Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2202: The Hierarchy of Versatility

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the appeal of deflected balls caught on the fly, the lack of variety in MLB.TV highlights, Aaron Judge’s bases-empty intentional walks, the Braves falling out of playoff position (for now), and the surprising team with a trio of young, above-average, qualified hitters. Then (40:44) they rank the types […]

How do you calculate whore? Does it come from the heart? Should we use defensive runs saved or follow the OAA way? Who's gonna win? With their quips and opinions, it's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2202 of Effectively Wild, a fan grass baseball... The number tripped me up and then I got past it and I started congratulating myself. There's a lot of twos in 2002. So many twos, Ben. Should we try again or should we just, you know, it's brought to you by our Patreon supporters for whom we are so grateful. I am Meg Rowley of FanGraphs.

You are Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing just fine. Friday show? I don't know how you're doing. I'm doing great. It's Friday. It's a Friday. It's a Friday.

It's a Friday show. We love a Friday show and we love Fridays really. Pro Friday. Know what else I love? I have realized I love a deflection on defense. A ball that is caught after hitting something, someone, and then someone else catches it. Did you see the play in the Rockies-Mets game on Thursday

that involved a double play deflection? And that's a rocket, that's an out, that's a double play. Did that go off of Lambert to Tovar and off his leg? What an effort by Ezekiel Tovar to turn a double play. I don't know that I've seen one quite like this. It was a deflection, a line drive back up the middle through the box. Francisco Andor deflected a liner off of pitcher Peter Lambert's glove. And then it was caught by rocky shortstop Ezekiel Tovar,

who threw to first to double off the runner who was on first. I had to watch the replay a few times to discern that this was in fact a deflection. And it seemed like even one of the announcers maybe was a bit fooled by what had happened here because it didn't really slow the ball or deflect it all that much. So I couldn't tell initially.

Yeah, I couldn't tell whether he had made contact and then I couldn't tell whether it had bounced before Tovar caught it, but no, it was just an assist. It was just a one, six, three off of the glove of Lambert, never hit the ground. And I don't know that I've seen one quite like that. Maybe I have. I've seen so many plays. Who can remember all of them? But that was a weird one. And I really like this. I

wish there were more of these. I had not seen this because I'm going to shock you by admitting I was not watching a Rockies game yesterday. Like I just like was doing really anything else. I do love that because this is a highlight, they are able to cut up other reactions. So like, you know that the Rockies dugout knows right away that this is a cool play, right? Because they cut to the dugout and people are looking like, whoa, that is nifty. It was. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't intentional. It just happened. I mean, it was a good read by Tovar to stay on it and not be fazed by the deflection. Occasionally you might see kind of like a

kick save, you know, just someone sticks a leg out or something and kicks it and maybe that's unintentional too. But I love the on the fly. It's like the defensive highlight of Dylan Cease's No Hitter was that pop-up right behind second in sort of shallow center, right center. And it went off of Zander Bogarts's glove. He was trying to make a basket catch kind of, and it just popped out. And then Jackson Merrill running in from center, made the catch to preserve the no hitter. It was only the fifth inning, so it wasn't super high stakes by that point, but still it turned out to be important. I don't know whether that would have been scored preserve the no hitter. It was only the fifth inning, so it wasn't super high stakes by that point, but still it turned out to be important. I don't know whether that would have been scored

an error or a hit. Maybe a hit though, right? It would have been a tough play, ordinary effort, extraordinary effort. So I just wish that we had more of this because I used to love playing dodge ball in my younger days. And one of the highlights of dodgeball was when you would deflect a ball and someone else would catch it, right? Maybe you could deflect it off of the ball that you were holding, or maybe it would be deflected off someone's face and then you would manage to catch it. And that was sweet too, because if someone just got knocked out of the game and it's like, you caught it, you know, hey, you thought that you triumphed. You just got this guy out and now you're out too.

Turnabout is fair play. Right. So I wish that there were more of this in base. It just doesn't happen that often because the fielders aren't that close together, I guess usually, but it's almost like, you know, I kind of always say that baseball is a team sport, but sort of an individual sport masquerading as a team sport almost because not everyone on the field is involved in every play. Most people aren't in fact.

And so it's not really like one-on-one pitcher versus batter as it's sometimes reputed to be. There's a catcher, there's an umpire, there are other people involved, but it is more one-on-one than more continuous sports where everyone's kind of playing a part in each play. And in baseball, a lot of people are just standing around a lot of the time. So this is a rare instance where it's like, no, it really is a team sport. It's not just that this guy threw and that guy hit, and then that guy was standing in the path of the ball and made the play. There was a cooperative, collaborative effort here, even if it was mostly unintentional.

Well, you know what they say, if you can dodge a wrench, you can preserve a no hitter. You're giving me an opening to a mini rant, if you'll allow. I am painfully familiar with that play to preserve Dylan Cease's No-No because I think it is every other commercial on MLB TV right now. They're doing the highlights, the throwbacks, and it's from like two weeks ago, you know? All of the recent plays, at least that I am being served as part of that look back thing are, they're all from like the middle of July onward is what I'm trying to say. And some of them are very impressive. Like who doesn't want to watch Eugenio Suarez hit three home runs in a game, but your, your desire to do that does start to flag ever so slightly when it's like

the 900th time that you've seen him do that. And so while I don't necessarily need all of those highlights to be from back in the day, I am floored that there's not greater variety between them. Like, you know how much baseball there is, Ben? There's like so much baseball and a lot of it is very good because I don't know if you know this, but big leaguers, they're pretty talented. So just like mix it up, like, or are you limited in your licensing of your own material, Major League Baseball?

What is, what can account for this? I simply beg, I beg. Wholeheartedly agree. Yeah, and it's so nice to have part of an ad break be devoted to like a cool thing that happened rather than trying to sell me something, you know? Like I appreciate that a great deal. But I need to be given a greater variety in my highlights because I have come to resent Dylan Cease and his no hitter and that feels bad because like that's really cool.

Yeah. I think we've complained about this in previous seasons, but it seems like it's gotten even more extreme or it's not, it's not even just anytime the season. It's like within the last month, like come on, mix it up a little bit. We don't need to be reminded of these things. We've seen them. I mean, I know not everyone has seen them. Many fans just watch their own teams games. And also some people aren't super interested in the distant past. And maybe you want to kind of cater to people who are interested in recent plays, but it's a rich tapestry. There's so much baseball history. That's one of the strengths of the sport. And also most of that is inaccessible because it's in the vaults in the MLB archives. And we can't even watch games that

are more than, you know, not that many years old, right? It might as well have been decades, sort of century ago. It might as well not have been on video at all. And why not just explore the studio space a little bit? Like give us some variety. Like we should never see repeats really. There's hundreds of thousands of plays, even if we're limiting to like exciting plays, I'd watch just a random play. If you could give me the entire digitized archive of all of the tapes that MLB has and it's filled and I don't know if all of that stuff is like tagged and sorted and you can just kind of

call it up. But yes, please a little variety. Oh my goodness. A little, a little variety. And I refuse to believe that there is like in any way a technological limitation here, right? If the algorithm, the advertising algorithm is smart enough to know that I live in a swing state and therefore serve me competing Kamala lady prosecutor ads, it can give me randomized plays. Come on, have faith in yourself.

Yes, here are plea. Thank you. It's just a good advertisement for the sport. Like you, I'm glad that they are sort of investing in the product. They're advertising themselves, baseball itself, which is good because baseball itself is a good advertisement for baseball. Hey, this thing is good. You should watch more of it. But show us a little more, please.

Lauren Ruffin A little more. There's so much. Anyway, thank you for indulging my mini rant because it's been wearing on me, Ben. I've been struggling. I share your sentiments. So one replay that probably wouldn't be entertaining to see is Aaron Judge getting intentionally walked with no one on base, which is happening more often lately. We've been talking for a while about why are pitchers throwing strikes to Aaron Judge.

Yeah. And they're throwing fewer pitches in the strike zone to Judge than they were earlier this season, maybe more arguably than they should be even now. But also sometimes they've decided not to throw any pitches to Aaron Judge at all. They just have the automated walk. And that has happened in some unusual situations, a sign of the, again, almost Bonzian run that he has been on really since May, he has been bonzing and now he is being treated like Barry Bonds and he's getting the intentional walk treatment. And I wonder whether this is defensible in any sort of statistical sense. I kind of, I get it. I understand the temptation to do this because if

you're an opponent of Aaron Judge, he's just been beating you over and over and over again. So the other day, August 3rd, he hit his 41st homer in the first inning, and then he got intentionally walked in the second with two outs and nobody on. The two outs maybe makes it a little bit better, but second inning to walk this guy, the Yankees were up for one. I think this was against the Blue Jays and Blue Jays manager, John Schneider,

intentionally walked him and said, I honestly didn't feel like seeing him swing, which I think is very relatable. I get it. And then talking to our pal, Mike Farron on MLB network radio, a couple of days later, he said, you know what? I kind of don't want it to be five one right there.

