Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2260: What We Might Remember About 2024

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Pebble Hunting’s Sam Miller banter about Michael Lorenzen embracing an Effectively Wild hypothetical, Ben and Sam’s past predictions about baseball in the 2020s, and Paul Skenes and the ERA title, then discuss what will be remembered about baseball in 2024 (plus a postscript). Audio intro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: […]

It's Effectively Wild So stick around, you'll be well-beguiled It's Effectively Wild Like Nolan, Ryan was Sometimes Good morning and welcome to episode 2260 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from fangraphs.com brought to you by their Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, a guest today.

Hello, Megan Ben. Hello. Hi, what a role reversal. Yeah. What have you brought me here for? To do the intro. Now you can go, thank you. No, I have a bunch of things to talk to you about.

Primarily, we have invited you on to talk about what we will remember from this year. In baseball, in baseball to be clear. We will not be rehashing the whole thing. Yeah, just the ball. You always shorten it to ball. You don't do the baseball. We gotta reclaim it. Football's been trying to claim it. Basketball's been trying to claim it. If we don't, it's like a copyright. If you don't, I guess, no, it's not like a copyright. It's like a trademark. If you don't use it, it lapses. Feels a little presumptuous to me to just claim all of the balls, but I guess we had

it first. We were here first. Yeah. So we're going to talk about that. I think we had you on last year or maybe early this year to talk about what we would remember from 2023. It's sort of an annual tradition for you and sometimes for us. Bit of banter before we get to that. I don't know if you're aware of this, Sam, but there has been another example of life repeating or imitating, I guess I won't call what we do here art,

but life imitating podcast, something that we talked about in Effectively Wild Hypothetical has now entered the realm of reality. So last month, this was several weeks ago, episode 2242, we started off that episode with a conversation prompted by a listener named Alex, who wrote in to ask us about whether it would be worthwhile for a team to get a pitcher artificially designated as a two-way player so that that team could

then flip him at the deadline and he would not cost a roster spot for the team that traded for him. And in this hypothetical, it was basically like an automatic out. I think Alex proposed it would just be a pitcher who didn't even swing like your classic Robert Gisellman article. And we said, well, he could swing. It would be all right if he swung and he would just be bad and you would just have him on the white socks or someone like that. And

he would just suck for some number of games. And then you could trade him. And we kind of debated whether that would even be worthwhile. And I think we kind of came down on not really, right, Meg? Not really. I think so. We kind of decided not so much. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that We kind of decided not so much. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you came down on not so much. Yeah, I think it was because we kind of decided that there's just so much flexibility

with the roster rules as it is, and teams are just constantly cycling in pitchers anyway, and this guy, unless he's great, he's probably not gonna be great. And so if he's just your seventh reliever or something, and he just doesn't take up an extra spot, does that really move the needle so much that you would be willing to tolerate an automatic out for 20 games or whatever it is until he's designated as a two-way player and tolerate fans being upset about that

and potentially teammates being upset about that. And I think we also said that if anyone tried it, probably it would be banned somehow that the leak would step in and say, this is an embarrassment to baseball. That's where I would have gone. Yeah. Yeah. I was also worried about the poor soul who'd have to do this, you know, forget his teammates. It felt like it would be a demoralizing day at the office on the days when it's like, hey, we know you're gonna suck up there, but get going so we can ship you out for someone we think will be part of a competitive core later. That's lousy. I mean, the situation where it would work would be something like the White Sox with

a pitcher like Garrett Crochet, where you are a bad team, you're not playing for anything. You have a pitcher who will definitely justify his roster spot. I mean, the point of this is to have be able to carry 14 pitchers instead of 13 pitchers, right? And so the team that employs Garrett Crochet might like to have 14 pitchers instead of 13. So, you know, he plays DH and just strikes out all the time, but the team, you know, probably had a 560 OPS in the DH spot anyway. But the challenge, right, is that it's like 30 games, right? It's a ton of games.

It's not like fantasy baseball rules where it's like five starts or 10 appearances. 30 games is like a long time to look at this. Yeah, you have to pitch at least 20 innings and play 20 games as a position player or DH with at least three played appearances in each game. So, yeah. Okay, 20 games, 20 games, okay. Yeah, but. But it's still a lot of games, you know?

It's still a lot. That's a meaningful number of games. It is. And you have to have them in the lineup the whole time too. Right. Oh, but then think you could suppress some other guy's service time by 20 games and that's, everybody loves to do that. Yeah, lousy.

Yeah, didn't consider that perk. Anyway, we kind of dismissed it ultimately. And then I read, reported by Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic this week, headline, Inside the Unique, I would quibble with the word unique, unique plan to sell free agent pitcher Michael Lorenzen as a two-way player. And then Rosenthal lays out exactly what we had discussed

on the podcast. Lorenzen, who turns 33 on January 4th, has not hit in a major league game since 2021 and has not had more than one plate appearance in a season since 2019, not to worry. And I would quibble with this too. The idea conceived by Lorenzen and his agent, Ryan Hamill of CAA, trying to take credit

for Effectively Wild and Alex, our listeners idea, could make the pitcher a free agent fit for non-contenders such as the White Sox and Marlins and a coveted trade target. Later, Hamill, according to sources briefed on his conversations, is talking with such clubs about signing Lorenzen, getting him the necessary plate appearances to qualify for two-way status, and then flipping him to a contender that would benefit from carrying him as a 14th pitcher. Or I guess you could even have an extra bench bat or something.

What a novel idea. I didn't even cross my mind to think that a team might decide to do that. So it is again, some weird thing we talked about that now is actually being talked about seriously by people who could maybe make it happen. AMT – A lot of people sent this to me. I was traveling yesterday, so I didn't encounter it in the wild, but didn't need to because a number of people were like, I think that Michael Renzen's agent listens to your podcast. And without having read it, I was like, that's kind of terrifying in its own right. But it makes me feel very powerful, but also powerless. Because we talk about so many things on the podcast, and so many of them are

like, good ideas. You know, ideas that we think would make baseball better, or more equitable, or more accessible, or whatever, you know, or involve more kissing. And then the things that people latch onto are like, you know, the golden at bat or this nonsense. And I'm not saying that we really had a direct role in either being popularized, but I do worry. I was like, do we need to shut down the pod and conduct an investigation of just where our tentacles reach, what they grab onto? So I don't know. It's not inconceivable that this actually was inspired by the podcast. I don't want to take

too much credit. I was kind of joking about that. But Michael Renson, I have had him on a podcast, not this one. He was on the Ringer MLB show to talk about being a two-way player when he was legitimately kind of making that attempt. And also he did DM me out of the blue a few years ago, I forget exactly what the circumstances were, but he DMed me in response to an effectively wild episode. What? And he said someone had sent it to him.

No, this is conclusive. You're downplaying it. You're to him. No, this is conclusive. You're downplaying it. You're downplaying it, but this is conclusive. It didn't sound like he was a listener. I think it was during the sticky stuff crackdown and he had made some kind of comment about that. And I forget what I had said about it, but he DMed me and he said, this was in 2022 actually.

He said, someone sent me your podcast. And then he elaborated on the comment that he made and like he throws a ton of sinkers and he was telling me some things that we hadn't considered on the podcast. He made it sound like someone just sent him this thing and he just heard it and it was the one-time thing. So I'm not saying he's a regular listener,

but it's more conceivable. I have definitely claimed that someone just sent me something when I didn't want people to know that I'm a regular consumer of that thing. Maybe, maybe. Oh yeah, I was just, oh, no, no, the song is playing in a car that was passing on the street and I was just curious. One of the principles of copyright infringement is to prove infringement, you must prove that the alleged infringer had access to the copyrighted work.

So basically, you can't just be like, this song sounds like this other song. If you can demonstrate that they played your song in their DJ set, that really strengthens your claim. That direct message would be an exhibit for me. I mean, 100%. How many players have DM'd you about segments on the podcast that is in question here? Maybe one. I've never had that happen. Yeah. I wouldn't want that to happen very often, but it is a little suspicious. But hey,

they're welcome to the idea. If it helps them out, then I guess I'm glad. Michael Lorenzen, as the kids say, gives podcast guy. Like he definitely seems like a guy who's listening to a lot of podcasts. Like he's working out and he's listening to like Andrew Huberman, is that his name? Yeah, he listens to Andrew Huberman while he lifts. So no doubt about it. He does look like he spends a lot of time lifting. So it's plausible. Yeah. So we'll see if this comes to fruition. I don't know whether it will, but I guess we hadn't really considered

Michael Lorenzo. We probably should have invoked him specifically in that hypothetical because he would be someone who could not be an automatic out. I don't want to oversell how good he'd be. Sure. You guys, he's listening right now. not be an automatic out. I don't want to oversell how good he'd be. Cause he hasn't actually hit recently. You guys, he's listening right now. It just freaked me out. I don't like. If you're listening, Michael Rensen, I'm rooting for you.

I've also listened to Andrew Huberman before. That wasn't a slam. When Michael Rensen came along, he was kind of all we had at that point. It was like Christian Bethencourt and Michael Lorenzen were like the two-way players that we were clinging to at that time. That was pre-Otani and MLB. So I was really rooting for Lorenzen and he was trying to make it work.

And he was coming in as a defensive replacement sometimes with the Reds. And, and I feel for him, cause he's always trying to establish himself either as a starting pitcher or a two-way player. And he's like always trying to break out of the box of the reliever. And I'm always kind of rooting for him to do that. So I guess if this helps, if this is the way for him to kind of become a two-way player, then I would be proud to have helped in some small way. It's weird because this idea came up as like a loophole.

