Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2299: The Email Anatomy

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s positional power rankings progress and discuss why MLB is “evaluating” its Diversity Pipeline Program, then for the first time in a while answer listener emails (15:35) about how baseball would be different if swinging hard caused more serious injuries, a high-elevation league/division, inter-game penalties for frivolous end-of-game […]

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I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. How is your positional power rankings odyssey proceeding? Well, good, weird, mostly good. We have completed all of the position player related rankings. Those have concluded and are on fandgrouse.com for your perusal. I learned new ways that errata feedback can be delivered. Rude ways, mystical ways. It turns out that

Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on rudeness. So that was rough to learn. But otherwise quite good. Yeah. The positional power rankings, their ranking, you know, the positions and their power. So there's that. Sounds like it's going great. It's going great. No, the rankings themselves, I think, superlative. The writing crisp, the jokes funny, the insights keen, all 30 teams are on all of them. I think many of the changes the teams have sort of embarked upon captured before the rankings went live.

So that's always good. You know, it's a weird thing to look back on because we start publishing them and it's not as if rosters are set in stone once they commence. You know, guys get optioned, guys find out they've made the opening day roster. And so like once we get all this done, we go and I do a summary post and we reflect on some of the changes. But, you know, it's always a bit of an odd exercise. I have to talk myself back into it being my preferred method of doing season previews every year, just because it is like a shocking amount of writing and editing to do. Just like a, what are we, Ben, what are we doing?

You know, like, what are we up to? Like, you know, ecumenically. Um, but having, uh, satisfied myself that I still think this is the best way to do it. And I get why, um, other sites do like, um, all 30 teams. I think that's a perfectly fine way to do a season preview. I like the ability to kind of grapple with each position top to bottom, which is why we've continued to do it this way. But I do have to talk myself back into it every year because man, it sucks to do, but it's always satisfying to deliver. So I'm a, you know, I'm a land of

contrast right now. Why not both positional power rankings and also team based previews? Cause you know, you may have forgotten, but we did that too. We did that on this very podcast, which is also published on your website in a sense, not with words in print. But yeah, but Ben, I don't have to, first of all, I don't have to edit those because we have wonderful, lovely producer Shane to do that heavy lifting. And we will again extend our thank yous to him because it is a bearer of a project, even though he always produces the posh slata to wrangle.

But I don't have to do that, you know, Ben? So like shut your mouth. I'm just saying fan graphs, fan graphs.com offers a little bit of everything. Fan graphs doesn't do anything half hog fan graphs, always whole hog and multiple approaches to previewing the season. And here at Effectively Wild, we have been busy with that latter one for quite some time. So between the season preview series and the preseason prediction game and Paul Skeens just begging to come on the podcast. And then, you know, you have to accommodate Paul Skeens when he invites himself on, let's be honest, but you know, you don't want to make Paul Skeens feel excluded. And so you say, okay, sure, Paul,

you can come on. And so what with one thing or another, we haven't done an email episode for, I believe, more than two months, almost 30 episodes. Yeah, I mean, we've done the odd email here or there, but I wouldn't classify them as an email show. So we thought what with both of us being busy and the absence of email shows and it being a Friday afternoon

and perhaps a little loopiness that we could rectify that oversight and we could do a few emails today. So I have some and people can keep them coming and we will keep working through the backlog. But email show, it's the backlog. But email show. It's been a while. Email show.

Before we email show, can I just very briefly, my essay. So we talked on our Paul Skeen's episode, again, tremendous merging of content about the Jackie Robinson DOD. I don't want to call it kerfuffle because kerfuffle is a fun word and none of that was fun. And in the course of that conversation, we noted, you noted that the league had sort of stealth edited some of their employment pages to excise some of their diversity related language. And I don't think either of us realized in the course of that conversation or that little self-editing that they had just fully jettisoned the diversity pipeline program portion of the website. Craig Helcatera made note of this.

The Athletic did some subsequent reporting. And I imagine we're going to have more to say about this. And it is Friday. We're doing an email show. We want to be fun and light and breezy. And I do want us to have episodes like that. But I just would say that this sucks and I hope that the league will grow a spine or because this might become the only piece of anatomy through which we understand courage

a pair. And that's what I have to say about that at this particular juncture. Yeah, the diversity pipeline program has been pretty important in just we've talked a little bit about the issues with front offices and other positions in the game and how they tend to be quite white. And often that's because they don't pay super well. And the people who come into those positions, often in the past there were unpaid or very low paid internships and it's not exactly lucrative now.

And so the people who maybe can do that, who can be supported by their families or live at home while they take those jobs and try to do something that's their dream job and maybe isn't the best for making ends meet in the short term. It just tends to lead to a certain kind of demographic makeup. And so that has been one of the ways that the league has tried to rectify that. And it seems to have paid some dividends.

And it's not entirely clear whether the program itself has been completely compromised or whether they are just trying to minimize its public presence because of fear, I guess, because of currying favor, because of the current political climate, because of the way that many private companies have just bent over backwards. Yeah. And it looks like they have come into focus for Stephen Miller's legal outfits. So they are facing litigation here.