And I kind of feel like on the one hand, you can't blame him, but on the other hand, you probably can. Because even with Bonds, most of the time, at least, if not all of the time, it just didn't really seem to be backed up by the numbers. And Schneider, the next day, intentionally walked Judge three more times, including one more time with the bases empty with no outs, which is really quite wild. And Jason Stark wrote about this at the athletic and he had some of the stats about this

and he looked up on the baseball reference that had event finder. He noted this was the sixth time since 1955 that a hitter had been intentionally walked in the first or second inning of any game with nobody on base and it hadn't happened in over half a century. Not even to Bonds. Glenn Borgman in 1972 was the last time that had happened and then it happened multiple days in a row being walked with nobody

on base. Bonds had that happen to him three times and it happened to Judge on Saturday and Sunday. And then the bases empty no outs intentional walk club. There are some members of that, but very few. Barry Bonds five times, Frank Howard two times, Ryan Howard one time and Aaron Judge one time. That is it. That is the complete list of players who have been intentionally walked with no outs and none on. So it is really an outlier. And he had also a list of guys who've been intentionally walk with nobody on more than once. Judge has had five of those in his career and the only guys since 1955 with more than that, Bonds 41 times, Mark

McGuire 10 times, Frank Howard 8 times, the only other active players with more than one, Mike Trout, Shohei Otani, Andrew McCutcheon. So I understand the sentiment of John Schneider just not wanting to see Aaron Judge swing. Now, Tom Tango ran the numbers on this at his blog, tankotiger.com, and he determined that this didn't make sense, taking into account the win expectancy and the leverage and the expectations for Aaron Judge. And he found that the break even point basically like it would have only make sense if he was a 630 weighted on base average hitter. And Bonds at his best was about a 540. Like a hundred points or so shy of it really being defensible, saprometrically speaking,

and yet vibes wise, I kind of get it. And also like Yankees lineup wise and who's batting behind him at any particular time. I kind of get it. You know, this is like one of those times where the gut and the eye tests, I'm sympathetic even if the numbers don't back it up. We talk in sports, this isn't unique to baseball, about like not wanting to let that guy beat you, right? Or that person beat you. This is a place to cross the gender spectrum, right? And there are times when it feels like, again, it's not being totally borne out by the numbers that we are, even in the face of someone who's incredibly

talented in Judge's case, literally head and shoulders above other hitters in the game right now, that we are perhaps imbuing them with an almost mystical power, right? That their defeat of you is a predetermined outcome, as if you're part of some grand narrative. And that's a little silly. But it's only somewhat silly. I get the instinct of saying, especially in an offense like the Yankees, where you have these two guys who are responsible for so much of the run production that the Yankees have had so far.

Bauman has looked at this a couple of times, like how much our judge and Soto on their own responsible for in terms of the number of runs scored by the Yankees offense this year. I get wanting to be like, I'll just see the next one. Now the next one is Austin Juan Soto. And like, good luck with that. That's her too, you know? But I get it. I really do. You know? And I'm not saying it's the right choice, but it's a very legible decision to me. Yeah. If you're just like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of it.

Just sick of this guy just beating us every time, even if it is conceding defeat and it's kind of cowardly. I have over time, I think, I don't know if I'd describe myself as radicalized, but I have become more anti-IBB over time. I don't really like that you can do that, right? I do kind of feel, I don't mind so much the not having to throw the pitches if you're going to have intentional walks, but I don't really love having intentional walks. I do kind of feel more and more that if you want to walk someone, you should have to throw

pitches. And yes, of course, if we mandated that you had to throw pitches, then they would just be silly lob type pitches, and then you might as well just put the forefingers up. And that's how we got to this place, I guess, right? Because it's just non-competitive and we're just wasting everyone's time. But it does kind of feel like maybe you should have to suffer the shame of throwing those pitches and the possibility that something will go awry, whether you throw one wildly or the guy reaches out and tries to hit one or whatever it is. You should at least have to fake it. And maybe it can be an unintentional, intentional walk,

which is what it would end up being very often, but then there's risk. You might throw one away, it might go in the dirt, it might be wild, you never know. So it does feel like just bypassing, just saying, I prefer not to pass, which it is, it's the free pass. I don't like it, I kind of don't like it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that what we've learned is that you're more comfortable than I am calling other people cowards. You're just comfortable with that. Yeah. I mean, hey, I'd be scared of Aaron Judge if I were his opponent too, but I have no quarrel with him. It's like you do the thinking meme and it's like tired. Yeah, the head tapping one. Yeah. Or rather like, I don't know about memes. It's like tired, intentionally walking Aaron Judge. Wired, intentionally walking Juan Soto.

I think that's actually where you make your money is in walking that guy. Just walk that guy because it's like after that. Why not both? To name another meme. Right. Yeah. There you go. Austin Wells beat you or whoever it is. Yeah, exactly. Austin Wells is hitting pretty okay though. Yeah, he's doing fine. Just a significant step down.

Yeah, be respectful toward Austin Wells, but also. So as we speak here on Friday, the first time in a while, I guess, that the Atlanta Braves are not currently occupying a playoff spot. As they say, if the season ended today, which would be quite weird if that happened, but if it did, they are not in a playoff spot right now. They are a half game back of the Milwaukee Brewers who just took them to the woodshed, just absolutely destroyed them in a three game series. Although I think the Braves had just beaten the Brewers in a previous series not that long ago. That's how baseball works. Anyway, the Braves are 57 and 49 and they are on the outside looking in for that third wild card spot in the NL and even run differential wise, they are plus 55.

The Brewers ahead of them are at plus 81. So it's not even that they've really gotten unlucky or anything. And of course the Phillies just seem to be the best team in baseball and have a eight and a half game lead over. A rough, a rough start to their post all-star break time too. Yeah. It's been going a little bit better for them very recently, but they were scuffling for a while and the Braves were doing well for a while and then suddenly they fell on hard times. Again, it's baseball. These things swing quite wildly from week to week and month to month,

but the Braves are now a half game back of the Mets even. And they are just trailing these other teams and they still have a very good chance to make playoffs. They, I would say, are still likely to make the playoffs, but they seemed like a virtual lock when the season started. In fact, they had the highest playoff probability of any team in the preseason, fan-graphs odds, even though the Dod playoff probability of any team in the pre-season. Fan-graph's odds, even though the Dodgers were the story of the off-season, they were second in the playoff probabilities and the Braves had a 98.3% chance to make the playoffs on opening day

and an 88.8% chance to win the division. No respect for the Phillies. And the Braves had a 25.4% chance to win the World Series. You don't see numbers that high. That is rare. So the odds really respected the Braves. And then that's why they play the games and that's why guys get hurt sometimes. So we don't really have to reach for an explanation. No, obviously the Braves have just lost a lot of key players and very few teams could weather the sort of losses that they've suffered and still be even close to a playoff spot and still be likely, at least according to the playoff odds now, have them as a 67.5 or 66.4. I think it went down a percentage point since we started the podcast. So 66.4.

So still a two thirds chance to make it, which a lot of teams would like, but that's not what the Braves thought that they would have to settle for come mid-August. Yeah. Like you said, it's not hard to figure out what has felled them this year. It's been like most of their important starters or everyday players getting hurt. It does make me sad about the timing of Chris Sale's resurgence, right? Because like he has had such an incredible season and he's looked like the old ferocious version of himself and what a great story.

And you know, I think you're right, their chances of making it to October play are not poor. It could still happen. And if it does, then I guess it's like a good story because he gets to play an even bigger role. But you know, it's not what you like to see. Like think about how good this Atlanta team would be if they didn't have the injuries they did and say we're having the year he's having. Like whoa, look out. But you know, the Phillies are like a good baseball team too. Some of this is them pressing their advantage, but a lot of it

is boy, Atlanta. Very hurt. Very, very hurt. Yes. Yeah. And I wonder whether Sale will hold up because he had a pattern even when he was healthy in the past where he would wear down as the season went on. I don't know whether all his time off recovering from various injuries has made him fresh or not, or has made him more likely to wear out as the season goes on, but they really need him to keep doing what he's been doing. Because yeah, they lost the projected wealth. You could have made the case, best player in baseball and best pitcher in baseball coming into the season, arguably. Best hitter, best pitcher, Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuna, who's certainly in the conversation.

So losing those two guys alone and then Ozzy Albies and his absences, Michael Harris, the second has been out for almost a couple months now. He's almost back, which I think will help because the outfield has been rough. Like in the absence, not that he was playing super well, but in his absence and in Acuna's absence, oof, yeah, they've, you know, they've tried the reunion route and they brought in Eddie Rosario who was not good at all and now got designated for assignment.

And then of course they had Duvall and they've got Saler now and Luke Jackson. They're just trying to run back the 2021 playbook here, but it's not working quite as well thus far. But yeah, it's the injury absences, but it's also, and of course, Renaldo Lopez, who was rotation stalwart as we discussed many times, he's on the IL though it doesn't seem serious. But it's also some of the guys who have been available who just haven't hit up to stuff. Yeah, just to go from one of the best offenses ever

last year and yeah, you subtract Acuna and Albies, et cetera, even though Acuna was not even hitting up to his standard before he got hurt or maybe he was nursing some sort of injury even then, who knows. It's hard to know because he had the knee thing in spring and so it's like, was he compromised the entire time? You know, hard to say.

Yeah. But really, other than Marcelo Zuna and to some extent, Austin Riley, no one has really delivered there, right? I mean, it's just so strange. Okay, like maybe Orlando Arcia, you weren't completely buying the breakout, I guess, or just, you know, even being a league average hitter, even though he'd done that for a couple of years. But Sean Murphy, who was also hurt, right? But since he's been back, he just hasn't been great.

And then like Matt Olson, what is going on with Matt Olson, who has a 98 WRC plus after being at 160 last year. And I don't know if he's just wearing down because he plays every single inning of every single game, which, you know, maybe take an inning off at some point, Matt. I don't know if that is what is hurting him or not, but those guys, you certainly penciled in for a lot more offense than you've gotten from them. Even if there were doubts about like Jared Kelnick and some other members of that lineup who you didn't expect to have to rely on so much. And, you know, I guess you've got Spencer, Schwellenbach, who has stepped up and has

been good for them. Max Fried was hurt and then came back and didn't do well in his first game back, but hopefully he's okay and that would be a big help. So really just almost everyone they were counting on has missed a lot of time or has dramatically underperformed. So it is almost impressive that they're in as competitive a position as they are, but it's still surprising that they're scrapping for a third wild card here. Yeah. And like Olsen, at least from a power perspective, I think has been a little bit better of late

than he was early in the year. But yeah, I mean, like one of the other things that's like so striking about it is how, not only how many injuries, right, and how much under performance, but how early some of the key injuries were. Like, they've basically played most of the season without Okunha and Strider. Like, Strider went down, what, on like April 7th or something like that? So, you know, they've had to deal with these absences for longer. To your point, it's like kind of amazing that things aren't worse. Yeah.

