Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2230: The Best-of-Seven (Stat Blasts) Series

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about not sleeping on the less star-studded but still exciting AL Central Division Series, a David Fry prediction, the reliever familiarity effect, an abhorrent TV shot, the Yankees’ ALDS victory, when the Royals will return to October, the Braves firing a few coaches, the future of Tropicana Field, and […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2230 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I got that Game 5 fever. How about you? Oh, you should get that looked at. Yeah, fever.

I got the fever. The only prescription is for the Dodgers to play the Padres and the Tigers to play the Guardians on Saturday, which is nice. It's good that we got some weekend baseball here to look forward to. It's not just the big Friday night tilt, which will have happened by the time people are hearing this, but we've also got the AL Central showdown on Saturday. And I hope that people are not sleeping on that series. I know that most of the star power is concentrated in Phillies Mets and Dodgers Padres

and Yankees Royals even, and there's coastal bias perhaps, but don't sleep on this AL Central Showdown. This Guardians Tigers series has been really quite compelling, I would say. Very compelling, quite compelling. And now we get another Scoobble start. So always compelling when Scoobble starts. Scoobble starts. Scooby snacks, but Scoobble starts. I'm almost unfamiliar with that feeling that we used to have of like, Oh, the ACE is waiting in game five and you better beat them before you get to game five because the ACE is waiting in the wings these days.

You just don't get that that much because the starter doesn't go that deep into games or because starters are hurt or whatever it is, it just doesn't feel like as big a factor where Scoopal right now, given how he's pitched lately with almost Maddox-esque strikeout and walk rates, he feels unbeatable, famous last words. He obviously is beatable, but he's been the closest thing to unbeatable lately. So that is a tall order for the Guardians to get to him, especially with an offense that hasn't been very productive in this series and really for certainly the second half of the season, at least not a strength of that team. They just scratched out enough runs to beat the Tigers in game four, which was another one run game and close until the end and a bit

of back and forth and big hits by some superstars and also by some sort of unsung surprise players of the season, such as David Fry, for instance. Good for David Fry. Laying down bunts, hitting homers, doing it all. I think that this series has the highest ratio of Wait, Who's That? of any of the series. Not for us, not for connoisseurs of the sport, just for your casual, your average mainstream fan. Yeah, I know. And look, this is one of the great parts of the postseason is getting to know the wait-whos-thats, right? Because I don't know that people outside the greater Cleveland area are necessarily tuning

in to every Guardians game. I don't know that people outside the greater Detroit area are tuning in to every Tigers game. They know who Scoobble is, right? They're not. They're not. Rubes. They know who the almost certain Cy Young winner.

Scoobs. I have regrets now. I don't have anyone to blame but myself, but I also have regret, you know? They know who he is. They probably know who Jose Ramirez is, but they might be less familiar with the fries and the Carrie Carpenter's of it all. And so I think that a series like this give you an opportunity to engage with teams that you might not watch every day, or at least people who aren't us don't watch regularly. And I think that's one of the great things about October because there are a lot of really good baseball players, Ben.

I don't know. Hot take. Yeah. And as I think we said, if you forced us to, if you put a bunch of Tigers relievers in a lineup and we had to pick out which one corresponded to which name at the start of the series, you know, I might've struggled with a couple of them at least, but we've gotten to know those guys. I'm a professional. I'm a pro, Ben. Pro. Yeah. But David Frye, we talked about earlier this season because he had his big breakout and that was a fun story early this season.

And then he cooled off and he had one month, I think it was July when he didn't really hit it all and then he hit, okay, he was kind of average for much of the post all-star break period after being scorching to start the season. But he had big hits and not only did he have big hits, but he predicted big hits because yes, you guessed it. David Fry predicted Jose Ramirez's home run, according to David Fry as reported by The Athletic. Not only did Fry Homer and deliver a squeeze bunt,

but he also predicted Jose Ramirez's home run in a dugout conversation with Austin Hedges before Ramirez deposited a pitch into the left field seats, quote, I will take all the credit Fry joked. So yeah, par for the course, as we're saying, pretty much every postseason home run was predicted by a player on one of the rosters. So it's just not even noteworthy anymore, even though it keeps getting noted. Do you think, Ben, that there is a possibility that they know that we are tracking this and they are juicing their numbers, not us specifically necessarily? Because it gets remarked upon in a lot of places. Sometimes on the broadcast they'll note that a guy had predicted a home run or what have you in a prior game. Like,

do they know? Is this like being an anthropologist and you're fundamentally altering the population you're observing just by your observation? Is this, are we back in school? Are we the subjects of an experiment? Are they trying to see how many of these predictions will they note? How wild do the predictions have to get? Are we going to start? I know, I mean, this is going to sound like I'm trying to get one over on Philly fans. I'm really not like Carlos. Are we gonna get more intricate Carlos Estevez ask predictions with layers and qualifiers? There might be a bit of an observer effect, you're right. Because they know that this will 100% get into print.

I don't know that there has ever been a baseball writer who has heard an anecdote about a player predicting a home run and said, eh, not much worthy. Yeah, I'm just gonna sit on that one. No, it's always, if not the lead somewhere in the story, it's kind of the kicker to this David Fry athletic story by Zach Micell. So yeah, you might be encouraging predictions

just because you know you can get publicity. Now David Fry, he didn't have to make up a reason. He was in the spotlight. He sees the spotlight by homering and bunting and coming up clutch. So people would have wanted to hear from David Fry after that game anyway. But yeah, if you're basically a bystander in a game, you could kind of horn in on the post game coverage by saying, yeah, I predicted that. But then there always has to be like, I was talking to us in hedges at the time.

So if you needed to corroborate this, this is who you could go to to confirm that I said this. I wonder if you could have gotten any human being alive other than David Fry and potentially his family to predict we would have said something along the lines of like, well, of course you wanted to talk to David Fry on opening day. Like you would, who would have, who would have, who, who? Ben, no one, no one. Even David Fry. Like David, and I say that mostly as a compliment. Like he seems like, you know, he's got a good head on his shoulders, a humble guy. David Fry, David Fry, Ben, you never know. You can't predict baseball. Someone said that

once. Yeah, he's saying it again. Gosh, it's nice to have John Sterling back. Like I'm not so much a Yankees fan anymore, but I am still a John Sterling fan. And so the deeper the Yankees go, the longer they play, the longer we stave off the permanent retirement of John Sterling. And I do want to fend off that day. So I guess I have a certain rooting interest there. Nicole Soule Would you say, then, then, would you say that you didn't appreciate before what his absence might cost us? It's right there for me. It doesn't even really make sense, but they don't have to. I mean, really, it feels right spiritually. Yes. So it's been an exciting series. And I also think that maybe the reliever familiarity effect

is coming into play here because that David Fry Homer, he was facing Bo Bresky, who will come up later on this episode. Fun name, fun to say, Bobriski. But it was his third time facing Bobriski in this series, just in game four, because he had faced him in game two and game three, and Fry had struck out both times. But perhaps he learned from those experiences and those strikeouts, and he was ready to pounce this third time, there was some discussion of that in my mentions because people were citing an article that I wrote last postseason about, is the reliever familiarity effect going to be the new times through the order effect where teams will be taking this into account? This tendency borne out by multiple studies that seemingly batters do

perform better against opposing relievers the more times they see them in a short series. And that could be coming into play here with these two bullpen centric teams, the Guardians and the Tigers. Pitching chaos is all well and good, but if you're going to the pen early, then you're going to be having the same pitchers facing the same hitters. This isn't even a seven game series. And yet already all of these guys are pretty familiar with each other. I guess it's helped by the off day schedule, the frequent off days. So you can keep pitching the same relievers.

And of course you might like certain matchups. And so you bring in a certain pitcher to face a certain hitter, but perhaps the numbers hide this subtle familiarity effect, which is not just within games, which will also come up again later on this episode, but also across games with relievers and hitters. And you could see the same thing maybe with Cade Smith of the Guardians, who also gave up a run or was charged with one in game four after having pitched in game two and game three. So I think there's something to that. And this is, I guess, exactly the sort of series, this matchup between two teams that

their bullpens are their strengths and also they really rely on them heavily. This is the sort of series that that could be a big factor. So look out for that in game five, though the Tigers probably hope that they just won't need to use many relievers because Tarek Skupa will do his thing. Do you think, and it might not matter all that much because you're not seeing them, it's not like you're seeing your division rivals a bunch of games in a row right before the postseason starts necessarily, right? But do you think that there might be a more pronounced familiarity effect for

relievers that are division rivals because they have seen those guys potentially even more because of the number of games? Do you think that that's a thing? Okay, here's a follow-up question. Which is worse to your mind? So you're Stephen Vogt or you're AJ Hinch and you're trying to sort out like, what do I do? When do I go to my bullpen? Here are the realities of my starter and how deep into the game that that guy can go. How do you as the manager balance the potential downside of the third

time through the order effect versus the familiarity effect of relievers? Because I could be persuaded and I can't remember what your study found. I'll tell you the truth right now. That was an entire year ago. You expect me to remember that from a year ago? Like, no, let's have realistic expectations. My actual question for you, Ben, is, is it worse to have a starter the third time through or a very familiar reliever?

I would guess probably the former. I think probably that's still a stronger effect or certainly a better documented one. But of course, it always is going to come down to the particular pitchers and hitters at hand there, right? And it's just an extra factor to weigh when you are considering the third time through the order effect. And so you're yanking your starters earlier and you're bringing in your relievers. And I think of this sometimes early in the series, we've seen some good relievers come in for low leverage outings and it's just like, well, let's get them some work because maybe

they've had time off since the end of the regular season and also you've got plenty of off days, but then should you be factoring in, yeah, well, if I just kind of give them this low stress inning so that they can get back in the swing of things and be ready for high leverage, but then what if someone who will be facing them in that big moment is seeing them in this garbage time inning, should you take that into account? So it's a lot of variables to consider. I didn't actually do the research really myself.

I was sort of citing others who had done it. There were a couple of different studies that seemed to document this effect. So I was kind of putting the spotlight on that and doing a little reporting around it and talking about, well, how could you game plan this? I would guess that some teams are thinking about this and are factoring it into their pitching plan for the series. One of the people who did the research on that subject, Cameron Grove of pitching bot fame is currently a consultant for the guardians. So, you know, he's aware of this effect, which he himself helped identify. So yeah, it's a really interesting little wrinkle. I don't think it outweighs the need to get your guy out of a game, but it does argue in favor

of varying relievers or even just trying to make sure that if you are using those guys in a given game, then maybe you're using them for a different part of the order because you know, most relievers, they're coming in for an inning at a time and you hope they'll only face three or four hitters and maybe you could work things out in a way that they won't be facing the same three or four hitters, but that relies on things breaking your way. And also sometimes you just really want those matchups, but yeah, there's just this kind of hidden factor that may make those matchups less advantageous for the pitching team than you would think just based on the

surface stats. So yeah, just something to keep in mind for game five. Cause I think this series, this might be an even bigger factor in a longer series that might go six or seven games. But in terms of the makeup of these rosters, I think these are kind of the poster teams for when it could affect you. And perhaps we saw that coming into play in game four, though we'll never really know whether it was that or whether it just happened to be that David Frye saw him better that time and got a good pitch to hit. Yeah. I wonder too, like how much does repertoire depth factor into that? So much to consider, you know? Yes. Yes. I will link to the article on the show page for anyone who wants to familiarize themselves or refresh their memory as to that research. And if David Fry was seeing Bo Breski well, well, we were not necessarily seeing that

home run in that game as well as I would have liked to because of the very odd, very disturbing to me camera angle and frame that was used by TBS. I don't want to be a broken record complaining about broadcasts and commercials every time, but they keep giving me different things to rant about. I mentioned this in the outro to the last episode, but for the benefit of anyone who didn't listen to the end of that one, there's a very strange setup for the camera in this Tiger's Guardians game four on TPS. And I quoted an anonymous source who has worked on local broadcasts a couple episodes ago,

who noted that sometimes they have to frame that center field camera shot in such a way that they can encompass the ads behind home plate. So they might have to zoom out a little more than they'd like to, to get all of those ads in there. And I don't mind that so much if it's still centered. I don't necessarily need to be up in everybody's business, but in this case, it was way off center. I think pretty clearly to my eyes to get the second identical booking.com ad in the shot.