Yes. And that happened, I guess, a couple of years ago. But then once Trump returned to power and issued his executive orders about DEI policies, et cetera, lots of private companies, as we said last time, have just fallen all over themselves to comply, even if they do not need to comply legally. And even if it's something that is not binding as of yet, and there are certain industries and companies that are not part of the federal government, but maybe there's public funding or maybe there are ways in which they overlap with the federal

government and thus it could affect them and perhaps there are ways in which MLB could be affected by certain policies. But it certainly seems as if it's less about, oh, this will happen if we don't do this, than it is just about let's get ahead of this and not possibly piss anyone off who is in power now and is clearly angling for things to return to an earlier and not better era of American society as far as these things are concerned. And so it's not surprising, but it is disappointing and it does make one wonder just how MLB will handle Jackie Robinson Day less than a month now and whether they will issue statements about any of this because

to this point they have not to questioning from Craig and the Athletics. So this has all just been basically based on way back machine, just looking at things that used to be on the website and things that used to be on the website and things that are no longer on the website and piecing together when those changes seem to have been made and extrapolating from there. So yeah, I mean, I have people I know well and friends and family who work at places

that you wouldn't think would have anything to do with these policies or wouldn't be responsive to them who nonetheless have and have edited their websites and the wording of their policies. And so I think this is fairly sweeping and widespread, sadly, but this is one of the things that we lament about all of this is just that it's not even like hashtag resistance or something. It's just sort of like the opposite of that,

just proactively making concessions or just bending over backwards to try to appease people about these policies. And there's just no semblance of a spine, just the opposite, just a jelly-like consistency. It's just how quickly can we bend the knee. Yeah, I'll note that the league did issue a statement through a spokesperson to the athletics. So they said, and this is in the piece, the athletic grant, as the commissioner stated, our

values on diversity remain unchanged because the commissioner was asked about this, I think the owners meetings earlier this year. Yeah, February. Yeah. We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward. They also noted that Tyrone Brooks, who has been in charge of the program since its inception, remains in his position and says the pipeline program will continue, but the links to apply for that program don't exist anymore.

So it's a little vague. And I want to say, like, we're being critical of the league right now as well we should. And we have been critical of the league and teams in the past for sort of the unfulfilled promise of making the game look like the people who play it and the people who enjoy it in every facet, right? Whether it's in the front office and the scouting ranks, making sure that the game remains accessible to young people in the United States, that it is more equitable toward its international players.

We've been critical and I think we'll continue to be. I do want to say that like every person I know at the league who works on these questions is so steadfastly earnest in their desire to make the game better and understands making the game better as making the game more diverse and inclusive. And so part of why this stuff is so galling and frustrating is that I do think that there is positive momentum that exists within the league office to try to make the game something that everyone can play and that every qualified person can find a role in if that's what they want. And so I hope that there is some reckoning around this stuff and something more forceful and positive that comes out

of it. I'm skeptical that will happen. You know, we also saw news today that there is a great deal of concern about how players who are Cuban or Venezuelan are going to be able to move throughout the game this year because the Trump administration is contemplating travel bans that might make it difficult for them to reenter the country after they've left. And we famously have an entire team in Toronto that plays games there.

So one, I think, can understand some of this stuff through the lens of the league trying to curry favor to garner exemptions for such a travel policy, et cetera. But you know, at some point you got to stand for something and the league has said in the past that this is part of what it stands for. So I think this is put up or shut up time for them. So there you go. Yeah. And if it were purely about just keeping a lower profile so as to be able to continue to do good work without drawing fire or something, then I guess there's a way in which that could be good.

But if you have made it impossible to apply for the program, at least through that means, then that seems like it would inevitably affect the efficacy of the program. So, I don't know. Yeah, so look, all of these things intersect. I was going to bring up those potential travel bans as well and how that could affect Venezuelan players,

Cuban players. That happened during the first Trump administration too, because of the deal between MLB and the Cuban baseball federation that got scuttled back in 2019. So these things, politics affects sports. It's very obvious to point that out, but in any number of ways, whether it's tariffs in the economy or climate change

or relationships with other countries and people feeling secure coming here or just being able to, all of those things will ultimately affect baseball in some way. So this won't be the last time we talk about it. But it's OK, because growing the game like you've never seen in Japan, you know, we're we're happy to tell the part of it that is profit maximizing. And I want to be clear, like, I think it's awesome to have

cultural exchange around baseball between the United States and Japan. I'm not, I'm not getting that down. That's good. But it's just like, you know, you can go buy a Jackie t-shirt on Emily shop right now. But anyway, I've, I remain frustrated Ben. So let's answer some emails and see if we can improve my mood. I opened a faux beer and now I'm regretting not opening a real one.

I wonder if that would help. Maybe a bit. It's not the way that I cope with these things. I'm trying to not make it the way I cope with it either. Yeah. All right. Nathan, Patriot supporter says with sprung training upon us. I see what you did there.

