Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2207: Between a Rockie and a Hard Place

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the stretch run, the “championship season,” the surprising solidity of the playoff picture, and how the playoff field could change before the end of the season. They also discuss the turnarounds of Jeff McNeil and Corbin Carroll, the return on the Rangers’ pitching blueprint, and whether A’s fans […]

Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2207 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. I don't know if you noticed this, but I put 2607 in the little window of our cast recording screen here and I briefly thought we had somehow skipped 400 episodes.

I just blacked out and missed 400 Effectively Wild episodes, but I adjusted on the fly mid-intro, wasn't thrown by this disruption to our routine, just called it 22, just audible. That is a seasoned podcast pro right there. I am impressed. I'm moved. And humbled too, that I took that in stride and then just moved along without calling attention to it.

I don't mean to make you envious, but it is unseasonably cool in New York city where I am. It was 59 degrees when I dropped off Sloan at school this morning, which is unseasonably cool, refreshing, literally and figuratively refreshing, refreshing to have some weather be unseasonably cool instead of unseasonably warm. And it felt a little like fall this morning. Now it's up to the low seventies now, still very temperate, but I assume this will be kind of a false alarm, a false fall. Can you say a false fall? People say a false spring, right? When it seems like it's warm, but then

it gets cold again. People say false fall. Maybe they do, but I assume that this will be a false fall, that it seems like it's getting cooler and then it will heat up again. But it did remind me that it's getting late early out there. We are 77.8% of the way through the regular season entering Wednesday's games. So we are well past the three quarter mark. Yeah. Time is running out. The sand is trickling through the hourglass.

Yeah. It's like we are marching ever closer to our destiny. Yeah. What was the weather this morning where you were? How was the temperature like? You know, I'm happy to report Ben that after spending two days under an excessive heat advisory

that we've had a little down tick in temp. And we, I believe I'm going to bring up the old forecast. We're south of a hundred degrees at the moment, you know, forecasted high is only supposed to be one of three today. It was one of 11 yesterday, one 11 Ben, you know, one 11 and we might have some, some rain. So that's exciting. It's a little bit overcast, which is certainly helping with the temps. So, look, it's all relative, right? It's what you're used to, what you've come to learn to endure, but definitely better today than yesterday or the day before for that matter. So.

Yeah, I suppose so. You brought some precipitation back with you from your trip to the Pacific Northwest. Well, I know that people love when we banter about weather in our local areas, which is not applicable to most of the people listening to this podcast. But the first part, the part about where we are in the season, that part is probably relevant to baseball listeners. I said regular season, you know, the technical term for the regular season, according to MLB though, it's rarely cited is the championship season. Yeah. And some people still use that friend of the show, Rob Maynes, who writes at baseball prospectus, I think makes a point of calling it the championship season in his work. He's more of a regular season forward guy, as am I, I guess I would say,

philosophically. It sounds very anachronistic these days. It sounds like why would you call the part of the season where no championship is awarded the championship season? I think it's because that's when division championships are awarded. And that used to mean more than it does currently. So I kind of like clinging to this term championship season because it still matters to me. It's still real to me, damn it. I like the regular season even if we don't actually award the championship until it's over.

They each have their merits, right? They're fulfilling different psychological needs for fans. The regular season is about companionship. The regular season is about the everyday, you know, the in and out, the being able to take a baseball nap. You know, you don't do baseball naps in the postseason, Ben. That would be ludicrous. No, much too tense. To take a baseball nap in the postseason, not unless you're like, I don't know, taking a second all or something. Unless you're a Mariners fan.

Okay. Wow. I don't know, taking a second off or something. So, unless you're a Mariners fan. Okay. Wow. I don't know why I went there. That is cruel. I guess we're fighting. I didn't know, but awkward to learn it on, Mike. So yeah, so you don't nap in the postseason, you know, it's about tension and strategy and the making of not just baseball, lowercase B, baseball memories, but baseball memories, uppercase B, you know, the sorts

of moments that can define the sport and careers. And so it's just different, you know? I think there's been a lot of angst in the last couple of years about the respective purposes of these two seasons in baseball's life. And I think it has caused some fighting, some consternation. And I think that we could have peace on this question if we just acknowledge that they're engaged in different projects, you know? And the one, you know, the successful completion of the one project is necessary to even attempt

the other. So I don't want to claim that they're disconnected from each other. Surely they're not, but they're doing different stuff. And I think that's okay. And now I'm going to need to like reel for the rest of the episode from my freaking haymaker that I just took out of the clear blue nowhere. Well, don't reel for long because that will be relevant to the first question that I wanted to ask you here. If I haven't asked you a question yet, I guess I asked you how warm it was in Arizona, but it looks like according to the Fangrass playoff odds, there is a high degree of confidence currently in the playoff field as it stands today,

or the playoff favorites, the teams that are favored to make the playoffs are favored with some degree of certainty. So there aren't a lot of teams in the 50-50 coin flip could go either way range in the fan graphs playoff probabilities. As we speak, there's kind of a steep fall off from teams that are locked. And then a few teams that are kind of in the, well, roughly the range where

we are in the championship season. I said 77.8%, there's a few teams in that range of playoff probability. I said 77.8%. There are a few teams in that range of playoff probability. And then there are just a few that have real significant chances, but are underdogs, distinct underdogs. So if you look, there are, I guess we could say 1200 percentage points of playoff probability to hand out because there are 12 teams that end up making the playoffs. So on the last day of the championship season, there there are 12 teams that end up making the playoffs.

So on the last day of the championship season, there will be 12 teams that have 100% chances to make the playoffs. So a total of 1200 percentage points to hand out. And currently the top 12 teams, according to fan graphs, account for 1107.5% of those 1200, which is 92.3%. So I guess you could say that's the average playoff probability of the top 12 teams right now. So you have some teams that are, again, virtual locks, though, in some cases, still considerable uncertainty about whether they will win the division championship or whether they will win a wild card.

For instance, the Dodgers who have the highest playoff odds right now at 99.9%, but as we discussed last time, the NL West is somewhat up in the air, somewhat there for the taking right now. So their division odds are at 77.6%, almost dead on the probability percentage that we're through this regular season. And then you have the Yankees, for instance, who after the Brewers have the, they have the third highest playoff odds, 99.3%,

but 54.8% to win the division, because it's a real tussle with the Orioles. So there's some uncertainty about how these teams will get in, but there's a high degree of confidence about whether they will get in. So if you had to pick a team that is currently on the inside looking out and a team that is on the outside looking in again, again, according to your wonderful websites, playoff odds, where would you go with that? So it's the Dodgers, Brewers, Yankees, Phillies, Orioles, Padres, Guardians, Astros, Diamondbacks.

Why don't we do it? Do you mushing it all into one big mush? Why don't you do it by, do it by league, like a civilized person, who has a wall of his podcast co-hosts out of the clear blue nowhere. I can do that. American league, we have Yankees, Orioles, Guardians, Astros, Twins, Royals. Those are the six there. And then in the national league, Dodgers, Brewers, Phillies, Padres, Diamondbacks, Braves.

Yeah. So that leaves several teams with real measurable non-zero chances to make the playoffs, but not currently listed as favorites, including your Seattle Mariners. So I guess of those 12 favorites, or you could pick maybe one in each league. If you want to go, speaking of anachronistic, this is a throwback too, just going back to the days when people cared about league distinctions. I guess it still matters for determining playoff berths and seating and such. Quite relevant to the question at hand I would offer. True.

So give me a team in each league that is currently favored that you would think has the best chance not to make it. And then the team that's on the outside looking in that you think might end up cramming its way in there. And I guess it might end up being the team that has the lowest odds right now, but we'll see what you go with. Well, let's start with the American league. So I'm going to cheat a little bit and hopefully that makes the answer more interesting.

It would not surprise me in the least if we only end up with two rather than three AL Central teams in the postseason field. And like, look, way to go AL Central. That's an improvement in a, you know, would constitute a dramatic improvement relative to prior years where that division is just like not really fielded good clubs and you win the division and then you often make an early exit, although not always famously. And so I don't want to disrespect the guardians or the twins or the Royals and the Royals in particular, like I would very much like to see this Royals team play October

baseball. I just think it's a good story. They have surprised me with their ability to kind of get the most out of a couple of signings we talked about this a couple of episodes ago, off season pitching signings that I thought were just like, you got to fill innings and have ended up being really good. Although if I recall correctly, the episode where we talked about how good Seth Lugo has been, his start that day ended up going very poorly for him. Very poorly. Subsequently, he had a strong one. Yes.

They've, I think, made improvements to their team. They committed to Bobby Wood Jr. long term. That's obviously already paying dividends. It's nice to see them sort of investing. I wish that their ballpark situation were stable, but I think it's a good thing. It's a good thing for the sport for them to have endeavored to win and be met with success. I think that that sets a good precedent. But I think that if for no other reason than two of those clubs are right at the edge of the playoff field, it seems likely that one of them, if a club is going to dip,

it would be one of the two of them. Although, Ben, I would offer the following. Have you been paying attention to the Red Sox pitching since the quote unquote second half has started? Because boy, it has not gone well for them. It hasn't gone well for them in the rotation or the bullpen. They have this new approach, throw your fastballs, you know, just do it. And that works for half a season. And now like all of the soft end or breaking stuff is getting kind of crushed.

So I don't look at the guys, the team sitting just out of wild card contention and think, hey, you know, Boston's going to overtake them. I'm not sure. You know, I don't think that they're, they're not a surging club, right? And then like the Rays aren't surging sort of by their own decision, right? They have elected not to search in the second half. And then like the less said about my Seattle Mariners, maybe the better. The best, Ben. You know, they sure got six and a half games out of the last wild card spot fast, didn't they? They sure did. This sure happened. So fast, not as fast as they've gotten out of the division. Wow. Five games back in the division.

