Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2271: Deaths Came in Three

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Deaths don’t actually come in threes—unfortunately, there are many more than that—but Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley begin by marking the passings of a trio of notable figures: David Lynch, Bob Uecker, and Tommy Brown. Then (35:27) they talk about the maybe-momentous signing of a Japanese player not named Roki Sasaki (Shotaro Morii), follow up […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2271 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Van Graaffs. And I guess both of us and probably a lot of our listeners are in sort of a state of removed mourning, by which I mean mourning for a public figure, an entertainer, someone you didn't know personally. And so maybe it's not the same kind of acute morning that you feel for a member of your family or a close friend, let's say there's a parasocial element to it, but it's nonetheless pretty painful. And I am talking about the great director, David

Lynch. And because this is a baseball podcast, I'm talking about the great director, David Lynch. And because this is a baseball podcast, I'm talking about the great broadcaster, Bob Uecker. And both died on Thursday, Lynch at 78, Ueck at 90. I wanna talk about another baseball non-engineerian we just lost this week a little later. But those two, hearing about that back to back, that is tough. I know Lynch's work is pretty important to you and feel free to say whatever you want to say. But if people want to hear you talking about Lynch at length, we did do a bonus episode last April, episode 30, bonus episode 30, where we each chose our top five favorite

artists in any medium of all time. And one of your picks was David Lynch. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I know that every generation deals with this, right? Every generation has voices that are important. It's not to say that only elder millennials appreciated David Lynch, but we all have our artists and voices. It's interesting to think about Euchar and Lynch dying on the same day. I don't know if they ever crossed paths. I guess they could have, you know, voices in all our understandings of that word. You know, every generation like has them and then loses them. And so I don't know that we can really like lay claim to something particularly unique or aberrant in the loss,

but it's our first time being this age. And it sure feels like a lot of the people who have defined and shaped the way that we think of the world and have sort of kept us company as we journey through it are starting to pass. And it, to use a swear sucks. So I feel, you know, a little unmoored. So that's where I'm at today. Yeah. And because this is a baseball podcast,

we'll probably talk a little more, I guess, about Uyghur. But he was that voice for generations, not a generation because he did what he did for so long and was part of the fabric of baseball in various forms for so long. 70 years in different kinds of capacities as a player, as a broadcaster, as just a national celebrity. And I want to talk about that a bit, because that I think is what sets him apart so much from today's game and today's figures in the game, I think. But it did feel a little bit like, I don't know, we probably use like last

of his kind, last of his breed sort of a little too liberally, but it felt like that generation of broadcasters and lumping him in with say Vince Gulley and Ernie Harwell, those guys started calling games decades earlier than Uyghur did, but he was playing for a lot of that time. He was on the scene and then when he started on Brewers Radio broadcasts in the early 70s, that was a time when you just really did have these broadcasting giants, these legends who were with one team for ages. And maybe that's a little less common now. I don't know.

You do still have some who've been at it for a very long time. Denny Matthews, for instance, with the Royals. But I think also broadcasters and particularly baseball broadcasters could become national figures then in a way that they are not now for the most part. And that has more to do with the ways that broadcasting has evolved and baseball's prominence on the national stage. But it's really kind of amazing when you think about it that Euker was such a celebrity and not just beloved by Brewers fans, which of course he was, but there are a lot of broadcasters

who fall into that category of they've been on the radio or even on TV for one team's local broadcasts forever. And so they're an absolute institution in that city and people love them there, but they're not necessarily breaking containment the way that Uyuker did. And in some cases it was because Vince Gulley, for instance, would call other sports and call national broadcasts. And Euker, he didn't do other sports so much. He did do national broadcasts, maybe back when there was more baseball being broadcast nationally, or it was easier to access, I guess he was calling games for ABC in the sevents and 80s and NBC and

doing world series and such. And he also did some sports shows like Bob Euker's wacky world of sports and Bob Euker's war of the stars and that sort of thing. But he became this crossover figure really for his non-baseball, non-sports work entirely, which was pretty singular and I think it would be pretty impossible to have Bob Euker's career if you were starting out today, not only because there just aren't a lot of Bob Eukers, but it'd just be hard to chart the path that he did. LS. Yeah. He's such an odd figure because like quite famously, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school when I say this, like, you know, not the best playing career, right? And so, you know, for him to have been able to sort of carve out a niche both within Hollywood and within the broadcasting world. Yeah, it's just, it's a special

singular weird thing. And I don't know, I don't know that you could do it in quite the same way, which is funny because I do think that there's a lot of seeming appetite among athletes for aversion of this, right? That they want to be crossover stars. They want to act and also be known for their athletic prowess or what have you. But to do it in quite this way, to have the, you know, on screen time or in the booth time so markedly outstripped the playing career, but still have a strong foothold in that arena and be well-regarded for your perspective on it. I don't know. It's a special weird thing. I don't know that there'll be another quite like him ever again. So. Yeah. Replacement level player and irreplaceable

broadcaster and personality. And those things are kind of connected because as you were alluding to, he did get a lot of mileage out of the fact that he was not very good at baseball by major league baseball standards. By major league standards, yes. Certainly better than either of us, but by the- By far. Yeah. But also, it just goes to show how much mileage you can get out of self-deprecating humor.

I'm just a big fan of self-deprecation just in general. And it speaks to some self-confidence and self-esteem and accomplishment, frankly, if you can talk about your failures and make light of yourself and point out your foibles and it's very relatable and human. And so to be on that stage as a big leaguer and yet be able to talk about how he was so much lesser as an athletic talent than a lot of the players he was playing with and against. I think there's just a lot of appetite for that and he mined that for years and remained just a staple of Brewers broadcasts and still extremely funny basically right up until his

dying day. He never retired. He just kept at it until this most recent season. And still I would tune in to listen to him. He didn't have kind of an announcement that he was retiring the way that Vince Gulley did, where you could kind of savor how much was left of him and know that you weren't going to get more and tune in just to appreciate him while you still could. And with Euker, you could almost kind of take him for granted because it just seemed like he might do it forever, but he was really entertaining. He never lost that sense of humor. And it's nice because athletes, I think a lot of them are funny, obviously. And it's, we talked about this with Brent Rooker, I think a lot of them are funny, obviously. And we talked about this with Brent

Rooker, I think just like self-deprecation among athletes and how humanizing that can be because a lot of athletes, they do have egos and understandably so, they're really good at the thing they do. And maybe part of it is motivational and they have to psych themselves up and hype themselves up and believe that they can do anything. And so when you have an athlete who acknowledges their flaws and failures, that's just really appealing. Yeah. I think you're, you're drawing like a good distinction where it's, it speaks to like a genuine self-esteem, um, rather than mere confidence. And I don't, those things go hand in hand a lot of the time. And I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with like being a little bit braggadocious when the occasion calls and when your performance

backs that up. But yeah, I think that when you're, you're able to kind of joke about yourself a bit when you aren't necessarily undone by acknowledging your failures or the ways in which your performance maybe fell short of what your own desire expectation would have been. It just, it feels like you have to have sort of a real and genuine degree of self-esteem to do that, because it's very vulnerable, self-deprecation, which is why we like it.

But in order to have that not be tantamount to like ego death, I think you have to have real self-esteem. And I think, I don't know, there's no other way for me to put it, but that it suggests like having a nice way about yourself. And there are plenty of people who are very confident and they are confident for a good reason. And I don't mean to say that they're like, don't have self-esteem or that they're narcissistic in some way or any of those sort of pathologizing things, but I don't know. It just, it makes me think you got a nice way about you.

And I think that when you are compiling a list of attributes that make you want to spend an entire season in the booth with someone, that's an important thing, right? To be able to say, I don't know, I just got a nice way about him. Like I want to hang out with that person every day for an entire summer and into the fall. Um, that's a hard thing to, to find. There've been plenty of really good baseball players who have ended up being terrific broadcasters and there are plenty of, of folks, you know, Scully, probably the archetypal example who never played pro ball a day in their lives, who ended up being tremendous broadcasters, there's not one way to put it together. But I think that one of the ways that a former player can kind of bridge

that gap and become someone who you see yourself sort of, even if they're not there with you sitting on the couch with every day is to just like have a, have a relatability and being able to poke fun at one's own failure is a really good way to get there. But just imagine a baseball figure achieving what he did outside of the sports realm. He was kind of this ambassador for the game Mr. Baseball as Johnny Carson dubbed him. Just imagine a baseball broadcaster who was a pretty marginal player becoming the star of a sitcom, you know, Mr. Belvedere, to show up in movies as he did in major league,

to be something like a hundred time guests on The Tonight Show back when The Tonight Show was everything, that was something so many people were tuning in to see. And I guess that speaks to just the hold on the cultural conversation that The Tonight Show had at the time and just the force of his personality that he could talk his way onto there and keep being invited back and then to show up at WWF wrestling events and call those games. He was just this crossover figure. He hosted Saturday Night Live.