I have a hypothetical for you that is based on the scourge of UCL injuries in baseball. Obviously the increase in pitcher injuries is multifactorial, but it seems likely, if not clear, that one major factor is pitchers chasing velocity. So what if there were an equivalent for hitters? Specifically, let's imagine that swinging for the fences caused a similar uptick in serious season-ending career-threatening injuries to hitters as we have seen among pitchers. How might this change the game? Would we see a more contact-oriented approach? Would there be a sort of mutually assured destruction in chasing dingers and Velo that

might finally lead to both trends leveling off or receding? I hate to imagine what the scenario might mean for Shohei or a world where Aaron Judge joins Spencer Strider, Yuri Perez and Jacob DeGrama on the shelf all season, but I can't help but wonder how it would affect the game. So yes, some sort of a springing that happens if hitters swing too hard, which I guess on occasion you might see like rib cage

muscle strains or obliques or something. You know, those things could be related to just hitters getting bigger and stronger and swinging harder than ever, but it's a little less of a direct and devastating relationship. Which I guess could change now that Statcast measures swing speeds and those are public knowledge. And once you measure something, you can increase it and target it more effectively. But to this point, hitter and pitcher injury rates have diverged in recent seasons and I think this is a big reason why. Yeah, I mean, I think the

place where we see this stuff is like, you know, like we might classify Corbin Carroll's shoulder injury when he was still in the minors as like the hitter equivalent of this, right? Where like the force of a home run swing was so powerful that it kind of pulled his shoulder apart. You know, he like ripped up his whole shoulder. Fernando Tatis or I don't know if those were, I mean, sometimes that's just like some sort of structural instability or something. Right. I'm sure those things have always happened sometimes, but yes, I'm sure it hasn't helped that guys are probably swinging harder than they once did. Right. So I think that we do have an equivalent to that, although it is far less common than

you know, chasing Velo, throwing Max effort, seemingly resulting in sproings. I think the problem though, is that you have an equivalent sort of incentive mismatch that would cause hitters to just accept the trade off, right? Because think about the guys who are getting paid big, big money. It's, it's not contact hitters, you know, not generally. That isn't to say that there aren't other ways to produce value as a position player than hitting a bunch of home runs.

But a lot of the guys who get paid big money get paid big money in part because they at least, even if it's not the only part of their game, even if you have someone like a Juan Soto where he has power and he just hit for a career high number of home runs. But you know, part of what makes him so great is that the plate discipline gives him this tremendously high floor offensively and then you layer power on top of that. And he's like, you know, one of the best players in baseball. So I think you would have, you would continue to have an incentive structure, tension, mismatch. That would be a problem.

Now I do think that like you have more potential avenues to value production as a hitter than just the power than you maybe do as a pitcher. Not like only, it's not like the only guys who are good are guys who throw hard, but we are skeptical of guys who don't throw hard being able to be good or being able to be starters, and that shuns them into less lucrative roles. So I don't know, it's tricky. You kind of have to really max out on other stuff to provide equivalent value. I'm going to be so fascinated to see what kind of contract Stephen Kwan signs when he

reaches free agency. And it's not that he never hits home runs, but that's not Stephen Kwan's game. And so yeah, I don't know. I think you would have a lot of issues getting through to guys to be like, no, don't swing for the fences. Cause like, you know, especially now that we accept strikeouts in a way that we didn't use to guys have just sort of retooled at least a lot of them, not everybody, but yeah. Yeah. And does make sense. Annihilately speaking, as Russell Carlton and others have demonstrated, like why is there not

such a thing as really choking up on two strikes anymore and just prioritizing contact well because on the whole it tends to benefit players and teams and I guess it goes hand in hand with this risk aversion drum I've been beating because it's not so much about oh we have to avoid the embarrassment of striking out and looking silly so we must therefore make contact. No, you can tolerate some strikeouts because it goes along with good things and on the whole it benefits you. So if there were though more of a direct relationship

between swinging hard and some sort of serious season ending injury, then there would be more of a conversation about whether that was the right calculus and it would change the cost benefit. And some of the things that we say these days about, hey, maybe you should just develop a bunch of softer tossing command and control guys and they'd be super durable or bring back the knuckleball or at least don't throw max effort all the time and you could go deeper into games at a cost of a little less effectiveness on a per plate appearance basis then you'd probably get some of that conversation on the offensive side too, which go deeper into games at a cost of a little less effectiveness on a per plate appearance basis,

then you'd probably get some of that conversation on the offensive side too, which we don't really these days. Now it's all about aesthetics now mostly. It's about, oh, we wish there were more contact or there were more base runners, but it's less about actually maybe it would benefit you to swing for contact more often.

And so that would change, I think, in this scenario. And you'd, you'd start to actually be able to make a case for, yeah, you should take something off your swing speed and you should just aim for bat control and just put the ball in play because at least you'll be healthy and maybe you won't hit as many homers, but still, best ability is availability. So that would change things. But I don't know that that would be good if you wanna see scoring, because if teams and players are right,

and maybe they've taken that approach a tad too far, but if they're right about that generally leading to more scoring, then it would lead to less scoring to go away from that approach. And we're already worried about the lack of scoring, though, I guess it's less the number of runs being scored as it is the shape of that production and just the all or nothing approach and the strikeouts and the low batting average and all of that. So I guess it could produce a more aesthetically pleasing game while also producing a lower scoring game.

