Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2205: (Don’t) Pick Six

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the White Sox walking Juan Soto to face Aaron Judge, how Judge’s season could’ve been even better, the world’s untapped baseball talent, Shohei Ohtani��s run at a 50-50 season, ways to discourage intentional walks, a proposal to mandate six-inning outings for starting pitchers, a changing of the guard […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2205 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So we talked last time about whether Juan Soto was getting less attention than he deserves, maybe because he has teammates with someone who is getting even more attention, deservedly so, but Aaron Judge having an otherworldly year, Juan Soto having an almost as otherworldly year. So no sooner had we talked about that than Juan Soto was walked to get to Aaron Judge. A little respect for Juan Soto showed by Grady Sizemore, newly minted manager

of the White Sox, who I guess was sick of seeing Soto because Soto had hit three homers against them the day before and then had hit a homer in that game. And then he decided to pick his poison and he picked Aaron Judge. And Aaron Judge was pretty poisonous too. He hit a home run. So that's kind of a no-win situation for anyone who is facing the Yankees. You could choose one or the other. It's just not going to go well for you regardless. Yeah.

I mean, the White Sox are familiar with no-win situations, aren't they? Yes. Rude. It was kind of rude of me, but I did it anyway. I do wonder about the psychology of that moment because I'm sure you're right that you're just like, I can't with this anymore. Like I'm enough, enough, Juan, like enough with you already. But like, is it better or worse that it was Aaron Judge's, was this

his 300th career home run? This very one? Yes, he has the fewest games, two 300, fewest at bats, two 300 ever. This was the one. So I wonder how the possibility of that factors for you as a manager because you're like, I'm sick of Wonsoto, enough with this guy. I'm tired of him beating us. I'd rather have the AL MVP beat us.

Probably, probably the AL MVP. But the thing is, if you are the team that gives up a landmark home run to a guy, your failure isn't contained to that moment. Your failure is going to reverberate through baseball history. At the very least, we are about to see that on the MLB flashbacks on MLB TV, which as an aside, I know we have already talked about this, but it is out of control, Ben. It is on another level. I saw Parker Meadows rob Calralli of a home run 17 times yesterday. And look, is that a fun highlight for a Mariners fan on any day?

No. Is it even worse on a day where they lose in extras, wasting a terrific Brian Woostar? I mean, like, yeah, that does feel worse. And so then you keep watching. It's not the same Tigers on the same day, but it is the same Tigers only on a different day. Anyway, 300 home runs. We're going to see that a lot because this guy's career is so incredible.

It's not like we have a dearth of incredible Aaron Judge facts, right? We were lousy with incredible Aaron Judge facts, but this is an incredible fact. The speed with which he got to 300 is literally unprecedented, right? And so you might think, oh, that moment's about Aaron Judge. And the thing people are going to notice is the Aaron Judge of it all and the home run of it all. But you know what else they're going to remember? Man, that came against a really white-size team, didn't it? And it's just going to, you know, you're going to see like waves lapping against the shore after a stone has been thrown a distance. That's what it is. So it's like, is it better? Is it worse? I don't know. It's the thing that

happened. Yeah. Tough spot for It's the thing that happened. Yeah. Tough spot for Sizemore in that game. Tough spot for Sizemore in the season where, hey, you're a Major League manager on an interim basis and your assignment is to not lose the most games any team ever has in the season, at least in the modern era. Good luck. But Sizemore said, it's just pick your poison.

I'm not trying to get to Judge. I've got a base open. Soto had four homers on us. He had hit four home runs in four at bats, right? They were all consecutive. I guess there's no solution or easy way out of that jam. Soto has definitely been the hotter of those two bats, even though Judge has been hot too. I wouldn't really make my decision based on the four consecutive home runs and four at bats probably, but I guess Chad Cool was pitching. He's a right-hander, Judge is a righty, so does a lefty. There was a base open.

I guess they were sort of setting up the double play. I don't know. You're sort of screwed. It's one of those war games. The only winning move is not to play situations. Although I guess if you don't play, you forfeit and you also lose in that situation. So there's just no winning move whatsoever. But it was the first time Soto had been intentionally walked this season,

unsurprisingly, because Judge has generally been batting behind him. Whereas Judge has been intentionally walked 14 times. He has not had Soto behind him. Yeah. And it was the second time in Judge's career that someone had been walked to get to Judge. And the first time was in 2016, just a first season rookie, Aaron Judge, who was batting under 200 at the time. And the Royals walked Chase Headley to face Aaron Judge and set up double play. So that's a very different Aaron Judge.

That's amazing. I'm sorry, Ben. That's my new favorite Aaron Judge fun fact. Yeah, it's pretty good. That's incredible. Yeah, and generally everyone was surprised that this was happening. Austin Wells said, that was crazy.

I didn't believe it. It didn't work out too well. And Soto said, I don't know what they were thinking. And Boone, I think also said that he didn't expect to see that. And I guess I kind of get it, but also Aaron Judge seemed to Last Dance Michael Jordan style, take it personally. Oh yeah. And yeah, occasionally we get a question, do hitters do better after someone has intentionally walked to get to them? And it's a good question.

And it would be a subject of a good stat blast. And the reason I haven't stat blasted it yet, as far as I recall, is that you really have to adjust for various factors if you're gonna do that, right? You can't just look at, well, how did they do in that plate appearance? You got to look at, did they do better than you would have expected them to do based on the hitter, based on the pitcher, based on the ballpark and the defense? You really should correct for all of those things because it's going to be sort of a

small sample and then you could see whether they did better than you would expect based on that matchup. So that's a lot of work to obtain that answer. But Aaron Judge said, I was mad about the intentional walk. You don't want to make Aaron Judge mad. I assume. I don't know. I guess you could say maybe if you make him mad, he'll be off his game somewhat.

He'll be just so, so full of rage that it will actually distract him somehow. But, but in this situation he swung on three Oh, which is not something he usually does and not something he would have done in this situation. He said, except that he felt like he needed payback. So yeah, I think it was the third Homer he'd hit on 3-0 in his career. So he might've taken the pitch, except in that situation, he's just got to make them pay for walking him there. It's an affront. KS It's so funny to me because on the one hand, I suppose it is vaguely, I wouldn't

even put it in terms of it being disrespectful, I think is the part of it that I find so funny. My emotional understanding of that moment, and granted I'm a different person than Aaron Judge in like every conceivable way really, but I wouldn't think about that in terms of disrespect in part because I think we have a very good sense of the very genuine admiration and respect that Aaron Judge has for Juan Soto, right? Like they seem like they regard one another very highly.

We've talked about some of Judge's quotes about Soto. So clearly he is aware of the kind of hitter he is stacked up with in the lineup. And this reads to me based on what Sizemore has said and sort of the events that preceded it as an expression of exasperation, not disrespect, but also whatever works. And I guess when you're judge, in some ways you're really wanting for personal bulletin board material, right? Because everyone only ever has, you know, delightful, odd, but deeply respectful, annoyed at how dominant you are, things to say about you. And so maybe it makes perfect sense because you're like, well, I got to grasp at something.

And here's what I have elected to grasp at. But I find it very funny. Yeah. So I guess that's sort of a testament to how great Juan Soto has been that no one else really would have been walked ahead of Aaron Judge. I don't care if it's to get a platoon advantage or set up a double play or whatever else. The fact that Soto is even kind of close to Judge's stratosphere this season where that could make that even vaguely defensible or understandable. Again, just reminds us how good Soto has been himself. And you mentioned

those quotes that they had about each other. I actually misread or misattributed a statement on the most recent episode. So Judge called Soto the greatest hitter in the game, but then it was Soto who called Judge the greatest in the world. Okay. Yeah, so again, I don't really know what the effective difference is there really, because if it's just, you know, mutual appreciation society, I guess,

but I had thought that Judge had said both of those things about Soto, but it was actually judge saying he's the greatest hitter in the game. And then I guess Soto trying to top that compliment, maybe I'm saying, well, he's the greatest in the world, except that I guess implies that if that is a better compliment, that there might be a better hitter in the world who is not in the game.

As in there's a better hitter in the world who is not in the game, as in there's a better hitter in the world who is not in the major leagues right now, which all due respect to players in NPP and KBO, et cetera. I think probably those are one in the same, right? That's a best hitter in the game. If the game is the major leagues, unless the game is just baseball generally, in which case, maybe Soto is saying that he's the greatest hitter in the world, which means that even if we were pulling from the pool of every person in the world, even though there are many billions of people who do not play baseball, that even if all of them had trained and tried to be baseball players, Judge would still be the best hitter in the world.

So he's assessing all the latent talent in the non-baseball players who could potentially be the greatest. And even so, Judge is better than all of them. I mean, that is really profound, Ben. You know, like, cause it's, it speaks to do we actually know that these are the best guys? Are there individuals without access to Major League Baseball who would be better than Judge? I mean, if baseball's like everything else, you have to think, right? Because we know that talent and resources aren't perfectly distributed such that we are able to identify all of the best people at stuff. Yeah. I remember, I vaguely recall

a long ago conversation on Effectively Wild, maybe with Sam where we talked about that, like what percentage of the best possible players are actually playing. Right. And I think Sam was more of the opinion that it sort of sorted itself out and you wouldn't see like if everyone played,

there would be way better players. Whereas I was more in the camp of, no, there are probably potential best players in the world out there who just didn't pursue baseball for whatever reason. Right. And, or maybe it was more about like people who just didn't feel like playing baseball. They just weren't interested, even though they had the talent or the skill to do that. But yeah, you got a figure that's of the several billion people in the world that probably a minority of them even are like exposed to baseball or even though it's a global game, obviously, you know, there are probably a lot of people who

could be majorly quality, who just never tried to be or didn't want to be or never even considered it. But one sort of saying maybe Aaron Judge better than't want to be or never even considered it. Right. But, Wonsodo's saying maybe Aaron Judge, better than all of them, don't even bother trying. I mean, if you were going to put up one of the guys in the majors right now, and you were going to use him as a data point in favor of Sam's theory that this like largely gets sorted out, he's like as good a guy to select as anyone else. He'd certainly be in my list, you know, my top 10.

