Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2217: Who Was That Masked Man?

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and R.J. Anderson of CBS Sports debate whether Jackson Holliday, Jackson Chourio, or Jackson Merrill will be the best player long term, discuss the addition of ads to batting helmets and continued MLB ad creep, and ponder the possibility of publicly owned ballclubs. Then (55:52) Ben talks to Mojo Hill about covering Derek […]

Here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's in, Roger Angel and Super Pretzels, Lillian's Asked a Deal, and Mike Trout Hypotheticals, waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello and welcome to episode 2217 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Meg Rowley is on vacation and while she was gone, FanGraphs turned on a paywall.

When Meg is away, the readers do pay. Won't she be surprised when she gets home? No, don't worry. She was not unaware of the paywall, nor did she time her vacation to coincide with the erection of this paywall. It's pretty permeable as walls go. Lots of free articles. Everything else is still free, including this podcast, which continues in Meg's temporary absence.

But when Meg is away, it takes a nation of millions to replace her. And so as usual, I have a few guests for a few segments today. Later on this episode, I will be joined by frequent stat blast correspondent Ryan Nelson, who will be here to do some in-person stat blasting. I will also be joined on the next segment by Mojo Hill, who is a sports reporter who covered Derek Bender, whose name has been in the news this week. He covered Derek Bender last year when he was in the Cape Cod League.

This is the Twins minor leaguer, I guess I should now say former Twins minor leaguer, who evidently gave away upcoming pitches to his opponent so that the season would end sooner and that his team would not qualify for the playoffs. This has been a big story, but wanted to dive a little deeper into who Bender is or has been and we got some good background on him. But first and foremost, I'm joined by a pal,

staff writer for CBS Sports, RJ Anderson. Hello, RJ. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing all right. I had a few topics I wanted to talk to you about today and one of them I was feeling clever. We could talk about the Jacksons and we could talk about which of the Jacksons you got

and you gotta pick a Jackson and won't that be an original subject that no one else is talking about? Then I went to your website, CPS Sports, and I found that that very question was the topic of your weekly roundtable with the rest of your colleagues at CPS Sports. So maybe it wasn't original thought. It's a thought that everyone is having and kind of a popular debate, but I think that's because it's a thought that everyone is having and kind of a popular debate, but I think that's because it's a fun debate. It's a debate worth having, at least as fun as any baseball debate is.

So you already had to pick one. You didn't even have to prep for this. But as I think your colleague Mike Exisa said in his response, there's no wrong answer here, really. Like you could pick Jackson Holliday, Jackson Merrill, Jackson Churio, and I really wouldn't fault you at all because at this moment, and this would have been different months ago, and it might be different months from now, but I think almost any selection is virtually equally defensible.

Yeah, absolutely. And keep in mind that a year from now, we might have a fourth member of this question and Jackson Joe, one of the best, if not the best pitching prospects in the minors. But yeah, it's an incredible time for young talent and it's a particularly golden era, or golden age rather, for a young talent named Jackson. Yes. I went with Jackson Holliday and it gets into the philosophical question, right? Like, when do you move off a player? When do you update your priors?

When do you, you know, change your stance on a player? And it's something that I think about a lot, particularly with young players and particularly with young players who are coming into Pro Ball. You know, in the case of Churio and Holliday and Merrill, you know, they're all still really young and we're learning a lot about them week by week, month by month. And it just, it's fascinating with different takes you get on these players because of the different arcs they've taken so far this season. Yeah.

As the prospect, people always say, this is just a snapshot. It's just a moment in time and the answers are always changing and the ordinal ranking of the Jackson's is fluctuating. I was actually looking back at Eric Langenhagen's top 100 from this spring to see how he had the Jackson's ranked then because he had all four Jackson's in the top 30 of the fan graphs, top 100. And he had holiday number one, cheerio number three, Job number 16. And then Merrill was fourth at number 30. And Job is the one that

we haven't seen so far this season, but he hasn't really done much to diminish his prospect potential. It's just that he hasn't excelled on that stage yet. And I guess he's slightly older than the other Jacksons, but barely, right? He's like 22. So the old man of the group. It's just fascinating to me because coming into the spring, Merrill and Churio both made the opening day roster. Back then, I'm trying to think back to exactly where I had Merrill, but I know that I had the three Jacksons,

at least the three Jacksons have been top dozen to 15. And I remember doing a San Diego radio hit with Tony Gwynn Jr. and saying, you know, I think people maybe are sleeping on Merrill because again, you know, there are two other Jacksons or at least two other actions who are better prospects than him. And he's moving to this new position in center field. And I just remember saying like, I think he's gonna, I think he's gonna hit, I think he's gonna run, I think he's gonna feel better than you expect. But the one thing that I would not count on him doing this year sitting for a lot of power

because Pepco was really tough on left-handed batters. And you look at his stats and it's just kind of really impressive to me that he's been able to not only learn that new position, not only adjust to the major league pitching, but also, by the way, probably double the expectation I had for him home run wise. So he's just having a great year and it's really fun to see some of the debates about who should win nationally rookie of the year because of what he's played this year. Because in most years, I feel like Paul Skeens would have it in a runaway, right? Yes, but he does have some competition, certainly.

And when Ben Clemens did his trade value series for FanCrafts a few months ago or just late July, and we talked to him about it then, he had them ranked, he actually had Merrill number one at that point. I mean, among the Jacksons, not number one overall. He had Merrill at 14 and then he had Churio at 20 and Holiday at 37. But again, I wonder whether things have changed even since then given how

great Churio has been. And he just became the youngest player to go 2020 just this week. Right. And so if you had to make a pro and con list for each guy, what would it be? So you choose holiday. Are you going with holiday because he's a shortstop and because he was the highest rated prospect as of a few months ago? And it just hasn't been long enough to discount him since then? Yeah. So basically my argument for Holliday is just that, you know, while we have more data than ever before, and we would like to think it's better data than we had ever before, we shouldn't fall into this false trap of confidence when it comes to sample size. And I know holiday has been pretty bad at the big league level. The results aren't there. It's easy to start to second guess yourself or to doubt his skill set. Maybe there's something wrong there that we didn't pick up on beforehand.

But I would just point to Churio. And if you pull up his be rough page or his fan graph page or whatever page provides game logs. And you look at where he was entering June, his statistics were pretty close to what Holliday has posted in a similar amount of playing time. You know, the difference is the Brewers didn't send Cheerio down. He continued to get everyday repetitions and he's improved. You go, he's chased right throughout the season.

It's heading in the right direction. That was one of the big concerns with him was his approach. But with holiday, like I'm not going to give up on him yet. Just because of the sample size, like I don't want to, I don't want to ignore the greater context to his game. And that is that he's super young. He really didn't have a ton of time in minor leagues and you know, he's talented, like we know he's talented.

This is the first time he's really failed on a baseball field. And sometimes it takes a little while to learn from that and make the necessary adjustments. So I'm a believer in his skillset. I'm a believer that he's gonna figure things out. And, you know, we're taking the long view here, right? We're not just talking about

who do you want for the next three weeks. We're talking about what do you want heading forward. And so, yeah, I don't wanna let, I don't want to let a relatively small sample overshadow everything we know about this player in question. Yeah. Would anyone be surprised if he followed a Bobby Witt Jr. type trajectory, where he had some struggles his first season, and I know Witt wasn't bad his first season offensively,

at least defensively he struggled, but he was a league average-ish hitter. But then again, that was his age 22 season and this is holiday's age 20 season. So it wasn't anywhere near the big leagues at the same age. And then of course he went from being okay, mediocre that first year to being a well above average player last year to being one of the best players in baseball now, so wouldn't be shocked if that happened or even if he had sort of a Gunnar Henderson style leap ahead of him. It's just it's so early.

So it's funny that you bring up Gunnar, because if you look at these Orioles prospects, the position players, at least almost every single one of them has arrived and struck right out of the gate. The next consolidate includes Gunnar Henderson. Like, go back and look at what Henderson did the first few months of the gate. That includes all of it, it includes Gunnar Henderson. Like go back and look at what Henderson did the first few months of last season. Then at the end of the year, he wins the rookie of the year award

and now is MVP candidate. Look at Adley Rushman, look at Kobe Mayo as a recent example, even Kouser. I mean, it seems like for whatever reason, and it could just be us seeing a pattern but doesn't really exist. Those Orioles hitters really kind of take some time to adjust to the big league level. And I know there's, I think, increasing consensus that the gap

between the minors and the majors, or at least AAA and the majors has increased. I'm not convinced of that yet. It's just, it's become kind of common wisdom, right? I see that echoed over and over. And I guess I'm maybe slightly influenced by the fact that I wrote about this about a decade ago for Grantland because the same sort of narrative had taken hold at the time and it turned out that it wasn't really any different from the historic patterns of prospect promotion. It was just that offense was at a low ebb in MLB. And so players were coming up from AAA having posted stronger offensive

numbers in higher scoring leagues and then they were coming to MLB and it was a tougher hitting environment and so their numbers sort of superficially declined but the actual translations of what you would expect their numbers to be hadn't really changed from the historic norm and so I'm trying to get some data now to see whether that's still the case or whether it is actually true that the gap has grown. Cause there are plausible reasons why that could be true. I just, I haven't really seen anyone prove it. You know, you just hear people assert it and then they cite some scattered examples of guys who have struggled at least initially. And it's kind of convincing and it could be true. I'm just not sure.

Yeah, and I heard that a lot from foreign offices with respect to prospects and low A. This was up a trend I should say, you know, you saw some teams, including the Phillies, including the Mariners, trade players who had performed really well on low A and you talked to evaluators and like, well, why do you think they still have them in low A?

It wasn't because they didn't realize how well they had well, why do you think they still have them in low A? It wasn't because they didn't realize how well they had performed, it's because they were afraid of them being exposed when they moved up. And supposedly, like you said, while we're low on evidence, anecdotally, that comes up a lot, the idea that since there's been this minor league radio organization, there are a lot different learning curves and a lot of different talent levels. And it's going to take us some time to recalibrate what exactly each of these levels represents and what performance there indicates.

So that anti-Holiday case, I guess, would mostly be based on the fact that he just hasn't hit yet, whereas the other two guys have at the big league level. Is there anything else about his game where you would say, oh, this could be some actual flaw that's been exposed. It seemed like he had a hole in his swing early on where he was just swinging and missing at so many high fastballs and he just couldn't get as bad on them. And then there was a lot reported about how he had worked on that in the minors and seemingly had closed a hole.

And then he came back up and initially hit okay, but then started struggling again. So maybe it wasn't really a permanent fix or maybe he just needs an off season to work on that. But the physical skills and tools are all present. So I suppose it's just, is there some sort of gap, some sort of deficiency there that wasn't detectable. And it's just, I guess, hard to imagine that that would have gone undetected, just given all of the attention and the prospect pedigree that he had. Yeah. And I think that if you are looking for statistical reason to maybe doubt him, it's because of his zone contact percentage, right? I mean, he swings and misses a lot within the zone. That's usually a worrisome development, a worrisome indicator.

And I was just looking at his numbers before he came on and it's around 74% zone contact percentage. That's around eight percentage points below the league average. And that's not really what you would expect from someone who had his hit tool highly praised. And he's supposed to be a guy who can go up there and make a lot of contact

and keep his strikeout rate in check. And that hasn't been the case at the big league level. So I suppose if you are really diving be a guy who can go up there and make a lot of contact and keep his strikeout rate in check. And that hasn't been the case at the big league level. So I suppose if you are really diving into that small sample and trying to find the potential fatal flaw, that's probably the area that you're looking in. And what about for Merrill, if you had to pick something, I guess, by the way, with Holliday, he certainly has had some defensive miscues and some costly miscues. Again, super young, but he's not someone who seems like he would have to move to a less

premium defensive position or something soon. They have such a crowded infield there that spaces at a premium, but his defensive home, he could handle an important position for years to come. Speaking of that, Merrill obviously, I I think impressed people because he took to center so quickly and so naturally, despite having so little experience there and converting from infield to outfield, just on the fly and not having a whole lot of preparation or practice for that. And, and then just handling it as if he had done so before. So in addition to the offensive improvements and contributions, he can kind of do it all now.

