Bob in Omaha who says,

watch for the love of the game over the weekend, probably for the first time since it was in theaters. Given today's pitch clock, it was a little odd to see Kevin Costner take so much time between pitches, but if we were able to hear Billy Chappell-esque comments between pitches, would you be willing to scrap the pitch clock? The first time I saw it, I was caught up in the drama and didn't pay too much attention to the announcing. This time I thought, wait, Vince Golly would actually say that. A quick search revealed that he did a lot of ad-libbing, so I started to really pay attention. He was brilliant, of course. And the line at the end about a chapel having his day at the cathedral that is Yankee Stadium was perfect.

So if we had access to the inner monologue of a pitcher who was on the mound, then would that make up for the pace being slower? No, it would not. I mean, no. Go be a broadcaster when you're done and then you can share your inner monologue as an outer monologue. Yeah. I don't think it would be very interesting, right?

I think it would also bum us out because I think that like a lot of these guys are engaged in some pretty negative self-talk And I don't know that you need to hear like yeah them call themselves horrible things like Pitchers are freaking weird dude, like they're weird people, you know They're not as weird as catchers who remain the strangest of the baseball subspecies, but they're strange You know relievers in particular but starters too, you know Everybody talks about relievers like they're the only freaks on the staff. No, no. Starters are also weird. They're just weird in a different way a lot of the time. So I don't know that we need access to that. Mostly, that's not my business, you know? Like what you have to say to yourself to get yourself ready to like stare down Aaron Judge, that's between you and the baseball gods. That's none of my business. I don't know. I'm not entitled to that.

Jared Ranere Yeah, I think it would be a let down. There was that time, who was it? Alec Manoa at the All-Star game was miked up and again, we're okay with people being miked up in game in exhibitions. And that was- Nicole Zichal I still don't love it, but it's more tolerable. Jared Ranere Yeah, right. And that was kind of interesting if you're going to explain your pitch selection and your thought process and all that. Okay. But if it's just someone's inner monologue, A, some of their minds just might be blank, more or less, right? Like they're just, they're just out there trying to execute pitches.

You know, they're just trying to throw throw. They'd just be psyching themselves up or yes, berating themselves inwardly maybe, or just be like, are you actively going to be thinking or are you just going to be like, okay, there's the sign and here's the pitch I'm throwing? Some guys, maybe if they're super cerebral and they're playing cat and mouse games out there and they're thinking, okay, in the previous plate appearance, I threw this and he did that. And when we faced each other last year, this was how I got him out. That might be interesting, but I just don't think there would really be a lot of that.

Or maybe it'd be interesting if there were some guys whose mind was wondering, like if they're just thinking about their personal life or something, again, we shouldn't have access to their private thoughts. But if we did, if some guys are just like, okay, got to throw the pitch, got to throw harder, got to throw, and other guys are just actually thinking about random things that are happening in their lives, that would be kind of interesting, I guess, to know that there was that sort of disparity maybe. But again, I don't need to hear that every time. Well, Bob in Omaha asked another question.

The Onion article on the burning of MLE statistics, which we discussed recently, made me think of the movie Yesterday. If you haven't seen it, a solar burst hits the earth and erases the memory of the Beatles from the collective conscience of most people. One guy takes advantage of that and turns himself from a middling singer into a world famous one. That made me wonder, suppose a solar burst hits the earth and erases baseball from the collective conscious except

for Meg and Ben. What would you do to invent baseball and introduce it to the world? This is Ben's chance to get rid of the zombie runner. Yeah, I guess that's true. I could introduce a perfect form of baseball without the zombie runner. Drop strikes, third strike rule. Wow. I don't know if I can be trusted with this kind of power, Ben, you know? I wrote an article about yesterday when it came out in 2019 because I was kind of power, Ben, you know? Right. I wrote an article about yesterday when it came out in 2019 because I was kind of fascinated by the ethics of yesterday because the protagonist, Jack,

who's played by Himesh Patel, he feels guilty about this because it's like stolen valor, right? He's taking credit for all of the Beatles music and ultimately feels like he's a fraud, he's a pretender and he needs to own up to all of this. I talked to a bunch of ethicists and philosophers about what would be the right thing to do here.

Would this actually be wrong? I'll quote from a paragraph of my piece, because I guess it's relevant to our answer here. Although Jack's guilty conscience seems to make the virtuous course clear, the ethics of his situation are far from straightforward. Is it truly wrong of Jack to say he wrote the songs if he's not taking credit away from anyone who exists in his universe? Because in this movie, the members of the band are part of Jack's new world, but they never became the Beatles and they never wrote the songs. Doesn't the good he's doing by sharing so much music count for something

even if he's acting out of self-interest? Might it not be better to let listeners believe that he did write the songs, given that the world seems to be charmed by his humble origins and considering that the truth could come at a great cost to himself because most people would think he's lying or delusional, and to others because anyone who did believe his story would probably be distressed by its existential implications. Plus, wouldn't it be reasonable for Jack to conclude that he did somehow summon the songs from his mind fully formed and merely imagined the Beatles. After all, Paul McCartney did dream yesterday. And that's the thing, I think if I woke up in a world

with no baseball and I knew everything I knew now about baseball, but no one else in the world did, wouldn't it be rational and reasonable to assume that you had just dreamed that, that you had hallucinated that? Wouldn't that be as rational as to assume that everyone else's mind or memory was wiped, or that you had somehow slipped into a different universe or something? I might just assumed that I'm actually a creative genius and I just

summoned this out of the recesses of my mind somehow. Now if it were a scenario where you and I were both in this world and we both independently remembered this and no one else in the world did, then that might sway me to think, okay, this must have happened because Meg remembers it, it's just that no one else does. But if I were the only one in the world, if I were the lone voice crying in the wilderness, I might talk myself into, you know what, I'm actually just brilliant and I conjured this out of thin air. Anyway, all those considerations come into play here. So, what would we do if we woke up in a world without baseball? I'm stuck on whether I think it's ethical for him to pretend that he wrote the-

I know it's ethical for him to pretend that he wrote the- I know, it's really interesting. I think it's not. I also think it's importantly different than making up a sport, in part because who are we offending? Doubleday. He didn't really do it. The people who are credited with inventing baseball who didn't actually do it. Exactly. Also, there's something about like an artistic endeavor, like writing a song that feels like meaningfully different to me than like, here are some rules for a game we could play. I don't, which I appreciate that there's like a, you know, a limit to that logic because like if someone came along today and they were like, I've invented a new tabletop game.

