Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2203: Go for the Gold

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the 30th anniversary of the 1994 strike and how nice it is not to have the season end in August, the unusual extension of Victor Robles, Tanner Rainey, Patrick Corbin, and the remnants of the 2019 Nationals, Will Wagner and whether the debuts of sons of big leaguers […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2203 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaff's. Hello, Meg. Meg Raleigh Hello. Ben Lindbergh So yesterday, Monday was the 30th anniversary of the first day of the 1994 strike. Meg Raleigh Okay. Ben Lindbergh Just made me happy and relieved that there's no strike

right now. They're still playing. Isn't that great? Sure. Yeah. Definitely, man. We like baseball. That's one way I improve my mood is to look back at earlier times when something bad happened and tell myself, well, that bad thing's not happening now. There might be other bad things, but aren't we comparatively well off that that thing is not happening and hey, no strike, right? So we actually get to see the rest of the season and the postseason. So that's fun.

I'm glad because imagine how much it would stink if suddenly the season stopped right now. It's so hard to know how to feel about strikes, right? Because like on the one hand, yeah, you want baseball rather than no baseball and you want there to be like a, at least workable relationship between the union and the league. But also like sometimes the labor disruption is necessary to, you know to advance the interests of labor. So it's hard. It's a sticky wicket at times.

Yeah. I think as a fan, I think it's probably an uncontroversial position to say that we prefer for the season to be played. Obviously, we would prefer for both sides to reach some sort of compromise that is acceptable to them and fair or fair-ish so that they will settle for it and continue to play. And that has been the case for a while now. Obviously, there was a lockout not long ago and we're not that far from another round of CBA negotiations.

So that'd be fun. It seems like we just did that and we're heading for another and it could be contentious like the last one was given everything that's going on with broadcasting and the cable bubble bursting and everything else. So I'm not taking for granted that this problem won't recur, but I am glad that it's not happening right now because I'm quite enjoying this season and I'm pleased that it will be played to completion as far as we know. As far as we know, although I cannot believe you.

I simply can't believe you. Although you brought up Victor Robles a couple of episodes ago, and he's continuing to be fine. So- Amazing. Well, is he though? Oh my God. Financially, he is. I noticed that he has a 65 WRC plus in August.

Yeah. Okay, fine. But like he's still playing like plus center field defense. So that's useful, especially since even though Julio Rodriguez has been activated from the entry list, he is DH-ing at present. So yeah, I was going to bring up Robles because we talked about him and his turnaround with the Mariners after the Nationals released him. And now the Mariners are so confident that this success will continue that they have extended Victor Robles. Two-year contract extension. It's not enormous

money. It's a 9.7 million over the next two seasons plus a $9 million team option for 2027. And then there's a couple million in potential bonuses and escalators. But I can't remember a reversal of literal fortunes like that. Can you recall any previous example of a player going from getting released by one team and then picked up for another team that's just taken a flyer on him really, cause they only have to pay him league minimum. And then within the same season, just what, within a couple of months, basically that team then signing him to a multi-year extension.

I mean, everything has happened before, so it probably has happened before, but I, I don't recall a specific instance of that happening. The closest comp that I can think of, and it depends a little bit on how you understand the function of the release. Can it even be the same player? And then how proximate to getting DFA doesn't need to be. But like Adolis Garcia is someone who springs to mind as a guy who had mixed results, certainly

at the big league level for St. Louis. I mean, over like what? Like 20 some odd played appearances for them in 2018. And then he like got a tiny bit of play for Texas in 2020 and then like just came on strong, although he's got an 85 WRC plus right now. So like, I don't know. I'll tell you about that, you know, not quite a perfect comp, and I'm sure there have been others to your point, but yeah, that one is the one who springs like most immediately to mind, at least in recent play, but I don't know. I mean, it's sure something, and I'm gonna say something controversial to you, Ben. Okay.

I worry you'll want to drop me as a co-host and I'm gonna betray here the role that one's personal fandom might play in your understanding of events. But as you probably know, the Mariners were on Sunday Night Baseball at home in T-Mobile Park. It had been 20 years since Sunday Night Baseball made its way out to Seattle. In fact, I think that my high school friends and I definitively answered this question in our group chats, though if we have any other Roosevelt 04 heads in our listenership, you can correct me. But I think that we determined that the last Sunday night baseball game played in Seattle happened

like a week or two before we graduated from high school in 04, because my 20th high school reunion is this weekend. So that's an awfully long time. And one of the players that they talked to in the course of that broadcast was Victor Robles. I maybe have turned around on the in-game interview. I don't know, man. Like he's so charming.

He was having such a great time. They all were really like, it was just an effervescent bit of business. You got members of the rotation throwing sunflower seeds at each other as they try to talk to Eduardo and Ravitch and you got a big win against what seems like a kind of feckless Mets team at this particular juncture. So it was a great time and I was like, I don't know what Ben was talking about all this time. I think this is fun. This is great.

We should do this every game. I read, I think that there was some thought that he might announce the extension during the in-game interview, but he didn't do that. Right. It does seem that they have unlocked something in him mechanically, as we talked about last time. And maybe also they're just kind of letting him be himself. Evidently he was in Davey Martinez's dog house for one reason or another. And who knows, maybe it's just because he wasn't playing well there, whereas he's playing well in Seattle. And so yeah, Scott Service can say, you know, he's just out there being Vic.

And that's great when Vic has a 140 WRC plus, right? Not so much when he's a well below average hitter. So we'll see if that continues. But seems like a happy just whirlwind romance here, just shotgun wedding between the Mariners and Victor Robles here, who have found each other and made a long-term commitment. So that's great. It wouldn't shock me if he turns back into a pumpkin as soon as they sign this extension and he no longer continues to hit. But as we said, it's not an enormous amount of money. I just, I wonder if it's like the honeymoon phase, you know, maybe it's dangerous to sign an extension in the honeymoon phase, especially when you've

got Jerry itching to make some sort of transaction at all times. It's such a small amount of money. There have been parts of the fan base that have grumbled a bit about the deadline activity of the team. Very excited about Randy Rosarina, obviously. Happy to get some bullpen reinforcements, good ones at that. But I think there's been a desire within the Mariners fan base to press for more, right? Despite them rattling off like, what a nine game winning streak the Astros have at this point, like they're still in it, you know, and it feels like this is a year you should really try to win the West because it feels winnable, even with the underwhelming

offense that the Mariners have on offer most of the time. So I think that there has been some frustration that they didn't like add a bunch more bats and like just turn the bat and the bat's raking. and some of that frustration I think is understandable even if as I've said on the pod before, I don't think that this was a deadline that really gave much opportunity for teams that wanted to add a really big impact guy, particularly position player and the Mariners famously don't really need a ton of help from a pitching perspective, especially among starters. So maybe it's a way to mollify the fan base a bit, but also I think it's probably just a testament to the fact that like they don't have a good alternative in house to play center

field if something happens to Julio like it did. They traded away Jonathan Closet at the deadline who, you know, we were kind of mixed on in terms of his ability to stick in center long term, but like he was their best option internally. You're not going to put Mitch Hanegger in centerfields, Ben. That would be madness. You're not going to put Luke Railey out there. Like he's my favorite refrigerator to watch run around, but you don't want that guy in center. That's a bad idea. So I think that like there's a floor that's a reasonably high one to

Robles's value just from a defensive perspective and if he keeps sitting like this great Fantastic if not like fine, but that battlefield does feel a lot better to me You know, like hopefully Julio is able to get back out there soon, although I'm glad they're not rushing him back into the field because the high ankle sprains can be kind of tricky. But like to go from what they had to like push Robles over to a corner when Julio comes back and then you have Randy and Robles and Julio like skill wise, nice. Vibes wise, fantastic.

We're trying to do a different vibes era. It's so many facets, Ben, you know, just across the world. We want new vibes. So I ate pasta right before we started recording and I was worried it was going to make me sound lethargic because sometimes, you know, you carbo-load and it goes too far. And then what do you do? But it appears to have had the opposite effect. I wouldn't say I'm hyper, but here I am.

CB. Just fueling up for another marathon episode of Effectively Wild. But I was going to- They could be shorter. I'm just saying, not all the time, but sometimes we could try some stuff. I don't know. I was going to bring up two other members of the 2019 Nationals who are still on the Nationals, which is rare for former 2019 Nationals who are still on the Nationals, which is rare for former

2019 Nationals who are just about all gone. But there are a couple who are still there and a couple less accomplished ones who are still hanging around on that roster. And Leo Morgenstern wrote a fun article for FanCrafts this week about one of them, Tanner Rainey, who has been the lowest leverage reliever in baseball and has a chance to have maybe the lowest leverage relief season of all time. He just has not been put into any important situations. He's just the mop up man. He's often at the end of the game. He only comes in really late in games though, if the Nationals are already way up or way behind there's just a big difference in scores. And then really he's just kind of come in at moments where he can almost not have any

impact on the game. However he does, he hasn't pitched all that well, which I guess has something to do with why he has not been entrusted with higher leverage relief opportunities, but Tanner Rainey and Patrick Corbin are still hanging around as representatives of the 2019 nationals and Patrick Corbin, of course, is leading the league in losses for the fourth consecutive season. He's actually leading the major leagues in losses.