Like, you know, that just, it wouldn't, it really is. Like that just isn't possible today, I don't think, for a baseball figure. And again, he wasn't doing it on the strength of his on-field accomplishments, but even so to break out of the baseball box and just become this really recognizable national figure. There's probably no baseball player even now who's as well known as Bob Euker was in the

mid-80s, let's say, hosting SNL. Other than maybe Otani, I just don't think there's anyone who has that kind of stardom, that kind of Q rating. And he did it by just being like a backup catcher and a local broadcaster and just being so charming. And to be in major league, like as we've discussed, they don't really make movies like major league and it's sequels anymore, they don't really make baseball movies. There are a lot of movies that have baseball in them and that are certainly baseball movies by the facetious, effectively wild definition, but actual baseball movies, they made so many of them for a time and now they don't so much anymore. So I just don't think becoming that kind of crossover cultural figure, probably unfortunately,

is even available to someone in baseball these days. So he was sort of out of time in that sense. And he was just such a character and presented himself that way with the plaid outfits. He was kind of like a proto Craig Sager, I guess, just in terms of dressing loudly, garishly, seeking that sort of attention and finding it because he was just so entertaining. So yeah, that's the thing. There are certainly charming figures and personalities in the sport today and broadcasters and there always will be, but to achieve that sort of stardom, I just don't know that we will see that sort of thing again. LS. Oh, Ben, I'm so bummed. I'm just so bummed. It's just, I don't know. You gotta,

it feels like it's just a lot harder to be distinctive in the world today. There's so much that ends up looking and feeling the same. And then we lose these folks who had a perspective, who exhibited some amount of difference. Oh no, it's a bummer. It's a real bummer, dude. CBer Yeah. Or at least when you are distinctive to then be known to the mainstream, to have that kind of monocultural power, right? Because there are many distinctive, video-syncratic people out there, but it's all siloed and you probably won't know the ones that someone else knows

and they won't know the ones that you know. And so to have someone who sort of spans all of these different parts of the culture, that's just tough to achieve these days. So RIP to David Lynch and Bob Uecker. And also continuing the theme, unfortunately, just wanted to say a little bit about another non-agenarian we lost in baseball this week, the eldest of these three figures. On Wednesday, a former player named Tommy Brown died. Now, this did not make as much of

an impact on the culture. The ripples were not quite as wide or as high here, but this mattered very much to me because Tommy Brown was the player I most wanted to talk to. And unfortunately, I never got to. He was my number one dream interview white whale. I'm pretty sure on one of our bonus podcasts we got a question about that. Who would you most want to interview or talk to? And I said Tommy Brown. He really was like of all the people, not just ex players probably, but just anyone in the world.

I really wanted to have a conversation with Tommy Brown or have him on the podcast because just get a load of this life. Let me tell you a little bit about Tommy Brown. I actually broke the news of his death with the permission of the family, which was not the sort of scoop that I would want, but it was weird. I'm not normally getting credited in MLB trade rumors pieces or aggregated and people were crediting me for publicizing this news because I put it on Twitter. I actually, Meg, I did a Twitter thread.

I actually, yeah, I used the thread emoji, I think probably for the first time in my life I did this. But yeah, I know I was moved to do this. I barely tweet anymore except to promote my work or really do anything much on social media, but I did a whole thread. That was just a sign of the significance of this life and death to me.

So Tommy Brown was 97 and he was a former Philly and Cub, but maybe most notably former Brooklyn Dodger. There are now, I believe only four living former Brooklyn Dodgers. So he was one of the final five and that was not in my mind, the greatest claim to fame of Tommy Brown. So Tommy Brown debuted in the big leagues at age 16 in 1944. This sort of thing would happen back then at times. He was the last living player to have played during the World War II era.

He played for his hometown Dodgers. So he dropped out of school at 12. He went to a tryout. He grew up just a couple of miles away from Ebbets Field and he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers starting at shortstop at 16 years and 241 days old. He had not even shaved yet and he was starting at shortstop for the Dodgers, his hometown team. He idolized Joe DiMaggio. He looked a little like him, ran a little like him. He wore number five in his honor and got to play against him later in the 1949 World Series.

And I noticed his biggest day on the field was a three homer game that he had in September 1950. And Joe D actually had a three homer game that same month about a week apart, which is kind of cool. And his nickname was Buckshot, Tommy Buckshot Brown. And that nickname was given to him by Leo DeRosier because he had a great arm, but he couldn't control it. So he just sorta spray the throws around. You never knew where it was gonna go, but it was gonna go somewhere fast. And he was kind of precocious prospect prodigy

called up so young, which was partly because it was World War II and partly because he was talented. And he never really put the talent together, I guess, like Uyghur, he wasn't a great major league baseball player, but he hung around for a while until 1953 was his final season for the Cubs. Again, also sub replacement level by war, but made quite an impact in my mind. And 494 total games, 1387 played appearances ended up being

kind of a utility guy. And here's the greatest thing in my mind, or I guess I'll work up to it because he was in the service in 1946. He wasn't even old enough to, to be in the army or anything during world war two, and then he was in 1946, he missed that season and he got discharged from the army early 47 reported straight to Dodger spring training where branch Ricky had him learn first base. And I joked in my Twitter thread this was before Ron Washington was born, so no one was around to tell him it was incredibly hard, but he had George Sisler, the Hall of Famer, teaching him how to play first base, just kind of

learning on the job in spring training. And so that was where he was gonna play that season probably. That was his best path to playing time. But ultimately did not spend much time at first base that season because playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 was one Jackie Robinson. Yeah. Who is best known as a second baseman. But in that first season with the Dodgers,

Jackie played first base exclusively. And part of the reason for that was that Branch Rickey was worried that he would get spiked on slides at second by racist players, essentially. And so putting him at first was one way to protect him. That was part of the motivation. And so, because Jackie Robinson debuted and broke the color line, Tommy Brown did not really have a path to playing time in 1947.

And he spent the season with the team, but got into 15 games total, 35 plate appearances. So he was a witness to that history, but mostly not a participant in it because he was blocked by Jackie Robinson. And yet he became close friends with Jackie Robinson and later Roy Campanella and bore him no ill will whatsoever for taking what might have been his playing time. And infamously, there was a petition circulated among some of the Dodgers that spring, particularly some of the Southern players, some of the more racist players who circulated a petition about not playing with Robinson. And Tommy Brown and other players refused to sign that.

And Tommy Brown later talked about, maybe I can play a little clip because there's a great oral history. Sabre has on its website a 1994 interview with Tommy Brown where he talks a little bit about it. So wish I could have talked to him too, but that's not a bad substitute. And he talked a little bit about this petition. Jackie, back in 47 when he joined our ball club, there was so much pressure on him. And it takes a man to take all that. And of course he did. And there was a little dissension when he joined our ball club. Southern players, and I don't mind saying

it, Stanky and Dixie Walker being from the South, being from Old Beale over there. It was still the South against the North and everything else like that. But of course I didn't like it because he's a man. Color didn't bother me. You didn't like it, because he's a man. Color didn't bother me. You didn't like the dissension? I didn't like the dissension on it. Like we'd go out on the road, play Cincinnati or Chicago, Jackie had to stay downtown in a different hotel.

And being a young kid, I couldn't realize that. And I felt bad about it. But I'm glad I was a teammate with Jackie. Showed what it takes to be a man. He took everything on the road that they handed out, bringing up the color issue of it. And again, maybe it's not a high bar to clear, obviously, refusing to sign a petition to play with a black player, but it has been somewhat inspiring to me or stood out to me because in recent years, there's been a lot of attention, unfortunately, paid to the white nationalist far right conspiracy stuff, you know, the great replacement theory, right? Which, unfortunately, this gets aired in

disconcertingly mainstream circles these days, seemingly. And a lot of that is about, you know, non-white people replacing white people and taking their jobs, etc. Right? And trying to just drum up all of this racial enmity or, you know, capitalize on what is already out there. And this was a time when some white players' jobs were actually being lost to black players. Now, obviously those jobs were only theirs because of the color line and segregation. So not saying that they deserve to have those jobs,

but obviously, you know, it's an age old thing in sports and in baseball, like the rookie comes up and takes your job. And sometimes there's some bitterness there. And so there were cases where black players would arrive and a white player would lose playing time and they wouldn't be particularly happy about that. And maybe sometimes it was racially tinged and maybe sometimes it wasn't, but this would happen. Even Eddie Robinson, effectively Wild Legend, who was on the show a couple of times before he passed,

when Larry Doby broke in with Cleveland and Eddie Robinson was there. Robinson lost some playing time and resented that in the short term, though didn't bear grudge long term or anything and became friends with Doby, et cetera. But initially, maybe someone comes up and takes the job that you thought you were going to get. And if you're Tommy Brown and you're kind of this more marginal player who's just trying to, you know, you just got out of the army, as did Jackie, obviously, and you're trying to learn a new position. And then here comes this player who would not have been allowed in that league the prior season. And you could imagine someone,

even if maybe they weren't sort of inherently racist, like they could have just seized on that and said, yeah, I don't want to play with this guy because selfishly he's taking my job. But Tommy Brown didn't do that and didn't understand why anyone did that and was very much against that and embraced Jackie and became close with him.

I just think that's admirable. Again, not the world's greatest hero, yes, okay, play with a black player, okay, but there were many players who did not clear that low bar. And if anyone had sort of a personal stake in Jackie Robinson, not having a path to playing time, it was Tommy Brown that year. And yet he had no objection whatsoever to playing with Jackie as a person and sharing a field with him. And I just, I think that's nice.

And he was not one of the better known players on that team, but I think that is worth recognizing. And I really wanted to talk to him partly about that and just about his whole experience of coming up at 16 and being thrown right into the fire. And he is still the youngest major leaguer to hit a home run. In 1945, when he was 17 years old, he hit a homer.