It is called Smetlers of Smet's Man. I'd be like, okay, but like we know what settlers of Catan is like. Right, right. Somebody does need to write down the rules for true American, but I don't know. Like it feels different to me. I don't know that I would feel all that interested in claiming credit. I don't know that that would be important to me being like, hey, I came up with this amazing thing. I think I might just be like, hey, this is fun,

we should do it. Let's do it. I don't know that the credit piece would really matter. You'd be a more effective messenger in that case, because if you come up with this whole alternate history where baseball was this prominent part of society for centuries and you're the only one who remembers and you've written it down on these scrolls or something, people are going to think you've lost your mind, right? So I think you would be more persuasive if you just reintroduced it or introduced it as a new thing that you came up with.

And then the fascinating thing would be to see whether it worked again, whether you could introduce baseball in 2024 in a modern world and have it catch on. And that's something that I think I touched on in the yesterday piece is that it does, right? Like in this modern world where he tells everyone about the Beatles, the Beatles are still a phenomenon and everyone loves them and they're, you know, it's just as beloved as it was the first time, which I don't think would actually be the case because even though Beatles music remains immensely popular and wonderful and certainly dear to me, there's just a time and a place for everything. And there's a zeitgeist and if someone came along with the Beatles caliber music right now,

I mean, maybe that happens and it just, it doesn't break as big because the conditions are not ripe for it, right? Or just it's not just the music and the songs, but it's also the songwriters and the performers and the chemistry and charisma of the Beatles. The haircuts. The haircuts and this fashion and the 60s and the counterculture, all the rest of it, right? So you couldn't just introduce the same songs and have them make the same waves, I don't think. And that would be the case with baseball too, right?

Baseball is less popular now than it used to be, at least in some terms, not in terms of the total number of people paying attention to it, I don't think, but just in the hold that it has on the American imagination. Now, that said, baseball has taken root in other countries and other places long after

it took root in the US and it has become immensely popular in those places. So I do think there is an inherent appeal to bat and ball games and to baseball specifically that if it didn't exist, you could introduce that now and people would still be into it. Just not as into it. Like you couldn't conjure the history either, which is a, that's the onion article scenario that we talked about, losing all the stacks in the history and everything. If the history had never happened

and you're just starting fresh, well, you're gonna lose some of the luster and the tradition and everything. And you'd hope to then build that back up from scratch. Yeah, it would be very challenging to not have that to appeal to and that sort of tradition and resonance. And like people come up with new sports, some of them are at the Olympics and they're crazy. There's some crazy sports, Ben. Did you know about some of these sports there? They were like Olympic sports. Why are they Olympic sports? That's wild. But people come up with new games and stuff all the time. And sometimes they're good and sometimes

they're- CB So we would scheme to bring baseball back, even if it was just kind of a casual thing and we would see it would be an experiment to see if it caught on again. If we just showed up at a park and we wouldn't even have, I guess, bats and gloves. Like what would we have? We wouldn't have anything. We wouldn't have a ball. We wouldn't have a baseball. We wouldn't have a baseball. How would you and I, how would we play?

How would we play? We could use some other ball and hitting implement, you know, but we... It's gonna make it hard to catch on though. Yeah, or I guess we could go to some craftspeople and say, here is what we want you to make, and we could describe to the best of our abilities, like what a baseball is, and a bat, and a glove, and we could come up with a simulacra of those

things, I guess. We wouldn't be able to mass manufacture them unless other people got into it and wanted to want to, you know, we could be rich, I guess, if we tried to profit off this, if we tried to coin a new sport and sell all the memorabilia and merchandise and everything. If we wanted to go about things that way as a business enterprise, then I guess we could see if it would catch on. We could, but I think it would undermine our credibility with the new sport. People would be like, oh, they're just here to make some money. They're just trying to scam me into getting into this new sport. But then again, stuff does pick up, stuff does pick up, right? Like I know pickleball is

not a new sport, but people are out of their minds for pickleball. People are, people should chill about pickleball a little bit. But you know, it, it's a phenomena. I would be daunted by the prospect of trying to reinvent baseball to be like the Johnny Appleseed of baseball. Like it would be, I would want to do it. I would feel some responsibility to do it, I guess. Like as someone who has gotten a lot personally and professionally from baseball and knowing how much it has meant to so many people, I would feel like, okay, I'm the keeper of the flame here. I can't let this spark die. Like I have to fan the flames. I have to blow on the embers here.

I have to carry it forward. And yet knowing the history like I do and just how hard it was to get it off the ground and build it into what it became. And yes, you could hopefully reintroduce it knowing all that we know about what worked and what didn't work and what backfired and you could introduce a better version of baseball from the start even if you didn't like, you know, put your personal stamp on it, even if you felt obligated to bring back baseball as it was. You could still skip all of the many decades of trial and error and like figuring out how many balls and strikes there should

be and all that stuff. Like you could say, okay, here is the version that we have agreed is a better, more optimized version of the sport. Maybe that would help it catch on more quickly than it initially did, right? Because they had to kind of figure it out as they went and, you know, stub their toes on all sorts of more imperfect versions of baseball.

So you could say like, this is the refined, the, you know, the version that we know works and connects with people. And so if we introduce that without all the lead up, then maybe you could sort of skip that on ramp and connects with people. And so if we introduce that without all the lead up, then maybe you could sort of skip that on ramp and it would become big and popular sooner, maybe, hopefully.

Maybe, maybe. Just a lot of infrastructure required, you know? Like there'd be no baseball diamonds. Right, where would we play, Ben? We would have to build it for them to come. And like kids play baseball in places, you know? Where would we play, Ben? We would have to build it for them to come. And like kids play baseball in places, you know, like- You can play catch, yeah.

