Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2239: The Post-October Banter Backlog

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about offseason EW, Tommy Kahnle’s love affair with changeups, the Yankees’ preparation and fundamentals, Aaron Boone’s managing, the Dodgers as a dynasty, the White Sox hiring Will Venable, Alex Kirilloff’s retirement, two prediction anecdotes, glove flips as the new bat flips, the check-swing challenge system, the Premier12 tournament, the […]

I'm just a man who wants nothing less than Effectively Wild. Oh, wild, oh wild. Nothing less than Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Much as I wish that we were prepping for a game six with the potential for a game seven

on the horizon from a podcasting perspective. It really does make things much easier when they stop playing post-season games. I'm disappointed that the series didn't go longer and that the off-season has started, but that feeling of when are we gonna record? That doesn't work,

because then there will have been another game and then there's another game. Don't so much have to worry about that now. And also by the time you get to the end of October, there's just only so much more there is to say about those teams, I find, because you're kind of covering those teams almost as if you're a local podcast maybe that talks about the same team all the time. And yet we're not quite equipped for that, or at least we hyper focus on certain games and certain teams in a way that we don't typically in this podcast where we just rove around and talk about everyone and

everything. And by the time you get to the world series, you've seen 15, 16 games involving these particular teams. You've talked about their strengths. You've talked about their weaknesses. You've done multiple series previews, and there's just not that much more insight to add, I find. So part of me is disappointed, part of me is almost relieved. You know, every new matchup presents an opportunity for analysis, but like at the end of the day, there's just, there's a ton of new grist that you can sort of feed into the mill, right? Like, did you know that the Yankees employ Aaron Judge? Did you know Otani is good? Did you know that both of these

teams are taxed to varying degrees when it comes to their starting pitching. What? You know, so, and look, like the games provide so much, uh, delight and amusement, it's not like there's not stuff to be fascinated by here, but yeah, from a preview perspective, you're like, okay, well, you know, still, uh, still big and tall, those guys, they haven't shrunk. Can be kind of nice because it's a different way to experience the game, at least if you're someone like me, who's covering things from more of a national perspective and hasn't followed things through a fan lens in a long time, which I know is not the experience of most of our listeners, but for me, I'm not watching

one team every day, unless it's the Shohei Otani era angels. So it is kind of, yes, exactly. That maybe put me off the experience forever, but it is nice actually to follow a team you're almost embedding as a baseball observer for a little while. I've never been a beat writer. I'm not really covering a particular team that way, but you do get to familiarize yourself with all the little ins and outs of that team, which is tough to do because when you're trying to keep an eye on everyone, then you can't

really dwell on anyone. And sometimes that comes up, I'll get a request to do a radio hit to talk about a particular team. And I always feel like, hmm, I'm going to have to kind of bone up as they say on this day. Like, you know, I'm not going to know as much as someone who is following that team. I'm from a day to day perspective. Maybe there are some ways that I could add value as someone who has the 30,000 foot view,

but then am I going to be watching that game and that team and knowing here's how the manager has been handling this particular player lately, or here's what fans are saying about this storyline or that storyline. So you get a taste of that in October. And it's also nice when more or less everyone is watching the same thing and talking about the same thing. I think plenty of people have tuned out and are like, when do we get free agency started? And also I'm watching football now, thank you.

But also if you are still paying attention to baseball at that point, then you can kind of have a monocultural conversation about it, which is nice for a while and yet also good when that ends and we can go talk about the Jorge Saler trade. Not that specifically, but other stuff. I prepared like 20 minutes of material on Jorge Saler. How dare you? I did not. I did not do that. Neither did I. I did not do that. But yeah, I think it has its pros and its cons. And you're right from a prep perspective, we're always going to miss things relative to the beats, which I think you're right, that folks who kind of

take the whole league in and try to identify trends across all 30 teams. We have stuff to say also, but yeah, whenever we run the previews, I'm like, this could be 10,000 words long if we wanted it to be, and our responsibility is to try to find the most sort of salient aspects of it. And sometimes, you know, that's tricky, but that's what you got to do and hope it's good enough. And also it does take away some of the labor of preparation for the podcast because it's tricky, but that's what you got to do. And hope it's good enough. And also it does take away some of the labor of preparation for the podcast, because it's just, well, we're talking about the two games that have happened since the last time we talked,

which is a weird way to approach talking about baseball, because it's completely different from what we do during the regular season, where we're not drooling down in that granular away. So it restricts you in the sense that you have some weird off the wall stuff that you want to talk about and you're like, gotta get to game four, gotta get to game five. But it also does really remove any, what are we going to talk about today kind of element from the conversation? Cause you know what you want to talk about or what everyone

wants to hear presumably. So here we are, we've gotten the navel gazing out of the way we have podcasted about podcasting. And now I guess we can get to the baseball, the full off season swing of things. Off season, effectively wild is actually probably my favorite effectively wild. Not that we don't get weird and off the wall and off the beaten path all the time because we absolutely do, but we're even less tied to current events, I suppose you could say, and we have to get more creative at times. And probably that's not for everyone, but it is for me. So we will proceed. I did have a couple last things to say about the series. We talked about some of the mistakes that the Yankees made and

how they were costly at the end of that series. And one that we didn't mention, but I think it could qualify as a mistake, even though it's a strange, eccentric, curious kind of charming one, is Tommy Canely's oops-all-change-ups approach at the end of the postseason. I was fascinated by this initially when I realized that this was happening. And I've come to think that it is really kind of cute when it works and then when he doesn't have a good outing and he's throwing exclusively changeups, then you're wondering, what are you doing here? What's the game plan exactly? And I've been researching and reading

because he threw, I believe, 58 consecutive change-ups, which is just the strangest thing. There was a stat blast about this years ago and the record was barely more than a dozen, I think. Change-ups had the lowest we did in that stat blast, every pitch type, and looked at the most consecutive pitches of that timed thrown in the pitch tracking era. And change ups had the shortest streak, which makes sense because it's right there in the name that the change up is, it's changing from something else. It's, it works in contrast to another type of pitch. And so the idea of just throwing exclusively changeups just seems like it shouldn't work.

It has worked fairly well for Tommy Canely. I gotta give it to him, but I think probably he went to that well too many times. And he even conceded that there was an MLB.com article about this when he was up to 56 changeups in a row. And he said that it was maybe too many. And he said, mixing a fastball, I guess laughing and, and, and he did in his next outing, he threw a couple of fastballs, but in his game five outing, when he took

the loss, he threw exclusively changeups again. And I don't know whether that was why he didn't do well. It was just eight changeups, but it seemed like the Dodgers were sort of sitting on them, sitting change up. Which is, yeah, you would think, right? It's like play the odds. Right. You don't, you don't hear the expression sitting change up.

No, you don't. But with Tommy Kainley, you could, and it seemed like Tommy Edmund, KK Hernandez were anticipating that. And maybe he also just didn't have his good command that day. And I think he walked Will Smith on four changeups, but really when he's not having a good outing, I default back to just, well, it's probably good to mix your pitches sometimes. And it's odd because he didn't used to be this way. He always threw a changeup, but he didn't throw majority changeups.

And even during the regular season, the last couple of seasons in this current keenly incarnation, he's thrown roughly three quarters changeups, which is still an awful lot of changeups, but seem to be working well enough for him. But there's a difference between three quarters changeups and a hundred percent changeups, like just too many changeups. You really, you got to change up from the changeup at some point. So I don't know what it is that inspired him. I don't think he has a great fastball.

His fastball gets hit fairly hard. And so it's, it's kind of the league wide change that we've seen to, Hey, don't be bound by convention here. You don't have to throw a certain pitch type in a certain count. Or if you have a good pitch, just spam that thing, just throw it a lot. And he got away with that for a while. But I do think there's probably a level and a limit where at some point you do have to keep them guessing.

Well, and I would imagine that like, let's say you want to take a secondary heavy approach, which as you said, we're seeing more and more guys do. We're seeing a lot more sort of flexibility and variability in terms of when you throw what pitch and which counts. And I think that having sort of creative license to mix that up in a way that emphasizes your best pitch and perhaps is more attuned to how your pitches play with each other because there's a lot of complicated analysis that can go on there,

right? I think that we've been a little stayed in our approach, but I think if you're going to be that dominant with one pitch, you would think that there would be like, oh, that's not working trigger in, in the sequence, right? That either you or the catcher are like, Hey, so we've been spamming changeups and that worked fine the first couple of times, but it's not moving the way that we wanted to. It's clear that they're sitting on this. You're not finishing the way that you need to in order to take this approach. So here's our backup plan. And you'd think that they would deviate to

that more quickly than they seem to, because he didn't end up throwing all changeups for his entire postseason. But pretty close and pretty close in his game five loss, he was the one who ended up taking the loss in that game. He did throw exclusively changeups. He did throw exclusively changeups. So you would think that there would be sort of, okay, here's the backup. Now, maybe they really enjoyed how much they were delighting John Smoltz, right? Because he, grump that he is, was like really excited about Tommy Kandley's like all changeups approach. Maybe he knows that I still can't remember if it's oops or whoops. And so he was like, I'm going to keep doing it until it sticks, you know, who knows?

