Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2206: By the Skenes of His Teeth

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether the custom-painted bats featured during Players’ Weekend should be usable all season, Alex Verdugo’s batting-glove allergy, Rich Hill’s predictable-yet-curious choice of team, where the Rookie of the Year races stand, how the Pirates should handle Paul Skenes down the stretch, the magnitude of the Skenes Day attendance […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2206 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. I know that you were traveling over the weekend, so I don't know how much of Player's Weekend you got to take in. But I got to say, after watching Player's Weekend, I kind of think the custom bats should be permanent. I kind of think we should have the custom bats all the time. Why are we depriving ourselves

of the colorful custom bats most of the year? Sure, yeah. You don't find them distracting at all, your game for- I don't, yeah. Distracting in a good way, maybe, where I notice them and think, oh, that looks cool. That's personalized and individual

and injects some personality into the game. I like it. We've seen this before, these airbrushed bats, I think a company called Victus Sports makes most of all of them, but they've been used before at special events. I guess this was a special event, but exhibitions, home run derbies, that sort of thing. And so this year they were used for at least the first day of players' weekend.

There was like a different designation for each day in the weekend. And Friday was the day for fun, which you'd think all the days would be for fun, hopefully, ideally, but one was for charitable causes. So the day for fun specifically was the one where everyone got to show off their custom bats and there were a lot of really cool and clever ones. I mean, Bobby Wood Jr. was using a Pablo Sanchez bat, well timed for the apparent return of backyard baseball and backyard sports games. And there are a lot of crayon and pencil themed bats, and some superhero ones and just really interesting color themes. And I don't know, I guess maybe they would be boring if we had them all the time. And maybe part of why I thought they were so cool

is that it's just one weekend a year, one game a year. Like we have the custom cleats this season and they've expanded that. And I don't notice those as much. I don't mind them. I welcome them. I'm not really a hype beast, not really a shoe guy. I don't know if I'm blowing anyone's minds there. I think the way you just said hype beast probably betrays that

for you, Ben. Probably, yes. I'm not really a street wear maven. I'm the sort of person who acquires one pair of shoes and wears them for about a decade until they fall apart around me. So I feel like I don't notice those as much. And past Player's Weekends, we've had custom batting gloves and wristbands and that sort of thing. I'm fine with all of that, but the bats are just much more noticeable, which could be considered a downside for some, I suppose, but I really like them. Why not? I think it's nice. I mean, I tend to be of the mind that we should just try some stuff and see what if it resonates. I liked the nickname jerseys. I didn't love the aesthetic of those jerseys, but the concept of

the nickname, I think if you had taken the nickname and put it on a real jersey, that that would have been good. So, you know, like have a little trial and error and see like what resonates with folks. Yeah. This was the first players weekend in I think five years and right. They didn't have the nicknames on the back anymore. They had kind of custom caps with numbers on them, not nearly as good, but the bats, I really like the bats. Maybe for some people, they would seem sort of gaudy or yeah, distracting in a bad way, I guess, or you want a uniform to be uniform. You want the equipment to be standardized, but I always think it's cool when people have custom equipment.

These days, bats don't really stand out that much. The sizes of them are fairly uniform and the colors and the shapes and everything, and there are only so many materials you can use. Because it used to be that there was a little more variation and you can maybe summon Barry Bonds' bat to your mind's eye, let's say, right? Or, you know, the black bats. I mean, there's a little bit of a different look there and I kind of like that. I like when people have implements tools of their trade that stand out. We talked about this, I think, on a Patreon bonus pod

where I was talking about my affection for guitars that certain musicians have, you know? Like Willie Nelson's Trigger or Neil Young's Old Black. Like you can recognize these models or they have names. I love that. So if we could have that for bats, it's kind of like the natural wonder boy sort of thing. And some of these color schemes and designs are mass produced and others are just painstakingly painted

on there and it takes like several hours to do so. I don't know what the bandwidth of that bat company is and whether they could actually meet the demand of having this all season long and you know, the bats break less than they used to, but occasionally they break and there might be wear and tear and you'd got to get a touch up on your paint job on your bat. Right. But I just, I like it. And I saw a lot of people say like, well, this could be what interests kids and youths and this could, and yeah,

I think there's something to that. I don't think if suddenly everyone was using pencil bats, then suddenly the kids would just be flocking to baseball. I think it might take more than that, but it wouldn't hurt, right? To have a little swag and something you could kind of collect and emulate. Especially these days when we talk about maybe a standardization of mechanics and batting stances and deliveries. And it's hard to quantify that, but it does seem like there's a little less variation now that we've kind of optimized those things and you're less likely maybe to either emulate some weird batting stance because you can watch every player on every team all the time if you want to or maybe just instruction and development

has gotten better and maybe more rigid and more efficient right and so you're not gonna see so many outliers from sort of a mechanical perspective and if if that's the case, then we could really use some distinctiveness, I'd say. I think that that's right. I do find the idea of players weekend fundamentally strange, like as a notion, because this isn't like that every day. Yeah. Why not? Just players season, players year all the time. But I think having an opportunity to showcase, you to showcase a personality or a cause, it means a lot to you. It's always a good thing, even if sometimes the exact implementation of it is a little

bit silly or gaudy. I was surprised by how many of them were not just youthful, but actually childlike, the bats. That was a little surprising to me. But I think that anytime you can remind people like, hey, this is a specific particular person who you are enjoying watching baseball and we should prioritize that person in how we think about the game rather than it just being laundry. I think that's valuable. Yeah. I guess some of it could border on SponCon. Like you have Jackson Merrill with a glow in the dark lightsaber bat,

which, hey, I'm a Star Wars guy. I get it. But do you want more kind of brand advertising when we already have a lot of that? So much. Too much. More and more ad creep and patches. And so if that then goes onto the bats and probably you'd have some controversy, there would be like players promoting causes on their bat. And then that would lead to bat lash, backlash, backlash, and then maybe there'd be rules and there'd be crackdowns on what you can promote on your bat and then there'd be a backlash to the bat lash and that would just be, it would lead to some controversy.

Maybe, again, maybe that could do some good or maybe not, I guess, depending on players' proclivities and the causes they might be inclined to support. So maybe- Could be fun, could be bad, who could say? Could be Pandora's bat that we'd be opening up there potentially. And maybe this would be a monkey's paw situation and I would rue what I'm saying right now. But on the whole, I enjoyed it and I think I'd like a little more of it. I do want us to really take a moment to appreciate how good bat lash is. Thank you.

Because I don't want to move on from that too quick and have you feel like that turn of phrase didn't get the recognition it deserves. Thanks. Batlash. I was trying to think if that's some tool on Batman's utility belt. He's got the Batarang. I don't think he has a Batlash. Have you watched the new animated?

I have not yet, but I've heard great things. It's really good. Oh my gosh, I've seen something you haven't. Wow. Jot down the date. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's a very well done homage, but it has components that are new and interesting. I think they threaded the needle on it really nicely.

Caped Crusader for anyone who's wondering. Yeah, that's right. Kind of a throwback to the animated series, Same Creator, et cetera. Yeah, it's great. So one person who might not be enjoying custom batting gloves or who I guess maybe now will require them. And I don't know whether you saw this story as you were Chris Kousing the country, but apparently Alex Verdugo is allergic to his batting gloves. I look, sometimes you're traveling, you're busy, you're seeing family, you're seeing

friends, you're grappling with the reality of it being your 20th high school reunion. And you see a note come across the transom and you were like, if I look into this for one minute, I'm going to be looking into this for the next several hours. And so you simply have to close out of Twitter and go, you know, that's going to be a thing that Ben tells me about on the podcast. So, so are they, I have so many questions, Ben, are you prepared for a battery of questions? Can I like- I don't know that I have all the answers, but I'll do my best. So he is allergic to, well, first of all, let me back up.

Are these new batting gloves? Is this like a change that he made or has he been like, you know, the villain in a Victorian novel slowly poisoning himself for years? Yes, the latter. Korean novel slowly poisoning himself for years. Yes, the latter. And that's the most confounding aspect to this. This is not new. You'd think that if he had an allergic reaction

to his batting gloves, he would quickly rectify that situation and say, hey, what's going on here with my hands? Maybe it's the batting gloves. But apparently this has been happening for years. So he's had an allergic reaction to his batting gloves since 2021 apparently. So this was a story by Randy Miller for nj.com.

And here's the quote from Verdugo, my hands hurt, they blister, then it opens and starts scabbing. It's like super dry skin. I've been dealing with this since they started barking in 21. 2021. Okay. Okay.

Wow. Okay. So I have more questions. So it isn't just that he felt a little off. He was getting like a visible, seemingly painful dermatological reaction to this. Did he seek treatment? Did he like go, hey, it's weird that my hands are blistering all the time?

Great question. Here's a quote, Verdugo used the mid-season break to decompress over the All-Star break, but there was another reason he stayed in New York, a doctor's appointment. After three seasons of sores and pain in his hands and fingers, Verdugo was tired of constantly wrapping his palms with gauze and knuckles with medical tape. Oh my God.

Yeah. Three seasons this has been going on. Okay. So I now have more questions. Wow. Wow. First of all, didn't think I was going to be thinking about sores today, so I have regrets. I have questions about his reluctance to proactively address this with a doctor sooner.

And like, look, I know that navigating the American healthcare system can be a living nightmare and that it is hard to find the care that one needs. But one of the great things about being a pro athlete is that that is at least marginally easier. So Alex, what the, you know, my guy, like there's this stereotype about young men either thinking they're invincible and so never seeing a doctor or ignoring obvious problems with their health and then never seeing a doctor. And I don't want to be a centralist about these things, but he's not helping dispel

that stereotype even a little bit. Also, if he's having to wrap his hands, where are the various trainers that he has interacted with at any point in the last couple of years? You would imagine you'd see, and I know that guys have to like, sometimes they have to tape their wrists. Sometimes they have to put a brace on their knee. They have to do a thing on their elbow. But also, they're often doing that under the specific

guidance of the training staff that they are working with because like maybe they tweaked a knee, maybe they, you know, their little wristies are hurt. Maybe they got a finger thing they got to do. No one was like, Hey buddy, what's up with the blisters and gauze, my guy. Yeah, I know. It reads like you read about Mickey Mantle late in his career, wrapping up and taping his knees to lumber out there. This is his hands, just because his hands are like suppurating, blistering, just oozing. And when he's batting and he has the bleeding blisters on his hands. They're concealed by gauze in the batting gloves. But then when he's out in the field, one of the hands hanging out.