People play baseball places without the infrastructure, but it would be a hurdle. It would be a hard hurdle. We'd need to get like middle-aged suburbanites enthusiastic about it and they're like, tear out the pickleball, put in a baseball diamond. And it'd be weird if there were no other batting ball sports, like in this scenario. Right. I was going to ask like, what is, where does softball sit in the firmament? Yeah. Or like, is there rounders? Is there cricket? Like, is, you know, are the predecessors to baseball, do they exist? Because it would be weird if no one ever thought

to like hit something with another thing or to like throw and play catch. Like those are things that you would think would arise naturally, even if the specific rules of baseball as we've laid them out didn't arise. Like you'd have probably some analog. So maybe that would be easier. Like if this is a world with cricket already or rounders or some proto baseball, and you could say, hey, here's a tweak, wouldn't this be fun? That would be, I think, an easier sell

than if you're somehow parachuting into a world where no one has ever thought to throw things or hit things. In which case, maybe this would not be a receptive audience because if they have not naturally generated that, like maybe they lack that impulse for some reason. Yeah. Who knows? Oh boy.

It would be, it would sure be tricky. I think it would be very hard. Okay. Matt says, I think it would be fun if each team matchup had some kind of rivalry belt or trophy that would go back and forth between the teams based on who won the last game. Same as how boxing or wrestling belts work. In my envisioned scenario it would either be between all natural rivals, intra-city, state rivalries, etc. Or ideally each and every possible team matchup. I could see it being both a fun thing at the

end of meaningless Marlins Reds games in September to see who gets to keep the trophy over the offseason. The fanbases could brainstorm what each trophy should be. It would be fun to see who would get to keep a tacky silver and gold subway themed trophy between the Yankees and Mets. It would be even better to see whether the Astros or the Rangers get to take the comedically oversized 10 gallon hat back to the clubhouse each night after a game. It would be a new category of stat to track who has the most current trophies or belts. Additionally, it could be a charity event if each team in the duo agrees that the losing team donates $5,000 to an agreed upon charity.

Is there any reality where this could happen? Does it have to be this alternate reality we've just been discussing? Am I the only one who would like to see this happen? Hmm. What do you think? Well, doesn't this exist in some limited way? Like isn't there, well, there's the, the Vetter cup, but that's not, is that an actual physical thing? I don't think so. I don't think there's anything like exchanged between them, you know, other than like tiny pieces of his soul.

But yeah, I, well, there is the, so the mayor's trophy is a thing with the mayor's trophy for the, the subway series. Like, so I'll read from Wikipedia here. Before the creation of interleague play, teams from the national league never played teams from the American league in official games, except during the world series. The teams occasionally met in spring training exhibition games and played 19 times

in the Mayors Trophy game, an in-season exhibition game every year from 1963 through 79, and then again in 82 and 83, the Yankees posted a record of 10-8-1 over the Mets in the Mayor's Trophy Contest. The Mayor's Trophy games were played primarily to benefit Sandlot Baseball in the city, with proceeds going to the city's Amateur Baseball Federation. After dwindling interest and public bickering between the owners of both teams. The Mayor's Trophy game was discontinued following the 1983 season. It was revived again as a pre-opening day series titled the Mayor's Challenge and held in 1989. I think there was a physical Mayor's Trophy. I think that

was an actual trophy that existed. And so I guess if that was a thing and most people don't remember that being a thing and it died out in part due to lack of interest, then I guess that doesn't speak well to... I associate this more with like college sports and college football in particular. Like there are a lot of, and who knows how any of this stuff is going to work now that all the conferences have been rejiggered and whatnot. But like, you pass a thing back and forth to denote your rivalry game and the winner gets to keep the thing for a year. You know, like, there's like a big ax, you know, I think between Wisconsin and Minnesota. As a Wisconsin grad, I'm embarrassed that, oh, what is Paul Bunyan's ax? Yeah, see, I remember stuff. Yeah. They like pass a big acts back and forth between the winner of the Wisconsin Minnesota game every year. And like, you know, the, uh, university of Washington and Washington state have the apple

cup and I, they, I don't think they exchange apples, but maybe they do. Maybe there's a physical thing, but I associate this more with college sports. Um sports and it's fun. So I wouldn't be opposed, but I don't know that there's a ton of like baseball precedent for it. Yeah. I'm thinking of like Cheers versus Gary's Old Town Tavern, which was a running bit in Cheers where there was a rival bar and they would compete in various sports or events. I think sometimes there was a trophy. So yeah, I think it just wouldn't really catch on unless certainly for the non-natural rivalry games, no one would care at all if it was like Marlins versus Reds as the email cited as an example.

No one would care at all about that. Like no one would even know there would be no stakes, I don't think at all. So you would need the natural rivalry. And I guess like we already have the rivalry. So if there were a trophy or some physical manifestation of that, I don't know that anyone would care that much. For all I know, this may exist and we just may not even be aware of it, but like it's, it's for the bragging rights mostly, right? Like an actual physical belt or something. I'm not against it. I'm fine with it, but I just, I think probably most of it is like the gloating you get to do more so than the physical object. Yeah, that might be true.

Sorry to rain on, on the parade here. Maybe you could have an actual parade. Maybe people would care about that. Sometimes we get these suggestions for things or we suggest things and then we realize it already exists. Right. And the fact that like no one really knows or cares suggests that it's maybe not that great an idea. Like the Babe Ruth Award, for instance, which is given to just the best postseason player.

And like no one knows or cares about that particularly. Like I think it's a good idea. I think, you know, give an award to the player with the best performance in the postseason overall. Not just in any individual series, but throughout the postseason. I think that's a cool thing and it exists. And like most people don't really thing and it exists and like most people don't really care that it exists. You know, Dolce Garcia won the Babe Ruth Awards last year.