But yeah, I would have perhaps suggested an expansion of the repertoire because you would imagine that there's a point where it's like, okay, let's say that, you know, you have, you have a tremendous amount of confidence in the changeup. Maybe that's the pitch you like the best. Maybe you've rightly identified that that's your best pitch. But if your best pitch isn't finishing the way you need it to, I think you probably on balance get a greater benefit from throwing even a substandard different something just to, to your point, kind of keep on guessing and get them off that change up a little bit. Uh,

then you do continuing to spam them with just change ups. Oops, all change ups. Oops, oops. Yeah, it was oops. For a while there, there was no oops. It was on purpose and also it was working well for him. But I do think there has to be some sort of, I don't know who's involved in the planning there.

I don't know what the pitch comm situation with Canely is and whether he's calling his shots or they're being called for him, but there's got to be some preparation intervention I would think at some point where it's like, okay, 75% changeups, sure. 100%, 98% changeups, possibly too many changeups. So that's just a small piece of this larger conversation that's going on about the Yankees and lack of preparation and fundamentals. And Joel Sherman wrote a piece at the New York Post about the Dodgers preparing to exploit the Yankees' weaknesses, alleged weaknesses in those areas. And I'm always down for a post-series or mid-series breakdown of advanced scouting and how teams identified flaws in their opponents.

And some of it is probably mythologizing, but I particularly love back when the Royals were making the series 2014, 2015. There were so many instances then about the Royals advanced scouts and their preparation and how they picked up on things and whether it was John Lester not throwing over or tendencies about throwing or base running. There's just a lot of good stuff that came out of that. And Sherman, I'll just read this passage

from his piece about the Dodgers. They were thrilled at how short Yankees leads were at first base to potentially be less of a threat on pivots at second, where Gavin Lux does not excel. They said their metrics had the Yankees leads were at first base to potentially be less of a thread on pivots at second, where Gavin Lux does not excel. They said their metrics had the Yankees as the worst positioned outfield. They were amazed how many times relay throws came skittering through the infield with no one taking charge and how often Jazz Chisholm Jr. for example, was out of place or just standing still when a play was in action.

Now he's kind of new to that position. So perhaps you could make some excuses there, but the Yankees being the majors worst base running team by every metric and that the Yankees are just talent over fundamentals and that if you run the bases with purpose and aggression, the Yankees will self-inflict harm as was exposed by bets, Tommy Edmund, Freddie Freeman, et cetera, that the value is very high to put the ball in play to make the Yankees execute.

So a lot of that stuff is public knowledge. And something like the Yankees being the worst positioned outfield, I don't know if that's true or if I totally believe that, but I guess you've got to draw a distinction between, well some guys aren't going to be good base runners no matter how well you coach them up. believe that, but I guess you've got to draw a distinction between, well, some guys aren't going to be good base runners, no matter how well you coach them up. Sure. Right. Whether it's an instincts thing, whether it's just that they don't have the

wheels, whatever it is, you can only do so much, but it does seem like the Yankees were running into a lot of outs. Yeah. They were making a lot of simple mistakes, some of which came back to bite them, some of which didn't. And I don't wanna exaggerate things because they won the pennant, right? They had the most wins in the American league,

clearly a good team, but it just goes in hand in hand with the sense that they have underachieved. And a lot of Yankees fans hold Aaron Boone personally responsible for that. I heard some takes from friends of mine from New York about Aaron Boone. I heard some, why didn't they fire him the night of? Are they waiting till the next morning? And I was like, Jesus Christ. There are many people who feel that way. And the fact that they got to the World Series

didn't really ease any of that. It didn't assuage the enmity the Yankees fans feel. There's been reporting already that his option will be picked up for next year and that maybe the prelude to a multi-year extension. Some of this comes into play with Cashman 2, where I think a lot of Yankees fans feel there's just too much job security, right? You can have a happy medium between perhaps this, where you have essentially a lifetime appointment for Brian Cashman and the original flavor Steinbrenner era, where you were just constantly changing managers, changing GMs, sometimes multiple times per season. So are they in this rut where they don't feel any pressure to perform and they've let

things slide or their management style just doesn't get the most out of this team? How much does Boone get blamed for deficiencies of the front office? Because of course there's just so much coordination there. It's funny because one of the other criticisms that Boone gets is that he's basically a puppet of the other criticisms that Boone gets is that he's basically a puppet of the analytics. So I don't know if you can have it both ways where you blame Boone personally, but then also say he's just sort of a front for the front office. Maybe you blame both at that point. So I think some of it's overblown because again, the Yankees, they have it pretty good on the whole. They have been a good team.

They have not had a losing season. But if you're a Yankees fan, you're saying we should be the best, we should spend the most, and we have not had the consistent track record of both making the playoffs and also just having a team without obvious flaws. Yeah. Like, well, you could say the Dodgers in some seasons, like the Astros have throughout their run, the Yankees just have seemed more vulnerable than some of those super teams have.

I, I feel like there is not, uh, it would be difficult to conceive of a criticism from an opposing team that is better set up to troll the Yankees fan base than a sloppy fundamentals accusation, right? Like this is a team that won't let you have long hair, it won't let you do a full beard. We're not putting names on the jerseys because it's about the laundry and they can't even, I can just imagine what Sports Talk Radio sounded like in the Tri-State area after this. These bums can't even, you know? So that I find kind of funny. I guess if I were a Yankees fan, I would take some comfort from the fact that if the accusation

is, if the assertion is rather, hey, you're doing a bunch of fundamental stuff wrong, right? There's a sloppiness to the defense. The positioning is poor. The execution around base running leaves something to be desired. In a lot of ways, absent the like, hey, you're, you know, John Carlos Stanton or Anthony Rizzo and you're slow as molasses. All of that stuff strikes me as actually relatively low hanging fruit in terms of improvement, right?

If the question is, can we figure out how to better position our outfielders? Can we work with our infielders to be more fundamentally sound from a fielding perspective? It's not like everyone can become the best defender in the league. Obviously there are guys who are better at it than others and we see that distribution of talent. But if you look at someone like, you know, jazz and say this guy's relatively new to the position, you look at someone like Volpe and say he's pretty young, but he has demonstrated acumen as a shortstop.

And so maybe there was just some sloppiness there. You look at an outfield and say, Hey, you know, we can, we can move them around and position them better. Like all of that strikes me as, as fixable, um, or at least improvable, even if you're not going to suddenly make whoever ends up standing in right fields next year, whether it's Soto or someone else, like a plus defender in a corner, like, you know, you can work on that. I'm sure that the Chisholm will go home and work on his fielding over the off season. He's going to have an entire camp next year as a third baseman, presumably. So some of this stuff, I think is fixable.

It is funny that this would be the way that this team would be felt because you're right. They are a good team. They won the pennant. They have a lot of really impressive players. There is something that inspires cognitive dissonance between the mighty Yankees being brought down by, it's like, you know, elephants being afraid of mice. I think a lot of animals are afraid of mice. Are elephants actually afraid of mice?

Is that just a story? I don't mice. Are elephants actually afraid of mice? Is that just a story? I don't know, how often do they encounter mice, I wonder, in their natural habitats? I would imagine a lot of the time. Or mice-sized things, you know? That's a common animal shape and sizes, you know, little creatures. That's true. Although you'd think if they were encountering them constantly, that would-

Well, this is why I'm asking. Exposure therapy, they wouldn't be so scared anymore. This is what I'm saying. Like, are they actually afraid or is that just from some cartoon from back in the day? Could be anything, Ben. But so, I love advanced scouting stories too, even when I think some of them may be embellished in terms of either how unique the observation is, meaning it was or it wasn't, because you can only, you know, binary state thing on that one, or it being discovered in the course of postseason advanced scouting, either in the postseason or in the month immediately before.

I love those stories. I think that it demonstrates that there is real value to the enterprise. I think it probably keeps people I know in their jobs. So give me every advanced scouting story is what I have to say about that. In terms of Boone, I don't really have a very strong opinion about Aaron Boone as a manager one way or the other. I think that he does some doofy stuff. I think that there are times where he seems sound. He seems pretty like mid to me in terms of his acumen as a manager. If you told me he needed to go and they wanted

to bring in someone else, I'd go, okay. And if you told me they want to keep him for another four years, I'd be like, sure, fine, whatever. It's like, I don't know, man. It seems pretty normal. Like if every other manager bore the amount of scrutiny than the person who manages the Yankees bears, would they be better? I don't know. Would they be deemed better? I guess is my question. I don't have a good sense of that. We're gonna get emails from Yankees fans and I'm gonna get new text messages

from my friends in New York being like, he's a bum, he's gotta go. And it's like, I don't know, maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't, who knows? It was weird that they hired him in the first place, but we all got over that, you know? It was like he was a TV guy and then he became a manager. That was weird.

I know that he also played baseball before that. I just want to clarify that I am aware of Aaron Boone's biography. It seemed like he had dispelled some of the complaints earlier in this postseason. And then the World Series happened and the Yankees blew a couple of games and he played a part in the first one.