So what would you say is the flaw if he has, is it just sort of a lack of offensive ceiling or sort of superstar power potential, or is there something else that you would ding him for if anything? He's just like a really well-rounded, good player, clearly. Yeah, I think it's the approach. I think, you know, he's very prone to expanding his zone and, you know, that's going to keep his walk rate in check. So he's going to have to hit for average, he's going to have to hit for power. And the good thing is, you know, he has the potential to do both of those things.

As he, you know, matures, I'm sure he'll walk more than he's walking now. But, um, yeah, I mean, he's a heck of an athlete. Like I said earlier, I thought he had some juice in his back, but I really didn't anticipate him putting it on full display this early in his big league career. So really good player. I'm glad that he's getting some national acclaim. And I hope that we get to see him show off a little bit

in October, because he's got a chance to hang a star on a national level. Yeah. Not a uncommon refrain when you're talking about 20, 21 year old hitters. So they need to lose, learn some, some plate discipline. Yeah. Unless you're talking about one Soto that's almost universally true, I guess. And then Churio, he's just been so good now for a while that it's hard to find a

flaw, I guess. But that wasn't the case early this season, obviously. But yeah, he's just kind of put it all together to the point where it's, it's tough to find flaws or nitpick that much with him. I mean, he just outstanding, you know, he's just so dynamic. I mean, you said he was the youngest player to ever go 2020. He's probably going to become the youngest player to go 3030. At some point, if I had to guess he's just that kind of an

athlete, that kind of a player. And I guess I would go back to the approach. Well, I you know, he has improved his chase rate throughout the season. But that's been a long standing concern of his is, you know, how often is he going to expand his own? Is he going to get himself out? Now, one thing that he has working for him, as opposed to, you know, the average players, and he's so fast that if he expands his zone and, you know, mishits a ball and it's a little dribble or something, well, that's a single for him. It's not just the ground out. So in some ways, you know, I don't know that

he's going to be as impacted by his free-swinging ways or what remains of his free swinging ways as the average player would. And I guess that's another knock if he wanted to find one on holiday is that he's not going to give you quite as much base stealing, base running ability maybe as the other guys. And I guess with Curio, you could say, well, he's playing an outfield corner. Now he's doing that well, obviously. And maybe that's partially a personnel thing. And on another team, maybe he could handle a different position. Who knows? I mean, the, the Brewers have such a good defense.

And if you have Blake Perkins in center, then he's going to be tough to dislodge. So it's not like any of these guys is a defensive liability or anything, but the fact that Merrill has excelled in center already and Holiday is doing it at short, maybe if you're just forecasting future war or whatever, I guess that could potentially have an impact. Yeah. I mean, they're all three up the middle players though. So we're not talking about a first baseman here. We're talking about three guys who are legitimately going to stay up the middle. Like you said, personnel plays into this. If Holladay were on a different team, maybe he's their shortstop.

If Torio were on a different team, maybe he's their center fielder. Because they are up the middle quality athletes regardless of where they're standing on the diamond stage right now. All right. Well, I did ask Dan Szymborski to generate the long-term Zips forecast for each of them, just so I could see where they stood. And that actually backs up the idea that it's a dead heat more or less because he gave me their Zips projections through 2040.

So that's 16 seasons after this one. They'll be as old as we are now by then. And I don't want to think about how old we will be by then, but they'll be as old as we are now by then, and I don't want to think about how old we will be by then, but they'll be at the tail ends of their careers even if everything goes well for them. And yet the long-term total war projections for them are separated by from first to last about five wins above replacement. And that's, that's over 16 seasons. So it's just a fraction of a win per season. That's what's separating them here. And if you go by the hierarchy, so Dan and Zips still have holiday number one at 51.8, Future War between now and 2040, and then Churio number 2 at 49.5 and Merrill number

3 at 47. Churio is projected to hit more homers and steal more bases than either of the other two. Holiday is projected to walk a lot more. Merrill actually isn't projected for any individual season as valuable as the one he's had already this year. Which sounds strange, why would you project him to be worse than he was as a young rookie? But it's just a general regression thing. Someone who's very good as a rookie often will be

projected to be not as good the next year and often will perform somewhat worse. That's why there's the perception of sophomore slumps. It's really regression. Dan just wrote about that. And Merrill has been better than people expected him to be and better than the projections expected him to be, which is good for him, but also means there's some skepticism baked in, though he could continue to prove everyone wrong. So that's why his projections trail those of the other Jacksons. But again, such a small difference between any of them there. Those are the average outcomes and it's so close those distinctions that if you go by the median outcome, it's actually holiday Merrill-Churio because Zips evidently sees Churio as riskier than Merrill, even if Churio I guess has a higher ceiling according to the projections.

But again, just like very little daylight there, So you can't go wrong with any of them. And I also wondered, are we just having this conversation because they're all named Jackson or are they actually the best players in their age group? Does anyone project better who is 21 or younger? And holidays at the top, Merrill or Tri is at the top, I guess, depending on whether you go with mean or median. But actually third on the list that Dan gave me is Roman Anthony. So yeah, yeah.

So he's right there and he's not named Jackson. And so we're not talking about him in this conversation. And he hasn't made his major league debut. So bigger error bars there, I suppose. But if you believe the projections, then Roman Anthony, who is just 20 years old, just turned 20 in May and is hitting well in triple A right now for the Red Sox. Then in theory, he should be in that conversation too. So maybe we're sleeping on Roman Anthony because he's not named Jackson.

Yeah. I mean, his middle name is Joseph. So maybe just go and change his middle name and then start going by that middle name if he wants to get this kind of a claim, this kind of attention. Yeah. So it's a Holiday Merrell, Anthony Churio, and then James Wood, Jordan Lawler, Carson Williams, Cole Young, Samuel Bisayo, and Emanuel Rodriguez. But I think it's a pretty big gap maybe after the top four or five there. So it's really close. I have a hard time choosing. I guess I'm kind of inclined to go with holiday myself or like in a vacuum, like

in some sort of neutral position context. I might. I just, it's so crowded in that Orioles infield that maybe that saps some of his value. And then maybe I'm more inclined to go with Chirio. I guess I'll stick with the projections and also with you and make it unanimous and say holiday just so we're not falling prey to the small sample here. But then again, maybe we're not updating our priors quickly enough. Who knows? I guess time will tell. This is the existential crisis of analyzing baseball. And I say that despite you just

mentioning that this is the 2040 and bringing up how old we're going to be when these guys are nearing the end of their careers and then maybe do the mental math. So I thank you for that. That's something I'm going to think about when I lay my head down on the pillow tonight. So thank you. Well, maybe I'll put a poll up and we'll see what effectively wild listeners think. I'll link to that on the show page. I'm just kind of curious, but this is all subject to change. And I said time will tell and it might take a long time to tell. This might be one of those debates that we are having for years to come. Although you never know.

One other thing I wanted to ask you about, I woke up to a press release in my inbox this morning. Maybe you did too, or maybe you didn't wake up to it because you probably got up earlier than I did headline or subject line Strauss partners with major league baseball in new international sponsorship pact, and it says Strauss partners with Major League Baseball in new international sponsorship pact. And it says Strauss partners with MLB to become first brand partner on MLB and Minor League Baseball batting helmets

in the US multi-year deal with German workwear brand includes Minor League Baseball marketing rights, post-season helmet logo placement set to begin during the 2024 postseason and a customized year-long content platform across MLB media assets. It says somewhat euphemistically as part of the deal Strauss' name and logo will adorn MLB batting helmets during the postseason and regular season games in Europe as well as minor league batting helmets all season long beginning in 2025. So this has touched off a new round of this is the latest

sign of the advertising apocalypse and we are defiling and spoiling our pristine uniforms with even more advertisements and ad creep is proceeding apace. So are you wringing your hands? Are you lamenting this development? Are you thinking it's inevitable and I'm already resigned to it? I suppose a little bit of both. I think it is inevitable. You know, usually when you push back against these kinds of things, you get labeled an out of touch idealist. Like, you know, of course they're going to sell ad space on every single part of the jersey. Of course, they're going to sell ads based on the helmets.

Of course, when you watch a game, you're going to be exposed to seemingly a dozen different advertisements just behind the plate. I mean, you compare you compare a game now. Like if you go back, look at the Carrie Wood game when he's out 20 batters and look at a random Cubs game now at Wrigley Field, and there are at least a handful more advertisements wanted to play. So the amount of passive advertisements that you have to stomach and overcome casually watching a game on television, not including the actual commercial breaks, it's just,

it's jarring. And I think that it's good in some respects that we haven't grown completely numb to that, even if we are kind of saying, you know what? Of course it's going to happen. Like there's no way to stop it. Yeah. And I'm sympathetic to the argument that you basically have to make a fuss every time there's some new incursion, because that's the only thing that's stopping us

from being even more inundated. That's you just, you let them take an inch and they'll take the entire uniform and the helmet too, and all the signage behind home plate. And so you have to fight every inch, even if the loss is inevitable and you're going to cede that territory. If, you know, part of the reason that this hasn't happened before now is probably fear of a backlash or brands being worried about it's backlash or brands being worried about it's soiling the brand somehow. And now of course, money ultimately trumps that concern. And look, I don't like this. I don't know why anyone would want this or be happy about this other than MLB and MLB

team owners who are going to be making even more money now. And it's true that MLB was, I guess, the last holdout really when it came to ads other than the uniform manufacturer logos, Swooshes or whatever, actual advertising of companies that are not making the uniform. The NBA broke first, the NHL broke next, and then MLB did. And of course, this has been a staple of soccer kits going back decades. Right. So it's a shrug.

If you're in Europe and you're seeing this news, you're like, this hadn't happened already probably, right. But I guess I find this less objectionable than a lot of other forms of advertising just because it is purely aesthetic. And that doesn't mean it doesn't matter, obviously, as you're saying, things can be unsightly and they can bother you just because of that. I'm less of a uniform guy.

I'm just, I'm not really a UniWatch person, even though I have read and subscribed to UniWatch at times because I like Paul Lucas's work and still do. But I just, I don't pay that much attention to uniforms. It's just not one of my many nerdy preoccupations about baseball for whatever reason. I'm just kind of immune to that unless it's really outlandish. I may not even notice or care. So it's partly just personal preference and this not being something that I'm inclined to fuss about, but also because it doesn't really make my life worse as much advertising does.

So a lot of advertising, it makes me wait for things, right? I want to watch something, I have to wait for the ad to play, or I'm listening to a podcast and I have to fast forward through five ad breaks to get to the content that I want. So that is an inconvenience and that costs me time and waste time. And it could also be something that actively makes the experience and the product worse in some way. And again, if you're someone who just really appreciates a pristine uniform, then this might do that for you. But this doesn't really rise to the level of even the ads behind home plate. Again, I don't love those, but we have talked specifically about the green screen stuff

and how sometimes these ads will be superimposed and sometimes it'll be done really badly so that there will be flickering and stuff will disappear behind other stuff. And that's actually distracting. Like that takes me out of the experience and that might actually obscure my view of things. That bugs me in a way that this probably won't, to be honest. And again, maybe, maybe I'm just pre resigned to this because I assumed it was inevitable and I've seen it in other sports for years and I've just kind of become accustomed to that. So maybe I'm kind of a soft touch in a pushover here and I should be making more of a stink about it. But this is something that obviously like people are like greedy MLB, greedy Manfred, greedy owners. And that's all true. The players did exceed to this.

This had to be collectively bargained that in the most recent CPA players granted the right to teams to do this. And I think there's some consultation with the MLBPA that has to happen in order for specific ads to be approved, even though some of them have been pretty garish and discordant and unsightly. So the players are on board with this to some extent. They're not getting a direct cut of the revenue, but I guess they felt like, A, it's a concession that we don't care that much about that we can give that up to get something. And also I think they thought, well, if teams are getting more revenue in theory, maybe

they might spend some of that on players now in practice. That's not always the case, but it's a nice theory. It is. It would be pretty to think that. And I guess in this time of all the concern about the cable bubble bursting and teams actually, in some cases losing significant amounts of broadcast revenue. If this were a way to compensate for that somewhat and offset it so that teams did not cry poor and still spent on players and we still had teams actually trying to win, then I would consider

that a decent exchange or a worthwhile trade off. That's of course suggesting that teams are not just going to pocket the extra millions and not spend it, right. Which is very likely what will happen in a lot of cases. As long as we stay away from, you know, the team name is being sold off. So when I'm getting the, uh, what is it build submarines.com, Mariner. Yeah. I mean, it Could be worse.