Yeah. I don't know how visible this was. And I guess we can't chalk this up to Yankees medical staff inattentiveness. This is not necessarily Anthony Rizzo Redux playing with post-concussion syndromes, but this was, I mean, he was with the Red Sox the last couple of years, right? So this was a multi-team affair here. And I don't know if it intensified and worsened, and that's why he finally sought help or whether it's just the fact that he's not hitting. Now, I guess the timeline, if you want to be encouraged as a Yankees fan about Alex Verdugo, well, 2021 is when he kind of took a step back offensively, right? 2019, his age 23 season, 112 WRC+, then 2020, shortened season, but career year, 125 WRC+, and then he stagnated as a

player and he's been an average hitter roughly the last couple of years and then significantly worse than that this year. So maybe that's what finally caused him to seek help. Now he says that he doesn't think his statistics are caused by the fact that his hands are dry and blistering and cracking, but you know, you hold your bet with those hands. And I would think that that might potentially affect you. So it says, after examining Verdugo, the Yankees medical team sent him to an allergist. They believed he was coming in contact

with a material that was causing dermatitis, a skin condition that can produce rashes, itching and blisters. You're allergic to your batting gloves, the doctor said. Verdugo was flabbergasted. Batting gloves? Yeah, Verdugo responded, revealing that his allergic reactions were traced to two chemicals in his Franklin batting gloves, cobalt and chromate.

Chromate is used in curing the leather and cobalt is found in the color dyes. Okay. So I have additional questions. So I don't mean to like impugn the skill or integrity of various medical professionals here, but I kind of do a little bit because another thing that happened in the midst of all of this, now he probably wasn't wearing the batting gloves, but like he was traded. He had to undergo a physical as part of being traded. At no point during that was he like, hey, by the way, this shouldn't impact the trade at all, but I've been getting blisters on my hands for the last three years.

Is that weird? The other thing is, and again, I don't want to make Alex Rodriguez feel bad, but I do have some questions about the pattern recognition skill from Alex Rodriguez, because presumably at some point during the off season, he takes a break. Now I'm sure he's doing work over the off season trying to impugn his work ethic, but there is probably at least a stretch where he is not in the cage, right? Because you need to rest, you need to recuperate, you need to rebuild your body. Did he not go? No batting gloves, no blisties. Batting gloves,

blisties back. You think he calls them Blisties? I hope not. An affectionate term of endearment for his losing hands. So he was traded in December and maybe that's why it wasn't flagged in the physical. Maybe by then the Blisties had receded because you take some time off after the season. But yes, he would think that would have occurred to him and maybe he would have thought, well, it was just the work, not the batting gloves specifically.

So he thought that maybe he saw this happen and knows that, and this is a reasonable thing to think if you're not a doctor, which I am not. Do you think he maybe thought he was getting blisters because of the friction and rotation of- Maybe. The act of batting rather than anything contact related? That might make sense because I haven't heard of batting glove allergies. But also you haven't heard of a guy who is a full-time big leaguer continuing to get blisters like that from hitting.

I mean, like I know pitchers get blisters because like you rub in the seam and it does the thing, but like once you've also, do you have to break in batting gloves? I guess so to some extent, maybe not like a fielding glove, I don't think, but it's rare. Franklin makes his batting gloves, the company, and says they weren't aware of this happening to anyone else they're looking into. Can they change the manufacturing process or get him some kind of custom gloves here that aren't made with these chemicals? Apparently only 2% of the population is allergic to cobalt, 6% is allergic to chromate.

So whichever it is, it's quite rare. And apparently not that rare though, because evidently the Yankees top prospect, Jason Dominguez, who uses Nike batting gloves has told Verdugo he's had a similar reaction. Okay. I'm back to being worried about men. You guys. And Dabig has talked to Ben Rice, Yankees First baseman about chronic handsore-ness when those two were in AA last season. Again, hands are pretty important if you're a hitter.

You know what? They're also useful in fielding. I don't know. Yeah, that too. Throwing. Again, I don't want to be an essentialist about these things. There are a lot of ways to be all kinds of people, but you guys, go to the doctor though. Go to the doctor when stuff is wrong.

Again, I have spent the last several months trying to wind my way through a ridiculously complicated, for no effing reason situation, trying to get my stupid little back figured out. Okay? So I get it. It takes time. It takes resources. But also you're a big leaguer and you're attached to the negative call. What is happening?

Yeah. That's the thing, right? You think about professional athletes. They're like, everything is optimized and they're trying to improve and you know, a 2% improvement and everything helps in any edge you can gain. And meanwhile, this guy's hands have been sore and blistering for three years. And finally, he's just like, maybe I should see someone about this. It just makes you wonder. And the author of this article got some second opinions

or second and third opinions from other doctors and just asked them for what they thought. And they said, yeah, it could be the batting gloves, but also possibly it could be his tattoos because he's got multiple tattoos and sometimes people have tattoo allergies. He's got a bunch of tattoos on his chest and arms. And sometimes the tattoos are made of metal ink and you can get a tattoo

allergy to the metal. And then evidently maybe the batting gloves and the tattoos could be interacting. And if you're an athlete and it's hot and it's the summer and you're sweating and all these things are coming into contact, it could be some combination of the batting gloves and the tattoos. And so evidently he's looking into getting some sort of shot that you can get to combat the tattoo allergies too. So just a bunch of stuff going on here, but it certainly seems like the batting clubs are involved and it is on his hands.

And yeah, you would just think that at some point it would have dawned on the guy, like my hands hurt, I need my hands. You know? And again, like I also want to be mindful of the fact that other people's relationship to this stuff might be less prone to catastrophizing than mine. Yes. But like for several years, at that point it's like, hey, Alex, what are you doing here, bud?

Come on. Because I wake up feeling lousy one day and I'm like, well, I have cancer clearly. And that's not a great balance either. But recurring blisters, there's just no situation where that's a good thing. You know what I mean? There are situations where it's a less alarming thing. And like of all the things that could have been, it sounds like this is among the least potentially harmful over the long term, right?

Like you can treat contact dermatitis, you can get different batting gloves, like apparently you can get a shot to deal with tattoo allergies. Science is amazing, Ben. Like what an incredible, I incredible source, you know? I remember one time when I was a little kid, I tend to react in a very big way to mosquito bites. I'm pretty allergic and they love me. So it's a terrible combination. And I remember one time going camping as a little kid and I reacted so badly to a bunch of mosquito bites that I blistered. And they were on my hands because, you know, your hands are sticking out of your clothes

and my feet. And I looked like I had contracted a medieval disease of some kind or maybe one that you get from swimming in a river. And it was incredibly painful. I did get homemade donuts though as like, yeah, my aunt makes donuts when the family goes camping and I got extras because I was so pathetic. But again, I was like crying, complaining, definitely leveraging it for donuts. So like missed opportunity, I think Verdugo could have leveraged this for donuts. So like Miss Opportunity in Verdugo could have leveraged this for donuts.

Didn't think of that, did you? What a weird story of all. And also what is it with guys either currently or formally associated with the Yankees and like sores? What's up with that? What's up with, and tattoos. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes? Yes. What's going on? Yeah, it's not just a rolled as Chapman for Duke O2. Yeah. I mean, minor ailments, if you're not someone whose performance necessarily needs to be optimized at all times. Now, if it's a minor thing, maybe you put it out of your mind for a while

if it doesn't seem to be something serious. Like for the last couple of weeks, I've had this weird thing where I have sort of numbness in my left pinky finger and half of my ring finger, which I've Googled, you know, you Google these things. Yeah, that's a mistake. Sometimes it is because of course there's a range of causes, right? From very minor to, oh, this is super serious. It's always

possibly cancer, right? Somewhere on the list, right? But I think it seems to be a textbook case of compression neuropathy, which is basically when you put pressure on a nerve for a while and the nerve acts up a little. And so I've got this like slight numbness and tingling, you know, kind of, kind of like when some part of you, some appendage falls asleep, it feels a little like that. And it's just in like two fingers. It doesn't affect my grip strength or anything. I'm able to type, I'm able to do everything. It's just this minor inconvenience, I guess. And I think it comes from if you compress your ulnar nerve, which is in the inside of your elbow. And sometimes one cause of this can be pitching.

That is not what caused this for me. But sometimes you hear about ulnar nerve issues with pitchers and they've got tingling or some loss of feeling or something. And that can come from this. I think in my case, it was because I was writing in the bathtub. My job could be hazardous. And occasionally I've mentioned this, I don't know if I've mentioned this on Maine before, but I've definitely mentioned this on the Patreon pods where you get the juicy details, but sometimes I will write in the bathtub and I've got a nice little tray set up there so I can put my laptop. I've managed not to electrocute myself, though I have dunked my phone more than a few times over the years, but it's fine. And it's a comfortable little place and it's soothing.

comfortable little place and it's soothing. And the only issue, I guess, is that resting my elbow on the side of the bathtub, right, maybe I compressed the ulnar nerve. And so I've taken a little break from bathtub writing. You know, I have the Dalton Trumbo setup, right, where fewer papers and like, you know, bottles of hard liquor, but the same sort of situation. And so I think resting my elbow on the side of the bathtub probably put pressure on my ulnar nerve. So I'm waiting for this to go away. Now, if it persists for a while longer, maybe I'll see someone about it. It doesn't really seem like there's that much you can do. You kind of just wait. And then if it doesn't go away for a really long time, you might have to have surgery or something. But again, I'm not really impaired in any way by this slight numbness.