And so that reignited a lot of that because it's a tough way to lose. So that was a bad managerial decision. That was not just a, you know, kind of whatever. That was a bad choice. And we criticized it at the time. I just want to clarify my feelings on it. And also sometimes an oft criticized manager

has a redemption month like Dave Roberts. Like Dave Roberts. Yeah, right. And how many people have called for Dave Roberts' job had. Like Dave Roberts. Yeah, right. And how many people have called for Dave Roberts' job? And there were times when I took issue with some of his moves, certainly, but you look at him and he's basically compiled a hall of fame managerial resume in a decade or less. And he's had such success and there's always something to just don't rock the boat and

people seem to like him and he gets along fairly well and there's just not a lot of public clubhouse drama and in a big market that matters too. And so just a player's manager who can kind of keep people in line and pulling in the right direction. And Boon sometimes of course, if you don't show a lot of emotion, then fans will get upset about that

because they want to see their own frustration mirrored in the manager. And Boon does deliver that plenty of times, right? He gets ejected constantly. So it's not just that he is Mr. Mild-mannered. He is a lot of the time. And I think there are times where he'll have sort of a word salad, buzzword, just imprecise in post games and fans want to hear like heads will roll and he won't do that, but then he will get quite upset at umpires at least in

games. So he does show some fire at times too. So yes, I think maybe it could be better, maybe it could be worse, but the fact that the Yankees got so close this time, they haven't even gotten this close in a while. And so I know Yankees fans who just think they will never win one with Aaron Boone. That he's the impediment that they're just fundamentally flawed in some way. They're they'll be good, but they can't be great. They can't unlock their latent capacity to be the best team in baseball and just

steamroll right through the postseason. There are all these stats going around about the Yankees haven't beaten an AL or a non-AL central team in the postseason. Like they've made hay against the AL central teams, but they can't handle anyone else, which seems like slicing things a little too thin to find something meaningful there. Also, aren't those AL central teams normally dispatching other teams? Sometimes. Like you can only play the team that gets there. Like what are we, we all need to touch grass.

I mean, just, I get it, but also like that's the team they have. What are we, Ben, what are we doing? Well, we can not do this. We can not talk about the Yankees for a while in the Dodgers, although they'll be relevant to many offseason storylines, I'm sure. I did want to say, I called the Dodgers a dynasty in my piece. I called them a modern dynasty to try to sort of send the signal that I think the definition of dynasty has changed. And in a fan graphs headline, I saw Jay Jaffe called them or whoever put that headline on his post playoff dynasty, which, which, you know, if you want to say playoff dynasty is just making

the playoffs a whole lot of times, then I think they're indisputably that I would just call them a dynasty because they've won two championships in five years. They're always division winners. They're always one of the best teams in baseball, they're always in the playoffs, they're often winning pennants. That to me is as close as you're going to get to a dynasty these days. And so I think you can kind of redefine dynasty. There's a Bill James little toy stat about defining dynasties and I think they easily clear that bar. I think we just need to get away from the idea that the big red machine is the platonic ideal of a dynasty or the nineties Yankees. Yes, but it's just impossible to do that

anymore. There is just too big a playoff field. The league is too competitive. The playoffs are too random. You're just not going to get three peets or four peets. It's just not going to happen. And so either we need to retire the term dynasty or we need to update our definition. It's almost like the conversation about hall of fame pictures. What's a hall of fame picture? Are we just going to hold pictures to the same standard that we always have in which case there will be no more hall of fame pictures after Broender and Scherzer and Greinke and Sabathia and that'll just be

that basically or do we want to era adjust? And I can hear reasonable arguments on both sides, like if you're just not as valuable as a picture anymore because you don't throw as many innings and you're not providing as much value, well, maybe there just should be fewer pictures in the hall of fame and maybe we just shouldn't throw around the term dynasty anymore. But I think there's something to be said for having a modern dynasty and just updating our definitions or lowering our bar a bit for when we use that term, when we invoke a dynasty. The membrane around the definition of dynasty has to be semi-permeable because what teams look like, which teams are going to be good, how they're composed, it's just going to change era to era. It's not going

to be the same. So like what constitutes the best team, the best kind of team? It just seems like it's going to be, it seems ridiculous to look at a team in this playoff era, which is different even than the playoff era of a couple of years ago, right? The format has shifted and be like, oh, well, the definition of a dynasty is inherently the same. Why would that be true? That seems silly to me. I find it silly. Do people react rationally to your thing? Are people being normal or are they being weird? CB I saw some people in replies just questioning the use of dynasty, questioning fairly forcefully, but then others coming to my defense and saying, well, if the Dodgers aren't a dynasty at this

point, who is? Who is, yeah. And maybe the original replyers would say no one is, which I guess if it's like being a big hall person or a small hall person, are you like a big dynasty person or a small dynasty person? I think it's okay if you just have an extremely demanding standard for what constitutes a dynasty. It's just that you're not going to see many anymore. So you're just automatically rejecting every suggestion that something is a dynasty,

which is fine, I guess. It's always been a fairly imprecise term. So it's like talking about what an ace is. These things are always just so vague and subjective and fraught that often I tend to avoid them. But I do want to just recognize what the Dodgers have done. And I've given them plenty of credit even when they weren't winning the World Series, even when they were just getting there every year, because there's so much value to that. As we talked about last time, you got to keep getting in and they keep getting in and not just squeaking in either, but clearing that bar by a lot. So maybe we can do next week sort of a setup for the off season or storylines we're interested in.

And of course we have to revisit our bold pre-season predictions and see how we did. I think they're all settled. So we should return to that sometime soon and all of our drafts and competitions and such. But just a few stories I've been stockpiling here maybe we can get to and also just a bit of news. So I mentioned this briefly last time, but the White Sox did hire a manager. They did.

Will Venable is the new sacrificial lamb for the White Sox. Would you want this job? Would you like, given everything that goes with it, given that there are only 30 of these jobs and not that many vacancies this off season and the ones that there are, are not exactly the cushiest. You want your pick of the Marwins, the White Sox? Like, you know, you're going to be sort of starting from the bottom and here we are kind of job opportunities. So the white socks have hired Venable who seems quite qualified.

He's done all the things that you should do before you get this gig. He's been Bruce Bochy's not quite bench coach, but associate manager, which is essentially the same thing. He was an actual bench coach before he's been coaching for a while. He had some front office experience with the Cubs. He's kind of done it all in addition to being a big league player. So he's always been mentioned in conversations about managerial candidates. So not surprising to see him get this shot.

And then I guess it's like, do you want to step into the breach and take this job? On the one hand, there's nowhere to go but up. I would certainly hope. But you are taking on just this hopeless situation, at least at the major league level and all of the complications about ownership, whether there's an ownership change, whether there's not an ownership change, I don't know which would be worse. But you're really like walking into both the best positive regression sort of situation,

but also maybe the most broken organization in some respects. I think that the answer to that is just, yeah, you take one of the 30 manager jobs in baseball. If you're a Venables and you like have a choice, right, if you're sitting there on multiple offers, well, no, you don't take the White Sox job, you take a better job, like with a better team where you can have a greater sort of level of confidence

that your club is gonna be successful. But that's not the choice that's very often presented to these guys, right? And there are only 30 of them. So yeah, I think you take the job. Is it the best one in baseball? Well, sure. No, definitely not. They're bad.

They're bad team. They're probably going to continue to be a bad team and you might have to deal with an ownership change, but there is only up, uh, really on the horizon. Cause it just seems impossible that it would be worse. So yeah, I think you'd take the job if you're offered it. There aren't endless openings for these things, you know? And if you're in a position where you're viewed as, you know, a real candidate for one of these gigs, I think you just have to say yes

and hope for the best after that. And I think that people are good at applying the appropriate context to these sorts of things. Your expectations of the 2025 White Sox are gonna be fundamentally different than they are for say the 2025 Dodgers. Particularly if you can go in there and demonstrate to the organization

in a way that maybe isn't gonna be as apparent to the press, but we get our glimpses that you're a carrier of good culture, that you are able to connect with the clubhouse and sort of guide them through a difficult time. I think that there are other benchmarks of success that get brought to bear for managers on crummy teams than there are for contending clubs. So yeah, I take that job. I'm reading about elephants and mice.

Is it a real thing? Well, to date, I'm quoting here from an explainer, no one has been able definitively to prove or disprove this old urban legend. The popular television show Mythbusters tested the belief. Their findings suggest that elephants may indeed be afraid of mice. Scientists who have viewed the episode, though, disagree. elephants may indeed be afraid of mice.

Scientists who have viewed the episode, though, disagree. They say it's just as likely that the elephant was merely surprised by the mouse, not afraid of it. So I guess we need to ask the elephant, were you merely surprised or were you actively in fear? Evidence from zoos suggests that elephants can get along with mice, so that's good to know. I guess they can coexist peacefully. That just raises so many more questions for me though.

Like what does it look like to say that, what does this zoo evidence look like? Like does it seem like they're, how do you show that? I guess it's just that elephants eat hay and zookeepers have reported seeing mice in and around the hay and that doesn't dissuade the elephants from eating the hay. They seem fine with it. So it doesn't seem like there's any smoking gun here that in fact elephants are afraid

of mice. I also am wondering the following, which is did the Mythbusters guys go, you know, my understanding of my job today is that I'm going to go terrorize some elephants. I think we should leave elephants alone, you know? Why do we need, I want to know the answer, but I don't need them to go like scare an elephant. That seems, you know? Well, maybe they didn't. Maybe they merely surprised the elephant. Merely surprised the elephant. What a weird job that must be to be one of the MythBusters guys. Well, sometimes we're baseball MythBusters here, but that hasn't involved any elephants or mice.