He has a 67 ERA plus. The FIP is not quite as unsightly. It's actually better than it's been for the past few years, but it's not good. And they just keep running him out there and rainy too. And you know, there's something sort of nice about it in a sense, like the 2019 nationals, you know, the nationals kind of got a raw deal cause they didn't get to celebrate that world series the way that you usually get to celebrate a world series in front of your fans because of the pandemic

and, you know, empty ballparks and that hurts not just in a morale sense, but also financially, right? You expect some sort of boost in attendance and revenue after you win a World Series and they didn't get that. And then lots of things went wrong and that team has been almost entirely disassembled and they're already building back up again, seemingly. But they just have a couple remnants hanging around there. And Corbin, of course, was an important part of that team. And Rainey was kind of an important part of that bullpen, at least early in the year, before they kind of put the pieces together late in the season. And then he went on to be more effective in subsequent seasons.

He was the closer for a while in 2022. And so he's just kind of hanging around and, you know, the Nationals are not contending this year. It looked like they kind of were on the periphery of the wildcard race for a while, but ultimately not really. And so there's something almost nice and sentimental about just carving out a couple spots on that roster for the holdovers from that team. Now I don't know whether those guys are good enough that anyone gets warm fuzzy feelings

when you're watching them now. Like Nationals fans, do you get fun 2019 memories when you're watching Tanner Rainey and Patrick Corbin right now? Or are you just reminded of how things have changed since that season? Because these guys are not what they were then, right? They're much diminished. But in a sense, like there's nice, there's something nice about kind of having continuity there. So I almost wonder if there should be some sort of carve out some kind of rule that allows for a team to carry championship remnants to remind everyone of those glory days, especially if they fall far from those

glory days as quickly as the Nationals did. It's nice to have just a couple ties, I think, to those better days until you're ready to have good days again and then maybe they get forced off the roster by actually productive players. Yeah. How it reads really depends a lot on the rest of the roster. I bet that Patrick Corbin's presence last year probably felt different than it does this year because now the Nats are kind of like on the come up. We're starting to see the players who are going to be part of the next good nationals team playing for the nationals.

And so I think you're able to let in the nostalgia of it in a different way, especially when you're in the sweet spot of like, we can tell who is going to help them be good next. We can see those guys like really either coming up from the minors or establishing themselves in the majors in like a new and different way, right? Like our opinion of CJ Abrams is different this year than it was last year or the year before, right? We view his potential trajectory

differently than we did. But they're also not like, no one was like, yeah, you know, who's going to go to the postseason this year? The Nationals. So you can, you have room for the nostalgia because your expectations are higher, but not like too high. You don't yet resent the presence of sort of middling players. So it's nice. It's a nice thing that you get to have kind of a retread with appropriate stakes. Stakes you can let in without feeling a bad way about it. Right. Yeah. Especially if it's like the last man in your bullpen. That's not someone you expect to be good. So if Tanner Rainey were still closing as he was before his Tommy John surgery

and he were pitching this way, well, then he wouldn't have the lowest leverage index of anyone. But I wonder whether in this role, it just doesn't really matter. You could replace him maybe with a more effective reliever, but he's pitching in these situations where it wouldn't make any difference anyway, according to Leo's piece. The right-hander has yet to enter a tied contest or a one-run game.

In 27 of his 34 appearances, he has taken the ball with the Nationals trailing by at least three runs. He has entered with a deficit of at least six runs on five separate occasions, and Washington's average deficit when he enters a losing game is 4.9 runs. And granted the Nationals are losing more often

than they're winning, I guess, but even so, that's pretty extreme. I wonder what effect that has on Rainey too, because he's someone who has pitched in high leverage situations. And he seems to be, his stuff is not what it was pre-surgery, at least not yet, but often late-ending relievers will say that they feed off the adrenaline, right?

And I would get quite a boost of adrenaline if I entered any major league game in any situation. But Tanner Raney, having pitched in important moments, if he's now coming in and often his team is losing by five runs already and it doesn't really matter what he does, I wonder whether that has contributed to his ineffectiveness or like, you know, his velocity is down from where it was pre-surgery, but pre-surgery he was closing. Like is it just that he can't get as amped up for the low leverage? That's kind of a chicken and an egg situation because maybe if he were pitching better, he'd be in high leverage

situations, but it's got to be quite a disparity for him. And maybe some people would thrive in that just kind of show up and no pressure, you know, relatively speaking for a major league player, but others would probably feel stuck in the doldrums. Like how am I supposed to get psyched for this pitching appearance when it really doesn't matter how well I pitch? Yeah, it would be such an odd thing because you're right. Like he, he clearly knows what it feels like to pitch in moments that are much higher leverage than the ones he's facing now. So in theory, he has like that muscle memory, right? But also I wonder not only how it is for him, but how it impacts his relationship to other members of the bullpen, right?

Because like relievers have this reputation, I think often a deserved one for being weirdos. You know, they're the, they're the sickos out there. And they have this very strange job where they're being relied upon to get out. It's like fundamentally their goals are not different than the goals of a starter, but the circumstances under which they're deployed are really different and their ability to do that job is clearly like less good than the guys starting or there'd still be starters, right? This is like the failed starter theory of relievers. But also you get, you got Rainey and he's like, this is easy, you know, this is like,

I'm just, it's fine. What I do doesn't matter. Does that, I feel like that would make me feel kind of lousy. Like I want, Tanner Rainy's making big league money. He has a World Series ring, which is why we're talking about him at all. He's had glory days, right? There have been times in his career where he's been an incredibly effective reliever, a good closer, but I don't know.

Like anytime you're at work, you're not doing other stuff. And so even if you really love your job and get to do the thing you want to do, there is this tension that exists, I think, for a lot of people, like spiritually, where it's like, you know, I got to do this because I need to buy a salad later, but I'd rather be reading or hanging out with my family or staring into the middle distance in my living room, not getting yelled at by a ballpark's worth of people. And so I wonder, does he sit there and go, why, what I'm doing doesn't matter. But it does matter, Tanner, because someone has to pitch those innings.

That's the thing about it. It's like there's never someone on the field whose work doesn't matter at all. It might matter a little bit less. It might contribute to the winning or losing a little less than other people, but it's still necessary because, you know, you're not forfeiting games. And if you're coming in when there's a big lead and they just need someone to mop up, to soak up innings, you don't get to like forfeit and win. So Tanner, you're essential, really. You know? Tanner, you're essential, really. You're a critical piece of this nationals team. And if Tanner Rainey is listening to this, he's probably like, I know, what are you talking

about? Why is this weird lady on the podcast telling me about myself? Because I don't even know her. But you're very important, Tanner, because somebody has to pitch those innings. And in the event that there are higher leverage ones, they are going to want a different arm. I won't say more effective, even though that's what I mean, but like a more, they'll want a different arm to do it. Instead, you are, you're eating up those innings and that's valuable.

You know? Sparing some potential position player pitcher, those innings, baby. The Nationals, not only are they carrying Rainey and Corbin, they've also had a rule five guy on the roster all season, Nassim Nunez, who has 28 plate appearances on the year and 11 of those have come within the last week. So he just was not playing or at least not starting and not batting. He was doing some pinch running occasionally. He would pinch hit.

We've, I've written or stat blasted before about players who've been on the roster for long periods without actually playing or getting played appearances. And it is hard to run those numbers going back very far. Cause you have to have data on like who was on the roster on any given day of the season. And that just doesn't exist going very far back and it's tough to parse in recent years. So it's hard to do a comprehensive query about that, though certainly Atlanta has had mascots

essentially. That was the Braves teams that had their first stringers, their starters just playing every day and so they didn't need their depth to be tested. the Braves teams that had their first stringers, their starters just playing every day. And so they didn't need their depth to be tested. And so they could just kind of carry people who never played. And Charlie Culberson. Yeah, you get that with a rule five guy who has to stay on the roster. But it's almost like the bonus babies of old where, you know, they'd be on the roster, but they just wouldn't play and you just kind of have to carry them throughout that season. The Padres have done this memorably with multiple Rule 5 guys, Adria Koehler pushing the envelope as always, and then you get them through that season and then they can go to the

minors if you want to keep them around or if you don't think they're ready for the majors. But it's a strange institution or tradition, the Rule 5 guy who's on the roster all season and is just kind of Present but not really doing much more than that. I Saw Nassim Nunez play in the fall league when he was still in Miami Marlin Prior to his rule five selection. I think I at one point described his defense is nifty Which is a word we should use more satisfying to's fine to say, and he's a good speedy bass runner, not like a top prospect or anything, but like a guy on a list. And yeah, it has been so funny.

He's just like not doing it, you know? He's not playing much. It's like, okay, I guess, you know, it tells you something about what the organization thinks of him. And I think it's not the thing that people might think at first glance, which is that they don't trust this guy. It's like, no, we like this guy so much that even though there isn't necessarily a place to put him every day, we want to use the roster spot to keep him around. Like that is a weird vote of confidence on their part, I guess.