He retains that distinction as the youngest big leaguer ever to Homer. And just the fact that he was still alive felt almost miraculous to me until yesterday because again, he was there. He had this front row seat to Jackie Robinson. And I just would have loved to talk to him about that. It was almost like, you know, he was still surviving past the point that anyone else was really because he was so young when he came up. And so almost

everyone else who was there at that time, they wouldn't be alive anymore. And Tommy Brown was until yesterday because he was, you know, in his teens when this stuff was happening. And so it, it felt like this last living link to that era and a witness to this momentous history. And so that's why I would have loved to talk to him. So RIP, Tommy Brown. Yeah, I guess like it's easy for folks to get over their skis praising white players who happen to not be virulent races. But you're right that it is not a bar that everyone cleared. And I guess if you're a player who didn't really end up having a particularly notable career in terms of your production on the field, there are way worse things to be known

for. I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to talk to him. That's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. He was pretty private. And so, you know me when I'm trying to interview an old baseball player. Usually I get my man, you know, but this was my one quarry that I couldn't wrangle. And I tried. It was tough to track him down, first of all, because he just, he wasn't very public and not a very uncommon name. And then I think I failed to find maybe a direct number for him or I did, but I didn't

get an answer and there was no voicemail or something. So I ended up finding a number for his neighbor, I believe, who was like, yeah, I live next door to Tati Brown, nice guy. I see him sometimes. And so I'm pretty sure I asked his neighbor to convey my interest in talking to him and never heard back and then did a little more digging and found one of his daughters and reached out to her just to let her know that I have this podcast and we talk to former players sometimes, including some players from your dad's era.

I'd just be thrilled and I sent her some old newspaper clippings that I had found. We had this correspondence for a few years, actually, where I was holding out hope that I might finally get to talk to Tommy Brown because she was supportive of my talking to him. She wanted him to do it and to get those memories on record and preserve her posterity and everything. And every now and then she would try to talk him into it and he just wasn't willing to do it. But you know, she would tell me like, because every now and then I'd drop her a line when he had a birthday or something or just when I thought of him for any reason.

Like actually just recently, I think a few weeks ago, maybe I saw a post that mentioned that there were just a few surviving players still from the 1952 Tops set, the famous set of baseball cards. There were just four players left living from that, and one of them was Tommy Brown. And so I sent that over to her and she told me, don't give up.

I'll keep trying. Maybe one of these days, I'll agree to it. But it didn't happen, unfortunately. And I guess what happened to him was that he had suffered a fall recently and broken some bones. He broke his hip and arm. And that's, it's always, you know, bad sign. It was the same with my grandma. You fall and break your hip and you're kind of bedridden for a while. And at that age, it is tough to bounce back from that sort of thing. And he was rehabbing from that and caught pneumonia, unfortunately. And that was

rehabbing from that and caught pneumonia, unfortunately. And that was what did him in, but he is survived by four children, seven grandchildren, and 10 great grandchildren. So there's a large brown brood that he left behind him. And I would imagine that he shared a lot of those memories with them, at least, if not with the public at large. But he was also, maybe it is implied by what we've said about him so far, but he was the last living player to have played in the major leagues, any of the major leagues prior to integration, which again is not, I mean, you could almost, I guess, celebrate in a sense that it's been long enough now since the color line was in place that there is no one living who played in either the black or white major leagues prior to that point.

But it does just go to show that until Wednesday morning, there was someone still alive who had played in the pre-integration major leagues and that's how recent that is, right? Yeah, it's black and white, but it is not ancient history at all, right? It was within people's living memories and still is, obviously. I mean, Jackie Robinson's widow, Rachel Robinson, is still with us at 102 years old. So it just hasn't been that long. And the only living big leaguers now from the 1940s are the two surviving Negro leaguers from the period that has been designated by MLB as Major League now, Ron Teasley, who has been on this show, and Bill Griesen, whom I've also attempted to interview

unsuccessfully thus far, but he was a big part of the Rick Wood broadcast last year, so people probably saw him on that, and Bobby Shantz, who of course has been on Effectively Wild 2. So two out of three ain't bad, I guess. And yeah, they're just so few from that era that you gotta They're just so few from that era that you gotta treasure them while you still can. So, sorry to see Tommy Brown go and condolences to his family. Yeah, man. Sad. Yeah. I actually heard from the Dodgers team historian who reached out to me because the Dodgers want to send condolences to the family and was asking me for contact info. And his daughter, Paula, said that her dad would be smiling to know that that was the case. So yeah, that is bittersweet, obviously,

but sort of nice. So that's a sad way to start this episode, but you know, there's always the silver lining, the nice aspect of losing some important figure or someone you cared about, which is that you can tell people about them and you can commiserate and you can share memories and information. And so check the show page if you want to know a little bit more about Tommy Brown. I will include some links there for everyone. Okay. So to transition to non-death related news for the rest of this podcast, I guess there hasn't been much news. There's one item that I want to get your thoughts on and then maybe we will answer a few emails

we will see. But the news, there was a signing of a Japanese player, not Roki Sasaki as we speak, he remains unsigned. Don't know if that will be the case when you are listening, but whenever we get the news, whenever the white smoke comes out of the agency and we find out which of the finalists he chose, we will of course discuss that on Effectively Wild. But no, I speak not of Roki Sasaki, but of Shotaro Mori,

who was signed by the athletics. And this is a really interesting signing for a few reasons. Now, one is that he is barely older than Tommy Brown was when he made his major league debut. He's 18 years old. He's not gonna he made his major league debut. He's 18 years old. He's not going to be making his major league debut anytime soon, but he was signed by the A's. Now he was signed or I guess caught the A's eye because of an Instagram post.

So that's kind of interesting. And how many times, I mean, yes, you have a lot of social media posts about hopeful players, but rarely do they not only come to the attention of a team, but then that team sends some scouts out and finds that actually it wasn't just social media hype. This kid is really good and exciting and also of interest because he's a two-way player for now. And at least for the beginning of his career in affiliated ball, the A's are going to try him as a two-way player.

So he can play short, he's a good nifty defender and also pitch from the stretch and fired a fastball 92 miles per hour. Apparently he can throw 92 to 94, so he's got some giddy up despite his young age. And I guess the most interesting thing somehow may be more interesting than the fact that he's a two way player prospect is that he is bypassing. NPP bypassing the Japanese major leagues and signing directly with a MLB team. And that has been a barrier that players just have not really crossed. And I think the implications of that are really interesting. So last February, Rintaro Sasaki, who was also a top Japanese amateur talent, he skipped

the NPB draft and signed to play college ball at Stanford. Yeah. So that was pretty interesting. And he had gone to the same high school as Otani and was from Otani's area and you say Kikuchi's area. And his dad was the long time coach of Otani's school's high school team. And so that felt like a little bit of a levy breaking kind of moment,

but this even more so, because he wasn't just going from high school to college. He is going, Maury is going straight to an MLB organization. Do not stop, do not pass go. And that feels like that could be a real precedent setter because there is a lot of cultural pressure not to do that. And it's been kind of an informal rule, unwritten rule. And we just haven't really seen players

opt to go that route. There are players who could have, players who've maybe considered it and flirted with it and certainly had the prospect pedigree to do it if they had decided to, including Notani and Udavish and others, but no one has really taken that leap. And so I wonder what it will mean for Mori, but more broadly for Japanese

baseball and for the pipeline of Japanese players to affiliated ball in the US. LS I always feel a lot of conflict around questions like this. I think, you know, we talked about it in the context of our Sasaki conversation and the implications for NPB and we generally fall on the side of players being able to have agency, right, and self-determination and be able to pick where they play to the extent that that's possible and we're put off by the concept of team control. And so like in the abstract, I think that players being able to pick where they go and who their employer is going to be is important.

And I think, you know, it's, it's no more important for a two way player, but like it is interesting that, you know, when you think about a guy like this where there is, you know, I think when Eric wrote him up for our most recent international update, like he noted that he's a viable prospect on both sides of the ball, but I think there is a question about is that going to remain true as he embarks on his pro career or is, you know, one sort of skill set going to emerge as the one that's going to carry him to the majors. So it's interesting that he's choosing a team like the athletics to help him sort of navigate

that journey, right? I think it's good for players to be able to do that. Having said that, I do have trepidation about this becoming a more sort of culturally acceptable practice in international pro leagues for players who might go to those leagues because I think that there's a lot of really great baseball that gets played in NPB and the KBO and I don't want there to be even greater pressure for players in those markets to look to the United States as like their ultimate baseball destination. So I, you know, I don't really quite know how I feel about it.

I still think that there's a lot of resistance to this, but I guess we'll see. A lot of it might depend on Mori and how viable a prospect he actually ends up being and how successful he is, but yeah, I don't know. I feel a couple different ways about it. There was really an informal rule because Junichi Tazawa, he kind of challenged this norm, but not quite in this way,

because he was undrafted out of high school, and then he was playing in a different Japanese league, not NPB. He would have been eligible again for the NPB draft but instead after having been passed over the first time, he signed directly with an MLB team and after that there was what the athletic calls an unwritten yet highly specific Tazawa rule developed in NPB stipulating that any Japanese amateur who skipped the NPB draft to play there was what the athletic calls an unwritten yet highly specific Tazawa rule developed in NPB stipulating that any Japanese amateur who skipped the NPB draft to play overseas would be ineligible to play in NPB for at least two years upon returning home. So you'd basically be blackballed for a couple of years if you went there and then came back,

if it didn't work out, let's say you just couldn't play and you'd be subject to some scorn and peer pressure basically about that. And that informal rule was scrapped back in 2020, but there was still that understanding. There's just a lot of pressure to play in Japan, to play an NPP before you leave. And I also think it's great that there is just an extremely healthy appetite for baseball in Japan, that there's high level professional baseball in Japan. And yeah, if your dream is to play at the very tip top highest level,

then I do think you should be free to do that. And yet also I think it's to the good that baseball is so immensely popular in Japan and that there's this thriving ecosystem there and that the brand of baseball they played there is a little different from the way it's played elsewhere in the world and certainly in the US. And I think that's a good thing. And we've seen MLB bragging about ratings for games and how well watched they are in Japan. And part of that is the fact that baseball is thriving in Japan. So yes, if every hotshot prospect were to bypass

NPB, that would really be bad for that league. And maybe it would be bad for just the cultural enthusiasm for baseball in Japan. Even if you're enjoying seeing your players succeed internationally, still there's a barrier, there's a time zone difference, right? It's tough you're not seeing it in person, it's just a little different. But you have this generation of players now growing up having seen Otani, having seen him exercise his agency, now Sasaki leaving a little earlier than his customary. And part of it is the fact that in Japan, you're just under team control for so long, even longer than you are in MLB. So it's nine years until you're an unrestricted free agent there. And yes, you can perhaps be posted

a little earlier than that if you have leverage, but not everyone can do that and it's kind of a case by case basis. So if there were some reforms, some collective bargaining, some action that took place there to maybe improve the lot of Japanese players when it came to controlling when and where they could go, then it would be a little less onerous. You wouldn't have to wait quite as long to make that leap. Whereas now you're signing over like, you know, a big part of your, your prime, your peak, if you start an MPB. So that's tough to ask a player to do. Maybe if that path were shortened, then there could be kind of a compromise there.