We don't want to traumatize elephants. We like elephants. Elsewhere in the AL Central, there was some post-World Series news, which is that Alex Kiriloff has announced that he's retiring. He had the decency to wait until after the World Series so as not to seize the spotlight when we're all trying to watch the World Series. He didn't come out and hog it and say, it's about me, Alex Kiriloff. The White Sox- Feels like you're being a little rude about Alex Kiriloff there, Ben. No, the White Sox hiring rumors, they surfaced during the World Series, but Alex Kiriloff, he bided his time. And I was sorry to see this.

I was somewhat surprised by this surprise, but not afraid, but somewhat surprised just because it's rare for a baseball player in his prime age-wise to call it a career. We've seen this sort of thing more often with football players, where you might have life-threatening injuries or quality of life

threatening injuries. And that's fortunately not quite as endemic to baseball, but Alex Kiriloff, who's turning 27 next week, he's just been through a lot injury wise. He's had so many injuries. He's not the only Minnesota twin who has had that and can say that, but he has had, I think, particularly painful ones and debilitating from a baseball perspective ones and ones that would probably make you cringe if I described the mechanisms of the surgery. And when you start reading about the back problems and the wrist issues and everything

he's had, certainly don't blame him. And, you know, sad that it didn't pan out in terms of him being a top prospect. And then just being basically an average player when he was able to take the field, which was not nearly as often, and, you know, average might be generous, but he just average hitter at least, but he just wasn't able to play consistently. And at a certain point, he even said like his enthusiasm for the sport was sapped somewhat that the joy wasn't there as much that he wanted to give it his all as long as he was going to play.

And he just didn't feel like doing that anymore. And who could blame him given what it has cost him physically to get prepared for that game. So it's disappointing to see him not get to have a healthy time when we get to appreciate what his talent might have enabled him to do on a baseball field. But good for him for deciding that he wanted to walk away and didn't want to put himself through that anymore. And hopefully he has a happy and healthy and productive second career, whatever that might be. LS. Yeah, I think it's a good reminder that sports medicine around this stuff has advanced so dramatically, even in our lifetime, like the degree to which we just assume that a player is going to be able to bounce back from this or that. And, you know, there are ones

we know are worse than others and ones that might end up being a long-term barrier to them playing the sport well. But, you know, I think we, we take for granted recovery a lot of the time and don't always have the proper sort of appreciation for the toll that that process can take on guys, particularly if they're enduring it multiple times. And I get it. I get being like, you know, I just, I, this is so, there's no enjoyment in it and it's painful and it's so hard. And you know, I think we should have a little more reverence for that process than we maybe

do. Um, not you and I, we're, we're always perfect about these things, but just in general, it's hard. It's hard to come back from that stuff. My job is sitting at a desk and looking at screens, and that's a pretty basic way to describe my job, but it's getting at the action of it a lot of the time. And I've been doing PT on my stupid back for months now, and if that were my entire job, I'd be exhausted by it. So Aaron Gleeman, who covers the twins tweeted this too, that he has the same back injury that Alex Kiriloff has. And Aaron wrote, I seriously can't even imagine trying to play baseball like

this. I've had a hard time writing about baseball with it. So, okay. Other things, a couple prediction stories to catch up on. So the sad death of Fernando Valenzuela caused some people to bring up a story about a Fernando prediction. This was a fairly famous story about him, but he called his shot not on a home run, though he was a fine hitter by pitcher standards, but on his no-hitter in 1990. And reading from a quote here, so we're watching the Toronto game, Dave Stewart's pitching and Dave Stewart is pitching a no-hitter. So Fernando pokes his head in just when Dave Stewart's getting the last out of his no-hitter

and Fernando says, hey, you saw one on TV, now you're going to see one in person. And he walks out of the bullpen and throws a no-hitter. Socia, this is Mike Socia, insisted the story held true. I think I told it after the game, but there wasn't social media back then to really get the word out. Now, A, he's acknowledging what we have said so many times, which is that this prediction creep, I think is a product of just the reporting and how exposed we are to these things.

We only know about it if it gets reported and every single prediction gets reported these days and then gets retweeted many times and it comes across our trance. And so this is how we know about it. I think Fernando was kidding. I think he acknowledged that he was kidding, although he did then back it up by going out and throwing a no hitter. I think the only time when there were multiple no hitters on the same day. But yeah, that's quite a call. It's one thing to predict a home run, to predict a no hitter is an even lower probability event. So kudos to him for nailing it.

Don't know again, whether he ever predicted a no-hitter on other occasions and did not deliver, but he was prompted to by the fact that he saw Stuart throw in one. So that's kind of a fun one and not one that you hear that often, but our attention was directed to another more recent one, and this is a new genre of just a very vague prediction, and this is Mark new genre of just a very vague prediction. And this is Mark Vientos. So here's a tweet from SNY, the Mets RSN. Mark Vientos says he predicted Francisco Lindor would win the NLDS for the Mets prior to his

huge Game 4 Grand Slam. And here's the quote from Vientos. Before Game 4 of the Phillies series, I had this gut feeling that I couldn't shake. Game day. I head into the clubhouse and for some reason this thought keeps popping into my head. It's unmistakable. Lindor is going to do something big today. All pregame it was there. Lindor. This is his moment. This game. I even told some teammates about it." I like how people are just trying to establish like, no, there's proof. I said it at the moment. Like, Francisco is about to win us this series today, bro. I can feel it. Then a few hours later, I'm in the on deck circle, bottom of the six bases

loaded, Lindor up in my head. I repeated it. He's about to do something big. It wasn't even a question of if, no way it was, oh man, watch this. This is actually going to happen right now. And then it did. As soon as he swung, I knew it was gone. I didn't need to watch to see where the ball was going. I just saw the swing, how perfect it was. And I was like, ball game, the end. We just took the soul out of Philly.

We just ripped their hearts out. This was a player's Tribune piece actually, where he wrote this. And I mean, the last part of it is it's almost like he's trying to claim credit for predicting the home run after the swing. He's like, I didn't even need to see the ball. I just saw the swing, presumably saw the contact. And he's like, I knew, okay, we're not going to give you credit for predicting that the ball would go out after the swing. That seems like a bridge too far here. But also it's almost like he's not getting specific enough.

If he's just like, when Dor is going to do something big, okay. Like he's your best player. He's Francisco Lindor. Yeah. He tends to do that. He's like one of the best players in the league. You're not really going out on a limb here. If you're just saying he's going to do something and not even in the moment when

he's on deck, he didn't even say it's going to be a grand slam. He's just like something, something he's going to do something and not even in the moment when he's on deck, he didn't even say it's going to be a grand slam. He's just like something, something he's going to do something. This is, you can't claim credit for predicting that the best player is going to do something to help your team win. That happens too often. Like that's, everyone would predict that you'd think, yeah, Francisco Adora, he's going to do something today. He usually does something.

So this is just, we've got to raise the bar when it comes to what constitutes a shareable prediction, I think. KS It is funny. It's like, you know, everybody's, this is such a pained, stretched comparison that I'm going to make, but it's like everybody's like Tony and West Side Story singing like something's coming. It's like, yeah, but what? Do you see Maria specifically? I just had a gut feeling that Francisco Andor is pretty good at baseball and he's just going

to do something. I don't know. That's just, that's not, it's not a story worth repeating, I think, for me. Yeah. But Ben, but Ben, like, could be. Who knows? Would you like me to incorporate all of the lyrics to something coming into the- Please. People are like, hey, stop with the 90s movie references. And I'm like, fine, I'll go all the

way back. I also, I wanted to mention this quote. This was actually prior to the Yankees losing. This was like on the eve of the series, I guess. And Jean Afterman, who is the Yankees extremely long time assistant GM and well-respected, well-liked when I worked for the Yankees way back

when everyone liked Jean. And she had a quote that was extremely un-Yankees-like and I wanted to applaud it. And I don't know whether many Yankees people are singing this tune post-loss, but we've talked before about how the Yankees are really the primary ones who get that message out about nothing mattering unless you win the World Series. And they've been pretty consistent on that from Jeter to Judge, etc. And putting it in terms where it's like we shouldn't even bother to show up if we don't win the World Series is just

a waste of everyone's time, it's an utter failure. Yes, be disappointed. Your ultimate goal is absolutely to win a World Series, but the fun we had along the way is worthwhile too. And Gene Afterman said in this MLB.com article published October 23rd, I always feel a little chagrined when people say the season is a complete and utter failure if you don't win the world series, because that kind of throws away and belittles the enormous amount of work it takes just to play every single day. And I think that is a great sentiment.

When I first came to the Yankees, nobody in the organization knew what it was like not to win the World Series. Everybody expected to win the World Series every single year because there was that tremendous run. Then we were dry for a while and we came back in 2009. So that muscle memory of winning the World Series came back. It's an exercise in humility not to win the World Series every year. I think the challenge is to not get used to not being in the World Series. In the same way that winning is addictive, losing can become a bad addiction. It's hard when you get to the end of the season and there's no postseason. That was devastating last year. To come roaring back, this team is a tremendous achievement.

So there might be Yankees fans who would seize on that and say, see, they're not holding themselves to as high standards as they used to back if George were here. He is rolling over in his grave hearing that it's a tremendous achievement just to make the World Series. But no, I applaud this sentiment. I think it is nice to say it took a lot of work to get here, had to be good to get here. We delivered a lot of entertainment along the way.