Where their playoff odds sit is probably something of a cold comfort to Braves fans because, you know, they have aspirate. This is like a really good team. It's supposed to be built to be good for a long time. You have all of these key guys signed to long-term extensions. Like, these are the moves of a team with aspirations beyond merely making it to October, right? They want to win another World Series. They want to be a dynasty.

They want to like be one of those teams we talk about in that way. And so even if they make it to October, you do have to wonder what kind of postseason run they really have ahead of them. Now we had big doubts about the team that won the World Series too, where it's like there's talented folks here, but also they're missing their, you know, their best player and one of the best players in baseball. What are they going to do? You know, is this bullpen going to be able to hold up? And then like, you know, Tyler Manstek was amazing and they won a World Series. So, I mean, not just because of him, like there were a lot of other parts too, but it's, it's certainly possible. We

talk a lot about how anything's possible in October, but this isn't the version of Atlanta's squad that I think their fans were hoping to see come postseason play. Well, they got upset by the Phillies in each of the past two division series, so who knows? Maybe they will return the favor and they will upset the Phillies this year. They'll be the underdogs who win even though they're not as good a team. And I mentioned the baseball prospectus injured list ledger last time, because I was citing the Dodgers major league leading totals of games missed and days missed the Braves are not actually that high when it comes to just number of days or games missed, but they are number one when it comes to warp wins above

replacement player baseball prospectus is win value stat missed. So they're about eight warp, eight wins above replacement down just because of injuries. And maybe you could say that's even conservative. I mean, just think of what you would have expected out of Acuna and Strider alone in a full healthy season, right? So, yeah. And it's funny, because we talked,

remember when we talked to Ben Clemens early this year about the depth work, right? About how FanCrafts was trying to figure out a way to account for depth in projections. And the Braves were a team that we talked about because they had this great first string and then not a lot of depth and the depth had not been tested because they didn't really go in for load management and given guys days off or innings off in Maddelson's case.

And that had worked out for them because pretty much everyone had stayed healthy more or less for them. And so they hadn't really had to dip down into the second or third string. And then I don't know whether that accumulated where caught up to them this year or whether it's not really related. It's just a run of bad luck, but yeah, not that there's any team that has the depth to sort of, you know, whether the loss of Ronald Acuna and Spencer Strider and Ozzy Alapes and loss of Ronald Acuna and Spencer Strider

and Ozzy Alapes and all of these other guys and just take that look in and keep on ticking really. But that has totally been tested and been found wanting, I guess. So somewhat this season. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there we are. And my last little observation here before we sort of segue into stat blasting, I've

got some good stat blasts lined up here. I just noticed this. What team do you think has the most players, most hitters, 24 or under, who have been above average hitters this year, who have qualified for the batting title. So 24 or younger qualified for the batting title above average hitters as defined by 101 OPS plus or higher. Maybe you can tell from the framing of this question, it might be a somewhat surprising team, but what do you think like, oh,, productive hitters, lots of young talent. Nicole Zichal-Bendis Yeah, but I got to be kind of cute about it,

right? Like the way you formulated the question makes me think I got to be kind of cute about it. And so I'm going to think about what is the counter and I mean, like the Orioles seem like the right answer here. Jared Ranere Yes, you would think Orioles. Yes, you would. It's not the Orioles. Nicole Zichal-Bendis It's not the Orioles, clearly, because you're asking the question. Otherwise, it would be

sort of a boring question to ask. The Milwaukee Brewers. Not the Brewers. It is. Can I keep guessing? Yeah, please. Can I have one more guess? Sure. It's such a weighty guess. It's such a heavy thing to take the, I mean, a couple of years ago, I would have said the Cleveland Guardians, but now they're all older.

They just keep getting older, Ben. That's the thing about age, it just keeps moving in one direction. Even Benjamin Button, it was like kind of moving in one direction. It was just a counterintuitive direction. Yeah. You know, the real person, Benjamin Button. I don't know, tell me. It's the angels.

The angels? Wow! The angels, yeah. Oh, I'm so mad at myself because I thought, who other than Zach Neto is on the angels who qualifies? Maybe I'm betraying that I'm not paying close attention to the angels. How old is Zach Neto? Who other amongst the... Zach Neto qualifies. He is 23. And we talked about another one of them last time, Logan Ohapi, 24. Oh, yes, sure, Logan. Yeah, yeah. And then Nolan Shanwell, who has been hitting quite well lately, has even shown some power, relatively speaking. He's just 22. So, the angels.

Wait, wait, can I interrupt you for a bad joke? So, when Nolan Shanwell has been hitting for power, would you call him instead Nolan Slamwell? Would you? I wouldn't have, but you just did. Now you will! Yeah. Oh, I'm really proud of that one. I think that one's good. No, it's not good, but I'm still proud of it, you know? sometimes you love your goofy looking children too. Yeah. So fun fact. I mean, who would ever think of the angels, hot bed of young talent, right?

But they do have some, it's just, you know, like half a core maybe without like the rest of the, the other half and also like surrounding talent too. But if you were starting with Neto and Ohapi and Shanawell, that'd be a pretty solid start there. So there are other teams, like the only other team with more than two such players with at least five plate appearances, just to get rid of the total such players with at least five plate appearances, just to get rid of the total randoms, is the Nationals who have CJ Abrams, Luis Garcia Jr. and James Wood. So the qualified for batting title is excluding some players here.

The Orioles have Colton Kouser and Gunnar Henderson, and they also have some other guys, but they just have not gotten that much playing time. Like they haven't qualified for the batting title. But that says something about these angels guys that they've been up all season and that they have managed to be above average. So that's pretty impressive, I guess. It's just fun facts. I would not have expected that until I just sort of stumbled across this.

The angels, who knew? The angels, the Los Angeles angels. Of Anaheim, yes. Do you think, I think that they would do better if they leaned into the Anaheim, you know? Like, be proud of where you're from, I think. I agree. You're not from... No one's fooled by this Los Angeles thing. Just use the of Anaheim or just say Anaheim or just go back to California.

What was wrong with that? Well, California Angels, I think is ridiculous because there are so many other baseball teams in California. You can't claim the entire state of California. Yeah, no. Yeah, you can't claim the whole state. That's wild. I mean, if you can be the Texas Rangers with another team in that state. Well, maybe I think that's also stupid. Or you could be, now, you know, New York Mets, New York Yankees, I guess you could say is the city, not the state. But yes, I agree. It's bold to claim California as yours. But if you're going to go big, if you're going to claim you're a Los Angeles team,

when you're not really, might as well just go bigger and bolder, just take the whole darn state. Can I offer two team name takes and then we can get to your stack less? Okay, so here's my first team name take. I think that it's ridiculous that they get to be the Texas Rangers. I think they should have to be city specific. I think the only time you get to claim an entire state is if you were the only team playing that sport at the highest professional level in that state. So that's a take. That's one take I have. I'm kind of with you on that, I guess, except can they claim Dallas? Can they claim Dallas,

Fort Worth? Do they have to be the Arlington Rangers? And- They could be the DFW Rangers. Well, that's a truer statement if a goofier sounding one. I kind of like it only because the Texas Rangers are a thing. And so you're playing off the existence of the Texas Rangers, a Texas tradition, but it's still, it does feel like overreach.

Yeah. And maybe not, you know, maybe not among their best traditions, just saying that. That's a, that's a third, that's a third take on related to names, but one I feel strongly about. And here's my second take. I think that there should, you should only be allowed to have one version across sports of a team name. Because it gets confusing. You shouldn't be allowed to have multiple, why are there multiple giants? Even with different cities, you mean? So you can't have New York Giants, you can't have New York Rangers, Texas Rangers. You can't have Texas, we just established. You got to pick. I don't like that either. I don't think. I think you got to-

So is it just seniority then, whoever gets dibs? They could fight. They could have a cook off. They could make a compelling case. Or like recent success or something. Like if you got to earn it, you got to be the best Rangers or Giants or whatever. Yeah. Because I don't have any better reason other than I find it annoying that when I Google Giants, Google doesn't know which one I mean. And it's like, I'm Googling baseball stuff way more than football stuff. You should know.

What is your newly determined illegal monopoly for, if not this, right? So that's a take I have. Yes, every now and then I, even though I'm well aware of which teams have the URLs, I still will type in giants.com and it will be taken to the football giants. Yeah, even though you can type in twins.com now and you go to the twins website, that is important. A difference in a piece that I wrote for Grantland, but the

guardians- Is there, wait, wait, hold on. Sorry, I have to ask a clarifying question about that. As opposed to like people searching for information about the movie Twins? Well, it was just a website that was owned by two twins, Durland and Darwin Miller, and they just squatted on this URL forever.. I showed up at their door almost a decade ago now and just knocked on the door because they wouldn't answer my inquiries and I wanted to know who are you and why do you still possess this twins.com website. It was quite an adventure.

They had matching hummers in the driveway and it was quite an adventure. They had matching hummers in the driveway, and it was quite an odyssey. They turned out to have been a member of an 80s rock band. I'll link to the piece. It was fun, but they have since sold to the Minnesota Twins, sort of sadly in my mind. So now you've got the Guardians, who still don't have guardians.com, right?