Yeah. And also indication that you're probably not contending that year. It helps to be a rebuilding team where you can kind of play with a few roster spots tied behind your back essentially. Yeah. You can, you know, cause like what difference is it going to make anyway? Really? You know, like think about who they got in their bullpen. I think that the reason that the Braves kept Charlie Culverson on the Roster all that time and didn't play him was because they were worried he would end up with dance B Swanson and then I would lose my mind

You know, they were like this is a service roster spot, you know for Meg because that's the same That's the same guy, you know, for Meg, because that's the same guy, you know, they don't. Although to my knowledge, only one of them is married to someone who scored a very important goal for Team USA in the Olympics. So who could say which one's better? I don't know, got to get the wives involved. So I have a hypothesis here I want to run by you. I don't know that I'm that confident in it,

but it's an idea. So you know how when a son of a former major leaguer debuts, everyone crumbles to dust and thinks that it's a reminder of their mortality and how could this guy already have a son in the majors? And the latest addition to the canon is Will Wagner, son of Billy Wagner, who just debuted for the Blue Jays, was just traded to the Blue Jays and made his debut and had a few hits in his first game. The Blue Jays, having offloaded Cabin Bishio, have replenished their stock of sons of former Ranger Leaguers and specifically,

sons of former Astros stars in this case. Yeah, how about that? Craig Kakatera in his newsletter, Cup of Coffee, noted that this debut made him feel impossibly old. And I get it, I grew up watching Billy Wagner too, and now he has a son in the majors and Will Wagner's 26, so it's not even that young a debut as these things go, right? So it does make you take stock of things.

And this is one of the ways that we gauge where we are in the life cycle, I suppose. I think though, or I wonder, I suspect at least, could it be that this effect is exacerbated by the fact that maybe major leaguers and pro athletes in general, perhaps have kids younger than the average member of the population and thus their sons arrive sooner than we expect. Not just because we've forgotten how old we are and how long it's been since we were young and watching that guy, but also because it doesn't seem like that former major leaguer has reached the age at which they should be able to have a major league age son. I have some data on this though, I don't think it's conclusive or that strongly suggestive, but Billy Wagner had just turned 27 a few days earlier when Will Wagner was born,

which is not particularly anomalous. But I think Billy Wagner has four children and Will Wagner is his eldest. There are some sons of Major Leaguers who've come along recently who were born to younger former Major Leaguers or at the time active major leaguers and so make you do even more of a double take like Jacob Wilson debuted for the athletics in July, son of Jack Wilson, shortstop following shortstop and Jack Wilson was 24 when Jacob Wilson was born and of course there's Jackson Holiday, who in addition to being very young himself when he debuted, was born to Matt Holiday when Matt Holiday was 23. So that's a combination of things. It's like, it seems like Matt Holiday was just playing,

right? And of course, we've had examples of major leaguers playing with their sons in the majors, or at least at the same time as their sons. So it's not that unusual, but it just doesn't seem like Matt Holliday has been gone from the league long enough to already have a son getting established there. But it's a combination of Matt Holliday being pretty young when Jackson Holliday was born, and then Jackson Holliday reaching the majors quite young. So that I think is kind of a case of, it's not actually that Matt Holliday is like way older or longer ago than you thought. It's just kind of this confluence of other factors.

So I was trying to determine whether it's actually true that major leaguers have children earlier than the average American or the average person. And it's kind of tough to determine. I thought there were some reasons why it might be the case because A, I guess major leaguers, they're kind of thrust into adulthood earlier than most of us. I mean, people who go to college and graduate from college tend to have kids later. And obviously some major leaguers graduate from college, but many don't. They get drafted out of high school or signed internationally as free agents or whatever, and they don't graduate from college. And a lot of them attain financial

security quite young, right? Younger than the average person who's like, I'm in my early 20s. Like I'm not in a position to afford to be able to have kids now. Whereas if you're a major leaguer, maybe you signed some giant contract by that point, right? Or it could be other demographic factors, you know, where you're born, your nationality, your, your religious background, right? Major leaguers might come from disproportionate demographics that tend to have kids younger than the average person. It's possible

anyway. So the only data that I could get on this, first of all, it's difficult to determine the average age of a first-time father in the US, I found when I tried, very easy to find the age of a first time mother. Lots of data on that. Yeah, well, you got to make them feel bad. So you have to know how old they are. But with dads, it seems like there's just a lot less data because I don't know, no one cares if dads had kids before. They don't ask. There's some sexism going on here in the data gathering perhaps of parents' respective ages. Many sources report that a recent study says that the average age of a first-time American father is 31 now. Reputable sources like from the New

York Times on down cited that stat about first-time fathers. But then when I went to look at the study, it didn't seem to specify first-time. It just seemed to say the average age of fathers of newborns. Oh, that's a different question. It is a different question. And so I'm not sure whether there was some supplementary information I wasn't seeing that did specify that it was first-time fathers or whether these outlets were just making a leap there because sometimes the average age of the first-time mother will be reported, but then it'll just say the average age of fathers period without specifying first time.

So maybe that can lead to some confusion. Maybe they're able to back into it too, because maybe if you know, for instance, that those are fathers who only have one child, then even if you don't ask the question directly, how old were you when your firstborn child was born, you can infer the answer to that based on knowing how old they are when their child was born, right? So maybe there's some of that data work being done. CB There is possible, yeah. And there typically has been an age gap historically, which has narrowed over time, but first time fathers or fathers in general older than mothers typically. But it seems like it's either 31 if it's accurately reported by all those various outlets, or it's, I would think maybe a couple of years younger

based on everything I could tell for a first time father. But the average age of a father period of a newborn in the US, it would appear is 31 now, which is on the upswing, right? And I'm part of that myself. I was 34 when Sloan was born. People are having fewer kids and at older ages, which I guess kind of goes together, right? So this is up like three and a half years over the past 50 years or so. Like in the early seventies,

it was like 27 and a half or something and now it's 31 ish. Anyway, I got data from Kenny Jacqueline of Baseball Reference, who just joined us recently to talk about Danny Jensen about the average age gap between major league fathers and their major league sons. I will put the full data online if anyone wants to peruse it, but looking since 2015, the average age gap between a major leaguer who has a future major league son and that major league son is 28.6 years. So the average big league dad is 28.6 when their big league son is born these days, which would be below the 31 US average. Of course, not every major leaguer is from the US and of course that number has been

increasing over that period. So it was a little lower 20, 25 years ago when those kids were being born, et cetera. But those are not necessarily first time kids, obviously. I don't have data on Major Leaguers' entire families and whether their Major League sons were their first kids or not. Many of them are obviously like Will Wagner, but others will have come along later. And I know I've read that in the early days of baseball, it was actually more common for second sons to go on to be major leaguers because the first son would be expected to follow in the family business or support the family or get a real job.

That was back in the days when baseball didn't pay as well as it does now. And, uh, you know, those weren't necessarily sons of, of former major leaguers, but just second sons in general were more likely to become big leaguers because the first sons would have to, you know, get a responsible real job and like put food on the table as opposed to chasing their athletic dreams anyway, I guess if the 31 is the average age just of fathers, period, then that kind of matches with this data that I got from Kenny, which says 28.6 is the average age of major league fathers, period of their future major league sons who may or may not

be their first kids, right? So that would suggest, I guess, that there is a slight difference there, which maybe does sort of support my loose hypothesis here that major leaguers tend to have kids a little earlier than the average American, let's say, these days. And I guess also just because the patterns of parenting and having kids have changed just over the past couple of decades, now we're thinking that parenthood, if it happens, happens later than it did even a few decades ago. And so it could be a little jarring when a major leaguer comes along who is the son of someone you watched seemingly not that long ago.

So I think it's mostly just the obvious like, oh gosh, I didn't realize how long has passed. I'm not a kid anymore, clearly, because this guy I grew up watching now has a kid in the majors and Billy Wagner named Billy the kid. Now he has a kid who's a big leaker himself. So it's kind of an adjustment, I guess. But I think this is maybe a small factor in how jarring it could be. Because when Sloan is the age that Will Wagner is now, I will be 60, hopefully. Wow.

Right? So, that's Billy Wagner is 53 now, I think. So, even to me, it sounds sort of premature for this to have happened, but it's not really. But I think that might contribute, I guess, to just how shocking it seems when one of these guys comes along and we're forced to reevaluate where we stand in life. I think that those are all astute observations. I keep wanting to call him Willie Wagner because of Billy, which is like feels infantilizing. And I want to apologize in advance for the eventual slip up that I commit there because I know it's going to happen. Willie Wagner

does sound ridiculous as a name. Sorry to any Willie Wagner's listening. Will Wagner sounds like a name. That's like a grown person's name. Yeah. I've been delighting in Tigers catcher Dylan Dingler this year who also made his debut but is not the son of a former major league group, but is named Dylan Dingler. And you know, like the Dingler you're born with or you're given, the parents had a Dingler, but you have to then make a choice to go with Dylan in addition to the Dingler. I guess his given name is Francis, Francis Dylan Dingler.