That sucks. That sucks. You know, it really does. Yeah. It's really been bad. Everyone's just marveling at the fact that their starting pitching has been so good. Can they get some offensive support? Can they get some bullpen support?

The answer seemingly is no. Yeah. I was just about to say, like we have groused about the offense and let me tell you, those bets, they bear responsibility here, but the vaunted bullpen, not having the easiest time lately, it's just been kind of bad. So all of that to say based on their proximity to the edge of the race, and the fact that they aren't any of them like real powerhouses, I would, I guess, identify the twins and the Royals as the most likely to fall out of contention on the AL side, but I don't find it particularly

likely. And then I don't think the Mets have it. I don't think they have it, you know? I'm here to be controversial. I know they were only two and a half back and the Giants only three and a half back of that final wild card spot. And it's not as if this version of the Braves is, you know, as strong as prior iterations, but the Mets, while they have definitely been better as the season has gone on, they have kind of struggled of late. And as JJ Fee noted when he wrote about them for us today, getting into a difficult stretch of their schedule where they have to deal with the Padres and the Diamondbacks a fair

bit and those clubs just seemingly never lose now. I don't know. I remain kind of skeptical of the Mets and I don't really have strong feelings about the San Francisco Giants any which way. Yeah. They've made it hard to have strong feelings about them. I don't think about them very much. That sounds dismissive in a way I don't mean, but it's just like they've kind of just been

right around 500. They have gotten obviously good pitching out of Snell in the second half in particular and not just that no hitter he threw. And it's not like Logan Webb has been bad. Logan Webb has been great, but also I just don't think about the Giants very much, you know? They don't really have a path to a division win because the Padres and the Diamondbacks have been making things difficult for the Dodgers, which I still think ultimately that

the Dodgers are likely to win there, but if any of the teams in their division are going to unseat them, I don't think it's going to be San Francisco. And I think that the NL West will send three clubs to the postseason. And so here we sit, which is funny because it feels like it wasn't all that long ago that there were like seven teams, half a game out of the third wild card. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

So separation has opened up. Yeah. I was surprised actually when I looked at the playoff odds to prep for this segment and this prompt for you. I thought there would be some teams that were more in that middle ground. Yeah. Not really And not really. Not really. Yeah, I feel the same way about the Giants, which is nothing.

I feel very little about the Giants. And they've had things go against them, obviously. And of course, they haven't landed some of their free agent targets, famously, infamously. But Grant Brisby, our pal, has this running Twitter bit where he tweets about how the Giants are 500 playing 500 ball over their last X games and X keeps growing. They're just aggressively 500 if such a thing is possible. They fall below and you think they're out of it and then they have a nice little run and you think, oh, they're coming on. And then they bounce backward. Can you bounce backwards? You can bounce back. That's a good thing.

Yeah. If you see a mouse, you're like, ah, a mouse. I want to jump back from it. Sure. As soon as they start to heat up, then they cool down again. They are just lukewarm. They're aggressively lukewarm. And I don't know that I see them becoming more than that, even though Blake Snell has morphed back into his Cy Young self, there's no, no middle ground with that guy either. It's, it's either he's like unpitchable or the best pitcher in baseball, seemingly lately at least. So I guess I'm more or less with you on the overall evaluation.

I know that there have been people who have forecasted the Guardians to fall out of the race entirely. That would be a steep descent for them. And I get it. We've talked about their offensive correction, which has been happening right after being so surprisingly productive at the plate for much of the first half of the season. They've come back to Earth, fallen pretty hard. And the records reflects that this month, certainly. But I don't know that I see them falling out of the playoff picture entirely.

It's weird, like if they replayed this season a zillion times with the same rosters and true talent and everything, then I would probably put them out of the playoff picture sooner than I would say the twins. Sure. But they do have a tiny cushion. It's a much smaller, less plump cushion than it used to be.

But they do have a lead still in the AL Central. It's so weird when you look at the base runs standings at FanGraphs, because the guardians are now plus 11. So base runs thinks that they have outplayed their deserved expected record by 11 games. No other team is more than plus four. And it's weird, because when you see that, you expect that that means that,

like their base runs record is 62 and 63 base runs. They should be a losing team, a four 95 winning percentage. And often when you see that it's because the run differential is bad and you almost expect to see the team has been outscored, but that's not the case with the guardians. They're plus 82 run differential wise. So just based on run differential, their, their Pythagorean record, their Pythagin pat is five 71, which is not much worse than where

they are right now at five 84. So run differential wise, they're only plus two, but base runs wise, they're plus 11, which is because of the timing of their performance, right? The clutchness. Yeah. The sequencing has gone very well for them. Yeah. It's got to be one of the most extreme cases of that, where it's not that they've been outscored and been flukely lucky. It's that the scoring itself or the lack of allowing scoring is somewhat flukey or extremely well-timed. However, you want to say that.

Yeah. I noticed that this morning also, and it sent a chill down my spine because if you think it's hard to explain the gap between a record and a Pythagorean record. Just imagine having to communicate effectively about like why one's base run record would be so far off of that. And so if anyone who works for Guardians PR listens to this podcast, I just like, I beg, I beg of you, enjoy your life, you know, like don't, don't worry about us. You just enjoy your life. You know, like don't, don't worry about us. You just enjoy your life over there. It's okay.

Cause I don't want to have to do Twitter and don't make me do Twitter. Why you do Twitter. That's your job. You're guardians PR. I, that's not my job. So I think they will probably make it to the finish line. They will, they will make it to October, perhaps not in a very formidable or imposing form, or with a strong finish. Not that that is particularly well correlated with how one does in October, but

yeah, there are causes for concern there, even as they have been one of the best stories and most surprising teams of the season. You mentioned the Rays. It's interesting, Joshian had a hot take maybe a week or two ago where he predicted that the Rays would make the playoffs over the Guardians, that the Guardians would just collapse and the Rays, even after their deadline sell off, because maybe they've got some reinforcements back, even though they hadn't been very good by the underlying expected numbers heading into the trade deadline, which could be one reason why they did what they did, but he thought they would pick things up. The guardians would fall off, which by the playoff odds

was an extreme long shot for both of those things to happen. So the Rays were like three games over 500 as of the deadline, and I think there are two games under 500 since then. So it's not like they have completely fallen apart since then. That would have been the, the raziest thing ever. If they had managed to divest at the deadline, the way that they did and still somehow make it to the playoffs while replenishing their already rich farm system. I don't think that's going to happen. Their playoff odds were not robust at the deadline

and they are smaller now just because time has run out of the hourglass and they have not made a real run or anything. So yeah, maybe the Red Sox are your best bet to sneak in. Though, as you said, the pitching has, maybe it's just running out of gas somewhat because a lot of the early success was based on guys who just didn't have high workloads in the past and people who'd been bullpen guys or swing men maybe and established themselves

as successful starters. But maybe they're just running out of some steam and some fuel. They're fading. They're flagging down the stretch right now. They lack steam. They have no steam. They need a steam engine. Such as Rich Hill.

When Rich Hill arrives, the reinforcements, maybe he will propel them into the playoffs, but that would be so funny. Yeah. I would enjoy that. I know. Rich Hill just had like a 2015, late 2015, the original Rich Hill Renaissance and pitched like that and just single-handedly push Boston to the playoffs. That'd be great.

That'd be great. Probably you're right. And if any team is going to fall out of it, it might be the Royals. Disappointing as that would be. I mean, I think it's just, I don't even really want to specifically pick on the Royals. Like I don't know that I have less confidence in them than I do the twins or the guardians. You know, if I were forced to pick, it would be one of the AL Central teams and probably one of the twins or the Royals simply by virtue of the fact that they're in a wild card spot

now, even though it's by a quite slim margin. So it just seems the most likely, but I don't have conviction. I'm not making a case other than like, look at the standings. It's close. That's my case. Yeah. And then the NL, now I guess it's become a question of can Atlanta hold on?

Can they keep patching this already patchwork roster? Let's go get Geo or Shella. Let's just get any warm body here to try to replace our injured starters. But not Charlie Culberson. No. And can they make it too up to, can they hang on long enough and maybe they'll be a little healthier come October potentially. Yeah.

They might get Austin Riley back by then. Yeah. Yeah. Roughly right around then perhaps. So we'll see if they can hang on there. They're the low team right now. Playoff odds wise though though they are higher than the low team in the AL, which is Kansas City.

And my saying that I imagine the NL field staying largely the same is more about my lack of confidence in the Mets than it is, you know, a strong vote of confidence in Atlanta, because you're right. Like they're just, the fact that they're in playoff position at all right now is pretty remarkable given just how injured they are. But that Mets team, the Mets offense has actually been quite strong of late and they have gotten some good contributions from guys who, you know, as Jay noted, either bounce backs, which feels like too small a way to describe what the Jose Iglesias phenomenon has been like, or Lindor basically going from having a miss season to being an MVP contender, and then some of their younger guys who have really

seemed to take a bit of a step forward in their sophomore campaign. So that's exciting. But you know, their pitching is super underwhelming. I don't know, I want to acknowledge the potential for a low Mets bias on my behalf and leaning on that is lazy, but it is also funny. So I, you know, I'm caught betwixt in between on that one. But I just don't, I don't know that they have like a, let's go on a tear and rattle off 10 wins or whatever. I don't know if they have that in them, but you very rarely anticipate the team that does that.

So, me not saying it is like, what does that even mean? I don't know, other than, you know, the history of the Mets. Jeff McNeil has a 992 OPS since the All-Star break. A 992? Yeah. Really? 591 pre All-Star break 992 since. Yeah. He's hit 298, 365, 628 since then.