Yeah. And I think that one sort of outcome that shifts like this can result in is catastrophe, but one outcome it can result in is reform. If a league feels like they have to alter their existing sort of practices to find some sort of compromise, that would I think be a good outcome to something like this. Because you're right, it is an incredibly onerous amount of time. And unless you come up very, very young, it can exert downward pressure on your earnings potential and all sorts of things.

So I think that there's probably a middle ground to be found that would give Japanese players sort of a pathway to eventual major league baseball participation if that's something they aspire to, but at a juncture that still makes staying within NPB appealing, at least on a shorter time horizon. So maybe that's the optimistic way to look at something like this, where it might be, it might catalyze change in a way that would be to everyone's benefit, where you get to see these guys play in MLB to the extent that that's something they want, but you are not depriving a league that has a very rich tradition in a country where there is a tremendous amount of interest in baseball as a sport. And like, you know, we have seen over the years, like, I think that just as we have

seen the average quality of athlete and the average quality of player in Major League Baseball, you know, continue to improve. We've seen the same thing in NPB and like that's a really good league. Um, and so it, it deserves to exist and thrive, um, separate and apart from any potential, you know, talent pool it might provide to major league baseball. And if you could shorten that path, it would still be an appealing prospect. Not only just getting to play in your home country in front of your family and friends and everything, but also because getting to the big leagues in your country faster might be more appealing than going to the minor leagues.

And Morrie, he got a $1.5 million bonus and he's signing this deal. He's obviously going to be riding the buses and going to towns that he's probably never seen before and dealing with all the acculturation and assimilation and language barrier and all of that that goes into just changing continents. And it would be appealing maybe to get to sort of season yourself at home and make the majors faster in NPB. And then you do some of your development there. So you sort of skip some of the minor league travel

and facilities and everything. And NPB salaries aren't MLB salaries, but they are certainly, you know, I'd imagine better than minor league salaries. So it could be a path to getting paid faster depending on how big your bonus is. And the other thing is that I of course am supportive of seeing more players attempt to be two-way players.

I don't think there are many players who could be capable of doing what Otani has done just because of his physical gifts, but I do think there are more players who could do it at some level. And when Otani came up and proved that it could be done in MLB, there was a lot of, oh, is this the start of a wave of two-way players? And there were various players who were giving it a go or at least were amateur prospects and looked like, eh, maybe. And that just hasn't really panned out. And so it's notable even that they're giving Mori a shot to prove that he can or can't do this. And that is probably because of the leverage he had.

Because if being a two-way player is important to him, he can say, well, you can sign me if you let me continue to be a two-way player. Otherwise I can just go to the NPP draft and I'll be a top pick there. If you're gonna force me into a box and make me be conventional, well, I don't have to come to the A's organization to do that.

But if you let me be a two- way guy, then, then you can have me. And that's kind of what Otani did too. He, he used the leverage, the threat that he could go directly to an MLB organization to extract the concession that, okay, with the fighters, he would get the shot to do that. And then he later used the leverage of, well, he didn't have to come over when he did and cost himself money in the short term. And he did it.

He could hand select a team that would allow him to continue to be a two-way player. So you need those special circumstances, I think, to force teams hands or to force them to refrain from making you pick a hand because you really have to have some other viable option in order to convince a team to let you do that. Because even now, when there are players who succeed as two-way guys in high school, in college, sometimes they get drafted as two-way players, but many of them are forced into one path immediately or very quickly and they specialize whether they want to or not. So I would like to see some players preserve that option to continue to do it. Yeah. I worry that it is going to particularly as, you know, as the minors in all likelihood

continue to contract that the room to try that is just going to continue to dissipate. And so the idea that there are players who actually do have the leverage in those moments to sort of extract it as a concession is like really appealing to me because I also would like to see it. And I think that it's likely to require some amount of prior development, whether you have an instance like Otani where it was a thing that he did at a high level in an international pro league prior to coming to the US or, you know, is simply something that, you know, a player in a really unique circumstance is able to say, yeah, but you really want me though, don't you? All right. A few emails here. Let's, uh,

I guess we can do a quick breakout follow-up because we got a few responses to our recent breakouts conversations. Now after our second breakout conversation, we received some, well, not anonymous tips. They weren't anonymous to us, but anonymous to our listeners, I guess we heard from some people at MLB and MLB network about how that happened, how the MLB network Instagram post that labeled a lot of players as breakout players who were just by no definition that we could define breakout players.

We were trying to puzzle out how that happened. And I had previously corresponded with someone at MLB.com who didn't understand where those purported MLB.com breakout picks were coming from. Well, what happened is that there was an article written for MLB.com by multi-time, effectively wild guest and listener Will Leach. Will's article was not about breakout players. It was about players who could define 2025 because Will had written an article, a list of players who defined 2024. And then he did a forward looking one to see, okay, who are the players who are going to define 2025? Because they're going to do something

new and different or new circumstances or whatever it was. And somehow something was lost in translation to the point that Will's article about players who would define 2025 ended up being labeled breakout players for 2025 by the social media crew at MLB network. So there was some miscommunication there. There was some confusion. I don't think the intent was to make everyone mad. I hope that's my interpretation, but yeah, it was just a little lost in translation more so than let's anger Ben Lindbergh and other people on the internet by pretending that these are breakout picks. So that's the origin story for that post, which is still up, but at least it has been seemingly communicated somehow that those were not breakout players.

And that was not something that people at MLB network or MLB.com wanted to be broadcast in that form. The previous article that we talked about at MLB.com, which was explicitly about breakout players, and we quibbled with many of those selections as well, that was the intent. But yeah, that's what we have learned about that particular Instagram post. So just clearing the air a little bit about that. And we did get an email from a linguist who wrote in in response to our conversation and had some thoughts about why there seems to be this broad definition of breakouts. And his take, essentially, this was Aaron Finholt, he noted that, well, the definition is fairly loose. There's a lot of ambiguity to begin with because people disagree on how to define a breakout

season. Does it just depend on that player's previously established standards? Does it depend on how good that player was before? Is there a certain level at which you can no longer break out no matter how much better you got? Does it have to do with your performance relative to the league, et cetera. So reasonable people could disagree to some extent, which then opens the door for what

I would consider to be unreasonable disagreement, right? Just because it's inherently a little subjective and ambiguous, and that lends itself to maybe pushing the breakout boundaries. I get that. But also. Yeah, but also, right. And so we got a couple requests for clarification or follow-up questions. One from Daniel, Patreon supporter for instance, who says, what would it take for come October you to say, yep, Otani, Mookie, et cetera, they actually did break out. And Daniel said, I assume if Otani puts up peak Gibson plus Bonds numbers, that would do it. So if he has a two-way

season where he's Bob Gibson on the mound and Barry Bonds at bat, would I then say that that was a breakout? And Daniel, no, I still would not. I still wouldn't. I still wouldn't. Yeah, it just wouldn't be the descriptor I would reach for. He's beyond that. That isn't an appropriate way to understand him at this juncture in his career. in his career, you know, he is, I, he, he qualifies for so many adjectives, but he's just fundamentally disqualified from that one. And that doesn't, it's, that's not negative. That's not a bet. It's done. Like, yeah, he is, no, yeah. You can't win rookie of the year twice and you can't win. You can't be a breakout player twice in my mind, at least. And certainly not when you've reached that level. I'm willing to entertain. Maybe there are some cases where you go from

a marginal, you go from a bench player to let's say an above average regular. And then maybe you go from above average regular to like superstar MVP or something. And maybe you go from obscure, no one knows who you are to, okay, the people who are playing close attention to baseball know who you are and know you were good. And then you graduate to another level where everyone knows you're just mainstream. Maybe, maybe you could say that could qualify as multiple breakouts. I would just use a different term and certainly I just use different term. Yeah, for an Otani or a Muki, you know,

like I would just say realistically, there's not that much better they could be probably, but even unrealistically, if we do some kind of crafted, how valuable could they possibly be if they maxed out? I would say that I would say they maxed out or they peak, or they leveled up or they they've had a career year. There are lots of alternate terms you could use. I just, the question is like, what are you breaking out of?

And my conception is that you're kind of breaking out of obscurity or, or being more of a marginal player. And for me, it's more about performance than fame, but I think you could quibble with that and I would understand if you're known to the true sickos and baseball knowers, the extremely online baseball knowers, but no one else, maybe you can break out and become a mainstream figure. For me, it's more about just the actual production on the field. But yeah, I just know there's nothing Shohei Odani could do to break out in my mind. He could

break out in hives. I hope he doesn't, but in terms of performance or fame, no, he has already broken out. Yeah. So this is sort of what I was trying to get at with the notion that what a lot of people mean when they say break out is that that player has broken through to their notice. And that is reasonable. And I don't think that everyone is obligated to know who Lawrence Butler is, right? But it is a different phenomena that you are describing. And it is separate from, related to, but separate from that individual's baseline expectation of production. And you know, for young players, for very young players, sometimes the baseline expectation is like an unsettled question, right? We're still trying to figure out exactly what the baseline looks like. And that's part of what we spend like sophomore seasons evaluating and trying to understand.