That is still unclaimed and for sale, it looks like. And also the Rays who are, they don't have the, they don't have Rays.com because that was like a restaurant, right? So Rays Boathouse. Yeah. Danielle Pletka Rays Boathouse? Yeah, in Seattle. My Rays Boathouse? Yeah. Wow. Did they get paid a lot? Did the twins get paid like a

good chunk of change? I hope so. I was not able to determine the amount and I get the sense that URLs like that have gotten less valuable over time because fewer people are just going to a homepage as opposed to just searching it or going to the app or using social media or whatever it is. But I hope so. They held out long enough. I hope they got themselves a nice little windfall there. to just searching it or going to the app or using social media or whatever it is. But I hope so. They held out long enough. I hope they got themselves a nice little windfall there. Wow. Well, I'm sad that I missed your piece from 10 years ago. It would have been, your story is objectively better than my hypothetical, but it would have been very funny if the motion

picture twins had been squatting on that URL. That would have made me very happy. Twins, movie, yeah, see it's like the third. It's from 1988, so probably it didn't have a website. But they should make one. It's a comedy classic. Sure. One is tall and one is short, man.

That's why it's funny, that's the whole joke. Formula for funny, yeah. Okay, this is not yet the stat blast. This is just a segue into the stat blast. This is a prelude, but I think it's good banter. So I tried to determine a hierarchy of versatility in baseball. Okay. As we talk about player versatility, but there are many types of versatility. You can be versatile in any number of ways. And so I tried to rank the ways in which a player can be versatile in ascending order of, I guess, difficulty, but also fun.

Probably those things correlate closely. So there are a couple, I'm not sure. I wasn't sure how to order them. So you can let me know whether you think I've captured all the different ways one can be versatile and also whether I've ranked them correctly. So one way to be versatile, I think this is lowest on the totem pole, is to be versatile in the sense of having a good all-around offensive game. Okay. So you're not like a one-dimensional hitter, right? You're not all or nothing. That could be that you

have both speed and power, maybe. You can steal bases and also hit home runs or I don't know. Maybe it could be that you can make contact and also draw walks, whatever it is. Like you have a multifaceted offensive approach. So that's one way to be versatile, but not a really uncommon way. It's not super special. I mean, to be Ronald Lacuna last year, that was special to have that sort of power speed combination, but there are varying degrees of that that are fairly

common. Okay. Yeah, I think that's fair. All right. I would say next rung on the ladder is a two way player. Sometimes you hear the two way player term applied to someone who's good on offense and defense, right? And whether you call it two-way player or not, that's a type of versatility. So you're not just all offense or you're not all glove. You can do both of those things. You can hit and you can field. That's a way to be versatile, right? And that's fun, you know, because there are a lot of good fielders, there are a lot of good hitters, and there are fewer good fielders and hitters.

But it's not super rare, right? It's special. It makes you quite valuable and entertaining, but it's hardly unheard of. Okay. Next up, I would say, is a multi-position defender. Okay. And we talked about some of those earlier this week, like your super sub, your super utility type. And not even just like you might play second and short or something.

If it's really special, there are gradations and degrees here too. So if you just play corners or something, or maybe you just play second, it's not that special or rare. But if you play infield and outfield, if you like catch and do anything else, right? It's, you know, different degrees of rarity here. And of course, if you can hit even better, if you can hit on top of being a, well, that makes you, I guess, a super utility player. Or do you think it does? Do you think super utility, does that connote that you can hit or does that

purely connote that you can play like a lot of defensive positions as opposed to just a few? AMT, I tend to think of it as indicating a lot of defensive positions more than that you're like super, like I take it to mean lots, not like... Jared Ranere Yeah. I think that's probably true, but maybe like super sub or something, like if you say someone's like a Zobrist type, maybe that term was more in vogue a few years ago when Ben Zobrist was around, but part of what made him so special and valuable was that he could hit too. He was an offensive force.

So again, you're just stacking these different ways of being versatile there because you're the lower rung, you're good on offense and defense, and also you play a lot of different positions. Okay. So we're continuing to ascend here. I would say next is switch hitter. And that's going to be the subject of one of our staff last year. Switch hitter, I think is underrated versatility. I think we kind of take switch hitting for granted relative to other ways of doing multiple things like switch pitching or hitting

and pitching. It's maybe not as impressive as those things, but switch hitting is really impressive for most people who are just completely incompetent with whatever their non-dominant hand is. Most people are not ambidextrous even when it comes to writing or picking up stuff or whatever, let alone hitting major league pitching, right? Nicole Soule-Naguero I know what you mean, but the downgrade from writing to picking up stuff is funny, objectively. That slide is a funny slide that you just introduced there, but I know what you mean, Ben. I know what you mean.

Yeah. I'm not completely hopeless with my left hand. I could catch stuff. I mean, if you're a baseball player, you do catch with your left hand, which I guess makes you somewhat astute with that, even if you've got a glove. So, I can do that. But if you ask me to swing left-handed, you're going to tell that I don't do that, that I've never really done that with any regularity. It's going to look like I've never swung, I've never played. It's going to be awkward and herky-jerky as heck. So I think switch hitting is pretty impressive. Now this is maybe where it gets kind of controversial because I would say next highest on the hierarchy of versatility

is switch pitcher. And you might say that that should be at the top or even higher cause it's really, really rare. We've almost never seen that, you know, there are just so few people who've done it and who've done it with any regularity. Right, I mean, there are some one-offs or it happened infrequently or someone did it occasionally, but it's basically pat venditti.

So far, yeah. Hopefully, Duranjula Sinche gives us a second modern example. Yeah. But is it the rarity that makes you at the top of the hierarchy or is it how difficult it is? Because it seems like it shouldn't be as hard as the rarity would indicate. At least I would think it's still throwing either way, right? It's the same skill with different arms, which makes it, but you would think that if you could hit, if switch hitting is as common as it has been historically, that switch hitting should

have been a little more common, right? Why is switch pitching so much rarer than switch hitting? Does that make sense to you? I understand what you mean, but don't you think that the rarity maybe speaks to you underrating the difficulty? Maybe except that maybe, I was going to say maybe it just doesn't confer the same advantage that switch pitching, that switch hitting does, but I guess in theory it would. I mean, you're getting the same platoon advantage either way, whether you're on one side of the ball or the other. But yes.

So I guess the fact that it just doesn't happen probably indicates that it is extremely difficult to do. Yeah. I think that we're both maybe right because I do think it's incredibly difficult to do. be right. Because I do think it's incredibly difficult to do. I do wonder if the lack of a real sort of proof of concept, and I don't mean that as a, to be like rude to Pat Venditti, but we've seen a lot of sort of proof of concept of switch hitting at the big league level. And we can have a conversation about how many truly dominant from both sides hitters there

have been and all, like, get on ahead of yourself less. There's probably a conversation to have there, but I think, I wonder if part of the soup here and decision-making process on the part of player dev folks within big league organizations is you have a guy who comes in ostensibly as a switchpitcher, he is probably going to show even if he can, you know, sort of competently throw from both sides, some amount of greater dominance from one side than the other. And there's a determination made perhaps too soon, then it's like, eh, just, just have him do that, you know?

Like, he could be really good if he were developed just thrown from that side and we didn't make him waste time with all of this switch pitching nonsense. And so I do wonder if at least part of what we're seeing is guys being in a sense given up on too soon in terms of their switch pitching ability. And if there were more examples of that really working that teams would kind of let a guy try to make it work for longer. This is part of why people were so amped about Otani, right? That like, oh, is he going to usher in this new era of true two-way players?

Because like, look at what you can do if you have a guy with this skill set. And then I think everyone was like, yeah, but he's a weird unicorn. So maybe he's not really representative of that. And I wonder if there's some similar something going on with the switch pitching. Yeah. Because I guess in theory, I was trying to think whether it's more valuable to be a switch pitcher than to be a switch hitter. Because if you're a switch hitter, or if you're not, you can still play every day and you could still get the same amount of playing time in theory. You just won't be as good because you won't have the platoon advantage as often.

Whereas if you're a switch pitcher, I don't know that you can throw twice as many innings or games because of course your body is still going to be fatigued. You still have lower body strain and wear and tear and everything, but you could maybe theoretically throw a good number of additional innings and that would be quite valuable. That would translate to much more playing time. And I think that part of the appeal too isn't just the potential increase in volume, but the increased versatility within a single game, right?

Because you have to declare before the batter comes up, right? You can't change hands within, like, you know, but you could throw multiple innings and like face lefties and righties and do all kinds of stuff. And it's, you know, I think that's the thing that really is tempting for folks is less the, oh my gosh, this guy can pitch every day and more like this guy can like deal, like you said, have the platoon advantage pretty much every time, you know? Yeah.

So just purely on scarcity, I could see a case for putting switch pitching at the very top of the hierarchy of versatility, but I'm not. I am putting above that two-way player sequentially, not simultaneously next. So the Anthony goes, right? Or the reverse case, the Rick Ankeel, right? The going from pitching to hitting or hitting to pitching, but not doing them at the same time. Just doing one and you get hurt or you wash out, you're not good enough or you develop

the yips or whatever it is. And then it turns out that you have major league ability to do the other thing, but you're not doing them at the same time. You finish doing one and then you do the other. And then at the very pinnacle at the tippy top, of course, I have being a two-way player simultaneously. So this is really just an opportunity for you to talk about it. Another way to glorify Shohei Otani.

Oh my gosh. I feel bamboozled. But maybe it's not a surprise because it reflects my just awe of what Shohei Otani is doing because I find it so impressive and improbable that he's been able to do this. So do you disagree? Would you put switch pitching above either of those types of being a two-way player? I think that would be reasonable if you did.