I'm uncomfortable with that. I don't care for it. Look, I don't have a good reason to dislike Jeff McNeil. I don't really dislike him at all. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other. I liked him as a player when he was good. He was good in a fun way, in an unusual way. Yes, he was.

Maybe what it is is that I felt like I had Jeff McNeil figured out, right? Like that he was going to be good in a fun way, in a way where the shape of his production was a little unusual relative to the rest of the league. And then I got comfortable with that. And then he started the season by, I'm going to do a swear sucking s***. And so I was like, okay, now I have a new understanding of Jeff McNeil and to have to adjust again, it's like listening to a new artist, you know, can't I just, I can only do one a year, you know? And I'm trying to keep my brain plastic and elastic and all of these things, but then sometimes you're just like, ah, screw

it, I'm going to listen to transatlanticism again. I guess having studied the state of the standings, my initial surprise that the playoff odds seem to have sorted themselves out the way that they did. I am forced to update my own understanding of the race and say, yeah, things do seem semi-settled, right do seem semi-settled. Right. And I guess if you had to bet, maybe you would bet on nothing about the current playoff picture changing or maybe the likelihood of one team swapping in or

out is not low. So it's just who's going to do that. Who's going to finish strong or who's going to cool off. I keep feeling like the Mariners just, they feel like a playoff team to me. I don't mean to torment you here. I guess it's because they have that kind of championship caliber starting rotation. It just feels like they should be there and that if they, if they could get there, they would be really, like they'd be pretty, they'd be tough to tangle with

in a short series, right? So maybe if they could just scrape enough runs across, I wouldn't be shocked if they had a little run in them. They're gonna, here's what's gonna happen, Ben. Can I give you my like actually quite depressing prediction? They're gonna miss by like one, I'm gonna do a big swear, Shane, you make sure to bleep this one. They're gonna miss by like one game. And I sound full of feeling about it. And I have moments kind of like this one,

where I am, I'm full of feeling, you know, or I went home for a reunion and a lot of my friends were like, God damn it. Like they're doing this again, you know? And so then I was full of feeling because I was like, look what you're doing to my friends. My stepmom is so disappointed in you. But I also am like, eh, what else did I expect, Ben? You Ben? And I am back in it with them, but it's not the same as it was. I've been thinking a lot about fandom in the last little bit. What do I want to get out of this?

What's reasonable for me to expect to get out of it? And I think sports, I don't know, we're having this broader sort of cultural conversation about fandom and standing and how are those things, unfortunately, overlapping with increasing regularity. And I wonder if sports fandom and being a fan of a musical artist or an actor should maybe be different. We should think about those things differently because the production of art versus doing a sport, is it different? Like we should think about those things differently. Because like the production of art versus doing a sport, like is it different? Anyway, all of that to say my prediction as of this moment is that they will go on a little run, they will miss by one game. And then I'm sorry to tell everyone, but that probably means the Astros are going to win the stupid World Series.

And then Jerry has to live with that. So I also have decided the one thing I am going to get kind of worked up about Ben, I've decided to get worked up about something if it comes to pass, which is that there's a concern, I won't call it a consensus necessarily, but a growing concern that seems to be percolating up through some of the more reasonable among the Mariners fan base that like Scott Service will lose his job, that he's on a wobbly chair. I have decided that if Scott Service loses his job, but Jerry DiPoto keeps his job, that I'm going to be worked up about it.

I'm going to, I'm going to stomp my little feet and get worked up about it. Cause I will find that fundamentally unfair, I think. So that's what I think I will concentrate my feelings into. But maybe a couple of alternatives will emerge. Either they'll miss the postseason by quite a bit more, they'll make the postseason, they'll miss the postseason but keep the existing administration. I'm not going to be able to make that happen at my administration versus regime. That's not going to work, is it? I want it to work

and even I don't have conviction about it as I say it. It doesn't sound right. If your prophecy comes to pass and they miss out by one game, then you can definitely listen to transatlanticism a lot to console yourself in your sadness. And Ben Gibbard will be just as sad as you are. And so you can commiserate. LS. Yeah. I haven't even bothered Ben. I haven't been like, when they were 10 games up, I thought about messaging Gibbard and being like, how are you feeling? And then I was like, this isn't going to last. And now I've- CB. That's probably what he would have said in response, I would think. So based on past interactions. So yes, if I had to choose any

one or anything to kind of swap places, I guess I would say I almost believe in the Mariners to muster a little run and maybe elbow out the Royals. And I could imagine the twins overtaking the Guardians in the central. And I could certainly imagine imagine if not expect the Orioles to shoulder aside the Yankees. I don't know why I chose shouldering aside in one case and elbowing aside in another, but they're effectively tied right now atop the Aleast. But I think if the season ended today, the Orioles would be the first wild card winner. So I could certainly see things going the other way where the Orioles win the East. So we'll see.

Maybe there will be a Rich Hill Red Sox resurgence and that would be fun too. Can I ask an Orioles related question really quick? Because I keep thinking about it every time I watch an Orioles game and I've broached this subject before, but you know, there's been an evolution to the, um, the Homer hose, right? Um, this season, it's not like within the last couple of days, like they, you know, there's been an evolution to the Homer hose, right? This season, it's not like within the last couple of days, like they, you know, like a Pokemon, it has become a different thing. And now it's like more, you know, involved than it was last year.

There are more hoses. Do you think that, I have two questions. First, do you think that their, their sort of new version of it, they did so that it would look less like a gravity bunk. And second, how often are they cleaning that thing? I remain worried about like amoebas and other parasitic kind of situations going on there. And I know it's just water and I know they're drinking out, but like you're spitting, you got to be spitting a little bit back too. Like, come on, we've all had water bottles

and you've got to clean that thing out once a week too. If you haven't cleaned your water bottle lately, hey, pause and go clean your water bottle and then come back. If you can't remember the last time you did it, it's been too long. Yeah. It's a Homer hydration station now, I think. Right. It's got all kinds of appendages and tubes coming off. It looks like something out of the matrix. It's like coming to destroy Zion. Yeah. It looks like a HR Geiger creation. Yes. It's a little bit disturbing. So maybe they just felt like, you know, bringing it back for a second season, they needed to make it more elaborate, but also maybe it was really, they should just lean into the bond like nature of it. Yeah. Is, is recreational marijuana legal in the state of Maryland?

Hydration station, you guys, it's, I mean, the one last year looked much more like a different thing. Teamwork. Oh, they got like stickers made for this. They did crafts. They did some crafts. I really hope they're cleaning that thing regularly. I know that gravity is working in its favor because like they put the water in the top and then it comes down. But I, especially after yesterday when we learned that Verdugo was just like living with blisters

on his hands for years. I am worried and I don't want to, you know, I'm sure the clubhouse attendants take care of it because I'm sure that this concern occurred to someone other than me, but I hope they're clean in that thing. Yeah, cannabis is legal in Maryland for medical and recreational use. See, you guys, just you could get an official, I, I, I saw, um, you know, commercials for the official CBD partner of, of major league baseball the other day on MLB TV.

If they're doing that, you can have it just be a bong. It's fine. I mean, don't like smoke during the game. That's probably not going to, you know, help you elbow out the Yankees. Or maybe it would. Or shoulder. I forget which one it was. But yeah, if MLB can have an official beer partner and an official cerveza partner, surely they can have an official CBD partner. They have an official CBD partner. But why not an official THC partner too? I mean, just all the, just, just all of the various chemical compounds,

we could get them all. Charlotte's web is the official CBD of major league baseball. You're right that I don't think they have an official like THC partner. Probably not, but One of the California teams should do it. They can have like a California sober night at the ballpark. Yeah. Zach Efflin shoulder inflammation is kind of concerning though, when it comes to the Orioles chances, but I still do tend to believe in them, or maybe I

just believe less in the Yankees, one or the other. So I mentioned the Jeff McNeil turnaround. I also wanted to mention the Corbin Carroll turnaround, which I'm sure you're well aware of. But after making everyone think maybe he's hiding an injury here because he was just so punchless for the first half or so of the season, he has turned back into, I don't know if we can quite say he's rookie of the year form, Corbin Carroll, but lately he has been, right? I mean, even since the start of July, let's say, he is a top 30 position player according to FanCrafts, number 30 exactly, but top 30 nonetheless,

with a 138 WRC plus over that span. And if we go over the past month, the past 30 days. He's a top 20 FanCrafts War Position player, 18th in fact, with a 161 WRC plus over that span. He has hit, I think after being again, virtually powerless for the first few months of the season to the point where we were thinking, is it the shoulder? Is he just not disclosing that? What is going on here? And he just was not hitting the ball hard and he was not hitting the ball up.

And he was certainly not hitting the ball out. He had one home run in March slash April, one home run in May, zero home runs in June, and then he had six in July and six already in August. So the punch, the pop, the power, the potency, it has returned and that has helped power the Diamondbacks. So it is not the only thing that has helped propel them, but yeah, it has really helped to have him back. It's fantastic.

I went back and forth on the question of whether they were maybe concealing an injury. The data point in their favor was that he didn't, as far as we know, have any procedure or anything done in the off season. And I figured that if that terrifying swing he had, after which his power really disappeared last year, this had been quite a protracted slump in the power department that if something had, had gone wrong then that

they would have had it addressed in the off season and they didn't. So I was like, well, maybe it's just, I don't know, but you can, you know, you could imagine that if you are nervous that the power of your own body is going to result in further injury that it could mess with your swing. I didn't think he needed to be hurt in order to be in a slump. He could be afraid of getting hurt. And I don't know that that was necessarily what was at play either, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

But yeah, they aren't making him play center. He's not having to assume center field duty, which is not sort of his best position and he's hitting well and it's just going so much better. And when it rains, it pours and it often does pour when it rains here. It's not just Carroll, right? That entire offense has been producing at a pretty phenomenal clip in the second half. Ayo, Hanyo Suarez has been hitting well and Jack Peterson has been hitting well and Jake McCarthy has been hitting well.