So I know that in Comerica, you don't have the straight behind the catcher center field camera. It's a little off center, just the norm. I went back and watched some regular season broadcasts to compare, but this was extreme. I mean, it was, you know, part of the pitching mound cut off on the left side of the

screen, the pitcher and the hitter and the umpire and the catcher kind of clustered to the left side where like the composition of the image, something was just off about this. It was lopsided. It was off kilter. I felt disoriented. I felt like I'd lost my bearings because there was this vast swath of real estate to the right side of the screen where we weren't seeing anything. No particular baseball action was going on there. It was just perfectly positioned so that we could get the entirety of the second booking.com ad, which in Detroit is not as close to home plate as it has been in some of these other ballparks. So they had to seemingly pull back a bit to get both of those identical ads for the same

company, same billboard design, not seeing any new information, just the same thing twice. And as a consequence, you had everything just sort of off center. And it was upsetting to me and to others. I saw a thread in the Facebook group. I saw tweets about this. I was not the only one who noticed and was disturbed by this. And I messaged you about it during the game and you had noticed it too.

Yeah. Well, and it would be one thing if it, you know, I wouldn't love it, but it would be one thing if like, you know, they're coming back from break and they have like a wide shot for a second so that you get the two, but it just persisted. It was just like that for so long. So yeah, it was wildly distracting, very upsetting, honestly.

I did not care for it at all, even a little bit. So we got to complain, we got to every inch, we can't give them this without a little bit of being aggrieved about this. I saw that Defector wrote about it with the headline, MLB's television product is getting sh**ier in exciting new ways. And they actually cited Effectively Wild. Thanks Defector with our recent reporting about this issue. We got aggregated by Defector in our rants about the broadcast. So yeah, it's just new frontiers of annoying

ad integration, which is not historically something I've really been up in arms about. I've always accepted, okay, there are ads. I don't complain that much about the patches or even the helmet, the Strauss. I don't like these things. I don't want them, but I have resigned myself to them long ago. I'm not some sort of purist traditionalist, not that there was really ever a time when there were no ads. I mean, you know, go back to look at the golden era, so to speak, and all of the outfield walls are festooned with ads, right?

This is how it's always been. I mean, it's a business, you know, we got to make money here. We got to pay for this stuff. Fine. But just don't interrupt my viewing experience. Don't disrupt, don't make me actively aware that you are compromising the quality of the broadcast in some way so that you can squeeze some more ads in. It's just very annoying to me. So hopefully this is not like a slippery slope that we are just hurtling down, but it seems to be all

of a sudden. As for the other AL series, which has now concluded, the Yankees beat the Royals in four games. Garrett Cole came up with a good start. I wouldn't say he was dominant. He had what, four strikeouts, something like that in seven innings. It wasn't vintage Cole, but it was good enough Cole. And there were some close calls and some almost homers and some batted ball luck and everything.

But ultimately he did what you want him to do, which is go seven in a game that you really want to win and give up one run. And that was enough. Yankees got a few timely hits and that was that. So one thing we worry about with the Yankees, maybe even more so than the Royals, was the bullpen. And that didn't really come back to Bite the Yankees in this series. It seems like the Luke Weaver closer experience going okay so far.

He really is quite slight for a closer, for a late inning reliever. I think of them as being these big burly fireball and flame throwers. And he's not that. He looks quite wee for a closer. Yeah. This is a physique that I have described as balletic at times. When I am feeling derisive, I have referred to it as resembling the Dauphin in the sickly French prints. Luke Weaver isn't sickly, but it does border on the shape of a man who would be afraid of the spores, for all my secret garden heads out there. I don't know, we're doing, well, I'm doing bits today, Ben.

I have a backlog. We want to get some of these bits out here. I'm going to reference classic literature and reference center stage on Bluesky the other day. And I didn't get a lot of traction on it and that made me feel old. It did make me feel old. But anyhow, yeah, he's not built like Geraltus Chapman or anything. But I wonder sometimes with like littler guys like that and you know, littler in a baseball standards. He's 6'2", 183. Yeah, like, you know, yeah, if I saw Luke Weaver in person, I'd be like,

that's a tallish man, you know? But by baseball standards, he is not particularly tall. And yeah, he's not a burly guy. But I'm like, maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's better. Like puts less pressure on your joints, maybe less longer that way. Maybe he just doesn't inspire the intimidation. Maybe you underestimate him because he doesn't look like he's going to be the dominant shutdown closer, but then he's fairly effective. But I do worry about their pitching sort of more broadly and sort of how it will progress. I do feel it more likely that San Diego will advance. And if they do that, I feel like they'll be the favorites in the World Series to my mind.

I don't know what the prognosticators will say in terms of like the projections or the budding lines, but doesn't it feel that way? It just feels like there's more to have to deal with San Diego than there is even with New York. Although you still have Aaron Judge and Juan Soto and John Carlos Stanton, who just becomes a different kind of guy in October. It's really incredible. CB Yeah. I did, when I was forced to make some playoff predictions, just a few limited ones. I did predict a Padres-Yankees 1998 rematch and I think I predicted Padres in six over the Yankees. So I could see that happening. This might be proved wrong by the time people hear this, in which case I'm not surprised by

that either. But yes, for the Yankees to win in four games without getting any sort of power output from Judge and Soto really. Soto 746 OPS in the series, Judge 620 OPS, neither of them hit a home run. Right. Just two extra base hits between them doubles only. So if you can get by without getting what you've gotten all year from those guys, well, that bodes well, I guess. I mean, maybe you got a little fortunate, but also you hope that, okay, well, if we can win a playoff series without our strength really

showing up, then if those guys do and it's tough to contain Aaron Judge and one Soto for very long, doesn't mean they're due or anything. This is not gambler's fallacy, but it's just hard to suppress those offensive forces. So if they do show up in the ALCS, then that would help. It would help. The incisive analysis that you're getting from Effectively Wild is that it would help to have Aaron Judge and Wonsoto hitting like they usually do. And given enough time, I assume that they will do that. But yeah, John Carlos Stanton, 1132 OPS in the series. So that'll make up for it.

Him kind of going off the way he did and the pitching being good enough was enough for them to beat the Royals. Will it be enough for them to beat whoever comes out of the AL Central DS? Maybe. Will it be enough for them to beat whoever comes out of the NL bracket? Ben, that's why they play the games. It is. For the Royals, I consoled them on their loss, but I salute them for their success this season. It really was an improbable path that they took here.

One of a few improbable paths that teams took to this post-season, but in a way, maybe the most improbable of all, the Mets certainly was improbable after being well below 500 through May, and then they have the best record in baseball from June on, and then all the big hits that they've gotten since then. So that was quite a turnaround. And then the Tigers, of course, were considered out of it, considered themselves out of it, dealt at the deadline. Double digit games back in mid September, right? Wait, mid August? Yeah, not mid September. Mid September, that? Wait, mid August? Yeah, not mid September. Mid September, that would have been particularly impressive.

I was like, I feel like we would have talked about that a lot on the podcast, had that been true. Mid August, but still extraordinary. But still, yeah. Still unprecedented or almost without precedent. So those are incredible comebacks, but if you had looked at the projections pre-season, I guess it would have maybe been a little less improbable that those teams would be in contention than the Royals. It's not like it

took us completely by surprise because of course the Royals had convinced themselves that they were contenders coming into the year and they had seen themselves that way even when others didn't see them that way and that's to their credit. And they were aggressive and they tried to get better. And even though they were very bad in 2023, they managed to get 30 wins better, partly through a little better luck than they'd had the previous season, and partly through just good signings and also some holdovers coming through. And we want to see more of that, obviously.

We, I think, are pleased that the Royals were rewarded for going for it, particularly after being in a situation where no one really would have faulted them for not seeing themselves as a contender, because I think most people didn't see them that way. And they had that faith and the courage of their convictions. Now they've been wrong in other years too. And certainly they saw themselves as contenders in years where they ended up not being that way. But if other teams learned from that example, which again, I guess is the flip side of this expanded playoff field, maybe there's less incentive to be great and to tack

on to your roster when you know you're good enough to get in, but also there's more incentive to just try to bring yourself up into the realm of respectability because you know, you get 500 ish true talent and then some things break your way. That's all you need to get into this thing and then even win a wild card round. So I hope other teams do learn from that example. They're an interesting and I think philosophically useful organization when it comes to their approach to things.

Cause it's like, yeah, they did add this winter and they added in ways where I would be very curious to know what sort of Kansas City's baseline projections for Lugo and Waka were in particular. Did they have an assessment of those guys and an expectation of those guys in excess of what ours were or are those guys surprising Kansas City as well? Because I think that understanding where they are sitting from an evaluation perspective is useful in terms of how they go into this off season and who they target, et cetera. But they spent money for them, right? And they got those guys and those guys have been good.

And also, they are illustrating how important it is to have high-end talent to really push the team forward, right? You can't just have a whole team full of Lugos and Huacas, even though those guys were very good, right? You also need a guy giving you an MVP caliber season and you need Cole Regans who is very strong and able to head that rotation. So I think that if clubs look at Kansas City and all they take away is, yeah, get lucky on a couple of or have a better evaluation of a couple of mid-rotation starters and you're good to go. No, no, you also need Bobby Wood Jr. Like if they don't have Bobby Wood Jr. and Cole Regans, they're not playing in October. Like there's no way that they're doing that, right? And arguably their play in October illustrated

the fact that they need a couple more impact bats, right? You know, at least one or two. Your assessment of that might vary depending on what you really think Vinny Pasquentino is going to be like next year if he remains healthy, but they need more on offense. And they have standout defense, they have some guys who are really interesting. I think people are starting to come around to like Michael Garcia and what he can do, but they need more impact talent on offense. I think that's clear after this year. Yeah, I was going's clear after this year.

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. So the preseason playoff odds at Van Graaf's Royals 13.2% chance to make the playoffs. Tigers and Mets were long shots, but not quite as long. Their odds were more than twice as high. So 28.1 for the Tigers, 29.9 for the Mets. It was not out of the realm of possibility that those teams could make the playoffs, even though they took weird ways to get there. Yeah.