But if I were an athlete, if I were a major leaguer and a hitter and I had to grip a bat and wear a glove and throw a ball and it actually mattered that I performed to my peak utmost capacities at all times. And if I like was a member of a very powerful union and you know, had trainers and people at my beck and call basically, I probably would have said to someone, hey, I've got some slight numbness in my pinky here. And that isn't even bothering me really. Whereas this three years of chronic hand pain and soreness, it just makes you wonder.

And look, athletes have to be tough to some extent. I mean, they have to have high pain tolerance and grit through things. Now, sometimes they grit through things that they shouldn't, and they hurt themselves worse, or they should talk to someone because it's making them worse. If it turns out that Alex Verdugo comes back from this and his hands don't hurt and suddenly he goes back to hitting, you know, I kind of doubt it will turn out that this was the only issue with his offense. But, but if it did, what if he went back to being above average hitter again? Wouldn't he feel silly that he waited three years to see someone about this?

Right. And I just, and again, I don't want to keep picking on the guy, except that I'm going to keep picking on the guy. It also gives me a tremendous amount of sympathy for how difficult a job player evaluation is because you think, you know, right? You think, you know, what's going on with a guy. You know that that guy's pitches aren't good because they don't spin enough. You know that that guy's pitch is bad or is good because of its approach angle. You can see how much barrel variability this hitter has. Really makes it sing. You can

see how groove that guy's swing is. And then sometimes he has an allergic reaction for three years and doesn't see anybody about it. And again, I tend to agree with you. My instinct is that like, sure, I'm sure being pain-free, having an answer, not having to do all this weirdness, not having the obstruction of gauze and what have you, like will that have some marginal positive impact on his performance? I mean, probably, like stands to reason that it would. If he goes from what he is now to being like a 140 WRC plus hitter, I tell you what, man, I'm going to, I would, I would have guessed that your injury was like

gaming related, right? Yeah, you think, right. I had the Joel Zumaia too much guitar hero, carpet tunnel sort of situation. Yeah. Yeah. You have to stop writing in the bathtub. I had to buy a standing desk or just falling down all around ourselves. But. So someone who can give us some hope about physical durability at advanced athlete ages is a former Red Sox teammate of Alex Verdugo's Rich Hill.

Yes. I mentioned in the outro last episode because the news broke that he was signing with the Red Sox. Just one other point though, now that we know that that's official, he's going to Worcester, he is going to make a start or two, presumably, and then he'll be back with the big club yet again. I didn't even attempt to do the Worcester. I'm sorry, I don't want to offend

anyone's New England heritage, but there's nothing more timeless and special than the romance between Rich Hill and the Red Sox. And as I've mentioned, he's signed with them as a free agent, a record number of times that anyone has ever signed with one team. And this is his fifth time, his fifth separate stint, I believe, with the Red Sox being acquired by this organization with some other organization in between, which is not quite a record, but is close, one short of Scott Service and the Reds, not the Mariners manager, but the other Scott Service. The other Scott Service.

Yeah, as determined on a staff blast on episode 1780. The thing is though, I get why the Red Sox would be comfortable bringing back Rich Hill and why Rich Hill would be comfortable going back to the Red Sox. Wouldn't you think though, if you were going to come back for just a partial season like this, that you would want to pick a team that has a better shot at making the playoffs and having a deep playoff run. Cause I don't think that's the sole thing that motivates Rich Hill to keep coming back just to win a ring. No, like he just likes to pitch and likes to stay active and he's pitched in a couple of world series, but he's never won one. And even apart from that, you'd think you'd just want to maximize your time pitching because like, you know, he, he had to work himself back up to this.

And having taken half a season off, I'd imagine that the ramp up probably wasn't totally easy, right? At that age, you know, it's kind of like a use it, you lose it. And he says he feels good and he looked good at the workout and he seemingly had interest from multiple teams. And of course I was kind of hoping he would pitch for an organization he's never pitched before and check off another club on the bingo card. But you'd think that given that it's already late August, you know, like

you're looking at maybe a month of pitching and then it's over, right? Your comeback is over right after it begins. Cause the Red Sox right now, they are seven and a half back in the AL East. They are four and a half out of a playoff spot. They're the closest team to the third wild card that is not in possession of it, but four and a half back, that's a pretty significant margin there. And playoff odds-wise at Fangraphs, I mean, they're distinct underdogs here. Fangraphs has them 28.6% chance to make the playoffs and maybe Rich Hill wants to earn it and he wants to pitch his hometown team

back to the playoffs and that would make it more special for him. But it just seems like the whole ramp up, he'll have to shut it down so quickly, right? In such short order if his season ends in late September. I'm just sort of, because one of the virtues of waiting till this point in the season is that you get to pick your spot, right? Like, you know, you get to go where you're most needed. Some team that is shorthanded and needs a Rich Hill like the Red Sox, but also you get to kind of call your shot. It's like, hey, I don't have to deal with the uncertainty of, I don't know how this team's going to do. And maybe it'll end up being bad. Now you know, and you can choose where you want to go. So just based on that,

I'm sort of surprised that he wouldn't go for the certainty of being able to pitch potentially in October, if not deep into that month. I mean, maybe the familiarity of it is more comfortable. Maybe his perception of where the team is at is different than the odds would suggest, which I don't, you know, maybe, maybe he's excited by the prospect, even though it's not like he has, you know, so many more innings on his arm, but maybe he wants to get to know that coaching staff, you know, and see what they can do. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that when Rich Hill retires, that he has interest in maybe pursuing coaching himself. So maybe this is being viewed by

him as sort of a bridge to future aspirations. Maybe it had something to do with that. I can't believe that he didn't prioritize another team so that we could talk about it though as a former guest. it feels kind of rude. Yeah. Well, maybe we can have him back on in the off season and talk about his decision, but yeah, he's 44. Craig Breslow who runs the Red Sox front office is also 44. That's great.

Yeah. Richell is older than Craig Breslau. Yeah. Richell was born in March of 1980. Craig Breslau was born in August of 1980. So yeah, I don't know if he wants to transition to coaching. I mean, you know, he took most of the season off so he could coach his kids a little league. Maybe that he has the bug for coaching or maybe he just, he's a family man, wants to spend time around the fam. But I guess, yeah, tough transition to the Red Sox front office if the guy who's

running the show over there is younger than Rich Hill is. But yes, I wish him well and hope to see him with the big club soon. It's great to have him back wherever he goes. I am just excited that we get like one more go-around and it always feels good when there are people older than me in the league, you know. That's like an important... Considerably older in his case. Yeah, psychic bomb. That does something for me. Yeah, I hope it goes well so that he will want to do it again and so that other teams will encourage him to do it again, right? Because it's less of a psychological load if you're just like, yeah, I'll pitch a month.

This isn't even like the Roger Clemens, like he's missing more of this season than Clemens did when he pitched partial seasons or a season, right? I mean, this has taken it easy, like coming back here for just the stretch run, right? Like Roger Cummins in his final season pitched 99 innings in the regular season and then 2006, his penultimate season, 113 innings. Rich Hill's going to get like a handful of starts here, right? So this is, this is a light load. So if he handles it well, then he could do this indefinitely. I just, I wonder whether it's worth the effort for this payoff.

Well, maybe that lends further credence to the idea that one, he's not quite done and two, thanks that like, hey, if I want to keep doing this for however long I can in whatever, you know, with whatever amount of workload I'm capable of, maybe he feels good about like the direction that Red Sox pitching dev is going. And I was like, maybe those guys have some answers for me. And I already feel comfortable here. Although I do wonder how comfortable does he feel, right? Because you know, we've sort of been counting on some familiarity and obviously there's

still plenty of people who are holdovers from the last time he was with the organization. It's not like it was a complete cleaning of house, but there are a lot of new folks hanging out in Boston now. So hanging out, hanging out. They're working very hard. They're not hanging out. They're not in hammocks.

How do you feel about hammocks, Ben? I love hammocks. I'm you feel about hammocks, Ben? I love hammocks. I'm a big hammock man. Really? I have a hard time getting situated in a hammock. I always feel like I'm going to fall out. I'm never particularly comfortable in a hammock. It might be related to my back being bad.

That might be, yes. Those things could sink up. And also, I don't have great balance. It was humbling to get my physical therapy assessment and for him to go, hmm. I was like, oh, that's never the sound you want to hear. You never want to hear. Hmm. Jesse gave me a gift of a portable hammock, just one of those that you can kind of string

up and connect to trees. So we could take it over to Central Park or Riverside Park and you can just find a couple well positioned trees and have yourself a hammock. It's really nice. I love the idea of a hammock. I'm into the idea of a hammock, but then you're like, you're trying to read and it's like, where does your beverage go? You know, if you want a glass of water, you're like- Yeah. Hammocks with cup holders would be great. I don't know if they have those, but there'd

be some slashing going on. You're never going to look pulled together getting out of a hammock. That's true. It's hard to exit gracefully. No, yeah, there's no graceful exit. One of my childhood dreams was to have a hammock in my bedroom. And I remember drawing up a little blueprint where like on the windowsill, I would have a hammock just by the window. And that dream never came to fruition. It never came true. But I'm an adult now. I'm a grownup. I could have a hammock just by the window. And that dream never came to fruition. It never came true.

But I'm an adult now. I'm a grownup. I could have a hammock in my window sill now if I wanted to. So I should look into that. You should look into that. The standing desk I bought, one of the accessories you can buy is an under desk hammock. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. You say that, but I've seen- Like a George Costanza take a nap under your desk sort of- Yes, but I've seen pictures of it in action and they are like, here's a person in the

hammock, here's a dog in the hammock. And I'm like, that's the same hammock. And you're making me think that the person and the dog can both fit comfortably, but I am confident that if that lady stood up, she'd be bigger than the dog. So what's this hammock fraud you're engaged in? It's a hammock fraud. I have a 10 pound dachshund, so I think we could fit comfortably together in a hammock and I'm sure she would love that.