But yeah, it would change a lot of the conversations that we're having about offense in baseball. Can you imagine? Then we'd get lots of fast boys. Don't you think we'd have so many fast boys? Oh, fast boys. Yeah, that'd be a nice thing, I guess. Yeah, that part would be good. But I don't want people to, I don't want the cost of fast boys,

the price we pay to be rending one's shoulder and getting weird torso injuries and intercostal strains. You shouldn't know that much about your rib cage, I think. I think you should be able to think about your rib cage and be like, a mystery I'll never contemplate to completion. I do like the idea though, that there would be some sort of summit where pitchers and pitchers could come together

and say, we will ratchet this down. It would be like some sort of nuclear arms reduction or something and be like, okay, we'll reduce our stockpile if you reduce your stockpile and we'll have mutually assured destruction here. And we had the brinksmanship of we're swinging hard and we're throwing hard and hey, this is hurting both of us. And maybe we could step back from the precipice

and hey pitchers, if you just throw a little less hard then we'll have a deal, you know, we'll have, we'll shake on it, we'll swing a little less hard, then we'll have a deal. You know, we'll have, we'll shake on it. We'll swing a little less hard, but it's tough because how do you control that? The incentives for any particular player are still gonna be what they are. So it's just tough to do away with those things

without changing the rules in some way, which we have advocated for. Okay, question from Murray, Patreon supporter. I have this MLB expansion idea, the Elevation League. Let the Rockies be in a division with a Mexico City team and I don't know where else, Utah. I guess my only realistic expansion team for the Elevation Division would be Mexico City,

but let there be one division that hits three times as many home runs. What bullpen slash rotation patterns would we see in that league? Would Chad innings eaters like Jordan Lyles be the primary tool implemented? So yeah, I guess the closest we come to this now is like the NL West, just with the Rockies

and the Diamondbacks basically. But the Rockies are kind of on an island there, kind of on a mountain when it comes to the elevation. So yeah, you'd have to get Mexico City involved. And like, you know, we talk about playing baseball on the moon when it comes to Denver, but like Mexico City is way up there, man. Like it is, it's a different kind of thing. Even it's, it's way, more happier than course.

I wrote an article about that when MLB was first playing games in Mexico City, I think it kind of crunching the numbers on like what the park factors would be there. I'll link to it on the show page. But we've seen that and we've seen some regular season games played there and sometimes the scoring has been way out of whack. It would be. Yeah. the scoring has been way out of whack. And it would be, yeah. I don't know, like maybe if you had, where else do we have high locations?

I guess like Alaska or something, if we had Denali, which that's also become a controversy. Is it Denali or is it Mount McKinley, right? This is a Gulf of Mexico. He never even went there. When are we, mm, mm, I'm trying to but this is part and parcel with what we were talking about with the executive order. It's again, you don't have to snap to attention and change what we call everything because someone said to.

But the point is that that's a high spot. I mean, that's literally a mountain. Like it would be tough to play baseball on a very high mountain. But, you know. Well, and you wouldn't wanna mess with the ecosystem. You know. That is also true. You need a high place with an existing urban center. Cause I wouldn't wanna sacrifice the natural beauty of Alaska just to play baseball.

That seems crazy. Yeah. So if you did put together some sort of high elevation league, the thing is that you have more balanced schedules now and so everyone else would have to play in the elevation division too. If this is a division within the existing league as opposed to some sort of splinter league,

then everyone else is gonna have to visit those places. So if you did this, then I guess one thing you would want is players who were well-conditioned to succeed at altitude, whether they were naturally gifted in that respect or whether they were just doing the training so that they don't get winded in when they go up in the air to play baseball,

there's an adjustment there. And if the entire division or league were high altitude, then I guess you'd see even more offense because as it is, there's the core's hangover effect because you're going from low altitude to high altitude and you have to adjust to that and the pitches move differently and everything. But if the whole thing were high altitude, if you just built the whole plane out of course, essentially, then everyone would adapt to that and, and wouldn't be thrown by that at all. And so there wouldn't even be that factor suppressing offense. And so it would just get kind of out of control.

But I guess, yeah, you'd want a bunch of ground ball pitchers and, I don't know, fly ball hitters. And so you would certainly see certain profiles becoming more common in this league slash division. I think it would be a little too much. You know, I like having the Rockies, I mean, I want like a version of the Rockies where someone looks at it and goes, what a fun natural experiment, allow me to be like a hero and a God, you know, and conquer the mountain. Like that's

the vibe I want. And it's not the vibe we have. But I think you want like, you want one or two weird spots. I don't think you want a lot of weird spots. People play baseball in Mexico, so I don't mean it like that, but like, I would think it would be cool to have a team like another country represented in the league. But I don't know if it's ideal to like have an entire division that is like the high altitude division. Just cause like at a certain point you get, you get too weird to mismatch. It presents problems. I don't know. It probably does.

Yes. I like a little variety though, but I do like variety. Yeah. Within reason. And I like the, I, again, I like the idea of having sort of a broader understanding of the geography of the league and being, you know, expanding to have like a team in Mexico, I think would be really cool. But I just don't know if you want, I mean, it's such an extreme difference in altitude. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a big, it's a big thing.