It does make me wonder just because he's been really better than Aaron, than Barry Bonds was in any single season since May, really, like he had that slow start, right? And everyone was wondering what's going on with Aaron Judge, what's wrong with him. And nothing was really wrong with him. He was still an above average hitter, but just not, not Aaron Judge Ian. And then since then, since May 1st, he has a 258 WRC plus, and that's several months at this point. And Barry Bonds peaked at 244 in 2002. So he's been better than Bonds was in a full season since April ended, basically.

And now I just wonder like, well, what if, what if he hadn't started slow, you know, like I'm getting greedy. It's like, this could have been, yeah. I mean, there was an article recently, I think the athletic about just some mechanical changes he made and like, you know, opened up his stance a little bit and he credited that for his improvements. But like if he had made those changes earlier, you know, like there's, there's maybe I guess if he hadn't struggled earlier in the season, then he wouldn't have been moved to make the changes maybe that have helped him here. And so you can't just say what if, because you couldn't have had the hot hitting without the

relative cold snap to start the season. But it's not that hard to envision this being even Babe Ruth, I think maxed out at a 234 WRC plus. So that's, you know, that 230, 240 range, a 234 WRC plus. So that's, you know, that 230, 240 range, that's the best ever. And judge if he'd had even like a lukewarm start to the season by his standards, he might be up there because he's at 219 on the season despite that slow start. So if he had started slow like this could have challenged the all time greatest seasons. It's not that far from that as it is. Are you often struck and perhaps surprised by the lack of mechanical stickiness that guys seem to have?

Because like it makes sense that, you know, pitchers are always like throwing you new stuff and they're making adjustments and they got new grips and they got all kinds of stuff. And so like it makes sense and perfectly replicating one's mechanics is challenging. But do you ever think to yourself like, why can't you guys just keep doing it the way you've been doing it? Do you ever think that? Yeah, that thought does cross my mind. Yeah.

And I want to be clear, I couldn't do it under any circumstances. So it sounds like more of a criticism than I really mean it to be. It's more a surprise that there is such sort of in-season variation. And this isn't a new thought. Like I'm not discovering today that guys have to make adjustments during a season. I'm not new, but I do continue to find that a little like, huh, that's not what I would necessarily expect given all of the stuff, but you know, that's how it is. That's how it's been. That's how it's always been, Ben.

Just because by the time you get to that point, you've just taken so many swings or throwing so many pitches or whatever it is. You'd think the muscle memory would be so hardwired that you couldn't really get out of whack, right? But I guess sometimes you're tired. Sometimes you're nursing some sort of injury or you've been off for a while or people adjust against you and you have to do something different. So yeah, it makes sense when you think about it, but yes, it does.

Like these guys are so good. You'd think they could just repeat what they do every time. But yeah, I guess sometimes purely repeating isn't enough because your opponents switch up their strategy. So it's a, it's a comprehensible thing, but it still inspires surprise. Yeah. It's both at once. So if you were going to put up everyone else in the world against a current talent,

if it weren't Aaron Judger, one, so it might be Shohei Otani and Shohei Otani, I mean, he's lucky, I guess, that he's in the national league this year, because probably the four most valuable players are in the American league. Yeah, how about that? We wouldn't be talking about the potential for another Otani MVP award if he were still in the AL. Hold on. We would absolutely be talking about it. The general public might not be, and I don't know that our fellows in the media would be quite as invested, but let's not kid ourselves. You and I would be talking about it regardless.

Could come up, maybe, in passing, potentially. But he's barely fending off on the war leaderboard right now at FanGraphs, Ellie Lela Cruz and Ketel Marte, right? But one thing that he is doing, which is pretty extraordinary, and I guess could boost his candidacy from a narrative perspective,

is the power speed combination that he's putting up right now. Now he would be the first DH only, or full-time dedicated DH to win an MVP award. And that might be a point in his favor. You might be like, wow, he's been so good that even as a DH, he's still this valuable, give him all the awards. Or you might say, I don't know that a DH should win this award.

Right. And you might hold that against him. And if you're in the latter camp, then I wonder whether it would help that he has 37 home runs and 35 stolen bases as we speak here on Thursday afternoon in 121 team games, which means that he is on pace for 49.5 home runs, which you can't really round up in reality. So I guess we would have to say 49 and 46.9 stolen bases. So if that's a 49, 46 season, he's within sniffing distance of being the first 50-50 player,

which would be quite an accomplishment, I would say. And in fact, he would be the first even 43-43 player. I know it's not quite as special if it's not a round number, but Alex Rodriguez in 1998 had 42 homers and 46 stolen bases. So he's the only guy who's had as many as 42 of each in each season. Alfonso Soriano in 2006 had 46 homers and 41 steals. And of course, Ronald Acuna Jr. last year had 41 homers and 73 steals. So coming on the heels of Acuna's 40-70, I don't know whether a 45-45 or a 50-50 would be as impressive.

And of course, it's got to be discounted slightly just because of the stolen base boom and the rules about pickoff attempts and step offs, et cetera. But all he has to do is get to 43 of each and he would be the first 43, 43 players. So that would be a feather in his cap, I think. And I would guess that he probably won't get there because he'd have to really finish strong. And, you know, if the Dodgers lock up a playoff spot, maybe he'll get some rest in there. On the other hand, he has actually picked up the pace stolen base wise while more or less maintaining the home run pace.

So he had five steals in March slash April and then eight steals in May and only three steals in June, but then 12 steals in July, even though shorter month with the all-star break and seven steals so far in August. So yeah, you might think he'd be wearing down or getting tired or running less. No, he's actually swiping more as the season goes on, which makes me wonder if this is a goal of his,

if it's intentional, whether he's just gained confidence as a base dealer or if he's actually setting his sights on 50-50, in which case I wouldn't bet against him if there's intention to the picked up pace here. I imagine there's probably intention now, right? Once you get within, you use sniffing distance, which makes it feel like a much closer distance than like striking distance. That's like, you know, out there more sniffing distance is like right here. I'm doing right here. I'm like holding

my hand in front of my face, very close to my nose. Sniffing distance. Do you normally say sniffing distance and not striking distance? I don't know. Sniffing distance. Anyway, it's not a, I don't have an issue with it. I just, I say striking distance and sniffing distance is like maybe better. It's so evocative. Anyway. Striking might be more appropriate when we're talking about home runs, I suppose, or we could say swiping, swiping distance. Swiping distance. Ooh, but see that, that's far, you know, like that's a farther distance, but maybe that's appropriate.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. You sniff, you strike, you swipe, you do whatever you want to do. I think that it is likely a conscious effort on his part now. I am interested to see how his continued rehab coming back from TJ starts to interact with some of this stuff, right? Because I think I saw Ben that he might be thrown off a mound soon. Did I see that? That he might be thrown off a mound?

Like, it seems like, you know, that lines up with our expectation of his return from TJ. So I'm curious how everything kind of lines up for him around that and whether that starts to have an impact on his approach to the game, like how careful he is with himself, his usage, et cetera, because we want fully operational two-way Otani next year. And if he is entering a phase of his rehab that is perhaps more demanding, that might have something to do with how he ends up being deployed and looking and, you know, swiping and sniffing as the season goes on. So yeah. Setting up that big moment in October when Shohei Otani runs in

the depleted Dodgers rotation slash bullpen. Here Can you imagine? Oh yeah, we definitely wouldn't have been talking about him as an MVP. Oh no, we wouldn't have done that at all. By the way, speaking of intentional walks, as we just were a moment ago, we got a couple emails, some responses to when I expressed some displeasure about the existence of intentional walks earlier, and I was saying that over time I've come to loathe them more and look down on them and the people who issue them more. And some people wrote in to suggest ways to punish them more harshly to disincentivize intentional walks.

Tim wrote in to say, what magnitude of penalty would curb intentional walks just enough if a batter is walked on four straight pitches without regard to intent. The next batter starts with a 1-0 count or 2-0. The next batter gets four strikes. If the bases are empty, the batter goes to second. The hitting team gets metal bats for the rest of the game. That is graded quickly.

Pitcher has to switch places with an infielder for the next batter. Third or first base coach gets to throw the next pitch. Or Jeremy writes in to say, I play in a few rec softball leagues in my city and they have varying rules in place that make intentional walks effectively illegal. I thought they might be of interest for discussion. Two leagues have two different rules to achieve the same goal to prevent teams from avoiding the best hitters in favor of facing less good hitters, if the pitcher walks a batter on four straight pitches, the batter can decline the walk until they see at least one strike. And second, if a pitcher walks a batter on four straight pitches, the team has the option of either allowing the walk or sending the on-deck hitter to first,

while the at-bat hitter gets a fresh at-bat. And he says, I think the first rule is more practical to implement at the big league level, but I think the latter does much more to achieve the intended goal. So I kind of like those latter suggestions because the earlier suggestions about penalizing the team, the next guy starts with a ball or two or gets four strikes or, you know, even you send them to second or something. Okay, then you might not get the intentional walk, but you would just get the unintentional intentional walk. Now, now I guess Tim specified that's four straight balls. So that would again incentivize you to throw at least one strike. So I, I think I kind of like that idea.

Cause the sticky part of this is that, well, how can you really get around a pitcher not going after a hitter? You can't really, because if you say you can't intentionally walk him well, then he'll just throw four not real pitches, right? And you know, it'll be an unintentional walk. But if you mandate that there are these penalties, if you throw four straight balls, then you would have a pretty strong incentive at least to come in the kitchen once, right? Like at least you got to go at them one time and give that batter a chance and give the fans a chance to see that batter. So I kind of like that idea of like the batter can just say no thanks until they see one strike or yeah, you just send the on deck hitter to first and then the bat hitter just is still at bat. These are kind of creative ideas. I find myself struggling to generate ideas because very rarely do you issue an intentional walked and then like get air and judge, right?