But to me, pitching with different arms, it's still pitching. And that just doesn't impress me quite as much as pitching and hitting with major league ability, because those are just such different skill sets, right? That's not just about being ambidextrous. That's about just two completely different, you know, you don't, to be a pitcher, I mean, yeah, you have to be somewhat athletic, of course, but it's just totally different. You don't need quite the same like hand-eye coordination. You have to be coordinated, of course, but to hit a major league pitch, that requires

a very different skill set and type of athleticism and practice and acumen than pitching. And pitching with two arms is still just pitching. I feel like you wrote like the weirdest version of a Shania Twain song I've ever heard in my life. I think that I largely agree. I might quibble. I think that the simultaneous two-way, that sounds dirty. Now I'm laughing at that. But I think the simultaneous two-way phenomena has to sit at the top. I agree with that. I might, given more time to think about it, quibble about the order of switch pitcher and non-simultaneous two-way player, because even though what Anthony Goose has done is rare, it's still a more common occurrence than being a pat-benditty.

So that I might swap in order, but I agree with you that once again, Otani is the best guy, put him at the top of the stuff. Thanks for validating me. I'm comfortable with that. I think that that is fine. But you did, you really, you bamboozled us, Ben. You bamboozled us and wrote a weird Shania Twain cover. I'm impressed.

I am impressed much. I am. I'm back into this exercise as a way to further glorify Otani. I just ended up there organically. So I have seven levels, layers on my versatility pyramid or whatever it is here. So if anyone wants to suggest additional levels that I have neglected, are there other ways one can be versatile? I mean, on a baseball field as a baseball player that I have left out here, I don't know. Either that or if you want to quibble with the order.

By all means, do let us know. I'm interested in your thoughts. And now we can get to the stat list. So Okay, so I've got a few here, but this will be the meatiest one and also the one that's relevant to the preface we just did. So, switch hitting. Wanted to do a little stat blasting about switch hitting, inspired by an article that appeared in the Athletic just this week by Jason Lloyd, which was headlined, why one of baseball's unique skills, switch hitting, is trending toward extinction. And I think it's a good article. It's an interesting article. It covers the issue. However, it is not the first article that I've read on the subject. I feel like I read an article on the decline of switch hitting every year or two. So there was one Fox Sports, our pal Jordan Schusterman wrote about baseball's dying art of switch hitting in 2022.

And then there was a Wall Street Journal article, the lost art of switch hitting in 2018. And there was an LA Times article, switch hitting is becoming a lost art in 2015. So for the past decade, if not more, people have been sounding the alarm about switch hitters being endangered. And they're not wrong because the percentage of switch hitters being endangered. And they're not wrong because the percentage of switch hitters does keep declining. So they're all picking up on the same trend, but it is an ongoing trend and the percentage keeps falling. So I guess you can keep writing articles about it.

And this isn't even the first stat blast that has been done on switch hitting and the rates of switch hitters. I think Jeff Sullivan did one on episode 1214 back in 2018. So again, it's been going on for a while. We can talk, I think a little bit about why this is happening maybe and whether it's a bad thing that it's happening. And I think I mostly agree with the article's thesis, which is that it's about specialization mostly. And I think the interesting thing that Jason points out in this piece is that it seems like the decline

of switch hitting is more pronounced among US born players, that it's still fairly robust among international players, Latin American players. And that much of this decline in recent years has been US born players who are not switch hitting as much. And he puts that down to just the increasing, I guess, professionalization is the wrong term of amateur baseball, but

kind of, right? Preparation to be professional. And there is a trend towards amateur athletes specializing earlier, not just in baseball, but in other sports too, which I have read seems to be maybe a bad thing that if you actually want to be a professional athlete, it's advantageous to play a bunch of sports and to develop a broad skillset and to not wear yourself down in any one particular part of your body and get to, you know, play different sports at different times of year and maybe not get sick of them and everything. So that's maybe counterintuitive. It seems like if you want to be really good at something, you should just do that thing, right? Like

we all heard of, you know, the violin prodigy who picks up the violin at three and then just gets there 10,000 hours, even though that's kind of debunked. But you know, a lot of practice helps. Right. So, but it seems like having that broad athletic skill set and not wearing yourself down too much, doing any sort of repetitive injury helps. But now that you have these high stakes and you have travel ball and you have showcases and all the rest, right.

And, you know, we've kind of lamented that just because it prices some people out of the sport, which is not great. And maybe for some players, it kind of just makes it all too serious when you're still young enough that you should just be playing for love of the game and just having fun out there, playing like a kid out there. A lot of kids are kind of playing like professionals. And so if you're hiring professional coaches and you're on these high stakes teams and you're trying to impress scouts at young ages, then you don't want to

fail and flail. And so if you're a righty or a lefty, then you're just going to stick with what works, right? So that seems fairly persuasive to me, I guess, as a factor behind why this is happening. Yeah. I think that that is quite persuasive. And I think you're right that it seems this is very anecdotal, but I feel like it is not uncommon for me in the process of editing a prospect list. We will have a limited number of reports on international amateurs for the next signing period, and then their reports get ported over to the team list. And it's

not uncommon for me in the process of editing, in fact, checking a prospect list to say, hey, the report that we had on this guy when he signed in January was that he's a switch hitter. And now he's listed on his milb.com page as like hitting righty. And so at the very least, as they are formally entering the MLB talent system, a lot of those kids are, and I use the word kids because they're often quite, quite young, a lot of those kids are coming in at the very least as switch hitters, even if early in their careers, they start to favor one side of the bat, you know, the home plate or the other.

And it seems like this trend will continue. The article ends by citing fan graphs, prospect lists out of about 140 of baseball's best prospects listed on fan graphs preseason lists ranging from AAA down to rookie ball 34 were switch hitters who had yet to debut eight were Americans. It says, so again, a distinct minority now of Switch hitters seem to be US born players. And I guess it also, I think part of it is like, was there a famous Switch hitter you grew up watching and idolizing? Because a big part of this is just like, if you were a fan of a Switch hitter as a kid, then you're like, oh, that's so cool. I want to try doing that myself. Right.

Right. And so that can be kind of generational and cultural and where you grew up and who you were watching. So that's maybe sort of cyclical and circumstance dependent, et cetera. Like, you know, Carlos Beltran, for instance, is mentioned in this piece and he picked up switch hitting really late actually

after he was already professional. And he played winter ball in Puerto Rico with a fellow Puerto Rican, Bernie Williams, who is a switch hitter and uh, Carlos Beltran started switching and struggled with it initially and then eventually it clicked and he went on to a Hall of Fame caliber career. So it is just kind of happenstance sometimes and a lot of times it's just like, did whoever introduced you to baseball, your parent, your coach drill this into you for whatever reason, you know? And sometimes

they do and they say, Hey, this will be really valuable if you could hit from both sides of the plate. And sometimes not. So I, after reading this, just wanted to get a sense of the full scope of switch hitting in major league history. Cause this article cites certain years when there were this many switch hitters, but it doesn't, you know, I wanted to see a graph, you know, fan graph, give me a graph in this article so I can just get a sense because yes, there's a decline in recent years, but what if we look back a little longer? Is there still a decline or is this not actually historically anomalous? So I have a spreadsheet, I'll put it online. I made

graphs and I will link to that on the show page, but I will send this to you for your reference as we speak here. So the way I did it, you could look at the incidence of switch hitting in any number of ways. You could look at the incidence of switch hitting in any number of ways. You could look at the total percentage of plate appearances in a given season that were taken by switch hitters. You could look at qualified hitters who were switch hitters. I just looked at the percentage of non-pitcher hitters

who were switch hitters in every season, going back to 1871 in the AL or NL, or I guess the National Association in the few years there that preceded the National League's foundation in 1876. So I looked at the fan graphs leaderboards where you can just look at players whose primary position was not pitcher, and then I looked at how many of them in each year were switch hitters and what you see is that there has been a sustained decline now for

almost 40 years I guess you could say so this year according to my numbers here there have been 597 hitters non pitcher-pitcher hitters, and 60 of them have been switch hitters. And that's not a lot. That is 10.0%, exactly 10% basically, which is where it's been for the last couple of years. But that is fairly low. So it peaked according to my method of doing this. The peak rate of switch hitters was 1988. Sometimes people think of that as year of the balk. It was the year of the switch hitter also. 17.5% of all non-pitcher hitters that year were switch hitters. If you go by raw number, not percentage, then in 1998, it was 16.7% of non-pitcher hitters, but that was the first year of the 30-team era,

so there were more players, so there were 106 switch hitters that year. That's the max. And now we're down at 10%, which is not a lot by percentage points, but is a lot by percentage if you go by that peak. However, that was, as you can see on this graph, as much of an outlier as where we are now, if not more so. Because that was historically anomalous to have that many switch hitters.

And there had been a decades long increase in switch hitting leading up to that peak around the late 80s, early 90s where there was a little plateau and then it started gradually decreasing as of I guess right around the mid to late 90s, right? So really, which is stranger? Is it now or is it the peak of switch hitting that all of these articles are comparing the decline to? And in fact, if we look at say 1901 on, so the first season of the American league on, then the total rate, if I just look at up all the hitters and all the switch hitters is 9.9%. And again, I said we're at 10.0% right now. So you could say that we are right at average now. This is like bang on the historical

average. If we look beyond the past four decades and look back to the quote unquote modern era, this is normal. It's just that we haven't really been at this percentage for any sustained period. It's been like either lower or higher and on the upswing or on the downswing, but it hasn't really been around here except for, I guess, like around the turn of the, the previous century, like around 1900 or so, it was around where we are now. 10% were switch hitters. But, you know, it climbed up to that point and then it fell again and it kind of like bottomed out in the 50s, 60s, which is interesting because you think like, oh, Mickey Mantle, right?