Like we imagined that you could just do this with came up as like a loophole, like we imagined. Yeah. You know, like that you could just do this with any pitcher to find this loophole. And if you can get through 20 days, then it's like, so it's kind of an odd coincidence that he's an actual two way player. Yeah. Like it's not it. And so is that just because, do you think that's just because it gives a little plausible deniability to it? That he's not like, you wouldn't do this with a real pitcher, just a plain pitcher, I mean to say, because then the league would just immediately crack down on it.

But Lorenzen has the fig leaf because he actually is a 700 career OPS who has played in the field and wants to be a two wayway player and, and all that stuff. And that's the other thing. He wants to do it. I think he would want it because he wants to swing and most relievers would not want to do this. I think we're thinking of this loophole wrong. The loophole is not from the team's perspective.

He's trying to loophole himself into being the thing he always wanted to be. Yes. Yeah. He's trying to trick us. I'm more comfortable with that. I'm more comfortable with this being about Michael Lorenzen realizing his dreams than roster shenanigans. It's true that he is running a con, but who is the con on? It turns out the con is on the team. Well, then why did they volunteer this? They should have been sneaky about it, you know?

They should have just kept this little idea to themselves. I mean, even if you want to con the team, you should approach the team and say like, look, this is part of our pitch, but then don't tell Ken about that. Why are you telling Ken about that? Now the league's gonna be on the look. Maybe Ken found out on his own.

I mean, he's a good reporter. He's got, I think we have, people want more than one thing and he's got a chance for two scores. Score one, two-way player. Score two, hear himself talked about on a podcast. He loves that. That's one of the things. Do you guys want to hear the craziest thing I've ever heard about a podcast listener?

Yes. Aaron Gleeman writes to podcasts. What? Yeah, like he listens to podcasts while he writes. What? Yeah. That's inconceivable. I couldn't do that.

I can't even listen in music with lyrics while I'm editing. I can't even write. Right. I mean. In silence. Same. I also need to turn the radio off when I parallel park though. So this might be an auditory processing issue on my part.

Is that so that you can hear the beeping of your car or? I couldn't even tell you. It's like, I can't parallel process while I'm parallel parking. I can't parallel process very well just generally. I've come to find, especially as I age, like I need silence or like music with no lyrics or music with lyrics that aren't in English, that's fine. But if I'm trying to like dissect what the words are as I'm editing words, it's a catastrophe. I can't do it. One other follow-up that involves Sam. We've gotten a few requests here to follow up on a game that we played years ago that has now reached its halfway point. Oh, you know, is this the vault? It is the vault.

I've actually been meaning to follow up on a specific thing for years, and I keep meaning to bring it up because the official records of the Effectively Wild Games has me picking Walker Bueller for most Cy Youngs, or I think it's most Cy Youngs. And in fact, that was my initial answer, but then I famously pivoted to a more contrarian answer, which was Shane Bieber who did win a Cy Young. Oh, better answer. Okay. Well, we can get that record corrected. But a few people have written in because it's now halfway through.

So for people who forget, which included me, I really had no memory of doing this, but on episode 1512, which was early March 2020, what a time, MLB was running this competition called The Vault, a $1 million competition to predict the statistical leaders of the 2020s in baseball in a bunch of different categories. And we made our picks and we're now halfway through the 2020s in baseball. I guess temporarily speaking, at least, maybe we're less than halfway through if we don't get

any more work stoppages or shortened seasons, but also we very well might get another work stoppage at some point in the second. If you had to bet the over under on games played in the next 10 years, like would you bet on 1,620 games per team or do you think that it would be smarter to pick a lower number? And then like just in your general sense of the world, do you think that baseball, you know, seasons are getting more stable or are the next 10 years less stable? I guess, well, I would take the under on that exact number because we might get some rainouts or something, but that's not really what you're asking here. You're asking about either some repeat of a global catastrophe or a work stoppage, which

is hopefully likelier. I mean, not that I want that to be likely, but hopefully more likely than another global pandemic. Or I guess, you know, the season gets officially shortened or something, which certainly could happen at some point, but I guess I'd be surprised if it happened in the next 10 years. So if you put all of those things together though,

and add up the probabilities of the three, then I guess I would probably take the under. I'm taking the under for sure. There's only actually been one shortened season for any reason in the last 29. Right. But then there were a lot more in the years before that. Yeah.

I don't know if you guys saw, but they're inventing this thing called a mirror cell, which is going to end the world, runaway mirror cells. So there's that. We haven't even put that in to the calculation yet. Yeah, I was lumping that into the global catastrophe bucket. But yeah, it just seems like storm clouds are gathering, CBA wise, labor battle wise. And we did just have a work stoppage. So many wisest in so many ways. Fortunately didn't lose any games that time, but not sure we can count on that again.

So, so yeah, I don't, I don't know what percentage of the playing time of the 2020s were through. I tried, I've been trying to get from someone at MLB the records that most people picked, what were the most popular picks, and I've thus far been unable to get that data. Hopefully, maybe I will at some point, and if I do, I will update. But I had completely forgotten who we picked here, and I guess you remember at least one pick that you- I think about it constantly. Okay.

All right. Well, I have not thought about it at all. So I was going to quiz you on who you picked, but I guess you would use that. I don't actually remember who I picked. I just know that the Shane Bieber Walker Bueller thing I think about constantly. Yeah. So the categories were for batters, home runs and hits for pitchers, wins and strikeouts for teams, regular season wins and world series wins.

And then player accolades was all-star selections, MVP's and Cy Young awards. So I, I do have what we picked here and what the actual winners, the leaders in the clubhouse are halfway through the decade of baseball, courtesy of listener Trey, who compiled all that and sent it in for us. So do you want to guess who you picked or is it too hard to put yourself in the headspace of what you would have been thinking in 2020? I think it was a common, I remember my hitters, I think were a combination of Mike Trout, Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Wander Franco. And then the pitchers, I do think I had a, I think I had a Bueller or two in there and then snuck a Bieber in. And then I'm sure, I'm sure that the team pick was

the Dodgers and we just discussed the Dodgers versus Yankees. And so that would, those would be my guesses. Well, you're right on some of those. So your home run pick for the decade was Cody Ballinger. Oh, of course you wrote, you wrote that, uh, article that one time about how Cody Ballinger, we could have been watching the beginning of a record setting home run total career. You never know. And I guess we know now, well, yeah, we have a higher confidence probably now, but, uh,

Cody Ballinger has hit 85, which is 120 behind the leader, Aaron Judge, who has 205. Your pick for hits was Vlad Greer Jr., which was a pretty good pick, 37 behind the current leader, Freddie Freeman. And you got to figure that Vlad will make up some ground on Freddie over the next several seasons, right? So Freddie is at 816 and Vlad is at 779. So you're very much still in play there. Wins, this says at least that your pick was Walker Bueller

and you are 24 behind the leader who has 60 and that is Framber Valdez. So can't fault you for not picking Framber at that point, I think. So Bueller has 124, so he's 36 behind Framber and then strikeouts your pick was Walker Bueller also. And he has 577, which is 376 behind the leader, Aaron Nola. And then according to this, your team wins pick was the New York Yankees. And usually you can't really go wrong picking the Yankees as your decade leader.

That's been right more often than it's been wrong, I think, historically speaking. Thank you, Ben. But thus far you have gone wrong in this half decade at least. So the Yankees are- Pulled the rug out from under you on that compliment, huh? You still got some years to catch up there, but 58 behind the Dodgers total of 458. Now this one- I don't like that tone.

This might be a bit more embarrassing. Your world series totals pick for the 2020s was the Chicago White Sox. Well has anyone won two? No. The Dodgers have won two. No. Oh, jeez. It's not looking good.

Yeah. So that one you might want back. And then MVP awards was Byron Buxton was your pick. Yeah. You know, we were optimists. A lot of us were, maybe still are, but he's, he's trailing by three in that category still has time to come back, but Otani has built up a commanding lead and then yes, this says that your Cy Young pick was Walker Bueller, but you're saying it was Shane Bieber. And that means that this says that your Cy Young pick was Walker Bueller,

but you're saying it was Shane Bieber. And that means that you are tied because no one has won more than one Cy Young award so far this decade. And your All-Star Games pick was Mike Trout. And he trails by one now by, yeah, there are a few guys, several guys who have had four All-Star appearances. Trout has had three and the four timers are Betts, Burns, Freeman, Guerrero, Judge, Otani, Ramirez, and Soto. Not bad, except for the White Sox one. You're going to do this for yourself? Yes, it'll go faster because I've already told you who the winners are or the leaders are, but that does maybe-

I know. I'm sorry. Are you expecting that I'm going to remember the answers there? Clocking that? This does drive home just how far the White Sox have fallen, right? Because that could have even been a defensible answer at that time, which it was because like they were good and getting good and they had the great farm system and they were young and everything. Like it was-

Made the playoffs that year. Yeah, right. And so the fact that they could have been picked as the decade winner in world series and here they are coming off one of the worst seasons certainly in the modern era, which we will discuss in just a moment when we get to what we will remember about this year.