But I do kind of question how confident I am in the Royals returning next year, because they've gotten good enough to get back in after a long playoff drought. And often when that's the case, you can kind of see things coming together as you can with the Tigers maybe where the second phase of the rebuild, the re rebuild you could say is, is almost a little ahead of schedule and that we didn't think they were going to make it this year and then they did and they still have work to do as we've discussed, but they should be able to supplement the core

that they have. But the Royals, I'm not quite as confident in them returning next year as I have been with some of the other teams that have been eliminated thus far, or really maybe any of the teams that have been eliminated thus far. Not saying they can't do it. And again, as they themselves just demonstrated, you don't have to be that great to get into the playoffs, but there are holes on that roster, holes that were exposed in this series. And yeah, the lack of impact bats, wit goes a long way, but they do need sort of a supporting cast there. And some of the homegrown guys who seemed like they could be that have stagnated a bit or haven't really taken the leap.

So I don't know how much room they have to maneuver and how aggressive they will continue to be if they just build on this and don't say mission accomplished, but bring in the same attitude that they had last winter to this winter and say, how can we get better? Then great. It's certainly conceivable that they could get back there, especially in the AL Central kind of asterisk. So, yeah. Although, you know, depending on how you think about the twins and the Tigers, like I don't know, maybe we have to course correct on that a little bit. I ran my own brain into that conundrum yesterday when we were podcasting. It's like, do I think that

the Central is worse than the West? I mean, yes, but also it's closer than it used to be because I do think that some of those clubs have actually taken a step forward or will be inspired to commit to a step forward in a different way. Although obviously the potential sale of the twin clouds that picture somewhat for them. But yeah, I don't know, man. It's interesting. I definitely think that they have work yet to do and it'll be interesting to see how much money they're really willing to spend. They aren't in a position where you can look to their farm system and say, ah, well, the next impact bath that they need is just right there and ready to go. That's kind of not where just right there and ready to go. Like that's kind of not where they're, where they're sitting because, you know, I think their only top 100 prospect right now is Caglione and he,

he's not ready yet. He needs more time. They need impact bats, but also they would, if they just got a couple guys who hit like more consistently, I don't know, I might be able to talk myself into Kansas City again. I haven't decided. Can I share a final Kansas City thought, not in the Yankees clinching game, but in the game before that? I don't know if you noticed that the camera kept cutting away to Patrick Mahomes in his suite. Okay. I enjoyed the hell out of that. Watching an athlete of his caliber interacting with sport, not his sport, mind you, but sport, with the same level of nervous excitement was so delightful to me. It was just a treat because this guy is like unflappable.

He throws a football from funky arm angles. You can't get away from hearing about the baseball of it all when you're watching Chiefs games, to the point of kind of annoyance for me. But like he is just calm and cool and does his thing and is, you could argue, the best quarterback working these days. And then he's there as a minority owner of the Royals, like he has bought into the team. He's in a jersey and he is just living and dying with every single moment of that game. And it was such, sports are great, I guess is what I'd say. Cause even this guy who is like a consummate professional in his own right, hyper competitive when, when push comes to shove and he is there as a fan, just like us. He owns part of the team. So in that respect, very different from us. But in terms of the way

that he behaves watching that, I really enjoyed that. So that's my home's watching the Royals thought for the day. CBerlain Lyle Yeah. No, I think part of it is that a lot of baseball fans, myself included, have sort of inferiority complex when it comes to football, specifically just because so many people will compare the popularity of baseball to football and will say baseball's dying. And as we've discussed, football is on another level of popularity relative to basically every form of entertainment in the United States. But because we've just been conditioned for so long to talk about baseball being in decline and people comparing football ratings to baseball ratings, which is obviously apples to oranges,

baseballs to footballs, but also footballs blow us out of the water, even if you adjust a norm for that somehow. And so to see maybe the best football player and biggest star in that sport being super into baseball, obviously, is the son of a big leaguer. So, you know, that's why, but still it is kind of cool to see that adulation go in the other way. And you do often see athletes in other sports express their admiration for and awe of and respect for baseball players. And very often extremely athletic players in football or basketball or what have you

will look completely uncoordinated if you hand them a bat and they just take some swings. They look like they're not athletes at all. And it's just very different skill sets, obviously. But it is heartening, I guess, to see that the biggest football star can be as into baseball as any of us. But again, that's just sort of like low self-esteem

of a baseball fan who's been told for decades that no one cares about their sport anymore, which we know is not true. And yet it is a frequent refrain. I just don't think you have to worry about it. I get that the consternation around the general popularity of baseball is like a worthy conversation at some point because you want there to be money in the sport so that the sport is thriving, so that players are paid well, so that young athletes have

an incentive to continue to play the sport, even though it's so funny to think that the money in pro ball really affects that conversation because so few kids ever end up playing professional sports of any kind, baseball or not. But you want the sport to be doing well and to thrive, but I think that football, as you said, has just transcended into this totally different substrate of like, it's not even a substrate, like it is the monoculture that is left. And so to say that baseball needs to compete on those terms just seems, why set yourself up for that? Like Marvel movies wouldn't compete with football. Like what are we doing? Don't worry about it.

All right. A couple non-playoff tidbits. One, this is a coach turnover season. This is when a lot of coaches get let go if they haven't already. And we know that coaches, they tend to be sacrificial lambs and things don't go great and you got to make some sort of already. And we know that coaches, they tend to be sacrificial lambs and things don't go great and you got to make some sort of change. And so the coach pays the price whether or not they're really directly responsible for that underperformance. But one that caught my eye was the Braves firing a few coaches because they tend not to do that. They tend to keep their coaches around and their players for that matter, right? And they fired their assistant hitting coach, they fired their hitting coach, Kevin

Sitzer, and they fired their catching coach, Italian legend Sal Fasano. Now the rest of the coaching staff is supposed to return along with Brian Snicker, but it just caught my eye that Sitzer got cut here because I you know, I don't really have many reputations of hitting coaches in my mind, but I tend to think of him as a highly regarded one. He has often been talked about in positive terms. He was with the Blue Jays briefly before the Braves. He was with the Royals for a few years before that and kind of preached patience and on base ability at the time when the Royals hadn't historically done that. He was with the Diamondbacks briefly before that, but he's been with the Braves

for like a decade, I mean 2015 through 2024. And of course the Braves in 2023 had maybe the best offense ever. I mean, if you don't account for pitcher hitting and all of that, like they had a 125 WRC plus, which is tied with the 1927 Yankees as the best in the modern era. Probably if you go out to a second decimal place, it would be a head because they're on top on the leaderboard. So you have maybe the best offense ever. And then you have one down year where it's largely a down year because tons of guys got hurt and then heads have to roll after that. I don't know. That just seems like kind of a quick come down and whoever knows what's going on behind the scenes and personality conflicts and

coaches not meshing well with particular players, we're, not all that privy to the ins and outs of these things, but just on the surface, it's like, you know, you had one decline year when they were still good enough to make the playoffs even without Ronald Acuna and, you know, Austin Riley for a big stretch of the season and others, Ozzy Albies getting hurt. So are you blaming Kevin Seitzer for, I guess, like Sean Murphy having a down year, Matt Olson having a down year, these veterans? I guess, you know, ultimately you have to hold someone responsible and they went from best offense ever to basically average offense, but I would say some mitigating circumstances there. So it seems tough.

Yeah. And yeah, I always feel odd trying to sort these things from the outside because like, I don't know. You know, like they're, who knows what's going on. There might be, you know, maybe the assessment of their performance last year, despite the really incredible performance was like, was just mid. Who knows? We don't know, right? But it does feel, given what we do know, kind of surprising because it's like, well, everyone was hurt. And the ones who weren't hurt were Jared Kelnick, you know? That's not anyone's fault, but his. So I do feel like it's a little, it feels a bit rough, but I don't know, man.

I don't know. I'm sure there will be a bounce back when they will be somewhere between average and best offense ever. And whoever gets hired as the new hitting coach and assistant hitting coach can take credit for that. And I don't want to take a complete pass on it because we can sometimes note when an offense just like isn't working. And some of that is going to be on the individual players and some of it might be on the instruction

that they're getting. And maybe it is time to just like have a new voice in there. I don't know, man. And you don't want to just let people get fired and have it be unremarked upon, but it does feel like we're just not in a good position to know these things. I don't know. Jared Sussman Also, if we can talk trop briefly. Danielle Pletka Oh, man. Yeah, we can. Jared Sussman We hope that all of our listeners and all of their loved ones are okay, that you have weathered the storms, that you have made it through Helene and Milton as unscathed as possible. If you are in that area, obviously there have been a bunch of deaths.

There have been millions of people displaced, tons of damage that these areas will be recovering from for months or years, right? So ultimately the fate of Tropicana Fields, not particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but it was one of the more striking images. And just seeing that just hammered home, oh, this is not a normal storm. Like it is shredding the roof of this baseball stadium that they'd been playing in for years and years and years. And it stood up to all previous weather that they've gotten there, but not this one. Just completely taking it apart. It was this very kind of apocalyptic site.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in that particular incident because they had planned to use it as a staging area, but then they had thought better of that, right? And all the first responders, people who had planned to set up there were not there. And so it was very sparsely populated and no one was hurt in the destruction of the roof. But obviously the roof was hurt. So I do wonder what they will do now. Because you might look at that roof in tatters and just think, oh, this will be an easy fix, you know, just like, uh, put a new, put some new saran wrap up there or whatever, right? But it is not that, it's not even like the Metro Dome

sort of like air supported lining. It was more of a heavy duty thing. It's this Teflon coated fabric, which fiberglass, you know, usually we say that like Teflon Don, right? We say like, oh, you know, Teflon things just kind of slide right off your back. In this case, I guess we have to update that because the Teflon did not help enough in this case, but it's like six acres of Teflon coated fiberglass and I guess replacing the metrodome roof which again I think is not exactly the same although that had a fiberglass fabric roof too but that cost five months and 23 million dollars and they could maybe replace this in time for next

season. I don't know that they will because of course they're planning to tear down the trap anyway in a couple years, right? And they're building a new ballpark for 2028 and it's the Rays we're talking about here. So I do wonder if they will explore some alternative site or whether they will actually spruce up the place that they know they're going to be moving out of in a couple of years. And I guess the reason that this happened is that it was kind of past its expiration date. So the roof had never been replaced in the more than 34 years since it

was installed. And its estimated service life is about 25 years. so it was well over that. And then this powerful hurricane comes along and says, that's it for you, right? So, it remains to be seen what approach the Rays will take here. They're obviously still deciding how to handle it. I think that, yeah, it's like, how much do we want to stretch the Teflon? It's the analogy, it's like when the coating cracks in your pan and then you gotta get a new pan because you don't want that stuff in your food. It's carcinogenic. It's bad for you, that stuff. I've been actually thinking about the sort of broader issue at play here a lot lately because I don't know if you have heard, Ben, but it has been

lately because I don't know if you have heard Ben, but it has been like the surface of the sun here in the valley for much of the summer. Weirdly, we haven't had as many high highs as we had last summer. I think in some ways last summer was harder to bear because it was hotter on average, but it has been very hot for a long time this year. And so I just wonder, what does the future hold for baseball from a climate perspective? And moments like this bring that kind of murky, unknowable timeline into very stark relief, right? Where you have like the roof of the building literally getting blown off. But it's like, what's the plan? Right? Because the two states where you have, well, in the case of Arizona, a big league team and then half of the league's

complexes. And in the case of Florida, you have two big league teams and half of the states, the league's complexes, both of those states are being put under a tremendous amount of climate change pressure. So like, what's our plan here? And I know there's been some reporting done on that. I know like Hannah Kaiser did a really nice piece on that a couple of years ago, but like kind of abstract necessarily. And it's like, no, but what's the like concrete plan? Because it's only going to get hotter here and we're going to probably keep running out of water.