Just to pick our most relevant example. When you're deploying that strategy, you're doing it with the hopes that you face an inferior hitter and often like a meaningfully inferior hitter, right? Like you don't do that when the gap is narrow. I still think that like having a guy on is like not good. So you know, maybe I'm satisfied with the balance of reward to punishment here because there's also the psychological punishment of being like a little bit of a coward and telling people that, you know. You're a little bit, I'm not saying you, I'll talk about myself because I don't know you

to be a cowardly person. You're like very comfortable asking people politely for things and they tell you no and it doesn't seem to affect your sense of yourself at all. Like it's one of your best attributes as a writer and reporter. You're just like, okay, no problem. And then you move on and it doesn't like- Yes, incredibly courageous of me. Well, it's, I mean, to people who are prone to spiraling and not being able to let go

of past embarrassments, it is courageous Ben, you know? Just to, again, talk about myself. But we have moments in our lives of feeling sheepish or outright cowardly, but we don't always have to tell other people. And when you issue an intentional walk, you do. You got to tell them. So I'm satisfied, but I know you're not.

But you no longer have to wear it as you did when you threw the four pitches. You still have to wear it. And everyone was booing as you were lobbing the pitches out there. You still have to wear it because you have to hold up your four little fingers and look. Or the manager does, right? And the manager's not the one who's throwing the pitches or now not throwing the pitches, but I guess that's fair because the manager's usually the one. Exactly.

This just locates the locusts of cowardice where it belongs, which is the dugout. Yeah. And we've talked about maybe making a harsher penalty for hit by pitches because hit by pitches have been up in recent years. And there's an actual risk there, right? Yes, right. Oh my God, the Mariners lost again. What on earth are we doing anyway?

I do think though that even though generally I prefer not being heavy-handed with rules and saying teams can do stuff tactically and strategically and they'll figure it out. I do like for a spectator's perspective, no fan is ever really happy when there's an intentional walk. Well, I guess historically speaking, at least often intentional walks were counterproductive and so they actually did benefit the batting team. But you usually, if you're a fan, you want to see that guy hit, right?

You want to see the good hitter, you want to see that big moment. And so from a fan standpoint, it's less interesting and less exciting if you can just say, I choose not to, I pass. I don't want to face that guy right now. And so I think it might be more entertaining if you didn't have the option to do that. And I think these might be ways to actually implement that given the necessity for pitchers to pitch around guys sometimes, there would be maybe a steeper penalty if they didn't at least throw one strike that would kind of keep them honest, you know, make them enforce

bravery or courageousness or challenge. So I kind of, you know, I might be interested in tinkering with those ideas. Hmm, I'm interested in tinkering with the Mariners. One idea that I'm not interested in tinkering with is mandating six inning starts. Yeah. There is a report by Jesse Rogers of ESPN earlier on Thursday that MLB is kicking around, has discussed, it's very vague how real this is. And I tend to think it's probably not that real, but it sounds like it's at least come up the idea

of mandating that starting pitchers have to go at least six innings. And if you look at the wording in the article, the league has discussed a limit to the size of pitching staffs. Well, I'm all in favor of that. There already is a limit to the size of pitching staff. So making that limit stricter, I've written about that. We've talked about that.

And the double hook DH, I'm not really in favor of the double hook DH. According to sources familiar with the discussion, there is some belief around the game, however, that one idea could be a panacea requiring starting pitchers to go at least six innings every time they take the mound. I don't really know what there is some belief around the game means. Just one person thinks it's a good idea. In his tweets of the article, he did say the league is kicking around this idea, which

does suggest that league executives have actually discussed this. And I mean, I'd be fine with them discussing it, kicking it around. Maybe they kicked it around and said, this is not a good idea. And that was that, right? So again, I don't want to make too much of it, but there's a whole article here about this idea and there are many executives quoted about it. And the goal I am sympathetic to, I like the idea of having starters go deeper into games and having to pace themselves and throwing less max effort.

And then you get fewer entries and maybe you get fewer strikeouts and you get the starting pitcher protagonist and you get hitters facing the same pitcher more often in the same game. Maybe you get a little more offense. There's a lot of potential benefits to this, but I do not like the idea of just saying, Hey, starters don't go six innings enough anymore. Well, now you have to. It just seems like it's sort of skipping a step, which is kind of how I felt

about the shift band, the positioning restrictions. It's like, we don't like certain symptoms. And so the treatment that we come up with for this, we're just going to kind of like bypass the harder work of like addressing the underlying issues here. And we're just going to attempt to mandate or legislate our way out of this. I don't know if this is the most apt analogy, but it's like if you had an infected leg or appendage or something and you want to treat the infection and cure the infection, but instead they're like, well, we're just going to amputate.

No more infection now, problem solved, right? Except then you lose a limb and that doesn't sound ideal. And in these situations, you lose- It doesn't sound ideal, Ben. You know what? I'm going to, I got to hand it to you. It does not sound ideal. That's necessary sometimes, but it should probably be a last resort, right?

And that's kind of how I feel about this, that you can't just skip straight to, well, we want stars to go deep into games, therefore we will enact a rule that they have to go deep into games. I don't think it's that simple. I mean, you could do it and I guess do it and I guess it would work in a way, but it's very inelegant. It's very heavy handed. The freedom and flexibility you lose is that, I mean, it just becomes then very uniform, right? Like I don't want every starter to go six innings every time. I want them to go deeper if they can and if they're pitching well and

everything, but I don't want the league to come in and take that decision entirely out of teams and players' hands and just enacting this one size fits all rule. I don't like that at all. And it would be quite a sweeping change. So this season so far, there have been 1,814 games. So that means that there have been twice that many starts. So 3,628 starts. And I just stat headed the starts that would be in violation of this rule. And this rule, as Jesse laid it out here,

has some carve outs, of course. It can't just be six things every time, no matter what. Right, so it has to be, you are allowed to leave early potentially if you've already thrown 100 pitches or more, or you've given up four or more earned runs, or you get injured with a required injured list stint to avoid manipulation. Yeah, that's pretty, yeah, because there are other usage minimums where you have to have a real injury, but they don't mandate that

you have to go on the IL. You just have to make it convincing, I guess. But it's not the worst idea in the world, I guess, unless sometimes you might have an injury that prevents you from continuing to pitch that day, but might not merit an IL stint. Right, like what if you get a cramp? Right, but this would be a way to take seriously the potential for shenanigans, right? So I looked for all starts this season that had someone going fewer

than six innings pitched, so five and two thirds are shorter with three or fewer earned runs allowed and 99 or fewer pitches. And turns out that's 1200 starts. Wow. Wow. Yeah. 1200 out of basically 3,600. So that's like a third of starts this year would be affected by this hypothetical rule and you might think a lot of those are openers, but not really actually because of those 1200, 1,082 were starts of three innings or more, so they're mostly not openers in bullpen days.

You know, there would be some injury removals in there, of course, too. But, but openers are not quite as prevalent now as, as they were. It still happens. And this rule will do away with them, which might not be a bad thing, I guess, but you're talking affecting one out of every three starts at this point. So I guess that would work in a sense, but also I just do not care for this way of going about it. I agree, Sam, I am. I agree. It feels like a blunt, a very blunt solution to the problem. And it's not, I can't believe the Marrars lost

that game. I'm so annoyed. I'm spent. I am so annoyed. Oh God. And now in on the Javier Byers home run. Oh my Lord. Oh, that's a backbreaker. That's- The Marrars probably do decently in this six inning start worlds. They probably get a lot of those. Bryce Miller looked so good. I was like, look, we got this Bryce Miller interview. It's so interesting.

Laurel, I did a great job. Like I was talking about this like splitter and what I mean. And in the league's defense, they're not talking about implementing this overnight. This would be sort of a, you get maybe several seasons worth of notice and you're testing it in the miners. Yeah, right. So you can't suddenly say, okay, now you have to go six innings every time because pitchers are not training and conditioning for that way and rosters are not constructed that way. So yeah, okay. You could phase it in over time. And there are some people in this article who say, well, you can't go back and

everyone's so conditioned to just throw max effort all the time that I don't know that they could not do that. I don't really believe that. I don't see why there's a reason why pictures are taught to throw max effort all the time. Okay. But I don't see why they couldn't be taught. Yeah, take a little off. That's not beyond the abilities, I don't think, of most pitchers if the incentives were there for them to do that and if teams were prioritizing that and the league were prioritizing that. So I'm on board with the general idea. I just think there are better ways to do this. And again, I just go back to my preferred solution of just continuing to lower that

limbo bar of how many active pitchers you're allowed on a roster at any given time. I guess you could also make it how many pitchers you're allowed to use in a given game. You could do other things like moving the mound back or deadening the ball or, you know, moving the foul lines as we've talked about that. There are just a lot of ways you could do this that I think would still preserve some variation from game to game and preserve the autonomy to some extent of teams and players to make decisions within that somewhat more restrictive framework. They also talk about maybe incentivizing rather than punishing

teams really for not doing something you could do more of the carrot than the stick. And you could say give teams an extra draft pick or something if they have a certain number of innings pitched by a starter over the course of a season, something like that. There could be some kind of financial or draft reward, which sounds okay in principle, but as someone notes in the article, I don't know that a manager who's making that decision on the game level, are they going to be factoring in the draft pick? No, definitely not. Yeah, because I mean, I guess they could if it's part of their mandate from the front office

and it's like, hey, we care about this, but you know, like a draft pick, is that manager even going to be still with that team by the time that- That's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, that draft pick gets to the majors, you know? The timelines of those incentives are not properly aligned for the manager to be the one making that decision and having that be front of mind. I actually don't think that that is... I wouldn't want draft pick compensation like

that to be what the manager is necessarily thinking about, which isn't to say that I don't want starters to go deeper into games, but I'm hesitant to have there be additional incentives built into the game that distance out from what the manager does from winning. And there are times when that works well in tandem, right? When they implemented the prospect promotion incentives in the CBA, it was giving you sort of long-term incentives that are furthered by the short-term, which are about winning, right? Like you want your top prospects up if they're the best guys, because then you're going to

win more baseball games. And that's what you should be wanting to do. But I think the more we abstract away from that, you know, frontline goal, the worse off the game is. The solution is how do we make having your starters go deep be more closely aligned with winning the baseball game? Like that's the gap that you want to close. You might be able to get, you know, another compound pick later by keeping your starter. Like what?