And are all of those performances sustainable? I mean, it depends how closely you wanna look at Jake McCarthy's Babbitt, but it's been doing what it's needed to. So yeah, I think that they are a team that could round into a form where at the end of the season, they are a more formidable postseason opponent than they were at the start of the postseason last year, which doesn't mean that they're going to like, improbably make the World Series again, but it would not surprise

me if this club looks quite a bit more intimidating come October 1st than last year's club did. Cause remember they kind of had to like squeak in a little bit last year. They had to squeak. And I think it'll be a more comfortable final month for them than last year's was. So that's what I think about the Diamondbacks. It's a pleasing OPS progression if you look at the monthly splits for Corbin Carroll. I guess it wasn't that pleasing for the first few months, but the trend is 538, 614, 725, 822, 964. It's heading in the right direction.

That's what you want to see. And he's hitting triples, you know? He's got five triples in the second half, Ben. That's what you want to see. And he's hitting triples, you know? He's got five triples in the second half, Ben. That's so fun. I want him to have a year where he sets a triples record. That's the thing I want for Corbin Carroll. Cause it's like, it's so fun when he's doing, you know, vroom vroom stuff. It's really quite something.

Cause you watch him and you're like, holy s*** that guy's fast. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. And I meant to mention that the team that played Corbin Carroll in the World Series last year was a non-factor in our discussion to start this episode about the playoff picture because the Rangers are just out of it, 0.2% playoff odds. But look, we could do probably a whole episode breaking down what went wrong

for the Rangers, but it is interesting. I think that their plan, which was basically let's get to the point where all of our injured pitchers return and all these guys come back from Tommy John surgery and we'll start shorthanded and we'll go get Michael Lorenzen and we'll try to just make it through and then we will get Scherzer back and we'll go get Michael Lorenzen and we'll try to just make it through and then we will get Scherzer back and we'll get Tyler Malley back and we'll get Jacob deGrom back and we'll be firing on all cylinders by the time the playoffs roll around and I would say that portion of the plan has not paid off because those guys just

Collectively have not given the Rangers very much, which maybe tells you something about whether you can bank on injured pitchers to return. I guess you could play this game with the Astros too, though they have righted their season and their rotation to some extent. Some of the guys they were counting on to reinforce that rotation, Garcia and Orkide and McCullers, et cetera, have not really been part of that push. So just as you can't bank on healthy pitchers not to get hurt, you definitely can't bank on hurt pitchers to get healthy. The Rangers have gotten 0.9 fan graphs were in total thus far from the trio

of Scherzer, Malley and deGrom. Scherzer and Malley did return, but then got hurt again. They're on the IL now. And deGrom is finally embarking on his rehab assignment. He is going to be pitching for AA Frisco. He's scheduled to start on Thursday, but he's not going to be back in the big leagues for a while because apparently he's going to need four rehab starts. And that's if all goes smoothly,

which means that he'd be on track to be activated around mid September, which means that he'd be on track to be activated around mid September, which is disappointing because I had hoped that we would get a more extended look at DeGrom and given where the Rangers are right now that they're out of it. If he has even the slightest setback, it will not take a lot for them to say, let's just shut him down, right? Like, why are we rushing him back? Just give him the whole off season. So I don't know what kind of odds I would put on our actually seeing

Jacob DeGrom in the majors this season, though I think it can be probably a morale boost to a player who's coming back from a serious surgery and has gone through the whole rehab assignment just to make it back to sort of break the seal on the big leagues again and celebrate that victory at the end of the year. Hey, I made it, I'm a big leaguer again. I can start the season there. Any nerves or jitters you have about coming back,

you can kind of get those out of the way before the next season, and then you can go into that at full strength. So it'll be a brief comeback if it's a comeback at all. And I just, I'm kind of on the edge of my seat waiting to see what his stuff looks like and will he still be the great de Gram that we were seeing on a per inning basis before the surgery. But that plan has not worked out. They just haven't gotten much from those guys. And yet maybe the more surprising thing is that that hasn't even really mattered that much. It

hasn't even really mattered that much. It hasn't That's not the thing that sunk them because you thought that's okay It was just can they rake can they mash their way to contention and stay within striking distance? And then they'll get the pitchers back, but that hasn't happened That's been the weird thing about their offense has not shown up. Some guys got hurt, some guys underperformed, and even if they had healthy de Grom, Scherzer, and Malley right now, that probably would not be enough. So really both prongs of that plan went wrong, but I guess it's worth remembering if you're kind of banking on a pitching resurgence from reinforcements who

were possibly potentially coming off the IL. Can't count on that. I think it's funny given that the Diamondbacks ended up kind of having that strategy happen accidentally and then it's kind of worked. True. Right? And part of why the first half was so rough for them, although they ended on kind of a

high note, was that all of their starters were down, right? Like Rodriguez didn't even debut until the second half. Meryl Kelly was hurt. Zach Allen was like often dealing with cramping. They were having all of these issues in their rotation. Montgomery bad. And then hurt and since returned, but still kind of bad. So at times it felt like they were on parallel tracks and then, you know, they're starting to get some of their guys back and have it go, um, obviously better for them. Uh, so yeah. Going to end with some stat blasting.

The last thing before we get to that, I just, before we recorded, listened to an episode of the long running podcast, Judge John Hodgman, because it was a baseball episode and the format for that podcast is, well, John Hodgman serves as the judge and he, he rules on some ethical quandary that listeners bring to the show. And this time, I believe for the first time ever, John Hodgman recused himself and did not actually serve as the judge.

And he handed over the judge duties to long time, effectively wild listener, Patreon supporter, former guest co-host of effectively wild Jesse Thorne, who is the longtime bailiff of that podcast, but he was promoted into the judge role here because I guess of John Hodgman's lack of familiarity with baseball and the fact that Jesse is very familiar with baseball. But the quandary was can an A's fan who is boycotting not just the A's, but Major League Baseball go to a Giants game with a longtime friend? So one of the guests was Jenny, longtime A's fan wearing a cell shirt in the video version of the podcast.

And Jenny's longtime friend, John, Giants fan, wanted Jenny to go to a game with him. And Jenny wasn't sure whether to do that because of this boycott against MLB and really all MLB owners. So not just boycotting John Fisher, but everyone who enabled John Fisher, so Rob Manfred as the commissioner of baseball, and to some extent, every other owner who didn't block the A's attempts to move the team out of Oakland, right? That was just kind of rubber stamped. And so can you change your allegiance, but also can you in good conscience support

Major League Baseball or another Major League Baseball team in the absence of the A's as opposed to say the Ballers, right? Or some other non-Major League Baseball version of baseball. And so Jesse stepped in and ruled on this debate, though I guess you could say Jesse should have recused himself as a Giants fan. Perhaps he was not entirely impartial in this matter. But where do you stand on just what should A's fans do if they miss baseball and don't want to be deprived of baseball, but also don't want to support the organization, the business that enabled their team to be

taken away from them. I wonder if there is, if they insist on not supporting sort of the broader enterprise, I think it gets a little tricky, at least in terms of stuff that I can suggest on this podcast. I think there are a lot of ways to watch baseball and some of them more directly enrich me, really, I don't know how any of those ways work. So I couldn't give you pointers, but I'm given to understand that, you know, you don't always have to, you could go to a sports bar and then like the amount of, of money you sit in there,

it's probably just on, you know, like you're not making choices. You're not asking for the remote. You're sitting there having whatever beverage you want and look, there's baseball on, you know, what are you going to do about that? You go to a minor league game, many of which are not owned by the same people who own major league franchises, those teams. Jenny has been going to ballers games and supporting the ballers, but look, as much as I

enjoy non-Major League baseball, there's something that Major League baseball gives you that maybe you can't get from the ballers. You can get the community aspect, you can get the joy of just going out to the park and watching baseball played. But if you want to see the highest caliber of baseball played, then the ballers aren't quite the same, right? No offense to the ballers and their ilks. So yeah, there's, there's just something that's hard to replicate with a non major league, you could maybe get into an international major league if you know, but that's, it's a lot to start fresh with an entirely different league and players you

don't know. And maybe that could be fun. Maybe that could be edifying, you know, you're, you're coming fresh to this thing. It's a whole process of discovery, but that's not a light lift either to just start from scratch when it comes to following a league. So it can be logistically challenging. Yeah. Time zones. Yeah. Although you are probably going to be safe to watch on a delay without spoilers a lot of the time, not always there. It's not as if there's no domestic U S interest in and NPP or the KBO,... A lot of people have trouble watching time shifted sports though, even if it's not because they're going to get spoiled, it's just because you know that it's not life and the lack of

immediacy just eats at you somehow. Yeah, I struggle with that personally. So yeah, it's tricky. I guess I would offer this though. I think that it can feel as if those sorts of consumer choices are sort of the only ones that we have. It's the only lever we can pull, right? And for a lot of, in a lot of instances, it is the only lever we can pull. And I don't want to be nihilistic about it and say that like those kinds of choices don't matter, right? Because I think that it underestimates the power that, you know, a lot of those choices

brought together in collective action can have. And it also, I think, can serve to let people off the hook for stuff a little bit sometimes. Although of all the unethical decisions we make under capitalism, like deciding to watch MLB TV is probably low on the list in terms of its impact. But like, I also just think if you want to keep watching baseball and, and you don't want to watch the A's because that was your team and they have let you down and boy have they, but you, you know, you find another club that resonates and you enjoy watching

it. Like, I think it's okay. You know, I don't think that makes you like a less committed former A's fan. It doesn't, you know, make your complaints about the team or its ownership hollow in some way. It really doesn't. Yeah. I totally understand not continuing to be a fan of the A's organization, certainly as

long as John Fisher owns it. So you don't want to- And even after, you know, it- such a personal thing, right? And it's your time. It's your time and money. And if a change of ownership doesn't satisfy you, that's okay. You don't have to return to them. You can strike out on a different path and that path can be permanent. There's nothing wrong with that either. Yeah. So by all means, don't follow the team to Sacramento or Las Vegas or wherever it ends up. And even if they somehow find their way back to Oakland, maybe they have to earn their way back into your good graces, right? And again, it might be contingent on a sale. I wouldn't deprive yourself

of the joy of baseball and high level professional baseball. Just because you've been burned by the A's now, if you've been so burned by the A's that you no longer have the appetite for baseball, that's fine too. Yeah, that's fine too. I totally get it. If you don't feel the yearning for it anymore because you've just been so soured on the whole enterprise, I completely understand that. I get it.