But he already broke out. He broke out. So unless you're describing, you know, an unfortunate acne experience, it's done. Yeah. And you could say, well, maybe you broke out of your previous box or your previous tier of performance and the conception that people had formed about how good you were.

And you were typecast as that kind of player, even if it was a pretty productive player. And then you broke out of that mold maybe, but yeah, I just wouldn't do that. A couple people wrote in to say that maybe we should blame Pacota. Maybe this is coming from Pacota because I'll quote from Jonah, Patreon supporter here. I think Nate Silver played a role in the breakout player article with non breakout players trend. Pacota had a breakout percentage, which was defined, if I recall correctly, which I might not as being 20% better than last year. It sounds about right, I forget exactly, but he noted this wasn't a perfect use of the word breakout, but it made sense in his model and it was a short and snappy way of saying significantly

better than last year. And he acknowledged this in an article he wrote every year about the players with the top breakout percentages. And I think the article was popular for fantasy sports purposes. Basically, it's an article of potential bargains in draft order or auction dollar amounts. And then people who wrote fantasy took the idea and ran with it without the proper disclaimers about their definition of breakout. And my theory is that it's not just clickbait, but that it's also a continuation of this fantasy trope to the point where it's ridiculous. So yeah, I mean, I had and wrote for and even edited at times the BP

annuals and PECOTA and there was that breakout percentage and it was like collapse percentage and breakout percentage. And it was all defined as yes, your PECOTA projection relative to previous years or like percentile performance, that kind of thing. And so maybe, yeah, when you standardize it, if everyone has some sort of breakout percentage, even if it's remote and you just draw some sort of statistical objective line and say X percent better than before is a breakout, then maybe you encourage this kind of thinking. And I guess that could be part of this becoming more pervasive, perhaps. LS I don't want to denigrate Pocoto by any means or BP, but I am, I think this is a bigger problem than that. I think that there probably is a particular stat head brain that has been addled by Nate Silver, perhaps in multiple

ways. But I think that this, this suggests this suggests a misunderstanding far beyond the reaches of baseball prospectus. Can I break in with some news that is completely unrelated to the concept of breakouts? Sure. You're breaking in with news. Yeah, I'm breaking in with breaking news. Although I suppose he was on one of these lists, it appears that the Cubs and Kyle Tucker have managed to avoid arbitration and have come to an agreement on a $16.5 million contract for next year. He will be at Cubs Fest or whatever the fan convention is. So carry on Cubs fans, enjoy your Kyle Tucker.

Yes, put down your pitchforks. Yeah, we talked about this. We noted that they could still settle and avoid arbitration. So they ended up, I guess, more or less at the midpoint closer to Tucker's figure, right? Because he had filed at 17 and a half. The Cubs had filed at 15. LS. Do you think that if I go as Ichabod Crane, but with a Cubs jersey on for Halloween, that that will be too obscure of a reference for trick-or-treatitors? Do you think that they'll be like, who are you even? And then I'll have to explain it every time.

That'd be annoying. I won't do that. I think you probably would, yes. It does look like you're about Korean though, telling you. Yeah, last breakout related question came from listener Debbie who says, my wife who doesn't care about men's sports enjoys the pedantic questions you ask. There's something for everyone on Effectively Wild. When I told them about the conversation you've been having about breakouts, they had a good

question that I thought I'd ask your insight on too. Basically, if someone meets the general requirements that you've been outlining to be considered a breakout by results-based stats, but their underlying numbers pretty clearly indicate that most, if not all of the improvement was based on luck, would it be fair to call their season a breakout season? So if it's more of a, a babbit fluke sort of situation and the, maybe even the value improves by leaps and bounds and the superficial stats do too, would we term that a breakout or does there have to be the implication that this is sustainable

and repeatable? I think I want it to be at least leaning toward the side of sustainability in order for me to really call it a breakout season. You know, if a guy's running like a 380 babbip, I would probably reach for fluky to just to define or describe the season sooner than I would talk about it within the terms of the breakout. I think you have to consider the potential sustainability of the performance, which doesn't mean that it has to be replicated like perfectly in the following year. But I think you want to be talking about a guy reaching something that might come to approximate his new normal. Because otherwise it's just maybe the best season he ever had. But I think we talk, we tend to talk about breakouts with the expectation that they will sustain. Yeah. If you're someone who thinks of this more as your fame, then I guess you could

break out in that sense, because if you bat 360 or something and it's just highly babbip driven, it's still going to lead to a lot of attention and might get you well known. Now in this day and age, that would probably come with caveats and cautions and there's regression ahead. Cause I think people aren't fooled by flukes as much as they once were. And so if you have a super low ERA with a higher FIP or a BABIP driven batting average, and you don't have a history of having a high BABIP, then I think people probably

aren't going to buy that hook line and sinker. And so the enthusiasm would be muted to an extent, but you would still be better known than you had been before. But yeah, I think it has to be a true talent breakout or a true talent improvement for me to classify it as a breakout, a legitimate breakout. Yeah. I think you want to be able to say like, wow, I can't wait to see what that guy does next year. And if you're struggling to do that, then maybe it's not a breakout. Your projections should improve meaningfully in the season after your purported breakout. So if it's just forecasting a lot of regression, then I don't think that quite qualifies as a full-throated breakout in my mind.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good distinction. A few non breakout related questions. Rob Means of Baseball Prospectus and our Patreon says recently in Joshian's excellent newsletter, the Joshian newsletter at Joshian.com, he was describing a pitcher's fastball as his number one. We're familiar with calling a curveball a deuce. These terms refer to the signals catchers used to call for pitches. With pitchcom obviating catcher signals, will terms like those become obsolete, like butcher boy, circuit clout, and complete game?

Or will the continued use of catcher signals in the minors and at amateur levels ensure continued familiarity? So this is, I guess, kind of a corollary to our previous conversation about Tommy Canely throwing change-ups as his primary pitch. And can you classify it as a change-up and how do you define change-up? Does it have to be a change from something else?

Does it have to be in contrast to a fastball or not? We already reckoned with that one. This is just about the terminology, just calling a pitch your number one and saying it's a fastball, I guess. And obviously for a lot of pitchers, fastball is not their number one, at least when it comes to frequency. But putting that aside for a second, let's say it is still someone who is very fastball heavy. Will we continue to call it a number one or call

a curveball a deuce if these things stem from catcher signs? And in the big leagues these days, we don't have those anymore. I suspect that we will. Phones haven't looked the way they did when we used to do the signal for dialing and people still, you know, they hold up the hand with their pinky and their thumb. CB It's a skeuomorph as we have discussed. LS Skeuomorph, thank you. Couldn't for the life of me locate it, Ben. Had no idea where it was in my brain. Thank you. Good lord. Yeah, it's like an old fashioned thing that is not really present in our lives anymore, except it's still used in our interfaces, right? Or it's something that is kind of ornamental or

designed that's meant to resemble something that used to be functional. and it's still with us just as kind of a cultural or I guess linguistic in this case, artifact. So yeah, I think this could stay with us and be sort of a skeuomorph, a verbal relic of back when you had to put down fingers at a number one or number two that corresponded with a pitch type. Yeah. And to Rob's point, it's not as if catchers never call games anymore, right? It's not like they never put signs down. They do it.

They do it in amateur ball. They do it in the minors. Like it is still a phenomenon, even if, um, the, the frequency at the major league level has, has greatly dissipated with the advent of the pitchcom era. Is it an era? I guess it is an era. We would call it an era. We would distinguish it as an era of baseball. Yeah. I wouldn't say that it is the era defining thing in that, but we could call it a pitchcom era. We could also call it other kinds of eras too. Yeah. It's over determined.

Yeah. I'm going to call it the silly name era, you know, maybe we'll do. We got some feedback on our names conversation too. It was mixed. CB. Yeah, it was mostly. LS. We weren't trying to be mean to the people who said we were mean. Those kids are okay, they don't know what we said about them. I also do, can I say something about this? Because it did occur to me. I don't know if we said this or not. Like obviously, you know, people interact with names. They have their own like cultural reference for names.

And there's a not proud history of goofing on names, sometimes like for racial reasons. That's not what we were doing. We were trying, we were remarking on the great silliness of the why prevalence. So many whys. Anyway, I hope those kids are having a great day and their parents too. Jeff Hoffman seems like a nice enough guy. Yeah. To be clear, there was one person who at least let us know that they thought that conversation was mean-spirited. It seemed like most people were fine with it. Seemed to feel very strongly about it. I do.