Before we made our picks, if I remember this episode correctly, the first half of the episode was figuring out the earliest you could have correctly guessed the winner in the previous decade. And it was frequently like, like July, 2019 to like, to have like were there were people who like one like I think Nelson Cruz won home runs and you would not have put him in your top 10. You know, yeah, any any time before or you know before 2017 or 2018. I'm still in it. And I also would like to just note that I recently saw a competition in which people did much worse than me. That

competition was a shooting competition between Stephen A Smith and Shaquille O'Neal. And they had to shoot three point baskets and they each got five shots and they hit the rim one time. They hit the rim one time. They hit the rim one time. They had eight air balls out of 10 shots. And then Charles Barkley saw this and was like, I'm shooting one. And he shot one and I would estimate that his shot was 12 feet short. And then Ernie Johnson came up and went 0 for 4, all airballs. So I got Shane Bieber. Yeah.

Yeah, you're doing better than they were. So my picks, my home run pick was Ronald Acuna Jr., who is trailing Aaron Judge by 107 home runs. Wow. I guess a little bit better than Bellinger, but not that much better. And then my hits pick was Wander Franco. That is a 524 hits behind Freddie Freeman and that number will only increase. And wins and strikeouts.

I had Walker Bueller for both and team wins. I did have Dodgers and world series titles. I did have Dodgers. Oh, so that's solid, I guess. Yeah. And then MVP awards, I had Mike Trout. So that sort of said, why were we sleeping on Otani like that? What were we?

Cause at that time, I guess 2020. He wasn't been good. You were so obsessed with Walker Bueller. My gosh. He was good in 2018 and then he got hurt and then he was bad in 2020, he wasn't been good. You were so obsessed with Warfarin Buehler. My gosh. He was good in 2018 and then he got hurt and then he was bad in 2019. You just answered your own question. Yeah, I guess that's why, right?

He had multiple injuries and surgeries and, but still. Still. I don't know. You hadn't fallen in love yet. Oh, I was in love, but I guess I was doubting at that point. Not for seeing the MVPs would have been an oversight just because we did not have the imagination to add two wars together and see how big that war would be. But he was not the hitter that he is now, and he had thrown 50 innings as a pitcher. So it was, we were, we did not see this coming at all

at that point. In fact, I think that probably the initial excitement had probably been cashed. Yeah, that was like a low ebb for Otani Mane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had Walker Bueller as my Cy Young award pick, and then I had also Mike Trout as my all-star pick. So there was a lot of overlap there,

but I didn't doubt the Dodgers. You can't go wrong just picking the Dodgers to be perpetually good, apparently. So we should talk about some things that happened this year. And one thing that happened was that Paul Skeens was fantastic, and maybe this can segue into the larger question of what we will remember, because you wrote separately at Pebble Hunting, your excellent sub stack that I read every word of about Paul Skeens and specifically about your

belief that he is getting shortchanged, that we are sleeping on skeins to some small extent because the ERA qualifier is horribly wrong and is way out of whack because pitch error usage has changed. And this is a topic that you have returned to a couple of times. You've written about this previously and you're not the only one who has written about this, but this is as close as you come to having a hobby horse, I guess. And you seemed sort has written about this, but this is as close as you come to having a hobby horse, I guess. And you seemed sort of animated about this issue and you made a pretty impassioned case that we should change what counts as qualifying. And I think you laid out quite a reasonable case. And I got to say, I don't care at all about this. I just don't care at all. You have

not persuaded me to care. I have not persuaded you to care. No. And I don't care at all about this. I just don't care at all. You have not persuaded me to care. I have not persuaded you to care. No. And I, I don't know if that's my failing or yours, but I, I feel like this just doesn't matter to me at all and that it hasn't really made much of a difference whatsoever in terms of the perception of Paul Skeens. I feel like we're, we're past innings qualifiers. I don't even look at that so much myself anymore. We're in an era where I can set the minimum wherever I want it to be

for whatever use I desire. And so you seem to postulate that Skeens is not getting enough credit for what he achieved this season and he's not going to get mentioned in enough fun facts because he's not going to get compared to all the past qualifiers and it won't be official in that sense. But it's hard for me to imagine Paul Skeens getting more hype or more credit for what he accomplished this year. And so I wonder whether we have just evolved past the need for qualifiers. So maybe you can lay out your case or why you care about this. Cause I'm still sort of wrestling with why I just, I don't care about this. This just doesn't bother me much.

I, I don't want to, um, get too focused on one tiny specific thing you just said, uh, and take this in a different direction. But you said you don't think Paul Skeens could be more hyped than he already was this year or his rookie year couldn't be more hyped. And I actually think that's wrong. I think I'm stunned at how unexcited we all are for Paul Skeens rookie season specifically compared to previous pitcher manias. Grant Prisby and I did an episode of this on the Athletics Baseball podcast, exploring why it is that like, you know, Nomomania and Fernando Mania and Mark Fidrich and I would say even Dantre Willis all got like kind of huge manias around them while Paul Skeens, who was better than all of them, was more hyped than all of them,

showed up and was like really immediately the best pitcher in baseball or is now pretty clearly one of the two or three best pitchers in baseball. And yet it wasn't the biggest story of the year. It wasn't as big a deal as Strasburg. And I didn't know whether that was more a matter of our big a deal is Strasburg. And I didn't know whether that was more a matter of our dispersed attentions or if it's a sort of a fatalism about picture arms or about our failure to - Although that could make you appreciate it even more if you have a sense that it's fleeting, which with Strasburg it was at least initially, and maybe we didn't even appreciate how fleeting it would be, whereas now you yeah, you're constantly here,

watch Skeen's while you can. But then- We should be doing that, yeah. Although I think that, and we have taken pains to apply the appropriate caveats when we said this, but I do think that there is a perception around Skeen's because he is built like a brick sh** house that he is just gonna be immune to those issues, right?

We saw him go so deep when he was pitching in college, he threw all these innings, da, da, da. And I'm not saying he can't get hurt because like guys who are built like him do get hurt, that happens. They're pitchers. But I wonder if in the back of our minds, people are going, oh, am I going to have him? Look at the guy, you know? I wonder. Or it might be that he pitches for the pirates.

That's probably part of it too. And also, I guess he's kind of a conventional great pitcher, whereas at least some of the guys you mentioned, they're no mo and, and done trails. Like he doesn't have a sky high kick. Valenzuela and Fidrich, all of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's, yeah, there's a little less character. Sky High leg kick. Valenzuela and Fidrich, all of them. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a little less character. I mean, maybe less so with Strasburg, but he didn't have like a huge leg kick or turn completely around on the way to the plate. Or Nomo obviously was just because he was coming over from Japan, which no one had for decades. That was a big part of that too. So there's not as much with Skeens. It's just like,

he's dating, Livy Dunn is like the thing that people know about Paul Skeens, basically, other than the fact that he's good at pitching. So my primary theory is, as I put it on the podcast I did with Grant, is that in contrast to like Mike Trout, when Mike Trout comes up, and he's amazing, and he's 20 years old, and you can start forecasting all the things that are conceivably in play for him as a career. You can start doing the math and going, could he get to 150 war? Could he get to 700 home runs? Could he be the greatest of all time?

Could he win how many MVPs, etc., etc., etc. Whereas with Skeens being a pitcher, you don't think that any of the great marks are conceivable for him. He's gonna win like 155 games in his career. He's gonna be the best pitcher in baseball for 12 years if things go right, and he's gonna have 155 wins. I mean, Chris Sale has like 155 wins and Paul Skeens is gonna have fewer than that. Chris Sale has 138 wins and Paul Skeens is probably gonna be in a position to win fewer games than Chris Sale. And he's probably, he's like, his career high for innings, it's going to be like 196. And you know, his, because he he's a pitcher, you don't start thinking he's going to be healthy for like a 17 year

run. You expect to have a bunch of a bunch of like big career trajectory shifts as he recovers from shoulder surgery and all that. And so it is in fact, it's a, it's an inability to imagine his legacy is what makes him harder to get excited about than a comparable position player than a Juan Soto who you can put onto Ted Williams' early career and be like he could be Ted Williams. You can't put Paul Skeens on Tom Siever's early career and be like he could be Tom Siever. And because this sort of comes back to his not getting full credit for his rookie season because he didn't qualify. I mean, I don't think it's the biggest thing in the world, but probably like one of the two to four biggest sort of like first

things you notice about a player or the first things that you scan to determine the greatness of his career is bold ink. And because he didn't qualify, he doesn't have Bold Ink this year. He would have. He would have won the ERA title as a rookie. That's a big deal with a 1.96 ERA. That's a big deal. Is it still? Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. I mean, I would notice it, but you know, maybe it's not, but I would notice it. He would have led the league in ERA. He would have led the league in WIP. He would have

set the rookie record for ERA and the rookie record for WIP. And instead, he just has a shortened season like Cal Eldred's rookie year or Aaron Seely's rookie year, where you look at it and you're like, oh, seven and one, pretty good. That's what he had, but he didn't have rookie years like them. He had essentially a, what is like the median full time starting pitchers season. The like 133 innings is now the norm. There are guys who start 32 games who only get 150, 160 innings. There are teams, there are world champions this year who don't have a single pitcher with more than 133 innings. So he did pitch a full season, but on his stats, it looked like he had a half season. And so that in that way, I feel like in that way,

instead of looking at his rookie season and saying, it's Dwight Gooden's rookie season, holy cow, he had Dwight Gooden's rookie season. We look at it and go, it's Tim Hudson's rookie season. Okay, interesting. Yeah, this was, I guess, why you and Joshian were coming up with different ways that we could appreciate him and forecast a record that he could set some sort of no hit starts, right? Like not no hitters because he just doesn't go deep enough into games, but he was pulled from no hit starts. So that could be his records that he would own if we could convince people to care about that.