Yeah. Could be worse. But yeah, I tend to agree that the worst ones though are the ones that actively distract you from watching the game. And I fear that because that distraction is partially the point, they want you looking at their advertising. They want you looking at the name of the company. Yeah.

If you didn't notice, it wouldn't do any good. I think we just need to come together and agree that any company that advertises in that way, you write their name down and you never ever entertain becoming a consumer of that product. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't really in the market for German work wear as it was, or for building submarines or for construction equipment or any of the other eye catching advertisers that MLB has had. It does seem like MLB is not very discerning when it comes to the companies that put their names on its products.

It's just kind of, I assume they will take money from the highest bidder, whether that was FTX a few years ago or whoever it is, right? If the check clears, and I don't know whether the FTX checks ended up clearing But if they're confident that it'll clear they'll take your money if they're willing to pay and you mentioned Franchises using company names instead of city names. Well, they do that in NPP. They do that in the KBO So this ad saturation makes me grateful for the remaining exceptions to that I think there are eight MLB teams now that don't have a corporate sponsored stadium name. I think there's still seven holdouts from the Jersey patches this season.

And it does get tacky sometimes in a way that I find distasteful. Like when MLB brands every marquee event, postseason series and world series and all star game and the draft and everything is the this presented by that, right? And sometimes especially when it's like the Roberto Clemente award presented by Capital One, you know, and every time any MLB material mentions the Roberto Clemente award, it says the Roberto Clemente award presented by Capital One or it, you know, Roberto Clemente Day presented by Capital One. And not only is it a mouthful in word salad, but it does sort of sap from the fact that you're honoring this very important historical

and cultural figure who gave his life on a humanitarian mission. And meanwhile, every time you mentioned him, you're saying presented by Capital One, right? When I think about Roberto Clemente or Jack Robinson and their legacy, what I really think about is Duncan D'Aless. Yeah. I mean, Capital One hopes that you think of Capital One now when you think of those players. Hopefully that's not actually the case for anyone. And I saw that Grant Prisby and Craig Goldstein were talking about this today too, but it is very onerous when you want to go to an MLB

highlight online and you have to watch an ad that's longer than the highlight you want to watch. I don't know how many times I've clicked on something and just X'd out before I even got to the highlight. Cause it's like, I just, I want to see this, but I don't want to see it enough to wait that long to see it. Or if you're looking at even MLB TV archive games, and again, this is a service I subscribe to and pay for, and you're clicking around in an archive

game and you are subjected to ads, right? And you like click on this inning or that inning, or you click on the wrong spot and suddenly, oh, another ad break, right? And this is not even a live game. So that stuff is annoying because again, it costs me time and also maybe is not advantageous for promoting the product. If you actually want people to share these things and it's a shame

cause MLB TV is a pretty incredible product on the whole. And the MLB film room is really cool and useful, but all of these things are sort of saddled with this ad creep and ad bloat. It goes back to what I said basically at the beginning in that, you know, if you express the sentiment that you understand this is a business and they have to make money, but maybe you don't have to make every last dollar you called an out of touch idealist. And like you say, you know, you at some point reached the threshold

where you're actually harming your products, which, you know, is the sport of baseball, the consumption of baseball when you, you know, loaded down with every little advertisement and every little trick to get an extra dollar or however much they're getting from, you know, those film room plays, bad plays. So it's just a balancing act that I think is kind of, you know, out of whack at this point. They have to find a better equilibrium heading forward and I'm not optimistic they will. I think it will get worse.

But it's a great spot. That's where I am the out of touch idealist when I say, hopefully they find a better way. They won't. No, they won't. Let's be honest, it's gonna get worse. I'm an optimist by nature too, but not about that. This only moves in one direction. It's like the playoff field only expands. It does not contract.

You know what's going to be, I saw, I think it was an article like a month ago where I want to say it was Sony or one of these companies was testing advertisements where you could not look away. I think Sony had patented this technology where you had to actively look at the screen for the duration of the ad before you could proceed. And I was just thinking, whoever introduces that, they are really testing people because it is going to be, that's awful.

I mean, that's a horrific idea and I hope it never comes to that. History's greatest monsters, yeah. I said the playoff field only expands, it does not contract. I guess it can contract after a global pandemic, but that's the only exception to that rule and that trend. And, and I'm sympathetic to people need to get paid, not billionaires necessarily. They get paid plenty, but look, you go to cbssports.com and you want R.G. Anderson to have a job there. So you can read his excellent content and there are going to be ads on the screen and there's going to be some

autoplay videos perhaps from time to time, right? I mean, the revenue has to come from somewhere. I get that. And we want people to continue to keep their jobs and make money. And this is one of the ways that that happens. And in a lot of cases, that stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. And I guess you could go in one of two directions. You could either lard it up even more with more ads and it's diminishing returns and you're trying to make up in quantity what you're not getting in

quality, or you can do sort of a user supported model. You could do what fan graphs is doing now where they're trying to actively encourage people to sign up and support the site, at which point they get an ad free experience or what Effectively Wild does, which is that we have no ads ever for anyone. And we're able to do that because we have listeners who subsidize that and who fund us on Patreon, which we are very grateful for. I think we should innovate, Ben.

I think you and I should sell our bylines where it's by Ben Lindbergh presented by Capital One. Yeah. I mean, I'll sell out to some extent, but maybe, maybe not to quite that extent, but look, we should be grateful. Maybe that it's just a German workwear brand and not sports bedding on the helmets because that's the next frontier probably. So they're going to start wearing their over under on their helmets.

Forget Jersey numbers. It's going to be their money line or something. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's not a big leap from broadcast to actually on the field, right? It's certainly you see signage and everything. So in conclusion, please support Effect wild on Patreon so that this can remain one of the lone ad free Oasis remaining on the internet and in media.

Thanks to everyone who helps us do that. All right. The last thing that I wanted to ask you about, we got an email and it's an email about a topic that we are asked about all the time. I think it is maybe the most common question we get certainly up there. And this was just the latest incarnation of this and it was from listener and Patreon supporter named Brian who wrote it to say, what problems would we solve

and or create if all owners were given the boot and our baseball teams were held in common, a la the Packers. I guess this might be one way to get rid of ads on helmets. If all teams were publicly owned, maybe fans would not okay that because we would all be stockholders in the team. And I say that this is a common question.

I searched my podcast inbox to try to find previous examples of this question because I knew we had gotten it many, many times. And I've now, when we get a new one, I've taken to sending a link to an article you wrote on the subject a few months ago, but I figured why not just have you on to share what you learned

and maybe head off future versions of this question. But I searched for Packers in our podcast inbox, because we don't get a lot of questions about Jordan Love. So usually when we're asked about the Packers in our podcast inbox, because we don't get a lot of questions about Jordan Love. So usually when we're asked about the Packers, it's because of the public ownership question. And I think at least double digit count of questions that we have gotten variations on this theme. And I'll read one that was a little longer than Brian's that I just read. This was from 2022 and it was from Ben Gibbons, not Ben Gibbard, but Ben Gibbons, who says, "'Ever since the lockout, my girlfriend has had to put up

"'with my incessant griping about the lack of baseball news "'as well as about the owners and their dastardly ways. "'She's not a baseball fan by any means, "'but she's also not a fan of capital exploiting labor "'and raised an interesting idea "'why do baseball teams need individual owners at all? "'M Many of them seem content to pad their own pockets at the expense of fielding a competitive team, a few of them don't even seem to like baseball very much. She proposed the idea of public ownership, in which any fan that

buys a share of the team, no matter how small, could vote for a group of people or just go to the pure democratic route and have ballot referendums to make decisions regarding signings, trades, roster moves, etc. The purpose of buying a share would not be to make a profit by selling shares later, but to have an actual influence on the operation of your favorite team. As I understand it, the Green Bay Packers operate on a similar model and are consistently one of the most successful football teams. I'm sure there are legal reasons why owners can't simply be stripped of their teams,

and even public ownership would privilege the opinions of wealthier fans, but this model seems better than having one person call the shots. Perhaps the money that owners are currently pocketing could then be redistributed to players, concession workers, et cetera. Do you think it's possible that this would ever be implemented in MLB?" Well, you considered this question at great length back in June in an article entitled, public ownership works for some of the world's best sports teams. Is there a future for the idea this question at great length back in June in an article entitled Public Ownership Works for Some of the World's Best Sports Teams. Is there a future for the idea in America? And you devoted, oh, I would say about 7,000 words to considering that question.

So tell us what got you interested in this and what we mean when we're talking about public ownership of sports teams. How would that be different from what we have on the whole here now and what precedents are there out there in the world of sports? Yeah. So let's start by hoping that Ben Gibbons and his girlfriend are still together. Yes. I guess to answer that first question about like, what would be the biggest difference? For me, I think the thing that comes to mind is that if the communities

own the teams, and you got rid of the 30 individual billionaires, then all of a sudden, you would do away with relocation threats, because it's hard to see a scenario where San Diego, let's say is going to threaten to take the Padres elsewhere. I know in theory, like they could sell the team to a different city or whatever. Let's not get that high level. Let's just say like, for the most part, you would do away relocation threats, which means in turn, you would do away with these attempts to gulk more public funding for new stadiums, because that's what location threats really serve

the purpose for now, right? It's mostly to get someone else to pay for the stadium and the community. So that's like the biggest difference to me. And the headline there, some of the world's best sports teams are publicly owned. To be clear, there are a few alternative models here kind of conflating them. Like there is community owned, there is fan owned. We're conflating them here just for the sake of saving words because I don't want to keep differentiating between the two. So I'm just going to say public ownership, you know, that's an umbrella that covers all these different variations. But it's funny that we had that headline because it came out literally days after the Champions

League final at Real Madrid and Dortmund. And both of those are of course international soccer clubs that are publicly owned or fan owned or community owned. Again, whatever umbrella or whatever part of the umbrella they fall under. And when you look at like the history of this internationally, because in the four major professional American male sports leagues, they're right.

The Packers are the only team that is operated this way. But when you look internationally, whether it's foreign soccer leagues, whether it's the Canadian Football League, whether it's even some of the American minor league baseball teams, there is a ton of evidence that the billionaire owners don't really serve much purpose. You can win a lot of games, you can sign star players, you can pack your arenas or your stadiums or you know your fields with spectators and it really makes no difference if the billionaire owners involved or not. If you look at the world at large. So is it possible? Like in theory,

could a MLB team be publicly owned and succeed? Absolutely. Could they be publicly owned and succeed absolutely could they be publicly owned and sign star players and you know field a consistently compelling product that invigorates the community and invigorates their consumer base yeah absolutely what happened probably not honestly if you look at my best constitution there's nothing that outlaws this and if you go back in the history and I was gonna run through the history real quickly because if you just go like the 1990s this came up time and again. I mean uh Merrick Cuomo looked into buying the New York Yankees when George Steinbrunner was in trouble. Joan Croc tried giving the city of San Diego the Padres and got blocked by the Ever Owners and the city of Montreal tried to take equity in the Exposed. Instead they just gave them money and then getting equity. We know what happened there. So time and time again, like this has come up. I believe the Mariners at one point were in talks to be sold to Seattle.

And this has came up time and time again. And MLB, MLB spokesperson back in the day said, sure, it's possible. This was of the Yankees that said, you know, they're not for sale. So we're not going to really discuss that. And I think the reason that MLB hasn't really had to roll one way or the ever on nonprofit ownership with the way that NFL has, because if you look at the NFL's constitution, they forbid nonprofit ownership. Now the backers grandfathered in, you can't have another backers because of that.

But MLB hasn't been that explicit about, and I think the reason for that is because the owners would never allow it to get to that point. Like they would never ever allow a city to actually get to the goal line and the reasons for that, it's kind of funny, the reasons for that have always been, well they don't want the public, they don't want media, they don't want the players knowing the financial state of these organizations. You know, if you were to publicly reveal their financial information, then that would change the entire game. Except the thing is, the Atlanta Braves released public financial information every year. Nothing has changed.