And you could just say, well, humidor the hell out of it. And you can kind of do that. But as I recall from talking and writing about this previously, I think doing that in Mexico city with the humidity, just like with the atmospheric makeup, like it's, it's kind of tough to do that and completely correct and just bring it all into line. And, and I kind of look, there's a part of me that's kind of tough to do that and completely correct and just bring it all into line. And I kind of, look, there's a part of me that's sort of nostalgic for Blake Street bombers, just like pre-humidor, just totally wacky,

just having these unusual environments, because that is one of the things we like about baseball is that you do have different environments and different dimensions of parks and places play differently and there's a local character to it. And you kind of, I think it's nice, like if you have different offensive environments, we talk about the league offensive environments all the time, but it's also kind of nice if different locations have their own offensive environments and then there's more to

analyze and the baseball looks different there. But it also, it can become onerous to the team that is tied to that location. It's not as if like everyone, all 30 teams, it's just musical locations and we're all jumping around and we play some games in Colorado and then we play some games in Florida and we play at sea level. Like certain teams play all of their games in those spots. And so it's, it's not really variety for them. It's the same for them. And so if they're an outlier, it can sometimes make it more difficult for them. And

then that's not good for the league wide competitive integrity. But we have kind of tamped down on some of these differences with the humidor or with ballparks themselves getting a little less idiosyncratic and extreme. And so there's part of me that's sort of sad about that. And there's part of me that thinks maybe that makes sense. Well, and you know, it's like, um, to, to your point about like the different like environments and whatnot, but like it has an impact on players beyond just their stats, right? Like it can be, you know, the high altitude thing can be a problem for people.

So I'm, I don't know. I don't know. They play soccer there though. Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, the high altitude thing can be a problem for people. So I don't know. I don't know. They play soccer there, though. Oh, sure. Yeah. And they play a lot of baseball there. There's a whole baseball league there. So if you want that, just watch the Mexican League baseball. It exists already, sort of. OK. Question from Max, thinking about the end of game ABS challenges. I feel like there will be a bunch of unnecessary challenges in the final batters because there's no reason

not to use them. A clearly wrong why not challenge of a game ending pitch would be extra annoying, delaying the celebration for the winning team. We talked a bit about that. Rob Maynes wrote about that. But Max says, one response I have in mind, if you incorrectly challenge the final pitch of the game,

have that team start the next game with an automatic strike slash ball, depending on whether they were challenging as a batter or pitcher slash catcher. It's not a huge penalty, but it at least creates some cost for extraneous challenges. First of all, do you think this would work? Probably more interestingly, do you think this cross game penalty in baseball is statistical sacrilege? And I guess if you wanted to limit it to just make sure it applied only to extraneous challenges,

you could have it be so that if it was a close call, that would not apply any penalty. If you were nowhere near and you were just like, ah, what the heck might as well. And it was clearly frivolous than the penalty could be imposed. I struggle to answer this because I'm not worried about it. I'm not overly worried about it, but I can appreciate why one might be concerned about it, even having read Rob's analysis and concluded that the likelihood of it being a big problem is sort of muted. And I think this does occupy that sweet spot of being a disincentive, but not an overly strict one. Like we talk about this a lot with these hypotheticals where sometimes people will be like, you know, he, uh, a thing should happen and then, um, you should have to play the entire next game without a glove,

you know, and like that's too much or like, or like you're down a field or the rest of the game. I don't know why Jimmy Stewart is the inner locket or I've chosen, but here we are. And so you seize any opportunity to, uh, to bring Jimmy Stewart onto the podcast. Such a good Jimmy, you know, like everyone agrees with that. Yeah. Yeah. So one of Meg's better impressions. Um, but this is the right amount.

This is a good balance because it's not insurmountable. It's not like you're starting down, you know, and out. That would be too much. But like having a little bit of a disincentive, I suppose, would be fine. And I like your idea of it being, you know, if it's a minute, if you're only off by an eyelash, you know, then that's not trying to harsh the vibe. I guess the question is like, how much do we care about the vibe piece of it? Because really what we're worried about is this muting a celebration interfering with our enjoyment of the end of the game, but ultimately it doesn't Really change the outcome unless it's a wrong call in which case like we have decided we want to remedy those right?

particularly at ends of games and so it's like what is, you know, what is the appropriate amount of punishment for inflicting a little bit of psychic damage on, you know, the opposing team and their fans, maybe a ball or a strike. That seems right to me. If we're going to, if we're going to disincentivize it, again, I am not convinced that that is strictly necessary or necessary at all, really. But if we decided as a society that this is something we want to counter, this feels like the right amount. So yeah, we could wait and see how prevalent this practice actually is and how much it bothers us, if at all. But it is kind of an interesting philosophical question

because this is not a lever that the league tends to use that we tend to see in baseball penalties that cross games or cross innings or cross even plate appearances. And this does often come up in effectively wild hypotheticals. And maybe this could be something played appearances and this does often come up in effectively wild hypotheticals. Oh yes it does. Maybe this could be something to disincentivize intentional walks.