But I don't know when I look at his stats, I understand that most people are not consuming stats via the fan graphs leaderboards where they're just setting the innings minimum. When I look at his stats, I would just sort of automatically set the leaderboard at 130 probably, and then he would just be there if I cared about, you know, because I just don't care about what qualifying is anymore really. And so I just set it wherever I think a substantial number is for whatever I'm trying to do or whatever comparison or cross-era comparison I'm trying

to make. I'll just put it at the place. I guess I'm essentially saying that I basically do already what you're saying that MLB should do officially. And maybe that means that in a way I agree. It's just that I'm doing that for myself already. And so I don't need anything to change, but obviously most people are not consuming the sport that way. I'm somewhat scarred by the experience of the 2010s, really the late 2010s, especially when the normal people in my life were constantly challenging Mike Trout's greatness to me. And that was for a different reason, but it was because they did not like really buy into the war and they wanted to see the dingers and the ribbies.

But I don't wanna have a, I don't know, I don't wanna have a situation where people are, where they're telling me that Paul Skeen's isn't a horse like in the old days or whatever. I don't think, I mean, that's not really the problem I have in mind. The problem I have in mind is I don't wanna have to use a bunch of extra words to qualify a pitcher's greatness when I'm just trying to write a nice concise article. You don't want to

have to put qualifiers that you don't have to. Bold ink is super sexy. Bold ink is the greatest thing in the world. And I think it should reflect the, I mean, like he will almost certainly, I feel like I should knock on wood after being like, he'll never get hurt. He's giant. He's built like the Nimitz. Do you think that if he has like a qualifying season in his sophomore campaign that that solves a lot of this problem? Or is it that we're still not going to be fully grasping the greatness of the rookie campaign just from a load up his page perspective that's the problem. I think that his rookie campaign will never get the credit that it deserves. I think if

he'd been chasing the ERA title in the last couple weeks, it would have made things a little more interesting. But I don't know. Like again, I don't think my interest in this topic precedes Paul Skeens by about a decade. And like a lot of it, a lot of what this comes down to is just I can't abide a bad argument. And the argument for 162 being still 162 feels like a bad argument to me. Skeens will be fine if he has a long career. Well, and he did win Rookie of the Year, so he'll always be able to be like, yeah.

He also won, he finished third in Cy Young voting. And so like I, you can't, this goes both ways. In one sense, his rookie season was not quite so overlooked because he finished third in Cy Young voting. On the other hand, if you can finish third in Cy Young voting. To me, as a starter, you qualified. You have qualified as a dude. Hunter Green led the league in war. He led the league in war, and yet he didn't qualify for the ERA title. I just think as a thing that gets bugged by little details of the world, I'm sorry. I just can't stop hearing the whine. Yeah. But do those placements and how he showed up on ballots then suggest

that he's not getting ignored? It's not like when people were sorting the leaderboard and he didn't show up, they forgot he existed. So that's what I'm saying is like, leaderboard and he didn't show up, they forgot he existed. So- Right. That's what I'm saying is like he's like it is evidence that like, you know, people understood that he was good.

Partly though, the reason that he finished third in Cy Young voting is because like eight people qualified. I mean, if you limited yourself to who qualified for the ERA title, you wouldn't have a lot of your favorite options, you know? I think there's four guys on here who didn't qualify. Three guys, three, one, two, three, three guys in the top 10 who didn't qualify. You know, the ones who did are all like, it used to be that I remember when Blake Snell won his first Cy Young, there was a big debate about like, oh, I mean, come on, this guy only threw 182 innings,

182 innings now, that's a horse. And it's only been like seven years since Blake Snow won that Cy Young. So it just needs to change. Well, I guess that's one objection to changing it is that you just have to be monkeying with it constantly, right? I mean, you could fix it once and that would work for a while, but if it's not constant, then yeah, you'd always have to look up what it was that year. And then what if starting pitchers make a comeback and Rob Minford changes some rules and then we were going to raise it again. And there's something nice about having it as a constant baseline, if only so that you

can cite those stats of, it used to be that X number of guys qualified and now Y number qualified. And you can kind of show the passage of time and the change in pitcher usage using that yardstick, which if it's a moving targets, then you couldn't really. I basically agree with that objection. And part of the reason that I rewrote the piece for a second time, partly it was because I have skein specifically, but partly it was because the trend actually did stabilize. Like over the last five years, the median starting pitchers innings have been pretty steady.

The number of pitchers who would, who have qualified at 162, the number of pitchers who would qualify at 130, which is where I would probably prefer to set it, has stabilized. I don't know if that's permanent. If we start going to more six man rotations, then it could drop again. But at least it has stabilized enough where I don't feel like you'd have to be resetting it every three years continuously, which looked like maybe was a possibility in 2016 when I first noted this this struggle to qualify emerging. Okay. So we'll see whether that hampers the memorability of Paul Skeen's rookie season. Maybe when we just run through your candidates here for what will be remembered, maybe we could just start with Otani because you know it's going to go there eventually. And as you said, he has basically broken this question because he is

so often the obvious answer. Not that the obvious answer is always ultimately the right one, but it's maybe the highest percentage one when you're trying to forecast the future. So this year you've got super memorable Otani in a completely different way than we've had before, and maybe even more memorable because it was unanticipated and you've got 50-50 and you've got E-Pay and you've got winning the MVP unanimously for the third time, which no one has ever done and winning MVP as a DH, which no one has ever done. And you've got Dodgers winning the world series in his first season there. And you have his weird contract, which I guess technically he signed in 2023, probably, but we were still talking about it a lot in 2024. The contract itself I think did come up in the discussion of 2023, but I think that the fact that the Dodgers were winning while he had done this creative accounting

to help the Dodgers win made it an ongoing storyline through 2024. Yeah. Like the news of the sign, it wouldn't have been the big thing this year if the Dodgers had, you know, like been knocked out in the NLDS, but the fact that he did this like unprecedented really weird thing of taking a huge pay cut essentially so they could win the World Series and then they won the World Series. Yeah. So you've gone back and you've picked these things for a century or so, right?

So I have not been picking them for a century. Retroactively, retrospectively, I have gone back and identified what the thing was when you identified that at least for all I know, if some of those have changed, even since you wrote that. But what's the, the lead for the most years that one guy has, like how many years does Babe Ruth has for instance, because I'm, I'm wondering if you max out at a certain point, if one person can't claim several different seasons because it just all blends into Shohei Otani, you remember Otani and you remember everything he did, but it's just the, it's like the Otani era more so than it is a single Otani season.

And so maybe we won't in retrospect, we won't remember, oh yeah, that was the year he was rookie of the year and he did it for a while and showed it could be done. And then it was the year when he was like fully operational Otani and he like was really great. And then the year after that he was like really, really great. And then the year after that, he was like really, really great. And then the year after that, he was even better than that. And maybe it all just blends together. Even if it does, then maybe this year stands out just because he was a two way player in an entirely unanticipated way. Yeah, the the rule, this is not an actual rule, but observing what we know about the past, you see that

being the best player in baseball for seven years in a row does not make you those seven years memorable. Usually, at most, you get one. And usually it's because either that's the year that you set a record or because that's the year that you had a specific play that you're most identified with or somehow your narrative became bigger than the rest of your narrative. But being good seven years in a row in some ways actually makes those individual seasons like less memorable. And so like most stars, if I search most all-time superstars, I would find their name once on this list. And there are two exceptions to that. One is Barry Bonds, although only one of, I guess two of Barry Bonds were performance. And then the last was the year that he couldn't

get signed, that he got blackballed, which was also a pretty tepid year in baseball. And then the other one is Babe Ruth. And Babe Ruth is just basically all over this. Like he's got, Babe Ruth has just so many stories, so many weirdnesses, so many different things that he did that are memorable. And Otani is again, like the first since Babe Ruth, where it's not that he, he's not the story that people will remember because he had the best year. It's because he keeps doing it in entirely new ways or he keeps surprising us with different things that are unprecedented and different reasons that people will remember this year specifically. If he had simply had his 2021 season four years in a row, then 2021 would be remembered as the year Ohtani

got to, what did you say? What was your phrase? Fully operational. And then we'd have other things for the other years. But he's like, he manages to insinuate himself into the best baseball stories in new ways every year, unexpected ways, ways that you're not even thinking of are in his skill set, particularly. And then suddenly there he is doing them. Well, and to, and to be insinuated into on savory baseball stories, but in a way that proved to be ultimately innocuous from his perspective, right? I mean, I'm sure he's, he doesn't view what happened with EPA as innoc as innocuous in the story of his own life, but we didn't have the biggest star in the sport

actually implicated in a gambling scandal. And that was something that like, I had friends who do not care about baseball, but no, I work in baseball media who were like, so what's going on with this guy? Like, did he gamble illegally? So it like also, I don't know, it catapulted him in a way that I'm sure he would prefer to have not had happen, but did make this year memorable.

— That's an odd one to include because it could theoretically, it could happen to anyone. Lots of guys have $40 million that you could steal. But yeah, the fact that he's as famous as he is, you could steal. But yeah, the fact that he's as famous as he is, is part of what made it cross over into mainstream news. And I also, this is gonna make the story really sticky for 100 years. But I have most of my friends who are barely into baseball, but are kind of like into sports generally, they always bring this up. And they, I mean, they all have filed it away as Otani was gambling and then his translator took the fall. Like it is a broadly held conspiracy theory among people who aren't really paying attention.