Like we know how much money they make. We know some of the accounting tricks they do and nothing has changed. Like you still can find people who defend ownership, you know, not spending more money or asking for public funding on their stadium or, you know, any other examples here we can throw out there. So I don't know. I guess that's a long rambling answer. I'm trying to address every question and topic that was brought up, but could it work? Absolutely. There's plenty of precedent for it. Will it ever get the chance to work on it? I would assume no. This is often the case when people ask us about some other sport model and whether

it could work for baseball. And often the answer is, well, maybe if baseball had developed in an entirely different way and in a different place at a different time, but it's just really hard to overcome that entrenched structure and those entrenched interests, especially among billionaires. BF Let's just sum this up. Here's a quote for you. This is from the CEO of Dortmund, again, the soccer team in Germany.

He said this in 2016, the German spectator traditionally has close ties with his club and if he gets the feeling that he's no longer regarded as a fan, but instead as a customer, we'll have a problem. The investor in Dortmund would soon turn 28,000 standing places into 15,000 siege, which to guarantee several million euros more per year. But I want to see the fans to be as milked as is happening in England. Can you even imagine an American sports executive

saying sure, we could make several million dollars more per year if we turned 28,000 standing places into 15,000 seats. But I'm not going to do that because I don't want to turn our fans and the customers. Can you even, like, what do we, what do we talked about through all this podcast? We talked about the advertisements and you know, how we are like a constant customer, even when we're watching a baseball game, it's just a completely different culture in that respect. And yeah, I can't even imagine an American sports executive saying something like that. Yeah.

We get so many soccer specific questions because soccer is a global game and the most popular sport in the world. And so when people ask us about, oh, could you have promotion relegation in baseball or something like the soccer transfer system? And it's just hard to imagine MLB ever getting to that point or most major North American sports or, and sometimes it's like the fan culture is different too. And in some ways fans have more of a say and more power in other sports than they do in say MLB.

We saw that with the European super league situation and the way that got scuttled by the backlash to that. Whereas we just sort of have to accept whatever American sports owners do for the most part. So they're just such longstanding, deeply ingrained cultural differences there. So it is this sort of utopian vision, I guess, of just collectively owned teams because they always say like, it'd be nice if a team could be run like a public trust because it's Yes, it's a business, but it's not really like any other kind of business. Yes, it's for profit

But also everyone roots for it and has a personal stake in it And yes, there's public funding of facilities and all that so it's in some ways very much like any other industry or business And in other ways not at all like those things and almost like a public utility. And I guess that's why people wish cast. Well, could it actually be kind of a public utility? And I guess the answer is probably not. We get the worst combination because you see cities will pay for the stadium. They might own the stadium, but because they don't own the team, the stadium is

relatively worthless without the team. And so we just get like the worst of both worlds paying for their ballpark without actually having equity in the team to make the money back. Yeah, and we've gotten questions before about player owned collective teams to where the players, you know, MLB players can't have ownership stakes in teams now, there are rules and regulations about that, but what if players themselves own the team and we're shareholders in the

team? I mean, these are kind of revolutionary visions of how a league like MLB could work and MLB is not interested in a revolution. MLB is interested in status quo, except with more ads and more money, hopefully. And when we say MLB here, we mean specifically the 30 owners. Yes, yes. It doesn't even matter, I don't think, what the commissioners also think about this, because it's never going to get to that point.

It's the 30 owners. They know they have a good thing and they're not going to threaten that by trying to make the league a little bit better in some respects. Yeah, and the commissioner works for them. So he will do their bidding for the most part. And yes, I mean, billionaires famously have lots of money and lots of lobbying ability and the ear of politicians. And so they are able to lean on people if someone were to come along and propose this or advocate for some sort of radical reorganization of the league that would quickly be quashed most likely.

Or owners would certainly do their darndest to ensure that it was. Do you think it would have any other implications beyond just not being able to leverage loyalties for public funding of ballparks. I mean, just in terms of the, the operation of the team and, and fans relationships and investment relationships with an investment in those clubs. Yeah. I mean, I think that you would see ticket prices go down for one thing. Like if you look some of the statistics again, not to keep going back to Dortmund, but if you go back to like their ticket prices, I mean, it's a joke how much cheaper they are than American ticket prices. For instance, I have a stat in front of me. Dortmund season ticket last year

was about $15 per game. The cheapest MLB season ticket, according to statista.com, was $69 per game. So like that. And here's the thing, Dortmund is one of the most expensive tickets in the league. So I think that would be one thing. You could talk about, you know, fans having more investment and more emotional attachment to a team who they actually either own a part of or, you know, maybe have purchased the membership with. I mean, I think that's kind of like a, you know, a soft factor. We can't really prove that's a thing.

But I suppose if you are willing to make that investment and perhaps pursue voting privileges, then yeah, you probably do have a little bit more attachment, a little more ownership in a literal and figurative sense than maybe you or I would toward our favorite team, who we don't really have that actual investment in. And there are some other ways to look at it. This is a very complex issue,

so I'm sorry if I'm missing an obvious point off the top of my head, but yeah, I think it's probably fair to say there'd be a lot of other changes. And I think there would largely be for the better, but I think there are also probably some negatives you can draw and that's fair. I mean, it's a complex issue.

People are gonna have different opinions on it. Well, I will link to your piece. People should check it out at length. You went into more detail than we could's a complex issue. People are going to have different opinions on it. Well, I will link to your piece. People should check it out at length. You went into more detail than we could in a summary here. Any other points from that piece or questions that came up in your reporting that you want to share? I just remembered that I believe it was Ben's question, said, you know, is there any precedent

for what amounts to eminent domain where these kind of threatened teams that, or threatened owners that they're going to take the team. And there actually is some precedent for that. I would say it goes back to, I want to say it was the Baltimore Colts when they left. Baltimore attempted to use eminent domain to keep the Colts, but they actually snuck away in the middle of the night and Baltimore was unable to seize control because by the time they got to that stage, you know, they weren't in Baltimore anymore. So it wasn't really Baltimore's jurisdiction to do so. And this has come up before, I would

really recommend Googling Neil DeMouse on the subject. I think he wrote about it like a decade ago. His work in general is just invaluable. And I think that, you know, if you're reading, if you're not reading Field of Schemes every day and you And I think that, you know, if you're reading, if you're not reading field of schemes every day and you have any interest in this side of the game, then I would, I would correct that because I think he's one of the, one of the most informative and insightful writers going into baseball sphere. Well, so are you RJ Anderson. And it's always a pleasure to read you and talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

See, and instead of an appearance fee, I get praise. So that's just how the podcast, this little behind the scenes. Just doing it for exposure. Yeah. Paying for CV, working for CV, whatever they call it nowadays. Well, at least I'm not making you wear a Strauss logo on your helmet as you talk to me. You don't know that. No, that's true. We're not doing video. Yeah, you don't know that at all. that's true. We're not doing video.

Yeah, you don't know that at all. I'm gonna go back to building submarines now. And. All right, well, if you're like me and most people, you just learned of the existence of Derek Bender on Thursday and it was a rude introduction. You may not have known him while he was in the Twins minor league system,

but you surely know him now that he's not because he was released for telling opposing hitters what pitches were coming while he was catching in a game with playoff implications for the twin single A affiliate. I'll be back in a moment with someone who has known and covered him for some time, and can tell us who he is and what might have motivated him. What should we make of this strange story? Mojo Hill will be here to answer a question about Bender. Who was that masked man. Well, in June of 2023, the website for the eventual Cape Cod League champion, Born Braves

of Bourne, Massachusetts, published a feature entitled, Derek Bender Wants to Make Baseball Fun Again, regardless of what life throws his way. His name is Derek Bender, the story said, and he's here to live his life just the way he wants to. I'll read a few more passages from that story. He showed up to a travel ball circuit that summer and he recalled being struck by how tense and serious everyone was.

This was when Bender was younger. "'Everybody's playing so tight,' Bender said. "'Everybody's playing so like, oh man, I gotta get these looks here. These coaches are here to see me. I gotta play well. I started this motto, make baseball fun again. Bender began living by that mantra in small ways, whether it was running after foul balls down the line or sprinting on and off the field for no reason other than the pure joy of playing a game. Thus, the player Braves fans have been blessed with this summer began to take shape. It goes on to say, nobody remembered how to play the game anymore, Bender said.

Everybody was so focused on showcases and trying to get offers, I was just like, how can I have the most fun I can have? You never know the struggles that somebody is going through, Bender also says. You never know what people are dealing with behind closed doors. How can you have a positive impact on people's lives every day? How can you make people smile? And most of all, how can you make yourself have the most fun in life? He wants to increase the opportunities for people to get help where they need it

because nobody is ever alone in their struggles. It happened so much in our generation and in today's society, Bender said. I just wish there were more outlets for people like that. It's now starting to get a little more traction, but I feel like we as athletes can use that platform a little better to spread the awareness and spread that message that you have a purpose, you are loved. There's a reason for you to smile today. That was then. This is now just a little more than a year later and Bender is now national news because the Minnesota twins released him just a few months after he was drafted in the 6th round of this year's

amateur draft after he reportedly gave away pitch types during a game where he was behind the plate in the playoffs in single A as he was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Muscles, allegedly because he was tired and wanted the season to end. The author of that article I was just extensively quoting, as well as of a Twitter thread from this past June, in which Bender was described as possibly the most memorable player I've ever covered, maybe more memorable now, is Mojo Hill, who is a sports reporter for the North Dakota Devils Lake Journal and also an editor for the Metsite Metsmerized. Mojo, welcome to Effectively Wild.

Yeah, appreciate you having me. I certainly wasn't expecting this, but I appreciate the offer. Yeah, so this is a short notice interview, but I guess you have probably been as surprised and as compelled by this story as everyone else has and maybe more than most. We were just talking about this before we started recording. It is especially strange to you that Derek Bender is now a name on national lips in baseball. So tell us a little bit about what the last day or so has been for you reading and seeing the story explode.

Yeah, it's been really strange, especially when I saw the news yesterday, I was actually at a high school volleyball game in a town of about a thousand people called Can Do. And I was, you know, it was my job to cover that game. So I was really trying to pay attention to that. But my phone is just blowing up suddenly during this game. And you know, I still am in pretty close contact with the intern group from last summer for the Bourne Braves. And it was such a fun summer.

And so we still communicate all the time. And Derek Bender, like I was telling you before we started recording, was kind of our little secret in some ways. He was a player we all knew and got to know really well over the course of a couple of months last summer. And suddenly I'm seeing John Boy and these big Yankees accounts and, you know, all these people I followed on Twitter for a long time talking about Derek Bender. You know, as if he's a common name, which is,

it's kind of weird that suddenly everyone's talking about Derek Bender. Yes. As I said to you, the secret is certainly out now. So tell us how you got to know Bender. What was your first introduction to him and what were you doing for the Braves last summer? Yeah, so I was the beat reporter intern for the Bourne Braves and Bender showed up, think about a week into the season and they got off to a really slow start without him and without a bunch of other guys that showed up late. They were really struggling to hit. They lost most of their first games that week.

I remember Bender showed up at the batting cage one day and I remember he introduced himself as Bender. He just, he stuck out his hand and he goes, Bender. No first name, just Bender. And he had bleached blonde hair, which he later told me was a thing that his coastal teammates did in the playoffs. But yeah, that first interaction really stuck out to me because sometimes you have to initiate an introduction with a player yourself or some players are more quiet. But he went up to every intern and said Bender.

I just remember he had a super outgoing personality from the very beginning. He, it didn't take him long to, to open up or anything. He was, he was just the kind of guy who talks to everyone. Um, he seemed to know someone on every single team, you know, there's, there's 10 Cape league teams and you're constantly playing different teams and traveling across the Cape. And he always seemed to know someone from somewhere, whether he played travel ball with them a long time ago or whatever. So he was just a really, really out there personality. So he said, I'm Bender and you

said I'm Mojo and probably neither of you forgot that. Yeah, exactly. Pretty memorable for both of you, even if you're not great with names. What was he like as a player? Tell us a little bit about his strengths and weaknesses on the field. So he got off to one of the hottest starts I've ever seen a baseball player have. I think he went 17 for 30 to start his Bourne Braves career. He hit for the Steichel in one game. It seemed like every other game I was interviewing him and our sideline reporter, Ali, was always interviewing him and it almost became a, Ali, was always interviewing him.