So I don't know if the plan all along was for him to go by Dylan or whether that just happens, but Dylan Dingler. Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your Willie Wagner. No, that's okay. Dylan Dingler sounds like a prohibitionary gangster name to me. Yes, or like Dirk Dingler. No, I'm picking a different thing that it reminds me of. He sounds like he should be running maple syrup, you know? I think you're right. I think there are a lot of different demographic factors that might push and pull at the age

at which these guys have kids. And some of it too is like, Will Wagner to your earlier point is maybe an exception to this rule, but it really doesn't help that a lot of the prominent sons of former big leaguers have come up at like very young ages, right and come up at young ages You know when they've been Guys who have come through like the American talent acquisition system and and internationally likes a lot of them are just young They're young and and quite good. So yeah, it does it does make you feel a way I don't feel a way about it yet. I't think. I still think that the thing that has

made me feel the oldest, and I want to be mindful that we do have listeners who are older than both of us and sometimes meaningfully so. So, you know, like take this with the grain of salt of a 38 year old exhibiting hubris. But I don't think that anything has made me feel as old as the most recent Futures Games coaching staff, where I was like, excuse us for, what the f**k is that? Like, what are you doing out there? No, no, no, no. You were like a big league early two years ago. Like what is this business? No, thank you. What about Grady Sizemore managing the white socks? Right. Yeah, that one did make me feel old. Although, hmm, I'm going to say something

and I want to apologize for how it might sound. Like when you've had like leaked nudes, because didn't he have leaked nudes? That makes you feel young to me. Not like too young to be clear, but that feels like a medium young person's problem. Like not medium is a mistake. That's something that happens to you when you are of age, but not yet like worried about your back hurting for no reason, you know? And so maybe that's contributing to why I wasn't like, oh my God, Grady, I just wanted to be a manager. Yeah.

Leaked partial nudes, I think. Partial nudes. Partial nudes. Yeah, but memorable nonetheless. I didn't look at them, Ben. That's none of my business. Hey, I've seen them. I don't know when I saw them or how I saw them, but I saw them.

I didn't look. I was like, that's not my business. No, thank you. I'm not judging you for looking. I mean, some- You're not a Grady's lady, I guess? No. No.

He was not my guy in that way. Most managers don't really have that in their backgrounds, maybe like Gabe Kapler aside, but you know, the sort of sex appeal. We don't know what's gone on with that guy. Sex appeal of managers currently or former. It's not the first trait that you associate with them necessarily, but- No. Yeah. Again, it doesn't feel like my business.

Anyway. Anyway. So if anyone's curious, I looked up the- It's such a weird sentence to utter right after we were talking about his nudes. If anyone's curious about the biggest age gap between a Major Leaguer and their Major League son, I have determined that it's by a lot, apparently, Willard Maynes and Jim Maynes. Okay.

So Willard Maynes was the dad and played for various teams in the 1880s and 1890s. And then Willard Maynes' son, Jim Maynes, made one start for the 1943 Philadelphia athletics and the age gap between them was almost 54 years. Wow. Willard was about to turn 54 when Jim was born, but that's kind of an outlier, it looks like. And the smallest age gap it looks like is just a little less than 17 years. Nelson Dean and Robert Dean, who played in the Negro leagues and then Alex Cabrera and Ramon Cabrera were 17.8 years apart.

And then Eric Young, senior and junior were about 18 years apart. Bobby Bonds and Barry Bonds were about 18 or 19, I guess close to 19. But yeah, there's a wide range there. I'll link to the data. I always feel a sense of profound relief when you'll be like, yeah, like I found this outlier guy. Here's his name.

And my mind goes, why don't I know who that person is? Why don't I know? And then it's like, oh, because he's both he and his son. Excuse me not to know Willard and Jim Maines. Not really household names unless you're in the Maines household. What do you think we should do about the Olympics in 2028? Because the Olympics, Paris just concluded, a lot of people enjoyed them. You enjoyed them. I enjoyed them. They were quite popular.

They did bananas ratings and there's going to be baseball in the 2028 Olympics in LA because the Olympics, baseball is not a full-time permanent Olympic sport now. It's just when the host country is into baseball, then you can play baseball. So there was baseball in the Tokyo Olympics, there will be baseball in the LA Olympics, but there have not been big leaguers in the Olympics, traditionally, historically.

Jeff Passon tweeted the other day, "'The best athletes in the world performing at their apex is what the Olympics is all about, and it's exactly why Major League Baseball needs to do all it can to get baseball back into the 2028 games and allow big leaguers to participate. The NBA showed the way MLB must follow. Now I don't think the NBA MLB is a great comparison.

I think the WNBA showed the way. Yes, because the WNBA, their season is going on and they had to take an Olympic break in the middle of their schedule. Yeah, the NBA is in its off season. Yeah, come on, Jeff. Relatively easy for them, you know, and the men's team at Team USA, obviously a legendary history there, but the timing works out for NBA, right? Whereas other sports, WNBA, NHL, right?

They have to, for the Winter Olympics in that case, they have to pause their seasons and sacrifice something in order to send the big timers over there. And there's a lot of talk about that happening in 2028, really for the first time with major leaguers, there's an of talk about that happening in 2028, really for the first time with major leaguers. There's an ongoing discussion about that. Tony Clark said there's momentum that there's maybe going to be a way for this to happen, but it's going to be odd.

If it does, there's going to have to be some divergence from what we usually see in the summer for 10 days, right? You're going to have to stop longer than an all-star break and you're probably going to have to do away with the all-star game, which itself is a venerable tradition, though one I think that matters less and less. So would you sacrifice the all-star game and lengthen the all-star break? And how would you manage that with playing the rest of the season as scheduled?

Do you think it's worth the squeeze to send big leaguers to have a proper professional Team USA of baseball players? I do. I do think it's worth it. I mean, I might put the Olympics on a city with better transportation infrastructure than Los Angeles, but that's not really the question we're trying to answer, is it? We mentioned the WNBA and here we will mention the storied history of US women's basketball in the Olympics because boy, they even won gold.

I don't have any memory of an Olympics where the US women didn't win gold. That's really cool. That's a, it's like a, I know they haven't broke. I think, I think I saw on one of the really excellent Peacock broadcasts, they did a good job. They just did a really good job. You know, I give the streaming services the business sometimes for having to give them my business, but I thought they did a really excellent job.

And I think that there is another team that has won more consecutive golds in a different event and now I'm not remembering which one it is, but like they're just like powerhouses. So cool. So anyway, I think it would be really, really great when we're thinking about the events that have really generated a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for the sport. In the last couple of years, the WBC looms really large for me. I think that WBC play has improved the standing of baseball as a sport, not Major League Baseball necessarily, but baseball as a sport.

Each time it's been played. Now maybe the existence of the WBC scratches that itch, where you get good international competition and increasing participation by US born big leaguers for Team USA. And so if someone wanted to say, eh, I'm good, don't goof up the season, let them just do the WBC. Like I don't feel so strongly that I would be like, no, we must Olympics. But I do think that there's something like cool about the idea of the name that just like comes so immediately to mind.

Like don't you want to see Bryce Harper win a gold medal? Like, I don't know why he's the guy, but like you think about like the, I want to see Bryce Harper win a gold medal. I don't know why he's the guy, but you think about the, I want to see Bryce Harper win a gold medal, baseball, I think that'd be freaking cool. CBer He thinks that would be cool too. He said, I think it's everyone's dream to be in the Olympics. KS I don't know what exactly it is, but I do wonder if the way that starting pitchers viewed wonder if the way that starting pitchers viewed Olympic play would be different than WBC play, if you aren't having to disrupt your spring and the buildup. And I know that they have to throw in the spring anyway, so the WBC, we can have that conversation about whether it's really a

disruption. But if you said to Scoobel, hey, you get to have a completely normal spring, you get to have a totally normal buildup to the all-star break, and instead of throwing one inning of all-star game baseball, you could go win a gold medal. I bet that you would have more high profile starting pitchers be game to like throw their hat in the ring and be like, yeah, let's go, you know, represent team USA baseball. So I think that that would be cool. Now it is neat that you get like prospects participating in the Olympics. And I think that there are a lot of guys who that experience has been very meaningful for. So it's not as if you can't enjoy Olympic baseball if they don't bring the big leaguers,

but if what you want is, you know, an excuse to get like a little nationalistic in the middle of the summer. I do think it means it reads different. It means something different when you're having the most famous baseball players in the world as your sort of representatives in that kind of international competition, as opposed to some prospects who you might know and might be like, Aaron Judge should be an Olympian. He looks like an Olympian.

Look at him. Look at that guy. And I think it would be cool too, because you would get a lot of players who are not from the US who would go and represent their countries. And like, that would be awesome. Also, like, I won't want Soto to be an Olympian. That would be so, that would be so cool. So you know, it doesn't have to be Team USA or Bust.

Like, I think that opening it up to all of these guys being able to represent their home countries would be really great. If we take the WBC as a cue, that is clearly a very meaningful thing for a lot of these guys. Being able to have their country name across their chest, it does mean something to them. So, I hope that if they want to participate, they have the opportunity to do that. Yeah. And you could say, well, why do we need this?

Because we have the WBC, we're going to have the WBC in 2026, and then again in 2030. So do we need Olympics in 2028? I would watch the WBC every year at this point. I think four years breaks between them is too much. And hockey has something similar where they have Olympic hockey, but then they have the World Cup of hockey also,

and it's sort of staggered. So there's something every couple of years, and I guess that would be good for baseball too. And again, it's not going to be every summer Olympics. It's just going to be the ones in certain countries, right? So take advantage of those opportunities. And I guess what you'd have to do, you'd have to sacrifice the all-star game. You'd have to, you know, the non-Olympians would have an extended break, which could

be good, but also could lead to some complaints about people being rusty, right? So send them under AAA. I guess, yeah. Send them under AAA. I think that that could be an asset to the plan because then you have guys like, hey, you want to keep, you know, you want to make sure you're on a consistent throwing program. You're not going to participate in the Olympics for your country. Go throw at the AAA affiliate of your home club and let the folks who are proximate to

that affiliate get to like see big leaguers down there for a little while. I think that would be cool. Yeah. I don't know if the big leaguers would be as excited about that as the fans would, but, but maybe pitchers complicate everything with these things, you know? Like it's always, it's always pitchers that make it so hard, even compared to say basketball players, not that basketball players don't need to like get up to game speed and everything, but pitchers just, their arms and the

workloads and the ramp up and it just makes it so complicated when people talk about doing the WBC after the season or mid season or something. It's just seems like we've arrived at the best way to do it, but it's still imperfect. So in order to do this, you'd have to, to make up for that time off in the middle of the season. I guess you would either need to start the season a little earlier, which seems feasible, right? Spring training is quite long and you could probably speed that up a tad.