I think she would. So let's talk about the opposite of Rich Hill, the furthest thing from Rich Hill, which is rookies, youngins. So let's talk about the NL rookie of the year race for a second, because it's been a minute since we checked in on that. And then maybe we can segue to Paul Skeens and the conversation around a Skeens shutdown and if and when that will happen and what impact that might have on the rookie of the year race and also on Skeens' service time. So the rookie of the Year race right now in the NL is pretty interesting because you have

Shota Imanaga, right, who is eligible, although he is obviously an international veteran and he is currently topping the FanGraphs war-based war pitching leaderboard for NL rookies, but by a 10th of a win over Paul Skeens. Yes, who will likely overtake him if he continues to pitch. He's like almost 40 innings, 35 innings short of Imanaga. And then on the position player side, you have Jackson Merrill, whom we've talked about recently when we did our check-in on the Jackson Trio. And you also have Tyler Fitzgerald, who we talked about

recently too, and who has worked his way into this conversation despite having played about half as much as Jackson. So right now the NL rookie war leader, according to fan graphs is Jackson Merrill at 3.7 war, 121 games, 458 plate appearances. He was opening day, right? Tyler Fitzgerald, 64 games, 212 plate appearances. But since he's been on such a heater, 172 WRC plus, he's at 3.4 war. a heater, 172 WRC plus, he's at 3.4 war. So he's nipping at Jackson Merrill's heels. And then Imanaga is at 2.7, Skeens is at 2.6. And I guess those are really the guys in the quote unquote conversation right now. Because Yamamoto would have been, but of course his season was curtailed and looks like he's not going to be back till the tail end of the regular season. And anyone else?

I mean, Mason Wynn, I guess is at 2.8 and another Jackson, Jackson Churio. Yeah. Is at 2.6. Joey Ortiz is at 2.5. So it's a pretty strong group. Michael Bush, Jacob Young, but it's probably, I would guess, going to come down to Skeens, who is certainly the best known. He's the IT guy.

He's the IT player of the season. And Merrill has been around all year. So it's kind of like a career versus peak, but in a single season sort of situation where you, you have Imanaga who's been up all season and then you have Merrill who's been up all season. And then you have Skeens who has been up most of the year, but, but less of it. And then Fitzgerald who's just coming on strong here in just half a season or so. So what do you do there? Do you give preference to someone who has been a staple and has been on the Rosteral year or does that not matter? Is it pure value, assuming you even go by value and just who's been the best as opposed to who has the best long-term

outlook? So a lot of factors to consider here. So many factors. And I think that it is a fun and interesting challenge and certainly a much more entertaining conversation that these guys are bunched up so close to each other and that they present different profiles, right? Because we've talked about this before. I know that there was scuttlebutt about the NLMVP race over the weekend because Francisco Landor moved into a war lead and then we had to remind everyone that it's the same. It's the same. The Menagenskines, it's the same. Now, are they actually the same guy? No. But the difference, if you are getting into fractions of wins,

it's the same war. It's the same. It's the same. And both of the MVP races are down to tiny fractions of wins. Yeah, tiny fractions of wins. You can tell Marte on the IL now with his ankle issue, like that could make the difference. That could make the difference. Premature really to talk about this, except for the fact that we host a three times a week baseball podcast. So we could say everything we talk about is premature. Let's just wait till the end of the season then we'll do a season wrap-up pod. But we provide a service here in

hopefully engaging conversation throughout the year. So we check in on things that we cannot provide a final judgment on. So all of this is obviously provisional, especially when it comes to awards races. Super provisional. But I think that it's really fun when you have really tight races and they're tight among guys who all kind of look a little different from each other, or in some cases look drastically different from one another. So that's my like top of the conversation sort of proviso and really a reminder that like the margin of error in a given season on work can be like

half a window full width. So as you're thinking about who you, the listener, believe to be the rookie of the year, the Cy Young, the MVP, I view all of the the stats as a starting point, and then you get to have a conversation. And the most tiresome people, and I say this as someone where we spend half of our podcast talking about pedantic clarifications about baseball, the most tiresome people are the ones who just point to the war and then are willing to move on. Sometimes that's enough, right? Sometimes the gap is significant and it is suggestive of a truly dominant season

that means that there's really only one reasonable choice for some of these awards, but we're not in that year. And that's exciting because it's a lot more fun to talk about it that way. I mean, I don't have a vote, so I get to just say what I think about this stuff. I can appreciate the case for providing consistently good value to your team over a longer stretch and not swaying some people when the margins are this close. And here I'm mostly talking on the pitching side. I think that we can talk about the merrill of it all in a second. But so there's that.

And I think that like, if you as a voter look at Imanaga and say, you know, he has done for the Cubs exactly what they wanted. He was available in a way that differentiates him, say, from Yamamoto. When we're talking about sort of this influx of players from Asia, he's had a good statistical season. There have been sort of ebbs and flows for him, but he's had a good statistical season. Yay, Imanaga. I think that's a defensible position. Except then you watch Paul Skeens and you're like, this guy might just be the best pitcher

in baseball. And I appreciate that it's over a shorter distance. Didn't they say though, that they weren't going to shut him down? I thought that the pirates were sort of like public about that. Yeah. So Ken Rosenthal wrote an article about the service time considerations because Skeens was not up opening day, of course. So they can't get a pick regardless of what happens with his awards finish. Well, no, if he finishes- He can get a year of service time, but they can't get a pick regardless of what happens with his awards finish. Well, no, if he finishes... So he can get a year of service time, but they can't get a pick. Yes, exactly.

Yes, that's right. Yes. So if he finishes top two in Rookie of the Year voting, then the Pirates will have one less year of service time. He'll hit free agency a year earlier. So the Pirates have some incentive to shut it down if they're going to be nutting about it, right? Which you would think the pirates might be tempted by that. And if they were to shut him down, then, you know, they could justify it with workload concerns too,

right? I mean, yes and no, right? Yeah, it would be tenuous because he pitched 129 in the third innings last year between college and then the several pro innings he pitched. He's at 125 and a third right now, so his next start probably he will have a career high but barely, right? And so if he just pitches for another five weeks or so, you know, and they keep him on a fairly tight leash in those starts, then yeah, he will surpass his limit or his previous high, but not by so much that you would say it's irresponsible or something. Like it's

okay to ramp up year over year, I think. And yeah, you want to be careful with someone of his experience level and age and someone who throws that hard, obviously, but I, you know, pushing past where he was last year, if he gets up to say 150 innings or something like that, that seems fine. And then he'll be good to go next year. You know, as long as his elbow lasts. Theoretically, he will go in with no constraints on him next season. And that would be nice.

So yeah, like if they shut him down and said it was workload concerns, you would have to wonder whether it really was that. Yeah. I mean, if they shut him down and they say it's workload concerns, like if I were the union, I'd file a grievance the next day. Because like, what do you have to lose? Here's my argument for them not shutting him down. I think there's developmental value for him to your point starting to inch up that workload

so that he can throw a complete compliment of innings the next year, especially because Pittsburgh is sort of feeling like they're going to maybe be in it for a while card. And so you want Skeens to be as available as he possibly can be in 2025 in furtherance of that goal. I also think I understand the strong desire to, it's so funny how we talk about these things, right? To not reach free agency early mean, wasn't meaningfully up for the entire season this year. But I can appreciate why for a club as budget constrained by ownership as Pittsburgh is why they would want a seventh year of team control and shutting him down now maybe allows the other NL rookieookie of the Year candidates to put some distance

between themselves and Skeens. There's also the possibility they shut him down and people are just still so blown away by his season that he ends up in the top two anyway, right? It's not inconceivable that there's just no way for them to game themselves into an additional year of service here. But assuming that like, whether it's Mnaga, it's Merrill, whoever kind of pulls away in an appreciable way in the next couple of weeks here if Skeens is shut down, yeah, they get another year, but it's going to look not great.

And I think that allowing him to continue to pitch and build innings for next year, and sure you only get him for six total club controlled years, assuming that you can't work something out with him, assuming that you can't just say, this is our dude, he's one of the best starters in baseball, we're finally going to spend some money. But like, it seems like a pretty all things considered for how much value you get out of Paul Skeens, kind of inexpensive way to garner goodwill with your fan base when you have done so much over the years to test how much a city can love a baseball team. Cause it's like, you're still going to get, you know, five full seasons of him after this, assuming that he

stays healthy. You won't have invited the question from analysts, from commentators, from your fan base about like, well, what do you actually think is important? Is it continuing to put a good team on the field and getting this guy in shape for him to be your dude, a capital D dude in the postseason, not this year probably, but hopefully next year or the year after, or is it, you know, trying to nickel and dime this guy out of another year of service, you know? Just like, it's a cheaper, maybe it's cheap when it's understood that way as a thing to garner some goodwill and to say,

yeah, this is our guy. Yeah. It looked for a while like the pirates might be in the race this year and then they would really have a reason to keep pitching him, but they've gone three and 13 in August and have pretty much fallen out of it. So that takes away some incentive to keep pitching him, but yeah, it's really a bright spot on this roster because as exciting as the young guys have been, there has been some stagnation when it comes to that core. I mean, the, the pitching, the rotation has been certainly interesting and exciting at times this year. Like if you look, I guess, at the overall starting rotation war,

they're only 16th, which is not great. But when they had Jones and Skeens going and Keller and Falter pitching pretty well, and then Jones got hurt and he will probably make it back sometime soon. But that gives you something to build around. But then on the other hand, Brian Hayes went backward and O'Neill Cruz built on his previous work, but didn't break out. And then, you know, other guys you were hoping might be part of your core, like Henry Davis. I mean, you know, it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. Certainly didn't happen this year. So yeah, there's still some tenuousness when it comes to how good

are this pirate's team going to be. And so you want to lean into this sensation, this phenom you have. And I did check this. I was wondering, you know, there's some economic incentive to keep pitching him because you'd think he's a draw, right? People are going to come out for Skeen's day. Now I reused a method that I used for a Grantland article long ago where I tried to look for the biggest starting pitcher draws the guys who in a single season boosted their team's attendance by the most on the days that they started. And the method I used back then and now was just to look at the average attendance in home games started by that pitcher and then the average attendance in home games in the same series, not in game started by that pitcher.