And guess who writes history, guys? People who aren't really paying attention. So, Ohtani's, yeah, that's going to be there both because it's him, but also like in some ways totally independent of his skills or his uniqueness. Yeah. I would guess if there's never anything else about that though, I guess it'll still, as you said in your piece, like there will be podcasts about it and there will be TV shows about it or something, maybe, and eBay will probably be in, yep. Like I don't know. A hundred percent certain. Well, yes, we know that one is in development, right?

But it's, this dude, this is like the baseball American hustle. This is, this was a story of a guy who got in super duper duper deep and you know, like directors in 30, 40, 50 years are going to want to, well, in two years are going to want to tell the story of the hapless crook who got in way too deep. CB Yeah. It's like an uncut gems kind of thing, I think we said at the time. If nothing else ever comes out about Otani, if there's never anything that leads to another whiff of suspicion about him, then I wonder whether this will be really remembered. LSF Well, you can't have somebody take the fall and go to federal prison twice.

CB You wonder if people are going to remember. People are talking about Babe Ruth burning his wife in a fire still. Which he didn't to be clear. What a great day on the internet that was. Oh my God. Everyone was like, wait, what? Everybody go look it up. Have your own journey with that tweet. This will probably be memorable. A more innocuous or I don't know, more innocuous example of the phenomenon that you were describing,

Meg, is the fact that he was on such a piss poor team for so long that if he were a lesser player playing on a bad team for six, seven years, baseball fans would maybe talk about how he's, like Felix Hernandez would be an example of a guy who baseball fans, real diehards, they talk about how, what a shame, he didn't get to play in the playoffs or whatever. But with Shohei Otani and Mike Trout, it became a meme. And it became a meme that has completely crossed over into the broader sports world.

Tungsten Armandoil is not quite moneyball for public awareness, but it's crossed over. You can now use that term broadly across the Internet to convey a point. And that is an example of failure also or like a sort of a story of like non-accomplishment growing into a bigger memorable story because of Otani's attachment to it. And then Otani also immediately surviving it, subverting it. Like the minute he leaves, he's the world champion. Okay, well, it's a pretty compelling case for Otani, but it would be boring if we just decided it was Otani every year and maybe he'll do something else that overwrites his win this year in retrospect. So if it's not Otani, and you

went through some of the possibilities that he could continue to surprise us and continue to up the ante somehow and make himself as memorable as he has before. You know, things like winning this I young of course and winning a gold glove like becoming a either a full-time fielder or some sort of hybrid closer slash fielder or various other feats just pitching in the postseason having some superlative outing in the postseason throwing a perfect game having the highest war season of all time. It gets progressively harder for him to keep wowing us. And yet I fully thought that there was no way for him to wow us this year. I thought this was

going to be the lull in Otani Mania and we were all just going to be waiting for 2-way Otani to return. And then, no, that was not at all the case. So who knows? Yeah, he stole bases at a 90 stolen base rate for a half a season despite not being that fast. And not having ever stolen bases like that before. He can just flip a switch. It's incredible. Yep. Do you think he could play shortstop? He could, I mean, it like there

is, there is absolutely no reason to rule out Shohei Otani playing shortstop. Like just because there's no evidence that anybody's ever thought of it is no reason to rule it out. He could do it. Of course he could do it. I want, I want him to try, but I want it to be a game where I can sit with both Ben and Craig Goldstein and watch both of them just devolve into a flop sweat as they worry about him getting injured out there. That's what I want. Because I'm a mean person. He almost made it the year that he injured himself in the World Series, stealing all

those bases that you never thought he'd be stealing too. But he managed to avoid that and that one didn't even get mentioned in the article. Yeah. 70 things mentioned and not that. Yeah. So if it's not Otani, I also, I thought the leading candidate was the White Sox, but you're right that they made it a little less interesting

there at the tail end by having that little dead cat bounce to avoid some of the most ignominious records that they could have set. So there are some qualifiers that you have to attach to how terrible they were now. And it's still pretty compelling that they were that bad. But it's not quite the open and shut case that it would have been if they'd lost just a few more times. Yeah, I guess a way of thinking about this question, because what does it mean to be remembered how many people have to know what we're talking about? And it's basically if you're like an 80th percentile baseball fan, what are the chances that you could name this

fact from memory? And will the 80th percentile baseball fan know that the White Sox have the record for single season losses? Probably. Will the 60th percentile, I say no, like no chance. I think right now the 60th percentile fan does know the 62 Mets. And we wanted the White Sox to replace the 62 Mets. And they didn't replace them. They just chipped away at them. But the 62 Mets did not get replaced by them. And because of that, I just don't think the White Sox are gonna

be in the lore in quite the same way. I think you're right because loss records, unless you set a record, but big loss seasons don't get mentioned on post-season broadcasts, where big win seasons do. And so I think that for the casual fan who's just checking in come October, apart from their own favorite team, they're not gonna hear John Smoltz or Joe Davis say, you know, 2024 White Sox, da da da, because they didn't set the record. And so they're not going to hear John Smoltz or Joe Davis say, you know, 2024 White Sox,

because they didn't set the record. And so they're not going to know. I think you're right. Yeah. So much of what you note here is that it is not necessarily what should be the most memorable or what is actually the most interesting, but just the thing that has maybe the most possible contexts in which it could be mentioned in an enduring capacity. So you mentioned one that I honestly think I had already forgotten before the first one that you listed was about the consecutive strikeouts record, which I really like Jeremiah Estrada striking out 13 batters in a row, which was across multiple games, which maybe made it less memorable to me. But we've had enough strikeout streaks that I almost just kind of blank it out and it's not even always a particularly impressive pitcher. But something like that, you're right,

if that does prove to be an unusually enduring record and people are coming close to it and it's at least getting mentioned, then it doesn't have to be the coolest thing that happened that year. It's just the thing that gets invoked most often. Yeah, they, I mean, this was very low on the list. I don't think it's likely to be the answer, but I included it partly because I guess some, there's a, some psychologists will talk about like the two different types of pleasure that humans feel that are referred to as the pleasure of the feast, the pleasure of feasting on something, the joy you feel when you're at a feast,

and then the pleasure of the hunt, which is obviously the pleasure that your brain feels that's the satisfaction of chasing something, of being active and working toward a goal. And I think the pleasure of the, the pleasure of the hunt in some ways is actually way more durable, way more pleasing to the human psyche. It's like, that's the flow state. Whereas the pleasure of the feast is like a little bit of a different, more

ephemeral, never quite so satisfying thing. And so anyway, the reason that I included the Jeremiah Estrada one was because I think that it's the sort of thing that could be a lot more famous to the, to people in the future than it is to us now. Like that was not a big deal. It's not a big deal that Jeremiah Estrada has that record. As far as pleasures of the feast go, it's a pretty scant feast. Like I'm not that, that excited that Jeremiah Estrada has that record. I can't dig in to that. However, because we love the hunt so much, anytime a pitcher gets to like nine, we're

all going to get excited. We love the hunt. This guy's hunting a record. And so we'll be, you know, we'll be engaged with the hunts all the time. And anytime someone gets to nine or 10 and you start talking about what the record is, you're gonna go, well, who has the record? And the broadcasters gonna tell you who has the record. And that name, potentially, if it lasts long enough, that name just gets ingrained into your head.

The record for strikeouts in a row before Jose Alvarado made it a relief pitcher record, which it will now be forever and ever. It had been 10 and it had been Tom Seaver. And Tom Seaver, of course, is a big star. Maybe that's why I heard it so much. But I heard that record referred to dozens of times. I mean, that's a very famous record. I've known about it because every time someone gets to six in a game, they're going to mention Tom Seaver has the record with 10. They're the most to start a game, which is as, I mean, that's like as niche a record as you can have. And it is not held by Tom Seaver. It is not an exciting record. And yet I probably have heard that 20 times in my life. And therefore I know it's Jim DeShays, Jim DeShays.

Do you remember what year he did it though? Jim Dehaies? Oh, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be able to identify it with a year. No, it's what do you know from that year, not what do you know about that year. So, and anyway, I think that Jim Deshaies probably did it in like 1988, maybe 87. So Jim Deshaies, I don't know, was that on the front page of the newspaper the next day? Absolutely not. Was that on the front page of the newspaper the next day? Absolutely not. Was it on the front page of the sports section? Absolutely not. Wasn't a big deal, it wasn't a big feast. And yet somehow it survived. And here I am telling people about it, not quite 80 years after the fact, but sorta.

Okay, and then if it's not that or the white socks, now the uniforms, we did talk about that. 86. 1986. Yeah. I feel better for not knowing because that was the year I was born. And Sam has said that's not real baseball also. Has that line moved for you by the way? Is it still 88 or has it moved closer to where we are now when real baseball begins?

Oh, I think I've written about this. I mean, 88 is real baseball, but we're in a different era for sure. We're not in the 88 era anymore. I think whatever era we're in started in 2001. So maybe the most modern era is now, if I remember this right. The uniforms, we did talk about this, what we talked about this constantly. Lauren Ruffin Did you? I'm surprised. Lauren Ruffin I will never stop talking about it. I will go to my grave talking about those uniforms. Jared Ranere Yeah, we did discuss whether this would be the thing from this year at some point,

and it might be. I guess there's just, there's enough reasonable doubt now circulating. And I don't know that, that Meg actually buys into this because I have no doubts. Like the idea that it wasn't localized to this year, that, that some aspects of it were the smaller lettering, but not the transparency. Not the transparency. They're more transparent now. That they'd been like this all along, and we just hadn't noticed until our attention was called to it by the other changes in the uniform.