There were a lot of smaller successes on the path to that ultimate success you aspire to. And I hope that that coming from a Yankees executive, I hope that filters down and that we hear more of that and less of this was a waste. It's a tricky balance, you know, and I've given the Yankees faithful and the Yankees themselves some guff about this, but like it is a hard balance because you do want to have aspirations. You don't want to be satisfied or rest on your laurels, but I also just think that there's a, you know, there's so much that can constitute a good season and you don't want to lose sight

of that stuff either. And I don't know, it's like you want to be serious without being self-serious. Does that distinction make sense? Yeah. All right. Also want to draw your attention to a new innovation in player celebrations, which is glove flipping. Okay. So I'm going to send you this video. I will link to it on the show page as always, but this was a highlight from Lidlm. So Dominican pro baseball is going on. Baseball is not over, even though Major League Baseball is. MLB is on a break, but baseball is still being played elsewhere. And Cesar Valdes was pitching. This was a week or so ago and he got a big strikeout and he celebrated. Not happy. Yes.

The hitter was extremely unhappy. The benches emptied apparently. This was a Lise and Tauros. I don't know what the history was, what else had gone on between these two teams or in that game. I just, uh, parachuted in and saw this clip, but the hitter jawing immediately at Valdez for doing this. Everyone's running out. The umpires are holding them back and all because of this glove flip.

And it's very much, this is not like throwing the glove way up in the air, like Jesse Arasco style to celebrate after you have a huge win or something. This was just a strikeout in a six to one game in the sixth inning. This flip just kind of, you know, very much the bat flip motion and Hitter took great exception to this. So what do you make of the glove flip? So part of this is maybe he's not angry. He's just surprised. Yeah. is maybe he's not angry, he's just surprised. A theme for this episode.

The place that we have landed about bat flips and a big argument in their favor, a sort of an acceptable mode of expression is that very rarely do guys bat flip at the pitcher, right? We tend to have a lot more patience for exuberance because you've just done something very exciting or difficult and you get to be happy and exuberant about it. But when you're doing that at a guy, we tend to think that the guy being expressed at gets to express back, right? That it feels like it's about showing up your opponent rather than being excited at your own achievement. And I think that it's a spectrum. You kind of know the stuff that feels like

it has maybe slid into being unsportsmanlike when you see it. And I think that when you're a pitcher, like you're facing the guy, like that's just your natural direction. And so I can imagine, particularly since you don't see this very often, it feeling much more like, hey, he's showing you up. And you might take exception to that. I could see like if a pitcher turned around and did that in the direction of his infields, that might read really differently to the hitter than this. I don't know what I think about it. I want to think about it a little bit more, but that seems like the obvious sort of differentiator

because it does look like he's like flipping that glove at him. Like he's like, yeah, it's a targeted glove flip. It feels a little dismissive. It is a little like kind of a brush your shoulder off. It's like a mic drop sort of glove drop. I like it cause it's new and novel to some extent. And it feels only fair that if hitters can bat flip, then pitchers could glove flip.

Sure, yeah, yeah. But yes, there does seem to be a bit of malice behind it. And maybe malice is too strong for flipping a glove, not at him even, but yes, there does appear to be a bit of, yeah, you're not even worth me. I don't even need a glove. It feels directed. Right? It feels, it feels. Yeah, you can't make contact anyway. I don't even need a glove, right? It feels, it feels. You can't make contact anyway,

so what do I need this for? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you know, maybe that's, maybe I'm reading too much into it. I'm open to the notion that I'm reading too much into it. And like I said, it could be that some of this is just, you haven't seen it before,

and so you have a bigger reaction to it than you would if you were given time to kind of sit and think on it. But I can understand being like, hey, I've already struck out, you know, I'm already embarrassed. Why must we embarrass me further? You know? I think I get that. I don't feel like it needs to be a whole, we don't need to wring our hands for days about it, but I get being like, hey, that feels a little targeted. CBer Well, because sometimes there will be pretty over the top reliever, mostly reliever celebrations, not always relievers, but pitcher just in

general. You have very demonstrative, you might have firing it off an but pitcher just in general, you have very demonstrative, you might have firing it off an arrow, let's say, you might have a Fernando Rodney style celebration, or you might just have some kind of chest pounding, fist pumping, yelling, you know, sometimes like sticking your face in your glove as you yell expletives, and of that again if it's just oh that guy's pumped up he got a big out it's not really directed at me then there's not that big an issue but sometimes there is also and sometimes there's some

jawing that goes on as the hitter is still standing at home played and the pitchers walking off the mound they'll talk to each other and sometimes it gets more theatrical of course there was the Aroldis Chapman somersault after finishing games back in 2012, which Dusty Baker, his manager at the time, kind of put the kibosh on that. Yeah. Reading the AP headline, Aroldis Chapman told to stop antics. Well, I guess he stopped that specific antique.

Yeah, I was going to say. But that kind of choreographed mountain celebration, you don't see that so much now. And maybe that's for the best. There's a level at which you're kind of making it about you as opposed to like an organic, just expressing your joy that you're feeling in that moment. And also, yeah, you're rubbing it in a bit. So just, you know, the glove flip. Hadn't really seen something like this before. So I appreciate people trying something new, but the hitter clearly did not appreciate it.

And like, I think Rodney is maybe a good counterpoint to this because often there may have been individual exceptions to this, but like my memory of him as a mariner was that when he would not just say if he would fire the arrow and he would fire it to the outfield, like he didn't do it at the guy, right? And then there were times where people took exception to that. Like I know the angels got kind of worked up about him doing that.

And then they got the sweetest revenge, which is that they want a game that he pre-maturely Artemis, what's a archer? What's a male archer? Anyway, he shot the arrow too soon and then they like got him. And it was like, okay, well, fair's fair, you know? CB 1 Yeah, Sterling? Sterling Archer. Let's go with that. LSF Yeah, there you go. I was like, Artemis is a woman, you know? That doesn't work in this particular circumstance. CB 1 Cupid. circumstance. Cupid. Cupid. Yeah, but Cupid's a weird little baby, you know? Like, I don't want to compare Fernando Rodney, a cool adult, to a weird little baby.

That's wrong. Maybe one of those viral Marx people archers at the Olympics. I don't know. There are lots of famous archers over the centuries, over the many millennia. I thought you were gonna talk about a weird viral baby. There are a lot of, you know what, Ben? There are a lot of weird viral babies too. I don't think the babies, they go viral, they're not. You know? Yeah, hopefully. Words are so complicated.

Well, having had a baby in the not too distant past, also they have a lot of viral load there sometimes too, depending on the age and the exposure to daycare. Definitely contagious at times. So yeah, we're sending our thoughts to all the parents about to embark on winter daycare season. May the odds be ever in your favor, speaking of orchards, you know? Yeah, yeah. Get your flu shots, get your COVID shots, get all your inoculations. I'm due for all my various boosters. I've been boosted. Postseason's done, so now I can do it. Could have gone with Hawkeye, famous archer. Also, I have been waiting to talk about check swing challenges. So I imagine you probably

haven't had a lot of time lately to take in AFL action. Yeah, I've been remiss. I have not seen the check swing challenge system in person yet. Yeah, you've given us in-person reports about the challenge system, the ball strike challenge system. You've given rave reviews about that. Perfect flawless, no nuts. You cannot personally testify to the efficacy of the Chexwing Challenge, but I didn't even know this was happening. Me either.

This took me, they hadn't announced, at least I hadn't seen that they had done this and the IFL has been a testing ground for a lot of innovations, including ABS stuff, including the pitch clock. And now this Chexwing Challenge system, which kind of came out of nowhere for me, but I was surprised in a good way, not afraid like the elephants and the mice, just surprised, pleasant surprise. Surprise is neutral. Surprise can be positive or negative.

And in this case, it was a pleasant one because we've advocated for this. I'm in favor of this. This seems like something that could be solved or improved with technology because it's just so vague. And as everyone has pointed out, in order to enforce a check swing challenge system, you have to agree on what a check swing is or isn't. And it just hasn't actually been defined specifically. And so the official rules just say that a strike is a pitch struck at by the batter.

What does that mean exactly? Where do you draw the line? And practically I'm reading from the athletic piece that laid out how this new challenge system is working. The athletic says the practical definition is when a batter swings short of the first baseline for righties or the third baseline for lefties, but it's pretty ambiguous and it's very much a gut feeling and a justice powder steward. I know it when I see it, except that not everyone agrees on what they see

and what they know. And I think it's good though, because as I have said before, I am always deceived by Czech's wings. And they always went around more than I think they did when I first see it and then when I see the replay. Of course, if you are a baseline umpire and you are paying attention, which who knows if they all are 100% at all times. You know my thoughts about this,

which is that they are not always paying attention, but they are sometimes caught unaware. Yeah, right. And if they are paying attention, then they have a better vantage point, but still we could maybe define this better. There's again, like, are you taking into consideration intent? Are you trying to evaluate? We've talked about the complications with umpires trying to assess intent.

Or do you just say, no, you went around this far, this angle, whatever it is. And that is what they're trying to do here. So I'll read what this piece says as the check swing rule stands now. If the manager or the catcher believes the home plate umpire's judgment is wrong, they can request that umpire ask for help from the umpire at first or third base. Okay, good. Because sometimes it's frustrating when the umpire at home doesn't appeal and you think, well, how could they know that? And so you can kind of compel them to get help, which umpires

are generally good about, but not always. If the home plate umpire grants the request, then whatever the assisting umpire decides is final. Under this new camera aided system, however, there's another level of review. Catchers and managers can still ask the home plate umpire to request help. And you can do that always now. You know, when I think of requesting help, sometimes you request help on a non-check swing call and they don't agree to confer. I think they've gotten better about that. On a check swing, yeah, you're going to ask for help, but on some calls they don't. And that can be frustrating. better about that on a twerk swing. Yeah, you're going to ask for help, but on some calls they don't.