What? Ben? What? Yes. So we got to do something about this, but not this thing. I really hope not this thing. And I think the league is fairly thoughtful about these things. And I think the rules changes they implemented last year mostly were well thought out and worked, maybe with the exception of the shift ban, which hasn't had a huge effect and now leaves you without field defense, maybe being your problem

when it comes to balls and play falling for hits. But hopefully this is something that they really did just kind of kick around and then kick to the curve. I have no problem with talking about it or entertaining the idea, but let's hope this is not the preferred solution. I think there are many better ways to achieve those same goals. I agree. Okay. So I saw that there has been a changing of the guard atop the Fangrass farm system rankings for the first time in a few years, just by a hair, but the Orioles are no longer number one. They have been number one in the FanCrafts Farm System rankings since the 2021 mid-season update.

So three years, I don't know if it was continuous, whether every day they were number one, but they've generally been number one in the major updates. And now for the first time in a while, they have slipped to second just behind the race. And the race, they've kind of been consistently high all along, it's not like they came out of nowhere. I think they were at the top before the Orioles ascended

to the top, so they've just sort of stayed close to the top. And if you look at the number of ranked prospects, or I guess what prospects who have grades given by Eric, the Rays have many more. So it's 61 guys who I guess are contributing toward this overall farm system valuation for the Rays, whereas it's 44 for the Orioles. So it's more of a depth thing with the Rays. Like they've just acquired so many press. Yes, right. More so than individual, highly ranked guys.

And it's just a difference of like $6 million in projected future value, which is basically it's negligible, right? But still it's the first time in a while that I've noticed another team at the top. I saw that MLB pipeline also updated their rankings on Thursday and they had the raise on top and I think the Orioles fell to third according to them. I think the twins maybe were second in between them there.

So this is what you want to happen if you're the Orioles. I don't know if it's what Michael Iass wants to happen because he seems to really like those highly rated farm systems. He hates to part with those prospects, but you want those guys to graduate and you want to trade some of them for major league talents when you have redundancies on your roster.

And so, and I guess Jackson Holliday is still counting toward this, right? Because he has not exhausted his rookie eligibility yet. Correct. He did get downgraded from a future value perspective ever so slightly. So that's part of it. He was a 70 and now I think he's a 65. Yeah. So I guess when he officially graduates, then the Orioles ranking may fall farther. But yeah, it's, you know, the White Sox are third, a sort of distant third, but at least they're there.

Maybe that's heartening to White Sox fans and then the Dodgers and the Red Sox and the Cubs and the Twins and the Guardians. But yeah, it's, I guess, kind of impressive that the Rays just managed to hover there constantly, whether they're doing well at the Major League level or not. They don't tank and bottom out the way that the Orioles did in part to amass that farm system, which is not to take away from how accurate their drafting has been and how well

they have used those top picks and developed some of them. But yeah, it's just a slight changing of the guard, which is a recognition of the fact that the Orioles are now a really good team that is using their prospects, whether on their roster or by trading them to other teams. That is true. Quite a run though, that they had there at the top. It was quite a farm system.

I can't believe Javier Baáez beat the stupid first one. You're not going to let that go. I'm not. I'm so, I'm all, anyway, I'm running out of garments. It's tough to put that past you. Yeah. Well, cause you know, I came in here to record and they were holding onto a narrow lead. And I was like, Oh, check to see how that game ended. I regret. Not well for you. Not well for me. Now I'm surprised by where the twins are. That's interesting. Wow. Good

for you twins for pipeline. Wow. Yeah. Elsewhere in the AL Central, I have realized that I think maybe I've underrated Austin Hedges. Austin Hedges very much up our alley, right? He's a catcher after our own hearts in that he's a defense first glove guy. Doesn't hit. He's there because he fields. But unlike some glove guys whose reputation seems to exceed their quantified performance at least, like Martin Maldonado in recent years, even to some extent, Jeff Mathis, who was really reputed as a great game caller, but was not like an off the charts

framer. He was good, but the numbers that we could quantify didn't always suggest that he was that valuable. Austin Hedges though, is so good at defense. And I reckoned with this because Matt Trueblood wrote an article on Thursday for baseball prospectus that was headlined the last great framer really this time, because other catchers have been heralded as maybe the last great framer. And it's not that there aren't any great framers anymore. It's just that there are a lot of good framers, just catchers on the whole are really good at receiving. The worst receivers, the Ryan Domets of the world just don't get to catch anymore. Also, it has been a skill that teams have been able to train and help players get better at this. And so just the bar has risen and all boats have risen along with the framing tide. And so it's

harder to stand out relative to the average, cause the average is just so good. Jeff Sullivan wrote about this a couple of times that you just don't see the outlier framing seasons that we used to see with Jose Molina and others back at kind of the dawn of the public recognition of framing. But Austin Hedges is, is still pretty pretty extraordinary even by these higher standards league wide. And I looked at baseball prospectus's stats, which I think have him rated even more highly

than Fangrass and Fangrass have him rated well too. It's funny, if you look at the three win value stats, there's kind of a tier system graduated numbers here for Hedges, where if you look at baseball reference, it says that Hedges is a sub replacement level player for his career. So he's sub replacement level this year, he's negative 1.4 career baseball reference war. And you might look and say, gosh, 10 years in the big leagues

and 733 games and more than 2300 plate appearances. What are these teams doing? But if you then look at the value metrics that do incorporate framing specifically, then he starts to look not just playable but downright valuable maybe. So, Fangraphs has him at 7.9 War, which is good enough maybe,

but still not super impressive. But Baseball Prospectus loves him even more, and has him at like 14, wins above replacement player for his career. And Baseball Prospectusus warp has a different replacement level than fan graphs and baseball reference. So its numbers tend to be a little lower just across the board.

And so you could bump that up mentally, maybe even more. He's at 13.1 career warp. And if you do the math and do the division, that actually makes him not at all a bad player. That makes him kind of valuable. He's had 2,324 plate appearances. So if we were to divide that into 600, roughly a full season for a non-catcher at least, and we said like per 600 plate appearances, I guess, then really Austin Hedges is at 3.4 warp per 600 player appearances. Like that makes him an above average player.

Like that's in the Molina mold of this guy can't hit at all. And yet his defense might be so good that he's actually a pretty good player. And maybe the reality is somewhere in between there because he hasn't really made enormous amounts of money and he's been sort of a journeyman and he signs a series of one year deals often. And so he went from the Padres to the Guardians and now he's on kind of a one year per team merry-go-round.

He was with the Pirates last year and then with the Rangers, and now he's back with the Guardians again. So they signed up for another tour of duty of Austin Hedges after seeing him for a few years. And hey, he won a World Series with the Rangers last year, and he's with a good, surprising first place team with the Guardians this year. he's with a good surprising first place team with the Guardians this year. Maybe it makes it even more impressive that he's moved around this much and still his defensive stats are this strong because you know

you got to learn a whole new staff every time you switch teams which is a lot to expect of a catcher. So if you divide on a rate basis, BP has this catcher defense metric called CDA. They also have framing runs and they have framing chances, which is not just number of pitches, but framing opportunities like pitches that had a greater than zero chance to be called a strike. They weren't way outside the zone. And if you look since 2015, which was Austin Hedges' rookie year, there's only one other catcher who is in the conversation as on a rate basis as good at framing and

overall as Austin Hedges and that's Patrick Bailey of the Giants, who is also extremely good. So I don't know if we can say that Hedges is the last great framer when you also have Patrick Bailey, who's doing it too, and is a little bit better at hitting too, you know, below average hitter, but not Jeff Mathis level, Austin Hedges level. But man, Hedges, he's playable. He's worth playing, which is more than you would think looking at his offense. And he also, Matt pointed out, he has this very steady, very quiet manner of framing, kind of a throwback to the Molina, Jonathan Lucroy era.

It's beautiful. It is. It is one of the more aesthetically pleasing framing experiences in baseball. And it is definitely, his approach is definitely benefiting from the contrast to the stabbier framers of today. And look, you can get to value that way. There's a lot of different approaches, but it is so, it's buttery, Ben. The hands are so soft. It's comfortably handsome person also. I'm just saying it took me by surprise. Okay. There was a day where there were several group chats that were reacting to the same photo

that they had posted of like pregame fits and everyone was like, do we need to like have a conversation about this thing that we were not anticipating? And I was like, I think we do. Yeah. And we have to acknowledge like not a bad looking guy, you know? No. Yeah. And baseball prospectus since 2015 has him as the most valuable defensive catcher by

a lot other than everyone except Yasmani Grandal, who is just a few runs ahead of Hedges and in like 40,000 more pitches than Hedges caught. So he is really in a class of his own, except maybe for Bailey, who's just been doing it for two seasons at this point. So he really is an outlier and kind of a throwback to that technique. Yeah, I came of age as a framing appreciator as Molina being my muse, Jose, not even Yadi Jose. And there's just no highlight I'd rather watch

than a reel of Jose Molina framing pitches because he's just so steady. You know? We are weird. We are weird people. And sometimes it can be effective to have more of the jerkier method and a more pronounced movement, but it is more aesthetically pleasing to me when you can barely tell.