And you know, you could also- A little pitchers make that complicated too, right? They do, yes, they do. And you could also extend the postseason, you know, move things back deeper into October, which gets dicey weather-wise. Or you could cut games, which is something that, you know, there's some appetite for anyway, just have a shorter season, which I don't know if you would do that as a one-off, but maybe that could be a way to sort of sneak a shorter, you know, 154 game season, go back to that

or something. And of course, there are all kinds of considerations there and would it lead to less revenue or would it not? Because if you were games and there'd be higher attendance and ratings at the remaining games, there's a lot of debate about is the baseball season too long as it is. So this could be an excuse, I guess, to experiment with a shorter season and maybe players or teams would be in favor of that because it wouldn't just be tacking on extra innings and work onto those players. It would be subtracting from their regular season work. But then you're also potentially costing fans of MLB something the opportunity to see those games and revenue lost maybe. So yeah, it's kind of complicated. The timing just doesn't, it's not as conducive as it is for the NBA,

unfortunately. But I think I agree that it would be worth trying to work something out, at least as a one-time, one-off event, which would be cool, you know? Because the All-Star game just doesn't move the needle that much anymore, but for baseball to be a big part of the Olympics with recognizable players, that'd be a big story. That'd be fun for everyone. That'd be good for the sport and also for the particular players who participated. Yeah, I think that there are definitely logistics that have to be worked out and I don't want to downplay like the difficulty that that might present and like the participation in

it would be voluntary. So I'm sure you would get some guys who would be like, I don't want to do that. Just like the WBC. Yeah. And so, you know, it is maybe naive to think we would get the ideal field for any, for any country because I'm sure there would be guys who wouldn't want to participate. And I don't know what the appetite is for like extending the postseason into November and an election year. I don't have appetite for that personally. I don't like that notion at all, but like, I think it's cool and we should

do cool stuff, pro cool stuff over here. Yeah. Time off, no problem. Mookie Betts comes back from months off and a fractured hand, no rehab assignment, just homers in his second plate appearance back after his long absence and had multiple hits in his first game back as a right fielder. Now no longer a shortstop because the Dodgers do have other shortstop options. Sad to see the Mookie shortstop era end at least for now, but I do understand why that's probably better for

all involved. But you know, he came back and didn't miss a beat. So there's only one Mookie, unfortunately. That doesn't really apply to everyone. But how can you complain about being rusty and time off? I wonder whether he used any fancy advanced pitching machines to get back up to speed or what, because we've talked about that in Harper's case, like as an alternative to rehab assignments potentially. But he stepped right back in there. And after one single strikeout out he was going yard again and the Dodgers were winning behind Mookie and Otani and Kershaw just the way they drew it up though that hasn't been the way that it's played out for much of the season. But River Ryan needs Tommy John so it's not all happy and Dodger land. Yeah as you know Dan Siborski wrote an interesting post assessing the MVP races for fan crafts and found that unsurprisingly,

I think as we've discussed, there has been a change in how award voters vote, right? And what they're voting on. And so he came up with multiple models, kind of a pre-Saber Metrics mainstream, pre-2000 voting model to predict who would be the MVP this year. And then a post-2000 because war now, according to Dan's figuring and just kind of common sense, plays a big part in award voters' considerations and also just like the components that go into war, kind of tough to untangle those things, but we pay attention to that holistic value now and not just the back of the baseball card stats. And so there is a pretty big disparity according to his new school and old

school predicted award models when it comes to the current leaders and MVP fields right now, because you have Judge, who's kind of been the presumed favorite all season in the AL, and Otani, who's been the presumed favorite in the NL, and they have the big power numbers that traditionally might have just easily propelled them to the awards. But they each have candidates nipping at their heels and in some cases outplaying them, at least in recent weeks and months, who have more of the all around case, right?

So, yeah, Bobby Witt Jr. in Judge's case. And we talked about Witt and how incredible he's been recently. And, you know, we talked about Gunnar Henderson as, as maybe the primary challenger to Judge earlier this season. Now it's Witt and some degree Soto, but the all around case versus the just pure power and slugging case, though obviously Witt has plenty of power and offensive output himself.

And then in Otani's case, you know, he's competing with Elie De La Cruz and Ketel Marte, guys who have more of the advanced stats case, I guess, more so than just the overwhelming home run RBI type numbers. Actually, Ketel has almost as many RBI as Otani does. That's right, Ben. That's right. Yes, although he's dealing with some ankle issues. He is. Himself these days. But according to Dan's projections, the old school model of MVP voting would put Judge at roughly a 76% chance to win.

Whereas the new school trained on more recent decades puts him at kind of a coin flip relative to the field or you know 56.7% with Witt being his primary challenger and then sort of the same deal to a lesser extent in the NL where the old school model would have Otani as a 51% probability favorite and then the new school model has him about at a one in three chance. Still the, the leading contender, but 34.3% chance over Ellie and Ketel as opposed to over Marcelo Zuna and Ketel. And then in the AL it's a wit as the runner up compared to Jose Ramirez as a, the old school runner up, though he's certainly an advanced stat darling too.

So that does sort of support what I would have thought, but yeah, it's getting interesting, right? There's no lock in those races anymore. Judge and Otani are not shoe-ins or even close to it. There's the part of it that is the race itself being exciting, which is nice because we've had so many years lately where it's just been, well, obviously that guy is the MVP or obviously that guy is going to win rookie of the year in this league. There's no doubt about it. So there's just the natural thrill of there being the potential for the race to be upended and for it to go a slightly different way than you were expecting.

And then it's also like, we get to watch these guys be this good and really push each other. And I don't know, it's just like a very, it feels like a very special thing, which is interesting because I think I have at times this year felt a little, not overwhelmed by the season generally, but we've talked about how like some of the biggest stars in the sport are hurt and they're hurt in a season ending way and you know, we're not getting to watch Ronald Acuna Jr. play baseball and Spencer Strider is out and you know, there's been, it has felt kind of muted in some ways and so to see these guys really pushing each other, I don't know, it feels very, it's very cool.

It feels really special. And I am on some level like relieved that I don't have a vote because I think that this is the kind of field where there are no bad answers. I imagine by the end of the year, there will be no bad answers. And one of these guys could like really pull away and it could just be over by the time, you know, October rolls around. But I suspect that there are going to be guys where it could, you know, continue to be a question, which also means that you're going to get yelled at by pretty much everyone who have to vote. But I also am, I am envious because I've had, I had one

year, the year that Jordan Alvarez won rookie of the year, it was like very obvious he should win rookie of the year. And then, you know, I had a vote in the, well, I had a vote in the Strider, Michael Harris, NL year. And that one was, it was stressful and I was worried I made the wrong choice. And I still worry about that. And then I feel confident and then I worry and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it's nice to have it be close.

It's really nice. Yeah. And it's striking how much the voting patterns have changed. Dan also mentioned that whether you play for a winning team, a playoff team matters less than it used to, which I guess goes hand in hand with maybe prioritizing the players' performance in War, etc. But he noted that there have been 47 MVP awards presented to position players who finished their seasons with fewer than six War.

That's more than a quarter of all hitter MVP seasons. However, excluding 2020, a hitter has not won an MVP without reaching that threshold since 2006, when both winners were short of that, Ryan Howard in the NL and Justin Morneau in the AL. So that was kind of a common occurrence for much of baseball history and has been essentially unheard of for the past couple decades. So that tells you how much things have changed. LS WOLFF Wow. CBT. I was reading David Laura's excellent Sunday notes, as I always do, and he had a note about

Seth Lugo and how Seth Lugo thinks that having been a batter because he predated the Universal DH helps him on the mound. And he told David, I talk to my catchers about this all the time and to other pitchers as well. After I throw a pitch, I remember what it's like to be in the box and see the spin, shape, and where it passed through the zone. I try to think like a hitter when I'm pitching." And David asked him to elaborate and he said, what would you look for after this pitch? I mean, you can tell. A guy takes a swing

and fouls it straight back. You can tell he just missed it or he takes and turns around like, oh, I should have swung. You can see that and you know that feeling as a hitter. It's dang, I hope he gives me that pitch again. You can make a pitch off of that. And he goes on to say, I've been in the box. I know the feeling. And we will see in the future that fewer and fewer pitchers know that feeling, right? Yeah. Because they will have come up in the era of the Universal DH,

which, you know, there are minor leagues that haven't had a pitcher hitting for a long time, so there are plenty of pitchers now who don't have certainly any high-level experience, but at some point, all of the pitchers who predated the Universal DH will age out and there will be no one who, you know, Otani aside who can say I've been in the box, I know the feeling and will factor that into their pitch selection. Do you think that will matter at all? Do you think that will impair pitchers performance in any perceptible degree?