It's kind of like for Otani, because Meg is convinced that there's something off about Otani's dog. And so if that is ever revealed to be the case, like it's an animatronic dog. Like an Andrew W.K. situation? Like it's an animatronic dog or like, I don't think it's a robot dog. I don't know. Okay.

Okay. Sam, basically at first I thought there was just something weird about it. Like it was like engineered in some way, not like a robot, but like in a, you know, grown in a lab kind of way. And now I've come around to the fact that the dog is fine, but what is off is Otani's relationship with the dog. I don't think he has any real relationship with that dog. I think that- She thinks it's a whole sham. It's like some sort of like starlets who are matched up by

their agents or something. Yeah. And look, maybe, you know, it's a very cute dog and he bought it a little backpack, so maybe he's falling in love with the dog and this will all end with the dog being an important part of his family. But in the initial going, I think that it was an elaborate ploy to give a ravenous public and media who did not know very much about this man Because he tried to keep his private life private. He was giving us a little treat he was giving us a decoy so that we would have something to focus on and I don't I don't think that he and that dog spend very much time together

I'm not saying the dog is neglected or not cared for Someone is taking care of the dog but even more than the typical pro athlete who maybe delegates home responsibilities to paid or unpaid help, he is not, it's not, there's something weird about him and that dog. Well, I will tell you two things. I'm going to tell you two things. One, who is taking care of that dog? The answer is actually Ipe Muz tell you two things. One, who is taking care of that dog? The answer is actually Ipe Mizuhara's wife.

She was the dog sitter when they went on the road. But secondly, that I clearly came into this whole discussion way too late and absolutely none of what you just said sounded sane. Oh yeah, no. To me at the time either. So it wasn't like you had to be there. You had to be in Meg's head.

You didn't say that then. Just let me talk. No, I'm not alone in my thoughts about this dog. Other people on the internet are saying it. The man's wife was dog sitting for him. I just think that the dramatic possibilities here. If it ever comes out as Meg was right and she was a voice in the wilderness

and it is revealed that this was somehow phony, then maybe that'll be the biggest story of the year. But the pants, so the pants were huge, the pants broke containment and people who didn't know about baseball knew about the pants at least for a little while and it necessitated changes, which will be implemented. And then that'll give us more reason to talk about what they used to look like. And maybe when we see highlights from this year,

we'll clock that it's this year because of the pants, the way that we do when we look at highlights from 2020 and there's cardboard people in the stands. You are misrepresenting my argument entirely. None of that is in there. Nothing about the pants matters at all. All that matters is that the image of Xander Bogart's groin silhouette will be reposted on the internet for the end of the internet, you will see that photo in all sorts of world's biggest baseball fails compilations and Twitter aggregators will be like 37 years ago today that Xander Bogart's bent over in the pants. That picture is- That wasn't Xander Bogart's.

Wasn't it? Wasn't it? There was the guy at photo day who had it and then there was that other one that was even more explicit, but I think that one wasn't from this year even. Yeah, I don't think that Padre was Xander Bogart's. Okay, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. First of all, as I have been saying it's Xander Bogart's, I'm going to have to make some, I'm going to have to go do the media tour all over again.

It is widely, you know, like sort of like believed to be Sandra Bogart's, I think. I thought it was just some- But it could be widely believed on the internet, which means nothing. So you guys, what is like, if I ask you like, what's the most memorable, like game show moment of all time? Do you have an answer? The quiz show scandal.

That's what I was gonna say too. I don't know if that's a moment exactly. I was gonna say it's the time on the newlywed game when the wife was asked, where's the weirdest place your husband has ever wanted to make whoopee? Do you know this one? You don't know this?

No. I don't know. It was it, and then she indicated a part of her own body, I would imagine. That's correct, yes. A physical location out in the world. Absolutely, and so this was aired one time and then never rerun, and it became like an urban legend

that it had happened at all. Like if you were growing up in the, like in the 80s, you would hear about this as an urban legend that it had happened at all. Like if you were growing up in the like in the 80s and you would hear about this as an urban legend, but no one even could prove it existed. I think the show even claimed it didn't exist. And then like the game show network came around and you know the archives all got and then it became part of like VH1 clip shows and everything like that. I'm you know I that. You both staring at me blankly, it goes to discredit me. But I think that most people listening are like, duh, yeah, I totally know that thing that when the wife said the thing. And this is just that. It's not

important. It doesn't speak to any broader societal condition. It's just like it's repost bait. And the pictures from Uniform Day will be reposted every so often as just funny things. I mean, it's that it suits internet culture, suits repost culture. And for that reason, I think that people are gonna see it all the time. I mean, it's way stickier than the white socks wore shorts once. And yet, how many times have you seen the white socks wearing shorts? A lot.

Yeah, a lot of times. A lot of times. I just wanna, can I just say one, can I make this point one more time in case we have listeners who have not heard me talk about the pants before? I know that they say that they're the same. And I'm not saying that prior iterations of white pants haven't had some amount of transparency to them. That

is objectively true, but they are, they are more transparent. They were more transparent and I feel confident about that for two reasons. Three reasons. First is my own human eyes. Having seen them in person being like, I can just see the tag. I can see it. I can see the tag on the jersey through the pants. So that's one. Two, there are a lot of very horny baseball fans. And if we were seeing this much of these dudes in prior years, it would have been on the internet. your point Sam that is re-post bait for Internet folk particularly horny ones and then three the most adamant deniers of the difference for the pants I'm not gonna name specific names

but I will simply say that they may be worked for MLB.com and so I assert to you that they were given some marching orders about the pants and then I was like I don't know what she's the pants are the same but why not you they're different they we saw so much of these boys And not a single one of them were funny briefs and I I have remained disappointed I Sam I told Ben that one of them should wear like funny briefs They should wear like brightly colored briefs patterned briefs, you know, they should wear briefs and be like, well, I don't know. You said you couldn't see through the pants, but and yet you say that these are flowery briefs.

On the count of three, everybody name the player most likely to wear funny briefs. Okay. Okay. Ready? One, one. Wait, no, I'm not ready. I don't know. That's a strong question. Who wears funny pants? Who's like a prankster? Who's like, it's not a beard leader. It's not that important a question. I mean, anyway, I think that everyone's allowed to have one like relatively benign conspiracy theory that they believe. Like some conspiracy theories are not benign. And you shouldn't mess with those even to just have one. But like I get to think the dog is weird

and I don't have to count the pants because that's not a conspiracy theory. That's just true. Jared Suellentrop Okay. One, two, three. Pete Kearns Michael Lorenzen. Michael Lorenzen You've forgotten all the players. Lauren Ruff I don't know. I'm going to think about it though. This is like draft pressure again. You also mentioned the Royals making the playoffs after they lost 106 games the previous year.

You mentioned the Rickwood field game. You mentioned Paul Skeens. We talked about him. And you mentioned Freddie Freeman and his World Series performance just in general. And also specifically the home run, the walk off Grand Slam. You wrote a whole thing about that highlight and how he reacted to it and how instantly iconic it was.

And so maybe we're just ripe for a new Gibson basically. Like there's a fatigue about the old highlights and now we have a new one and he won the World Series and he was limping around for a while. But then you kind of concluded that either he wasn't good enough or he wasn't hurt enough for it to count. I'm low man on this one to the degree

that there's controversy over my list is that I have Freeman's home run specifically too low. And I do think that the fact that he wasn't limping enough and the fact that he clearly was not physically compromised in the same way that Gibson was, lessens my, I think the immediate reaction in the moment was like, we got a Gibby, there's the Gibby. And whether that connection lifts it to some degree, but also as time passes, in some ways that connection actually makes it look like a pale imitation

of the Gibby genre. Like, if it had stood on its own as just the only walk-off grand slam in World Series history, the ultimate backyard fantasy moment, and like a great pose with the bat above his head and everything like that, then it's like a different conversation. But specifically as a Gibby, I kind of immediately recoiled at its longevity by that standard. But a lot of people disagree with me. I could be totally wrong about that. I would, I passionately argue that as a total World Series performance, it should be, it should go down as one of the greats. It should go down as every bit as good as Reggie Jackson's. And I just don't think it will. That one disappoints me that it won't,

but I don't think it's likely to. So I ended up kind of just like stuff, you know, stuffing it in the middle of the article and being like, we'll see with Freddie Freeman. I think we'll just see. It's funny cuz he was more compromised even than we knew at the time, right? Cuz he had the rib thing in addition to the ankle. Yeah. But wait, I'm getting acknowledged why this isn't a snug comp, right? Because in that respect it bolsters his claim, but it doesn't, I mean like I can't imagine running with a broken rib is comfortable but it's not the same as having you know a messed up ankle or foot or whatever. It's not impeding the same part of the process that your you know your lower half is and so it and also Freddie

Freeman not a guy to really talk about himself and how much discomfort he's in and so we're not gonna you know what I mean he's not gonna be like remember that time I had the he's not gonna do that. That doesn't seem like it's his vibe. His dad talks about it a lot in a way that's very sweet, but like, it doesn't seem like that's Freddie Freeman's like whole MO. So. The proof is not actually in the pudding, but the proof feels like it's in the pudding. How hurt was he? Well, he was the best player in the series by a lot for the next week.