Do people know that? Do people care? Probably not really. I don't think they know. Yeah. Or when we talk about giving out an award for regular season, the team that had the best regular season performance or record, and that exists in so many sports. There is some trophy or some honor that is given to the best regular season team, and for the most part, no one really cares. So would I support that?

Would I welcome that in baseball? Would I personally kind of care about that? Yeah, I think so, but the precedent in other sports is that mostly people just don't care and you just can't really make them care about that once you introduce the idea of playoffs. JJ, Patreon supporter says, I had a dream that the answer for today's Immaculate Grid for the grid MVP X 2015 had only one answer, Chris Martin. While a reliever winning an MVP in the 21st century is surely a mark of a dream,

so is a player winning both the ALN and NL MVP in the same season. What kind of season would a player have to have to win both MVPs in the same year? I don't think that it's possible. Yeah. It's not really realistic, but. I don't know.

Like, could you take Aaron Judge and make him like 50% better than he even is? And then he gets treated. And this is the other thing. It's like, who's moving that guy? You know? Yeah, right. Right.

That's, yeah. So if you had like what the high single season war is like Babe Ruth's 14. So if, if you took a 14 war season and you split it in half, you have two MVP caliber seasons. So if you had like 1923 Babe Ruth and he gets traded at the exact halfway point of the schedule and he puts up seven war for each of his teams in two different leagues and it's kind of a weak year for other MVP candidates, then I guess you might do that, right?

Or semi more realistically, I guess, like it might've been more possible earlier where being on a playoff team mattered more to people. Again, if like, if you start the season on a playoff bound team, then you're not going to get dealt if you're having an MVP caliber season, but if somehow that happened and then you had a CC Sibathia tear after you got traded and you propelled your new team into the playoffs, maybe you could do it. to deadline and maybe you just get a five or the rest of the way, but like you're incredibly clutch and you propel your team into the playoffs and you have kind

of the narrative behind you. Plus you've just had an unbelievable season and maybe people start to think, wouldn't it be kind of cool if you won an MVP in both leagues? That's never happened before. That'll never happen again. Maybe we should make that happen. I guess you could, you could kind of construct a scenario where that might be reasonable.

I don't think people would do it still. Cause I think that people like to spread those awards around. I think that's part of why you end up with fatigue for like really great players where it's like, oh, you know, people are going to delight in being able to, well, and then Otani is just maybe having an MVP season anyway. But I was going to say like, people seemed excited at the prospect of being able to give the NL MVP to somebody else because Otani was only hitting. And then it's like, well, he's just really good at that.

It might not matter. Yeah. Although what if a guy had the best season ever? Wouldn't it be weird to not have him win at least one MVP? Like say someone puts up a 12-war season or something, and he gets traded in the middle of the season, and everyone would know that this guy was the best player in baseball that year.

And you might almost feel obligated if he had six war in each league and say there was like a seven war guy in each of those leagues or something, might you not feel obligated to say, oh, I guess this guy kind of deserves it in this league and that guy kind of deserves it in that league, but this guy really deserves some sort of overall recognition here. So maybe we just give it to him twice. Maybe, maybe, but I still feel like, Hey, I don't know, man. Like, why is that guy getting treated?

Well, he could just be on a really terrible team. Like, you know, the White Sox had a few good players despite being as bad as they were. He just could be on a bad team. That has happened. Shohei Otani, Mike Trout, back in the day. Dan says, some episodes ago, you talked about a pitcher being unable to field because they broke their non-pitching hand. How good would a pitcher have to be if they truly couldn't field, assume they can't become Jim Abbott, who used a glove on his pitching hand, assume anyone who reaches base steals second and third, then home on consecutive pitches. Can they just be an opener and be worth a roster spot?

Is there any degree of inability to field if the pitcher is good enough where you would put them on there? Let's say you can't necessarily steal home automatically, but if you could steal second and third at least automatically, is that guy playable? I guess. It's tough. Anytime you're into like, is this guy with one weird trick playable? Like, the answer is almost always no. Yeah, sometimes we've come down on, yeah, you could roster this guy, but this would be tough. Like, unless he's really letting almost nobody on base to begin with, if it's just automatic, like everyone's in scoring position, you get on first and then you

just get to third every time that would be tough. Cause even if the guy's really good, just from a run expectancy standpoint, I don't think he would be good enough to make up for that. run expectancy standpoint, I don't think he would be good enough to make up for that. And so yeah, like if you would bring him in, you know, you could bring him in when the bases are loaded or like you already have a guy on second or third or something. If you got to, if he's amazing and you just got to get out of the jam or yeah, you could guess like an opener and just let him go until he lets someone on base. You know, like you just, if he's really effective, I guess as a reliever, maybe,

because if he's a really effective reliever, then I guess usually he might still get through a scoreless inning because he's either, it's going to be a clean inning or he might let one guy on base and that guy will get to third, but he won't score because it's hard to string hits together off this guy. So if he's dominant enough, I guess maybe he could in some limited role, but it would be really hard. And the other issue, I guess, with a pitcher who can't wear a glove or can't feel, it just becomes a safety issue, right?

Because you can't protect yourself from or can't feel it just becomes a safety issue, right? Because you can't protect yourself from a comebacker, really. I almost feel guilty now about all the years where we tried to saddle Mike Trout with various ailments, where it was like, what if he was heavier or he had to run backwards or it was always raining on his head or something? Oh, he ate a lot of meat. Yeah. And it's like the hypothetical has come to life. Like what if he just tears his meniscus for no reason multiple times? I mean- What you're really saying is that it wasn't super pretzels fall after all, it was ours.