And it almost became a running joke like, oh, you again. But he just really, really mashed to start. And he totally propelled the Bournemouth season and really turned their season around. Because like I said, they'd been struggling. And suddenly they went on this big hot streak and they went to the top of the Cape League power rankings. And it was really bad. There were some other important guys too. Jonathan Vastein, Caden Bodine, who was Bender's coastal teammate.

They were big parts too, and a bunch of other names, but he was just, just a really strong hitter for them. Yeah. And the baseball America scouting report entering the draft on him. He's a strongly built right-handed hitter with a six foot one, two5 pound frame and the strength to drive the ball out of the park to all fields. He has a simple and surprisingly compact swing and generates power more via strength than bat speed, but employs an overly aggressive approach and chased out of the zone at a 31% clip this spring.

There are also some questions about his ability to consistently handle premium velocity, which raises questions about whether his hit and power combination will translate to pro ball. While Bender has spent some time behind the dish in college, most scouts think he'll need to move to first base, which puts plenty of pressure on his offensive profile. Old school scouts and analysts seem a bit split on Bender's profile, with the former being lower and the latter being higher. He was catching for born last summer? Yeah, he did a bunch of catching. He played some first, the aged.

I think Caden Bodine caught more than he did because Bodine was considered the better defensive catcher. But he seemed pretty adamant that he wanted to pursue catching. Although, you know, I was reading those same things that you were kind of just mentioning last summer where people didn't really see him sticking at the position,

but he was the kind of guy who was going to need to hit to keep moving up. Tell us a little bit more about his backstory and some of the struggles he had gone through prior to these current ones. So he is a 21 year old, he'll turn 22 in January. He's from Niskayuna, New York. And he seems, as you said, like a very magnetic personality when you knew him, at least. But he certainly had some traumatic experiences in his past or at least had experienced that secondhand through a friend, as you could maybe glean through those quotes I was reading about how he encouraged people to reach out if they needed help. So can you explain some of that story? Right. So he had the initials AP tattooed on his wrist. And he also wore a purple sleeve that was

in honor of suicide awareness. And he told me about that and how he had a friend named Ahmad Prelu who committed suicide. And so it was really his way of honoring his friend and just raising the general awareness. And that seemed like something that he was really passionate about. And I respected him a lot in talking to me about that. And Bender was always very honest about everything. And one thing I appreciated about him was,

he was appreciative of what I was doing and the coverage that I did. And I'd say I had a little bit more of a personal relationship with him He was appreciative of what I was doing and the coverage that I did. I'd say I had a little bit more of a personal relationship with him than I do with most players and coaches who I interview. Sometimes it's very formal and you don't talk to them much outside of the interviews, but yeah, he was always very honest from that upfront. You wrote a bit about his other interests and what he studied in school and some of his

hobbies. Can you flesh out some of that detail too? Yeah, there were things about him that you just wouldn't expect. I remember it was one of the first days he was there that he was talking about how he was a woman's and gender studies minor in college, which just didn't seem to fit his personality, but it was really interesting to everyone. And he was also a band kid, which was something I could relate to him about. I was a band kid in middle school, high school, and college, and he was a brass player. I remember he rattled off three or four brass instruments that he played.

I think he said he played a little bit of piano too. He also said he wanted to play hockey, although he didn't know how to skate, which is a bit of an issue and another thing I, but you know, I was never good at ice skating either, but yeah, he said, he's like, Oh yeah, my other dream would be to be a hockey player. Yes. Skating is helpful for that, I guess, if, unless you want to play field hockey.

So when you saw the news that he was drafted by the twins and he got a $300,000 bonus and he was a six rounder, right? And then he shows up for A-Ball. So you're, you're following his career closely. I would imagine. I don't know whether you stayed in touch with him personally at all, but from afar at least kind of keeping tabs. Yeah.

I, I always try to keep tabs on players I've covered. It's just, I just I just have the natural instinct to anyway with any player I've come in contact with or interviewed. So yeah, I was really excited to see where he would get drafted. There were a handful of other Bourne Braves I was also excited about, but if you asked me which one was I most excited about, I definitely would have said Derek Bender. The Mets and the Dodgers are the two teams that I follow the closest. And so I was really rooting for one of those teams to get him. And it ended up being the twins, which is actually the closest MLB team to me where

I live now in North Dakota. And I've only been here less than a year. So that could have been fun eventually. And I know Bender visited the Cape and reunited with some interns who went back for a second summer. And they told me that he was talking about me and that, like, oh, he says something like, I want Mojo to come to my first MLB game.

And yet, and you know, the twins are less than a six hour drive away. So theoretically, that's actually something that I could have made work. But, but yeah, I've I could have made work. But yeah, I've been, I made the Fort Myers, Mighty Muscles, one of my favorite teams on the MILB app. And I've been checking their box scores every day, just as I do with a handful of other minor league teams. And yeah, and I was following as they didn't get into the

playoffs, that they lost a few games on the stretch there. And I know they needed to win this one to get in. And then, and I remember I quote tweeted like Derek Bender batting ninth today as the muscles try to keep their season alive. And that tweet got screenshotted by the unfortunate MLB account, which is that popular baseball images that proceed unfortunate events, Twitter account. And so now that is going a little bit viral too with over a thousand likes on Twitter. Just really strange the way the whole thing worked out.

So he hit well for Coastal Carolina in his last college season before he got drafted, played 60 games, 942 OPS. And then I guess some of the concerns about whether that would translate into a pro ball showed up, small sample, but he wasn't excelling I suppose in those box scores you were checking. He played only 19 games professionally for Fort Myers, but he hit 200, 273, 333, 606 OPS. He struck out about 30% of his plate appearances. So who knows whether that contributes to how he was feeling.

But when you saw this news, I mean, I think people who've covered the minors for years and years have pretty universally responded with just shock or just being flabbergasted by this story, right? And J.J. Cooper of Baseball America said, this is truly the weirdest story of the minor league baseball season.

Kylie McDaniel, who co-reported the story and co-broke the news with Jeff Passon for ESPN said, this is the craziest story I've ever reported by a mile. And also the weirdest baseball story I've heard in a long time. So if anyone had done this, it obviously would have been big news and people would have wondered what the heck is happening here, but having now read your story and learned a little bit about Bender, everything in there now is especially poignant because you would think that he wouldn't be the type to do this.

And, you know, as he said in the story, you never know the struggles that somebody is going through, right? And that applies to him as well. But just reading about how important fun was to him and how much fun he seemed to be having and how infectious all of that was, right? His attitude toward baseball, it's then I suppose even harder to square that with why would a guy like that want to tank a game essentially to end the season sooner? Yeah, I almost wonder is like, you know, maybe he didn't really think through the consequences of what was going to happen, you know, first taste the pro ball, you know, maybe you get away with things like that at a lower level, you know, Not that he was doing that in college or the Cape League or anything, but he definitely could be described as a bit of a goofball, which I mean that in a good way, but he was

always joking around. Sometimes there is a time where you need to be serious as a baseball player, especially when you get to the pros. For him to do that, he probably wasn't thinking, oh, if I get caught, this will destroy my baseball career. I have to imagine that he didn't think through the whole chain reaction of what was going to happen. But I imagine it's definitely a wake-up call for him now at the pro level.

But unfortunately, I don't know if there's coming back from this. I've heard mixed opinions from people on whether they think he'll rebound from this. Will another team give him a chance, knowing everything we know, or is the team just not going to want to bother with that? When I saw the story, my initial reaction, I was just trying to run through the possibilities myself for, okay, why would someone do this? What would motivate them? And of course, first, maybe your mind goes to some sort of Bull Durham, Crash Davis teaching nuclear luci lesson sort of thing, right? Kind of as a gag almost, but clearly it wasn't that given that the

twins released him, right? And then, you know, I know a lot of people went to sort of a conspiracy minded, well, is this gambling related thing, right? And I totally get why in this environment, your mind would go there. And when we were doing a, a bold predictions podcast last year, I predicted sort of semi seriously, some sort of minor league game fixing scandal. I don't know whether this counts as game fixing. I guess it would if it were gambling motivated. Again, there's no hint thus far that there's anything related to that.

I haven't heard any smoke, let alone seen any fire. Plus, yeah, plus you gotta imagine, I mean, the action on Florida State League games. I'm not saying that there isn't any because people will bet on absolutely anything and everything, right? But that does seem like one of those situations where if there were some sort of suspicious activity, it would be flagged, right? Cause you know, I don't know if there are prop bets on Fort Myers muscles games, but if there's suddenly a lot of money being wagered

on one of those games, then that's probably going to come to a book's attention. And I know it wouldn't necessarily need to be a ton of money, right? With someone who's making minor league money, although he did get a significant bonus, right? So one would think he might not have been as hard up as some others, who knows, right? So one would think he might not have been as hard up as some others who knows, right? But you know, that's one possibility that in this environment, of course, you can never completely discount. And then I'm thinking, well, could it just have been bad blood between this particular catcher and that particular pitcher trying to settle some score, some

kind of clubhouse discord, but really maybe first and foremost, my mind went to some sort of mental health aspect to this story, right? To the extent where I was almost uncomfortable reading people describing it as crazy or weird or whatever, lest we end up stigmatizing something. If there's more to the story that comes out, especially with someone who himself has been very cognizant of that and has tried to raise awareness of that sort of thing. And again, I don't know, right? Like I've asked around a little, I've talked to some people who are more familiar with this than I was or who were trying to report it themselves. And it seemed like there might be some sort of mental health

component, possibly not something severe. He obviously was just drafted and got a big bonus a few months ago and a lot of scouts had to sign off on that, but that maybe it was more of a momentary lapse or just bad judgment of some sort, or as you said, not really recognizing the consequences. And then I was thinking, well, gosh, if it is some sort of mental health aspect to the story, or it's a 21 year old and then is there a second chance, right? Like, do you cut that guy or do you offer counseling or something? Is there a way to move past that? And from what I heard, again, sort of secondhand, perhaps he didn't really own up to this and maybe even denied that

he had done it or didn't apologize and then said that his heart just wasn't really in playing baseball, right? But I guess as you're saying, it's the sort of thing that maybe it's tough for your teammates to trust you again after that. Yeah. And I think one thing that sticks out to me is, you know, for as much fun as he had, and for as much as he joked around, he stuck out that whole summer. You know, in the Cape League, a lot of guys go home early for various reasons. And he could have done the same if he wanted to, but he was there all the way until the end. He could have done the same if he wanted to, but he was there all the way until the end. I think without Derek Bender, the Bournemouth Braves probably don't win the Cape League Championship. I mean, he had an OPS over a thousand for the summer, and he had one of the most memorable

home runs, which was the video in the beginning of that thread I tweeted. He hit an insurance run, home run in game three of the Cape League Championship Series and beast with the catcher as he was going around the bases. And that was still, I think, one of my favorite moments I've had watching baseball live. It was just the kind of moment where you get goosebumps. Like, wow, Derek Bender just did that. He just hit this tank and then stood and watched it and then started yelling at the catcher. That was just such an amazing moment. And, and he was so happy that day when they won the championship and he was such a huge part of that summer.

So that seemed to me that he didn't have this like give up kind of attitude. You know? Yeah. And of course, you know, when I read this, just that he had told teammates that he was tired. I mean, sure. A lot of us are tired all the time and baseball players at the end of a season, you know, after playing your college season and then your pro debut, a lot of players are tired and I understand wanting to go home maybe at that point,

especially if things aren't going great for you on the field. Obviously there are much better ways to handle that. And, you know, I think teams are more understanding, even if it is a mental health issue. I'd like to think that if you came forward and discussed that you were struggling in some way, that your team would say, okay, take some time off or you can go home, right?