And that can be frustrating. Like you just want them all to get together and maybe fellow UMPs on the same crew would be reluctant to overrule a comrade, but still like, you know, wisdom of crowds a little bit, hopefully, but, but now you're upgrading beyond the just ask for help. Two, if the players disagree with the call, they can now challenge and go to the video to see if the swing crossed the 45 degree threshold that differentiates a check swing from a full swing. So did it break the 45 degree plane?

And it's like the ABS ball strike challenge system in that only certain people are empowered to challenge. So hitters, pitchers, and catchers may challenge. Each team is afforded two challenges per game with an extra third if two are used by the ninth inning. And it doesn't sound like there's any thought of rolling this out in the majors soon, but I'm glad that they're testing this at least. What do you make of it? I think that it's great that they're trying. I don't have an opinion about this particular implementation of it.

I would like to see it in person. The Folly is a great place to try this stuff out and to start to define like what do we want the standard to be and to say that it might change over time, right? That we might let, you know, different people challenge that our definition of what the thing is might change. It's a good place to see sort of high level proof of concept for some of this stuff. I applaud it. Now, I love the challenge system.

I think the challenge system is great. I think the challenge system solves all of our problems. Okay, not all of our problems, but it is a good solution to many of our baseball-specific problems. I do worry about larding up the game with a bunch of stuff that happens a lot being subject to challenge, but I think that in all likelihood, the number of times that a particular player or team would be incentivized to really

challenge the check swing stuff is probably going to fall into the same category as challenges under the strike zone, where the issues it's meant to address are like the really egregious missed calls in high leverage situations. And so I look forward to seeing it for my own silly self and reporting back about it. I can't imagine it'll be as good as the challenge system, which is perfect as we've established, but it might approach that standard, which would be so nice. So. Yeah, it just seems doable. They're doing this in this one park in the AFL, which has the high frame cameras and Hawkeye. And what with all the bat tracking stuff that we have now and the joint tracking, player body motion tracking.

It just seems like once you agree on what a check swing is, you should be able to automate that. And I would not miss anything if this were taken away. I don't think there's really any interesting technique or nuance or finesse that you would lose here, unlike framing and receiving for a catcher. I don't know if there's like some sort of a check swing framing equivalent, like someone who's particularly good at disguising check swinging. I don't think there's that much to that that we would lose if this were standardized. And there may be some edge cases and complications as there is with ABS where you have just certain

calls that maybe rule book strikes, but you don't really want them to be called strikes. And that's why that's at least one reason why you, you want to like take player feedback into account and maybe have a challenge system and adjust things. And one of the AFL managers notes a computer probably couldn't recognize those types of swings where a guy is starting to swing and then almost gets hit by a pitch, the barrel could go there, but having feel for the game. Most umpires aren't going to call that a swing, but it very well could be from the computer standpoint. So there might be certain cases where you can't be too rigid about it.

And so I don't know if you want to retain some subjectivity there. So it's not just, did it cross this angle if there's something finicky going on? But in principle, I think it's a good thing to explore. LSF I think that John Smoltz had a good point about this during the World Series where Stanton clearly got, I don't remember what game it was, can't recall then. That was days ago. Are you expecting me to remember? Like why would that seems unreasonable? Stanton got hit by a pitch,

but he swung, you know? And so the thing is when you get hit by a pitch, even on your hands in a way that hurts all those little bones, if you swing, you're out of luck, you know, it's just an out of luck kind of situation. And Smoltz made the point as the replay of this was going on, that maybe there's a refinement that could be introduced to that rule because once you're hit, if the hit proceeds the swing, your body is just reacting to stuff and trying to get out of the way and trying to pull back and you're not really, there's no intent to swing really. And here's the problem. There are instances where a guy really does mean to swing and then he kind of gets hit anyway. And so maybe it's not practicable, but it does seem like a good thing to investigate because it always strikes me as like, kind of, it seems unfair. It's like this poor,

this poor guy got hit in his little bird bones or he got hit on his wrist or his elbow or in his butt and now you're expecting him not to swing, I would immediately throw up. So how are we expecting him not to swing when I would throw up? That feels unfair. So I said there's still baseball going on. There's been AFL and you talked to Eric, of course, about that. And then also more baseball that's happening. There is a tournament, the premier 12 USA baseball tournament.

I'll be there later tonight. Oh, wow. That's exciting. I think so. We'll see how exhausted I feel after I go to PT. I might bail, but I'm determined to not. Well, this is being put on by the WBSC, the World Baseball Softball Confederation. And the reason why it's most exciting to me is that you get some, remember some guys action going on here. So you get some former big leaguers,

including podcast hero, podcast mascot, Rich Hill. Rich Hill is playing in this tournament on USA baseball, which is, you know, I mean, who's a captain America? Rich Hill, Mr. USA, USA, Rich Hill. I want him representing my country. Such a big, loud pronouncement of that expression in the days before, who knows, Ben, you know? It's just like, oh, yeah, this is a dangerous one.

So yeah, you got your Dylan Coveys and your Anthony Gozes and Tupi Toussaint, et cetera, but really, you got Rich Hill. Rich Hill's still in action, always right with the world, as long as Rich Hill is still on a mound somewhere. So I hope that you get to see him in action. And that sounds fun to me. So you'll have to tell us how it went next week.

Yeah, I mean, it's good for us to plan nice things to talk about next week because I don't know, man, could be, I might be catatonic. Who could say how many edibles can I stream into each other to make it through? Got to work. That's the problem. Should be a whole, whole week should be a holiday, Ben, you know? That's the thing. Got to keep the, got to keep the ball rolling like a hamster. Well, if the whole week's a holiday, if you want to bury yourself in your work and lose yourself in your work, if the whole week's a holiday, if you wanna bury yourself in your work and lose yourself in your work, if the whole week's a holiday,

that would be the opposite of what you want. Yeah. We are dark on Tuesday though, to give people time to vote. It should just be a federal holiday. The fact that it's not a holiday is, well, it's part of a larger problem is what it has been. You can go vote any day now.

We did already, just repeating our PSA. Also some other baseball to look forward to in the future, not next year, but the year after that, there was an announcement of a new US based women's professional baseball coming in 2026. And this is something that is co-founded by Justine Segal, the founder of Baseball for All, whom we talked to a couple of years ago. She was on to talk to us about the League of Their Own TV show, cause she was the baseball consultant for that series.

And I think we may have briefly talked about Baseball for All in that conversation, but it wasn't primarily about that. But she's involved in this initiative to start the Women's Pro Baseball League, which is going to start with six teams. I guess they're all going to be based in the Northeastern US, and it will be the only professional women's baseball league in America. It's co-founded by Segal and also this guy, Keith Stein, and it's sort of exciting. There's going to be some well-known women's baseball players, also some male figures from baseball who were involved as advisors and such. There

was just a documentary that premiered on MLB Network called See Her, Be Her that talks about the history of a number of top women who have played baseball. And of course, there's been a lot of interest in a league of their own and, you know, of course there's been a lot of interest in a league of their own and that story. And of course we're mid boom in women's sports. Yeah. And just incredible ramp up in broader mainstream interest and a lot of success ratings wise and finance wise. And the co-founder Stein cited the success of the WNBA and the NWSL, et cetera. And why don't we have a baseball equivalent to this?

And Sequel and others, you know, have talked about girls, women being shunted toward softball. Not that there's anything wrong with softball, but they are two distinct sports. Obviously, you know, there's some, some obvious similarities, but, but different and you know, if you want to play softball, great. If you're playing softball, cause you were told you can't play baseball, not as great. And you know, there have been outlets for, for women to play pro baseball and high level baseball in Japan and elsewhere, but we've been lacking that in the US. So, you know, how popular this will be, how much money this will make,

how many people will watch it, how functional and viable and successful it will be, I don't know, seems like a situation where maybe we should do an interview at some point and maybe we could have Justine back on to hear more about the specifics. I'd be interested in that, but in principle, bring it on. Yeah, gosh, we could spend an entire episode talking

about sort of the evolution of the WNBA and how the league has arrived at the moment that it's having, which is really a series of moments, I would argue, finally getting like really recognized as much as there is this new groundswell of interest the league has been building to this point for a long time. But I think that one of the really great things that the WNBA has shown as a proof of concept is that if you give women's sports time and resources, people will watch them because they're really great athletes

and they play a dynamic game. And the level of play that we're seeing in the WNBA is phenomenal. And I don't say that to disparage what it looked like when it was initially founded, but when you have a generation of girls who grow up understanding this to be a viable option for them and seeing it resourced,