And then in Florida, it actually might keep getting hotter and then be underwater. So like, what's the plan? And I don't want to sound trite about that or just, you know, like I'm dismissive of the concern from a population perspective. I know that baseball is sort of like not last on the list, but pretty far down in terms of the human toll that climate change is going to take on both of those states. But it's not a sustainable thing. You know, we make fun of the golf courses here, but like we're watering 15 complexes and it's not just the spring training ballparks,

right? It's all of the backfields and you got kids and I say that because they're very young men often who are playing in the ACL, playing in 110 degree weather. What's our plan? It feels not good for the sport and it's like, you know, it's not going to look as dramatic every time as it did in Tampa. But this like, we have like, I know that frogs actually do like jump out of water if you slowly boil them. That's like not a scientifically sound thing, but it is an evocative image, right? And we've been in like the frog boiling stage, slow boil. And now I think it's more a roiling boil in both places. So like, what's the plan?

Yeah, well, no easy answer there because what's the plan for climate change in general? General? Obviously there are some plans and there's plenty of progress being made belatedly, but it's kind of, you know, one of the frustrations of that larger issue is, well, what can I as an individual do to affect this global issue? And you could even say that about Major League Baseball, which is a big business, but is, you know, tiny drop in the bucket, just being buffeted by these forces, figuratively and in this case, literally, that it can't control.

So it's not as if Rob Manfred can invoke the best interest of baseball clause to end global warming. It'd be great if he could do that. There's only so much that he can do. I guess baseball would be situated somewhere in the middle, in the spectrum of sports that are at risk or most immediately affected by climate change, where you have golf, which of course is all open air and their environmental concerns about watering these places, keeping them green, etc. And then you have sports that are played in enclosed arenas at night, right? Baseball, you still do have a lot of open air action

and you have a lot of daytime activities still. And we've seen this concern with heat. We've also seen it with wildfires causing smoke and air pollution, right? And that has endangered games and, you know, not just games, but like lives. Caveat to all of this is like, you know, not just games, but like lives. Yeah. Caveat to all of this is like, you know, we're talking about baseball because this is a baseball podcast and obviously like, you know, it's not a climate change podcast.

We're talking about our little corner of the world that is affected by this as we all are, as everything is, right? So what can you do? You can't really just pull up stakes and move uh, move inland, move North, you know, the population centers are where they are. Ballparks are not particularly portable. So I think you would want to prioritize retractable roofs and, uh, you know, want to be a little less subject to the elements to the extent that you can be.

And then, you know, probably shifting more to night games and yeah, trying to minimize travel to the extent that you can, just so you're not contributing to the problem any more than you have to inevitably because you have to have a season. So it's tough, but it's only gonna be more of an issue for all of us in every way, but yes, specifically for baseball too. Yeah, and like as we've seen,

it's not like the extent of the concern is limited to Arizona and Florida, right? Like we've seen the effect that hurricanes have had on the city of Houston. We just saw the devastation that went through the Carolinas where there are a lot of minor league facilities. It's certainly not an issue that is limited to the states with the complexes, but just in terms of the concentration of potential exposure there, it seems significant. So it's been a really fun sort of percolating thought for me. Little bit life now is like, which crisis do you focus on on any given day? But that one is sort

of top of mind because like it's October, right? The damage that was done to facilities in the state of Florida was hardly limited to the Trump and pitchers and catchers report in February. So, you know, we saw some of this last year where facilities were unavailable at various points last year, the year before, where facilities weren't fully available because of storm damage. So I don't really have like a solution to this, like both on the micro baseball level or the macro climate level. And I don't want to bring everybody down on a Friday.

Friday is supposed to be the fun show, Ben, but you know, the reality of the situation is such that it seems like it demands some sort of comment. And I don't know that the league is, the league doesn't have easy answers on this. There aren't easy answers to be had, but it does seem like businesses plan, they have like business continuity plans, right? You have plans around how do you continue to operate in the event of some sort of crisis and this seems like a big looming one that, you know, I imagine the league is giving some thought to. I don't want to make it sound like they're sitting there with their, you know, I imagine the league is giving some thought to. I don't want to make it sound like they're sitting there with their, you know, their

fingers and their ears going, no, no, no, that's never going to come for us. Like they know. But it does feel like the time is going to come fairly soon where those plans need to become a lot more concrete, you know, and at the very least there need to be procedures in place for relocation, either temporary or permanent for some of this stuff. Because yeah, we got off kind of easy this year, at least in the Pacific Northwest when it came to like, we didn't have fire season in the same way.

This is a thing we do now up there. We didn't do fire season when I was a kid in the Northwest. That wasn't like a fact of the summer. They got off pretty easy as these things go this year, but yeah, we probably should have better answers for like, when do we call off those games? Jared Sussman Yeah, and of course, planning as MLB did not really do for the contingency of Helene and the series that were pretty important to play and all of that. Yeah, you might have to invest more in your forecast or your process for considering those forecasts and coming up with contingency plans.

Well, and like, so imagine if the end of the season had unfolded a little bit differently than it did. Imagine if, you know, just to put it in kind of stark terms, imagine if Tampa's pitching health had been better. They finished six games out of the last wild card. If they had been a better team, we might have been in a situation where we were supposed to be playing playoff baseball down there. And they would have relocated the series, I suppose, but it doesn't take very much

for us to be in a position where the league is having to do some real, I'm going to use a football metaphor, blocking and tackling when it comes to this stuff. So I don't know. I'm at the point where I need other people to feel my generalized anxiety, I guess. So have fun with that over the weekend, everyone. Sorry. So sorry. So very sorry. So sorry. Yeah. The thing with the trap is that you can't just play open air because it rains a lot in Florida and there's no drainage system. So you do need a roof. I read that the roof was rated to be able to sustain 115 mile per hour winds and the gusts only got up to only about 105 miles per hour on Wednesday evening.

But according to this piece, the methodology of measuring wind speed has changed since the stadium was built, which was- Oh, interesting. Yeah, it reminded me of how our measurements of pitch velocity have also changed, right? We measure now out of the hand as opposed to midway between the hand and the plate. So the times the average speeds used to be slower because the pitch had slowed down

by the time the radar gun registered it. That's not the only reason why the average speeds have climbed, pitchers are actually throwing harder, but that contributes to it too. So something similar, I guess, going on with the wind measurements, it turns out, and maybe also the roof had degraded because again, it was old. So yeah, I think I read that part of what contributed to sort of the lack of structural integrity there was the age of the roof relative to, like it might've, if it had been brand

new, it might've been able to kind of hold up even to the devastation that was down there. But it's quite old now, which is, you know, I don't know, been the whole point of them getting a new ballpark, I suppose. And so yeah, you don't want to sort of invest too much in the cost of a ballpark that you're leaving anyway. I'm sure you definitely don't if you're the Rays. And so do you make it work? They're still evaluating whether there are larger structural issues. And then there are some alternatives. D-Rays Bay ran down some of the possibilities. Do you play somewhere like at Langfield or do you play at Port Charlotte or Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex?

You basically play in a spring training park, play in a minor league park, do what the Blue Jays did during the pandemic. It's not ideal, obviously. Or do you look to one of the MLB stadiums that's not occupied anymore? The Rays, they could just play in Oakland instead. But of course, these places, Oakland, Arlington, you know, they're configured for soccer use now, so that makes things more complicated. Or do you try to do a timeshare and split with Miami, with the Marlins,

with the Braves, share with some minor league team as the A's are going to do in Sacramento, right? Like none of these options is good, especially to commit to for what, three seasons, right? So it'll be an off season long story, I suppose, to see where the Rays are going to play and whether they can get this thing ready for opening day. And if they do decide to repair it and invest in it, maybe they

play somewhere else if it's not ready for the start of the season. But yeah, this is not an easy or inexpensive fix, seemingly. Yeah, boy, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. All right. So I wanted to end with some stat blasts here because we haven't stat blasted in quite a while. And gosh, we haven't done emails in quite a while. Once the postseason starts, we're just in playoff reaction mode, nonstop. Yeah. There will be fewer games in series going on

from this point forward. So obviously next time we will talk about the end of the ongoing NLDS and ALDS, and then do some CS discussion, but there will be fewer games to react to, which will leave us a little more time for other things. But, you know, I'll just catch up on a little stat blasting here. Okay, first one is a pretty simple one. I'm sure you were aware that John Bertie played first base for the Yankees and not only did he play first base, but he started at first place for the first time ever in his career.

He had never as a professional started at first base before. I think his only professional first base experience had been limited to, I think he came in as a defensive replacement and played a couple innings in a spring training game a couple of years ago. So yeah. And like, it's not that big a leap. People were sharing the money ball, Scott Hattieberg, it's incredibly hard. Meme, but it's not that hard really if you're John Bertie and you're a veteran utility player who has played every defensive position besides

pitcher and catcher, right? He's played much more demanding infield positions. He had been practicing, he'd been taking grounders, supposedly he looked good out there. So I don't know that they were really taking that greater risk by putting John Bertie at first base in a playoff game. Aside from the fact that you're playing John Bertie, which in itself is not ideal, not what you want as Joe Girardi used to say. So the Yankees had holes in their lineup too.

It wasn't just the Royals. But I was curious about any precedent for this, whether anyone had ever started a postseason game that they had never played professionally, like not even in the minors, not in winter ball, and they get their very first start. We've seen some guys make their major league debut in the postseason, but not playing a position they'd never played professionally previously. So I asked Kenny Jaclyn of Baseball Reference whether B-Ref had any prior examples in their database of birdies,

guys who had started a position for the first time ever in the postseason. And Kenny could come up with only two. One was Miguel Cabrera starting in right field in 2003. Wait a minute. Wait, I don't have any memory of that. Wait, in right field? Yeah, I don't really recall the circumstances.

We can look it up. I'm sure someone remembers that. I'm sure they do. He actually played eight games and 64 and two thirds innings in right in the 2003 NLCS and World Series. Miami Herald, October 14th, 2003. Versatility gives rookie an edge. Miguel Cabrera is mature well beyond his 20 years.