You don't need to tank your team's fortunes and hurt your teammates prospects as well and their competitive aspirations and everything. So, even if he's going through something, it's not necessarily an excuse, although maybe it's an explanation to some extent. But yeah, your descriptions of him, it seemed like he was just really enthusiastic about playing and really committed to it where you talk about him staying after the game in the press box and working with

the interns to study scouting reports for the opposing starters and everything, right? Like he wasn't going through the motions or coasting by, no pun intended, with the Coastal Chylerina, but coasting by on talent. Yeah. And he was neck and neck with Travis Bazana for like the MVP race and the batting title. And I remember he came up into the press box in like the sixth inning one time and asked me for the Falmouth Commodores box score to see how Bazana did. And I think Bazana ended up winning it by like 0.001. But yeah, so he was always like really into, into those kinds of things. And it sounds like from your account that he was quite popular too.

Like it seems like people liked him and kind of fed off his energy. I know when you have a teammate who's kind of colorful and a character and, and a little extra like that, you know, maybe it could rub people the wrong way or, or maybe they misinterpreted and think you're, you're kind of a showboat or something like that. Maybe it could rub people the wrong way or maybe they misinterpret it and think you're kind of a showboat or something like that. But he's handling the clubhouse stereo and the music selections for the the Born Braves and everything. It sounds like he was not a loner or anything. He was pretty well integrated into the team. Definitely. Although I do think sometimes he would pal around a bit with players on the the team. Definitely. Although I do think sometimes, you know,

he would pal around a bit with players on the other team and so sometimes maybe it did feel like he was a little isolated from the born Braves, you know. He was just such a popular character around everyone and not just his own team that he sometimes did kind of feel like his own character. Well, maybe he's just a friend to everyone, including the Lakeland flying tigers, who he was tipping off about the pitches. It's interesting. Cause I guess it came out because Bender, I don't know whether you can call it

tipping pitches, if it's just telling them which pitch to come in, or tipping is typically you, you pick up on something that the pitcher isn't trying to telegraph. I don't remember the logistics of how he did it. Like, was he whispering to the batter? is typically you pick up on something that the pitchers are trying to telegraph. And I don't know the logistics of how he did it. Right. Like was he whispering to the batter? Like is that something that the umpire would probably notice? You'd think, right?

The ESPN story said he told opposing hitters the type of pitches that were coming to the plate during at-bats in the game last week that eliminated his team from playoff contention. So yeah, if he's just saying that out loud. And I guess the hitters themselves were taken aback and then word spread to the coaches on that team. And then the coaches on that team tipped off the twins coaches to that. And that's how it got back to everyone. And it's interesting because I guess, A, how much would it help to know which pitch is

coming? In this case, I guess the implication is that it helps quite a bit. And also you have to be kind of quizzical at first if the opposing catcher is tipping the pitch or telling you what's coming, right? You must be wondering at first, is he trying to psych me out? Is this mind games or something? Is he trying to confuse me? And then I guess after he tells you one and then it's what he said it was going to be, I guess you trust him. Who knows? There are probably players who would say, I don't want to know, right? That's what always happens with sign stealing scandals.

There are always some players who are like, no, don't tell me. I want to not even out of a moral stance, but just I want to see the ball, hit the ball. It could be kind of distracting if your opponent is telling you what's coming and you're trying to puzzle out the motivations for that. So how are you feeling about this then? I suppose, does this just make you sad? I mean, are you kind of mourning the professional prospects of Bender, a player that you had kind of gotten attached to and was really rooting for and what are your hopes for him

going forward? Yeah. I mean, it's definitely disappointing because of how excited I was that he got drafted and to follow his career and everything. I will be curious to see if he ends up saying anything publicly about it because I think that article said he declined comment through his agency. So, it'll be interesting to see if, if he tries to tell his side of the story or if he just kind of concedes what happened. And then, yeah, I'm fascinated to see if, if any team takes a chance on him. Personally, I hope a team does, because I, you know, I'd love to see his professional career continue, but

you know, if he really did what, what it sounds like he did, it's understandable if a team doesn't want to take that chance. But somewhat selfishly, I'd want the Mets to sign him or the Dodgers. Those are the teams I follow the most. It's such a bizarre situation. I'm just still trying to process it. And the fact that it's such big news on a national level is just crazy. Yeah, right. And I guess in order to have any hope of a second act, he'd probably have to

cop to this, assuming he did do what was reported. He'd have to own up to it and explain himself and be more apologetic, I suppose, about it than perhaps he has been privately or certainly publicly to this point. Because yes, it doesn't really matter in terms of the playoff hopes of the Fort Myers Mighty Muscles, right? The twin single A affiliate. I mean, the minor leagues are about development more so than whether you win the games or whether you go to the Florida State League playoffs. And that's not to say that players on that team don't care or that there aren't fans who care, but everyone kind of has their eye on the higher level

and development always takes priority over winning and losing games. But when you are actively attempting to lose those games, then obviously that speaks to maybe your motivations or your character or your competitive aspirations or your integrity and you're then questioning, well, is he going to do this in games that matter or will there be some other unanticipatable lapse in judgment? Right? So yeah, I look, I knew nothing about Derek Bender. some other unanticipatable lapse in judgment, right? So yeah, I look, I knew nothing about Derek Bender.

I hadn't heard of Derek Bender before yesterday. So unlike everyone else who's just coming lately to this story and having read your work and learning a little bit more about him, it just adds a dimension to this where I kind of went just from gawking and rubbernecking to being like, I feel bad for this guy. Like, you know, if he is the guy that he presented himself to you as last year, then this is regrettable.

Yeah. And I think everyone is so shocked by this because I don't remember this specific thing ever happening, right? I mean, a minor league player being released for telling the other team what's coming, like, has that ever happened in the history of baseball? I mean, the closest like equivalent, you know, I was thinking of like the, you know, the 1919 White Sox, but even that was different. You know, that was the World Series and that had more to do with money and stuff. Right. And you hear stories about guys grooving one, right, for someone,

just often in an exhibition game, like, you know, let's help Cal Ripken hit a home run in an all-star game or whatever, but, you know, sometimes with some sort of milestone chase or something and it's a kind of meaningless game and it's a veteran or someone who's a legend or something and you want to give them one more great moment or that's more understandable, I think, than this. And even that is fairly rare. So yes, I think that is why it has generated this enormous amount of attention. Yeah. Usually when you hear about tipping pitches, it's the pitcher inadvertently doing it,

not like the exact opposite. Yes, exactly. Yeah, this is sabotage essentially, right, if this went down the way that it was described. Well, I wanted to connect to someone who could add a little more depth and personal connection to the story and detail, which you did. So thank you for jumping on without much warning here. Anything else that

you're thinking about or reactions to the story or anything else about Bender that we haven't covered? No, I just, I think we've kind of covered it, but yeah, I'm really curious to see what happens next. And, you know, like I said, whether he says something publicly or if he gets another chance or what's next for him. You know, I think it's kind of interesting that he got to keep the bonus, which wasn't a ton in baseball money, but was still a lot in, you know, just regular person money. Right. It's bizarre. You can't make this stuff up sometimes. Well, I hope you can go back to covering volleyball in tiny towns now without the daily excitement of Viral Stories. Friday night football game tonight.

All right. Enjoy. Thanks very much, Mojo. Yeah, thanks. And then they'll tease out some interest you did but disgusted it, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day, still blessed. All right, let's close things out with some stat blasting and frequent stat blast consultant. Ryan Nelson is here in the flesh or at least in the voice to deliver some guest stat blasts. Welcome back Ryan. Hey Ben, how are you doing? Always doing well when it's stat blasting time, especially when I don't have to do any other work.

Even if I'm just reporting your work, that's more work than I have to do when I just have to listen to you and read a question. So you're taking a larger load off of my plate this time. And I believe we have four stat blasts to share this time. Most prompted by listener questions, some prompted by host questions. Let's start with one from Justice who is a Patreon supporter and just wrote in yesterday,

Thursday to say, In tonight's Brewers Giants game, Camilo Duval walked Willy Adamus and then advanced him to second, third and home, all on separate wild pitches. I was wondering how often a run is scored this way. I can't remember ever seeing it happen. Adamus was also the only base runner Doval allowed. So this can be filed under a true case of effectively wild. So wild pitching in a run after putting a runner on base.

Yeah, so the way I looked at this was, I think it was a little more specific than that even, right? So Adamus actually made it to first on a walk and then there was three separate wild pitches to get him home. So sometimes you see these wild pitches that just go all over the place, maybe even into the stands somehow and you get two or three bases on a single wild pitch. But look specifically to say three separate individual wild pitches to advance one base at a time. And it turns out this is pretty uncommon, maybe verging on really uncommon. I found 21 instances of that happening going back a little over a hundred years. So only every few years does this happen.

Interestingly enough, it seems like it's getting more common. I don't know if that's just pitchers are more wild. It could also be some piece of reporting difference over the years. Maybe this wasn't really reported the same in earlier baseball history. To give you an example of the 21 times ever, four happened just between 2021 and 2023. In fact, there was two in 2021, both involving the Royals within three days. So just a weird little spurt there. I looked at the two from 2023 and found both of them were pretty interesting for their

own different ways. The most recent one actually happened on September 10th of last season, and it involved Davis Schneider. And his was interesting because he, just like Adamas, walked to get on base, and Alejandro Kirk came to bat, and Cole Regans was pitching. What makes this interesting is Cole Regans actually threw three straight wild pitches to score Schneider. He just completely lost it, could not control it at all, went down 3-0 against Alejandro

Kirk and all three wild pitches that advanced the runner. Guerrero Jr. was also on base at the time, so he scored prior to Schneider. But three straight pitches is not effectively wild. That's just wild. No effectiveness involved there. The next most recent one than that was just earlier, about a month earlier in 2023 on August 11th. And it was a game of the Guardians versus the Rays. And the Guardians were batting, Ramon Larianno came up with man on first and second, and he was actually hit by a pitch to load the bases.

And keep in mind, this is when they're down eight to five. So it's a three run game, Ramon Larianno is the tying run. And then of course, three wild pitches to score three runs to tie the game in the top of the ninth inning. So about as dramatic as it can be, the worst possible time to throw three wild pitches with the bases loaded, I think. Thankfully it worked out okay,

because in the bottom of the ninth, Wander Franco hit a walk off homer on the third pitch. So Rays were okay in that one. That's a level of drama that seems like, someone probably listening to this remembers that game exactly because they saw that and know that that doesn't happen. That's an extremely bizarre thing. So the two most recent are both really exciting.

Only 21 as far as I can tell ever. And then I did mention 2021, the Royals were addicted to these. They performed one of these on the 16th and then had one performed on them on the 18th. So what goes around comes around, I suppose. Yeah, I would say 21 instances since 1916. That's pretty rare. You could go your baseball watching life without seeing one if you just happen to not be watching the right team

at the right time. So I guess it does make sense that it has happened fairly often of late. As we've discussed, wild pitches and pass balls are trending down just in the last few years, but historically speaking, they're still fairly high and maybe there's been improvements in catching technique. Maybe it's pitch calm that has sent it back down again, but it's still higher than it used to be because of nasty movement and VELO and going for

strikeouts and expanding the zone, et cetera, et cetera. And as you said, there could be classification differences and maybe one person calls something a wild pitch that another person would have called a pass ball or in an earlier era. So yeah, there's some squishiness there, but it doesn't happen often. Justice was right about that. And now justice has been served by you. All right.