It was effectively wild. We were the ones who did him in. Maybe so. That's just a mark of like how amazing and invulnerable he was that we had to invent all kinds of ailments and everything. And then it came true. Like, you know, it's like we spoke it into existence. It's like a plague upon Mike Trout, a pox upon Mike Trout's head. For years it was inconceivable that anything could stop him. And now it is all too conceivable. The most far-fetched Mike Trout hypothetical of all, it turns out, is what if Mike Trout could stay healthy? All right. Couple more. Nicholas, Patreon supporter says, what if

MLB were Patreon supported? How different would baseball be? What kinds of rewards could they offer supporters? First pitch, sing the national anthem, be a bat person. Would the highest reward be to manage a game? What would the highest reward be? Nicole Zichal-Klein Probably a trip to the World Series. Jared Ranere Is it like, so the top tier of support for Effectively Wild is you get to come on the podcast, right? Nicole Zichal-Klein Right. Jared Ranere So the equivalent for MLB would be you get to play in a game. But as we have

discussed, as Sam has written, that might not be all it's cracked up to me. That might not actually be fun. That might be humbling. It might be embarrassing. You might feel like you were monopolizing the sport that people want to watch and serving as a distraction of some kind. So, but a lot of people would want to do it. I mean, a lot of kind. So, but a lot of people would want to do it. I mean, a lot of people wouldn't, but a lot of people would. So yeah, I mean, to get in the official stat record, to be on the fields. I think a lot of people who either fancied themselves good or just wanted to do it for the story and just wouldn't be embarrassed about it.

Yeah, you could absolutely offer that as a perk and many, many people would pay, I think, exorbitant amounts to do that. This is going to sound self-aggrandizing in a way I don't mean it to be, but I just feel, you know, I hear that, like I want to get in a big league game and it makes me feel like out of remove from other people because I'm like, I do not want to do that. I would, that would be embarrassing. That would be bad. I would not enjoy the time I would have out there.

But I think you're right that there are a lot of people who'd be like, let me do an inning. Let me have one inning out there. I think doing some commentary on the broadcast would probably be fairly popular. And yeah, the ones that Nicholas mentioned, throwing out a first pitch, yeah, you'd have takers for that certainly, singing the national anthem, yeah, being a bat person, yeah.

Just like getting to be a fly on the wall, getting to just like sit in the dugout, you know? Just like you get to be in the action. You get to come out to the mound. You get to eavesdrop on a mound visit, you know, like just participatory opportunities that do not involve actually playing in the game, but just being there, being, you know, in the clubhouse, in the dugout, around the players, you know, you get to fly on the team plane and, you know, take part in all the hijinks and pranks that players play, right? Like you just get to fly, you know, on a cross country flight with your idols.

I mean, all these things I think would be quite popular. I think that maybe this is something MLB should explore if like the cable bubble bursts and they can't replace the revenue that they were getting previously. Maybe this is an alternate revenue source. We don't do ads on Effectively Wild. And so that is how we make up for that. If MLB has a revenue shortfall, maybe you auction off experiences. Nicole Zichal-Bendis It feels different to me than, I don't know that you want to create the expectation of owing fans more than you do. And like baseball should be for fans, blah, blah, blah. I don't mean it like that, but it's just, it can get

weird when there's a Patreon involved. I mean, not with us, we've never had anyone weird. No. We've only ever had the best. Yes. And we mean that sincerely because we never know what we're going to get when a Patreon supporter comes on and we're always pleasantly surprised, or I guess it's not even a surprise anymore. Generally, we enjoy talking to our listeners and they know a lot and they're good at talking and answering questions about baseball, which is what we usually do. But if you were MLB and you said you could sing a national anthem and you just gave that to

anyone who is willing to pay that price, well, I mean, you know, we get some, some stinkers of anthems as it is. So I guess it's not necessarily always merit based or, you know, things go wrong, but you would get some, some truly bad situations or you'd get people with no feel, right? Like people who just were, you know, fanboying or fangirling about the players, and that would be a distraction to the players. They would hate that, obviously, right? Like people who did not kind of, you know, respect the situation they were in. They'd want to be buddy-buddy, and they'd, you know, be asking for autographs, and they'd be getting underfoot, and it would be really bad. I think players would hate it, obviously. The union would have to get a significant cut of this revenue, I think, to tolerate this. But there would be some, I think,

ways you could do it that would be a little less obtrusive, at least for, just like you get to hang around, you get to, and I guess teams do this to some extent with like, you know, tours of the ballpark, or you get to go in the clubhouse or something over the off season or when the team's away and you get to be in the hallowed halls and all of that. This would just be a more intrusive version of that. Something to think about. I don't want to, you know, don't want to give Menfred any ideas here or any bad

ideas. You suggest a revenue source to MLB owners. Watch out. It's all over for you. Okay. Last question, although it's really two questions or the same question that we got from two different listeners, almost identical. Harry says, I've been wondering what it would look like if MLB were to unilaterally

adopt the transfer system used in international soccer. Is soccer the sport that we get the most? Like what if baseball did this thing that this other sport did? Probably that and cricket, you know, we get a fair number of cricket questions. Obvious parallels there. Yeah, but yeah. We get a lot of soccer ones. Yeah, it's definitely the most popular non-bat to ball sport that we get questions about. Which I guess makes sense because it's the most popular sport in the world. We get the promotion relegation question, we get red card questions.

So this is the transfer system. We get the loaning players. We've answered that one. That has come up multiple times, the loaning system that soccer has, but this is the transfer system used in international soccer. As I, a casual soccer fan, Harry writes, have come to understand it, this transfer system works as follows. Team A approaches Team B to quote unquote buy a player currently under contract on their team. Once Team A and B agree on a price, then team A gets to negotiate a new contract

with the player. If and only if the player agrees to the new contract terms, then they will join team A. In MLB terms, this is kind of like trading for cash considerations for the teams, but the real kicker is that the player has to agree to contract terms with their new team before the trade is complete. This would obviously redefine the labor market in MLB, but I was wondering how you think

this would affect the game. For one, it feels like it would give more power to players, seeing as every player would essentially get a no-trade clause and more control over their destiny. But I wonder if it would encourage more owners to spend, as I would imagine a Steve Cohen like owner would simply throw ungodly amounts of cash at teams and players to get the best players. And then we get into the whole question surrounding young players before they hit free agency.