I don't know how you would determine this or you know isolate this factor, but do you think that the fact that pitchers will no longer have any real experience of hitting will hamper them at all on the mound? I'm of two minds about this because on the one hand it is intuitive to me that that experience even if it doesn't go well, informs something, right? It gives you some insight that you're able to pull and maybe use as part of your preparation. On the other hand, Ben, pitchers are famously really bad at hitting. And so I wonder how useful that insight is. I also think that they have such incredible tools at their disposal now that if they want

to get insight, like you almost don't have to utilize your imagination in that way, right? Because you can just look at a really good scouting report, not only for the hitters you're going to face that day, but other hitters like them. So I wonder if it does afford you any particular insight that you wouldn't be able to glean from other sources. But I can also imagine, I'm going all kinds of ways with this, that there are going to be pitchers, and I don't know if Seth Lugo is necessarily in this camp, but there are going to be pitchers for whom, you know, looking at a scouting report isn't necessarily going to resonate. It's not going to be the easiest way for them to engage with that

information. And so being able to supplement that with, you know, your own sort of memory of what it was like to be in the box and to face pitches like that and how did they work and how did you see them and when were they the most effective versus not. Maybe that does let you sort of relate to that information in a way that makes it feel more intuitive or, you know, stickier in terms of your memory of it. But I don't know, I'm skeptical. But I also think that like, it doesn't hurt even if like you were a lousy hitter. Right.

I guess not unless you like attributed the same lousiness to the hitters you're facing and you're like, what would I throw myself here? And it doesn't matter what you threw you because you sucked. Right. But I imagine that, well, maybe I'm giving credit for some amount of self-reflection that isn't warranted, but I would think that all you have to do is have experienced being a hitter when you're a pitcher to know like, that didn't go great for me. You're not going to be able to like con your way into thinking, oh, I know exactly what that, you know, you're not going to, that's not going to work. Yeah. I doubt this would make much of a difference for the most part. I don't know if it even helps

Seth Lugo. It seems like he thinks it does, but who knows if it actually does. Maybe it's just a mindset thing, which might be helpful, but it could be that you could assess those things without having been a batter yourself because you can still see how the hitter adjusts and reacts to your pitches without having been in the box yourself. Plus you can rely on your catcher who of course is also a hitter. And your teammates more generally, right? You're lousy with hitters. They're all around you. Yeah. And you have the scouting reports. And I think we've discussed this, that there have been

some teams that have put their pitchers in the box against like a trajectory pitching machine, some of the advanced pitching machines, just to pump them up. Right? So they face their own stuff as hitters and then they realize, oh, well, you well, my stuff's pretty good. It's hard to hit. Yeah. I can challenge hitters. I can fill up the zone here because it's hard to hit me. So you could mimic that experience, I guess, if you just want to buck people up and show them what it looks like to stand in the box so that they can gain greater confidence maybe. But yeah, you used to hear, and I don't know whether this was true, I think there have been some studies on this that kind of showed there wasn't that much to it, but the idea

that because pitchers had to hit, they would then be careful about hitting batters because they would worry that there would be reprisal, right? Like if they hit a batter, then when the pitcher was batting, they would then, you know, they'd get buzzed or something, right? And there'd be kind of a fear factor there that might like take away the inside part of the play because they wouldn't want to hit someone knowing that they could bear the brunt of the retaliation personally. But yeah, I tend to think these things are probably a bit overblown,

but that was interesting just because Lugo's, you know, a remnant, obviously, you know, many pitchers who are around now had the experience of hitting in the majors, but many don't and fewer and fewer will. And Seth Lugo is 34 going on 35. So he's getting up there, even though he's having just a fantastic career year. I think that my sort of overarching answer to these things is often like that people

just engage with information in a lot of different ways. And so I think that, you know, you want to have some evidence of the efficacy of it. And if you were to find out that like actually this is detrimental because to your point, like maybe they have an inflated understanding of their own hitting ability. And so then they're going in there sort of asking the wrong question, not could I get me out with this, but could I get someone who can actually hit out with this? So you want to make sure that they're trying to answer the correct question and that there is some demonstrated efficacy to the method. But I think that there are a lot of different methods that can be productive for guys as they're trying to figure out the

best way to deploy their arsenal and how to tweak it and how to adjust it to the hitter at hand. And so if this works for him, great. That's great.. You know, there are a lot of different kinds of learners. So it makes sense that a lot of different methods would need to be on hand to talk to all the different guys on your team. So, yeah, Seth Lugo, by the way, both he and Tarek Schubel are starting today, a little after we speak on Tuesday. And I've kind of been comparing their seasons all year because, you know, AL Central pitchers and they're having great years and Lugo's success is maybe

a little more unexpected than, than Scoobles given how Scoobles finished the last season, but that's another case where the stats that you look at, that will be kind of an interesting awards discussion if they finish the season roughly as they have been pitching thus far. Cause it kind of depends, like if you go by RA nine based war at Fangrass, so actual runs allowed, then Seth Lugo leads the major leagues in pitching war. And Scoobal is fourth. Whereas if you go by the default fit based war, which I prefer, leads the major leagues in pitching war and Scubal is fourth. Whereas if you go by the default FIP based war, which I prefer, then

Scubal leads the American league. He trails Chris Sale in the majors and Lugo is all the way down at 13th, which, you know, still a strong season, but he's got more of a ERA FIP gap and he's less of a strikeout pitcher than Scoobel, right? So Scoobel's season has been more impressive to me, certainly, but if you just go by the old school stats, the win-loss record and the ERA, they're actually quite comparable, right? So that's another case where that might be kind of an interesting conversation. Yeah.

Your preference there might reveal the- Something about you. Yeah. And what kind of voter you are, what kind of evaluator you are, I guess. They're, they're both tied as we speak with 13 wins. Lugo has a few more innings and Scubal has more strikeouts. You would bet on Scubal more to sustain this success, not only because of his age, but just because of how he's doing it and the underlying numbers there.

I want to be fair to Seth Lugo. And so it's making me think that I need to make a point of watching his next couple of starts because my impression has been that that signing worked out much better than I was expecting it to. I didn't think it was bad. Like I thought, you know, that the Royals needed innings and he was going to provide competent ones for them. Like that was sort of my understanding of how that was going to go. And then I think it has, he has dramatically outperformed that expectation for me. I know that like in his most recent start, he had a bit of a rough go against the Red Sox, but like he's been very good this year, but I've only watched him like, I don't know, a couple of times and I've, I've watched a lot of scubal

starts and you watch him and you're like that, he might just be the best pitcher in baseball, you know? So like the experience of watching him is very different, but I also think to your point, like some of that is that I am primed to view a guy with his strikeout rate as being dominant. And he has like a 30% strikeout rate. That's great. Wow. What a year he's having. Man, we should just talk about Tarek Skubul a lot.

Plus I will always have a soft spot for the Seattle U guy because he just didn't get recruited anywhere really. And then he went to Seattle U and then he got drafted and now he's the best pitcher in baseball, who could say? And I love when someone makes the conversion that Lugo has made where, I mean, he started earlier in his career and he was kind of meh and he was sort of a stat cast darling because of the high spin curve ball, right?

But then he was in the bullpen and then he went to San Diego last year and was a regular member of the rotation and was good. Yeah. And by some measures really he was just as good last year as this year. Like if you go by ex-FIP, which goes beyond FIP and normalizes for the home run per fly ball rate also, that said he was actually more effective last year.

So he's getting a little bit better luck in defensive support, et cetera, you know, 260 BABBAP this year, but still pretty cool that he has made this relatively late career conversion to full-time starting and that it has gone as well as it has. So I'm always pleased to see, you know, older dog learning new tricks or at least perfecting old tricks. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Jaren Duran got suspended for a couple games, right? Because he said a homophobic slur during a game during a plate appearance to a fan who was heckling him. Probably everyone has heard the slur. It was very audible. It was picked up on the broadcast live mic, which is why we know

about it. It makes you wonder how many of these incidents happened that we don't know about because they weren't caught on the hot mic, right? Which happens to broadcasters on occasion and also to players. And we've seen incidents like this before, and there's just sort of a standard like two or three days suspension. That's just kind of the going rate for these things, which, you know, that's the precedent. Certainly could be longer, but that's kind of like the established, you know, what you're going to get for one of these things. And I mean, he told the fan to shut up and cursed out the fan too, but you probably would not get suspended for that. You get suspended for a slur, out the fan too, but you probably would not get suspended for that. You get suspended for a slur,

as you should. And he has apologized and the Red Sox have apologized and have talked to him. The thing with one of these incidents is that he said that this is not a word that he uses, that it's not something he says in other contexts, that there was no meaning behind it, that it was just heat of the moment. It just kind of comes out. And I think people are often skeptical when they hear that as I am too, I guess. Because if this word is not in your rotation, if this is not in your vocabulary, if you've never said this at any other time, are you just going to blurt that out in that context? Or is it something that gets said in club houses or in other contexts? And it just came out at this moment. And I thought a couple of things about this. I'm winding around to asking you about the heckle of

all things here. The least serious aspect of all this, though, any thoughts you have on the actual offense, I don't know that we have anything that you wouldn't expect us to say about this or that we haven't said about similar incidents in the past. I was thinking there was the irony that he had just been awarded the Heart and Hustle Award for the Red Sox, which is for a player who demonstrates a passion for the game of baseball and best embodies the values, spirit, and tradition of the game. And I guess you could say that this probably did embody the value, spirit, and tradition of the game, unfortunately, right? For a lot of its history. And I also thought given the recent