But he was rare. He was extremely rare. Like 1951, when Mickey Mantle was a rookie, I've got 323 non-pitcher hitters that year and nine switch hitters. So it was like single digit switch hitters for much of the fifties. Man, fifties baseball was boring. I know it's thought of as like the golden era and the golden age. I guess that encompasses more than just the fifties, but maybe that's like the peak, you know, the Brooklyn Dodgers and everything and the romance of that. And I get it because culturally, yes, maybe it was a golden age for baseball, but the actual brand of baseball, like there were legends playing at that time, but it was like a very stayed station to station, lots of walks and no one stealing bases and no one switch hitting either. So

the actual brand of baseball was not the golden age, I don't think. Maybe the figures and the part that it played in American culture. But beyond that, not so much. Yeah. There's probably like an entire PhD thesis to be written, dissertation to be written about like 50s baseball as a lens through which to understand cultural nostalgia for the era. But I still maintain that the best ad that Major League Baseball has ever produced is the one before spring training a couple of years ago where Buck Scholl-Walter is driving around in a golf cart talking about how these are the good old days.

This is it. Like it's never, I know we have issues. I know that we have knits to pick. We got rules that need changing. We got a, you know, a baseball that alters its personality every off season. We got all kinds of stuff, but we should continue to remind ourselves how amazing the guys we are watching today are because they are something. We're very lucky. We should hold onto that.

Yeah, the caliber of play, but also just the actual style of baseball. And we certainly have our reservations about that, but I think relative to that golden age, I think there's a real advantage now. Anyway, it climbed steadily after that nadir. And maybe that was the mantle effect to some extent, just inspiring a whole generation of youth to want to do what the mic did. And, you know, there are other factors. I'm not sure exactly why the late eighties was like peak switch hitting. I know there was, you know, mid eighties, like we went down to 24 roster spots because owners were trying to cut costs.

And in theory, I guess that made switch hitting a little bit more valuable, but I don't know, it would, it had already been rising for decades by that point. So maybe it was just having some stars inspiring others. Maybe there were other reasons for that greater appreciation of the importance of platooning and platoon effects, perhaps. I don't know, but it's really interesting because if you go back to the beginning, If you go back to the beginning, there was from 1871 through 1877, so that's the National Association in the first couple of years of the National League. And then also 1879 and 1880, there was one switch hitter in the league, and that was Bob Ferguson. Switch hitting, it almost seems like you shouldn't be able to pinpoint who was the first switch hitter. It seems like it should be something that people were just always doing or from time in

memorials, some people did this, but no, there was a first switch hitter, everyone seems to agree, and it was Bob Ferguson who is maybe if he's known for anything, it might be because of the nickname Death to Flying Things. He was one of the olden times players along with an amateur teammate of his who was also supposedly named or nicknamed death defying things. Although later research has shown that neither of them was actually nicknamed death defying things during their career. Wait, really? Yeah, no, that was not a thing anyone called them during their careers or like-

Get out of here. For years after their careers or like for years after their careers. It's just, it seems to be a mistake and something that just showed up in baseball encyclopedias and was like misapplied. So no one, if you had said death defying things to someone during Bob Ferguson's career, he would not have turned around. Like no, no one would have recognized that.

In fact, like Franklin Gutierrez, who was like the modern death defying things, right? And everyone was like, oh, let's restore this old timey nickname and apply it to Franklin Gutierrez. He was the only player who like actually had it applied to him during his career. Yeah, yeah. Tom Scheiber, the baseball hall of fame researcher who's been on the podcast,

he determined this several years ago that there's just like no record of those guys being called that during their careers or for some time after. I had no idea and I don't want to like impugn the integrity of Bob Ferguson, but I got to say it's such a rad nickname that I would lie if I were him. I would totally say, oh yeah, like every day, every day in the clubhouse, they were calling me death to flying things because like that's a f**k. Excuse me, I swear, like every day, every day in the clubhouse, they were calling me death to flying things. Cause like that's a, excuse me, I swear, great nickname. It is, it is. Yeah.

I mean, he was a good fielder, so it would have fit. It's just, no one had thought to apply it to him. He was one of those players who went on to be an umpire. We answered an email about that last time that that used to be more common, but he was also just the first switch hitter. No one was known to switch hit before him. And the interesting thing is that when he did it, he wasn't really doing it for a platoon effect, which wasn't really needed at that point.

Cause like those were the days where you could just kind of call for where you wanted the pitch and also like early in his career, no one was throwing breaking balls. So like you just, you didn't really need to have a platoon advantage. There was no platoon disadvantage. There weren't even a lot of lefty pitchers then. So he did it seemingly just kind of like on a whim, like however he felt, whether he wanted to hit righty or hit lefty, or if he wanted to hit away from a good defender, if he wanted to like avoid a good fielder,

a good shortstop or something, then he would turn around and hit it the other way. Also, it was not imitated initially widely because A, he was not that great a hitter and B, he was not a popular player or person. And so like no one wanted to be like Bob Ferguson seemingly. So it took some time for anyone to decide that this was warranted or to pick up the knack. And so it's not until 1878 that you get any other switch hitter and then not until 1881 do you get multiple other switch hitters. So he was the lone switch hitter for years, but he was the proof of concept, I guess.

He was the switch hitting patient zero. So we owe it to Bob Ferguson for demonstrating that this could be done. I'm sure someone else would have come along. But the point, I guess, is that it was extremely rare initially, then it got more common, and then it got rarer for a long time, and then it got more common for a long time, and now it's gotten less common for a long time. So it is sort of a cyclical thing. And I have another graph here that I will link to and send to you, which is the average WRC plus of switch hitters in any given year. And it sort of surprised me actually that on the whole, switch hitters just kind of lumping them together. Now if you waited by playing

time and everything, maybe this would be different. But actually I think if you just look league-wide and just get a WRC plus for all the switch hitters, on the whole they have typically been below average, which you might think, well, wait, isn't it supposed to confer an advantage? Aren't you supposed to be good because you have the platoon advantage all the time? Shouldn't you be an above average hitter? And I guess you could say that maybe switch hitters are doing it because they have to, because they're not good enough from one side.

At least, you know, some of them obviously, they're superstar switch hitters who could have hacked it as just single side hitters, but some of them maybe are only in the league because they're switch hitting and they don't have to be at a platoon disadvantage. And so maybe it's not so surprising that on the whole, I think the average WRC plus has been 96 just over the whole sweep of history.

Like switch hitters on the whole have been slightly below average. And actually this year, the WRC plus for switch hitters is 104, which is the first time that switch hitters have been above average collectively in a really long time. I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling since I think, gosh, 1963. Yeah, they've been like at a hundred sometimes, but above average or significantly above average. It's been decades since switch hitters were as effective as they have been this year. And that gets to another point, which is that maybe too many people were switch hitting. Maybe it's not that it was a lost art. Maybe it's that some of the people who were switch hitting

never really actually possessed that art. They were You know, they were faking it. They were imitators. They were switch hitting posers. Like they should not have been switch hitters, right? And there have been some notable examples and I've written about this and you know, it's hard to figure out with the platoon effects and small samples and such, but there have been certainly

some switch hitters who probably would have been better off not switch hitting. And there are some players who've come to that conclusion mid-career, like you're, you know, Shane Victorino or Cedric Mullins more recently, right? And they're just like, why am I pretending to be able to do this? I can't do this.

You know, I should just hit from the side that I can actually hit from. And so I would guess that the true percentage, like if you were to determine like how many guys actually should have been switch hitters, it probably was lower than it was at its peak. Maybe it's higher than it is now, I don't know, but probably like somewhere in between there. So I bet that it does actually reflect like a more optimal distribution of switch hitters who are like being more honest with themselves or running the numbers here and are like,

you know what, this is actually really hard and maybe I shouldn't do this anymore. Yeah. I think that it's a combination of hitters being maybe more honest with themselves and also like teams being equipped to like really dig in and help them come to that conclusion perhaps. And say like, this isn't really getting us very much. And if we were to have you focus, it would go better, you know? Yeah. And you would think that it would be getting harder just because it's harder to hit major league pitching at all,

regardless of what side you're hitting from. And so to be good enough to do that from both sides, granted, I guess hitters are getting better and more athletic maybe, but not perhaps at the pace that pitchers are. And so it's just hard to be a big league quality batter from both sides, probably harder than it used to be. Then again, I guess the incentives in theory would be in favor of more

switch hitters because bullpens have gotten so big and there's so few bench bats and teams don't carry dedicated pinch hitters anymore. So it would be more valuable in theory to be a switch hitter now, right? Because you're not going to get pinch hit for if you have a deficiency or if you're at a platoon disadvantage. So you would think you would want more switch hitters, but maybe it's just hard to do. And why fake it? Right? So I mean, we've got some truly great switch hitters.

Now we've got Jose Ramirez, we've got Katel Marte, we've got Ellie De La Cruz. We've got Adley Rutchman. Right, Adley Rutchman, Francisco Lindor, you know, right? Like there are some really good switch hitters still out there. Ozzy Albies, we mentioned earlier, but even, you know, a lot of those, like there are differences. There's usually one side that they are significantly stronger from, you know, rarely is it evenly matched or sometimes it is, but it's like a different shape of production, but usually you're at a disadvantage. Maybe it's still beneficial for you relative to facing a same-handed pitcher, but you're not the same as you are from your strong side

and maybe your natural side, right? I guess the best switch hitter this year has actually been Jerks and Profar, who's been better than all those guys I just named WRC Plus, Wes, who saw that coming. Yeah. Who? I mean, clearly not very many people because he signed for exactly a million dollars and has been fantastic. Yeah. How about that? How about that? How about that? So I am, I guess, sad.

I lament the loss of switch hitting, and yet I am here to offer reassurance, which is that just because we're getting fewer doesn't mean that it won't come back at some point. Maybe Elie Delacruz, he's so fun. He inspires a new generation of young hitters to want to be like Ellie. And then it all swings back around.