I felt like I should recognize the strength of the feeling. Sometimes people feel away. My quibble with the names of the Hoffman kids or more broadly was not their names, it was the spelling. It was the fact that there were some Ys inserted in places where one would not expect a Y to be. I am fully supportive of uncommon names or even novel names, names I've never seen before. We should expand the name palette. As I said, names all

started somewhere. There was always someone who was the first person to have that name. So I'm not suggesting that we restrict ourselves to names in the conventional name canon. It's purely as a result of the confusion that could arise from taking a well-known name and just deciding to stick a Y in there instead of the letter that you're expecting to see, which then leads to a lot of conversations and spellings and confusions. We heard from some people who identified with that portion of the conversation too, because they have that in their own lives or they're a teacher, let's say, and they're constantly asking kids to spell their names to clarify. It's a lot of labor that you're

imposing on the kids or the people in their orbit because it's a lifelong, unless they change their name, confusion about yes. But novel names, I'm all for it. In fact, I have a couple of cousins named Ocean and Willow, and their parents are a little bit hippy dippy, as you might expect perhaps from the names. But I've always thought those are really nice names. And there are people who roll their eyes, even people in my family with Ocean and Willow, what is that? I think those are great names. They're pleasing to the ear, they evoke things in life that I like. I like willow trees, I like oceans. They are also clear to the speller. If you hear ocean or willow, you might or you might once have been taken aback by

the fact that a person had those names, but there's no confusion about what you're referencing or how to spell that. So that I think is immune from the problem or potential problem I identified with just sort of sticking a Y in there. You hear ocean or a willow, you know how to spell ocean or willow. You're familiar with those concepts. Yeah, I wanna clarify that I would say that 93%

of my reaction to it was the spelling, but 7% was, some of those names are a little goofy, but also goofy names are fine. Um, I don't know. Sometimes I wish that our listeners were more comfortable with us being a little mean from time to time. We are allowed to be a little mean. Yeah, we're pretty nice most of the time. Yeah.

From time to time. We try to be nice. Yeah. You know, I think we weren't making fun of the kids. They didn't choose the time. Yeah, we try to be nice. Yeah, you know, I think we weren't making fun of the kids. They didn't choose the names. Again, we were pretty clear about that, but yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Anyway. I don't want to overreact to one bit of feedback either, but I do value the feedback that we get, even when it is saying that something rubbed someone

the wrong way. That is perfectly fine to express that. All right, couple other questions. Brad says, I know that you've both watched, I think you should leave, but I'm not sure if I've heard mention of Tim Robinson and Zach Kanan's other hilarious venture, Detroiters. I have in fact watched Detroiters and I love it very much. And I wrote about Detroiters years ago at the Ringer and did interviews for Detroiters actually, which was very fun. Robinson doesn't do a whole lot of interviews. He's pretty press averse. And I had a chance

to talk to Robinson and Sam Richardson, who were lifelong friends, and Richardson also appears in I Think You Should Leave, and they are the stars of Detroiters, which is more of a traditional sitcom than a sketch show, but a wacky one. This came out in 2017, 2018, and I think a lot of people have maybe discovered it through I Think You Should Leave and looking up these people's prior work. And I think it's on Netflix now. So I encourage everyone to check it out. It's just two seasons and a quick watch and a really fun one.

Yeah, I have seen like an episode of it and thought it was very funny and super strange and those things were related. Those descriptors are related. So Brad says in season two, episode eight, Hark! Motors around the 445 mark, we get the following exchange when a competing ad exec uses the following analogy to justify stealing

one of Tim and Sam's clients. Guys, this is how advertising works. We steal each other's clients. Okay, it's like this, guy steals second base, right? He's not cheating, he's just trying to win the game. Well, statistically speaking, it's stupid to try and steal second base. I mean, Moneyball.

It's basically Moneyball. That's great. Brad says, despite this oversimplification and failure to fully incorporate success rate, this got me thinking about the colloquial usage and understanding of Moneyball. Yeah. If you asked a random person or casual observer

to identify the most important takeaway from Moneyball, I would have always guessed they would mention walking more or maybe bunting less. As Moneyball's original publication is now more than 20 years ago, yeesh, and perhaps more associated with the movie than the original book, I wonder if people's definition is shifting to include broader sabermetric ideas,

i.e. launch angle, third time through the order, et cetera. Am I wrong in this? What do you think the casual observer thinks of when they hear the term moneyball? Baseball team with no rotation at all. That's a joke about the movie Moneyball. And the book. And the book Moneyball.

But it was even more pronounced in the movie than in the book. It's like, who was pitching? I don't even know who could say. Yes. I think the book mentions the names, maybe Barry Zito and Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder and Miguel Tejada briefly. Yeah, I don't know that there's a single mention in the movie. And to be clear, sorry, I got it. I enjoy the movie Moneyball. I think it is a successful film. I think it is successful on its own terms as a movie, but it is very funny that it's like, I don't know, do you pitch at all? Like baseball, who could say only relievers, right?

Right. Scott Hattaberg played every position. He did it himself. Every position and- That is incredibly hard, by the way. Wash was right. I think there are two kinds of casuals that we have to account for here. The first kind of casual is the baseball casual.

And I think that the baseball casual has taken money ball to mean analytical concepts, but they are not, they are not updating their priors of what that means. I think they are not incorporating hard hit rate. They are not updating their priors of what that means. I think they are not incorporating hard head rate. They are not thinking about launching goal. They are thinking about money ball in a very basic way because they are not actually analytically inclined. I think that most people who deployed this phrase in like an earnest way are not, they don't think about baseball in an analytics framework very often. And so they are not like, they don't know what swing speed is, right? They're not like, oh my God, finally, Savant has swing speed. They don't, they don't

know about that. They don't know about that. Then there's the Michael Lewis casual, which is a different kind of casual. And these are folks who may or may not be sports fans, may or may not be baseball fans, and think of Moneyball as a catch-all for analytics or data-driven decision-making at all. And they're not updating with hard hit rate either, because they don't know what that is. Yeah, I think that's the common consensus, if anything, just analytics is synonymous with Moneyball. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? That's fine. I think that it is aonymous with Moneyball. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know what? That's fine. I think that it is a useful catch-all. We all know what we mean when we say it. And the people who are really invested in the particulars of analytics in baseball, they've been well past that for a long, long time. And so, I think that's what I think about that. Now I want to watch Detroiters. Detroiters?

Absolutely should Detroiters. Yes. Detroiters. And it's a baseball show for a few reasons, not just for this particular clip as well. But also I think it has become really synonymous with just competitive advantages or looking for something undervalued. So even if people aren't thinking of it as players who walk a lot or have high on base percentages, just the idea of there's something undervalued

in the market, whatever the thing is, whatever the market is that someone is identifying and then they're moneyballing it and maybe they're doing more with less spending wise and maybe signing a Japanese amateur like Shotaro Mori might be a form of moneyball. But this could be across sports. Of course, it's incredibly common.

It's also incredibly common to hear it just in non-sports arenas these days. And moneyball is applied to business, not just the business of sports, but business more broadly, politics, you hear moneyball all the time and it's just basically like finding an edge. So I think, yeah, it's not really, even when I think about it, I'm not thinking about specific stats or tech or anything or tactics. I'm just thinking of the more broadly looking for a competitive advantage,

looking for some undervalued commodity and then seizing on that advantage. Or it could be just numbers. It could be just stats, sabermetrics, new age analysis, data analytics, that kind of thing. Data, data, data driven, data. And I think that you're right that the business context is sort of where that is, I think, being most often unironically deployed. And it makes it incredibly funny to me because when it is utilized in that context, I think it is being utilized by people who are generally very resource rich, even though it was in some very important ways, like the result

of resource deprivation. So it is like a weird, you know, that wire getting crossed is sort of funny to me. There's like a lot of venture capital guys, I am saying guys on purpose. We're like, oh, that's how we got a money ball. And it's like, what are you even talking about? Yeah. It's some sort of like LinkedIn post probably where someone is bragging about some something they did in their business and how it made their partner break up with them, but it was good because they sold more stuff or whatever. There's some wild stuff on LinkedIn these days.

Laurenie We are not the first people to comment on this. And if we talk about it for more than two minutes, we're going to talk about it for like two and a half hours. LinkedIn is the most depraved, unhinged website on God's internet. I do not even understand for one minute the target audience for LinkedIn because it's not job seekers and I don't even think that it's people who are trying to hire. It is just the weirdest guy to graduate from an MBA program in any given year and then like a lot of very haggard HR professionals. It is so bizarre. It is the weirdest. Do I want to wish people happy birthday on LinkedIn? No.

What? No. No. And I, oh my God, the number of times that I've gotten an email from LinkedIn being like, this person you used to work with at Goldman has this to say, and then I opened and I'm like, everything I thought about that person has been confirmed to be true. Why does it want me to be following Vek Ramaswamy? I've gotten that email from LinkedIn like seven times. I don't know. I barely ever remember to log into LinkedIn, which I feel badly about because ostensibly there are people who want to network as they

look for writing opportunities, but I just never go there because every time I do, I'm like, this is the worst place on the internet. What is happening over there? Who, anyway, anyway, maybe I need to like refine my particular objections and it can be like a low stakes re-ent on our next Patreon or something, but I am just like flummoxed. I need someone to write, I need a smart culture critic to write a book about LinkedIn to help me understand. I feel like I am Amy Adams in, what's the one with the aliens that she's in? Arrival. I am Amy Adams and LinkedIn is the aliens in Arrival. And I do not understand what they are trying to say.

I cannot fathom it. It is, I got to read my life backwards or something. I just, I don't know. Anyway, anyway, that's me on LinkedIn for now. My colleague, Katie Baker recently wrote a piece entitled, The 10 People You Meet on LinkedIn, which might help you a little bit. But yeah, I'm going to read that as soon as we're done recording. That's amazing. People use LinkedIn to find love. Talk about finding love in a hopeless place. It's like a dating site sort of surrogate these days. What? Anyway, that's a rich text. Oh, God. Or just a terrible one, but there's a lot to discuss. Okay, last couple questions here. This one from Zachary, Patreon supporter says, I was discussing the Hall of Fame with my dad and specifically the idea of big hall versus small hall voting. And he mentioned,

if I go to the hall and see some random guy who was really good in 1949, but I've never heard of him, should he be in the Hall of Fame? That made me think of a player who is one of the best players of a decade, but probably won't be remembered a hundred years from now. And whether that person deserves to be in the Hall of Fame or not to solve this, my dad came up with the idea. A standard Hall of Fame vote gets you in for 20 years, but voters can elect you to a lifelong appointment if they choose. There could be variations on this, like not having a separate vote for 20 years vs. lifetime, and instead it's based on a voting percentage,

players with 90% or more support, get a lifetime election or the amount of time you stay in. But I'm curious about your thoughts on the concept in general. So we have discussed the idea of a hall of fame tier system which would maybe be updated as time goes on. And so like everyone would classify just for different tiers. And so the true elite Hall of Famers would be in

the top tiers. Or yes, that you could have referenda, you could kind of poll people on whether they think so-and-so should still be a Hall of Famer, not for off the field infractions, but just based on accomplishment. or you could have a set number of Hall of Famers. And so to put someone in, you have to take someone out. So there are various proposals like this. So what do you think of the idea of sort of sun setting someone's Hall of Fame tenure or revisiting it at some point?