death of Billy Beane, who would have been the one who, you know, would have talked to Duran probably maybe in this sort of situation or would have, you know, picked up the phone or gone to speak to him or the team or something. And now that he's gone, I wonder whether there is someone in that position or, you know, hope that there is someone in that position or hope that there is. And it seems like he's already gotten a talking to, but like, is there sort of a successor in place to be able to speak to the players the way that Billy Bean was

and hopefully open some minds and bridge some gaps there. Anyway, those are my thoughts on Jaren Duran. I don't know if you have thoughts about that specifically before I ask about the heckle. Well, yeah, I guess I'll just say, I don't know Jaren Duran. I don't know what's in his heart. I guess the first thing I'll say is that I thought the apology was fine. I think that the difficult thing for fans in moments like this is that the work that one needs to do in the aftermath of something like this is often not work that we see. And so I think we find ourselves in this really challenging position of trying to gauge the

sincerity of the person reforming based on what we do see. And that's not always a reliable indicator. So you do get in the spot where you're like, you feel yeshy about it and you don't, it's hard to know how to kind of pull out of that feeling with respect to that guy. I want to believe, I need to believe that people can learn from moments like this and appreciate both the impact of using those words, not only toward members of whatever community is, but also just in the presence of people who belong to those communities or whose loved ones belong in those communities. So I don't want to foreclose the possibility that someone can grow and learn from this

stuff because I have to believe people are capable of that or like, what are we doing here? But it is a frustrating thing and yeah, like I swear sometimes when I don't mean to but I don't I don't do slur oopsies, you know So I it's hard it's hard to take that at face value but I hope that he is making use of resources to excise those words from his vocabulary and also to really appreciate what that means and how it feels and how awful it feels in general and how bad it might feel in moments like this where across the country, the LGBTQ

plus community is under legislative assault in a lot of states. So I hope Durand does better. I think it's appropriate that there be suspensions for these things. I think that the play index guy, the ace of whatever the hell, was like, I can't believe that he got suspended. You'd have to suspend every player. And it's like, well, I actually do think that he got suspended. You have to suspend every player. And it's like, well, I actually do think that while these words probably get deployed in a way that is not good, it's not every guy who says that.

And like, okay, like there need to be consequences and repercussions for these things. And I don't think that they're appropriate to use at the ballpark in any context, but like you're, you're caught on mic using a slur toward a fan. There are just going to be consequences for that behavior. And it was clear that he knew that and the Red Sox knew that. Anyway, so about the heckling, that's all I have to say about that. And also, RIP to Looping. Yes, right.

And it's tough because I know a lot of Red Sox fans who've really enjoyed watching Jared Duren play are very disappointed by this and you know, what does it reveal about the person and, and there are reasons to root for players often, like the more you know, the less you want to know. But like, you know, Jared Duren, like he's been open about mental health challenges and has been kind of like an advocate in that area. And you know, that's made him sympathetic. He was also like a vaccine holdout for, for a while earlier in his career. Yeah.

And you know, he's, he's just a really fun, watchable, valuable players. So all these things, you know, you kind of have to consider it all, I guess, or do your best to put it out of your mind if you could do that and just watch the baseball, I guess. But the heckle that put him on tilt here and he was having a bad game and I think he like went at an electric fan in the dugout. Maybe before he went at the actual fan in the stands. Oh, I thought you were like, maybe the pasta is affecting my brain now, because I was like, like a hologram? I don't want to do a funny in the midst of a serious thing, but I will admit to being kind of a doof when it happens. And I was like, uh, like hologram fan.

So you mean like a, Hey, it's hot out. Let's have a fan going. Okay. That makes way more sense than my thing. So the heckle that pushed him over the edge here was a fan. And you can hear this dude shouting tennis racket, tennis racket, you need a tennis racket, suggesting that a bat would not be sufficient for him to make contact with a pitch. He needs a tennis racket. Which, first of all, I mean, that may have been true on that day, but on the season, I think a bat has sufficed for Jaren Durant. He's done quite well with just the bat.

So keep doing what you're doing in that respect. And he's struck out like a league average rate. So I think again, the bat is serving him just fine, but this just made me wonder like, would a tennis racket help? And I was trying to like, would that actually be an advantage to have a tennis racket? Because wouldn't the ball just go through the strings probably? Like would strings

be up to the task of repelling- Nicole Soule- Yeah. Like do they have the tensile strength necessary to- Jared Soule- Right, because- Nicole Soule- I have no idea. I have no idea. Tennis is a big sport blind spot for me in terms of, I like have watched tennis and I know the rules, but I'm not a tennis head. And I tried to play tennis one time and I swung the racket like I would a baseball bat. And I think that was the end of it for me. I was like, oh, I'm not going to be good at this either. I have some affinity for tennis. I play tennis and I like tennis and I'm still, I'm not confident in my answer here. I found another post on a website where someone asked this almost

a decade ago because their nine-year-old asked them that and they put it to some physics people to ask if you tried to hit a major league fastball with a tennis racket, would the ball rip through the strings or would you be able to hit the ball back with distance? And opinions differed because the fastest tennis serves are very fast. But the thing is that a baseball is more massive than a tennis ball, which you know if you've ever tried to throw a tennis ball like a baseball, like it hurts your arm, right? Like a baseball weighs five ounces and a tennis ball weighs two ounces. So there's a significant difference in momentum there.

And opinions varied on whether the strings would be able to repel a ball or whether they would just snap. And maybe it depends on the racket and you know, how the strings are strung and everything. And some people were saying, well, maybe the tennis racket would break the way that bats break sometimes, but you know, you have tennis rackets made of like carbon fiber, you know, titanium high tech stuff. So I don't know that they would just snap off at the handle or anything, but I can see the ball going

through or at the very least, I but I could see the ball going through or at the very least, I don't think you could hit it with much force. I don't think you could. And I know that there are people who play tennis baseball, right? Like you play baseball with a tennis ball with tennis rackets, which looks kind of fun, frankly, but that's with a tennis ball. Sorry. So you're playing with both a tennis racket and a tennis ball? Yes, but playing baseball. Can you really call it baseball at that point? Like in the else? I don't know. It's tennis baseball But tennis baseball you can call it tennis baseball. Yeah, they do I think call it tennis baseball

Yes, they call it ten they should call it tennis ball because like you're replacing the base part of the tenant That that's true tennis is a sport., okay? I got sassy about motor sports, sports. I'm doing air quotes with my hands. And we did receive a well argued email, but one that I did not find remotely persuasive about it. I'm not here to say that tennis isn't a sport. Tennis is a sport. And I know you use an implement.

It is a sport, unlike motor sports, which are not. Oh boy. Okay. Not co-signing necessarily, but yeah, I got, I got takes today. I got to take on what's a sport and the, and the in the in game interviews. It's all different now. A tennis serve can go like 150 miles per hour, but it's just, you know, different ball. And so I don't think you could hit a baseball that far.

So if the goal is purely to make contact here, which if this is what that fan was suggesting that Derenne needs a tennis ball, even needs a tennis racket even to make contact. Yeah. I mean, you certainly couldn't make contact. I guess that's fair, right? Even if the ball went through the strings, you could make contact. That would be a form of contact, I suppose, right? And it would be easier to do that.

But I question its utility as a hitting implement. I think, again, a bat much better. Even if there's more whiff, I think you're gonna produce much more pop with the bat than the tennis racket. So I wanna preface what I'm about to say by just, I'm sure this is clear, but I'll just say the words out loud so there's no ambiguity. No heckle would merit deploying a slur.

That's suggesting that the quality of the heckle, yes. I will say, I think that you might be right. I don't claim to know enough about the physics of this moment to be able to say definitively one way or the other. I will say, I think it's kind of a sick burn. Like, I think it's- Yeah, see, I saw that sentiment a lot as much justified condemnation of his retorts, of Duran's retort. I saw just as much praise of the cleverness of the heckle. Yeah.

And initially I was inclined to agree, because it's creative, at least. Yeah. Duren's retort, I saw just as much praise of the cleverness of the heckle. And initially I was inclined to agree, because it's creative at least, but then I kept thinking and possibly overthinking and wondering whether it was in fact the case that Duren would be better off with a tennis racket. I don't know. I'm not a heckler. We've talked about this. And I think especially when you're that, because the fan in question was like

pretty close, right? They were, it wasn't like he was hearing this from the Aberdecker or whatever. I do think that like, and again, not remotely defending using a slur. I do think like, especially if you're a close up, like don't, you don't have to be a heckler. But I think that that is a good burn. Physics be damned, you know? Well, physics experts, I know you're out there listening to this podcast. Please weigh in if you have any insight into the hitting a baseball with a tennis racket question. Okay.

Last thing, we got a couple responses, a few responses to our hierarchy of versatility conversation last time. So I deployed this concept of the hierarchy of versatility to rank the impressiveness, difficulty, fun quotient of different ways one can be versatile as a baseball player. So I had at the bottom, just having a well-rounded all-around offensive game, you know, mixing power and speed and contact and patience, et cetera. And then a two-way player as in excels on offense and defense, and then a multi-position defender.