I think it does make a difference in terms of the amount of enthusiasm that you have for kids playing sport. And that's really great, you know? So I think, I hope that they have time, you know, that they have enough runway to kind of let it gain momentum and come along because it can be really exciting

when that happens. And I think it's really wonderful. I'm so excited to see kind of where they take it. And it just goes to show like, once you have that initial proof of concept in one area, people sort of look at something that they previously thought to be impossible and are like, oh no, that's not impossible. I was just being sort of limited in my thinking about it. And that doesn't mean that this league will succeed. And it doesn't

mean that it'll become, you know, baseball, women's baseball is equivalent to the WNBA. Like, I don't know, we're going to have to see what it is. But there were a lot of other pro basketball leagues for women before the W and some of those got cannibalized by the W for being honest about it. But you know, the fact that there was persistence and that women kept saying like, no, we want to play this sport and we know that we can do it at a high level and that we are a viable league. You know, eventually that stuck and now we get to watch this incredible league of women play basketball. I hope that we get to say the same thing about baseball,

however many years from now it is. Yeah, we'll return to that topic. And I guess that if you're someone who wants to see a woman playing pro baseball against men, which doesn't necessarily need to be the goal. But if you wanted to see that, then often the, I think, realistic and reasonable rejoinder to that is like, well, there's just no pipeline and how do you find them? And it's just, you know, like it's hard to make a living doing that. And so in addition to the fact that there's just not a

lot of representation or role models you can point to certainly in the men's ranks playing against men in those established leagues, well then you need to provide some sort of path so that you can continue to play baseball at a high level. And so if you want women to get scouted by MLB teams, for instance, then having this league and again, I don't think it's just going to be like a showcase circuit for MLB scouts or something. Like that's a pretty limited way of looking at it. It's just a place for women who want to play baseball to play baseball and

hopefully make a living doing that, right? And hopefully make a career out of it. But if you think that it would be good to see a woman playing minor league baseball or get drafted by an MLB team, etc. down the road, then having an actual league like that, I suppose, would make that easier to retain and attract and find talent. So if that's something that you want to see, then maybe that makes that more likely, or maybe it's just a distinct entity like the W is, but either way, better than nothing. Yeah. Also, we got some news about that Shohei Otani 5050 ball, which sold for an absolute fortune. I don't know what I would have estimated it would sell for, but probably not this much.

It ended up selling at auction for $4.392 million. And I know there's still some dispute about the ownership of the ball and whether the ball was wrested away from the initial fan who got it. And there's lawsuits, and so it's not entirely clear who's gonna get all of this money but we know what it was bought for. It was bought by this Taiwanese private investment company and it sounds like it's going to be put on display for the public which is nice I guess. It's not gonna be a once-upon-a-time upon a time in Shaolin sort of situation where one person gets it and no one else gets to enjoy it ever. So if this is put on display for

the public, then I guess that's kind of cool. Obviously it's primarily an investment, but that's a lot. They're going to put it on tour, seemingly in Taiwan, Japan, and there might be charity shows so that they could display the ball. Ultimately, it just looks like a baseball. So it's not like that riveting a spectator experience. Yes, the history associated with it is cool. And if you go to the hall of fame and you see all the old memorabilia, then there's a romance to that. If it's just a brand spanking new baseball, then I don't know that I would go see it because it's the one that Shohei Otani happened to hit. But that's, I guess, a reflection of just the star power of Shohei Otani, the fact that he was 50-50 because we've seen, I guess the previous record was McGuire's 70th home run,

which sold for 3.005 million. And that probably, I mean, I don't know how these things have appreciated. I know the sports memorabilia market has just gone off in the past few years. So perhaps it's like buying a sports team and these things, you never really lose money. But McGuire specifically, I would guess, given that that record has since been surpassed and also his performance has been tainted somewhat, but by what we know about how he achieved it, maybe that was buying at the top of the market a little bit. And, you know, Otani 50-50, it's just the celebrity of him. Now we've talked

about, like, it doesn't seem totally out of reach that someone else could get to 50-50, it's just the celebrity of him. Now we've talked about, like, it doesn't seem totally out of reach that someone else could get to 50-50 at some point. He'll still be the first ever to have done it and he'll still be Shohei Otani. So that's special, but you know, it's a lot of money. Yeah, it's funny to me. I'm glad that like as an art of active baseball, it will be something that is relatively accessible to people, but it's like, don't you just want to watch the highlight of the home run? If you think the ball is cool, let me tell you, well, watching it get hit makes you feel, you know what I mean? It's such a funny bit of business. Right. It sounds like the ball shows signs of being hit, which is good. It's not just a pearl. It's not just a spotless.

According to the description from the auction site, the Otani baseball exhibits excellent game use with black scuffing and surface abrasions present throughout the white leather surfaces. So you can tell that it was hit hard. So that's good, I guess. I guess, but don't you, I just, I wouldn't know. You could tell me any ball was that ball and I'd be like, yeah, but I bet it was, you know? It just doesn't strike me as something

that's particularly, I don't know, resonant. It's not like seeing a piece of art. Like I don't like it when very, very wealthy people will buy like important pieces of art and then they try to keep them in a private collection. Like you should be able to, you know, invoke a good, public good clause in instances like that. But if someone bought a, bought that baseball, you know, it seems like it's between Otani and that person. Like that's not in my business. Whatever. I'll just watch him hit it. I'm just going to watch him hit it. That's the cool part. Yeah. As one of the world's foremost Otani appreciators, if this ball were exhibited somewhere near me, I might just browse by it.

Like I'd cast my eyes on it. I'd look at it for 30 seconds. I'd examine the abrasions and then I'd move on. There's not that much to say about it, I suppose. But it's because there's no relationship between Otani and the ball. They were ships passing in the night. He was sending it deep into the night. It's not even like a glove where a glove is like, you know, there's personal ownership and sentiment attached to that. You have to is like, you know, there's personal ownership and sentiment attached to that. You have to take care of your glove. You have to patch up your glove.

You have to break in your glove. You have to maintain your glove. It's- You have to throw it at in the direction of hitters. You've just shown up. Yes, yes. And you have to make a choice about what kind of glove you have.

And the wear might show something about the way that you use that glove. Whereas the ball, you just happened to hit it once. It was pure coincidence. You had no personal tie to that thing. Even a bat, like you had to choose your bat model and you had to put the pine tar on it and you had to tap it at home plate when you were deciding how far away to stand. And right, it's like made to your specifications. Whereas the ball. Yes. The ball, that ball being the one that you hit has as much to do, has more to do

with the pitcher than it does with you. And even that is a very loose kind of relationship. Yeah. I'm shorting the Otani ball then, I guess, but happy for whoever has it and gets to enjoy it now. That's nice. Did you see, by the way, that another sign of Japan's enthusiasm for baseball, that with Otani in action in the World Series, the mega popular anime One Piece delayed,

postponed its season premiere, knowing that everyone was gonna be watching Otani. Like, can you imagine just that happening here? It's almost like a time capsule to the way baseball used to be viewed during the quote unquote golden era in the US, which was not really golden for the baseball itself, but maybe was in terms of the prominence,

the part that baseball played in the national consciousness. It really just is the national pastime in Japan in a way that it hasn't been in the U S for an extremely long time. And I'm just imagining, you know, whatever the equivalent of One Piece is. I mean, One Piece is playing popular here too, but whatever the popular program, you know,

you've some like Sunday night HBO drama or whatever it is. And it's like, no, we're postponing that because Shohei Otani is playing in the world series. I just don't see that happening. Now you certainly see shows and baseball itself trying to get out of the way of football. So like football does have that level of, of just all encompassing, like we don't want to compete with this here, but it's, it's heartening that baseball still plays that part somewhere in the world.

And it makes me want to just like live in Japan for a while and appreciate the fact that everyone else is appreciating baseball as much as I am around me. It would just be great to see that reflected back at me. There was a Patreon supporter in our Discord who was talking about being at the gym while the World Series is going on and it's on all the TVs and everyone's stopping their workouts to watch the game. When I go to the gym, baseball is generally not on.

It's people pausing to watch basketball or football. And so, you know, just a little lament, but also, isn't it nice that, that that's still happening somewhere? I mean, what is that Spotify money for? If not, you just like decamping to Japan for a little while to report a story. Go do, you know, you can tell them that you're doing yet another required feature on the hippos, on Pablo Escobar's hippos. And then you can, people, was that a Patreon joke?

No, I think that was on main. That was on main feed? Yeah. I have like one functional brain cell. It's good that I'm editing the top 50 all day. Yep. Oh boy, top 50 free agencies. And you know what that means?

What's coming up sometime soon too, probably the free agent contracts day. Yep. Oh boy. Top 50 free agent season. You know what that means. What's coming up sometime soon too, probably the free agent contracts over under draft. There's so much business that we have to take care of when we flip over into off season mode. So. Yeah, busy. A couple other things. Eric Adams, you know, didn't make it to the world series because I don't know if this was why the Yankees

were vanquished on their home turf, but his honor was not in attendance to catch the world series because he wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Sure. Because, you know, as we know, like squeaky clean, spotless record, and his gifts being given to him something somewhat under scrutiny these days.

And so he has, you know, to steer clear of the conflicts of interest board with the city, which frowns on politicians taking gifts worth more than 50 bucks. Now he could have paid his own way, just purchased the ticket to see the Yankees, but to avoid just, you know, any murmurs, any rumors, he stayed away and watched at home. And of course he is a Mets fan. So there's that too. But

he was not on hand to cheer on the Yankees faithful with a Yankees cap or a hybrid Yankees Mets cap as the case may be. He just had to take it in from afar like most others. I'm not prosecuting Eric Adams because I'm not a lawyer. And I suppose that in the interests of not getting yelled at, we have to say his alleged crimes. But if I had allegedly committed the crimes that Eric Adams has committed, I would have gone, I would have been like, screw it. I might be in jail soon. I'm going to go

to the World Series. Like, let's just do it. Like blow this thing out while I can. Would that have been the most politically responsible move? The most legally above board move? I couldn't tell you, again, not a lawyer, but if it were me, I would have been like, yeah, screw it. Let's go. Yeah, just be uncowed, you know, just show no sign of weakness projects. I've got nothing to hide, you know, I can go to the World Series and it'll all be perfectly legal. If for no other reason than I, as me, Meg, not as Eric Adams, would really like to see what the broadcast would have done with that, you know? Did they show him? Did they show see what the broadcast would have done with that. Did they show him?