Would the Orioles accept $200 million from Hal Steinbrenner to acquire Jackson Holliday, who would then give him a mega contract and how little would Artie Moreno sell Mike Trout to the Dodgers for if it meant getting out from under his contract? Mike Trout catching strays even in the listener emails today. And would someone with a poorly aged mega contract like Trout agree to lesser terms

if it meant playing for a perennial contender? The possibilities seem endless. And then Adam asked a very similar question. The rumors around Garrett Crochet this past week brought to mind another soccer-related if baseball was different. How different would the league look if every traded player signed a new contract with the acquiring team, as is the case in soccer. And he goes on to explain this system as well.

In all, it seems like it would be such a significant win for players that owners would never agree to it, which is probably why no one traded for a crochet. So what do you think? I mean, it exists in soccer, so it could exist in baseball, at least in theory. Although as with the promotion relegation question, it just seems like there's, you know,

institutional obstacles to that. Yeah. That would be very hard to overcome if it hasn't always been done that way. I wonder in this era of prospect hugging, if teams would be willing... You know where it might... I don't know if I understand. I want to make clear that I don't know if I actually understand how loaning works, even though you just explained it to me. So take this answer with a grain of salt, but what if you were a team that was really bad at developing pitching and then you could loan your guy to a team that's good at developing pitching and then you get him back at some point?

That would be appealing, right? Yeah. I think we've discussed that scenario or something a lot like it on more than one occasion. This one though is different from the loaning. This is like... You don't get the guy back, necessarily. You don't get them back. This is not a temporary thing. You just give them away.

Well, or you get something back. You get something back. Yeah, so you agree on a sum with the team to transfer that player, and then you have to then separately negotiate with the player to agree on a new contract. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know about that.

I have to think about that because I don't know. You're like, yeah, that's why I read you the question so you could think about it while I was asking you the question. But I still don't think I'm having trouble seeing the corner cases of, of that. Cause wouldn't you just want, cause like, can you get something other than money back if you're the team that's giving the guy away? Such as? There's only money.

Is it, can you get another player? Can you do a trade? Yeah, I guess, I guess there are also trades, I suppose. But this is- This is just mostly about money. Yeah. I mean, it would totally change the whole economic system of baseball, right? Like if you had had this from the start, you have like players who they might not have ever unionized, like they would have had freedom because this would have been, I mean, different

from the reserve clause that just kind of kept them tied to one team indefinitely. As long as the team decided in this case, they actually have some agency. This is what we see now with established players who can demand an extension. Like the crochet situation was only unusual because he is not like an impending free agent or something. Like he, he has years left to go, but that's what we see when a player is on a expiring contract or a walk year, sometimes there will be a negotiation. And sometimes the team will agree to the trade contingent on an extension.

And then if they can't work out the extension, then they won't do the trade. Right. And like that was, I guess the Tyler Glasall deal with the Rays and the Dodgers. Like, you know, he signed an extension and he had to decide whether he wanted to do that. And then you have agency as the player, as the questioner said, it's like having a no trade clause. Everyone has a no trade clause. So that would dramatically change things. I guess one issue would be competitive balance, right? And you certainly have soccer powerhouses that just outspend everyone else by an enormous amount and they can just acquire a ton of players. So it would

be hard to balance the league, I guess, unless you made some sort of super league where all the teams are rich, then it would be really hard. Like Bob Nutting, you give him the transfer system. He's just going to sell everyone. Get all kinds of money. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And the players would probably want that because they wouldn't want to stay on the stinky, terrible team. They would want to go to the team where they get to want to stay on the stinky, terrible team. They would want to go to the team where they get to win and be in the big market and the big spotlight and everything. So I think it would lead to competitive balance issues, like pretty, pretty serious ones. Yeah. Stinky.

You wouldn't want, you wouldn't like people would be getting out of the white socks. They'd be getting out of the days. They'd be getting out of, well, I don't know if they would be getting out of the white socks. They'd be getting out of the A's. They'd be getting out of, well, I don't know if they would be getting out of the pirates now, I think that they wouldn't necessarily be like, it would be a conversation, you know, cause like their pitching is good. They got good pitching, man. Yeah, maybe.

Yeah. You wouldn't always automatically go to the big market team if the big market team was not good at the time, but like Trevor Rogers of the Marlins, I think he had some comments about how, like, you know, he was pitching for a trade basically. Like he, he knew that with Luzardo on the IL, like he could be the one going and, you know, you're like auditioning for teams. And in that case, if you're on a bad team and you want to go to a good one. So this would be a problem, I guess.

It would make it tough for those teams to acquire those players in the sense that they would still have to pay the players because the players would have leverage. So it would be, I guess, better for competitive balance than the reserve clause era where you just had Yankees or whoever just able to outspend everyone because they didn't have to pay the players anything either. So in this scenario, at least you'd have to pay the players, but it would still be, I think lopsided. So I don't know. The advantage to it would be for the players, obviously, like the, the

younger guys, it would completely invert the salary scale or, you know, it would topple the system we have now. It would change it significantly. Yeah. Yeah. Where you have to reach free agency to make big money or at least arbitration and the younger players are more valuable, right? But I guess like, so would you still keep the, like the pathway to free agency?

I guess you could still keep that to earn your way to free agency, but the young players would just be immensely valuable because of that, except then if they could then have their own contract, if they could set their price, basically, then I guess they wouldn't be as valuable as they are now. Like they wouldn't have as much surplus value because the reason they're so coveted and valuable now is that they don't make any money. Right. So in this scenario, you'd still want young players who would be good for a long time,

but you wouldn't be getting them on the cheap anymore, which would be good from players perspective. Yeah. Players would be, I guess the salaries would map better onto the production than it does currently. Yeah. So yeah, it's good for players, but I don't know that it would be good for competitive balance and I don't know if it would be especially good for fans in any way. Right.