So same opponent, adjacent days, doesn't adjust for other things like day of the week and time of year and everything. But what would you guess the boost has been if there has been one a Skeens attendance boost in Skeen's is nine home starts this season compared to the surrounding games in the same series that Skeens did not start. Like how many more thousands of fans would you guess attended those games? I would guess it's a 15% attendance boost. I don't know what that stands for. It's about double that actually. Really?

Yeah. I'll keep throwing that guy. I mean he's built like a freaking aircraft carrier. It'll be fine. Yeah. So games where Skeen's has started have out drawn surrounding games in the same series by an average of 6,699 fans. So 6,700 fans. It's about 29.3%. So the average game that Skeen's started this season at home has drawn 29,547 and the non-Skeens games 22,847.

So make of that what you will. That would be like just outside the top 10 on a raw per game attendance boost going by my Grantland article from 2015, where I did a top 10 and you know, the top draws like Fernando Valenzuela in 1981, Fernando Mania or Mark Fidrich in 1976, Bird Mania or David Clyde, highly touted rookie for the 1973 Rangers. Others like that were in, you know, double digit thousands added per game and higher percentages. But this would be like just outside the top 10 in the list I made there. And I think it's particularly impressive because most of the top seasons were quite a while ago, decades ago, which I theorized was either

because we can kind of see anyone anytime we want now on NMBTV. So maybe you don't actually have to go out to the game to see someone, or it could just be that the baseline is higher compared to some earlier decades where attendance was just lower period. And so when you'd have a big draw, you could get a bigger boost on a percentage basis or could be other causes. But I think for this era, it's a pretty significant skeins day boost. So does that equate to

the year of service time that you could gain over the handful of starts remaining or maybe fewer home starts remaining? I don't know, maybe not. But yeah, you certainly buy yourself some goodwill as well as selling some tickets. Yeah, I just also think that like, you know, when you think about the kinds of things that are going to meaningfully alter the fate of the pirates, and this assumes of course, that like the goal is to win. And I think for the people working that front office, that's definitely true. The relationship that ownership has to that idea, I think, kind of comes and goes. But if you assume that what you want is to win baseball games

and make it back to the postseason, but you aren't really willing to budge all that much on the question of dramatically expanding payroll, you kind of find yourself in this spot where to garner goodwill, you do have to extract value in places. That might mean trying to gain the service time for some of these guys, but you also have a real goodwill deficit that you have to make up. Because you were doing all of this like nickel and diming value extraction stuff for a long time and it didn't work very well. You know, you didn't end up with a franchise that made, you know, a ton of postseason runs. You didn't raise it, you know, you haven't

been able to do that. And so your ability to make the jump from a team where we have a crude and rude nickname for what your owner does to one where we can say, this isn't our preferred method of team building. And we think that ultimately like this doesn't serve the franchise well, or at least makes your path to the postseason narrow. But like, hey, you do it often enough that like we're convinced that what you want to do is win. You want to creep up that spectrum to where we're getting to the point where we're like, you know, we do kind of have to hand it to you.

And I think that they're pretty far away from that point. And getting up the assumed preference for winning curve is a lot easier to do when you don't dick around with stuff like this. Because it's so hard to get to the point where we're talking about the pirates the way we talk about the Dodgers. And there doesn't seem to really be an appetite for the kinds of things you need to do to get to that place. So like do this, it's easier.

You know, if nothing else, it's easier, Ben. Yeah. It'd be one thing if you could say, well, save your bullets. And if the wear and tear that he subjects his arm to now, if you have a finite number of pitches or innings in your arm, then save them for a season when you are contending and you might want to have him pitch deep into the playoffs. But we just can't do that math that accurately. We can't say like, if he pitches 30 fewer innings this season, that means he will get to pitch 30 more innings another season. We don't know. Right. So yeah,

the whole idea of there's no such thing as a pitching prospect just is kind of like a smoke them while you got them sort of situation. Right. So just let him throw as long as he can while being responsible and safe, obviously. Right. And to your earlier point, like that's the zone that they're occupying, right? It's not as if he has already thrown 30 more innings than he did last year and we're like, more, more, you know, that's not, that's not what you're dealing with. And you're also not dealing with a guy. And again, like pitchers break all the time.

It's not like, you know, the fact that he has been healthy up until now means that he'll never get hurt. But it's not like a guy who is just, you know, coming off of Tommy John or something like that. Like, he's coming off throwing, like, I'm going to do a swear. He's coming off, like, throwing f***ing innings in the College World Series and looking like he could throw 20 more. I'm glad he didn't because he is so talented and you want to make sure that he is your

guy when you're finally ready to be a postseason team again. But I don't think that you're anywhere close to obviously irresponsible. And the next pitch, I even hate to say this, I am knocking on literal wood, like the next pitch he throws could be the last one he throws for 18 months, right? Like that's just always the risk that you run with these guys. But if that were to happen, I don't think any reasonable person could say, well, that happened because they managed him irresponsibly. Like that's just not where you are with this guy.

But if he blows out, like maybe Libby, Livy Duncan just, uh, throw for him because she was doing some skeins cosplay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And they've obviously used him in moderation. I mean, certainly when he was in the minors, we were almost critical or questioning just how lightly he was being used in certain games, but since he debuted in the majors, May 11th, he has thrown 98 innings, which is tied for 30th in the majors, and he is over that same span, ninth in pitching war. He is in the National League since the day he debuted for the Pirates. He's behind Sale, Michael King of the Padres, Christopher Sanchez of the Phillies, Logan Webb of the Giants.

Most of those guys have thrown more innings than Skeens, not King, I guess, and Sale has pitched the same. But yes, he has certainly been one of the best pitchers in the league since he made the majors, which bolsters his rookie of the year case. If they don't shut him down, and there's no indication that they will, and they seem to be saying that they won't, but maybe they'll do what the Tigers are planning to do with Tarek Skupel seemingly, where they're not going to shut him down either, but they might not use him on regular rest. They might give him more breaks between starts, or he might not go as deep into games because he's obviously in strong contention for the

AL Cy Young Award. So, you know, it would sort of suck to sit him and hurt his chances there. So if they do that with skeins where he just doesn't go particularly deep into games, but he keeps adding to his total. Let's say he is the clear pitching leader for the rookie of the year race. I still think though, that if Merrill finishes strong, that he'd probably be my pick just on total value because if it were neck and neck,

like if it were separated by fractions of a win, maybe not, but it's a full win there. And on a percentage basis, that's a lot, because we're talking two to three to four wins for these guys. And I think that might make the difference, the fact that he's been up all year, he's been legitimately very good, he has been a big help to the Padres, he's learning a new position on the fly. Like, you know, he's so young, right?

Younger than Skeens even. I think he would be a worthy pick. And I know some people might parse the name of the award, which is always frat and I kind of discourage, you know, what does most valuable mean? What does rookie of the year mean? By some definitions, I think Skeens is the rookie of the year, regardless of whether he's the most valuable rookie or the war leader. He's the rookie of the year. Like, you know, if, if you have him start the all-star game, he's the rookie of the year.

Yes. The sensation, right? So, yes, he's a sensation. Yeah. If you wanted to vote for him based on, well, he is the rookie of the year. I guess I can't argue with the fact that he meets that description, but if you want to go with most valuable rookie, which is probably what I'd do if I had a vote, I think I'd probably pick Merrill and, you know, no slights to Tyler Fitzgerald.

But I mean, we'll see if he keeps this up over the next several weeks. If there were two guys who had essentially the same war and one had half the playing time, you could make the case that the guy who has half the playing time might be the better pick because it's more impressive that he managed to make it there. It could mean he's more fluky or it could just mean, well, you should give the nod to the guy who was there every day and they didn't have to play someone else at that position half the season. So if like Fitzgerald ended up neck and neck with Merrill, that would be pretty impressive. But I think the tie for me would go to the full season player, not to the half season player, which could be paradoxical. I don't know, but that's the

way I would go, I think. I think it's a tricky thing to balance because sometimes, and I had this conundrum and sort of challenge when I was thinking through my NL Rookie of the Year vote the year that Michael Harris, the second one, where I think sometimes Rookie of the Year voters get a little over their skis looking at who is going to have the more impressive career, right? Like who is the guy who, when we are thinking about his Hall of Fame case, we are going to say like, oh yeah, of course that guy was rookie of the year. Like he's incredible, right? And I think that sometimes you see people get a little wound up about that and you have to strike this balance between like, what did they do in the year that the award is being assessed?

And you might have a guy who plays a little less than some of his peers, but is so good in that little bit less of playing time that he's able to close the gap and still just be the guy. But I do think you want to balance that off the possibility that this is just like the best three months that a guy's ever going to have, right? And so you need to kind of find your way betwixt and between those things because I don't want the award to be who was just like really good for a stretch. And that isn't to say that that is an impressive and that it's not valuable to his team.