Let us answer, I guess let's save the two skeins related questions for last and we will answer a question from Melanie, who says, as I type this, I'm watching my twins play the Royals who now have Tommy Fam on their roster. Having been on vacation in late August, I must have missed this acquisition. And this was a little confused since it was only about two weeks ago that the twins faced Vam with the Cardinals. He was also a member of the White Sox for all of their matchups earlier this season. Is this anything? On one hand, I feel like anything happening only three times in a baseball season isn't likely to be notable, but then again, I can't recall noticing one player being in a lineup for that many different teams and in such an order that he keeps running Into the same opponent with every single one

This kind of came up on the last episode with big Mike Bauman since he has played for five different teams this year He has faced certain opponents multiple times with multiple teams. So who are the outliers when it comes to this? Yeah, so the first time I read the question, I completely misinterpreted the question, but we found an interesting answer from my misinterpretation. So I'll kind of read through that one first, and then I'll actually answer the question that was asked. So when I was thinking about it, and the way I read it was pitcher-batter matchups. So not so much playing a team a certain number of times, but just facing a certain pitcher

or batter for a team, against a team, and how many different variations could you have there, right? The simplest variation would be, you know, I'm on the Braves, I face a pitcher, then I go to the Phillies, I face that pitcher again. That would be kind of two different combinations of that pitcher-batter matchup. I did find two examples where there were four different team variations between the same two players in the same season. So in 1967, Ken Harrelson, who's a batter, played for three different teams, including the Senators, the Athletics,

and the Red Sox. And he faced Steve Barber, the pitcher pitcher who played for the Orioles and Yankees. So between those five teams, they faced each other four different times with four different team combinations. So there was Harrelson on the Senators versus Barber on the Orioles, Harrelson on the Athletics versus Barber on the Orioles, Harrelson on the Athletics versus Barber on the Yankees,

and Harrelson on the Red Sox versus Barber on the Yankees and Harrelson versus on the Red Sox versus Barber on the Yankees again. So four different times they faced each other with four different team combinations. And by the way, Ken Harrelson, that's Hawk Harrelson for those who don't know, famously of the White Sox broadcasting crew. And I saw Sam Blum of the Athletic just caught up with Hawk recently and took his temperature on this current White Sox season. And it sounds like Hawk is distraught, which if you ever watched Hawk Harrelson call a game you can imagine he was the ultimate homer and rooter. And he can now mostly not bring himself to watch White Sox games anymore, which is the

ultimate indignity. If the White Sox have lost Hawk, they can't really fall farther than that, I don't think. So he now watches the pre and post game and mostly just tunes out entirely for the game. So Hawk is out on the White Sox. That's how far they've fallen. I think we'd need to order a wellness check if he wasn't out on the White Sox. That would be a sign that he's not thinking clearly. Especially because it's not his job to watch White Sox games anymore. And so if he were taking that upon himself in his retirement, take it easy, Hawk. You don't need to force the White Sox upon yourself anymore, but he

just can't help himself. Yeah. I did not make the connection. That was Hawk Carrolson. When you do enough of these, sometimes names just become names and that connection did not happen in my brain. So I'm with the other listeners who didn't hear that one, right? We did have a second one there. Bill, this is quite the name, Bill Scouran, I believe it's pronounced, played for the senators.

Yeah, Moose. Sorry, his name was Moose. Moose Scouran, yeah, I mean, his name was Bill, but. This is now an animal themed stat blast, I suppose. Yeah, I guess. So Moose Scouran, he played for the senators, Andy Afrimanshian, White Sox, and he was a hitter and he faced off against Bob Meyer, who had three teams of his own, Yankees, Angels

and Athletics in 1964. So Scourin as a member of the White Sox faced Meyer as an Angel and an A, and then as a member of the Senators, Scourin faced Meyer as an angel and a Yankee. So again, four combinations there. Three team combos isn't particularly rare. I found 540 instances going back since 1916. There's two variations of a potential three team combo. The simpler one is one player plays on three different teams and faces the other player

on the same team three times. But then there's a potential kind of like the two above where both players play change teams somewhere in the season and they play each other in a combination of three different variations. So just to keep it interesting, pulled some more recent ones. Both of these are from last year. An example is Reynaldo Lopez played for three teams last year, White Sox, Angels, and Guardians. He faced Brandia Rosarena and Brandon Lau, each on the Rays the whole season.

But Reynaldo Lopez faced them on three different teams as a pitcher. So that would be kind of one of those three to one variations. In addition, I found a two and two, if you want to call it that, where Jace Peterson and Chris Flexon played each other three times. Peterson as an A played Flexon as a Mariner, Peterson as an A faced Flexon as a Rocky, then Peterson went to the Diamondbacks and then faced Flexon as a Rocky once more. So there's another three variation combination from just last year. Now the actual question.

Now the actual question. Yeah. I'm glad that that prompted you to do that even deeper dive than you had to. combination from just last year. Now the actual question. Not the actual question. I'm glad that that prompted you to do that even deeper dive than you had to. But yes, I think Melanie was asking not even specifically about better pitcher matchups, but just team matchups. Yeah, that's right. Uh, this was actually way easier. So I was able to turn this around much quicker. There have been three different players to face the same team

opponent four different times with four different teams in the same season. We have a nice chronological spread here too. So one going all the way back to 1904, Frank Hulsman played with four different teams, the White Sox, the Tigers, the Browns, and the Senators, all of which he played the Yankees during his tenure with each of those four teams. So he was able to face the Yankees many, many times. Smaller league back then, also no inner league. So as long as you stayed in league, it seems like the likelihood was higher that you could do something like this. But again, just shy of 50 years later, Paul Laener played on four teams as well, the Athletics, White Sox, Browns, and Indians, and he actually

played as a member of all four of those teams against both the Yankees and the Senators. So, he did this twice in the same season, 1951. Again, though, same league makes it a little more likely. But I think this last one in the year 2000 is the least likely. Nationals manager, Davy Martinez did this. He played for four different teams, the Rays, the Cubs is the least likely. Nationals manager, Davy Martinez did this. He played for four different teams, the Rays, the Cubs, the Rangers, and the Blue Jays. And he played the Tigers as a member of all four of those teams.

So there's a couple of reasons that's interesting. One, one of those teams is National League, the Cubs, and he played the Tigers as a Cub. They only played the Tigers for three games all seasons that year. So he just happened to be there for the three week time period that only played the Tigers for three games all seasons that year, so he just happened to be there for the three-week time period that they played the Tigers. But then, maybe even more impressively, is this is in the divisional era, and none of those teams are in the Tigers division either. So, you know, one is in the National League, different

league entirely. The other three are all in different divisions. So it really seems quite unlikely that they would be able to do this with the Tigers of all teams Given the teams he played for but he did pull it off I wonder if he remembers that if someone asked him about it if he would make that connection probably not if I had to guess Yeah, it's almost like changing costumes to come back in It's like a Bobby Valentine and in his disguise on the bench after he's being thrown out or you again Didn't we just see you? Oh, you're wearing a different outfit this time. Maybe a fake mustache as well. Yeah.

Eyeballing big Mike Bowman's game log. It looks to me like he hasn't pulled off the four different teams facing the same opponent feet this season, although he has done three twice, it looks like. So he faced the Blue Jays as a member of the Angels, Mariners and Orioles. And then he faced the Rockies as a member of the Angels, Giants and Mariners. But again, only three, it looks like, not four, at least not so far. So he has been bested. That's a good segue into the last little piece of this stat blast. So just a few years ago in 2021, Billy

McKinney actually, he only maxed out at three different teams that year, but he faced four different teams as each of those three teams members. So say that three times fast, I suppose. So in 2021, he played for the Brewers, the Mets, and the Dodgers. And for each of those three teams, he faced the Braves, the Phillies, the Pirates, and the Padres. So just everyone in the world saw Billy McKinney a thousand times that season. And so my big Mike Bauman, as you put it, has a ways to go to match Billy McKinney from just a few years ago. This bolsters the case I made recently that Billy McKinney is the avatar of replacement level now,

that he is constantly being brought in in emergency break glass situations and then jettisoned again. And I said that when the Pirates picked him up and he played 10 games for the Pirates, and according to both baseball reference and fan graphs, his war was 0.0. And he has since been cast off by the Pirates.

So he is proving me right, I guess. And this is another good example of that where he's just been kind of passed among various teams and playing the same teams over and over again, quite forgettably because he's Billy McKinney, but we haven't forgotten it. We've remembered it now, thanks to you. All right, here's a question that I put to you

because I got kind of curious about Paul Skeens' outing lengths this year, because it seemed to me that he was sort of an automatic six-inning start guy. And I just had the sense that he always goes six and he does average exactly six innings start guy. And I just had the sense that he always goes six and he does average exactly six innings per start. So as we speak on Friday, he's made 20 starts, he's pitched 120 innings, and he doesn't literally go six every time, but he has gone six in five of his past eight starts.

And then the other three, he went five or five and a third. And he has gone six in exactly half of his starts this season. So that seemed somewhat unusual to me. And I guess it's because Skeens is kind of a sign of the times that he's going to be capped in terms of his pitch limit, right? So even though he's generally pitching pretty well, he's just not going to go that deep into games. And because he's pitching well, he's not going to get inked that early either. And so the range of realistic outcomes for a Paul Skeen start in terms of inning total is pretty narrow, I guess. So as I said to you, I imagine that this has fluctuated over time because in

earlier eras, start length would have been even more consistent probably, because it was often a complete game. You were just going to take the ball and go all the way. And then probably it got less consistent and now it's getting more consistent again because complete games are so rare that you have sort of lowered the ceiling for a standard start. So I asked you about, does this stand out skeins as usage by standard deviation of start length or however you wanted to look at it? I agree with your perspective there that it's kind of a hump shape trend over time You know I think pitch limits have started to narrow the standard deviation of starts as well that

Even the best pitchers just only go six or seven these days So kind of narrows the opportunity but did look at Skeens and his standard deviation of innings pitched so far this year is 0.89. So you know what that means standard deviation without going into the stats, right, is saying about two thirds of the time Skeens has a start within 0.89 innings of his median start. So you know, his median's right around six. So 70-ish percent of the time, he's kind of within that five to seven range. That number is low.

The all time average is about 1.9. Since 2000, it's about 1.4. As we said, it's kind of coming back down, but it's not anything near historic. So there are some truly extremely low standard deviations that we can find in baseball history. One good example, I believe this is actually the lowest, is Mike Lynch in 1904, who had a.38.

This kind of lends to your earlier theory. He had 24 starts, all of which were complete games, every single one. The reason his standard deviation isn't zero is because, of course, some of those games he pitched a complete game only going eight innings because they did not pitch the bottom of the ninth inning. So 19 times he went nine innings, five times he went eight innings. That's a standard deviation of 0.38.

Vic Willis did something similar in 1902 to get his 0.44 standard deviation. I did just happen to stumble upon a nugget of one of the highest standard deviations of all time, in fact the highest standard deviation. It came from 1929 Johnny Cooney. He only made two starts. In the first start of his season, he threw one and two thirds, kind of the Ryan Stanek mold there. And then shortly after that, not long, he threw a 15 inning complete game and that was his season. So his standard deviation was like nine or something.

I didn't write it down, but it's something absurd. I just thought it was funny that that's very old baseball for you. Yeah. There's no middle ground there. He had an interesting career because he was a pitcher at first and then he went down to the minors. He got heard, I think, and was less effective and then went down to the minors and then came back as a full-time position player. So he sort of had two separate careers. 1929, I think that was at the tail end of his pitching phase. And so he was probably somewhat

diminished and he was appearing in some games in relief, but I guess he got the ball a couple of times to start and it just could not have gone any differently in those two outings. But kind of bringing the hump curve back over the hill here, the third lowest all-time is actually 2019 Ryan Stanek, which is a very different reason that he would have the third lowest of all time. Obviously, he basically only went one every single time. Occasionally, go a little bit longer than that, but definitely kept his standard deviation

pretty low. His 2018 season is the fifth lowest of all time as well. So it's basically all super old baseball guys or Ryan Stanik at the top of the list. But the first person on the list that's a reasonably recent, in fact, the first in the 21st century that also isn't Ryan Stanik is 2019 Clayton Kershaw. So he has the 11th lowest all time in that year at 0.7. He started 28 games and he went seven innings 11 times and six innings 12 times. He had a couple six and changes and a five and a four in there as well, but he was pretty much money to go six or seven on the dot that season. Had a great

year right around 3.0 ERA. So just a vintage Clayton Kershaw year, he really nailed the quality start metric, you know, the three ERA and the six innings pitched. He got that one going every time. Right. And I guess he's been someone, especially later in his career, where again, you're not gonna push him too hard. And so that's gonna kind of cap how deep into games he's gonna go.