Maybe if you intentionally walk someone the next guy starts down in the count or something like that, right? Right. Or the pitcher is a ball behind for the next batter or these kinds of things. Or sometimes we get questions about what if runners you stranded at the end of an inning carried over to the next inning. Like it's just, it's not really something that we see in baseball. I'm trying to think, are there any examples where we don't just sort of start fresh and reset where... I mean, really the only, the only examples that I can think of are a suspension, right?

And even then, right, like if a suspension is leveled against a player, and even then it's not unusual for there to be sort of a delayed effect of that, right? Because guys will often appeal their suspensions and then it doesn't take effect until after the appeal has been heard. So in terms of like a piece of in-game action that isn't related to removing a particular player from the field as a result of some sort of bad behavior, no, I can't think of that,

which makes me think that we're about to get a lot of emails and I look forward to those. Cause I, if I'm missing one, you know, I want to know about it. I like that a little bit that there's no backstory exactly, or that each game is its own entity or even totally inning or each plate appearance. Obviously they're carry over effects in the sense that previous action affects future actions.

So that's if you get tired, whatever available or not, you know, yeah, you threw a lot of pitches. There's a bigger times through the order effect or the picture is going to come out of the game earlier or you used your whole bullpen yesterday because the starter didn't go deep. And now this other guy has to wear one. Those things certainly happen. It's not as if each game is like a discrete entity

that has no bearing on subsequent games or is not affected by previous games, obviously. It's a long season and what happens one day affects what happens the next to some extent. But yeah, we're talking about in terms of the actual scoring of the game or starting at a disadvantage because of something that happened previously. And so it affects the game or starting at a disadvantage because of something that happened previously. And so it affects the counter, it affects the base out state or it affects the score

or something like that. We don't really see a whole lot of that. And yes, I welcome emails if we're missing something obvious or if there are obvious precedents in other sports as I'm sure there are like, maybe there are some small ways that, uh, that this would be beneficial. This is suspension related. Like in college football, if you get a targeting penalty, you have to miss the first half of the, of the next game if it's intentional targeting. And then you get to come back in at halftime.

That's one that occurs to me. But again, that's like suspension player related. It's not like you don't start with a field goal on the board, you know? So tricky. What if a team starts down a game in a postseason series or something to try to do away with some of the randomness? Like if you were way better during the regular season than your opponent maybe, then you have to win one less game than they do or something like that. And so again, there is kind of just the sense of like,

everyone's starting from scratch, blank slate. And maybe that's good, I guess, but yeah, I don't know. There could be some times where this is a way to affect some change, but it just feels like, yeah, from a spectator perspective, if the conditions were differing based on previous action, and then you're thinking, what did I miss here? I feel like I'm coming in in the middle.

I didn't get to see the whole picture that's affecting the game that I'm currently watching. So what do you do if, you know, the game where this happens is the final game in a series, you know, like you don't want to like give a benefit to the opposing club that didn't have to, that didn't incur the psychic damage, right? Whose fans were blissfully ignorant of what was going on before because they were concerned with their own series. So it gets, you could see how it could get tricky pretty quickly. Yes. Yeah.

It becomes like a bookkeeping issue kind of. Yeah. And it's like, how many accountants do we really need? You know? I mean, we need some, but like maybe but like maybe it shouldn't be bad accountants. Yeah, especially at this time of year, I guess they're pretty important, high demand. Luke says, I was listening to episode 2290

and the discussion of Jeffrey Yan and his strikeout celebrations. And it got me wondering, do you think MLB umpires will be reluctant to make demonstrative punch out calls once ABS is instituted in MLB umpires will be reluctant to make demonstrative punch-out calls once ABS is instituted in MLB and the potential for embarrassment from a big strikeout call being overturned is present? So do you think that umpires will moderate their very demonstrative calls knowing that

if they get corrected, then they could look sort of silly if they did the whole wind up and punch out and maybe some, some verbal utterance of some sort. And then 10 seconds later, they're like, oopsie, I was wrong. I'm trying to go back through my mental catalog of punch outs from fall league, because that's probably the best. I have, there's still some demonstrative umpires. I don't know if all the umpires are a representative sample though. Right. Cause like a lot of they're, you know, they're figuring it out. They're getting their business in order.

I also think this has just become less common over time. I think we see the big windups, the, you know, we don't see the like naked gun type choreography going on behind the plate, which I kind of miss. I think, you know, having that, it adds some character and you recognize, oh, that guy's back there. Cause he has that distinctive call. It's kind of like with pitcher windups or batter stances or swings, where it seems like there's been more of a uniformity in those things. And sometimes we lament that because you want the character and then everything kind of conforms and converges because you

decide, oh, this is actually the most efficient setup or something. And so why would you stray from that? And maybe the instruction at the lower levels becomes something. And so why would you stray from that? And maybe the instruction at the lower levels becomes standardized. And so you don't have a bunch of kids who are just kind of freelancing. They're just doing their own things that they thought looked good in the mirror. So they're taught the same sort of setup

and mechanics from an early age. And there are still exceptions to that, but I think probably fewer than there used to be. It'd be nice if we could quantify that in some way. Just use one of those computer vision type technologies to quantify batting stance difference over the years. Just the variability in batting stances or wind ups. That seems like something we could quantify.