I mean, it is. And I don't want to knock Taylor Fitzgerald either, but I am sensitive to the fact that like you do get to a point where the sample size might be small enough relative to other guys where you just have greater confidence in the level of performance in and of itself. And to your point, like, hey, you were really valuable and a really important contributor to this club over an entire year. And that maybe merits recognition in a way that being really good for a couple

of months doesn't quite. So I think it's hard. It's hard to know how to balance those things, but I think you do have to think about them relative to one another. So well, the next several weeks we'll tell, we'll revisit this at the end of the season and not to give short shrift to the AL race, which is quite competitive too, just a little less exciting because there's no Paul Skeen and no one who's been quite as valuable as Jackson Merrill either, but

there's not a lot of daylight among or between those candidates. I guess it's going to be someone from the AL East, almost certainly, but that doesn't really narrow it down because you've got Colton Kouser, who I guess is the war leader right now, according to Fangrass, but then you have a couple of Yankees, Austin Wells, Luis Gille. And then you have a few Red Sox players, right? You've got Willier Breyhugh, you've got Sedan Rafaela, you've got David Hamilton. Even there are a lot of Rafaela partisans out there. Sedan stands in this race and then equally vocal people who push back on that

and are like, he's not even the best Red Sox candidate. Will your brain has been better? And I guess that's partly because Seydan has a pretty paltry 0.9 fan graphs war. I think he has like double that baseball reference. It depends which defensive metric you're looking at. And people are kind of giving him extra credit for the positional versatility and being forced into playing certain positions, which I think is fair because if he's like negative nine as a shortstop, well, he wasn't really a shortstop prior to this.

He's kind of playing emergency shortstop. So are you going to dock him for that? Is that fair? And, you know, he doesn't get on base a whole lot, but he's got pretty good counting stats. He just, he has been a below average hitter, whereas someone like a Breu has been considerably above average, right? So it's like, how much are you going to give Rafael credit for the degree of difficulty or these other factors that were, might not account for.

And it's funny because, you know, when we've thought about Rafael as a prospect, part of what has given people comfort that he has a pretty high floor in terms of his value, even though the bat kind of comes and goes, there's concerning swing and miss there. He's been a below average hitter is that like, he is a plus center field defender. Like he is a real standout in center.

So it is a funny kind of pretzel to unwind with him this year because it's like, well, he's an amazing plus defender who's not playing defense super great because he's playing out of position. So you got to give him credit for that. So it's just like this weird, it's a weird case. I'm sure that because so many of the AL candidates are in the same division that everyone's being really normal about that race. I'm sure everyone's being, having a normal one about it. I was thinking on the subject of the Pirates, they just added Billy McKinney,

who is not nearly as noteworthy as Paul Skeen's, but I think Billy McKinney might be my current active pick for prototypical replacement player, replacement level player. People are always looking for like, who's the reigning replacement level guy? Who would you use as an example of the concept of replacement player? It was Willie Bloomquist for years, right? Because he was always just hovering right around replacement level, but he was always getting playing time. And I don't know if he would have as long a career if he debuted today, but Billy McKinney has played 312 games, 919 played appearances and baseball reference at least has him at negative 0.1 war for his career. He's 29 years old.

He's turning 30 in a couple of days. Happy early birthday, Billy McKinney. You're in the big leagues again, because Andrew McCutcheon went on the IL. And so they have Billy McKinney now. And he really has been just the prototypical replacement player. He's been on so many teams, right? He has, he's played for the Yankees multiple times. He played for the Blue Jays.

He played for the Brewers, the Mets, the Dodgers, the A's. The last few seasons, he's played for a new team or two every year. And he'll get released and he'll get picked up and he'll be a free agent in some way. It's like whenever you have to break glass in case of emergency, you need an outfielder. Billy McKinney's around. Let's call up Billy McKinney and he'll give you some replacement level play. 82 career OPS plus. He'll give you some solid league average defense.

Just plug him in there until whoever is missing comes back and then Billy McKinney will probably be gone again. So he's made this work now for seven years in the majors just as a replacement level player. I think he's going to be my go-to example for as long as this lasts. I don't know how long it'll be that he remains the emergency option, but yeah, he's my go-to and he's the go-to for a team that is in need of an outfielder. I support that. I think that that's a good call. Yeah, I'm in on that. Yeah. Yeah. Just also like sounds like it's a replace Billy McKinney. What's called Billy? You know, just get Billy in there. Billy McKinney sounds like the name of someone they put in like MLB the show in a strike year where they don't have licenses to actually

use players names. That's what it sounds like. Oh, Billy McKinney. Yes. Right. The, uh, the John Dowd of modern day. Yes. So a couple last things. One, we're talking about the length of starts and skeins and will it be a shutdown or merely a slowdown? We talked last time about that cockamamie six inning mandate for starters, which maybe was half seriously discussed by MLB. Joshian in his excellent newsletter, Joshian.com proposed an amendment to that. He like us condemned that idea, but he proposed a better version of it, which he also doesn't like or support, but, but likes a little better, which is that instead of saying that everyone has to go

six innings every time, unless they've given up a certain number of runs or they've certain number of thrown a certain number of pitches. What if it were that you had to keep pitching as long as you were pitching well. Because the thing Joe pointed out, and I don't know whether we touch on this too, it, it's not really that we want just everyone to go six innings every time. I mean, a, we want some stylistic and tactical variation and we want to preserve some room for creativity. And it would be boring if everyone went six, just as it could be boring

if everyone went five, but as it could be boring if everyone went five. But what you really want when you want the starter to be a more prominent figure and the protagonist of the game is that when you've got a pitcher's duel going, that it keeps going for a while. And just mandating that everyone has to get to six. First of all, I mean, you would be forcing some guys to stay out there. I mean, yeah, you're not really going to wear one.

Cause if you've given up for earned runs, kind of weird that it's earned runs, I guess, just not just runs. And also you'd with the hundred pitch carve out there. I wonder whether you'd see some mid plate appearance pitching changes because like you get to 100 then, okay, finally we can pull this guy. Even if it's in the middle of a plate appearance, but you don't necessarily want some scrubs to have to pitch another inning. That's not that interesting really.

What you want is when you've got top starters in there, you've got guys who are cruising. And yes, we know that cruising doesn't mean you will keep cruising and it is analytically defensible or recommended to pull pitchers even when they're pitching well if you've got a better bullpen replacement lined up. But you don't just want your fifth starter throwing six or something like you want your top guys and if they're going toe to toe and goose egg to goose egg like you want them to keep throwing up those scoreless frames there for a while. So Joe suggested, what if it's no pitcher may be removed from a game until he is allowed at least one run or thrown 110 pitches. And you could tweak that

and maybe it could be multiple runs or whatever pitch count you want. But that way, if someone is really pitching well, and it's not just a pedestrian outing, but you've got a real pitcher's duel going there where you're trying to see who will win the war of attrition and who will last longer and can they match each other inning for inning? That way you can't pull someone when they're pitching well. They have to falter first. And again, you're still taking some agency out of the hands of the manager and the team, and I don't really like it, but I do, I guess, prefer that. Variation to that's ostensibly MLB discussed idea.

Cause Joe was talking about a game just this weekend, the little league classic where Tarek'sobel started for the Tigers. He allowed one run on a wild pitch in six innings. He struck out five and a hundred pitches and then Marcus Stroman was going up against him and he had five strikeouts and he had shut out his opponent for 87 pitches and then neither of them started the seventh. And it might be nice if you could kind of get the pitcher to start the seventh in that situation. Right. Either they'd have to boost their pitch count higher or they'd have to give up some runs and then they could

be pulled. But I think that might encourage what we actually want to see, which is like good pitchers in good outings going longer. Because I think that that dovetails more closely to your point, like what we're trying to get, which is really in service of like there being coherent narratives about games, right? That the, you know, the good starting pitcher is, I think, an important narrative anchor to baseball and a role that is becoming increasingly minor and a character that's becoming increasingly minor. And I think that what we're really looking for is for starters to return to main character

status, you know, and to have those guys be, you know, be the ones who dictate whether, you know, when you're sitting there and you're like, I can only go to one game in this series. Oh my gosh, Skeens is going, I'm going to that one. Right? Like that's, that's what I think everyone is really trying to, to bring back is like the guy who helps to define the identity of that rotation and making sure that, you know, on the days that that guy's going good, you're seeing

as much of him as is responsibly possible for you too. And there's going to be variation with that. And there are going to be guys where maybe it really does just fit them better to be, I'm at 100 pitches, I'm done now. I want there to be some amount of flexibility because I don't want to be such a strict adherent to a particular number of innings or a particular pitch count that guys who are really good and fun and dynamic to watch and are going like five and a third, that's still good. That's still great.

That can still be really entertaining. So I want there to be some flex in it and some acknowledgement that not all of these guys are exactly the same. And maybe by being overly rigid about it, we take a guy who is good and we make him worse. And then it's like, well, did that really accomplish what we're trying to accomplish here? Did that really further our goal? So yeah, I like there being some, you know, making it context dependent in some important ways, I think is good.

The five and dive guy forcing him to go six and throwing another mediocre inning, just tacking that on top of that. That's not super sexy. That's not going to get me going. But to have an ace who's going to get you going, pitching well, seems like that's not super sexy. That's not going to get me going, but to have an ace who's going to get you going, pitching well, longer. That's what I want. And as Joe said, there have been 472 starts this season in which a pitcher left a game, having thrown at least five innings with a shutout intact. And there have been only 15 shutouts.

And we're not going to get back to tons of shutouts anymore, but 50 years ago, he said completed shutouts outnumbered abandoned ones, nearly three to one. And even 20 years ago for every shutout, about five pitchers left shutouts early. Whereas this year it's 30 abandoned shutouts for every completed one. And we've talked about this with abandoned no hitters in progress becoming commonplace now. Just if someone's really going well, don't pull them after five. If we could provide a little more reason for those guys to go a little deeper, that would be fun. Again, these are not my preferred ways of dealing with this

problem, but that's a little less bad, I guess, maybe. Okay. Also, just wanted to do two quick shout outs. I mentioned Carlos Santana the other day. I was singing the praises of the ageless Carlos Santana and how well- You weren't playing the praises? No, but he's 38 years young and he is hitting roughly as well as he has for quite some time. Yeah.