Oh, no, dear God, no. So I am a large hall person, and so I am always kind of flummoxed by questions like this because I don't view the current state of affairs as a problem, and so I am not in search of a solution. I don't feel the need for a limiting or culling or anything like that. And so, no, I think that the process is already inscrutable and complicated and confuses people. I don't like the idea that we are discarding history just because it is not immediately familiar to us, we're getting really tied up in the fame part of the name and that is driving a lot of this consternation, but it needn't because you could just ignore that.

You can understand that it's famous at the time. You can look at it as a, I don't know who that is. Great, what an opportunity to go learn something. I'm not trying to be snarky to your dad, to be clear. Like, you know, dads, they have ideas. Sometimes those ideas strike me as silly because it feels like a solution in search of a problem. But I'm a big hall person.

And so if you're a small hall person, maybe this threads some kind of a needle. But I also think that we know throughout baseball's history that it is a sport where our understanding of it is often subject to reappraisal, right, based on advances in statistical analysis, based on discoveries in the historical record about, you know, the context of a player's career or players who we have systematically neglected because they didn't play, you know, integrated ball because they were black or whatever, right? Like it is a, it is a, I don't say whatever, like that wasn't a big deal, but like there

are all of these, there have been a lot of moments in the Hall's history and the game's history where we have sort of reevaluated our understanding of who was good or who was interesting or whose career was, you know, held back by circumstances that were beyond their own control. And I think that if, you know, we should, we should view all of this as an opportunity to enrich our understanding and discarding Hall of Famers seems like it's working at cross purposes with that. So I don't care for it, but again, I'm coming from a perspective of what's the problem here. So maybe that's why.

Yeah. On a long enough timeframe, virtually every player will be forgotten. We will all be forgotten. Almost every single one. Even the guy you're thinking of who isn't, you know, Barry Bonds or Otani, that guy too, you know? Probably that guy too. And, you know, I think that we will have a long historical memory for, I'm not even going to keep naming guys, but like Willie Mase, Henry Aaron, like we're going to know, there are guys we're going to know, but there are going to be really good baseball players from this era who we understand today to be future Hall of Famers and 100 years from now, not only

gonna really remember them in any kind of systematic way, people are gonna forget, I'm not even gonna name guys because that feels mean, that feels so mean, and we've already used up our mean quotient for the week, but you know, it's just like guys who are so important to you, guys who've been all-stars, guys who've been multi-time all-stars and gold glovers and will-be-hollow famers and they will give a speech and we will sit there and we'll go, you'll never forget the career of that guy. And people will, they just will. And that's the kind of the thing about it. It just happens. Is it not the purpose of a museum to preserve those players who would be forgotten otherwise?

If you're going to the hall and you're seeing someone who played in the 40s and you've never heard of them, well, you just learned something. That's not a bug, that's the feature of the Hall of Fame. If you see a plaque for, I don't know, Archie Vaughan, let's say, and you say, who is Archie Vaughan? And then you see his plaque and you see his accomplishments and maybe you look him up and you say, wow, he was a hell of a player. I didn't even know. Now I know this is great. You don't need to go to the hall of fame to see Babe Ruth's plaque, which tells you that Babe Ruth was great at baseball. You know that already. So I get that on some level, maybe you're going to see the legends and the luminaries you have heard of. And yeah, if it were a museum entirely devoted

to players you had never heard of, maybe fewer people would buy tickets to go to the Hall of Fame. But that is the point of a museum in my mind is that you're keeping this history alive. You're educating and edifying. You're introducing people to players they would not have heard of otherwise. So I absolutely would not want to. And plus, you're trying to preserve how people regarded the players at that moment. So some players fame proves pretty impervious to the passage of time, relatively speaking. Babe Ruth is still very well known today. Some players fame fades, but that doesn't mean they weren't major contemporary figures. And so that's useful to know too, that the voters in that period perceived those players as Hall of

Famers. Well, even if no one thinks about them now, that's a snapshot. That's a moment in time. Okay, this player was considered a Hall of Famer at that time. Even if he wouldn't come to anyone's mind now, well, we have preserved for posterity the memory of this player as someone who was considered Hall of Fame worthy. And maybe by our current standards, they wouldn't qualify for whatever reason, but that teaches you something about baseball too. So that whole idea of, well, you can't tell the story of baseball without so-and-so, I think that's sort of slippery as an actual rubric to use to induct players or not. But a lot of the story of baseball gets forgotten. And the reason why you have a museum is to try to keep those memories alive

and pass them down throughout history. And so you can't just kick out the people who you've never heard of because then we will just be presentists. We will just be living in the moment forever. We will have the memory of goldfish, which is kind of a problem with probably society at large and always has been, is that we just don't know about the things that happened in the past. That's why the study of history is very valuable. So yeah, again, I don't want to dump on the dad here. I understand you go to the hall of plaques and you

see someone and you have no idea who they are. Maybe that's a little bit of a letdown, but if it does encourage you to do a little digging, then maybe that would be rewarding. And you know, sometimes you're going to go and you're going to see a guy and you're not going to know who he is and you're going to look up information and you're going to be like that guy knew someone, you know? And that's the conclusion you're going to draw. Right. That guy played with someone who was on the veterans committee. So. Yeah.

And wow, now you get to learn a different kind of lesson about history, which is that sometimes it isn't fair, you know, but like it. Chronicism is not new. I think that that's an interesting story about the sport too, to be like, oh yeah. But you know, even the hall of Fame is not immune from this kind of favoritism. And I feel bad saying this name so soon after uttering that sentence, but it's like, I do think some of the guys where even in the moment we're like, that guy's not a Hall of Fame, or some of those guys are going to persist. Like, I mean, people

are going to know about Harold Baines. Like they just are because we can't let that one go. You and I have, but we're bigger people than most, you know? Sure, sure. We're always gracious and never mean. Okay. Sometimes a little bit mean. And you know what? Sometimes we try to not do it very often and we try to do it in a way that isn't like,

you know, problematic. But sometimes I'm a person. Sometimes I'm a little bit mean, you know, problematic, but sometimes I'm a person. Sometimes I'm a little bit mean, you know? Yeah. So sometimes humor can come from that. I'm not trying to sound like one of these cancel culture comedians far from that, but, but, uh, you know, humor comes from, uh, violating expectations in sort of a low grade way in a

way that won't hurt anyone. We hope you don't name your kid Jetson, full stop, or Jetson with a Y, in this instance, and not expect that someone's going to say a little something. Like, come on, you got to have some amount of self-awareness there, Jeff. A dog is different from a kid, but I did name my dog Grumpkin, which is inspired by something in Game of Thrones, but something in Game of Thrones that no one knows about unless you're a really hardcore watcher slash reader. And so often I get Grumkin. How do you spell it? Grumkin? How do you say that? I get people mispronouncing that. I always put a P in there every single time.

Yeah. And you know, it more or less sounds like that when you say Grumkin without a P. So I understand that. And my mom has been complaining about the fact that we named our dog Grumpkin for years. Now we like the name Grumpkin for her. Wait, why does she care? Just because it's weird and she just thinks, oh, this is weird. And what is a Grumpkin? And you know, but- What is a Grumpkin?

I think it's like a little mythical creature that lives beyond the wall, you know, just like a little magical, mysterious, you know, old man is telling brand stories about the Grumpkins and Snarks. Oh, okay. And we like that because she's this little miniature dachshund. She looks like this mythical creature that shouldn't exist and somehow does. And it seems to fit her, but we knew what we were in for and she doesn't care because if we're walking Grumpkin and someone says, oh, can I say hi, what's her name? Grumpkin? Grumpkin?