Did they show him on the broadcast if he goes? What do they do? What does Fox decide to do with that? I would have loved to have the answer to that question. But it is one more thing that Eric has denied me along with not knowing so much about the ins and outs of campaign finance law in the city of New York. You know, I just know so much I didn't ask for now. Yeah. Boy, the Dodgers have been parading today.

It's, uh, it's impressive how quickly the parade comes together after the victory. Okay. I have a take about this. This should wait a little bit. Why are they so fast? I don't, I prefer give, give people who might want to travel a minute to get their Ferson order and go to the parade. I have never understood the speed with which they feel they need to do this thing. Do you think Dodger fans are going to be less enthusiastic about it?

Yeah, everyone's just going to move on. Oh, that was old news. Oh, last week when we won the World Series, you're still celebrating that? Yeah. Come on. Yeah, I feel like they should wait a little bit. But Shohei Watani was parading along with the other Dodgers and he was asked by a reporter on TV if he would be taking his shirt off, because I guess Kike did.

Okay. And he was asked if he'd be taking his shirt off and he said no. He answered without even needing the interpretation and said no, never. So disappointing to some members of the audience, I'm sure. Probably some of the people who were disappointed that One Piece was postponed, they're thinking, you know, maybe Shohay will take his shirt off at the parade. No, not happening. Shohay Otani, a never nude, at least publicly. Sorry, sorry everyone.

But glad we got resolution to that question. I don't know if anyone was wondering, but. Yeah, I was just going to ask, like, has there been a discourse about the likelihood of him taking his shirt off? Not that I've seen, no. I mean, I suppose people just wonder these things. They don't necessarily have to participate in discourse to be like, I would like to see this man without his shirt, you know? Maybe you keep some of the, I guess in all of the, the playoff celebrations,

he has been, you know, he's had a shirt on and I, not all of them have, you know, some of them, and it's not just Hernandez. Like, you know, I know Walker Bueller took his shirt off in some of the celebrations. Kirsten Kershaw will take his shirt off and drop it in the hat. He's like shirt off is his default almost like we're seeing him with a jersey on is disconcerting at this point. It's disorienting to you. You're like, why aren't you just, do you think that if he walked into the dugout in a situation like this year's where it's like he's hurt, he's not on the postseason roster, but obviously he's there, not expected

to participate. Do you think someone with the Dodgers would be like, Hey buddy, like, you know, come on, this is serious business. Or do you think they would have said, you're bringing a great California vibe to the state proceedings of Yankee Stadium. They have to keep their shirts on even when they're playing slap-assball. Do you think that they would have said that? Maybe. I guess it was cold some of the nights.

Yes, it was. And Kike, in addition to taking the shirt off, he has taken the filter off and he has come out against Fat Joe, which to be fair, a lot of people did, including us on the podcast. But he said- I would like to clarify, I didn't have a strong opinion about Fat Joe one way or the other. I don't feel qualified to have a real opinion about it. I'm not familiar with the man's whole catalog. Right.

I've only seen some of it. So I don't know. But it was the quality of the performance that was quite poor. Which had incorporated lip syncing. Yeah, that was quite poor. And Kike said, he came out and sang, and we didn't need to play anymore because after that performance we had already won. Wow.

Wow. I feel like that's a lot to... I don't know that you need to give Fat Joe that kind of power. I know. And like, you're complimenting him in a weird way by saying that he has the ability to play that big a role. I know Joe Kelly talked about the Fat Joe curse at one point, because Fat Joe was shown on the video board, I think, before that fateful fifth inning. And Joe Kelly was like, oh, well, we're going to win now because of fat Joe. And I'm like, he's not like a wizard. He's like a guy, you know.

Yep. And while we're loosely on the subject of Japanese baseball. So Japanese baseball in NPV, they hand out the IG Sawamura award. And, uh, you know, it's the equivalent of the Sayang in NPP. I talked about the real life inspiration for the award about a year ago back on episode 2104. But the thing about the Sawamura Award is that they don't always award it. If they don't think that someone is deserving, they just won't give it to anyone. I love that. I was going to ask like, what if the awards in MLB worked like this,

where it's just like, you know, I'm just not feeling a Cy Young award winner this year. Like no one quite cleared the bar for me. So the process, we could probably kind of take issue with the way it's handed out. This is the first time in five years

that they are not going to give one to anyone. And it's a five member committee. And so immediately like you have a selection committee and it's just this tiny little group. And I think it's also often old timers who were kind of crotchety. And it's, you know, the process perhaps doesn't seem great, but often like they have these set selection criteria where you kind of have to check these boxes and it's not iron clad, but often like they have these set selection criteria where you kind of have to check these boxes and it's not iron clad, but it's also quite old school where it's like they have seven criteria, 15 wins, 150 strikeouts, 10 complete games, an ERA of 2.5 or lower, 200 innings pitched, 25 games started, a 600 winning percentage, and the NPP schedule is shorter, you have lower innings pitch, 25 games started, a 600 winning percentage, and the NPP schedule is shorter,

you have lower innings counts, but having these kind of hard coded, did they clear these bars? Maybe that's not great either, but the chairman of the committee said that it was a very difficult selection process and we haven't been able to settle on one winner in the current era where pitchers are an advantage, we would like them to improve their performance a little more. And we've talked about that. It's been a big time pitchers era in NPB lately. And so if you're awarding based on criteria, it's like the bar is raised now or lowered

depending on the stat. And so, you know, if you manage to check off these boxes, maybe that's not enough when you're in a modern dead ball era, the year of the pitcher, you got to be better than that. And so they're just like, you know, there were a few pitchers who satisfied three or four of the criteria, but not all of them. And they just said, you know, you didn't do enough. I need to see more No Sawamora award winner this year.

So it'd be an interesting wrinkle to the annual awards discussions in MLB if it was not BBWAA decided, but just five old timers who were like, yeah, you know, not good enough. I do love it generally. I don't know that I like it specifically for pitching awards because at least in our context it's like we've talked about how the, you know, the hall of fame standard might

change and who knows maybe people are like, I don't know how to evaluate pitchers anymore, but I do like the idea of being like, I don't know, try harder guys like, but, but it sort of isn't in the spirit of the award, right? Which is that the best pitcher in each league should take home an award. It doesn't require that a minimum criteria, a bar be cleared. It's just like whoever the best one is. And there's a lot that goes into that decision and there's interpretation and dispute and all of that. But like the criteria aren't, isn't like, hey, you have to have cleared this hurdle. It's that you have to be better than, you know, it's like running away from a bear.

You just have to be faster than the other guys. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, we didn't quite clear out the banter backlog. I've got more, but it'll keep till next week, which is another nice thing about offseason effectively wild. Tends to be a bit more evergreen. It's not, oh, we gotta go talk about this game before there's another game.

There's no expiration date for some banter. Banter is forever. I've enjoyed everyone's responses to our discussion of the Game 5 play on the Mookie Grounder to first. Was it more Anthony Rizzo's fault or Garrett Cole's fault? Strong conflicting opinions. It's the Yanny or Laurel, is the dress blue and black or white and gold of baseball plays? Of course we can all agree that they were both to blame. We just differ on the degree. By the way, through my connection

to the show bae community, by which I mean following the queen of the show baes, Portia, pretty sure I've seen shirtless show hay pics before. I think there was one beach excursion which was of some interest to my wife, so maybe he meant he wouldn't disrobe in a baseball context. In his free time, on vacation, sure. Fewer prying eyes, though probably still some prying eyes, cause hey, he's Shohei Otani. Also I mentioned that those Yankees fans who got temporarily banned from the stadium for their egregious fan interference had received a refund for the game that they were banned from attending. That's actually just standard practice. It's so they can't sue for having purchased the tickets and been denied entry. So that's just kind of a cover your ass. If we ban you and you're already ticketed for that event, that future event,

that we are not permitting you to attend, then we will refund you. That wasn't really a sign of lenience, though perhaps having to be prompted to ban them and maybe banning them for one game only, those could be such signs. Also, since we've talked so much about the one knee down catching style and how that hasn't seemed to hamper catchers when it comes to blocking, I'll just direct you to another piece of research about this. Mike Petriello wrote about this leading into the World Series. Headline both World Series catchers will be on one knee, here's why it's fine. Good story, summing up much of what we've discussed.

That'll 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. The following five listeners have already done so. They have signed up to pledge some month or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access to some perks. Alistair Howell, a dad named Chili, and Bluey the mom is named Chili.

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and stats we discussed today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Can you effectively sort through All of these stats and players in your head? Is it a while to repeat them? To all of your indifferent family and friends Keep you company, they'll keep you sane On a long bike ride or a slow work day

Megan Benwaxing about a playoff race A blues bad side race, I'll lose by its heart. It's effectively wild, so stick around, you'll be well-beguiled. It's effectively wild, like Nolan, crying was. I know that Ryan was sometimes.