It's just, you know, the, yeah, the glove just doesn't move or jerk at all. Just like strong wrist, just hold it there and just subtly reorient the gloves. So it looks like the pitch maybe got a bit more of the zone than it did. It's just beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And he, and he does the one knee down like everyone does these days. That's, that's in vogue. And it seems like for a good reason helps you get those calls, but yeah, the

glove work is just phenomenal. And he gets, of course, great grades as someone who works with pitchers and can be a whisperer in that way as well. And personalized the pitchcom messages with inspirational, you know, pump up sound bites and everything. So just seems like a good guy to have on the staff, even though he can't hit a lick. So, I mean, I knew that he was obviously like, you know, glove first catcher who only is in the majors because of his defense, but I don't think I appreciated to what degree he has really lapped the league defensively during his now decade-long tenure. So yeah,

if you go by the BP valuations, he's not just maybe worth rostering as a backup. He could be even better than that. He's really good. And I think that like we should acknowledge as you have like, you know, these like defensive metrics are kind of messy still. I do have greater confidence in framing than like other stuff. It is just like objectively much easier to measure and they have so many chances. Right. It's a giant sample. Yeah. Most defenders you don't get nearly as many opportunities to make a play, but at catcher

you get thousands and thousands. Yeah. But even given that, just because of the amount of variability season to season we sometimes see with guys, I think it's probably good to acknowledge that there might be a little bit of fudge in there, but also he's just, he's fantastic. The numbers back up what you can see with your human eyes. And it's really impressive. And to your point, like the ability to do this so well, having played for such a variety of teams and having to deal with new staffs and like, it's, it's really,

it's really quite something, you know? And he's, he's only 31. I guess he, he'll turn 32 quite something, you know? And he's only 31. I guess he'll turn 32 in a couple days actually, or this weekend. So happy early birthday, Austin Hedges. Happy early birthday, Austin Hedges. Yeah, he came up, I guess earlier than I recalled because he was a pretty big prospect. I mean, I don't recall, I remember writing about him when he was still in the minors and looking at him as the next great dreamer, which was something I cared about deeply. But yeah, he raked.

We're very normal people. Yeah, Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus had him like in the top 20 prospects, maybe multiple years running, and maybe they expected him to hit a bit more than he has, but the glove is that good. So don't sleep on Austin Hitches.

He's a handy guy to have around. One more thing I wanted to follow up on. We had that discussion about fathers and sons the other day and I got the data. This was prompted by Will Wagner, son of Billy Wagner making the majors and we were talking about fathers and sons and the age gaps and why it makes us feel old when a son of a former big leaguer comes up and I was postulating that maybe part of that is that major leaguers tend to have kids earlier than the general populace and so that makes it more jarring when one of their sons comes along

because it seems like too soon for someone that age to have a adult son who is a professional athlete. But I wanted to look at that data while I had it from Kenny Jaclyn. Just to see something I was kind of curious about, you know how we always talk about the nature-nurture conversation with fathers and sons? Like, why are there so many big league sons who become big leaguers themselves? Is it nature or nurture?

And obviously it's both, right? But, but it's hard to know how much of, of one and how much of the other, is it more that, well, if you're the son of a big leaguer, you've probably got the jeans for it and you're probably big and athletic. Or is it that you were brought up by a big leaguer and maybe you were raised around them and maybe you were in clubhouses when you were a kid and maybe you got great personal instruction and hands-on teaching from a big leaguer and maybe you were pushed to become a big leaguer because you wanted to be like your dad or whatever it is.

Right. And of course, you know, maybe your, your family is financially well off because your dad's a big leaguer. And so you can afford other private instruction and travel ball and whatever else. Right. But I thought one way of, of looking at this also would be to look at when you have a big league dad, is his son more likely than you'd expect to be a batter versus a pitcher if the dad is a batter versus a pitcher. And I also looked at handedness, throwing and hitting to see if there's something there too. or two. So for example, I've got 292 father-son big league playing pairs here and 291 of them have handedness recorded. So of the 47 of them, 47 of 291 were left-handed throwers. So that's 16.2%. Of those left-handed throwers sons, 11 out of 47 were left-handed throwers. So that's 16.2% of those left-handed throwers sons, 11 out of 47 were

left-handed throwers. That's 23.4%. So 23.4% versus 16.2%. So if you are the son of a left-handed thrower, you are more likely to be a left-handed thrower yourself than the overall population of big league fathers, which I guess makes sense because handedness is partly heritable. I think it's fairly weakly heritable, but it's part of whether you're a lefty is whether you have that in your genes. And then it's also nurture and how you're brought up and all that stuff too. If you look at batting handedness, it's even more pronounced, which maybe makes sense because there might be a greater advantage there for hitters certainly.

Whereas for hitters, maybe there's not as big of a throwing advantage handedness wise. So of the 291 guys with a hitting handedness, 70 of the 291 fathers batted left, so that's 24.1%, and then of the lefty hitting fathers, 30 of the 70 batted left, 30 of the 70 sons. So that's 42.9% of the lefty's sons went on to bat lefty. So that's almost twice the rate. And that doesn't even include five switch hitting sons too. So that again could be because if your dad's lefty,

maybe you're a little more likely to be a lefty yourself. Or maybe if your dad's lefty and a baseball player, he's more likely to push you to hit left-handed, right? Because maybe it was an advantage for him and he knows it could be an advantage for you. So it seems to be a more pronounced skew for the hitting handedness than the pitching handedness or the throwing handedness.

That makes sense to me. Yeah, so that makes me think that, yeah, maybe it's partly nature, but it's also largely nurture there. You just get pushed to hit lefty, whether you're a natural lefty or not. Now, if you look at the batter pitcher breakdown, so of these 292 guys, 191 of the fathers were batters.

So that's 65.4% were batters. And I guess it makes sense that they'd be mostly batters. Cause I guess throughout major league history, most major leaguers have been batters up until recently when you had giant bullpens and so many pitchers, right? So 65.4% of the fathers are batters, but of the 191 batting fathers, 83.8% of their sons are batters. I was prompted to look into this by the fact that I thought it seemed slightly unusual that Will Wagner, son of Billy Wagner is a hitter, because Billy was a pitcher.

And I kind of had the thought that like, well, isn't it usually like big league father, son follows in the footsteps, not just by being a big leagueer, but also positionally speaking. And so I think that's true. So of the fathers, 65.4% are batters, but of the batters sons, 83.8% go on to be batters.

And if we do that for pitchers, so 101 of the 292 fathers are pitchers, so that's 34.6%, but of those 101 pitcher fathers, 61 of their sons go on to be pitchers, 60.4%. Wow. Yeah, so 60% versus 34%, basically. So again, almost double the percentage that you see in the father population go on to

be pitchers, their sons, which again, I guess, makes some sense, right? That doesn't settle the nature nurture debate, because I guess it could be like, well, if you have a big league arm as a father, then maybe you're more likely to have a big league arm as a son, just genetically speaking. The seed is strong, as they say in Game of Thrones, but probably a lot of it is the nurture factor, the instruction factor, right? Or you want to be like your dad. Your dad's a pitcher. Well, you're going to pick up a ball and start throwing yourself when you're a kid. You're going to mimic the father, or you're just going to emulate the father. You're going to get instruction from the father. Maybe the father pushes you, subconsciously or not, to being a pitcher because that's what he knows. And so, you know, he's able

to instruct you in pitching better than he could in hitting, let's say, and so pushes you in that direction. And it seems like it's more pronounced, again, to have pitcher sons following in pitcher fathers footsteps, even then batter sons following in batters fathers footsteps. So yeah, Will Wagner being a hitter when his dad is a pitcher, it's hardly unheard of, but it is unusual. So that reinforced my perception there. And I guess, again, doesn't really settle the debate, but I think this lends credence to the idea

that it's a bit of both its nature and nurture, which the debate, but I think this lends credence to the idea that it's a bit of both. It's nature and nurture, which we knew, but... It's definitely both. Absolutely both. Yes. But I think it might be more nurture based on this data and just my general inclination. Because yeah, I mean, being athletic certainly helps, but there are a lot of athletic people in the world. I do think that the nurture aspect of just like having money maybe and just being around the game and getting that hands-on instruction, I think that seems to me like an even greater advantage than winning the genetic lottery

baseball wise. I mean, it's just like the combination is so powerful, I would think. It's like you get, and not every, look, genetics are weird. Not every kid who's like born of a big leaguer is going to be an amazing athlete. Like that's not how that works. But if you happen to be an amazing athlete, and we should say, there are plenty of big leaguers who enjoy a sports lineage that's something other than baseball. And sometimes they have the dual threat, right? Their dads are pro athletes in some other sport and their moms were high level athletes. So then it's like, wow, that kid, look at that kid.

But then to have both the socioeconomic advantage that often comes with being a former big leaguer son, although not always, and the sort of, you know, the acculturation that you have when you, especially if you had a close relationship with your big league dad, which again, doesn't always happen, and you were one of those kids that's like running around the clubhouse. The amount of time that big leaguers kids spend at their workplace is like so interesting to me. Yeah. Not even just Drake LaRoche.