Except to the extent that fans care about players making what they're worth, which I don't know that most fans, it's not the top priority for them necessarily. So yeah, owners wouldn't like this. Obviously owners would never go for this because they like not having to pay all the players all the time. They only have to pay some of the players, some of the time, and, uh, they can win without spending at least in some cases, and even the rich teams that could really buy great rosters in this scenario would still be paying more for

those players than they do now. So even they probably wouldn't want it. So. Right. Yeah. Who's the real champion for this who actually has the ability- Pre-arm players, but that's it. Right. The actual ability to implement it though. And that assumes that I understand it, which I'm still not entirely sure that I do. Yeah, that's always the catch. You know, you ask us about like, what if baseball did this thing, this other sport that we are not experts in? And then it's like, we have to, well, we probably are not even aware of all the complexities of this because we don't cover that sport the way that we do baseball. I have one pedantic question slash complaint here that calls me onto the carpet.

So I have to answer the call, I guess. Peter, Patreon supporter, says, I have a pedantic and grammatical issue I want to raise. It's been simmering in the back of my brain ever since I first noticed it in the off season and now I can't stop noticing it. It is the overuse of an indefinite article preceding a specific player name. For example, here's a pretty reasonable usage, the ranger should acquire an Andrew Chaffin. The meaning is clear, Andrew Chaffin is an archetype of a certain type of proven veteran reliever on an expiring contract, a representative example of a whole class

of players whose specific identity is not what matters to the discussion. Here's where it gets bothersome when someone uses this construction to refer to a class of player whose size is exactly equal to the number of players named. For example, as Spring Training approached, I heard multiple commentators suggesting that such and such team should sign a Blake Snell or a Jordan Montgomery. There were no other players in free agency that were like Snell and Montgomery, that is veteran pitchers with track records and upside but also major question marks. If those two specific players had been removed from the free agent pool at that

point in time, there would be no third similar player available right behind them. There were just the actual humans Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery. Therefore, the meaning of the phrase is the same with or without the indefinite article. In a different context, it could make sense to refer to a Snell or a Montgomery, but in the specific context of March 2024 and many other contexts, it would make sense only to refer specifically to Snell and Montgomery. Sticking an indefinite article in front of their name adds nothing, and it's also kind of dehumanizing, but that is not the focus of my rant. Those repeated references to a SNL or a Montgomery is how I got article-pilled and now I can't

stop hearing it all the time in baseball conversations. It seems to come up in all major team sports, but most frequently in baseball, probably because there's so much discussion about actual and potential transactions. I regret to say that the specific trigger for this message was hearing Ben ask on episode 2195, do you trade a Tarek Scoobble? This was specifically in reference to the Tigers, not as an abstract question for an unnamed team, in which case it could arguably make sense. As you yourselves discussed in the follow-up to that question, Scoobble is a singular player

in the context of the Tigers. One might give you the benefit of the doubt by lumping in Jack Flaherty and saying you meant to trade a good pitcher. But in the context of the discussion, Scoopal's relevant characteristics include his youth and the fact that he's a homegrown player, clearly reducing the set of players referred to by the phrase, a Tarek Scoopal, to just THE Tarek Scoopal. Sorry for the long rant, but hopefully by raising awareness of this alarming problem, we can collectively affect change. Wow, Ben, you got taken to the mat.

What do you think? I think that this is correct. I do think that it's fine to have an archetypal example and say like, you know, an Andrew Chafin type or whatever. But you do need to be mindful about how broad that example actually is because sometimes there's only just the one guy. Like you would, and it's funny because there are guys where I think that that reality is so obvious that one would never do it. Like you would never say you should go try for an Aaron judge. You'd never say that because you'd sound ridiculous. Because there's only the one guy, even though he is two people tall, you know? So I think this is right.

I'm sorry that it was your verbal tick. Normally they're mine. I retract my A Turks Googlearik Schubel. Once I got this email, I started seeing it immediately. Like Joshian, in a recent edition of his newsletter, wrote about the White Sox signing Nick Senzel and said, signing a Nick Senzel is what bad teams do. And I guess in that case, it's defensible because he's not referring solely to Nick Senzel alone. Yeah.

And there are a lot of guys like Nick Senzel. Yeah, like a retread type of player who just hasn't panned out and you hope this will be the time. Yeah, that's an archetype, I guess. But yes, we should, I guess, be conscious of times when it is not and should be more discerning in our usage. Thank you, Peter, for calling me on this. Ben, did you enjoy your deadline week? Yeah, I guess so. Are you glad it's over? I'm not unhappy that it's over.

Me too, buddy. Me too. Congrats on having a wrap on the trade deadline. Yeah, we're officially done. No more, no more. It's behind us. And so is this episode. All right, well, to bring things back to one of the first emails we answered on this episode, if we're cracking down on the indefinite article

before the player name, maybe we've got to go after Vince Gulley and his celebrated line from For the Love of the Game. He's done it! He has done it! game. Not a chapel, Vin. The chapel. Okay, I think that's a little different.

I'm kind of kidding. I did run this matter by listener, Patreon supporter, Ben Zimmer, Wall Street Journal language columnist, word nerd. He said, when we use the indefinite article A before a proper noun, as in a Blake Snell or a Tarek Schubel, it's typically understood as representing an example or type. Linguists sometimes call this a type specifying usage of the article, where the type is specified by selecting certain salient qualities of the referent of the proper noun, in this case a particular baseball player. Among those familiar with the players in question, there's some shared implicit knowledge about

which qualities are selected out when you say a Tarek Scoobal, meaning a type of player like Tarek Scoobal. Now does the set of players who are like Scoobal in some salient way include anyone besides Scoobal? And does the set who are like Snell or Montgomery include anyone besides those two? Those are subjective questions, but even if there's just one Scoobble type player or two Snell Montgomery type players, I don't think that means the use of the indefinite article is somehow improper in those cases. The question, do you trade a Terek Scoobble is still valid, even if there's no one else quite like Scoobble that fits

the Scoobble type. It's simply a set of one. Okay, so other other Ben, sorta sticking up for the indefinite article usage. By the way, he continues, this isn't the only way we use indefinite articles before proper nouns. Emily Brewster, a colleague who's an editor at Merriam-Webster, was working on the entry for A and realized the dictionary was missing a use of the article, and it was actually a baseball example that led to this realization. It was a quote from Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated, October 18, 2004, with the Angels dispatched in short order, arrested Schilling, a career 6-1 pitcher in the postseason, could start three times if seven games were necessary against the Yankees.