You know, he plays tons of games. He's played in the most games going back to when he debuted in 2010. And what really thrills me and tickles me is that he is leading first baseman in Outs Above Average with a plus nine fielding run value at first base, which is pretty impressive. But the other thing that I didn't realize is he's got the old guy stolen base ability that Albert Pujols had for a while there where Pujols, even though he could barely get down to first base and he had all sorts of plantar fasciitis and, and, you know, it was painful to watch him run and painful for him to run, but he could sneakily steal a base every now and

then. And he went like 14 consecutive steal attempts without being thrown out at one point, you know, at an advanced stage when he was like one of the slowest runners in baseball, if not the slowest Santana sort of has the same thing going where he is 17 for his past 17 stolen bases. Again, like he's not a speed demon, you know, but he has not been thrown out since July 4th, 2018. And since then he has stolen 17 consecutive bases. And you know, it's just a few steals a year, but he catches him napping. You know, he stole six last year, he's stolen four this year, and he's slow. He's not quite

poo hole slow. And he's actually maintained his subpar speed fairly well, which I guess goes along with his graceful aging overall. He hasn't really lost a step seemingly, but he never had that many steps. So he's still like 16th percentile sprint speed, but he picks his spots. He's savvy. He's wily. And I love that sort of stealing. It's not as exciting as Ellie De La Cruz just challenging you and beating you. And even when he doesn't get a good jump, he can beat the throw. But I love the type of stealing bases that really just feels like a theft because no one's paying attention and it's like, you're just wandering away with the bag, you know, it's like, it's very shoplifting. It's just, they're not watching me because they think I'm slow and they aren't underestimating me. And so I'm going to go and I'm going to,

I haven't watched all of his steel attempts. I would guess a good number of them probably didn't draw a throw because it was just such a surprise. And probably he just, you know, got every way, took a big lead and people were ignoring him. I love that type of steel, you know, old guy stolen base. It's maybe my favorite kind. Yeah. The old guy stolen base is great. A my favorite kind. Yeah, the old guy stolen bass is great. Acknowledging your podcast partner's joke when she took time to acknowledge your delightful turn of phrase at the beginning of the episode is also polite. I think that there's a lot to be said for that.

It does drive home to me the difference between even like, you know, sometimes you'll hear fans be like, well, I could do that. And then you realize that like even a late thirties something, early forties something guy can do a thing and you're like, you couldn't though. Like he's, you know, even that guy, that guy's got hops. They're not the same as they were. And they're not as, you know, he's to your point, he's not Ellie out there or anything like that, but it's like that guy can do that. You can't do stuff.

You can't. Yeah. And it's a reminder of just how much of stealing bases is just having the will to steal one. You know, you just, you have to want to go, you have to seize those opportunities. And yeah, if you're not known to be a base dealer, you're going to be given those opportunities more often. But even guys who have some speed, a lot of it is mindset and the cost benefit analysis of is it worth it to go.

And I think there's strategy there that, you know, this is less of an issue with someone like Carlos Santana, but it's like sometimes I listen to how people talk about like, Elie De La Cruz is a great example, his base stealing. And I think when your speed is so incredible, like it's easy for a fan to lose sight of how much of it is actual. There is talent in base stealing beyond just the speed. You have to get a good jump, you have to know how to time the pitch, or you have to have good instincts for this stuff, but it isn't just instinct, right?

There is strategy involved and I think sometimes when a guy is just blazing fast, we discount other parts of the skill set that are really important and it's like, no, you should acknowledge that part too because that also has to be working really well for Ellie De La Cruz to be able to do what he does, for Corbin Carroll to be able to do what he does, whatever, the fast boys, the fast guys. Zoom, zoom. what he does for Corbin Carroll to be able to do what he does, whatever, you know, like the fast boys, the fast guys. Yeah. Zoom, zoom. And my other shout out tip of the cap goes to Jose Soriano of the Angels, who I don't

know that we've mentioned him in our rundown of the guys who've converted from relieving to starting this season. Can't believe we forgot someone on the Angels. I know. How dare we? Yeah. The drop off, the percentage drop off in time I've spent watching the angels from the past few seasons to this one, it is precipitous. Let's leave it at that. But

Jose Soriano, although I've not personally seen a whole lot of his work, I think maybe we've left him off because he didn't have that long a hiatus from starting. He was mostly a starter in the minors as a lot of guys are. And then last year he was exclusively a reliever for the Angels and mostly a reliever in the minors even. And so it was really a one season thing that he took off totally from starting or almost totally. But this year we've talked so much about Hicks and Lopez and all the other guys, right? Who've made this conversion semi-successfully or very successfully. Jose Soriano has been

excellent. He is pitched almost exclusively as a starter. He's pitched in 22 games, 20 starts, and he has averaged 99 on his fastball. And he's got a 3.42 ERA with a sub four FIP and he's been worth a couple war. Just wanted to mention, you know, I don't know if he counts because again, it hadn't been that long since he was starting regularly in the minors, but if he counts, then he should be mentioned. It's not that uncommon for a minor league starter to break in as a reliever and then shift back to starting like Spencer Strider did, like a lot of guys have done over the years. So it's more impressive if you take years away from that and then return to it. But you know, it kind of counts. It's somewhat impressive. So good for him.

I think it counts. I mean, we can, there can be gradations on these sorts of things, you know. You can still count though. Yeah. And I think he was kind of being built up as a long reliever in the spring and he hadn't even reached AA until he was kind of fast-tracked as a one-inning-at-a-time guy last year. So I don't know that there were high expectations for him necessarily as a starter, so perhaps he has surpassed them. All right. And last thing, there's been a lot of buzz lately about the structure of the standings

this season. And I don't know whether you want to call it parody or just lack of super teams, the super team era, we seem to be fully out of it now. We've talked at various points this season about the vast mediocre middle, the morass, the middle in the NL wildcard race especially, but to some extent both leagues, and of course we've talked about some truly terrible teams and the White Sox being historically bad, but at the top of the league, there are not any really great teams this year. And I don't mean that in the old school Joe Morgan complaining about how no teams are as good as his teams used to be, but really we're looking at the first season in quite a while without a hundred win team and it might be a team,

a season without like a 95 win team. I mean, there's just are not any standouts. There are not any super teams. Even the teams you would have expected to be super teams have been hurt by injuries. The Dodgers, the Braves, now Austin Riley hurt on top of all their other injuries, right? And the Phillies have scuffled a bit of late.

They looked like the closest thing to a super team this year. It's just a lack of extraordinary performance this year. And right now, according to the FanGrafts Playoff odds, the Dodgers are projected for 95 wins on the dot. No other team is there. The Yankees and the Phillies at 94. So no team it's possible might meet or even surpass 95 wins. And this is really quite a change

from the past decade or so of baseball that's been all about the hundred win, the triple digit win totals, right? I mean, 2019 record four teams, 100 plus games and then it happened again in 2022. If no one wins 95, there has never been a season in the 162 game era where a team didn't win 95 plus. And there's been only three seasons, 67, 82 and 89, where just one team won at least 95 games. I'm cribbing from Neil Payne's sub stack where he just wrote about this.

That's really unusual, if not unprecedented, that the best teams have been comparatively not so great. I don't know how I feel about this because I don't take the presence of a lot of 100 plus win teams to necessarily be an indication that the competitive environment is totally healthy, right? Because I think that in order for there to be multiple 100, 105 win teams in a season, part of that is they're maybe being subsidized partially by being able to play really egregiously bad teams. And we do have some egregiously bad teams this year, Ben.

I don't know if you know, but you know, the idea that having a hundred and five wins in a season, I'm just picking this number, means that is purely a result of you being superlative and other folks not being lousy seems off to me. But having such heavy concentration in the middle suggests a different kind of malaise. And so I don't quite know what I think about it. I think part of what has happened is that a couple of the teams that we thought had the potential to like really challenge for maybe not all time win records, but to really be up there have just been devastated by injury. And so some of it is like, you know, I'm sure that right now Braves fans are listening going, well, this isn't what we wanted, but

our entire team is hurt and getting hurt more, right? With Austin Riley going on the injured list. The Dodgers have been pretty banged up. They've won 74 games, but they've been pretty hurt and haven't been able to pull away. They are really only three games up on the Padres and four up on the P-Wes. It's a race. It's really a race.

That's cool, man. I know this. Yeah, we've talked about Dodgers-Padres rivalry before and it's kind of fallen flat, at least in the regular season. But the Dodgers, those miracle giants a few years ago did win the title in the regular season and then got eliminated in the postseason. What a fluky ass team.

What a fluky. That was a weird, wonderful year. But yeah, the Dodgers have been coasting and they've lost a lot of guys and they just got some guys back. Muncie is back. Tommy Edmond just made his season debut. But then Freeman, speaking of hand ailments, now he's playing through a hairline finger fracture, which at least is, it's not

like a Verdugo situation where he just didn't get it checked out. That's like knowingly playing through a problem because getting it fixed might take a while and maybe he can manage the pain and be worth playing, but that's got to cause some discomfort, I would imagine. But yeah, with him possibly compromised, three games, given how well the Padres and the Diamondbacks have been playing and the Dodgers just kind of treading water, that is, it's interesting right now. I mean, the division odds have the Dodgers still as a 77% probability favorite,

but yeah, I don't know if the Dodgers are like playing with their food here and they're going to turn it on, you know, now that they're actually being pushed, but I don't know. It's interesting. Nicole Zichal-Klein If I were doing that, I would be nervous to play with my food if one of them were a snake. That would feel, that feels dicey, you know? Yes, it could be venomous. Yeah, and like a dad, you don't want to mess with dads. Dads are, you know. Dad strength.

They do dad stuff. It is, it remains very funny that one of our teams is just the dads, you know? I know that's not what they're, I get it. Don't send an email. It's fine. But it's funny. I mean, you know, we name lots of teams after socks. So yeah.