That would be an interesting study that I'd like to see. It would be cool to do it like varying by region because you would start to see the influence like, you know, every kid in Little League in the Pacific Northwest who grew up at a particular time was doing each year rose like, you know, arm out thing. So like having, being able to see how the pro stances were filtering down would be really,

that would be very cool. You know? And this is one of the things we like about baseball being a global sport and each region having some idiosyncrasies is that you watch Japanese baseball, there's still a difference there, not for everyone, but you know, you see recognizably different approaches and mechanics and stances and deliveries. So I think there has been less of that kind of variation with umpires and maybe it's good because it probably also correlates to less variation in zones. And

I guess that's a good thing that that's been more standardized that you don't just have this guy has a huge zone and this guy has a tiny zone. I think some variety again can be the spice of life, but when it's totally wacky to the point that you have to completely recalibrate your approach from game to game based on the yump, that's probably taken it too far. And so maybe it was part and parcel with that

where it's like, I'll just, I have my own definition of the strike zone and I have my own way to signal for a strikeout. And a lot of that was encouraged or tolerated or permitted. And I think probably it's been somewhat suppressed or discouraged. And also maybe it was kind of correlated with tendency towards UMP shows,

which again, that's another good thing. Like if it's indicative, reflective of umpires not seeing themselves as the main event, hey, we're not here to see you and your punch out call buddy. I think it also sometimes led to some suspicion of bias because it's like, Hey, did you want to just do your big windup thing here? Like, yeah, were you quicker on the trigger here? Because like, or, you know, if there was a whole production where you have to go into your big windup, then maybe you have a little less mental processing time where you have to evaluate that pitch

before you go into your call. It's like, if you have a less pronounced call, then you don't have to do the whole big windup. You can just gesture more subtly. Whereas, yeah, if you're getting your whole body into the thing, then if you don't want there to be a big delay, then you actually have to make that call even more of a snap judgment. And maybe that leads to less accuracy. So I think probably this is reflective of trends that I'm in favor of. And yes, I do kind of like the,

the character of an empire who like gets picked up by the home plate mic and you just hear like, you know, these odds just shouts and yells back there and you're like, oh yeah, that's the ump and it kind of takes you into the game a little bit. So I could see further moderation of strikeout calls based on fear of being shown up by the computer and looking extra silly seconds later. I wouldn't be shocked if that happened, but

I think it's happening and has happened already, regardless. There are certainly exceptions to this and so I don't want to say that it has like washed over the umpiring population exactly the same in every instance. But I think that particularly after the introduction of Replay, there has been like a humbling that has kind of gone on, right? Like there is just a recognition on the part of umpires that they are going to make mistakes and those mistakes are going to be noted publicly. And I think that like there is a meeker posture. There's also for some, an obviously defiant posture. So, you know, I don't want to say that it's like everybody's doing great.

Cause some people are maybe they could do better. Okay. And then last question on this topic from JJ Patreon supporter. I guess this is something that Fangrass may actually have to consider at some point. Should player initiated challenges be included in war calculations? Should this be something that we try to quantify

if we get a challenge system? If it's player initiated, if you've got, probably it'll be mostly catchers, but also some batters and the odd pitcher. Is this something that we should factor into a value calculation? Because obviously there is actual value being added or lost. I have been thinking about this since the email came in. And I guess like on the one hand, yes, we account for all sorts of things in catcher war, particularly in the defensive side of catcher war. And I think

this would probably fit most comfortably there. I also think that it doesn't really matter that much because the number of challenges, I mean, I guess over the course of the season, like maybe it's a lot, but I'm skeptical that it's going to matter all that much. We don't put like pitch timer violations into war. We track them, right? You can see how many violations a pitcher or hitter gets related to the pitch clock, but that's not folded into war. So it's the sort of thing where I would be interested in tracking it, but I don't know that it necessarily matters all that much. Like I don't think it's going to move the needle on any individual pitcher. Like part of why you see such a widespread sometimes between our version of war and baseball references as it pertains

to catchers is that they don't include framing and we do. And you get so many opportunities, right? Like framing accumulates value really fast because it's every single pitch, right? And so yeah, maybe like throw it in the soup, but I don't think it's going to, you're not going to be like, oh my God, this guy is actually like 10 wins better over the course of his career because of his challenge acumen. I don't think that that's what we're looking at just from a volume perspective. Yeah, I guess maybe it's a little less imperative to track violations of the pitch clock because you are assessed a penalty

there anyway. Like, does it matter if it's because you threw a ball or just because you took too long and a ball was assessed to you? You're suffering the same disadvantage either way. Whereas in this case, I mean, yes, the balls and the strikes are still going to be credited to particular players, or at least the position that they'll be placed in by those counts will weigh into their performance somehow.

But if you are directly changing a pitch call, it is equivalent. I mean, it's roughly akin to if you are a good framing catcher and you get a call. In this case, you're a good challenging catcher and you got a call. Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking out loud here. So you tell me if I'm being a dope cause there's precedent. It does strike me as the sort of thing that probably needs to get folded into when probability added. Yeah, probably.