That's why manager Jack McKeon, Cabrera senior by half a century, has not hesitated to use the player he calls the kid at three positions in the NLCS. He's an athlete, McKeon said. When Cabrera went to right field as part of a double switch late in game three, it was the first time he had played there since Little League in Venezuela. The game before, he made his big league debut at shortstop, a position he hasn't played at any level in two years. But McKeon probably figured Little League wasn't that long ago in Cabrera's case,

so he moved the rookie to the new position to start games four and five, and left 11-year Major League veteran Jeff Konine in Cabrera's case. So he moved the rookie to the new position to start games four and five and left 11-year major league veteran Jeff Konine in Cabrera's old spot. Cabrera actually started a hundred games in right field the following season, 2004, and then never played it again. And then also you have to go back to 1925 for Buddy Meyer, who started at third base in, I guess, the 1925 World Series, because that's what the postseason was back then. So Buddy Meyer, 1925, Miguel Cabrera, 2003, and John Bertie, 2024, the only examples on record of someone starting. And this is not just appearing at a position, of course, like, you know, you can get shifted

over, someone gets hurt, you play some emergency substitution position, but actually starting, like that was the plan. Let's ask this guy to play a position that he's never played before in a very important postseason game. Only three times has it happened, apparently. There were two other examples that showed up. Andrew Jones at left field in 1996 and Etro in left field in 2001, but that is probably because for those guys, they just have minor league and NPP stats that are grouped as just outfield, just a wef, not specifying which outfield position. So probably they had played left fields previously. So yeah, it might just be three. That's it apparently. But Bertie looked good. He played a pretty solid first base. That was not the issue with John

Bertie. Again, like- Not the fine. Not the fine. Not the issue. I know Bert's words. Yeah. You don't want John Bertie basically a replacement player, utility type to be starting at a premium offensive position in the postseason. You know, obviously like they're without Anthony Rizzo and you know, they've had ongoing issues. You could put Cabrera there, you could put Ben Rice there. That's not necessarily better based on how they've played. So yeah, no great options and I guess it worked out okay. All right. That was one question I had. We also got a question about Bo Breski actually. And this question was from Braxton who wrote in to say, I was looking

at Bo Breski's baseball reference page when I noticed that he has 12 games started and 12 games finished in 2024. That's presumably in the regular season. This is of course due to the Tigers pitching chaos approach to the second half of the season. None of those 12 starts was a start in the traditional sense. The longest went only three innings, but it did get me wondering, is this a record number of games started and finished with an equal number of each?

Initially, I thought the record holder could be some dead ball era pitcher with a complete game in every start, but complete games aren't counted as games finished. With this in mind, the only real circumstances I could think of that would lead to the situation is a pitcher changing roles midseason or in more recent year situations like the 2024 Tigers where a team uses lots of openers. Given this, briskeys12 seems like a rather high mark. Curious to hear if you have any thoughts on this. Well, I do have a StatHead search

and the results thereof, this is a pretty simple StatHead query. And the record for most games started and games finished in a season, in a regular season, where those two tallies are identical, is 21, which was done by Walt Kinney for the Philadelphia A's in 1919. So it was indeed someone where you have to go way back. And then it was Phil Neekrow, 1967 with Atlanta, and Huck Betts, great name, Huck Betts for Boston in 1935.

Tote Presnell. Amazing. Another fantastic name in 1938 for Brooklyn. A more modern example is Don Robinson, who is, I guess, tied for third on the list with 19 of each for the 1988 Giants. And then Johnny Sane in 1953, just scanning down for the more modern examples,

Brian Williams for the Tigers in 1996 had 17 of each. And then Tom Flash Gordon, who was famously a starter and reliever, who for the Royals in 1989 had 16 of each, but it looks like Bo Briskey had the most since 96. I'm not seeing anyone who had a more recent season like this. Actually I take that back. Ty Black for the 2018 Giants. He had 13 of each.

So, yeah, we have some, some opener examples here and then Bobriski 12 of each. So I'll link to the list, but it's a, an interesting list of names. It's a kind of spans baseball history. It's not really concentrated just in old timey guys or even just in recent times with with openers. So yeah, it's a, I guess Negro, that was a season that was like his first really good season, Phil Negro, 1967, when he hadn't really established himself yet. and he hadn't been a starter to that point mostly in his big league career. And that year with Atlanta he had a 1.87 ERA but he got

into 46 games and started 20 of them and I guess that's when he really transitioned to being a Hall of Fame starter but before that he'd been more of a swingman reliever type. So that was just him on the cusp of being a successful starter. All right. Good question. Thank you for that one. Braxton. Almost as good as the names that came up in that question, which were fantastic. Yeah. Even better than Bo Briskey and Braxton. Okay. I have a position player pitcher update. Okay. So as some other people have noted, we have gotten past peak position player pitcher, which I think we're all pleased about. And there are probably several factors behind that, but MLB has tightened the restrictions

somewhat when it comes to when you can use one. So I think that has helped and maybe there are just fewer blowouts because scoring is down and maybe teams are cycling through real relievers so much now that who even really needs to go to the position player pitching well always, but it has receded somewhat, obviously. Still much more common than it used to be, but there were in the regular season this year, according to Baseball Savant, 1,362 pitches thrown by position player pitchers, which is only the fourth most on record. So 2022 was the peak at 1990 pitches.

Then last season was a close second at 1819. 2019 was 1543. And this year, as I said, 1362. So we're still above 2018, above 2021 even, but we're down considerably from 2023 and 2022. And this is in terms of pitches, but also if you look in terms of outings, I think Rob Maynes has written about that at Baseball Prospectus. It has come down from the high. So I think that's a good thing. I think we all decided that we were inundated with too many position player pitchers. And yeah, we've pulled back a bit. It's, it's hardly gotten back to the point where it was a fun novelty, but it's also pulled back from the point where it just felt like they were ever present.

And we were just being bombarded by position player pitchers. However, I will say that the caliber of the position player pitchers that we're getting these days, one thing I've been tracking is the average pitch speed thrown by position player pitchers, assuming they're all even fast enough to be tracked, but that has just been a steady decline essentially. So, interesting. Yeah. And I think it's probably partly because you don't really have to be an accomplished pitcher

to be a position player pitcher these days. When it was less common, you had to have some skills because you're not expected to pitch or even pretend to pitch legitimately. Right. Yes. Yeah. Cause to, in order, because of the rule changes in order to be in there, it has to be a real, a real blowout. And so you're right. Like the, there's no semblance of pretending anymore. No, not at all. So you can just completely lob it up there.

And of course the more position player outings you're asking for, the lower the bar when it comes to who qualifies for that. But it's really rare now even to see someone. You don't have to have pitching experience in your past. You're just expected to lob it up there often. And so the average pitch speed, this is not fastballs, quote unquote, but just all pitches lumped together. This season was 60.2 miles per hour. And that was a new low surpassing or failing to match last year's new low of 61.5, which was even slower than the previous year's new low of 63.3, which was lower than 2021's new low of 69.0, nice, which was lower than 2020's new low of 73.5.

So basically every season since 2019 at least has set a new low when it comes to the average pitch speed of position player pitchers. Even though we're seeing fewer of them, the ones we are seeing are not even bothering to fake that they have any qualifications for the position. Sometimes that makes it more fun when pitchers have actually tested the limits of how slow can you go and actually get the pitch on the fly to home plate, which there have been studies about that I've cited, but we're close to the theoretical minimum. But also I think maybe it makes it even more egregious when you don't even have

someone coming in like touching 90 or firing hi-80s and there it's just totally lobbing and effacing. So maybe that makes it more annoying to some folks who want to see like actual competitive professionals play. So, you know, a bit of good news, I guess, fewer position player pitchers, but also a bit of bad news in that the ones we get are worse than ever. Yeah. manifestation of that actually, this is something that I think Jeff Sullivan wrote about and maybe even stat blasted about, play indexed about back in the day, was that for a while there, position player pitchers had like roughly league average babips or better, which was this kind of fun curiosity because it really emphasized just how random results on balls and play are because we know that the league average in recent decades until very recent

times has been 300-ish. And so if you ever wanted to prove to someone that, yeah, pitchers just don't have that much control for the most part over balls and play, You could show them as Forrest McCracken did in his initial study, like Pedro, peak Pedro fluctuating from high Babbitt to low Babbitt despite being dominant both seasons. Or you could show them position player pitchers continuing to have like basically the same Babbitt as everyone else, even though they clearly were not actually major league pitchers. It's just, you could kind of throw it up there and once that ball is put in play, then it's

basically the same for your ace and the same for your position player pitcher. That has changed a little bit in recent years as the position player pitchers have gotten less and less like real pitchers, you know, because I didn't do this math, but obviously if you did like the velocity gap between your average pitcher and the position player pitcher, it used to be a lot smaller because, you know, position player pitchers used to throw fairly hard. Like in 2009, according to Baseball Savant, now there were only 228 pitches by position player pitchers that year, but they averaged 84 miles per hour. And that's all pitch types.

And as recently as like 2016, it was 80.1, right? So we've lost like 20 miles per hour just in several seasons here with position player pitchers as the league average VELO has climbed. So the gap has gotten greater and it seems like that has actually taken a toll on position player pitchers batted ball results. So if you look like, let's say 2008 to 2017, that was kind of like before position player pitching totally took off. Yeah. Kind of, you know, spiked all of a sudden roughly around 2018-ish. So through 2017, position player pitchers, a total of 2,829 pitches thrown by them.

They had a 272 BABIP in all of those seasons combined compared to the MLB average in those same seasons of 298. So position player pitchers actually allowed a far lower batting average on balls and play in those years than actual major league pitchers did. Now of course, position player pitchers were way worse. They allowed a 398 Woba overall compared to a 319 Woba by the real pitchers, but that wasn't so much because of results on balls and play.

It was because of them not striking out anyone and walking people and giving up lots of homers, right? But when the ball was actually put into play, position player pitchers were better than average pitchers, right? But when, when the ball was actually put into play, position player pitchers were better than average pitchers, which, you know, is surprising, but was a fun fact. However, more recently, that has not been the case. So since 2018, real pitchers have allowed a 294 bbp, and position player pitchers in almost 10,000 pitches have allowed a 321 bbp. So position player pitchers have gone from being 20 plus points better than the league average to being 20 plus points worse than the league average.

They've also just gotten completely creamed overall. Real pitchers over those seasons have allowed a 315 Woba, position player pitchers 453, which is identical to the career Woba of Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg. And so this fun fact no longer really applies if you do all years in the Baseball Savant database, the pitch tracking era of 2008 through 2024. Well, the real pitchers 297, BABIP allowed over that span, position player pitchers 312. So they've been bad enough on balls and play of late that they have now been bad collectively over that entire span. But for most of those years, it just, you had a position player pitcher on the mound, a batter couldn't expect better

results on pulse and play. And you know, of course, part of that was that in those blowout situations where position player pitcher would be pitching, you might have taken your regulars out of the lineup. So you'd have worse hitters up there. And also maybe they weren't trying as hard because they felt bad about picking on the position player pitchers or the game was way out of hand anyway, and just, you know, they couldn't get the same adrenaline going, whatever it was. But for whatever reason, they used to be better, and now they're worse.

So it's kind of a mixed bag. Would you rather that the number of position player pitchers continues to decrease, but the ones we have get progressively worse? Or would you rather have more of them, but they come closer to resembling real pitchers? I think fewer of them, but they progressively get worse because it seems to me that it indicates that where we have the rule calibrated is moving in the right direction, right? Because I want position players pitching to be sort of an option of last resort, either because you're winning by so much or because you're losing by so much.

I want the so much to be doing a lot of the work in terms of when we bring those guys in. And so if they're really, really bad, it suggests to me that they are being deployed when the situation for your team is really, really bad. And so that we are not kind of flipping the switch on their use at a point when the game might be competitive or like close enough to competitive that it would merit bringing in, even if it's the lowest leverage guy you have in your bullpen, an actual professional pitcher. Like a real hurler, Ben.