Well, yeah, but that feels like a lack of creativity. I like the dads. I think dads are anyway, all of that to say, I don't know how I feel about it. The thing that I have been thinking about a lot as I've like looked at how close these races are and how kind of in the mushy middle a lot of teams are, it does make me wonder kind of what sort of postseason we're going to get. Is it going to feel dramatic and thrilling? This isn't to say that there aren't good teams that are going to play October baseball and

that there aren't some really exciting teams that are going to play October baseball. That's totally true. But for instance, like I would argue that if they're not the two best, they're among the two best pitchers in baseball this year, Scoobel and Skeens, like they're not going to be playing come October. You know? So it's just like, I think in part because we've dealt with so many injuries and some of those injuries are concentrated on teams that are dealt with so many injuries and some of those injuries are

concentrated on teams that are going to play in October and some of the uninjured guys are concentrated on teams that probably won't play in October. I just wonder, I wonder what kind of postseason we're going to get. It doesn't say that it's necessarily going to be bad, but I don't know if I'm as sure of how it's going to unfold, but maybe that, you know what, you know what, Ben, maybe that's great. Maybe not knowing how it's going to unfold is actually really cool and exciting. And the fact that there might be some teams that we didn't expect to play October baseball

really in the thick of it and eventually in the postseason is like a good thing. Maybe that's good. Not that we ever know how October is going to unfold, but yes. But we feel like we do. We feel like we have an idea of it. Yeah. Jeff Passant tweeted about this a couple of days ago. He said, this is shaping up to be the weirdest baseball season in a decade. And he had the records and the run differentials. And he noted the last year without a hundred win team was 2014. Certainly seems like that's going to be the case this year unless someone gets hot down the stretch. And the last time the top run differential was less than plus 231 was 2014. It's barely half that at the moment. And so his kicker was a year after

a 90 win wildcard team faced an 86 win wildcard team in the World Series, the 2024 championship looks as up for grabs as it's been in a long time. So yeah, I think it's always up for grabs and I don't know that I'll notice a difference in October. I think I'm noticing the difference more in the regular season. Once the calendar flips to October, I'm kind of like all bets are off anyway. But, and it's not, I don't know whether it's that this season is weird or that the last several seasons have been weird. So we can keep some historical perspective there. It was an outlier to have so many teams being over a hundred wins and so many teams being terrible. Again, there are still teams that are terrible, but Neil did this with ELO ratings,

just a rating of team strength, and he found again that this year the worst teams are worse than usual. Thank you White Sox, but the best teams are also worse than usual. And it is just weird. It is unusual. And I don't think it's a bad thing. People will complain about any structure to the season. If it's lopsided, if it's stratified,

then people will complain about that and will complain about a lack of parity, even though I think baseball's parity is quite good and MLB parity compared to other leagues is good. And really the playoff structure just builds in a fail safe where you can't buy a championship. So I don't think that's been a big problem, but during the regular season,

certainly there has been some stratification. But then if you have a season like this, you'd think everyone would be saying, what wonderful parody and so many teams are in it and it's going to come down to the wire. And I guess there are people celebrating that, but there are also people saying, gosh, these teams aren't good, you know, where are all the good teams, right? So you can't please everyone. Why can't we graft the Mariners' rotation onto a team with a real offense, for instance? But I think on the whole, this is fine. I think it's a little bit of a shock to the system coming after the last decade, but I think to have fewer super teams. Now, I don't know that it's good to have fewer super teams because a lot of stars are know that it's good to have fewer super teams because a

lot of stars are hurt and we're deprived of some of the best players in baseball. But on the whole, this structure, I think isn't bad. And you can kind of question whether this is a response to other changes in the sport. Is this because the competitive balance taxes are suppressing spending at the top end? Is it because of the expanded playoff format? Reducing the incentive to try to be the best you can and win your division?

Because what the heck, you can be mediocre and make it to the playoffs and then once you do, the advantage of being a super team isn't really that pronounced. Maybe, maybe this is a reaction to that. Or maybe it's a one-year blip, or maybe it's just a return to the previous norm. I don't know what to make of it really, but I think it's kind of okay. I think I'm fine with it. I think not having several super teams that are just head and shoulders above everyone else is kind of refreshing actually, and kind of competitive and fun. If you don't have a particular favorite team, it is an interesting way to engage with it. I do think that it, I don't know, I do think it's good to have like one really good, obviously

good team that's just like really good and complete and really good and good. I do think that that you want the level setting. I think part of why I'm not perturbed by our current situation, or at least not overly perturbed is like I said earlier, that there were teams that went into the season intending to be like, knock down, drag out, we are the very best of the best. And then they just have been hurt. To keep the mediocre middle somewhat honest, you do need teams that are like, no, we don't want to worry though. To the extent that we can not worry, that we have multiple, I was just about to make

the world's most strained, useless, electoral college metaphor. And I'm not gonna do it, because you know what, why introduce that nonsense into this conversation? But I think that, you know, it's important for there to be teams that are like, we want there to be multiple avenues to us getting to October.

We wanna be dominant when we get there to the extent that anyone can guarantee that we are gonna be just a force and you're gonna hate playing us. I think it's important for that to exist because it pulls everyone up and it requires even GUI soft middle teams to be like, well, I guess we should add a couple of guys. So I don't want anyone's takeaway from this year to be, well, you don't have to spend any money, you don't have to do anything because, you know, we'll just be in the gooey middles together. I'm envisioning like a caramel filled chocolate bar, you know, like a gooey with a gooey.

Sounds tasty. Yeah. Are you a caramel guy? Not really, actually. And you probably say caramel because you're from the East Coast. I do, yeah. Extremes can be compelling though. And when you're trying to set a record, I've said the White Sox are entertaining. They're an entertaining car crash, tire fire, rubbernecking sort of situation, but I'm paying much closer attention to them than I would if they were just merely run of the mill bad.

And the same applies to if you're in the running for best team ever or trying to set some sort of wins records, that can be arresting and riveting. But I'm kind of burned out on that, I think, over the past several seasons. We've just seen so many teams that were so good or at least had so many wins that I'm into this return to just parody or a lack of extremes or just great races among mediocre clubs. I'm ready for that. By the way, maybe just don't wear batting gloves. That's an option for Alex Verdugo. If you can't find non-allergenic batting gloves- I'm sure you'll be able to find something, right? Yeah. But you could also just, you know, there are hitters who just don't wear them. I know

that can sting a little, but is that worse than having oozing, burning, scratchy hands? Probably not. I think you're more likely to get blisters in the short term with no gloves. But if he can't find alternatives, maybe he's in a better, in better shape long term once he like develops his calluses, you know. Yes. But I can't believe how long that went on and he did. I just assumed when I saw it that he had gotten new batting gloves. Yes, you would think. No. No.

All right, I'll leave you with this on episode 2194. Meg and I talked about how this year's Hall of Fame plaques weren't great likenesses of the players they honored, especially Joe Mowers, but not just Joe Mowers. Then I read an email on a later episode from listener Clay who was at the induction ceremony and said that everyone who was in line to see the plaques remarked on how little the image of Mower on his plaque looked like him. What we weren't sure of though is how the players themselves felt about their representations. Well, we got a clue this past weekend, thanks to listener Melanie for letting us know about this. The Rangers honored Adrian Beltre post-Hall of Fame induction, they

had the plaque on display, and they had Beltre in the booth. Here is Rangers broadcaster Dave Raymond asking Beltre what he thought about the plaque's portrayal of him. Was there, when you saw the plaque for the first time, that your likeness on the plaque, when you saw the plaque for the first time, that your likeness on the plaque, what did you think? Did it look like you? I didn't know. No.

Well, Molly says the same thing. Didn't look like him either. No, no. You know what? It was so crazy the whole week that I didn't even notice how I looked on the plaque. I didn't really, actually until my wife said to me, she said,

man, that's when you look, doesn't really look like you in a plaque. And I looked and I said, oh uh, man, that's when he looked, he was in a plaid. And I looked and I said, Oh wow. Yeah. It's not, that's not me. But you know what? Who cares? That's my name on there and I'm okay with it. Now the Rangers are installing a statue of Beltre. And so Raymond returned to that topic a little later. Here's what Beltre had to say. Okay. So the statue, have you thought about what that needs to look like? I mean, you don't get to design it, I'm sure, but you've got to be on a knee, right? Trey had to say. So look, he's an easy going guy.

Unless you touch the top of his head, he's not mad about it. He's just happy to be in the Hall of Fame. But clearly, Cooperstown onlookers are noticing that these images don't look like the players, the players themselves are thinking that, the players' families, it's not a huge problem, but doesn't seem ideal that these plaques that are supposed to make you appreciate the player and his accomplishments are also making you think, huh, that doesn't look like him, that's kind of an unwelcome distraction, unlike those players' weekend custom bats. We read some emails about why it's hard to have a plaque look like the person, but perhaps some process improvements are in order.

I've given up on the possibility of improvements when it comes to broadcasters confusing Taylor Ward with Tyler Wade and each of them with other players, but here's a new entry in the annals of Wade Ward miscues. This was sent in by Patreon supporter Harry Barker-Faust. It's from Sunday's A's Giants game. This is a clip from the A's radio broadcast where legend Ken Korak uttered a wayward Wade. Bottom of the ninth, the A's won, the Giants won. The right hand of Ryan Walker comes out of the San Francisco bullfence. Tyler Wade stays in the game at first base. Tyler Wade played for the A's last year. Now he plays for the Padres. That was Lamont Wade Jr. playing first base for the Giants. I love this long running bit.

I also love it when people support us on Patreon. You can do so by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Ryan Close, Ryan Killian, Jose Martinez Diaz, Ross Lambert, and Kevin Johnson. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, discounts on merch and ad-free fan crafts memberships, prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fancrafts.com. You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group

at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page or the episode description in your podcast app for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing

and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. I'm back to be wild I'm back to be wild A fan graph speaks for podcasts We're going to be wild, a fan-grossed baseball podcast. Listen our emails at last, we're going to do a baseball trip. Every weekday, break down your favorite pastime. Sit down relaxing on one, as we learn how a tony works.