And, you know, there are hierarchies within that. If you're a catcher and anything else, that's super impressive. And if you can stack these things, if you can hit in addition to playing multiple positions, that's pretty impressive. Then I had switch hitter and then I had switch pitcher. And then I had two way player sequentially, not simultaneously. So you're a hitter first and then you convert to pitching

or vice versa. And then two way player simultaneously. And I solicited suggestions for any additions that we should have to this hierarchy. And we got a few. So here was one submission from Justin who wrote in to say, the lowest rung is lineup position versatility. Most players are expected to bat wherever their manager puts them in the lineup,

but you'll hear about some players feeling more or less comfortable in certain lineup spots. A player who say refuses to bat lead off does meaningfully reduce their manager's options. You might say that lineup position flexibility is a replacement level of versatility. Okay. I'm sympathetic to that notion. Yeah. I don't know whether it merits inclusion in the hierarchy. Yeah.

I don't know that it does either, but it being replacement level versatility makes it seem like it's pitched at the right level, so to speak. Yeah. That's like table stakes versatility wise. Like if you don't do that, if you're just so married to a certain lineup position that you can't bat lead off or you can't bat anything other than lead off or whatever, or you insist on batting cleanup or something, that would be a notable lack of versatility, I guess. But I certainly wouldn't say, I wouldn't really compliment a player for just, you know, batting wherever their manager slots them in necessarily, you know, in most cases, unless, yeah.

And usually the approach is pretty similar unless, you know, maybe you're a lead off guy, you want to take more pitches, that sort of thing, but it, you don't really demonstrate that many markedly different skills in different lineup spots so I just yeah I don't know I get worth a mention I guess but I don't know if I'm gonna put it on the official hierarchy but Justin says the second rung is pitchers who are both starters and relievers the swingman even as this type of versatility gets more common with decreasing emphasis on the starter the

two roles still have different preparation routines and pitching in short bursts is a meaningfully different skill from being a bulk guy. I would rank both of these types of versatility below Ben's lowest rung, but an argument could be made to put the swingman higher. What do you think about multiple pitching roles? This is, you know, the same listed position. It's pitching either way. And there's a lot of overlap in what you're going to be doing as a starter or as a reliever, but does this qualify as, as a way to be versatile? I think so. Yeah. I think, I think I'd be comfortable putting that on the hierarchy at the

bottom, I guess again, it's like, how much do you adjust your approach? I mean, maybe you adjust your pitch mix, maybe you're, you know, throwing with a little more speed when you come out of the bullpen and certainly the preparation is different and the workloads and the recoveries and all of that. So yeah, okay. Yeah. I guess. And then would you count like, what about a reliever who, you know, does the Josh Hader

and only wants to pitch the ninth or one inning at a time or something versus your, you know, kind of Andrew Miller at the point in his career where he would come in in all different innings and situations. Like if you're a high leverage only guy or a low leverage only guy like Tanner Ray at this stage in his career, he's been high leverage only guy or a low leverage only guy like Tanner Ray at this stage in his career, he's been high leverage and the ultimate low leverage. So is that versatility or is that just following orders?

I don't know. I mean, I guess for any of these, like anyone could be a switch hitter, anyone could be a two-way player, anyone could be a multi-position player if you put them there, right? They'd just be really bad at it. So.

Right. There's an unspoken like doing it well that comes along with this being, you know, it needs to be useful versatility. Yes. I know that there are guys who prefer to do one inning. I know there are guys who want to be in high leverage spots. I think that guys who are actually good at that tend to find their way into those roles because their managers also want to be in high leverage spots. I think that guys who are actually good at that tend to find their way into those roles because their managers also want to deploy them there. And I'm reluctant to lump Hader in because it's clear that the lack of his looming free

agency and his lack of a long-term contract was a big motivator for him in being insistent the way that he was. So that's a little different, right? They're extenuating circumstances and he's been more flexible since signing his deal. And Patreon supporter Andrew M, he also mentioned the different pitcher roles, starter reliever, setup man, closer, fireman, but he also mentioned different pitching approaches. So like different arm slots, large pitch mix, right? And he said, I'd hesitate to call them versatility, but if switch pitching

and hitting is defined as a form of versatility that allows you to negate specific pitcher and hitter advantages, then having many pitches and arm slots at your disposal achieves the same end, right? So if you had a reliever who's just, you know, fastball slider, and then you have a pitcher who's throwing, you know, you Darvish number of pitches, right, like is that versatility or not really? Because it's how you go about it, but it's pitching either way.

I feel like it finds expression in the role you have, right? Part of why guys who are relievers and have a really diverse arsenal that they can deploy are especially useful is because in theory they can go multiple innings and you can maybe even turn over a lineup with them, right? Because they can actually face guys that way. And it allows you to face opposite-handed hitting more easily if you have a big mix to deploy. So I think that it's kind of baked into other understandings of versatility we've already identified, maybe. Although, if I was going to give versatility credit to a hitter who produces with power and speed, let's say, or has multiple offensive skills, that doesn't necessarily make you

better. You could be a one-dimensional slugger. Well, I don't know. I guess if you're a truly one-dimensional slugger who's just like an all or nothing homer hitter, but doesn't do anything else, it would be hard to be as good a hitter as someone who's more well balanced as a batter. But if I'm giving credit to that, which is more of a stylistic thing than pure value or production, then should I also give credit to the stylistic variations among pitchers? And if you can throw a knuckleball part of the time, like Matt Waldron is that versatility compared to someone who can't throw

a knuckleball who you have starters who throw, I mean, you have Spencer Strider, right? Like is he less versatile? Now he's been a reliever and a starter, but if you're getting by with two pitches, even as a starter versus someone else who has a handful or two handfuls of pitches, you might not be as good as Spencer Strider. So are you more versatile? I maybe is versatility the wrong term, the wrong label for that? Cause it's maybe it's not like it's it's variation. It's like stylistic variation, but I don't know if it's true versatility

unless it allows you to like deploy your skills in a more versatile way. Yeah, I think that's right. And then lastly, Julian R responded by saying, where does player manager fit in or someone who follows the player to GM route? Now I'm not going to count player to GM. I don't think, cause you know, I'm talking about on-field manifestations of this. And by the time you're a GM, you're no longer a player, but player manager. I didn't include that on the hierarchy because we haven't had a player

manager in MLB in so long. And I doubt that we ever will again, but maybe that just means that it should be somewhere high up on the hierarchy but maybe that just means that it should be somewhere high up on the hierarchy because it's so difficult that it's not really done anymore, or it's just not advantageous enough to do. Yeah, I feel like the reason that fell out of favor was distinct from it being like, really hard. I don't quite know how to articulate the thought I'm having other than to say that like, yeah, it was difficult, but I think it was abandoned more because it caused problems, right? And you also had increasing professionalization in the coaching ranks and so it was like not

a necessary thing and you also wanted players players to focus on playing baseball instead. And so I don't think that it was a scarcity consideration so much as a, why are we doing this kind of a thing? You know what I mean? But it would be versatility if you could do it well, if you had the playing skills and the leadership skills and the tactical skills and everything. Maybe that is versatility. Yeah, but my controversial take is that I think it's fine that we don't have player managers anymore Oh, yeah, I think it's fine, too

I think I think it's good to have in fact, I would argue that I think it's Deleterious to morale. I think that a lot of being a manager is doing HR stuff I don't think it's good for a player to be the one doing HR stuff I think that needs to sit above the it needs to sit in a different part of the organization than the guys on the field. So. Okay. I'm comfortable officially adding different pitcher roles or swing man to the bottom of the hierarchy here. I'm still on the fence about some of these other ones, but we will mull them over.

Mull. All right. Well, our sentiments about the sustainability of Tarek Scoobel and Seth Lugo's pitching performances this season were kind of born out by their respective performances on Tuesday. Scoobel, six innings, three hits, one run, one walk, nine strikeouts, got his 14th win in a blowout victory over Seattle. Lugo 4 innings, 9 hits, 8 runs, 7 earned, 2 walks, 4 strikeouts, and a homer. Not so great. That's going to inflate the old ERA over 3. Also, regarding the tennis racket taunt, producer Shane notes that he had a youth baseball coach when he was 11 or 12, and when his team was in the field

and an opposing batter came up who the coach judged to be a weak hitter, he would yell, BASE FIDDLE! As in, this guy couldn't hit the ball with a BASE FIDDLE! Also known as a double base. It would be hard to hold a double base like a bat. Easy to make contact though, it would take up the entire strike zone. Still have concerns about whether the hollow body would hold up to the force of a fastball. Also, minor correction to the stat blast from last episode. We played a clip from a Dodgers radio broadcast, a story about Maury Wills and his alleged imperviousness to slumps from both sides of the plate at the same time. I said that was Charlie Steiner relating that story, as listener Emil noted it was in fact Rick Monday.

And Chris in Illinois writes in also in response to part of that stat blast to offer a theory about why switch hitting peaked in the late 80s early 90s, he says, based on your dates it seems like the rise of switch hitting corresponds rather nicely with the increased number of turf fields that emphasize speed and has since decreased as more fields have gone back to grass. Lots of 1980s guys who were right handed tried switch hitting in the minors, then majors trying to take advantage of their speed speed being closer to first on contact. A theory anyway, as I am old, I believe I read that story any number of times growing up in the eighties.

Could be, sounds plausible. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access to some perks. Tyler Noe, Brian Jurdi, Kirby Davidson, Nick Glazier,

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You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit atdit at our slash effectively wild and you can check the show page and 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'll be back with another episode a little later this week talk to you soon Effectively why this week. Talk to you soon.