She's oblivious to all that, right? So a kid is not oblivious to that. And so it's sort of a low stakes strange name, but I digress. It is funny because we each have, you know, little creatures we're responsible for that in any given moment it might be like, this is a day where I spend a thousand dollars on this animal and they don't know our names and they don't know their own names, Ben, because they can't speak English. You know, you call for them and you're like, oh, you're the cutest sweetie. They don't, they, they just know it's a happy sound. They don't know, they don't know cutie sweetie. They don't know. They can't speak English. I wonder about that often actually. I do wonder like the, yes, obviously they just recognize that sound, but do they on some level? And obviously depending on what you're talking

about in the animal kingdom, there are certainly animals who I think understand the concept of a name and respond to it. Does a dog, I'm sure there's a lot of research out there and perhaps it's inconclusive because you can't just ask a dog whether they understand that that's their name as opposed to a cue and, hey, I'm talking to you over there, come over here. But I wonder over years of associating that sound with, oh, this is the sound they make when they want me or my attention. Maybe there is some internalized, I'd like to think that there's some sense of, oh, that's, that's me. I'm not knocking. I would lay down my life, you know, uh, but I also want to say that like,

Kat doesn't know my name. Doesn't know. Doesn't know my name. So important to me, but doesn't know my name. What a silly thing. The last question comes from Nat Patreon supporter who says, I have a rule modification proposal for you to consider during the baseball news doldrums. And here we are in those doldrums. I put this question also to historian Richard Hirschberger, our past past blaster, author of Strike 4, the evolution of baseball, because I thought he might

have some interesting insight into it, but happy to get your thoughts or share mine if we have any. author of Strike 4, the Evolution of Baseball. Nat says that the motivating event here was last April during a game between the A's and the Rangers. The ball was popped up slightly past the pitcher's mound while the infield fly rule was in effect. The pitcher stumbled around as they often do, leaving the play to the second baseman. He had a long run and attempted a not that difficult sliding catch, but it clanked off his glove. The runners had stayed put, assuming infield fly, but the second base ump declined to call it at the last moment after starting to gesture like he would, on the grounds that

the catch attempt wasn't ordinary effort. This led to an easy double play with the A's slow tossing the ball to third and then second for force outs. I don't know how frequently plays like this happen, but it seems to reveal a fundamental flaw in the infield fly rule. The purpose of the rule is to lock in the result of the catch early so that the runners can make an appropriate decision and not get doubled up on a dropped ball, intentional or not. But with the rule being invoked or not at the end of the play, at the umpire's discretion, the runners don't actually get that clarity. This is a problem on the line between ordinary and extraordinary effort, and on the line between pop-up and line drive. It seems to

be generally accepted that an infielder with the presence of mind and dexterity to knock down a soft liner rather than catching it deserves the resulting double play. So the proposal is, give the discretion for invoking the infield fly rule to the runners or batter or maybe base coach like a fair catch in football. If a runner believes the catch likely, they could wave an arm to call the play dead and the batter out. If they declined to call it,

they accept the risk of a tricky double play and the fielders can do whatever they like. So Nat wants to know about that. The offensive team, some member, the runner, the batter, a base coach, whoever calls in field fly rule, invokes it or doesn't. And I will read you Richard's response and then we can see what we think. Richard says, I've been thinking about this for a few days now to work out what this would do in practice.. Richard says, I've been thinking about this for a few days now to work out what this would do in practice.

So he's had the advantage of thinking about it for days, whereas we wing it based on what comes to our mind when we answer a question on a podcast. So Richard says, first off, we need to modify the proposal. So we are modifying the proposal to modify the rule. Invoking the infield fly rule does not and should not result in a dead ball. That would prevent awesomeness such as this, where we learn in real time who does not understand the rule, the Expos infield, and who does, the umpires, possibly Nafi Perez, though this is not entirely clear, and Frank Robinson, who uses this as a teachable moment for his

players. And he links and I will link too. This was a play from 2003 when Nafi Perez snuck a run in because the Expos seemed to be confused by the infield fly rule on a Barry Bonds pop fly. Yeah. So Richard continues, this is a small matter, modify the proposal to change how the rule is invoked, but leave in place what happens when it is. I think the problem Nat identifies of edge cases where the umpires might or might not call the infield fly are pretty rare. This is solving a very minor problem. Nonetheless, I like the idea in principle

because it reduces the role of the umpire and puts this in the hands of the players or possibly the base coaches, though that would be a significant expansion beyond their current merely advisory role. Maybe that would be a reason for me to say that base coaches deserve to be on the field because I have questioned that in the past. I know.

Make it so any runner, including the batter runner, can call an infield fly at any point from when the ball is hit to when it touches either a fielder or the ground. How would this play out? Well, we would see a lot more botched infield fly calls, especially if the coaches are not involved. That would be fun YouTube fodder. Judging when to make the call would be a new and important requirement for the job. The transitional period, while players are internalizing this new responsibility, would be hilarious. And even after they have

mostly figured it out, it would open new and interesting plays. I would expect fielders to generally catch the ball just as they do now, but if the runners are inattentive and neglect to call the infield fly, an alert infield could turn the double play and good for them. Conversely, if a runner calls the infield fly and it isn't caught, we have a news cycle's worth of discussion whether he should have called it. Good times. One problem is defining a fly. The infield fly does not apply to line drives or bunts. An alert infielder can turn a double play on a soft line drive by retreating to take it on the bound rather than advancing to take it on the fly. What is the line between a weak fly ball and a soft line drive?

Currently it is whatever the umpire say it is, and this doesn't cause any problems. But I can imagine a runner calling an infield fly followed by an argument, whether it was a fly ball or a line drive. I suspect this would not be a big problem in practice as even a soft line drive is a bang, bang play, not offering the runners the opportunity to contemplate the ball in flight and its likelihood of being caught. I guess you could always standardize it or say that stat cast defines if it's like above a certain launch angle or something. Maybe it's a line drive versus a fly ball. That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life. Can you imagine that on a broadcast? Can you imagine that in game stack? No, there would be a riot. There would be a riot and I

would join them. That's terrible. Richard concludes, I like the idea. I doubt it could ever gain traction in the league office because it doesn't address a pressing problem, but it would be fun. Yeah. I think that that's kind of where I would land on this too. It doesn't seem like there's really an issue here. This is a solution in search of a problem. But to make my stance on these sorts of things sort of consistent, like part of what I like about the challenge system is that it introduces strategy to the game and I tend to think that that's a good thing because it's fun. It's fun to see folks have to work through those things and we get to see a new skill

emerge and then see people demonstrate whether or not they're good at it. So in that respect, I quite like it, but I don't think that this is a problem most of the time. So, yeah. in that respect, I quite like it, but I don't think that this is a problem most of the time. CB And not just strategy, but strategy that the players exercise. I'm in favor of that. That's why I'm kind of anti-coaches and managers being on the field and why I'm sort of softly anti-maybe defensive positioning cards. And I kind of just want players to have to do these things and separate themselves from each other based on how well they have prepared and how well they execute their ideas and their practice.

So in that sense, I kind of like putting this in the player's hands. Although it's a lot to maybe ask of a batter runner they've just managed to actually make contact and then in that split second, they have to evaluate the trajectory and call or not call. Maybe for a runner, it's a little bit easier perhaps. But in general, I do like the idea of just another little skill, another differentiator, another fundamental, something where you'd have to be coached, but then you'd have to put it into practice in the game. It would be up to a player and you'd see who was prepped and who wasn't. And yes, also there could be some hilarity and that might be fun too in

the short term. Yeah, I agree. All right. Last time we did a stat blast about the players who've appeared in the most team versus team matchups, there are 870 possible combinations of visiting team at home team, home team at visiting team in the majors. Matt Stairs had the most matchups of any player with 301, and the Questioner and Meg and I were amusing about how long it would take a fan to see all 870 matchups and I joked that maybe our listener and Patreon supporter Michael Mountain could come up with the optimized itinerary because he came on the show a while back to talk about how he was going to see every team play in the course

of a summer and he tried to figure out what the quickest, most efficient route to do that would be. Well, I was kidding about having him figure out every team combination, but he did post in our Discord group in response to that. Back of the envelope calculation, he said the baseball season is roughly 180 days long. So getting all 870 team at team combinations

would require almost five full seasons of going to a game every day. If you got extraordinarily lucky with the scheduling, there's a solid algorithm for accomplishing it in six seasons. Each year you pick a division and you see every opponent that visits any stadium in that division, plus all the non-rivalry interleague matchups in the stadium of the corresponding division in the opposite league. Next year you stay in the same division and swap leagues. For example, if you start with the AL East, then you'd see every unique opponent to

visit the Orioles, the Blue Jays, the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Rays, as well as all the AL teams that visit the Mets, the Phillies, the Marlins, the Braves, the Nationals. Except for Baltimore at Washington, Boston at Atlanta, Yankees at Mets, Rays at Marlins, and Blue Jays at Phillies, you'll check those off in the following year because those teams will definitely visit again. Part 1 gives 14 league opponents plus 8 interleague opponents, including the interleague rival per stadium. Times 5 stadiums, that's 110 unique matchups. Part 2 gives 7 interleague opponents, not including the interleague rival per stadium. Times 5 stadiums, that's 35 unique

matchups. None of these are repeated the following year. You're swapping to focus on a new league, and the only matchups you previously covered at the other leagues' parks were seeing teams that are not playing there in the following season. And if you're moving on to a new geographic division, then obviously all the home sites will be unique as well. So 110 plus 35 plus 6 years equals 870 unique matchups. This is certainly not optimal with regard to travel, but he says I think it's the only way to plan predictably for a 6-year project.

As listener Raymond noted This does mean watching 58 White Sox games, but as Michael replied who knows in six years Maybe they'll be decent save the AL Central for last Michael added I'm not certain this checks out based on how many interleague games are scheduled under the new less unbalanced scheduling But I'd expect that you'd see each team at least twice per season 40 interleague games at your focus division sites is 2.67 games per league team. For teams in the same league as your focused division, you'd probably see them six or seven times. Once at each focused division site, plus probably at least a couple interleague

games at the cross league division sites. Hell, maybe you'd do the interleague rival games at the cross league sites just for the sake of slightly more variety. A little less cramming in those same five stadiums over and over again during one season. I can't recommend that. I don't think I would want to do that. But if anyone does want to devote several years of their lives or at least several summers to doing so, let us know. You can come on Effectively Wild. You can also come on Effectively Wild potentially if you support the podcast on Patreon, 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, W. Christo, Liz Pennella, Doug Graham, Brennan Jordan and Parashar B. Say. 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, discounts on merch and ad-free fan craftsraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And 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'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon Yeah, yeah! Don't hear about picture wins or about gambling odds All they want to hear about my chat at the fight of calls And the texture of the hair on the arm going out of one's ass Gross, gross! Give me, give me, give me, affectively wild Give me, give me, give me, give me, affectively wild

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