Right. Not even just him. Like, you know, it's a really fascinating like soup. And I think that one of the really big advantages is just like knowing the different kinds of behaviors that are like acceptable and not in a clubhouse. And obviously like those social worries change over time. And so it's not like it operates as this like fixed point, but having kind of your feet under you when you get to a big league clubhouse, I think is a really significant advantage. And then like being able to, again, it depends on the relationship that the younger generation big leaguer had has with his dad, which, you know, we can't assume that those are always

positive or that, you know, he's always someone that the young man's going to turn to. But I think that when you struggle to be able to call your big leaguer dad and be like, what do I do about this? What's going on? And to have someone who doesn't have a financial, well, sometimes they do have a financial relationship, but it's not a team employee, right? They're just there for you in theory. That's really powerful too. I'm sure, I'm not sure. I don't know, but I would imagine that like Jackson Holliday probably called his dad and was like, yeah, I think I read that he did. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, how do I deal with this? Like what are some tricks and tips for me navigating this setback, which we fully expect to be temporary, but like is a setback. How do I deal with that? You know, like that's really powerful. As opposed to me where I'm like, you know, I love my parents, but my lawyer mom and my tech dad, like they don't have anything to say to me about my job. Like I am like, let me explain what Twitter is. Yeah. I'm with you there. Yeah. Not getting a lot of parental advice that's relevant to my specific occupation, but maybe life lessons, just not really career advice that pertains to what I do specifically. All right. Well, shall we meet a major leaguer or two here? Yeah.

or two here? Yeah. Meet a major leaguer I am very eager To meet this nascent major leaguer It's the thrilling debut of somebody new Let's meet this certain major leaguer who maybe has escaped people's notice generally, not a top prospect, not a superstar, but someone who has debuted and who has earned the honor of being a big leaguer and thus deserves to be recognized for that accomplishment. And it's hard to keep track of all of them because there are just so many big leaguers. So that's why we started this segment to try to keep track

of some of the ones who might've slipped through the cracks otherwise. So who you got for us here? I think we accept nominations and suggestions and you, I think have one who was suggested by Patreon supporter, Wondering Winder. Yes, I am introducing us to Daniel Robert, who is a right-handed reliever for the Texas Rangers. He has made his big league debut. He's currently back in Round Rock and on the injured list, but he deserves some attention because I think his is the exact kind of profile

we actually imagine when we have this segment. So Robert is from Birmingham, Alabama. And to give you a sense of his background, I'm going to quote from a Shelby Country Reporter piece by Andrew Simonson. The 29-year-old Hoover native was a standout player at Briarwood Christian during his high school career and made a big impact for the Lions. Robert won Shelby County Player of the Year honors in 2011. After batting 546 during his sophomore season, he made the All-State team in 2011, 2012, and 2013, was named to the All-County team for four straight seasons and was a North-South All-Star game selection.

At one point, ESPN ranked Robert as the top position player in the state of Alabama. Keep track of all the position player stuff here because that's going to be relevant later. He then took his talents to the Plains and played four seasons at Auburn from 2014 to 2017. He quickly became a regular starting designated hitter as a freshman before starting as a first baseman in 2015 and then splitting time between there and right field for his junior year.

And you might be thinking to yourself, didn't you say he's a reliever, Meg? Well, that's so funny because Robert was drafted in the 21st round in 2017 as a pitcher signing for $5,000 and his signing story is pretty wild. And here I'm going to quote extensively from a June 2020 piece in the Athletic by Jamie Newberg titled, Relationship Goals, the edge the Rangers believe they have once MLB draft ends. Because as everyone might remember, the 2020 draft was only five rounds and then you had the ability as a team to sign undrafted free agents and those signings were capped at $20,000. So teams trying to incentivize players to sign had to point to other stuff other than

money to get those guys to sign rather than go back to school because $20,000 is not a ton of money in the draft, right? And so from that piece. In 2017, second season to lead Auburn in RBI, the senior pitched 8.1 innings in relief. Ranger scout Brian Bam Morrison, now in his sixth season withBI, the senior pitched 8.1 innings in relief. Ranger scout Brian Bam Morrison, now in his sixth season with Texas, saw most of them. I liked the size, says Morrison, who scouted the 6'5", 235 pounder as a hitter his junior season before envisioning something else a year later. The arm worked. I thought if he just focused on

pitching, he had more left in the tank, even though he was a senior. Texas made Robert, who was already nearing his 23rd birthday which is old for the draft even for college guy. The 644th pick in the 2017 draft. He agreed to sign for a mere $5,000. It was $5,000 he'd never see. During the routine physical exam administer to all draft picks before they sign, the Rangers detected some damage in Robert's elbow. An MRI confirmed the right-hander's worst fear. He needed Tommy John reconstruction surgery. The Rangers detected some damage in Robert's elbow. An MRI confirmed the right-hander's worst fear. He needed Tommy John reconstruction surgery. The Rangers voided the $5,000 agreement, making Robert a free agent. He sobbed when he got the news. Morrison's resolve found another gear.

I had no intention of giving another team a chance on this kid," Morrison laughs. I say it on D-Bob. And look, it is a nickname. I don't know if it's the best one I've ever heard, but it does exist. I told him just to be patient and that I'd be patient too. That connection between an amateur free agent and one team scout, a dynamic that will be more important in 2020 than any year in memory, made Robert feel as if he were a Texas Ranger

even when he wasn't. Having that relationship with Brian was very reassuring, Robert said. While I was at home rehabbing, he was so confident that I would eventually sign with the Rangers that I never really had to reach out to other teams. Brian was either texting or calling me every other week to ask how rehab was going and telling me not to worry about getting signed. That reassurance meant a lot to me. It felt like he really had my back and it was just a matter

of time before I got done. The timetable for a pitcher to return from Tommy Jones surgery is typically 12 to 15 months, But six months after Robert's procedure, he caught up with Morrison at a high school workout the Rangers were holding in Atlanta. The big righty brought a glove and told Morrison he was good for a catch. That said a lot to me about his makeup, Morrison says. He wasn't going to let anything get in his way. A month later, Robert headed to Surprise to take part in a free agent tryout that the Rangers organized just before spring training each year, the logistics of which were handled by Morrison. Today, Robert estimates he was maybe 75%. Honestly, he shouldn't have been throwing that soon. Yeah, but he still registered 90 on the

gun seven months out from surgery, which was enough for the Rangers to see. They signed him on the spot, but not for the 5,000 they agreed to the summer before. I ended up signing for nothing. I was just thrilled to finally be back with the team, especially the Rangers. Without Brian keeping my name floating around, there's a good chance I never would have gotten a shot. So Robert split his debut season between Spokane and Hickory. This is me, not the piece anymore. And across 36.1 innings, he posted a 0.99 ERA with 50 strikeouts against just eight walks. And then of course, the 2020 minor league season got canceled. And then in 2021, he traversed three levels, reaching double A where he threw 17.1 innings of 208 ERA ball, and then spent the next couple of

seasons at Round Rock. And this year he was fourth among eligible pitchers in the Pacific Coast League with a 2-3-5 ERA before his call up and had a stretch of 19 scoreless innings from May 22nd to July 4th, during which he only allowed four hits. He had issued at least one walk in four of his first five outings, but issued only two in his last 20 appearances. And our Rangers list came out not long before Robert made his debut or maybe just slightly after. And here is Eric Long and Higgins scouting report from that list where Robert was graded out as a 35 future value prospect.

Robert was a two-way player at Auburn, but he mostly hit throwing fewer than 16 in college. He only started pitching full-time in 2018 and then missed time due to the pandemic and injuries and he's been kept alive on the Rangers prospect list for the last couple of years even though he's pushing 30. Robert was called up just a few days before this publication and made his big league debut. Robert has been carving AAA this season 35.1% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate, using a sweeper heavy approach. Nearly 60% of his pitches are mid-80s sweepers, which he uses both as a chase pitch and to

get ahead of righties. He mixes in two fastball variants, one a letter high chase offering the other a sinker version to his arm side. There's an occasional change up here too, but they aren't very good. This is a pretty standard low leverage relief look, but it's a great story for an almost 30-year-old rookie conversion arm to make it at all. The Rangers selected his contract on July 8th and he made his debut on the 10th against the Angels. Entering the 7th inning with the Rangers trailing 5-2, he struck out

Anthony Rendon, who was the first batter he faced and allowed just a single that inning. The 8th inning started in promising fashion, but with two outs and a man on after a walk, he allowed a two run shot to Zach Neto. So, you know, that could have gone better. Zach's two appearances came against the Orioles in two separate games, and between those two games he threw an additional three innings, striking out two and walking run while not allowing a run against the 14 batters that he faced. He was optioned back to Round Rock on July 21st to make room for Gerson Garibito, and he was placed on the IL on August 7th, And I wasn't able to figure out why he went back, why he went on the IL at Round Rock,

but that's where he is right now. And yeah, that was Daniel Robert. Daniel Robert. All right. Yeah. His Twitter handle is like D-Rob. You said D-Bob, right? Is what someone called him.

Yeah, we have D-Bob. Now I'm going to, I'm going to verify because if I misspoke, I'm going to feel embarrassed. Well, maybe he goes by both, but on Twitter he's D underscore Rob20 and D Rob is what I think of as David Robertson's nickname. And he's D Rob30 on Twitter. So now we've got a new D Rob in town, although different first name and different last name, but close enough, David close enough, David Robertson, Daniel Robert. I know. It has goofed me up like several times already. Yeah, D-Bob. They call him, Morrison called him D-Bob. D-Bob. D-Bob. All right. Well, I want to shout out

a couple of NL West guys, one of whom debuted just a couple of days before D Bob, Yobar Diaz, who made his debut for the Diamondbacks on July 8th. And he's 23 years old, which is really a young in for this segment. We don't usually talk about 23 year olds. Usually it's people who've been through all sorts of trials and travails and aren't getting to the majors until later in life. But Yobar Diaz, he packed a lot of trials and travails into a fairly short time as a young man and no less epic and Odyssey to get to a major league mound. So he's a right handed pitcher, six feet tall, 190 for the Diamondbacks. And actually he's turning 24 just in four days as we speak. He is from Venezuela and I'm going to pull a lot

of the detail here from a great story by our pal, Nick Picoro for the Arizona Republic, Arizona Diamondbacks, Yilber Diaz's amazing story of baseball and life, quote, it's a movie. And the quote about it being a movie comes from the Diamondbacks scout, Francisco Cartaya, who said, it's been an amazing journey, his life, if anyone would like to make a movie about this guy, I think they would have enough material to do it. I'll tell you something. This is most incredible story I have seen in person. It's a movie, everything about him. It's a movie, everything. It's really hammering home the, it's a movie. It's a movie, Ben. It's a movie.

Yeah. Just if anyone wants to option the life rights of Yilberdias, talk to Francisco Cartaya here. He's very insistent that it is a movie. But- It's a movie. I see why he is saying that because he said, and you know, usually we talk about the debut and how nervous the player is, right? And Ylberdias said that he did not feel nervous because he's been through too much to feel nervous about a game. It's just a game, right?