So there has been a decline. You know, I didn't look back in newspapers.com, but for all I know, people were writing about the lamenting the loss of switch hitters in the thirties or the twenties or forties or whatever and then they bounced back. And we're still at kind of a normal amount of Switch hitters if you look back over the whole sweep of history, and also maybe a more sensible number of Switch hitters, all told. Now this is sort of a two-part Switch hitting stat blast because some time ago when I was watching and listening to the game when the Dodgers did strategy, remember very notably we talked about Dave Roberts did the mid-plate

appearance pitching change, and as I was listening to all of the various broadcasts of that game, I heard on the Dodgers radio broadcast this snippet, this little anecdote from Dodgers broadcaster Charlie Steiner talking about noted switch hitter Maury Wills. I will play the clip. Well you get into slump and I remember talking to so many times with Maury Wills and every time I talked to the former Dodger captain, Maury would teach me something about baseball. You're Just a marvelous like library of little things. And Morrie talked about the bunt in particular. You know, Morrie came up, he was not really a

natural switch hitter. He learned how to switch hit. And I asked him once, I said, you know, slumps are really difficult to deal with from one side of the plate. Did you have to deal with the slump from both sides? Surprisingly enough, he says I was never in a slump from both sides at the same time. Wow. One-two pitch and spoiled on a foul ball by Carroll. Count remains one and two. I mean, it's... Well, if you're a switch hitter and you have a slump from both sides, you have to make sure they keep you away from sharp objects. Okay, so this has taken me some time to get to, but Ryan Nelson has helped me out here, wanted to test this contention that Maury Wills supposedly never slumped from both sides

of the plate at the same time. I love it when we do the stab-blast thataster like, did he actually suck though? Yeah. So if this was in fact his contention that he was never slumping from both sides at the same time, that sounds pretty impressive if that's actually true. But this did make me curious not only about wills, but also just more broadly, like, is it really hard to hit from those both sides, like to keep both of those swings in sync? Because you do often hear that, right? Like in this athletic piece, there is a quote from Eric

Chavez, who is not a switch hitter, but he said he doesn't encourage other people to do what Francisco Lindor does, even though Lindor does it well. Chavez is the Mets hitting coach now, and he says, you're two different people, two different swings, because the body moves differently. You're right-hand dominant, now you come to the left side and your right hand is on the bottom of the bat. You're training two different swings. You can have a right-handed at bat and feel really good. In that same game, you can go lefty and think, oh crap, where's my swing? And I guess he's not necessarily speaking from experience here, but there are switch

hitters who have essentially said the same thing, like Lance Berkman, who I think said that if he had to do it all over again, he would not have been a switch hitter. He said, the disadvantage is you have two different swings to worry about. It's hard to keep one swing tuned up, much less two. And he describes himself as more pole heavy right-handed and more capable of driving the ball to the opposite way left-handed.

Chipper Jones called his swings polar opposites, simple and compact from the right side, complex and full of moving parts from the right side, complex and full of moving parts from the left. Over the course of a season, there might be one month when both feel spot-on," Jones said. So I guess that would suggest that your performance from one side would not really move in concert with your performance from the other side if it really is like two different people with two different swings right? So Ryan Nelson frequent stat blast

consultant find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. He pulled all batters with at least 1,000 plate appearances from each side to make sure their switch hitting sample was sizable which left him with 166 batters, including Maury Wells. And he notes, based on this sample of players, the overall correlation between lefty OPS and righty OPS over a switch hitters trailing 100 plate appearances is 0.1437, 0.14. So that is to say that when a player is struggling

from one side, they are slightly more likely than chance to also be struggling from the other side. Now.14, that is a very weak correlation, which is partly just because OPS for anyone over 100 played appearances going to fluctuate a lot just based on randomness. Like it just takes multiple hundreds of plate appearances for an OPS to stabilize without worrying about the switch hitting thing. So there's going to be a lot of randomness there, but if it were completely random, you would see maybe no correlation at all. There is a 0.14 correlation between lefty OPS and righty OPS over switch hitters trailing hundred plate appearances.

However, Maury Wills had a correlation of 0.07. So that's half as strong as the weak correlation that we see for all switch hitters. So Ryan says he correlates less than the overall sample, but doesn't negatively correlate, meaning that when he struggles from one side, he is actually more likely than chance to struggle from the other side too. So he is more likely than the average switch hitter to have these things be decoupled,

I guess, but there is still a relationship there where if he was struggling from one side he was still a little more likely to be struggling from the other side. There are some negatively correlated players. Matt Weeders apparently is the most strongly negatively correlated. So he had a negative 0.24. So when he struggled from one side, he was often hitting better than his baseline on the other side. And the most correlated player is Jose Ramirez, J-Ram, who has a correlation of 0.33, meaning both sides come and go together. So when he's doing well on one side, he tends to be doing well on the other side and vice versa. He also looked at it a different way. He says, I found each player's lowest 20% of OPS from each side and called that slumping. If slumps from either side were unrelated,

we would expect that 4% of plate appearances would have slumps from both sides just by random chance. A lower percentage than 4% would mean they slump from each side less often than chance would expect. In this case, Wills does not fare well as he is slumping from both sides as we've defined here, 5.2% of the time, meaning he does slump from both sides as we've defined here 5.2% of the time, meaning he does slump from both sides more than chance would have not less.

The average player is 4.4% so it does correlate slightly on the low end and it is statistically significant. So the best by this measure is Dave Philly who is slumping from both sides only 1.3% of the time. The worst was Billy Rogel who is slumped from both sides 8.4% of the time. I will link to all of this data in the spreadsheets and everything. But basically, Morrie Will's, as related by Charlie Steiner,

he's kind of full of it here, I guess we've got to say. And the contention that he never was slumping from both sides, that just demonstrably seems to be untrue. There's an iota of truth to the broader contention that maybe he was less liable to be slumping from both sides at the same time than the average switcher, even though there was still some likelihood that he would. However, he did absolutely have some periods where he was slumping from both sides at the same time. If you want to avoid the last moments of his career, Ryan writes, it's probably in 1969, a year where he finished 11th in MVP voting,

when from April 9th, the second day of the season to May 4th, he had a 354 OPS as a lefty and a 449 OPS as a righty. So for context, that was about a zero OPS plus as a lefty and a 449 OPS as a righty. So for context that was about a 0 OPS plus as a lefty and a 25 OPS plus as a righty. So by any definition I think you would have to say he was slumping from both sides of the plate during that span. He was not hitting from either side. Then he was subsequently traded back to the Dodgers and had 113 OPS to make that MVP case. So, you know, good player, but this is maybe a little bit of hyperbole here. Maybe there's like a shadow of truth to it, but nah, he was subject to slumping from both sides. Disappointing. Sorry, Maury. I'm sorry, Charlie. Also, I guess. And just to broaden this a bit, Ryan looked, I was kind of curious about whether the, like, it's two different guys and two different swings thing is true, whether we could find

evidence for that. And I wondered whether a switch hitter's performance either side is like more decoupled from each other than say, looking at a switch hitters performance from the same side over the same amount of time, right? Like, is there any more consistency in how a switch hitter hits from the same side than how a switch hitter hits from opposite sides over roughly the same sample. And it turns out, yes, there is. So the correlations are low, however you slice it, because we're dealing with small samples here. However, it does turn out that if you look at, so I mentioned the average

correlation for a switch hitter from either side was 0.14 over the trailing 100 plate appearances and if we, Ryan writes, break each of the players in the sample into 50 plate appearance chunks over time, 50 as opposed to 100 since in the previous work it's 100 plate appearances divided by two groups left versus right, here we're just dealing with right or left. We find that the correlation of a switch hitter to himself, the same side in the previous 50 plate appearances is 0.214. So stronger than the correlation on opposite sides of the plate. Roughly 50% stronger the correlation for a switch hitter. Same side, his righty plate appearances or his lefty plate appearances compared to the opposite sides and how those correlate together. So

that was a lot of math and correlations and words. And if you wanted to get really in the weeds you could say maybe it shouldn't be 50 plate appearances, it should be more like 29 because over any hundred plate appearance span for a switch hitter they're gonna see on average 21 plate appearances against lefties and 71 plate appearances against righties. That would lower the correlation somewhat but we decided that was over complicating things. But the upshot is that it does seem to be true that there's less of a connection between how a switch hitter is doing on opposite sides than how he's doing from the same side. So it does kind of back it up, I guess, right? It's

not truly like two different hitters and two different swings. Like there's no connection, there still is a connection, but maybe it's like halfway between no connection and the connection that you would see for some other player. And I guess it stands to reason that there'd be some connection just because like injuries, nagging injuries, fatigue,

that stuff is probably gonna affect you from both sides, to some extent, I guess. So you might expect to see some correlation just because maybe you're feeling good or you're not feeling good and that might affect you from both sides. So I think we've learned something or confirmed something about switch hitting as an art and

also about Maury Wills and perhaps his tendency to exaggerate his resistance to slumps. I will also just wrap up here quickly. Now yesterday when we were talking, I tossed out just a couple, perhaps someday, rainy day someone or maybe us, we will get to, staff lasting. I've already gotten answers. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's, you know, we go above and beyond here, as does Ryan, and he helped out here.

So one of the ones that I tossed out on our last episode, because we were talking about the timing of managerial firings, and like, does a firing come after a loss disproportionately or do managers still get fired after wins quite often, even if the season as a whole has been unsuccessful because Pedro Gryffo of the White Sox was fired after a loss, but not during the long losing streak, but also not after the win that snapped the long losing streak. So I have an answer to that question, courtesy of Ryan here.

So if we look all time at managers who have been fired mid season, and he limited this to managers who had at least 50 games managing for that team to do away with the interims and like people who were just filling in for a manager, maybe, you know, guys who were like actually managers and didn't make it through the season. Some of them may have resigned or retired, but the vast majority fired their cumulative

winning percentage in the season when they were fired, all put together all years, is 433, which is roughly a 70-win season over 162 games, right? Okay, so that's bad, and it stands to reason that it would be bad. You don't get fired, generally, if your team is winning. So that's the baseline. What do you think is the collective winning percentage for those managers in their final game? Okay. Remind me of the winning percentage again.