And so I'd rather them be just catastrophic when they come in because I think if that's true, then it's a signal that we are only using them very sparingly and only when the margin is so wide that it's insurmountable and you are justified in saying we're going to live to fight another day and use our worst guy. So I think because of what it sort of portends for the situation, I'm happy with this, even though, but look, we got to have our fun, didn't we? We got to have our fun where they were good and exciting and you're like, oh my God, that guy's throwing 92. Look at

you. Look at what you're doing. Right? We've had that fun. That fun is over now. We need to move on from that fun and try to make sure that we're calibrating the rules such that it is only being used in the most dire of circumstances. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Here's a playoff themed question.

Hopefully we'll have a position player picture list postseason, but here's a postseason question from E. May, Patreon supporter who says, I'm sure this has been stat blasted, but I can't find it. By the way, some people sometimes will say stat casted. That's not what we do here. Sometimes we use stat cast in stat blasts, but important distinction. Right. But it's a broader, it's a bigger, it's a bigger project. It is. Yes. A broader umbrella. So broader umbrella. We have a big stat tent in San Juan. Our stat coalition is wide. It's only going to get worse the closer we get to election day.

I just want everyone to strap in, this is where I'm at. Just get on board, I guess. I don't know, man. Here we are. Well, E-May wants to know about the list of best and worst playoff hitters compared to their regular season performance. I know playoffs is mostly small sample, but Aaron Judge's not stellar to date performance in the playoffs had me curious.

I don't think this has been stat blasted. I do recall doing one with pitchers comparing regular season ERAs to postseason ERAs prompted by who else, Clayton Kershaw. But I don't think I've run this one. And so I just did with the help of the handy-dandy fan graphs, postseason leaderboards. Oh, can I take a moment to say more about that? Hey, everyone, remember how we have postseason leaderboards? They're fantastic. And they go all the way back. They go all the way back. So when you're like, oh, where am I going to find my stats? They're right there for you, isn't that nice? Yeah, I availed myself of them for this stat blast.

And I looked up everyone who's ever had 50 plate appearances in the post-season and compared their post-season WRC plus to their career regular season WRC plus. And it was, I think, uh, something like 800 plus hitters who had this many postseason plate appearances. Of course you're more likely to get that many reps these days, but plenty of old timers on this list too. 50 play appearances is not that high a bar and it adjusts for the offensive environment.

And, and of course, you know, some players, they will be in the postseason past their peak or during their peak. And so if I'm comparing to their career regular season numbers, maybe their postseason stats weren't evenly distributed across their entire career and things could be a little misleading there. But I just looked for difference between

postseason WRC Plus and regular season WRC plus. And I will put the full list online for those who want to check it out. As we speak, and this will have changed by the time people hear us speaking, but the biggest gainer in terms of better in the postseason than the regular season is Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres, who just clears the minimum at 53 postseason plate appearances and currently has a 280 WRC plus in the postseason relative to his fine 138 WRC plus in the regular season.

That's a difference of 142 points of WRC plus that he has been better in the playoffs. So that number will have changed when he plays in game five, but not news to anyone that Fernando Tatis has been fantastic in the playoffs thus far in his what 12 games, I guess. If we go down the list, we've got Billy Hatcher, 122 points. AJ Ellis, 105 points. Lou Brock, 104 points. Chris Young, Chris B. Young, presumably, the position playing Chris Young, 100 points.

Adolise Garcia, Playoff hero of last year, 93 points. Cody Ross, 86 points. Troy Gloss, 78 points, tied with Gary Matthews, not Junior, I guess, original brand, Gary Matthews, 78 points. The original flavor? Yeah. Wait, can I interrupt your train of thought? This is so rude of me. I want to know if our

edit on this was right. So I was working with Michael Rosen on his Scooble piece and he wanted to reference like a substance that would make you incredibly hyper and souped up. And I was like, well, what about for loco? And he's like, right, but how do we indicate to people that it's like the for loco they had to ban because it was, it was, and so I said original flavor for loco. Does that communicate to you, an elder millennial, what we were talking about? I thought about suggesting the Panera lemonade, but that did kill someone. So I was like, no, we shouldn't do that. That might be in poor taste. Okay, continue. Sorry.

You got the message across, I think. Yeah. Pepper Martin is 10th. Pepper Martin? Yes, the great Pepper Martin. These names. I love these names. Yep. And he had a 76 point gain. So that's the top 10 getting better minimum 50 play appearances. The bottom 10, same minimum.

We've got Marv Owen, who decreased by 130 points of WRC+. I guess I could have done percentage WRC Plus increase or decrease, but I did draw points. You can do the other math if you care to. Bill North, negative 129 points. Favorite of yours, Dan Wilson, handsome Dan, 119 point decline in the postseason. And that's from a regular season baseline of 80. So that's not great, right? He was not known as a great hitter in the regular season to start with.

Rogers Hornsby down 113 points. Johnny Hop 113 points. Brandon Lau 110. Chick Hafe 108. Gorman Thomas 105, tied with Travis Jackson at 105, Johan Rojas of the Phillies, 103, and then Eric Davis, 100. Now, 50 plate appearances,

that's a pretty small minimum as these things go, right? So why don't we double it? Let's up that to 100 plate appearances, and we're limiting our sample now to fewer postseason hitters, I think fewer than 400, but this is more meaningful, at least samples involved here. In this case, the biggest postseason improver is none other than Randy Arroz Arena. Really? Yeah, 124.

I say really like I'm surprised, but I'm gratified mostly. I'm mostly I'm saying really because I'm gratified. That's fantastic. 124 to 199. That's a 75 point gain followed by Lenny Dykstra, 73, Billy Martin, 70, Paul Molitor, 60, Carlos Beltran, postseason legend, 51 points, Dave Henderson, 50, Daniel Murphy, 49, Pablo Sandoval, 46, Alcides Escobar, 44, George Brett, 43,

and Kike Hernandez actually at 41. And then at the bottom, we've got Brandon Lau, poor Brandon Lau with that 110 point decline. That is easily the biggest decrease. Kent Herbeck of the twins, 98 point decrease. Jason Hayward, 92. But then again, he also had the World Series rain delay pump up speech. So that's not accounted for here. And I think that boosts his clutchness. Dave Bancroft 87, Prince Fielder 80 point decline, Cecil Cooper, 79, Sean Figgins, 75, Eric Chavez, 74, Mark Maguire, 70, Bill Buckner, 70.

And Alex Avila at 70 as well. Now we have not heard from Aaron Judge who prompted this question yet, but with this minimum of a hundred plate appearances, he has the 16th biggest decrease. So it's the guys I mentioned and then Mark McLemore, Everett Scott, Nick Marcakes, Josh Hamilton, and Aaron Judge, who has a career 173 WRC plus in the regular season, pretty ridiculous, and 108 in the postseason for a decline of 66

points. Now, if we were to raise the minimum even higher, if we took this one to 200 plate appearances in the postseason and now we're pretty rarefied territory here, there's only 106 hitters who have even had 200 postseason plate appearances. But at the top end of the scale, Carlos Beltran matches the reputation, right? So 51 points better.

And then at the very bottom, I got to say Aaron Judge, who is at 66 points, surpassing Josh Reddick, who I actually wrote an entire article about once because of his unclutchness, which feels mean, but he was like his fan crafts clutch score was extremely low. And I guess also he sort of stunk it up in the postseason. But yeah, Aaron Judge currently is among this a hundred plus player group of postseason performers compared to regular season performers. He has had the steepest drop off and yet has still been an above average hitter in the postseason because he's that good in the regular season. Well yeah, it's relative to yourself, right? That's the thing about clutch that I think people,

one of the things I think people forget when they look at that stat is that it is, it is a self referential little guy, you know? Yes, yeah. Well, I don't make sports bets and I don't make a lot of predictions, but I am going to guess that Aaron Judge's drop off from regular season WRC plus to postseason WRC Plus

will be smaller than it currently is by the time this postseason ends. I'm going to say that he does better than a 108 WRC Plus, which is what he has career in the postseason right now. Wow. You say that, but you have forgotten that you are a very powerful witch as well, and you may have done irreparable damage to his postseason performance. We will see. Yeah, perhaps. By the way, after Call of Spelltron, it's Kike Hernandez, it's Steve Garvey, and then David Friis, who feels like he should show up on a list like this. Sure. Yeah. And then Nelson Cruz and Bryce Harper, who is also

well known for his postseason performance. I was somewhat surprised not to see Jordaan be higher. I am too, now that you say that. Yeah, Jordaan's postseason WRC plus of 156 is actually lower than his career 166 in the regular season. And I guess remember he had that really bad first postseason or at least like a bad couple series or something. Cause I remember writing a piece back that about like, oh, they seem to have figured out your none-offress. And then, you know, he's not stopped hitting in the postseason since, but yeah,

overall he hasn't actually been better than he usually is, which is very good. So he's been good, just, you know, he's always good. Yeah, he hasn't been like on fire, but also he kind of has been on fire. They've been, they've been so momentous. Some of those home runs, you know, like for me personally. Yeah. Yeah. At the bottom of the list, it's judge Reddick Reggie Sanders, Joe DiMaggio, another Yankees legend. And then Jim Tome and Robinson Canoe. Wow. When are these Yankees gonna be able to stand up

to the pressure of playing in New York, Ben? Can't hack it in the Bronx, Joe DiMaggio and Aaron Judge, clearly just not built for New York, okay? All right, I have a couple more, I'm almost done here. I had a whole bunch of stat blasts saved up. We had a stat blast backlog. So here's one that was prompted by the passing of Louis Tiant earlier this week. Sad events that day, Tiant, baseball legend, you know, one of the better players, pitchers, not in

the Hall of Fame, but also just a very famous larger than life guy, right? Just, you know, a character, beloved, cigars and stogies and the windup and Roger Angel naming all of his different deliveries and just so much lore surrounding Louis Tiant that, you know, it was sad to see him go. He even, he had a division three college coaching career, which I was not aware of. He had this interesting post-baseball life.

I didn't know that either. Yeah, he played in the short-lived Senior League and then he managed, I think, for three or four seasons for the Savannah College of Art and Design, a Division III program from 98 to 2001, where his teams went 55 and 97. It's a 366 winning percentage. And he went and managed and he said like, well, I've done everything else in baseball, I might as well do this. And he appreciated that they prioritized academics and not sports

at Savannah College of Art and Design, which, you know, coming from an accomplished player like that. Yeah. So, you know, that was a nice sentiment. So he had many baseball lives and we will be sad that that life is over. And so I was thinking about him in comparison to Pete Rose because they were contemporaries. They died at the same age, 83. They're both often mentioned as two of the best players not in the Hall of Fame for very different reasons. And the contrast in tone when it came to the way that their deaths were greeted could not have been more stark, right? Because everyone was celebrating Louis Tiant and people were not so much celebrating Pete Rose.