And his life has put that in perspective. So Nick's lead is a power arm starting pitcher. He used to panhandle for money to buy food. He worked as a street vendor and a car windshield washer. He lived hand to mouth on the streets of South America. He had sworn off baseball before the game lured him back then was almost undone by the pressures of pitching. So he grew up in Venezuela.

He dreamed of being a big leaguer. He was an outfielder initially. So like D Bob kind of a late convert to pitching, maybe not quite as late. And he couldn't hit that well. So his trainer suggested, why don't you try pitching? He was 17 at that point, which already makes you old for an unsigned position player prospect. But he was still young enough potentially to get signed as a pitcher and he drew some interest as a pitcher But then when he was 18, he fell and fractured his wrist playing basketball that hurt his spirits He quit baseball for a while. So in January 2019, he left Venezuela. He went with his girlfriend and a cousin They spent three months in Colombia. They lived at a shelter then they moved to Ecuador

He stayed with friends from Venezuela while selling energy drinks at traffic lights. Another three months passed, they moved on to Peru. He could only buy food by asking strangers on the street for help at times. During that time, he said it was hard, which sounds like an understatement. And there was more ahead in Lima. So he was washing windshields when cars would stop at intersections in traffic. And he had an intersection with someone who changed his life. There was a man who was selling candy

and Diaz didn't want to encroach on his corner there. So he asked if it would be all right if he also worked at that corner. The man's name was Jonathan Carrillo and Diaz says he doesn't know where he'd be. If not for that chance encounter, he shook hands with Carrillo who said, wow, you have big hands. Why don't you play baseball? And so Diaz told him his story and that he had played baseball. And so that brought back baseball to his mind and Carrillo helped him find work. He was selling strawberries with whipped cream for a while.

There's a picture of him doing so. And Correo was also from Venezuela, encouraged Diaz to give baseball another shot, kind of helped train him. He didn't have a baseball, he didn't have a glove. They were walking down the street, they saw two other boys with baseball gloves and balls. And so Correo invited them to train with them so that Diaz would have access to gloves and baseballs. And then Correo started recording videos of Diaz throwing and putting them on social media and sending them to trainers and people at baseball academies in Venezuela. They didn't have a radar gun,

so they didn't know how hard he was throwing. So they just said 90 because anything less than that, they wouldn't get interest. Right. And so they found a trainer. Diaz went back to Venezuela and his girlfriend was working in cell phone sales and got a phone as part of her job. They sold the phone and they use that money to take a seven day bus trip back to Venezuela, which sounds unpleasant. And then he went through a bunch of tryouts for teams and a

Diamondbacks executive saw him and they were interested. They liked how his arm worked and they signed him for $10,000. So even less than D Bob got as a bonus in the draft, right? Half of what he got, he had to pass a physical. So they flew him to the Diamondbacks Academy in the DR. This was March, 2020. So he passed his physical, but hadn't had a chance to sign his contract yet when COVID happened and all transactions were frozen.

So flights were grounded. He couldn't sign. He was stuck at the academy, which actually turned out to be okay because the Diamondbacks couldn't have players go through official workouts with coaches during that time, but he had access to the fields and the weight room and meals and he worked hard and he put on like 30 pounds on the Diamondbacks meal plan. And so he went up from throwing 90 to throwing 94. And that changed everything. And then finally, when the signing restrictions lifted, the Diamondbacks signed him

in February, 2021, assigned him to the Dominican summer league, where he struggled initially very much. So his first season, his first professional season, pitching in the DSL, he gave up more than seven runs per nine innings and had a five plus ERA and walked 18 guys in 26 and a third innings and struck out 17. Not a great ratio, right? And he was already quote unquote old for a DSL pitcher. And so he sort of sensed that he was on the bubble, that he was going to get cut. And then that put even more pressure on him.

And then he was pressing, right. And so it could have really spiraled and he thought he was close to getting released. But then another helper intervened and Manny Garcia, his pitching coach said, let's work together, met him at the academy at five in the morning and he knew about the pressure that someone in Diaz's situation faced. Diaz had already had a young son. Speaking of big leaguers having kids younger than average, he had a young son, so that added to the pressure to support his family and everything. They knew he had a good arm, but he was putting all this pressure on himself. And so they just sat down and had a long conversation and Garcia reassured him,

look, we like you and it doesn't matter if you throw strikes, I'm just going to keep using you as our closer. And that just meant everything to Diaz and took the pressure off him, gave him confidence. And then he suddenly started throwing strikes and commanding his pitches and then made a fairly quick ascent to the majors. And he also has since been optioned. So he's in the minors right now and I think has had some blister issues down there, but he made four starts for the Diamondbacks, pitched 20 innings, had a 4.05 ERA. So he did okay and he's young and he'll probably be back up. So should be a movie,

I guess, the Yilberdias story. So I guess a more circuitous route maybe or at least a longer path, though not necessarily a harder one. Michael Peterson also I want to highlight here, Patreon supporter Jonti suggested Michael Peterson. So thanks to him, we also got suggestions from Noah and Preston Patreon supporter to do Yilberdias. So Peterson, he is with the Dodgers. He debuted in June and he has also since been optioned. So he's back in the minors, but Hey, once a big leaguer, always say

former big leaguer at least. And Peterson is 30. So he is even older than D Bob and he was drafted a bunch of times. So he was drafted by the pirates in the 19th round in 2012. Then he was drafted by the Rangers in the 31st round in 2013. Then he was drafted by the Giants in the 24th round in 2014. And then he was drafted by the Brewers in the 17th round in 2015. So he was drafted four different times, which you don't see very often. And he ended up signing with the Brewers after the draft July 2015. He was born in the UK. So he is the first UK born Dodger. He is the son of a

Californian father and a Nigerian mother. The dad was a volleyball player. The mother was a track star. As he mentioned, sometimes the mother of a major leaguer is an athlete. They met when the dad was doing business in Nigeria, and then later they met up in London, lived there for a while, and had Michael there, and then moved back to the States when Peterson was young, so he was brought up in California, but has a bit of an unusual birthplace and background for a big leaguer. And he also, you know, went through a lot. He had this season lost to COVID, of course, as so many minor leaguers did. And then as soon as COVID was over, he then tore his UCL and had Tommy John surgery. And so from 2020 through 2022, he threw one inning

in an official game for the Rockies team in the Arizona Complex League and then was a free agent at the end of those years. And he pitched for Great Britain in the WBC last year. He pitched one inning against Team USA. He struck out Nolan Arnado, just blew three fastballs by him, hit 100 with his fastball. So that got him on some teams radar and the Dodgers were interested. He made it to AAA last year. And then the Dodgers liked him and thought they could get more out of him and make some tweaks and sure enough, they have.

And he pitched very well in AAA before his call up in June. He has a 1.93 ERA in 28 innings at AAA for the Dodgers this year. He got into nine games for the big league Dodgers, 4.5 ERA in 12 innings. So it was not as smooth sailing there and he's back down, but he'll probably have an opportunity to come back up again. He is a right-handed thrower. He's six, seven, big guy. Yeah. 195 pounds and his middle name. So this is because of his Nigerian roots,

his Michael Kenichuku Peterson, and he's kind of embraced that name, which he didn't initially. He said, this is from an article last year, he's grateful for his multicultural background and embraces every part of what made him who he is today. My middle name being Nigerian Kenichuku, when I was young, I hated it because everyone butchered it. I hope I didn't just butcher it young, I hated it because everyone butchered it. I hope I didn't just butcher it, but I looked it up and that was how it was pronounced in a couple of places. When you're young, you just wanna blend and you can't blend when you have a name

that has like 30 syllables in it. But as you get older, you kind of enjoy the foods, you enjoy the smells, being born in London, same kind of thing. So he has embraced that background. And in his first outing, he actually picked up a win in his first major league game, but it was kind of a weird one because he came in,

this was June 18th against the Rockies who he had pitched for in the minor leagues. He enters the game in the seventh inning, bottom of the seventh, Rockies who he had pitched for in the minor leagues. He enters the game in the seventh inning, bottom of the seventh, Rockies batting up eight to four on the Dodgers. So this seemed like a low leverage outing. And he came in and he gave up a run in that inning. So now the Dodgers were down nine to four.

He stayed in, in the eighth, the Dodgers didn't score. He had a one, two, three inning in the bottom of the eighth. And then in the top of the ninth, Jason Hayward hit a grand slam and Teasca Hernandez hit a three run homer. And suddenly the Dodgers had gone from being behind four to nine to being up 11, nine. And Michael Peterson found himself with a major league win

in his first game, which he did not expect at all. So nice way to start, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, during COVID, he pitched just to like stay active a little bit. He pitched against an adult rec league in San Jose and no one knew that he was a professional pitcher. He just like showed up as kind of a ringer.

And he said, the first team I faced, I just said, I'll get a couple innings at the back end. I don't need to start or anything. There wasn't even a foul ball. It was just three up, three down, three up, three down. One of the ladies on their side came up to me and said, hey, you should look into getting drafted. I was like, I'll keep my eye on that.

He had been drafted four times already. And he was actually throwing high 90s fastballs at these like delivery drivers and salesmen and weekend warrior types. And he said, it's funny, you go up there and you see all the cluers of beer and everyone's having fun. Then all of a sudden I come jogging out throwing.

I was trying to work on stuff. So first inning, I'd be throwing fastballs. Then the second inning, I'd throw all curve balls. I wouldn't pay attention to where I was trying to work on stuff. So first inning I'd be throwing fastballs. Then the second inning I'd throw all curve balls. I wouldn't pay attention to where I was in the lineup or anything. I was just pitching to what I wanted to do. So one of the guys in the lineup, I threw a curve ball and he bails out, hits the deck,

strike one. I throw another curve ball. He bails out, hits the deck, strike two. He turns and yells out at me, what are you doing? Just throw a fastball, man. I didn't realize he was the number nine hitter. He was the worst guy. So I throw a fastball. He doesn't even get his foot lifted before it goes by him. He goes, all right, nevermind and walks away. That's great. That's great.