For sure. And I did look at this on a career level. So obviously Skeens is in his first year of his career at 20 starts at the time of recording here, maybe 21 at this point, but 20 at the time of analysis. I did want to look at career numbers. I looked at all pitchers ever to make 100 starts. Interestingly enough, all of

the low names in the list here are very recent. The top 10, all of them pitched this century. That's more evidence of this trend here. But surprisingly, Michael Panetta is number one all time in standard deviation of innings. He was just over one inning at 1.05 standard deviation in his 169 starts here. So I don't know what we know about Michael Pineda that would lead us to believe that that's the case. But that is the number that we see.

Second is Garrett Cole at 1.07. And then third is a very remember some guys name for me personally, Dylan G of Mets fame. It felt like in my high school days, every single day was like BJ Upton versus Dylan G. That's like the what I was watching in high school. So that's a name that means a lot to me, maybe less to people who weren't in the analyst at the time, but good to remember some guy's name. Yeah, definitely. And then we got one final question here that is also Skeens related. So this is a question from Sean, Patreon supporter, who wrote,

in Paul Skeens' debut on May 11th against the Cubs, the Cubs had 10 hits and 10 walks and lost. I was impressed with the symmetry of those numbers and that they managed to lose. They scored nine runs, so close to 10, 10, 10, and six of those were charged to non-Skeen's pitchers. On August 28th, Skeen started against the Cubs and the Pirates lost 14 to 10. 11 of those 14 runs were charged to non-Skeen's pitchers.

In another start against the Cubs on May 17th, all three Cubs runs were charged to non-Skeen's pitchers. In another start against the Cubs on May 17th, all three Cubs runs were charged to non-Skeen's pitchers. There was also a Skeen start at September 3rd where the Cubs scored zero runs. I have a few questions that may be stat blastable. What's the highest matching number of walks and hits for a team in a single game? What is the record for a game that team lost? I don't even need to trouble frequent at-bus correspondent Ryan Nelson with such child's play. That is stat-headable. So I looked up those couple of questions

and the highest number of hits and walks where both are equal in a game is 17 done by the Yankees in the first game of a doubleheader on September 11th, 1949. It was a 20 to five win over Washington. Nine inning game. If we add the condition that the team had to lose, then the most is 14. The Padres had 14 hits and walks in a loss on August 25th, 1979. The Philadelphia A's had 14 hits and walks in a loss on April 29th, 1951.

Those were both extra inning games, 19 innings and 13 innings respectively. 13 and 13 has been done twice too. Once in extra innings but once in a regular length game. The Boston Red Sox were April fools on April 1st, 2002 when they had 13 hits and walks but lost to the Blue Jays 12 to 11. As for the highest number of hits, walks, and runs in a game when all those totals are identical, it's 13 was done by the Phillies 1948 and the Tigers 1921 for a game that the team lost. It's 10-10-10. On July 10th, 1999, the Reds lost to Cleveland 11 to 10.

The Senators had a 10-10-10 loss in 1955 and the Tigers did it in 1932. So those were the actual questions or a couple of the actual questions, but they raised a question in my mind, which was about these games that Skeen started in which he pitched well, but then the final score looked a lot worse than it was when he left the game. And I remember that we had previously teamed up

on a stat blast on episode 1852, which was about bullpen support for starters and specifically for inherited and bequeathed runners and did those guys score more often. So basically you determined which starters were helped or hurt most by the relievers who immediately followed them in terms of getting more or fewer runs than expected charged to those starters, thus inflating or suppressing their ERAs. This is related, but different.

So I'm kind of curious about a start where if you look at the final score without knowing anything about the game, you would assume that that starter got rocked, but really he didn't because all the damage took place after he left the game and wasn't even charged to him, right? So that 14 to 10 loss for the Pirates Against the Cubs on August 28th, if you just saw that, which I think I did,

and I thought, oh, did Skeen's finally get tattooed? But no, not really. He went five, he gave up three runs, two earned, but then the relievers who followed him gave up a combined 11 runs and thus made it kind of look like Skeens had not pitched well if you just sort of took a superficial glance at that. So that's what I was curious about. Who has the, I guess, record of the relievers who followed them having the best or worst collective RA or ERA such that your perception of how the starter had pitched might be distorted if you didn't look deeper. Yeah, so I did use ERA here and we have to set some minimums, right the all time leader here what I did is I basically

found a pitcher's ERA and compared that to the relievers and games that pitch after them in their starts ERA and found just the difference between those two. If we don't do any minimums the leader all time is Scott Perry in 1917. So Scott Perry pitched one game and in that game he had a 7 ERA, which is not good, but his relievers pitched two-thirds of an inning with a 54 ERA. So the difference of 46 there is the record, not very meaningful though being in just the one game. So what I did is I set the minimum at least 10 starts in a season and at least 20 relief innings following those starts. I set the second minimum there because especially in old baseball, you might have 12 starts

and 11 be complete games and only one inning in relief. So at least 20 innings in relief over 10 starts. And by that metric, the least lucky pitcher of all time is 1954 St. Louis Cardinal Tom Pahulski. So Pahulski had a pretty good season. He made 13 starts over 25 total games and he had a 2.58 ERA, which is one of the better ERAs in the league that season. But he only went 5 and five in those starts

because the bullpen behind him combined for an 11.79 ERA over 29 innings. So that's a difference of 9.22 ERA in that season given those minimums. One thing I found interesting is I thought when you hear that stat, it just feels like every single game the bullpen must have been awful like without exception. But looking through I feel like if you didn't already know this you might not even notice it's kind of interesting so I'll go through some of

the games here and not read 13 game lines but go through a few. His first game that season that year was May 5th he pitched three inningsnings, which is obviously pretty short, but only allowed one earned run. So pretty good. But the bullpen came in allowed six runs in six innings, which is obviously pretty bad. But right after that, the very next start, he pitched seven innings of shutout and the bullpen closed out, not allowing run themselves. Two games after that, the bullpen was terrible, but so was Tom. He did three innings with five runs allowed, bullpen six innings with ten runs allowed. So they actually did almost the exact same thing. So really so far, there hasn't been a game other than maybe that first one where the bullpen kind of blew what would be considered an otherwise good start.

But then there's this streak of three games in the middle of the summer, where it is as bad as you can imagine. June 19th, Tom goes eight innings, one earned run, but then the bullpen allows four runs and a third of an inning to lose the game. So that's an absolute blowout for sure. The very next start, which was about a month later, he pitched five innings and allowed two earned runs, not quite as good, but the bullpen pitched four innings, allowing seven runs. So blew that one for him again. And then the very next one, he kind of had a mediocre start, four innings, three runs. But again, the bullpen allowed seven runs over four innings. So that's three starts in a row where he was significantly better than the bullpen following him and may have cost them the win

by allowing a very large number of runs. So I did think it was funny. After that, Tom just said he's gonna do it himself because his next three starts was complete games, two runs, complete games, one run, complete game, two runs. Cannot rely on the bullpen anymore. I'll take care of it myself. And he did finish out the season, his last game of the season, eight innings, one earned run.

The bullpen kind of tried to blow it one inning, two earned runs. But, you know, three runs is not too bad at the end of the day. So not as much of a blow up, but found it very interesting that, you know, if you look, you take a step back and look at this season, I don't know that you would have noticed that this was such an absurd bullpen year, but it shows you how just even a couple bad blowups can really affect an ERA like that. So I did find 1929, Tommy Thomas had a similar season, kind of the same thing, but he did a 3.33 ERA versus a 12.129 reliever ERA.

He did it over 35 starts. So a much larger sample size, but again, being older baseball, he only averaged a little over one inning of relief per start. The bullpen only had so much effect because they weren't pitching that much. Lefty Grove, another early baseball name, kind of a similar story.

But if you look at more recent baseball, almost all of the worst seasons in this regard are from 2020, which makes some sense. Smaller sample sizes allow for crazier things to happen. So five of the six worst marks since the year 2000 came in 2020. The worst of which was Aaron Nola, who he pitched to a 3.28 ERA that season, and his relievers bind him at a 10.46 ERA, and that was over 12 starts. I won't read through the game lines on that, but it's kind of similar story.

There were two or three really bad blowups, but otherwise not really super notable. For those curious on the other 2020 seasons, it's Antonio Senzatella, Luis Castillo, Danelsen Limit, and Justice Sheffield all had 4.5 or higher differences between their ERA and their reliever ERA kind of hurting them on the backend. But I did mention five out of the last six or five of the six worst marks since 2000 came in 2020. There's one other one. I did note in the email here,

I'm gonna give you the opportunity if you want to. I know you don't love guessing games. I live and die for guessing games. They're my favorite thing. Would you like to guess who the worst season was since the year 2000 that was not in 2020? I do have a guest and it's the name that immediately came to mind when I thought of a pitcher whose win-loss record was known to be worse than it should have been quote unquote based on how he had performed. And I second guess my guess both because I kind of thought of that being more of a product of a lack of offensive support than a lack of bullpen support, but maybe it was both. And then the other

reason I second guess my guess is that he's on my mind right now because we're speaking on Friday and he is making his return from tummy John surgery. Is it Jacob deGrom? That is certified ball knower Ben Lindbergh with the correct answer. 2018 Jacob deGrom is the worst mark in a full non 2020 season. He made 32 starts in 2018. He had a 1.7 ERA, which many will remember. He won the Cy Young that year, led the league in ERA. His bullpen relievers had a 6.75 ERA in 72 innings that season. So you are right, he did have low run support as well. I looked it up, he had 3.49 runs per game in support.

Compare that to the league average that year, I believe was 4.45, so almost a full run below league average. But he did have a 10 and nine record despite leading the league in ERA and in whip, I believe as well. But he did win the Cy Young. So thankfully in this time period, you can still win the Cy Young with a 10 and nine win-loss record. This is a double whammy of his teammates letting him down on both sides of the ball.

Well it is always a pleasure to have you do the research and also sometimes to have you come on and deliver the results yourself. So I always tell people they can find Ryan on Twitter at rsnelson23. They can also find him hanging out in the Discord stat blast channel if you're a Patreon supporter and get in there as you should. And sometimes he will do bespoke stat blasts for people who pique his interest. Ryan, thank you as always. Yep.

Thanks, Ben. All right. Just in case you haven't heard, Dave Roberts, Dodgers manager, made some interesting remarks about the possibility of Shohei Otani pitching in the postseason. I've been kind of joking about that throughout this year, imagining a dramatic moment where Shohei comes in to close out a Dodgers game in October, Kershaw style. The Dodgers have pretty consistently and understandably shot down that idea, but listen to what Dave Roberts said on Friday in an interview on SiriusXM's MLB Network radio.

You know, I just think like anything. I think that you should always leave some margin crack in the door for any possibility, right? And if things line up and there's a need and the game, his body, everything is telling us that it makes sense in that situation, great. And it would be storybook. But I think that to kind of count on that, bet on that, I think that's an unfair kind of way to go about it. But, um, show he's on board, which is continuous rehab process. And

I wouldn't put it past him to have an eye on that. And we'll just see how it plays out. Trey Lockerbie You know that meme when a politician does or says something that implies that they might have presidential aspirations and someone will say he or she is running. Well, when I heard this, I thought he's pitching. Roberts hedges and downplay is the possibility, but why open that door? Even just a crack. If you don't want Otani to come through it, or if you don't think that he's going to strongly advocate for this happening, I'm torn, obviously, as a spectator experience as entertainment.

This would be riveting. Is it advisable though? Not just from a health perspective, but from a competitive standpoint, wouldn't he have to get into some games before that point in order to be a better option than someone in your bullpen? Or is Roberts going to fall for the narrative again and just want to pull that lever even though he might have more dependable but more boring options in the pen? I think it's probably not worth the risk. And I mean that both in the sense of give Otani another full off season. Let that elbow heal fully. I know he's been throwing, but why push it when you've made the investment in him that the Dodgers have and when you hope that he will have many more productive

years ahead of him for the sake of the sport. And also, do you really want an October outing? A high stakes, high leverage playoff appearance to be his return? It sounds ill-advised, and yet on some level, I kind of hope it happens. Do it for the story. These are the legendary moments we remember in players' careers. Just hard for me not to believe that the Dodgers being as short-handed as they are, Towerglass now suffering a setback, that if you're even going to entertain the idea, as Roberts did here, that you must be thinking it's not far-fetched at all. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly

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as well as upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be back to talk to you next week. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask,

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