Or if they were celebrating what a good baseball player he was, it was about how he had tarnished his reputation through all of his post-career actions as we discussed. I was struck by that too when Dikembe Mutombo died on the same day that Pete Rose did. And again, you had obits produced for two legends of their respective sports. All the obits for Mutombo said either explicitly or in so many words, better person than a player, even though he was a great player, because he was a vaunted humanitarian and just was really dedicated to leaving the world better than he found it. If anything, enhanced his legend as a player through all of his off court actions, whereas

the opposite was true of Pete Rose. Seeing that, I think I'd rather be remembered as a Matumbo or a T true of Pete Rose. And seeing that, you know, I think I'd rather be remembered as a matumbo or a tiant than a Rose. You know, when you're gone, I am not a believer in the afterlife, though I'd love to be wrong about that. But you know, you don't know how you're greeted after your death. I mean, you probably have some sense, some inkling of how that's going to go. And every now and then there will be like false alarms about some celebrity dying and then they essentially get to attend their own wake and see what everyone would say about them. Right. But I think it's good if you could leave things such that people remember you fondly and don't

just say great player, but they say great player and what a great person and what wonderful things he did. But thinking about those two in tandem made me look to see how they had done head to head. How did Louis Tiant do facing Pete Rose? And I was taken aback because they never faced each other in the regular season. And now that I've thought about it more, that's not so surprising, but it was surprising to me because they both had extremely long careers

that entirely overlapped. So Tiant pitched from 64 through 82 and Rose both the predated and post-dated Tiant. So Rose's career encompassed all of Tiant's career and they never faced each other in the regular season. And of course that makes sense because there was no inter league play back then. And Tiant was almost exclusively an American league player,

and Rose was exclusively a national league player. So yeah, how would they have faced each other? Now, of course they did face each other in the 1975 World Series famously, and they also faced each other in the 1975 World Series, famously, and they also faced each other in the 1976 All-Star Game. So they did go head to head outside of the regular season. But that made me curious about who are the most prolific players, like the longest overlapping

careers who never faced each other in the regular season. So like, you might think, oh yeah, those two guys, they played forever. They played at the same time. They must have had history against each other. If you're not thinking about what league they were in or what teams they played for. And then you'd be surprised to see, oh, wow, they were kind of like moving in the same circles, but entirely separate circles in a way that we're not used to today where everyone plays everyone, which I like. But it used to be that there really was a mystique surrounding the leagues and the rivalry leagues, and it meant something, and that's why the stakes were so high in the All-Star game. And you really would not see certain stars unless it was the All-Star game or the World Series. And so there was a lot of juice to those things because you could be a baseball fan and just never see some stars in the opposite league. So I asked frequent stat-blast correspondent, Ryan Nelson, to run the numbers on this one. And he did. He did not factor in postseason.

He could in theory, but I will leave that to all of you if you want to drill down into this, because it was a separate data set that to be combined, an additional hurdle. He looked at the most combined plate appearances and batters faced produced in seasons when these two players overlapped. So basically if they were both in the big leagues in a certain season, then Ryan added up all of their plate appearances

and batters faced for that season and then totaled that over the course of careers and came up with this cumulative number of most batters faced and plate appearances taken in the regular season in major league seasons when both of those players overlapped but did not actually cross paths. The record holder is Reggie Jackson and Steve Carlton. So, yeah, Reggie Jackson and Steve Carlton.

So yeah, Reggie Jackson and Steve Carlton never faced each other 1967 to 1987, right? 20 years, two decades, two of the defining stars of the game, they never faced each other. And I don't think they even faced each other in the playoffs. So maybe they faced each other in an all-star game. I didn't check, but that's a combined total

of 32,718 plate appearances and batters faced for that duo and never did they go head to head in a meaningful play appearance. Yeah, it's pretty wild, I would say. Just like two players you associate closely with that era, defining figures and they just never faced each other. Next on the list is Phil Negros and Greg Nettles. I will share this.

That was also 67 to 87 and more than 32,000 plate appearances. Early win versus Stan Musial, 41 to 63, also 32,000 plus played appearances, Carl Yastremski versus Phil Negros, Steve Carlton versus Rod Carew, Yastremski versus Carlton, Pete Rose versus Jim Palmer. Warren Spahn versus Yogi Berra, Warren Spahn versus Mini Mignosso,

Roger Clemens versus Craig Begio, Tom Seaver versus Greg Nettles. Red Ruffing versus Mel Ott. Phil Negros versus Bert Campanaris. Babe Ruth never faced Burley Grimes. Who would have ever guessed that Babe Ruth never faced Burley Grimes? Burley Grimes, the names, Ben, the names.

Carlton and Campanaris, Eddie Yost and Spahn, Paul Wehner and Red Ruffing, some names showing up multiple times here. Louis Tiant and Pete Rose shows up after that. So their total of 27,797 regular season plate appearances from 64 to 82, close to the top of the leaderboard, but not at the top. Melott and Ted Lyons, Spahn and Al Smith, Andres Galaraga versus Roger Clemens, Brooks Robinson versus Bob Gibson, Yastremski versus Tom Siever, Rabbit Moranville versus Sad Sam Jones, Lou Pinella versus Phil Negros, and Don Sutton versus Campaneras.

Now Ryan also looked for players whose whole overlap was in the interleague era when it would have been easier for them to face each other. Now I will note that some teammates appear on this list and so that's why if you had long time teammates who were on the same team then of course they couldn't face each other. So that comes into things here too. But top of the list is David Ortiz versus Bronson Arroyo, who were teammates for a little while at least with the Red Sox.

But 2000 to 2016, they had 19,705 combined plate appearances and batters faced, never faced each other, narrowly edging out Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina, which they set a record as a battery, right, starts, a pitcher and catcher. But of course they did not face each other as pitcher and batter as a consequence of that. Also, Yaddi and Felix. Yaddi and Felix Hernandez never faced each other. 18,787 played appearances.

Jose Reyes and Mark Burley, Ryan Zimmerman and Felix, Cole Hamels and Shinsu Chu, Jason Giambi and Ryan Dempster, Jimmy Rollins and Freddie Garcia, Derek Jeter and Aaron Harang. We were cheated. We were robbed of the Derek Jeter, Aaron Harang showdown. Dustin Padroia and John Wester, another couple of longtime teammates there. Same Chase Utley and Cole Hamels, Etro and Jamie Moyer. Carlos Zambrano never faced Etro, that would have been a fun one, Tim Wakefield and Jason Veritek, of course, long time battery teammates, Randy

Wolf and Vernon Wells, Alfonso Soriano and Josh Beckett and Ryan Howard and Mark Burley. I'll link to those and put them on the show page. But it's a fun one. It almost doesn't compute for me now that everyone plays everyone, that you could go decades and be incredibly prolific and just never face each other. It seems strange. And I think worse, I think it's good that stars face each other now reliably, even if it's not as special or rare when they do. I want to see them. I want to see Reggie versus Steve Carlton. Give me that. Yeah, give me that. And give me more of these names, Ben. Yes, please.

Give me these names. I'm just in awe. I'm in awe of the names. Yep. Okay. Lastly, this is a callback here to a few months ago. Do you remember we talked about the Traject Arc pitching machines? Yeah. So there was a piece that Alden Gonzalez wrote for ESPN about how teams were allowed to train in game, even against these advanced pitching machines that have sort of swept the league that purport to almost perfectly replicate pitchers stuff. And so pitchers were upset because they think it's an unfair advantage for hitters to be able to see their stuff as they're getting ready to face them in a given game.

So we talked about that episode 2184 back in June. And I think that's when I said, I made a mental note. I actually said that I licked this topic so that no one else could claim it. That's your cupcake. Yeah, there was any perceptible change league-wide because of the increased use of these Traject pitching machines, because the thing about them is you can only use them at home. They're big, heavy machines. They don't travel on the road. And so hitting teams use them during home stands only.

They don't use them on the road. And so I thought, well, maybe if we compare home versus away, we could actually see a difference because of this, that maybe the times through the order penalty for hitting teams at home would be less because hitters are preparing to face that pitcher before they actually physically face him. And so they'd be like ready the first time they step in against him. And so maybe they wouldn't improve as much over the course of the game. And so you'd see a less pronounced times through the order effect for hitting teams at home where they have it would be a smoking gun and I'd say, aha. You can see there's actually a meaningful effect happening here and ran the numbers,

got some help from Kenny Jacqueline of baseball reference and inconclusive. So I was all excited about this and really I can't tell because these splits like league wide home in a way times through the order effect, it fluctuates enough from one season to the next that we just kind of can't tell yet on a, like a one season basis, whether there's a, a trajectory effect here. Project effect. That's hard to say.

Yeah. So I don't know whether there is an actual benefit there, but I ran these numbers, I made some pretty graphs, I have the time through the order effect back all the way through 1920, all the way back through the live ball era. And there were a couple things that I discovered that I had not known that I thought were kind of interesting.

So for one thing, there is a more pronounced time through the order effect for away batters than there is for home batters. And this is pretty consistent over the course of baseball history that the difference, I looked at the difference in OPS from the first play appearance against the starter to the third. And I looked at that in terms of a percentage increase and consistently away batters have a bigger increase from the first PA to the third PA. And you might wonder why that is. I believe it's because of something else

we talked about recently, which is, remember that the home field advantage is particularly pronounced in the first inning. And it seems to be because the home starter knows exactly when they're going to go out to the mound and when their first pitch will be, and they can perfectly time their warmups and their routine, whereas the away pitcher cannot and is subject to how well the team does at the plate and the top of the first. And you can't perfectly time your warmup that way.

And so it seems like that has an effect. And therefore the visiting batters who are facing that extra effective home pitcher in the first inning consequently do worse in their first plate appearance and thus have more room to improve in their subsequent plate appearances than the home batters who are not having their first plate appearance numbers suppressed by an extra effective starter who has timed his prep perfectly. I ran this explanation by Rob Mayans who wrote about that first inning effect and he concurred. Rob also noted that the home team is usually ahead by the middle innings and so it may stick with its starter longer which then invites

more trouble. So I think that's probably a big part of it and that explains the difference there. And if you look at like, you know, this year, for instance, away batters improved by 11.9% from the first PA to the third PA, whereas home batters improved by only about 7%. And historically speaking, home batters typically improved by 5.4%, whereas away batters, 8.1%. I also was curious to see whether the times through the order effect has changed over the course of history. And sometimes you hear broadcasters, John Smoltz say something about the fact that like modern pitchers are, are subject to this because they're not asked to go deep into games. And so they, they've lost the capacity to do it. Right. And, you know, it's kind

of a back in my day, we knew how to work through the lineup multiple times. And, and Rob has written about this too, and has even looked at Smoltz's splits specifically and said, no, this always was a thing. And it always was going back to 1920 here, there was always a times through the order effect. However, it does look to me like it has increased, not linearly, but it's much higher than it was like back in the 20s and 30s.

I'll just give you by decade. So this is not home and away. This is a combined all hitters percentage OPS increase from the first play appearance to the third play appearance. In the 1920s, it was only a 3.3 percentage increase. In the 30s, 4.8. In the 40s, 4.5.

In the 50s, 6.5. In the 60s, 8.2. So now we're more than double what it was in the 20s. In the 70s, 4.5 in the 50s, 6.5 in the 60s, 8.2. So now we're more than double what it was in the 20s. In the 70s, 6.1, so it kind of goes down again. In the 80s, 6.8, and then it's climbing again. 1997, 7.5% increase, 2000s, 8.5, 2010s, 9.3, which is the highest of any of these decades. And in the 2020s so far, 8.8.