But if you still long for baseball, if you pine for the sport, as Jenny on this Judge John Hodgman episode did, then yeah, I don't think that it's necessary to take a stand and say, I cannot kind of obliquely double bank shot support John Fisher or Rahm Inford in any way. And I'm going to make my life worse and deprive myself of something that brings me pleasure. And yeah, there are certain things that you might like to do that are just really bad for the world. And so you swear off doing those things.

But I don't know if Major League Baseball rises to that level or on the hierarchy of things that are bad for the world. Whether- Or if I'm gonna maybe offer a sadder perspective on it, of all the things that Major League Baseball as an entity, if we're sort of abstracting away from the A's of it all, of all the things that Major League Baseball does as an entity, facilitating the sale of the A's is actually pretty low on their list of

crimes. They do, there's a lot of other far gnarlier stuff with even more dire human consequence than the A's. And again, I'm not saying that to let John Fisher off the hook, like what an embarrassment of an owner. And I do think that the other owners should have, there should be a greater collective sense of responsibility for that failure than they seem to be willing to engage with. Even the ones who on sort of owner adjusted terms, I think are good owners and really take stewardship

of their franchises seriously in a way that Fisher never did. Like, you know, if you want a reason to not engage with major league baseball, it's not, it's not the A's and there are reasons. So sorry to Jenny for reversing you yet again. And it doesn't have to be the Giants. If you're trying to team up from the A's to another team, the Giants, if you're in the Bay Area, then they're the most convenient team to go to. To go see, yeah. Right, and Rob Medford, remember when he took a lot of flack

for when he was asked about, what do you say to Bay Area baseball fans, or how are you gonna continue to support baseball in the Bay Area? And he was just like, hey, there's still a team in the Bay Area, right? Which I defended tepidly. Yeah, I did not.

But I understand why it's not an easy trend that you can't just pivot to. Oh, well, yeah. Especially if there's a rivalry there, but even if you put that aside, you could audition other teams to win your affections. You could go root for some other team entirely. Now, ultimately, not to spoil the episode,

I would suggest people listen to the podcast. It's a good podcast and it's rarely a baseball show, but this time it was. And Jesse's great, glad that he got to don the ropes this time and certainly is a subject matter expert. And he sort of, I guess, sidestepped the larger issue of like, can you become a baseball fan again or pledge your undying

allegiance to another organization? And he just suggested, you know, go to your, go to a game with your pal, right? Like your, your friends, you've been friends for a long time and it'll be a nice community experience and he'll go to a ballers game with you and it'll be a nice time out. But when it comes to deciding, we've answered listener emails about this in the past, like, can I support this team with this owner? And I do think it's kind of a fool's errand maybe to try to like weigh the ethical issues with sports owners and try to is like,, which team is, is ethically clean enough for me to root for them with no qualms.

I mean, that's going to be a losing game. Probably not that there aren't differences, but you're going to be hard pressed to find a team or an ownership group with no baggage whatsoever. And that could change on a dime if the team gets sold or something comes to light. Right. So I don't know. And I almost do feel like, you know, don't hold your affections hostage to like this owner.

Like this owner is maybe like a steward of that franchise and Rob Manford is the commissioner right now, but baseball and even major league baseball, it certainly does not operate like a public trust. It's, it's a for-profit business as it constantly reminds us, but it is also kind of like a public good and utility, just in the sense of bringing joy to millions of baseball fans. And I don't know, life is hard sometimes. And if baseball brings you pleasure, then I don't know that you should let the transgressions of a particular billionaire

turn you off of that forever, unless you just find something else you like just as much and brings you the same amount of joy, which is a possible outcome of this too. You might say, yeah, I should have stopped watching baseball before. I've picked up this new hobby I like even more. So yeah, it's tough and I'd be interested in hearing from any A's fans who want to weigh in about that. Maybe we could have some A's fans on the podcast at some point after the season to talk about what they're weighing in, what their considerations are, and whether they will be baseball fans going forward. But we've certainly heard from some A's fans who've said, like, I just can't be a baseball fan anymore. And I get that. And that's sad.

And that's why it sucks so much that Fisher has just run this franchise into the ground the way that he has. Yeah, it's, you know, I don't want to like, try to figure out exactly how it compares to some of the disgraced sport owners in other sports where the stuff that ultimately pushed them out of ownership was documented racism or sexual harassment or something like that. I'm not trying to find equivalences necessarily because yuck. But I hope that when we look back on the last hundred years of sports ownership, when we are looking at the sports owners who failed on sports terms, he gets the mention

that he deserves because to see a franchise like the A's and all that it has meant, not just to its fans, although it has meant a great deal to its fans, but also to the sport, kind of go the way it has, like it's disgraceful. There's no other way to describe it and it should keep him up at night. I doubt it does, way it has. Like it's disgraceful, there's no other way to describe it. And it should keep him up at night. I doubt it does, but it should. It's a deeply emotional issue. There was a member of the Judge John Hodgman podcast

that got choked up about this and it wasn't the A's fan. So that's how deep these sentiments run. So check that out. Let's stat blast. Stat blast. They take a data set sort of by something like E or M, sentiments run. So check that out. Let's stat blast. Okay. Before I do some stat blasting here, want to shout out some stat blasting that Russell Carlton did at baseball prospectus.

I thought this would be of interest to listeners because it was of interest to me. He looked into whether home run reliant teams are particularly prone to slumps or whether they're all or nothing from a scoring perspective, because that's something you hear about these teams, particularly when the postseason rolls around, right? It's like, okay, this might be a good offensive team, but when they're not hitting homers, then it's a complete power outage and they're just more susceptible to slumps and ineptitude than the typical team or the less home run

reliant team. And that's just a long, ongoing, undying canard about teams that are reliant on the long ball having problems in October and study after study. Some I've done, some others have done have shown that that's not the case. That not only are home run line teams typically better on the whole, all else being equal, but they are also more impervious to playoff offensive outages than the typical team. That home run rate actually falls off less in October. Of course, all scoring

falls off because pitching and defense is better and it's colder, et cetera, but you can actually October proof yourself to some small extent by being more home run reliant. That is very hard to convince people of, but it does seem to be the case. But there is a perception that when a home run hitting team is not hitting homers, then it's really screwed and it's going to get ugly. And Russell looked into that to see whether the scoring of home run reliant teams is more or less consistent than other teams. And he looked at the standard deviation of run scoring from game to game and some other metrics too. If you just look at standard deviation, you might conclude that yes,

home run reliant teams are prone to more wild swings in scoring, but that turns out to be solely an artifact of the reality that they are higher scoring teams typically. And if you're a higher scoring team, then you're going to have a higher standard deviation in run scoring, more variation in your run totals, because you have the capacity to score lots of runs and score runs and punches. And so sometimes you will, and sometimes you won't. And there will be just more variation around your average run scoring than if you're a team that doesn't hit and doesn't score and thus will not have as

much fluctuation, right? You'll just usually not score, right? So it'll be more consistent, but still bad. And if you account and correct for that, for the overall scoring level, then it turns out that more home run reliant teams are actually more consistent and have less variation and lower standard deviations than equivalent offensive teams that are less Homer and Reliant. So again, it turns out not to be true. And I don't know why this belief is so deeply instilled and hard to shake for people.

Maybe it's just because you remember certain times when like, you know, this team is capable of hitting tons of homers and then when it doesn't, it's extra frustrating. Or maybe you remember certain plate appearances where you just really want to play some small ball and get that run in from third with less than two outs. And the team looks like it's swinging for the fences because that's what it usually does. And it doesn't moderate that approach in this particular instance and then that's very frustrating because it looks like this just all or nothing

team that never changes its approach even if analytically it often makes sense not to vary your approach because that approach tends to pay off but it's just what we always say about October scoring it's hard to string hits together And so if you can hit a home run, then it's going to be harder to Homer off of the good pitching in October and colder temperatures, but it's also going to be a lot harder to hit three consecutive singles or something. Right. So it turns out that it's better to be a home run reliant offense, even if it doesn't seem like that sometimes, so it was a good corrective to that popular misimpression. I think that that's right. So let's do some stat blasting of our own.

I've got two that Ryan Nelson assisted with, and then I will close out with one of my own, so Ryan Nelson frequent stat blast correspondent will be my stat blast setup man. He'll be the bridge to Ben here. He'll pitch the seventh and eighth stat blast wise, and I'll come in for the ninth. So we got one question from two people, essentially the same question from both. Tyler wrote in several days ago to say Andrew Heaney in the first inning of his start against the twins today through 18 pitches to get three outs. 16 of those pitches were to Manuel Margot in the longest at

bat of the season. This got me wondering what is the highest percentage of pitches thrown in one inning to one batter by a pitcher who got three outs. Maybe there's a reliever who came in and got a triple play. So got three outs with a hundred percent of his pitches thrown to one batter. But outside of that situation is this heeny outing, one of the higher percentages. And then listener and Patreon supporter Cody also wrote in and expressed this in a different way. This was in the twins Rangers game last Friday, first inning Margot 16 pitches, let off the game. Then he flew out. Do you say flew out or flyed out?