So he said that reminded him that baseball could be played just for fun. Although I guess maybe it wasn't as fun for adult reckling people who were just being blown away by Michael Peterson. Anyway, Michael Peterson, Yelber Diaz and Daniel Robert, welcome to the major leagues. Welcome. Also, I think I said the Shelby Country Reporter and it's the Shelby County Reporter. It is Alabama's best community newspaper according to the Shelby County Reporter. So is Alabama's best community newspaper, according to the Shelby County Reporter. So, gotta give it its due. My apologies to the staff at the Shelby County Reporter. Thank you for your help in letting us get to know Dana Roberts.

All right. Well, big news after we finished recording. It sounds like Rich Hill is closing in on a free agent contract with, you'll never believe it, the Boston Red Sox. Former Effectively Wild Guest podcast icon, 44 years young Rich Hill seems to be returning to his hometown team yet again. On the one hand, it's a little disappointing that he won't be checking yet another team off of his big league bingo card. On the other hand, how can you begrudge Rich Hill returning to the Red Sox? You can go home again and again and again and again and again. There's no more storied tradition in the sport than Rich Hill signing as a free agent with this team. As we determined on a stat blast on episode 1780, Rich Hill has signed 7 free agent contracts

with the Red Sox already, this will be his 8th, and 7 was already the record. For most free agent contracts signed by one player with one team, Rich Hill surpassed Andy Pettit, 6, with the Yankees. This will be his fifth time being acquired by the Red Sox, after being with some other organization in between. That is not quite a record, as we determined on episode 1780. The record is Scott Serviss, the pitcher, not the current Mariners manager, S-E-R-V-I-C-E, who was acquired by his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds, six times. I was asked on the Red Sox podcast off the pike some time ago what the Red Sox could do to shore up their pitching. I joked. Rich Hill, free agent, he's available. And hey, it happened.

I think I said it on Effectively Wild that they got James Paxton, who's kind of the off-brand Rich Hill. And then James Paxton got hurt as he is wont to do. And here comes Dick Mountain riding to the rescue. He'll start at AAA Worcester, where he'll be teammates with Roman Anthony, who had not yet reached his first birthday when Rich Hill made his major league debut. Can't wait to re-meet the oldest of all active major leaguers when he makes his 2024 MLB debut.

Couple other things, the Giants provided a study in contrasting tactics earlier this week, where on both Monday and Tuesday, they faced almost identical situations, down by one run in the 10th, facing Atlanta closer, Rice-El-Glacius. And they took two different tacks.

On Monday, Michael Conforto was the zombie runner, Mike Yastremski was up, manager Bob Melvin did not order a bunt. Yastremski has some bunting experience and some speed. Melvin said he felt good about Yastremski's chances to pull the ball against a righty. Didn't work. Jastremski struck out. The Giants didn't score. They lost one to nothing. On Tuesday, it's Groundhog Day. They're running it back, except that the score is

four to three now with the Giants down in the 10th. Tyler Fitzgerald is up, who, as we've noted, has been the best hitter on the Giants this season. Surprisingly, he had hit a home run earlier in the game, his 15th in his first 59 games with the Giants, something done only by Willie Mays previously. this season surprisingly he had hit a home run earlier in the game his 15th in his first 59 games with the Giants something done only by Willie Mays previously so you've got your hottest hitter what do you do well letting your stremski swing away didn't work so this time Melvin says lay one down he tells Tyler Fitzgerald to bunt we're trying to get a guy over to third Melvin said trying to get it down the third baseline with Lamont Wade jr up next the guy's a tough

customer the glacius that is to string hits together against. And what happens? Fitzgerald gets the bunt down right in front of the plate, catcher whips it to third, where the runner is easily tagged out. However, Fitzgerald is then seemingly erroneously called out on batter's interference, so the runner goes back to second, but there's one out now, the Giants again don't score, and once more, they lose. I didn't get the bunt down, Fitzgerald said, it's kind of my loss. I have to be able to get a bunt down, I'm a rookie, I've known I'm going to be in that spot the whole year, I just wasn't able to get it down, I kinda deadened it way too much, I practiced it a

lot, I was ready for that moment, but I just deadened it way too much. Earlier in the game, Michael Conforto had come up with two on and no out, and the Braves up by a run in the eighth. Melvin let him swing away, he hit into a double, Michael Conforto had come up with 2 on and no out, and the Braves up by a run in the 8th. Melvin let him swing away, he hit into a double play. Conforto doesn't have a successful sackbunt in his career, but maybe Melvin saw those situations and said, let's try something different. But he came in for criticism, having his best hitter try to bunt a runner over in that situation. Seemed to speak to perhaps some pressing, a manifestation of the Giants struggles with

situational hitting. So I got curious, how anomalous a move was that? Because I know that Sacrifice Buds are up in extra innings thanks to the Zombie Runner. So which was weirder, letting Yastremski swing away on Monday, or telling Tyler Fitzgerald to bunt on Tuesday? And which has worked better in the past? Well, with some help from the StatHead event finder and Kenny Jaclyn at Baseball Reference, I found all the situations like this one since the Zombie Runner scourge began in 2020. No outs, runner on second, in an extra inning, batting team down by a run.

There have been 364 such situations including these two Giants instances. In only 33 of them, 9.1% was a sacrifice bunt attempt made. So 331 times, no sack bunt attempt, 33 times, including Fitzgerald, sack bunt attempt. Which went better? Well, in the cases where the batter was allowed to swing away, those teams averaged.93 runs in the inning and went 142 and 189. That's a 429 winning percentage. And in the 33 cases where the batter laid one down, the team playing for a tie,.97 runs scored in the inning, higher than the.93, and the team's record, 14 and 19, which is a 424 winning percentage compared to 429. Technically lower, but not

meaningfully lower. Small simple. Roughly the same number of runs scored, so inconclusive. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference. And if you go by Tom Tango's run expectancy tables for 2010 through 2023 Well with no outs and a runner on second you're expected to score 1.13 runs in the inning with one out and a runner on third you're expected to score only 0.97 however If you look at not just the average number of runs scored but the chance of scoring at all and in this case in the Bottom of an extra inning down by one run you have to to score to extend the game. With no outs and a runner on second, your chance of scoring 61.2%, with one out and a runner on third, 66.3%. So you slightly reduce your chance of a big inning,

but you slightly increase your odds of scoring. Going just by that, one would say that the bunt was perhaps defensible, except maybe for the fact that Tyler Fitzgerald was hitting, and you don't want to take the bat out of your best hitter's hands. Now you know the numbers. Also two episodes ago we talked about the last lingering remnants of the 2019 Nationals on the 2024 Nationals, Patrick Corbin and Tanner Rainey. I mentioned that maybe it's nice to have some reminders of the championship, even though those players haven't pitched well. Well we got an email from listener Clara, who says, I'm a Nationals fan

and there is never ever anything even close to resembling a good feeling about being subjected to seeing Patrick Corbin pitch. So I said, noted, how about Tanner Rainey? Clara said, less of an opinion on him, because like you all said in the episode, he's never really in a situation to ruin a game. Whereas Corbin comes out first inning and ruins it.

Yeah I can see how that might make one less sentimental. Also in that episode we talked about the heckle directed at Jaren Duran that elicited a homophobic slur, a fan saying tennis racket tennis racket you need a tennis racket. We talked about whether a tennis racket would actually help a hitter. Maybe it might help him make more contact, but would it be good contact? What we didn't note is that that's a very unoriginal heckle. Patreon supporter Doug wrote in to say, having seen the sandlot dozens of times, I knew the tennis racket heckle was familiar.

Yes, here's a clip from the Sandlot. You call that pitching? He's in baseball. Not tennis. Give him a tennis racket. Patreon supporter Dennis pointed out that the tennis racket heckle also appears in Space Jam courtesy of Jim Rome, who's heard on a TV talking about Michael Jordan's baseball career. Today he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts. Is this the only thing on TV? That brings his batting average down to an anemic 2-14, which also happens to be his playing way. Baseball bat. And I discovered that the tennis racket heckle also appears in the decidedly less classic baseball movie from 2006, The Benchwarmers.

Here's that clip. Unless you think this taunt was the creation of 1990s sports movies, no, it goes way back. I popped this phrase into newspapers.com. I didn't do an exhaustive search, but I did determine that it goes back at least as far as 1955 to an April 30th account of a Phillies Braves game, and I quote, the roof fell in on Spahn in the fifth. Earl Torgerson, who usually needs a tennis racket to hit spawn club to Double against the right field wall to open now that seems unfair to Torgerson who in 37 career plate appearances against Warren spawn hit

313 405 406 that's an 812 OPS left on left against the Hall of Famer But that does go to show that the tennis racket tip dates back at least 70 years or so So I was arguing that the heckle got too much credit based on whether it was actually good advice. Now I think the heckle got too much credit for being clever or original when it wasn't at all. Which might make it all the more unbelievable that that was what sent Jerand Duran over the edge. Perhaps he's never seen the Sandlot. And finally, it's been a while since we've had a Taylor Ward-Tyler mix-up by a broadcaster, or maybe it hasn't been a while, but it's just that no one is watching or listening to Angels

Games and reporting those mix-ups to us. But we got one on Wednesday, courtesy of listener Robert, who heard this slip-up by Angels broadcaster Mark Gubiza on his birthday. Happy birthday, Gubi, with Tyler Anderson on the mound and Taylor Ward in the outfield. A Tyler and a Taylor on the field at the same time, you know that's a recipe for confusion. when it's put in play, and that was it pretty hard. Nice play by Taylor Ward, helping out Tyler Anderson on that fly ball to left center field. Credit to Gooby for catching himself before it was too late. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Thanks to you for listening. That'll do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. If that did you why If that did you why