And people, I think when they're just assessing it mentally, it's just such a big difference from like, again, like I said this in my, in my article about the pose about the, um, his world series, which again, like I think his world series overall is tremendously underrated, but, um, Gibson wasn't announced before the game, wasn't thought to be available, could barely stand up while taking pitches, could barely stand up just like he was falling over taking pitches and then did not appear again in the World Series. Freddie Freeman tripled an hour before, so homered, then homered again every day for the rest of time. And then like a couple days later had his fastest home to first

time of the entire season. He didn't look hurt anymore. He didn't look hurt anymore. Right. And then like a couple days later had his fastest home to first time of the entire season. He didn't look hurt anymore. He didn't look hurt anymore. Right. And he probably wasn't. And the rib thing, we don't know what the rib thing does. What we do know is that the stats suggest a man who could hit the ball really well. So it doesn't like, you just don't come away with the impression that he was compromised. He might've been, but you don't come away with the impression that he was compromised. He might have been, but you don't come away with that impression. Therefore, I don't think he's got like, he needed to paint blood

somewhere. You know? Yeah. And then the last thing you mentioned, those were all the conventional ones. And if anyone thinks that Tim somehow missed something there, please let us or him know, though I'm sure he's spent more time thinking about this than you have, but still, I'm sure he'd be interested in hearing your suggestion. But the last one was something related to the Golden Etbat, a name that you hated and that I also hated. I hated it partly because I felt like it should be Golden Plate appearance because you just don't know if it's an Etbat when he comes up. But also you could just call it golden batter or whatever or just not call it anything like that. But whatever you call it and it doesn't seem like we'll need to call it anything because Manfred was

already like, psych, we're not even talking about this and also I hate it too, which was funny. I love that he floated this and then let David Sampson come out and be like, that was my idea. I did that idea. I've been saying that idea. It's my idea. And then heampson come out and be like, that was my idea. I did that idea. I've been saying that idea. It's my idea. And then he's like, Manfred's like, and it sucks. Walked right into my trap. But you have proposed something similar, which I remembered you proposing, but you had forgotten yourself proposing as I saw in the comments, because someone reminded you. But your solution for extra innings was let's just start at the top of the lineup again. And I think that is a lot less clunky than

this. And I don't know that I like it and you didn't know that you liked it, but you think that that's going to happen at some point. You think that that's what we're going to end up with. And therefore this golden at bat proposal, which will probably not come to fruition in that exact form, you saw it as sort of moving the Overton window or breaking down the barriers, the resistance a little bit in a way that might ultimately move us to the final form of this concept. And I don't know that that would even count for this year anyway, really, because probably we would just, we would remember whatever the final implementation of this, probably not like remember how Robb

Medford proposed a preliminary version of that, that one year. And then he walked it back immediately. And that was how ultimately we ended up with this thing. So I don't know if there's really any way that this would end up being the thing we remember from this year specifically, but I guess in an indirect roundabout bank shot kind of way, it could be, but that's your idea. If there is a theme to this entire series, it's that, you know, information wants to be forgot. Oh, well, we want to forget information.

Information wants to be remembered. And so there's a survival of the fittest, you know, adaptive element to things where what gets remembered, gets remembered usually because it has some distinguishing feature that makes it sticky or permanent. And that those things are very often hard to predict that because the ecology around information changes, because the way that we consume it changes, the audience changes, the subsequent events are always changing, it can be very hard to predict which sort of like evolutionary adaptations are going to be sticky. So if I can just make an analogy and maybe change the subject entirely. And then we can talk about this for 45 minutes. And then that would be the end of the episode.

Without looking anything up, without going running over and looking, are either of you like familiar with the Beatles, Spotify stream charts, like the top Beatles songs on Spotify? No. No. I don't use Spotify, so no. It does not make you look at this chart to use Spotify. I think most Spotify users do have not, uh, are not regularly looking at this. So I think we're all clear, um, here.

Okay. So what do you think is the most popular Beatles song is I guess the question. What's the most popular Beatles song? Hey, Jude. Yeah. Hey, Jude is number five. That's a great guess. Hey Jude is number five. Hard Day's Night. Hard Day's Night, not such a great guess. That's like number 17, but still high. I mean, they had 200 songs. They released basically 200 songs as a band.

I guess if you include different versions of them, they have like, you know, many, many hundreds, but you know, basically 200 original songs. 17 and five, Those make sense. Keep going. We're going to guess until you get it. Okay. I guess it's not, it's probably not like, I want to hold your hand. Great guess. Number nine. Okay. Help. Help is a great guess. It's number 11. Yeah. Oh my God.

I think it's going to skew later Beatles probably, but I would think. I mean, for a long time, Yesterday was the most performed song in the world. And so that would have been my guess. It's number four. Come Together. Come Together. Great guess. Number two, Meg, you're winning so far. Come Together. Come Together, great guess. Number two, Meg, you're winning so far. Number two.

Get Back. Hello Goodbye. No, not even close. Number 35, not a good guess. Which one? Get Back is- Hello Goodbye. Oh, Get Back, 21.

Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride. You're really, you love the early stuff. Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride. You're really, you love the early stuff. Ticket to Ride. So I'm just thinking, I'm not saying that I love a particular era, but I'm just saying that like I'm- Let it be great guess.

Great guess. Number one? Number three. Ah! Yellow Submarine. Yellow Submarine, 34. Really? Yeah. It's gonna be like good night because people are playing Ringo lullabies to their kids

or something. Now I will tell you the answer. The answer is, and it's double the number two, double the number two. So it's this huge smash. I can't believe you guys didn't immediately think of this enormous, the biggest hit, the biggest Beatles hit. Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun.

Yeah, here comes the sun, a song written by neither Lennon nor McCartney, a song that was never released as a single. That's great. And that if you'd asked, I mean, I mean, Beatles fans would have known it all along. But at no point up until maybe five years ago, would it have ever, ever come, it wasn't a single. How could it be? But something about Here Comes the Sun has risen to the top.

It has, it has survived. It is, maybe it's because it's a great campfire song. It's a great movie soundtrack or song. It's in a lot of soundtracks. Exactly. It could be because a dude in Norway or Sweden or wherever Spotify came from developed this algorithm that strangely lifts up one song per artist and like creates bizarro chart leaderboards for different acts. It could be any of those. It could be that George

Harrison surprisingly was reassessed after the Beatles broke up to be seen as a talent on par with Lennon and McCarthy, which nobody thought of before, you know, all things must pass and furthermore, whatever, unthinkable that this would be the answer. And yet here we are 60 some years later, 50 some years later, 60 some years later, decades later, and the unexpected has risen to the top. And so I think that part of what makes this exercise fun for me is just being like, I think that part of what makes this exercise fun for me is just being really imaginative about what could happen to make these things more memorable. The interesting thing I thought about your take on that version of it, because that was

one of my many objections to the golden whatever idea was that it would really skew the stats a lot and you considered that and you used this kind of a counterexample. Yeah, but we all just thought Otani 50-50 was the coolest thing ever. And that happened as a direct result of changing the rules to make it easier to do that. And that is true. And I did talk on the podcast a few times about like, how much should we be discounting this exactly? Like what era adjusting what this actually is? Like, are we inflating this accomplishment too much? And it was still cool and we still really liked it.

The straight up version of that, that Manfred bandied about to entrap David Sampson was basically like, that would be hundreds of plate appearances. I mean, like high leverage plate appearances. If it's once a game or something and you know, there were multiple versions of it. Okay. But if you did that, then it would distort things so significantly that I think the record

chases that would result or the records being broken would be so artificial that I don't think we would credit them. Whereas we, we wouldn't credit them 80 years from now, they wouldn't care at all. See, I think that it has to be, well, maybe in moderation, it would just, there would just be like a new era, you know, they would just talk about it the way that we talk about like expansion. Yeah. The thing about the, so the stolen base thing is that it obviously it matters a

lot, but in the moment, it's not that obvious to you. It kind of looks like, yeah, someone's stealing a base and you're not really micro analyzing their lead. I mean, you are, you have developed a whole system to gauge whether someone had a good lead, which is handy. But usually it just looks like someone's stealing a base and it just so happens that they're safe more than they used to be and they attempt to sell bases more than they used to be. Whereas the golden whatever would at least initially be just more of a shock to the system. It would be so obvious that this was breaking the fundamental law of the game. And also the stolen base rules just restored things to where they had been before.

And so historically speaking, it was not way out of whack with the eighties or the nineties or some, you know, within many people's living memory era. Whereas this, if we suddenly had people getting 800 plate appearances, that's never happened before. And that would strike us as so artificial that we would regard it. We would really discount it in the moment. And maybe you're right that that poo pooing would be forgotten long-term, but it would just be a pretty drastic change. Whereas the stolen base, it's more subtle though, still so significant that it couldn't have happened without those changes.

But your version where we just sort of reset the lineup and the top of the lineup comes up again, that I think is less heavy handed in a way that we would roll with it probably, and especially if it were like substituted for the zombie runner or something that not everyone hates. You like it. We still hate it, but have your, have your thoughts changed at all? You still like it by the way? Just check in. You, you like that? Yeah, I do. You still like it. we still hate it, but have your thoughts changed at all? You still like it, by the way? Just checking, you like it?

Yeah, I do. I enjoyed it. A great deal. Wow, okay. It's humbling. It's humbling to admit. I feel like I'm overestimating how many people watched Get Back. I'm just surprised I saw something from that album.