433 is for the season as a whole for those guys. So in their last game before they got the axe, what do you think their winning percentage was? 390. Not bad. 313. Wow. I'm a brain genius. So 313, which I guess over a full season, that would be what, like 50 wins, 51 wins,

something like that. Sure. So considerably worse than the overall season number. So it does seem like if you go out, you are obviously more likely to go out after a loss just because your team is gonna be losing most of the time, but you're disproportionately more likely to go out after a loss, even accounting for the fact

that your team is pretty bad. And that's been the case every decade if you break it down. Except for one. Weirdly the 1930s, 23 managers and they collectively had a 522 winning percentage in their final games relative to a 437 winning percentage overall. That's the only decade when the last game winning percentage was higher than the overall or higher than 400 for that matter. So that does confirm what I thought, which is that like, you know, it's just kind of awkward maybe to fire someone after a win, even though, you know, you're

not firing them because of that most recent game, still like they just did their job, they won that game. So maybe just wait for a loss. It's like easier to sell or maybe they're already sad because they lost and now you're just making them sadder because they also lost their job. So if anything, maybe I'm even surprised that it's as high as it is. 313, that's 313 winning percentage. The White Sox envy that. They wish they had a 313 winning percentage this season, but I might've assumed, cause you can always wait for a loss if it's a bad team, there will be another

loss coming down the pike sometime soon, right? So, so why not? But, uh, I guess I admire that, uh, managers or GMs or whoever is pulling the plug. They're not just reacting to that most recent game, nor should they really. But there have been a bunch of recent examples of managers fired after wins. So just 2010 on from most recent to least recent, Chris Woodward fired by the Rangers after a win, Charlie Montoya fired by the Blue Jays after a win.

That was previous to his most recent firing as the bench coach of the White Sox. Ron Renneke, fired by the Brewers after a win. That was in 2015. Bo Porter, fired by the Astros after a win. And they didn't win that many games. That was the 2014 Astros. Manny Acta, fired by a win. After a win by Cleveland in 2012, Ozzy Guillen by the White Sox in 2011, Jim Riggleman, the Nationals in 2011, Don Wakamatsu, A.J. Hinche, Freddie Gonzalez, and Trey Heilman all fired after wins in 2010. So yeah, it's not actually that uncommon,

but there is definitely a trend that you will be fired after losses for the most part. Okay lastly the other Stop blast that I threw out last time was that I had the vague sense that maybe there are more Intra-division trades being made. Yeah so we looked into that too. And I thought that because there had been some recent ones, I guess, at the deadline. And so it seemed to me like, oh, this is happening more often. Like the Red Sox and the Blue Jays hooked up on the Danny Jansen trade and the Orioles and the Rays on the Zac Eflin trade.

And then the Mets and the Nationals and the Jesse Winker trade and the Reds and the Rays on the Zac Eflin trade, and then the Mets and the Nationals and the Jesse Winker trade, and the Reds and the Brewers, and the Jacob Junas, Frankie Montas trade, and the White Sox traded Paul DeYoung to the Royals, and there were a couple other even more minor ones. So it just, it seemed like a lot to me. And I had a whole theory about why there would be more,

and teams are just doing the optimal thing and they're not worried about how it will appear. No, none of that is, none of that is true. Actually, the intro division trade has not become more common, as best we can tell. So I did some, some good data entry here and Ryan used RetroSheet too. I love just doing some mindless data entry for a stat blast. Me too. It's just, I threw on the new Dr. Dog album and played it a couple times while I was just entering numbers in a spreadsheet and not having to think.

It was great because I can't listen to music or podcasts that much when I'm working because I have to concentrate. And so when I get a mindless task, I know man, you know, and I don't want all of my job to be mindless tasks, but every now and then, you're like, wow, this is great. Yeah. Yeah.

So I got some great mindless data entry done here. And we found that it has not actually increased the percentage. Now, Ryan went back to the beginning of the divisional era in 1969, and obviously there's been a decrease when we went from two divisions per league to three divisions per league in 1994, because, you know, fewer teams within your division, and so harder for you to trade with just those teams.

So there was a step down going to the three division format that we've been in since 94. But even over that span, it's been fairly flat, if not slightly down over that time. There's no hint, no sign of an uptick in either the percentage of all trades that have been intra-division or even the percentage of inter-league trades that have been, or yeah, I guess, non-inter-league trades that have been intra-division. Did you know that inter-league trades were not really a thing for much of baseball history? Just quoting here from Wikipedia, for many years, players could not be traded

from one league to another without being waved by all of the teams in the trading teams league. Then in 1959, an interleague trading period was established centered on the winter baseball meetings in December. Later, there were two interleague trading periods each year, one from after the World Series until mid-December and the second from a week before spring training began until March 15th. So intent were leagues on keeping their stars from being moved from one league to another that then National League President Warren Giles threatened to keep NL clubs from trading

major stars to the American League after the deal that sent Frank Robinson from Cincinnati to Baltimore. So that was when league distinctions actually mattered. But yeah, in recent years, so you would expect, I guess, since what, 2013, since we've had divisions aligned like they are now where you kind of have five per division, you would expect, I guess,

if trades were just evenly distributed, that like 14% of trades would be intra-division, I think, if I'm doing the math right, because each team can trade with 29 other teams, and four of those teams are within that team's division, so four out of 29, that's like 14%. So if no one resisted intra division trades, you would expect 14% of trades, I guess, to be intra division. And it just has not been that. It has typically been about half that, in fact, since 2013, there have been well, it's been about 6.4% of all trades have been intra-division. So like less than half as many, I guess, as you would expect.

And in fact, that is exactly the rate so far this year. Seven trades out of 109 have been intra-division, 6.4%. Last year it was 5.4, the year before it was 6.1, the year before that was a high 2021, it was 10.8%, but it has not sniffed 14. So I mean, in 2002, I guess it was 19%. So it fluctuates from year to year, obviously, and spikes just based on circumstances. But no, there is seemingly a bias against inter-division trades, and that bias does not seem to be lessening, which interests me really, because a James Patreon supporter wrote in to say if the trend of trading within the division more often is real, which we've just established it's not, then he suggested maybe it could be about the playoff format

because when six of eight playoff teams were division winners, the cost of making a division rival better in a win-win trade was higher, whereas now more teams from within the same division can make the playoffs. But no, there just doesn't seem to be anything to it. I'm sort of surprised.

So I don't know, maybe there's still like some low hanging fruit to be found here if teams could match up. Maybe the ideal optimal trade partners are intro division twice as often as they have been if you were just going based on the best fit and not by perception and, you know, ruin the day because you have to then face that player. I mean, yeah. Okay. Well, we've established some truths about baseball. This was an edifying stat blast for me, at least. Do you ever wish, by the way, that there were fewer teams and players? Because as I was

going through these numbers and just looking at how few hitters there used to be, when I was doing the switch hitter percentage math and also the trading, how many trades there used to be, there just used to be a lot less of everything happening because there were just fewer teams and also fewer players per team. And if anything, we're way overdue for expansion. There should be more teams, right? We haven't had expansion in, you know, it's 1998. I mean, that's ridiculous.

Like we're, we're overdue. And yet there's a part of me that kind of feels like, you know, even though the growing population and talent pool supports more teams and more players. From a fan perspective, there's part of me that like almost feels a nostalgia that I never personally experienced for the era where you had like eight teams per league and you had fewer players. Like imagine just having a smaller cast of characters so that you could kind of familiarize yourself with all of them. Like is it bad? You know, it's why we do the meet a major leaguer segment, because we don't know who half these guys are, you know? So maybe that's too much. I'm not saying we

should have the number of teams, but there might be something to like, I'd feel like I had my finger on the pulse more, or like, I was aware of more of the storylines or, you know, more of the players, or there'd be more like matchup specific intrigue, I guess, if there was a limited palette, right? It's a lot to keep track of even if that's your job. Yeah. I mean, and you don't even engage with prospects or college baseball that much. Yeah.

Forget about it. If you have to know about that too, I have no idea how you can do that. So yeah, I'm not saying we should go back and yet it must've just felt nice to have a handle on everything that was going on. Now granted in those eras where there were fewer teams and players, you couldn't see them and watch them so much. So I guess, you know, trade-offs, you had to like be in the ballpark to see them or, you know, be within radio range or whatever. You didn't have MLB TV or maybe the games weren't even broadcast so they might have

been strangers to you even if you knew the names. Plus you couldn't check the stats as easily. So again, we're better off now, but there is a part of me that kind of wishes like I just knew these people better, you know, than I have an opportunity to when I'm trying to keep track of everyone. The good old days, eh? All right. That will do it for today and for this week. knew these people better than I have an opportunity to when I'm trying to keep track of everyone. Alright, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening, and thanks to everyone who's written it in response to the prompts in our preceding episode about the most demoralizing re-injuries. Delin Batanzas, his 2019 debut in September,

tearing his Achilles after spending all season rehabbing from a shoulder injury, that was his last appearance as a Yankee. Or Daniel Hudson re-tearing his UCL as he was making rehab starts from Tommy John surgery. I was thinking mainly of players who made it back to the majors and then immediately hurt themselves, but of course not quite making it back. Hurting yourself while rehabbing. That can be quite demoralizing too, as Mike Trout recently reminded us. And thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions for unorthodox places to play baseball games,

a free-floating platform in the Hudson River, the Mall of America, Times Square, Boston Common. And thanks most of all to those of you who have supported the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks. Today, our gratitude goes out to Gina Kim, Apollodorus, Blake Berg, Vy Nguyen, and Evan Korshavin, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free FanGraphs memberships, and so much more, check out all the offerings

at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild, and you can check

the show page or the episode description in your podcast app for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. I wanna hear about Shohayotani Or Mike Trout with three marks