So it is higher, it's a more pronounced difference than it ever has been. So it's always existed, but I think it is more pronounced than it used to be. So make of that what you will. Is that because they all, everybody has a peanut butter allergy now, a peanut allergy? Is it because of the peanut spend? Is it because I'm just trying to weave together the things that

people say happen less often than the peanuts? Yeah, I don't know. Rob was speculating like relative to earlier eras. I mean, there's more reliance on relievers and integration and just the caliber of play has improved. You pay players enough so they spend the off season working out instead of being substitute teachers and maybe they're just better at adjusting over the course of a game relative to the pitchers and you know, maybe pitchers just were pacing themselves, right? And so they, they weren't like running out of gas so much. They never had gas to begin with.

And so it's just a less pronounced difference. But yeah, it does seem like there's been an uptick recently and Rob's method is a little more involved. He makes a couple of adjustments. He looks only at games in which the starting pitcher faces at least 19 batters. That is they last through the third time. Whereas baseball reference first and second time through the order splits includes pitchers who just got knocked out of games early and never made it to the third time through. So because of that, Rob says the baseball reference split actually underestimates the size of the times through the order penalty.

Rob also breaks it down by batting order position, because if you get pulled after facing 22 batters, you had a harder time on your third trip through the order than someone who gets pulled after 19 and doesn't face that heart of the order the third time. Rob's data goes back to 1969, but he says when you make those corrections, the penalty is about 10% larger than the baseball reference version. But I think my numbers show that the magnitude of the penalty has increased. And I guess that could be because, yes, now we have max effort pitching and maybe you're more likely to run out of gas or maybe you have hitters with Traject in their training against you who knows or you know you're just not expected to go deeper into games

And so you don't pace yourself And you don't save some pitch types for your third time through or just the hitters have gotten better and they're they have their iPads Right so electric vehicles and their soy milk and I don't know what are the other things that they have now? Yeah. So this year was just not notable in terms of the difference between home and away hitters when it comes to the magnitude of the times through the order effect away hitters had a bigger one, but they usually have a bigger one. And this one was, was not particularly large. So no evidence there of a trajectory effect, but that is not conclusive. I did reach out to Joshua Pope, who is the founder of trajectory.

I talked to him for a feature a few years ago for the ringer and ran this by him. First of all, he says that the number of clients that they have, according to that ESPN piece, it was 18. He says this past year was 19 clients and they may get up to 24 or 25 next season. So almost every team is using this at this point. He says of the 19 that used it this year, each team has at least one machine and they were located at MLB stadiums at the beginning of the season. In some cases starting in spring training, Some of those clients have four, five or six machines in their ballpark, in spring training, at their minor league affiliates. So they're the early

adopters, the power users of TraDect. He says there may be a portable version of the system, but that's probably still a few years out. And they do keep metrics themselves. And he sent me some anonymized data, which shows a correlation on the team level and the player level between the number of pitches you have seen as a hitter off of a Traject machine and your performance in game, as measured by, you know, strikeouts and batting average and OPS and everything else. So that maybe indicates that there's something there. Of course, it's correlation, not causation. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the more you hit off trajectory, the better you'll hit in games. It might mean that the more you hit off trajectory, like the more you like

hitting because you're good at hitting and you're just more likely to practice and go in the cage and take swings. And so you're already a good hitter and it's sort of skewing the numbers a bit, which he acknowledged is a potential confounding factor here. A traject effect elect. Yeah, exactly. You elect to use the traject. Yeah. An elect traject effect.

Exactly. Yes, you nailed it. There it is. I had to workshop Exactly. Yes, you nailed it. There it is. I had to workshop it, but I dialed it. Front office person from a holdout, one of the team that's not using Traject. And they're not like doubters. They don't think it's snake oil or anything, but they just think maybe it's useful on an individual basis. It's a select Traject effect, but not team wide or it's tough to tell. It probably doesn't hurt, but also they thought maybe some teams are just doing it because it's like the way to signal that you're a cutting edge

progressive advanced team, like let's go get a trajectory and no one knows exactly how well it's working, but it's like expensive, but not so expensive that it's prohibitive just cause like probably can't hurt and maybe it helps. So we might as well try it and we don't want to be left behind everyone else who's doing it. I think it's plausible that it works, that there's a trajectory effect, not just for the elect. It makes sense. If I thought it just made no sense at all, I wouldn't probably even bother to look into the numbers, but it does seem plausible to me that it would help. It's just a little tough to document that. And as the front office person said to me, it can't replicate the subtleties that tip what pitch is

on the way throughout the motion, and maybe there's still no perfect substitute for reps against pitchers with whole human bodies. So you're not claiming a trajectory effect defect? I am not. I can neither confirm nor reject the trajectory effect. I don't know that I have a million more, but if we keep recording I might find them. Let's stop there! Alright, just been here with a last, late-breaking stat blast question from Patreon supporter Dan. I'm sure this is somewhere, but I'm struggling to find it. What is the average number of games in a DS, in an LCS, in a World Series? This is another one easily answered with the FanGraph's postseason leaderboards.

The average length of a Division Series? Four games, 4.0 exactly. The average length of an LCS since 1985 when the LCS switched from a best of 5 to a best of 7 format? 5.8 games. And the average length of a World Series since 1922 when the format was fixed permanently at best of 7, also 5.8 games. On Friday, a division series concluded that went one game over. That 4-game average length, the reliever familiarity effect, did not

hurt the Dodgers. LA's Penn, along with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, blanked the Padres for a second straight game, 24 consecutive scoreless innings, to take the NLDS in 5 games with a 2-0 game 5 victory, powered by solo homers by the Hernandezes Kike and Teosker. A valiant attempt by San Diego, but the bats went quiet, and so we've got a Dodgers-Mets matchup starting on Sunday. TV executives are salivating over the prospect of a Yankees-Dodgers World Series, but the Tigers are guardians and the Mets may have something to say about that. So hey, who needs a healthy starting rotation when your bullpen becomes unhittable? More on all of that next week.

A few follow ups. We got a lot of responses to our discussion of the New York title drought, how long it's been since the New York championship. Patreon supporter Matthew Neer writes in to say that this title drought is actually somewhat worse for millions of fans than you implied. I'm 32 years old, a lifelong New York sports fan, and I have never rooted for a team that won a championship. I had the poor fortune of being bequeathed the Mets, Knicks, Rangers, and Jets as my

teams. Only the Rangers have won a title in my lifetime, and I was all of two when it happened. If you wound up as an Islanders fan instead of a Rangers fan, not an uncommon occurrence for people from Long Island, the drought would date back to the 86 Mets title. It's true, history and legacy go only so far when you haven't witnessed any winners in your lifetime. Then again, we were talking about the big four men's sports and the WNBA. A different Matthew writes in to note that we were neglecting the victory of Gotham FC,

the NWSL's New York team, last year. Matthew says, I generally think we've reached the point in this country where soccer is more than a little sibling of the so-called Big Four sports. The reason it is not included seems to be because the U.S. Men's League, MLS, is not a star-level league, but rather a place for former stars to extend their careers. NWSL does not have that problem. It is one of the elite women's soccer leagues and attracts world-class talent from around the globe. It also gets viewership comparable to that of the WNBA, at least prior to

this year's WNBA boom. I'm aware that the team plays its home games in New Jersey, but NYC has a long history of incorporating certain New Jersey teams into the fold. See the NFL, and the team is officially called New Jersey slash New York Gotham FC. Listener Ben also wrote in to mention Gotham FC as well as New York City FC, which won the 2021 MLS Cup Playoffs. Fair enough, soccer counts, New York has a lot of sports teams, just that the NWSL goes back only to 2013 and NYC FC goes back to 2015, so you don't yet have the generational attachment to those franchises. That same Ben also writes in about Meg's confusion about how to spell Rob Thompson, whether it's Thompson or Thompson. It's the latter. Meg's confusion over the spelling of the Phillies manager's name naturally made me think of Thompson and Thompson, the infamous bumbling

detectives from the Adventures of Tenton, or Tonton as they say in France. We got another email about the Thompson Thompson issue from a listener named Mike Thompson with a P. Mike says, as a Thompson and a linguist, I was tickled by your brief aside into Rob Thompson's last name. It is natural, in fact, to insert a P into Thompson. That is indeed precisely why the spelling of my last name exists. This linguistic phenomenon is called epenthesis, the insertion of a sound into a word. It happens in this case because the place of articulation differs in M and S. The name means son of Tom, but at a certain point in history the spelling changed because people were naturally inserting a P, so now both spellings occur. You

also might find yourself inserting a P in words like something in Amsterdam. It is completely natural. Another way of dealing with those particular consonants shows itself in a word like crimson where there are two distinct pronunciations crimson and crimson. One might find themselves exerting effort to not make the P sound but over time the most natural way of speaking typically wins out. I'm thankful my last name is not pronounced Tomzin. I can't imagine more of a subject matter expert on that question than a linguist named Thompson. Thank you Mike, Patreon supporter, and effectively wild subreddit creator. A few of you have written in to draw my attention

to the Wendy's ad that has been airing during the Division series in which one of the actors eats a burrito using the Lindbergh method, just biting into the middle instead of the end. I'm glad the Lindbergh method is getting so much airtime. This is an important step for burrito representation. I salute you, my burrito brother. I'm glad that Wendy's is normalizing my way of eating a burrito. No need to email me about how my burrito method is an abomination. I have heard it before,

and we discussed it in fact on our most recent Patreon bonus episode. Finally, listener, Patreon supporter, effectively wild wiki keeper Raymond Chen noted one reason why a team might want to travel to the place where it's going to play a day early, even if there's an off day. The Yankees in the ALDS, because of a lack of hotel vacancies, stayed an extra day in the Bronx and then flew to Kansas City on the eve of the game instead of immediately after their previous game. And I was saying, well, why don't teams do that more often? You get to stay an extra night in your bed, in your hometown. But Raymond alerted me to an NPR segment on all things considered in 2016.

The write up is titled Half Your Brain Stands Guard When Sleeping In A New Place. It's called the First Night Effect. The first night in a sleep lab, a person's sleep is usually so bad that researchers simply toss out any data they collect. Because when you sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, only half your brain is getting a good night's rest. The left side seems to be more awake than the right side. This helps explain why people tend to feel tired

after sleeping in a new place. So yes, maybe it's advantageous to travel sooner, get that first night effect out of the way, and then get a good night's sleep the night before the game. But the Yankees won anyway. It was the Royals who looked a little less lively in game four. That will do it for today and for this week.

Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild as have the following five listeners who have signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Julia Pascal, Laura Woodland, Hannah, Bailey Simone, and Michael Hausman. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, it's about 1,500 members strong, get in on all the action, you also get monthly bonus episodes, playoff livestreams, one more of which is coming up later this month, discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts, memberships, autographs, books, personalized messages, prioritized

email answers, and so much more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild

on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups such Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show group at Facebook.com slash groups such effectively wild You can find the effectively wild sub edit at r slash effectively wild and you can check the show page at fan crafts or the episode Description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance We wish you a good long weekend and enjoyable baseball and we will be back to talk to you next week. We're going to be wild, a fan-grast baseball podcast. Listen our emails at last, we're going to do a baseball trip.

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