Yeah. I know that Get Back wasn't the title track of the album, but everybody relax. No emails. dear God. But I'm just- No, when Ben suggested Get Back, I had a moment of thinking, oh, that's a brilliant guess. Because they've only been on Spotify for like five years. And so as far as like news events around Beatles songs, that's pretty much the only one. Except for the new one they released this year that wasn't really that great.

But anyway, I think that- I don't really count that as canon. Your version, I think is, it's not so jarring that we would immediately write it off and say this is heresy. And so I can buy that that might be implemented at some point. And I don't necessarily want it to be, but I think I could adjust to that even more so than I have to the zombie runner. I mean, occasionally a rule, occasionally a rules change will come that people react

well to occasionally a website redesign will come along that people react well to those are one in a million, right? Everybody hates every website redesign. No baseball fan, generally speaking, likes rules changes. I mean, you know, we do, we talk about them, they're fun. But like generally speaking, we think we like things how they are. Future people like things how they are when they were born. And the difficulty of steering like a culture from point A to point B, when all the people

there at point A want it to stay where it is and all the people at point B don't exist yet, are a non-voting constituency because they haven't been born, it's a tricky thing. Anything that we suggest here, people are gonna be like, ugh, like we're not gonna like that. But the world's gonna be around probably for a lot longer than we are. And all those other people, they're gonna just swallow up whatever you shovel at them. Like they're gonna just love it how it is when they're born.

They're gonna think that life's never been better than when they were 11. So you don't have to worry too much, Ben, about whether this idea sucks because, you know, your grandchildren, they're gonna think that you were a dork and they're gonna think the world is going to hell after they turn 22.

In the meantime, it's their sweet spot no matter what. So, you know, maybe try to make it so that they enjoy it. Yeah, the thing about extra innings only rules are that you're still presented with the contrast between the regular state of things and the weird state of things. And so that's why if you don't like the zombie runner, and you could come along and not like the zombie runner, even if you grew up in the zombie runner era, because still most of the time you're seeing non-zombie runner and then suddenly there's

zombie runner. So it's a little less jarring to you than for me. And you get to the playoffs and MLB is like, okay, now it's serious. And we're just like, I don't, I don't like that. I don't like the lack of the zombie runner. I think it, you're right. It, it, um, it undermines the zombie runner. Yeah. Oh, it does.

Which, which is my friend. But yes. Well, we, we disagree strenuously about that, but this has been fun and, uh, we will remember this conversation hopefully from this year, even though I forgot- I don't remember last year. I forgot the game that we played about the MLB vaults, but I remember what I read on Pebble Hunting, which is always very memorable and fun.

So go check that out. If you are somehow not subscribed to that already, what are you waiting for? Pebblehunting.substack.com. Thank you for returning today, Sam. You're welcome. Okay, I'm gonna put out a call right here and right now. We need your help. As usual, at the end of the year,

we try to do a pod or two devoted to stories that we missed in the year that's ending. We try to collect a story that we did not discuss about every single team. So if you have one, if you were sitting there thinking, why won't they talk about this? Now's your chance, email us, tell us what we missed, and maybe we will cover it on an upcoming podcast. While we were recording this one, there was a somewhat significant signing. The Astros

signed Christian Walker. Much to Meg's dismay, it is a three-year deal, 60 million total, which is exactly the MLB Trade Rumors prediction. Meg had the under on that one, instead it's a push, so no implications for the over-under draft other than the fact that Meg doesn't gain or lose points. But the Astros gain a first baseman, which they have sorely needed over the past few years, and they keep him away from the Mariners. He is another Crawford Boxes guy, He will also turn 34 around opening day. This almost certainly spells the end of Alex Bregman's tenure in Houston.

I don't blame them so much for moving on from Bregman the way that I blamed them for moving on before they had to from Kyle Tucker. And keeping Kyle Tucker still would have been good, but they can play Paredes at third, Walker at first. They still have an aversion to long-term contracts that could come back to bite them. At least they're trying to compensate somewhat for the loss of Tucker. And hey, he would have cost a lot more for a lot longer after this coming season. The Astros are just kinda confusing these days.

Still contending, shipping players out, bringing players in, trying to trade for Nolan Arnado. You'd still have to say that they're the favorites in the AL West, but as we discussed recently for how much longer and how will Walker age? Better than Jose Abreu, I'm sure they hope. And I believe, because it would be hard to age worse than that. He's got a good glove. He's been consistent. Like the player, not sure I love the overarching strategy, but they are better with Walker than they were without him,

just as they were worse without Tucker than they were with him. Couple other things, can I just rant for a second about how silly this whole Samesosa saga is? So the Cubs and Sosa, this franchise icon, had this fractured relationship because of how things ended with him in Chicago and more broadly because of the whole P.D. cloud that has hung over him. And Tom Ricketts essentially demanded an apology from Sosa as a condition of reconnecting, of featuring him at events, of honoring him, which first of all, Tom Ricketts didn't even own the Cubs during Sosa's time there, so I don't know why Sosa owes him in particular

an apology. The Cubs also benefited greatly from having Sosa during his heyday. Cubs fans certainly enjoyed having him there at the time, so I don't really see the purpose of this moralistic stance, and I don't think Sosa was under any obligation to apologize, at least to Tom Ricketts. But he decided to, sort of, to get back in the good graces of the organization, and so there was this very choreographed exchange of statements on Thursday where Sosa put one out and then Ricketts said, essentially, okay, you've done your penance, do you want to

come to this Cubs fan convention now? You're invited. The apology itself was one of the weakest I've seen, a very nonspecific apology. And I'm not the type to parse apologies with a fine-tooth comb, go word by word to scrutinize whether it was penitent enough. Yeah, you got your bad ones, you're I'm sorry if I offended anyone. But for the most part I tend to find apology language policing tiresome. This one though, the AP headline was, Semisosa appears to acknowledge PED use and apologizes.

Because of course he didn't explicitly. He put out a statement through a consulting firm, and he said, There were times I did whatever I could to recover from injuries in an effort to keep my strength up to perform over 162 games. I never broke any laws, but in hindsight I made mistakes and I apologize. Okay, we all know what he's alluding to here, but there were times I did whatever I could to recover from injuries in an effort to keep my strength up to perform over 162 games. Isn't that what every player does, legally?

In itself, that's no acknowledgement of wrongdoing other than the nonspecific apology. I'm also skeptical of the I never broke any laws, which is sort of the needle he tried to thread at his congressional hearing. Steroids were a schedule 3 controlled substance in the US as of 1990, so essentially for the entirety of Sammy Sosa's career, it was illegal to distribute or possess or use steroids in the US, without a prescription at least. I guess in theory he could have had some bogus prescription. Or maybe what he is claiming is that he took PDs only when he was in the DR, never on US

soil. Or maybe he did steroids in the DR and he did HGH in the US or something. I don't know how plausible I find that if he's taking whatever he was taking to recover from injuries. Wouldn't that usually have to be during the season when he was in the US where he spent most of the year? But maybe he knows no one can prove that he broke a law at this point. At least say Mark McGuire when he finally came clean kind of. He had the same explanation he was doing whatever he was doing to recover from injury but he did at least say that

he took steroids. Not just I made the mistake of trying to do whatever I could to stay on the field. So I don't know I don't think he should have had to be put through this apology toe-touch to be welcomed back by the Cubs and then if he was going to do that maybe it would have been better to be more, more forthcoming. This is probably why you hire a consulting firm, because they tell you how to say the vaguest version of the thing you want to say so that you accomplish your goal and your statement is so boring that it stops being news. I just thought it was an odd little dance to some extent on both sides. And finally, you know my theory about how baseball is overrepresented in popular media. We don't so much get big baseball movies anymore, but we do get baseball scenes in big

movies and TV shows. And I think that's because of the residual national pastime perception, and maybe the wave of baseball movies from 30 or so years ago, and the connection to pastoral, idyllic scenes. Well, a couple more examples. Of course, the Superman trailer included a brief clip of Superman fighting in the ballpark of the Metropolis Meteors, which was in real life, progressive field in Cleveland. It was known previously that that field had been used for Superman scenes. So more baseball in big superhero movies. How many times have we seen that? Also, I'm watching this more obscure show called Earthabides on MGM+. It's an adaptation of the classic post- obscure show called Earthabides on MGM Plus, an adaptation

of the classic post-apocalyptic novel Earthabides, which I loved when I read it many years ago. In the premiere of the show, we get a bunch of baseball. Actually in the opening credits, there's a brief baseball scene. We also get footage of Oracle Park, both before and after the disaster. Pre-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic Oracle Park, the latter of which has been reclaimed by nature. Just a great way to illustrate essentially the fall of civilization. You get a big packed ballpark, everyone having fun, fill in the stands, not a care in the world, and then abandoned ballpark with some wildlife taking possession of the park.

Kind of a classic trope at this point, you know? I guess I'm glad to see it because baseball show. This is also a baseball show and we hope a good one that you would care to support, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners, Andy, Tim Morton, Jeff Silver, Patrick Houlihan and Brandon Kuhn. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, autographed books, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad-free fan crafts, memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. Patreon does provide gift subscriptions if you wanna give someone an Effectively Wild Patreon membership for whatever holiday they celebrate.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us at the Patreon site. If not, you can still contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastoffangraphs.com. Send those Secret Santa gifts out if you haven't already. If you are participating in Effectively Wild Secret Santa, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast

on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. You can check the show page at fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben and Meg have

to say. Philosophically and pedantically, it's effectively wild. Effectively wild!