People say flyed out, but I always feel kind of uncomfortable with that. I do too, but I feel weird about flew out. I know what you mean though. It's, you know, it's a failure of language, I think. Continuing with Cody's question, Margot saw 16 of 18 of the pitches in the inning, 88.9%. And so Cody also wondered that led me to wonder if there's been a higher percentage of pitches seen by a single batter in a three out inning to exclude walk-offs logistically.

It's difficult to improve on that percentage so much. So I can't help, but wonder if it's some sort of record. So Ryan Nelson, you can find on Twitter at RSNelson23, he looked into this and found that yes, it is a record. So our eagle-eyed listeners, as usual, picking up on something impressive here. Ryan says, I did exclude innings where there were not three outs, for example, a walk off or an inning interrupted by rain or darkness. And we don't have pitch by pitch data going back that far before 1988.

Prior to this, Carlos Pena had the record of 87.5% of pitches in the inning 14 of 16 for the Rays against the Braves. He started the inning with a 14 pitch strikeout. This was in 2012. Then Luke Scott singled on the first pitch and then Jeff Kepinger grounded into a double play on the next pitch. So 14 out of 16, and this was 16 out of 18. So there was a Carlos Pena 14 out of 16.

There was a Jim Gantner 1988, 13 out of 15. Each row in 2006 also had a 13 out of 15. I'll provide the full list and spreadsheet for people who are interested. And the players to most often face more than 75% of the pitches in an inning. I don't know what this means exactly, but it's a leaderboard. Barry Larkin has the most times facing more than 75% of the pitches in an inning. He did that 16 times. So I don't know if that's a testament to just Barry Larkin

having a pretty long career in the pitch by pitch era, or whether it has something to do with where he hit in the lineup and who was hitting behind him. You know, pretty patient hitter, maybe less patient hitters behind him. But Barry Larkin did that 16 times. Ron Gant did it 13 times. Sammy Sosa did it 13 times. Ray Durham 12 times. J. Bell, Ray Lankford and Phil Nevin 11 times. And Adrian Beltre and Steve Finley did it 10 times. So we just remembered some guys. Love to remember some guys. Next question comes to us from Sean, who says,

"'Could y'all do a stat blast on Chris Bryant and his slugging percentage significantly declining after he signed with Colorado?' It might not end up being as rare as I think it is, but it seems unreal how his offense and specifically his power just disappeared as soon as he signed with the Rockies. His slugging as of this email, this was last week is 104 points lower with Colorado than his career slugging percentage.

I think Sam Miller may have had a tweet to this effect earlier this season. So Ryan looked into this. He has a spreadsheet. He has a graph, a link to both on the show page. He writes, yes, this is notable. No other player with 500 plus Rockies plate appearances has such a big gap between their Rockies slugging percentage and their rest of career slugging percentage.

So Brian is indeed an outlier here. If you look at guys who had at least 500 plate appearances with the Rockies, the next biggest drop off from their slugging percentage elsewhere to their Rockies specific slugging percentage is Jason Giambi, who barely cracked that 500 plate appearance with the Rockies threshold. And his decline was 68 points compared to Bryant's, which is currently 123 points. And as you recall, Jason Giambi was a Rocky at the tail end of his career. He was basically like a mascot for those teams, right? I mean, he produced a little bit at times, but he was kind of like a clubhouse leader,

mentor, veteran type, you know, he played every now and then, but he was just bringing his knowledge and guidance to that team. So that was at the very end of an accomplished offensive career. So I guess it would make sense that he would show up there. And the other guys on the list, I guess are kind of in the same boat. Maybe it looks like Luis Gonzalez had a 52 point drop off, Daniel Murphy, 33 point drop off. Randall Gritchick, 19 points. You see how quickly the drop-offs drop off here

because it's rare for someone to have, like if I don't wait at all by playing time and just take like all the Rockies, the players who had 500 play appearances with the Rockies and also played elsewhere, then the average difference it looks like is a 54 point gain for the Rockies. And so it's rare to have really anyone who's worse with the Rockies than they were elsewhere in any significant amount of time. So Chris, Chris Bryant has almost doubled the records basically for someone who has this much playing time for

the Rockies. It is. So to find someone with a bigger gap, you have to drop the plate appearance threshold all the way to 134 plate appearances, which is how many Mark Bellhorn made for the Rockies in 48 games. So he had a 138 point slugging percentage drop, but in like 20% of the plate appearances that Chris Bryant has had as a Rocky and slugging percentage quote unquote stabilizes at around 320 at bats per the fan graphs glossary.

So this is a pretty meaningful that Chris Bryant has been this bad and it's just blowing away everyone else when it comes to being worse offensively for the Rockies without even park adjusting. If we park adjusted, then it would really get ugly. But yeah, it is kind of shocking that he's been this bad. I don't think there were a lot of people who were high on that signing at the time, but that it has gone so south that he has hit 250, 330, 2381 for the Rockies. Oof, oof. And that's like, that's a full season cobbled together over a few seasons, but 159 games, 671 play appearances. Yeah, it's, it's bad. Like what else do you say about it? Other than that, it's like really bad,

man. Yeah, it's pretty depressing. And he's on the IL again, as we speak, right? It's hard to keep track because he, he's off and on and hasn't made much of an impact when he has been off. But this is like, what is third time on the IL, something like that, the season. And it brings to mind a Facebook group in the Effectively Wild Facebook group, a thread I saw the other day from Ethan who posted about Chris Bryant versus Anthony Rendon, like, which has worked out worse. Rendon for the angels or Bryant for the Rockies. And Ethan put it in terms of contracts, which of course is an inevitable consideration when you're talking about these guys, but even if we put contract aside or didn't do this purely based on dollars per war or whatever,

which of those signings bums you out more or has worked out worse? They've both been bad, but if you had to choose one, you'll rocky in a hard place here. I think that's our episode title. I guess I'd say Rendon, simply because the competitive aspirations of that team were so much greater. And I think the competitive potential of that team was greater. And I don't blame, like I don't think them not getting to the postseason during the Ohtani era is like Rendon's fault. Like that would be a ridiculous thing to lay at his feet specifically,

but a fully functional, operational, competitive Rendon would have helped a lot, although he doesn't pitch. So maybe it wouldn't have mattered. Again, that's why it's silly to lay the blame for that entirely at his feet or even mostly at his feet. But I think that the Chris Bryant list Rockies probably still weren't going to go anywhere. And signing a different, healthier, and therefore better player in his place probably doesn't make the difference. Whereas maybe committing that Rendon money to good starting pitching would. It's a tough call.

Yeah. money to like good starting pitching would. It's a tough call. I think I might go the other way and say that Bryant has worked out worse just because he has played worse on the whole. Again, they've both been bad and disappointing. Rendon somewhat surprisingly has a 102 OPS plus as an angel, whereas Bryant has a 90 OPS plus with the Rockies. The angels did have one season where they got what they wanted from Rendon, except for the fact that it was 2020. So it was a shortened season, but Rendon did deliver that season. He played most of the games he played more or less like what they were bargaining for, like he had played to that point.

So they, they got one shortened season that was not shortened through any fault of Anthony Rendon's where he played like what was advertised and expected. And then, I don't know, like he's been positive value overall, like he's produced 3.6 FanGraphs War for the Angels, which again, not a great return on investment, but Bryant is in the red right now. He's at negative 1.2 War for the Rockies. And you know, you're almost splitting hairs at that point. And Rendon, it's been five seasons for him with the Angels. Bryant, it's been

three. So it feels like maybe there's more of a chance that he could change things unless you've like watched him play, in which case, maybe it doesn't seem like that. Rendon, I guess maybe more was expected of him by outside observers when he signed. I think that that's correct. Yeah. Cause they were at roughly the same stage of their careers age wise, I guess, right? Like Rendon's first season with the angels was his age 30 season and Bryant's first season

with the Rockies was his age 30 season. But Rendon had been performing at his peak to that point and was just coming off a World Series championship and was a superstar and one of the most valuable players in baseball. Whereas Bryant had already declined before the Rockies signed him, right? So he wasn't such a superstar or at least most people didn't view him that way because he'd had that kind of lost 2020 with the Cubs and then had the split 2021 with the Cubs and the Giants where he was okay. But certainly like peak Bryant was very early in his career and was already pretty far removed from Bryant by the time he joined the Rockies.

And so the Rockies still seemed to evaluate him that way, but no one else really did. So that contract was more roundly criticized at the time, right? Like everyone was dumping on the Rockies signing Bryant to those terms. Whereas the Angels signing Rendon, I mean, yeah, he had been sort of injury prone earlier in his career, but he'd been so good and hadn't dropped off. And so that seemed like, okay, you're signing one of the best players in baseball to one of the biggest deals in baseball makes sense sort of, right? So relative to expectations, maybe by most people around the game at the time, Rendon has been worse, but also the

signing of Bryant was worse. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's like, it's like, was the signing itself, you almost have to have different answers for the signing itself versus the players performance. And I guess, you know, Bryant hit okay his first season with the Rockies, but he just played 42 games. So, yeah, which was not that many fewer than Rendon played in his first season with the angels, but for very different reasons.