Based on looking at examples like that, Emily added a new sense for A, used as a function word before a proper noun to distinguish the condition of the referent from a usual former or hypothetical condition, now listed as definition 3F in Merriam-Webster's entry. I always learn something when I email Ben Zimmer. Few other follow-ups. Last time we talked about Blake Snell's resurgence. Well, it continued on Friday when he no-hit the Cincinnati Reds. Three walks, 11 strikeouts. His ERA on the season is now down to 4.29. His FIP is down to 3.09.

He has totally turned his season around, as it didn't take long for his numbers to improve because he hadn't actually pitched that much. But his FIP is now a good deal better than it was projected to be preseason. I think opting out is totally back in play. If he finishes the season on some torrid run, the kind that he had last year, if he's healthy, his option is for $30 million next year, half of which I think is deferred until 2027. I don't know if the market for him will be any stronger than it was a year ago, but it's

possible that there might not be as many strong starting pitchers available via free agency. We'll see. Snell, by the way, threw 114 pitches in his no-hitter, one less than Dylan Ceasthrew in his. He said after the game that he and Giants catcher Patrick Bailey decided at the beginning of the year that he'd throw a 9-inning game, get the monkey off his back, quote, nobody can say it anymore. Complete game. Shut out. No-hitter. Leave me alone. End quote. Good for him. He did it. I think his previous longest start was 7 and 2 thirds innings. We also talked last time about the White Sox and their unparalleled record of futility,

at least as measured by playoff appearances. Listener and Patreon supporter Tex ran the numbers on that. We talked about the White Sox lack of consecutive seasons with playoff appearances, other than 2020-2021, but overall they've made the playoffs only 11 times in 122 seasons. That's 11.1 seasons per playoff appearance, and no other team is particularly close to that. The Mariners are second at 9.2 seasons per playoff appearance, the Nationals slash Expos next at 9, the Reds 8.8, the Phillies 8.8, the Sox are in a class of their own.

And of course, there were no playoffs per se for much of that franchise's history, it was World Series or Bust, but there were fewer teams in those days too. I'll link to Texas' spreadsheet. You will not be surprised to learn that the Yankees have the lowest seasons per playoff appearance number, 2.1, followed by the Rays at 2.8 and the Astros at 3.6, Diamondbacks also at 3.6, and then Dodgers at 3.8. Those expansion teams in expanded playoff eras may be somewhat skewed. The White Sox, by the way, will not be making the playoffs this season either, so that ratio will worsen, as did their record and their losing streak on Friday because they lost for the 18th time in a

row. And I believe that aided and abetted by the All-Star break, they actually set the modern era record post-1900 for longest stretch of days during a season without winning a game. They still got several games to go to challenge the modern record for consecutive losses. Finally, we talked last time about whether runs that scored as a result of a pitcher's error should be classified as unearned given that they are earned by the pitcher. Well, a few listeners noted that maybe we were looking at it backward. Michael, Patreon supporter says, in the discussion about pitcher errors in ERA, Ben mentioned that what wrinkled is that

runs scored because of pitcher errors are intuitively very much earned by the pitcher. This line of reasoning surprised me because I've always understood an earned run to be earned by the offense, not the pitcher. On my reading, runs resulting from errors should always be unearned, no matter who made the error. Am I alone in my interpretation of earned run? No, you're not alone. We got an email from another listener, Adam, who said the rationale here, I think, is that it's the offense that earns or fails to earn a run. That is, if the pitcher makes

an error, the run was unearned in the sense that the offense didn't earn it. And yes, that is true. If you look at the history of earned runs, it was originally an offensive statistic, but it very quickly evolved into a pitching statistic. Henry Chadwick is typically credited with the concept of the earned run. And he was a hardliner when it came to what was earned. Initially, he didn't think stolen bases were earned by the offense so much as given up by the defense. Same with walks. I'll quote from a Sabre piece by our pal Richard Hirschberger here, author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball. He's writing about the 1888 season when bases on balls counted as errors, but not as at bats.

This proved unsatisfactory, he writes, thanks to another innovation, the earned run. The idea of distinguishing between earned and unearned runs was not new. It went back at least to 1871. The topic was regularly discussed in later years. This discussion, however, was unofficial. The official rules did not in later years. This discussion, however, was unofficial. The official rules did not distinguish earned from unearned runs until 1888. Having an official definition to disagree with wonderfully focused sports writers' attention, the rule as implemented presented an especially irresistible target. An earned run was defined as one unaided by errors, with the explicit exception that bases on balls, though summarized as errors,

shall be credited as factors in earned runs This contradiction was met with widespread outrage The whole point of an earned run is that it is achieved without benefiting from an error It seemed obvious nonsense to turn around and include runs achieved from bases on balls The problem was a lack of clarity about the purpose of the distinction between earned and unearned runs and difficulty integrating the ideology of earned runs with the ideology of bases on balls was earned runs an offensive statistic meant to determine whether to assign credit to the batting side, or was it a defensive pitching statistic meant to determine whether to assign blame to the pitcher? It seems to have been originally conceived as an offensive

stat but came to be seen also as a defensive stat by 1879, when Chadwick, using italics to stress his point, wrote, There is but one true estimate of a pitcher's excellence in playing the position, and that is in the number of earned runs charged against him. These two conceptions existed side by side through the 1880s, leading to the disconnect. But of course, that debate was quickly settled in favor of the defensive side of things. And when earned runs became an official statistic for good, it was a pitching stat used in ERA. So I think Michael's right, Adam's right, but also we haven't really looked at things that way for a very long time. A hitter doesn't get credit for reaching on an error

the same as they do for a hit, but the earned, unearned run distinction is used to decide whether to hold the pitcher accountable. So practically speaking, it becomes a reflection of the pitcher's performance more so than the offense's. I guess it's two ways of looking at the same thing, but I'm not sure the original conception of the purpose of the earned run matters that much these days. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Now I'm freely now a scorecard With a cracker jacket smile Back to the wild