If you go by just pure availability, again, bad for both, but Bryant has played in 159 of 450 possible Rockies games. nine of 450 possible Rockies games. So that is 35.5% and falling because he's on the IL right now. Rendon has actually beaten that. So he has played in 243 of 672 possible angels games. So that's 36.2% and climbing because he is currently active as we speak, at least. Who knows if he will be when you hear this, but 36.2% and climbing because he is currently active as we speak at least. Who knows if he will be when you hear this, but 36.2% versus 35.5% of possible games. That's as close as you could come without it being identical.

So a lot of parallels here. I guess there's been more bad press about Rendon maybe. I think there's been more bad press that has, I mean, like he, I don't know, man, like they've, they've each had pieces written about them that haven't been particularly complimentary. There have certainly been more of them in Rendon's case because there have been these recurring injuries and there's been sort of this persistent perception that he doesn't really care about baseball. Which I don't think has been the case with Bryant. Although I do think that there has been a souring on some of Bryant's PR lately. Like, wasn't there a piece in the last

maybe year about how he kind of felt like the signing hadn't gone well and it didn't maybe go over great with Rocky's fans? Yes, right. Yeah. That was a Sam Blum piece as were many of the Rendon pieces where he had some quote that blew up in Rendon's face. But yes, I think Sam talked to Brian and he said something about, because he signed, it was like the lockout time and he was like, he felt rushed and maybe he had some regrets about signing with the Rockies, right? So that maybe didn't endear him to the fan base, which probably isn't super fond of him

because of how little he's played and how poorly he's played. But yeah, like, Rendona's certainly taken more abuse from baseball fans in general who've gotten big mad about him and the perception that he's apathetic about whether he plays at all. And I've been sort of sympathetic to Rendona on that score and have kind of walked through the history of his quotes about his feelings

vis-a-vis playing baseball. And I think he kind of gets a bad rep, but also has stepped into it himself and has not done himself any favors in portraying his own enthusiasm for baseball, but he's been more of a punching bag kind of for people who've been like, you know, overpaid baseball players and, you know, he's just taking the checks and not doing his best to get back. Brian has just kind of fallen off the national baseball map. You know, we just like, don't even talk about Chris Bryant anymore.

It's kind of a, well, he's just played so little, you know, it's a lot of that. Very unusual, shocking career progression to go from being one of the best players in baseball and, and one of the biggest stars in baseball and winning the World Series fairly early on in his career. And then, you know, maybe it's all downhill from a 2016 Cubs title, regardless of what you do on an individual level after that, but he just started so strong and all the controversy about his service time manipulation and then, yeah, he just has not aged well. It's disappointing.

Sad to see. Yeah, it is. All right. Here's the big finish, the last stat blast. And this one is prompted by a broadcaster clip and broadcaster commentary. It's the gift that keeps giving when it comes to fodder for research, right? As it was for Bailey Hall, our guests last week who looked into lead off walks versus we have singles.

That's something you hear on baseball broadcast. It's just been such a reliable staple throughout my entire career. If you know, baseball broadcaster says something, is that true? Let's check, right? Let's do an explainer. Let's do a Snopes investigation of whether this is actually true. And you can get a lot of material out of that. So I'm glad that baseball broadcasters say so many things.

And many of them are former players who are speaking from their personal experience. So in this case, we are providing a clip from Mike Kruco, the storied legendary Giants broadcaster. I don't mean to impugn my Kruco here, but he prompted this investigation. He is of course, along with Dwayne Kuyper, widely believed to be the best booth in baseball

or up there with the Mets at least. And Kruco of course is a former player. And so maybe he is speaking from his experience too. And this clip was flagged in our Patreon discord group by supporter Xander S who pointed me to this clip. This narration response to a Kurt Kassali ground out last Thursday in a game against Atlanta. Kurt Kassali, Giants catcher grounded out to Whit Merrifield, another one of the Atlanta injury replacements who actually has played surprisingly well for the Braves.

So let's hear this quick Kruko clip. And Casale shoots this one. And Merrifield will knock it down and then make the play. No panic there for Merrifield. He knew who was running. It's August. Casale is a catcher. You don't see many infield singles by catchers

after August 1st. All right, so Xander says on the broadcast, Mike Kruko said something to the effect of you pretty much don't see catcher infield hits after August 1st. So I was wondering what's the monthly breakdown of infield hits for catchers versus non catchers and if there is a decrease in infield hits after the start of August for catchers, is that unique to the position or does that decrease exist for others as well?

I guess the claim is technically true. You don't see many infield singles by catchers after August 1st. You don't see many infield singles by catchers at any point in the season. There were 306 infield singles by catchers all of last year. So say 10 per team per season. But clearly the claim is that they get less frequent later in the season. So you don't know the answer here. You are not privy to the results of this stat blast. I sent you the Kruko clip where he claims that infield hits for catchers are rare late in the season, presumably because fatigue and the dog days and you're tired

and it's hot. So do you think the stats will bear this out? Do you think there will be a decrease in infield hit rate for catchers or for anyone for that matter in the last couple months of the season? I'm going to say for catchers, no, but only because the rate is going to be very low to begin with. Okay. And so it won't taper that much because it's just going to already be low. I could see it tapering, falling off for, hmm, how complicated do I want to get? And this might not be a split you have. I could see it falling off for non-catchers on non-contending teams as the dog days progress

because like, what are you doing here really? Except playing out the string. But I imagine that it's like fairly consistent over the course of the year for everybody. You're correct. That it is fairly, well, I don't know yet. I guess you said a couple different things there. I mean, it could, I said I could see it maybe falling off for like non catchers on non contending teams, but really I think it's mostly consistent. I think I landed the plane at the end there. It is mostly consistent.

There does not really seem to be anything to this as far as I can tell. It's interesting. I did see a study recently, I will link to on the show page, about whether players on teams that are out of it do worse late in the season. Like if you're on a going nowhere team, are you worse in September slash October, the end of the championship season? And it looks like there's maybe some evidence that there's a slight decline for those players. So that could be the case.

I didn't break down the infield hit rate for teams that are out of it, though. I guess there could be something to that. Maybe, maybe that's why there is a slight tapering of the offensive output late in the season, but when it comes to beating out grounders, I can't find any evidence that this is true. So through the wonders of the fan graphs splits leaderboard. I was able to go back to 2002 and I looked at completed seasons 2002 through 2023. And I looked at the infield hit rate prior to

August and from August on. So the first four or so months of the season versus the last couple months of the season in field hit couple months of the season. Infield hit percentage on fan graphs, it is the percentage of ground balls that are in field hits. So just in field hits divided by total ground balls and for catchers again over this two decade period, the in field hit rate through the end of July is 5.1%. So 5.1% of ground balls become infield hits for catchers.

Post July, it is 5.0%. So if you squint, there's a tiny, tiny, probably statistically insignificant 10th of a percentage point difference there, but essentially it's the same for all players It is higher in both periods because catchers are slow, but it's not that much higher And also it doesn't change really so through July for all players including catchers It's a six point two percent infield hit rate and then post July 6.3.

So again, one tenth of a point difference in the other direction, but still essentially unchanged. If you want to exclude catchers and just look at all non-catcher positions, then it is 6.3% through July versus 6.4% post July. So nothing, nothing to this as far as I can tell. And I considered, well, could it maybe be that runners are slower, but also fielders are slower, right? And you know, like they're not getting to the balls as quickly. And so the runners are slowing down, but the defenders are slowing down,

or they're not getting the ball over to first and maybe those things kind of even out. Well, I asked MLB for some stat cast sprint speed data just to see if sprint speed changes at all post July. And it does not. There's no change whatsoever. Got these stats from Jason Bernard, part of the Statcast team at MLB. He sent me Statcast era prior to this season, 2015 through 2023. Pre-August sprint speed, league-wide average, 27.5.

And post-July, also 27.5 feet per second. And for catchers only, again, lower numbers, but the same numbers pre August, 26.1 feet per second, August on 26.1 feet per second. So no change whatsoever. I guess if we want it to be really rigorous, you might look at players, only players who had played for the first four months of the season. Cause as it is, we're looking league wide. So you're going to get like some rookies who are promoted late in the season, right? And maybe they're fresher, even though they've been playing in the minors or,

you know, guys who just came back from an injury or something, right? And so I guess if you want to be really rigorous, you could look, you know, comparing players to themselves after the first four months of the season, instead of just looking league wide. But if there were any pronounced trend there, I think it would show up in the league wide numbers. And the fact that there's just no difference whatsoever suggests to me that there's just nothing to this. Now I was trying to find out like, is there any kernel of truth to this that Kruko might've been drawing on. Can we find any sliver of reality that might support what he was saying? And I thought, well, what if we look up Kurt Kisali specifically,

because this was about Kurt Kisali. It was also about catchers as a whole, but does Kurt Kisali slow down after July is his infield? Yeah, we're singling him out here, but I guess Kurt Krueger kind of did too. So does Kurt Kusali's infield hit rate decline after July? And you know what it does. Does it really? It does. I mean like how many infield hits does this guy have?

Well, yes, right. So you know, I didn't run a T test or anything on this, but if we will, I mean, he's been playing for a while. He's been in the big leagues since 2014, which actually surprised me that Kurt Kisali goes back that far, but he has had his 11 years in the bigs. And so if we look at the pre-August and August on splits for Kurt Casale, so through July, 5.5% infield hit rate for him, which is slightly higher than the overall 5.1% for catchers.

But post-July, 2.7%. So yeah, so basically halved, his infield hit rate is halved after July. Yeah, and this is, again, the samples are not huge because we're talking backup catcher Kirk Cassell here, but this is for his whole career lump together, we're talking, I don't know how many balls in play, but two hundred nine hundred nine plate appearances pre August and five

hundred forty five plate appearances post July. And that's played appearances. And we're talking rate of infield hits, which is percentage of ground balls that are infield hits, cause it's, that's probably a small sample, right? So this might not be meaningful here because you know, how many balls in play and how many grounders and how many has he beaten out, you know, for all I know, if he had beaten out this one particular play, that would have equalized things. So yeah, it's probably not meaningful, but I was just trying to dig deeper to try to support Kruko somehow. And I guess you could say that it has been true

for Kirk Casale. He's dogging it late in the season. Kirk Casale's lollygagging late in the season, or maybe he knows his limits and maybe he's conserving his strength because how often are you really gonna beat out an infield hit? And in fact, I've been heartened

that I think there's been a general overall change when it comes to hustle. Now I'm not here to denigrate hustle entirely, but I think I wash, I think there's been a kind of a correction. There's been a shift. I think so. Cause I wrote something years ago, defending Robinson Cano, who is often seen as running down the line a little lackadaisically, right?

And he was compared to Derek Jeter who'd always bust it down the line, right? And, you know, that was true, but also you can hurt yourself sometimes doing that. And I showed, I wrote a piece long ago and I looked at like injury rates and I made the case basically that it doesn't really pay to just sprint all out on every possible infield single because the value of an infield hit, it's not nothing, but in many cases it's not high leverage, it's not going to make that much of a difference. And if you pull a hammy or something or have a calf strain or a quad strain or whatever it is, then you're costing yourself many hits because you're going to be on the IL for quite

some time. Right. And in fact, that later happened to Robinson Cano. So I just feel like there's been a little less condemnation of not sprinting down the line. Now, you know, if the game's on the line and you're trying to avoid making the last out of the game or it's the playoffs or something, then yeah, by all means run hard. But I think maybe just along with the general greater

appreciation for like load management and saving your strength and picking your spots and everything, you're maybe a little less likely to see someone get a ton of criticism for not going all out on every ground ball because people understand that there's a trade off there. Yeah, I think that the understanding of it has been refined and it's not that there are no contexts under which you should bust your ass down the line. I think it's more that people understand that there are contexts in which it's not necessary for you to do that and sort of understanding that and taking context

into account as a player isn't a sign of weakness. How do you explain the fact that there's no difference in sprint speed or in the field hit rates late in the season when it's hot and people are worn down and they're subject to the grind and maybe they're saving their strength to the playoffs if they're making it to the playoffs. Why don't you think there's any evidence of a slowdown there?

Maybe it suggests that, to your point, that there is better load management throughout the season. And so perhaps guys are being kept in fresher shape. Maybe it's hot earlier, so they're acclimating to it. I don't know if that is borne out. It's definitely not earlier. I don't know if that is borne out. I mean like, climatologically it is, but I don't know that they are acclimating to it any better. Maybe they're hydrating.

Maybe what it really suggests is that the general perception that players were loafing before was wrong. Maybe guys have always just been busting it and they're busting it. Ben, I don't know how I feel about that as a term phrase. Always been busting it out of context quote from Nick Rowley. I was doing so well. I thought to myself, I was like, this is a pretty normal episode. Haven't had any lines.

Yeah. I think, I wonder if that's part of it, that there's just sort of an outsized perception of guys not really trying to get down the line as fast as they can, but actually they always have been. Maybe it's that. Right. One would think that load management has improved and certainly there's been a greater willingness to respect the need for off days and give guys a blow as they say it to use another term that out of context.

I know that out of context that one isn't great, but I think it's good. I think it's good. We should use that expression more actually. It always reminds me of a whale surfacing. Oh, okay. Yeah. But if I had seen some difference in the infield hit rate or the sprint speed here, I would have been curious. I might have subdivided this period because there's been an increasing emphasis on load

management maybe ported from other sports. But because there was no difference over this whole 2002 to 2023 period, I didn't even bother slicing and dicing it further to see if it's changed. Because over this whole period, there just doesn't seem to be a difference. I wonder if it's that... I mean, it's not that guys don't get worn down late in the season or that they're not nursing nagging injuries, but maybe it just doesn't really manifest in this way. Right? Like, if you're sniffing a base hit and you're just trying to

run sprint for 90 feet, you could probably do that even if you're just generally fatigued, because you're talking just a few seconds of sprinting. So maybe it manifests in other ways. Maybe it's not on the sprint speed. Maybe it would be on what MLB or StacCast would call like non-competitive runs, right? Like the ones they don't even track for sprint seed purposes. Maybe you're more likely to just trot on balls where you know you're not going to beat it out. Whereas you might just for show, make more of a real running effort earlier in the season. So maybe it's like you look for times when it doesn't matter at all

to kind of give yourself a break. And so when an infield hit is a possibility, yeah, you're still going for it. Right. So I think that, um, guys know not get away with implies that they're like doing something they shouldn't, but like, I think that players are really sensitive to game state and I think they have a pretty good sense, as do we all, which made this insistence on calling them lazy in moments where you're like, you couldn't have beat that out. It wouldn't have mattered. So silly to me. I think they have a pretty good understanding of when they're likely to make a difference

in hit or no hit based on how fast they're going. I really think most of the time we should operate from a place of thinking guys want to get on base and win baseball games and they tend to prioritize that I think sometimes to their detriment. It's why we've had to, why teams have had to work so hard on load management and had to be insistent on giving guys days off because a lot of these dudes, not every guy obviously, but a lot of these dudes, they'd play themselves into the ground if their teams would let them. Broadcasters say the darnedest things. I don't know what it is, but Mike Kruco has been calling games since 1990, so that's almost

35 years, and he played 14 years in the big leagues. Guy knows a ton about baseball. He's seen so much baseball, right? So why, I wonder, would he say that? And why do broadcasters say so many things that don't really hold up upon inspection? I guess it's largely just the fact

that they have to talk so much off the cuff live. Yeah. So like we talk a lot on podcasts, but baseball broadcasters, even in the pitch clock era, if they're calling six or seven games a week, that's a lot more talking than we do. And their talking is live and it's not planned at all and it's not edited. And so they have to fill space and avoid dead air. And so they just say stuff sometimes. And probably if we were in their position, we would say stuff sometimes that was equally questionable. And maybe it's just that it, it sounds better to be demonstrative sometimes

cause you could caveat everything every which way and you might be more correct, but it might not be that great a listening experience. Like I hope the fact that, you know, when I state things, I will sometimes express uncertainty. I hope that makes me a good podcaster. Maybe it wouldn't make me a good broadcaster. If I were in that spot, I might've mused about this. I might've said, Hmm, I wonder whether late in the season catchers are less likely to

beat out in field hits because they're tired or they're conserving strength or whatever. But I wouldn't just come right out and say, you rarely see this happen without checking that, especially when it's something that can be checked. So I don't know if it's just that they're not used to being fact checked. It's fairly low stakes. Who cares if this is true or not? It's like, gotcha. They actually do beat out in field hits.

I'm not trying to dunk on my crew. My crew goes great here. So on balance, incredible baseball broadcaster. But I do just generally wish that baseball broadcasters would say fewer untrue things or would at least provide the proper level of uncertainty when it comes to am I venturing something that might be true, but I don't know it to be true. And often, I guess if they're a former player, they're just kind of generalizing from their own experience and that might not be broadly applicable.

And maybe it's just sort of a small sample extrapolated point. But I just always wonder, like I would lack the confidence to express something which is such certainty that there's no way I could be sure of without checking. Nicole Zichal-Klein I mean, I hesitate to be too hard on broadcasters one because the only time I was in a broadcast booth, it is hard. It is hard. Like Farron had to carry me a little bit at times there. We say all kinds of stupid **** on this podcast. I think you're right that we often caveat it. I think we do a good job of indicating when we are curious about something versus asserting

it to be true, but we say dumb stuff on here and then we get emails and we go, oh yeah, we should have known. So I don't say that to let everybody off the hook all the time or even to let us off the hook. Like I think we aspire to be better podcasters than we sometimes are. And I hope that broadcasters aspire to the same, but it's a really hard job. And provided nobody's like being anti-intellectual or like doing slurs, I try to grant grace to those folks. Low bar, but not a bar every broadcaster clears.

You're sure right about that. So there are some things that I think are disqualifying, but I also think that it's a really hard job and we don't always have enough appreciation for the difficulty of it. We should have good broadcasters and there are so many, right? And part of the frustration with the ones who do a less good job, and we're not throwing him in this group here to be clear, but part of the frustration with the folks who don't do as good a job is that I think there are a lot of people who given the opportunity would grow into really great broadcasters.

And it's just hard to say that many words. Yeah. And I've always said, I don't need every broadcast to be larded up with Saber Metric stats. I don't necessarily need to get that from my baseball broadcast. It's hard to squeeze that stuff in. So I don't need everyone to be doing the stat cast broadcast. But I just would like less misinformation maybe. It's usually misinformation, not disinformation.

It's not, you know, knowingly saying stuff that's not true. But yeah, you do hear a lot of stuff that's incorrect. So it's not that I need my mind opened or I need to be told things about baseball that I didn't know before, but at least not to kind of miseducate people. Again, this particular instance, it couldn't care less really. I'm just curious. And I'm glad broadcasters say stuff because then we can say stuff about what they say. Yeah. And some of the stuff they say is wrong, but funny.

And those are often the best ones. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening and special thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Corey Gowan, John Armbruster, Evan, Eddie Campbell, and Janet Green, thanks to all of

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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 Podcasts 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 and the episode description in your podcast app for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you soon. The wacky hypotheticals are perfectively styled And their stat blast queries are detectively compiled The nonagerian baseball legends selectively dialed, but their spiciest takes are still respectfully mild. More than 2,000 episodes retrospectively filed, and at each new one we still collectively smile

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