Yeah, I would think so. Especially in, in end of game situations, like we probably need to figure out a way to account for it in WPA. Cause you might, I mean, you're still recording the result regardless. So maybe in a sense you are kind of double counting, but like if you're the catcher and you,

I mean, but you're not necessarily double counting. I think you have to put it in WPA. Yeah, maybe ultimately it does make sense to just factor it into any value metric. And yeah, I don't think it's gonna move the needle that much for any particular player. And maybe it'll all just even out over the course of a season league wide,

I guess we'll see whether ABS ends up having a very pronounced effect one way or another. Favoring pitchers or hitters, depends on how they define the zone exactly and everything. But on an individual level, and with a catcher, I wonder exactly how many challenges you're going to accrue over the course of a season. Like, it's not going to be obviously as many

as calls you're getting or losing based on your glove work, I guess, but it's going to be a significant number for catchers because if you're playing most of the games and yeah, it should be though, right? Like it'll be hundreds, presumably, for like a starting catcher, I would think. Like if you're challenging a couple times a game back there, that's going to add up.

Like that's going to be real value. And if you're particularly adept at that and we'll see also, yeah, like how much of a skill this is. How much of a skill it is and then what sort of distribution of challenge frequency we end up getting because there are going to be guys who are really good at it who challenge a lot and there are going to be guys who are less good at it who challenge less frequently. And then I bet there are going to be guys who think they're good at it, who challenge a lot in the beginning and then their challenge rate tapers. So yeah, I'm kind of fascinated to know what the real frequency is going to be.

I mean, like, look, the answer is probably like, yeah, we should probably figure out a way to put it in there. We haven't had a conversation about it internally yet because it's not here yet. Haven't had to really. But we should have it now, you know do some planning. Let's figure it out. Yeah. You may need to know next season. And we'll see how quickly we'll be able to tell who's good at this, who develops a reputation as being a great challenger or a bad challenger. And then does the bad challenger have their challenge privileges revoked? I mean, that could really hurt a team.

Like if, again, I don't know how much variability there's going to be. I don't know if the distribution here is going to be as wide as it was or even is when it comes to framing, let's say, because catchers, I don't know that there will be as much of a skill difference when it comes to challenging, because it should be, I guess, a little easier to just evaluate whether a pitch was a ball or a strike than to actually influence the call, I would think,

because you're just sitting there and you're saying, was that in the zone or not? And that seems like something that I kind of doubt among major league catchers, there would be as much variation as there is when it comes to actually executing the act of receiving a pitch and presenting a pitch in such a way that it makes you more likely to get that call.

So it might turn out that there's not that great a skill range and then also if the samples that we're working with are not that vast. And also you're talking about like 50, 50 calls for the most part, most of them aren't going to be super egregious. And so luck could go against you. And so like there won't be that wide a margin there to begin with maybe. And so it, it might take some time to actually be able to discern the true talent of a challenger. And that's not to say that you can't still credit and debit value before we can assess the true talent, but in terms of like being able to tell who's actually good at this,

you know, factor it into projections at some point, like it would probably have to be pretty regressed, I would guess. Like if you had some outlier challenge system where you're just, you know, you're, you're hitting on every challenge and you know, it's like, some guys are coming up, snake eyes every time they roll the dice and others, it's just the opposite. Like probably it would have to be heavily regressed, I guess, to get at the true talent of these guys. And yeah, maybe it'll turn out that like no one's bad enough at this,

that you're gonna like revoke their challenge privileges. And maybe no one's good enough at this, that you're gonna give them more playing time purely because of their challenge acumen. But we will see. It's something that'll be interesting to analyze, which I think is one plus of the challenge system compared to full ABS where there isn't really that much to analyze.

There isn't much strategy, you know, for better or worse. So yeah. Okay. Anyway, good question, JJ. I'm sure this will be under actual consideration at some point by the people who make these decisions. So here's a question from Kate who says, the Mariners played a split squad spring training game

yesterday, yesterday being the day before, Kate sent this email, and Ryan Divish entertainingly reported that second team manager, Mike Cameron, quote, demanded to have Julio on his roster in hopes of actually scoring a run under his guidance. Cameron's Ms scored four, though Julio wasn't one of them, and he debated this characterization in a reply, saying he just wanted a couple horses, but that's besides the point. Normally, I don't give split squad games a second thought, they're just a part of spring

training after all, but the jockeying for competitive teams or rosters made me think about how entertaining it would be if each big league squad had to play at least one genuine split squad game that counted in the regular season. How would teams divide up their stars? Would they go all in on just trying to win one or split up the best players equally? Presumably there'd be an even more expansive version of the temporary players for double Presumably there'd be an even more expansive version of the temporary players for double headers rule, as you'd need more than a 40 man roster to fill two teams. Split squad games would give a lot of players that otherwise would never sniff the major leagues a cup of coffee. Obviously this is a very silly idea that would

create a lot of headaches, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about this and whether it could be a fun way to add a wrinkle to a regular season and maybe compress the calendar in the event of a future strike or lockout shortened year. So yeah, I was trying to think of like, why would we do this during the regular season? Because in spring training, there are certain advantages, but during the regular season,

why would you ever want to do this? And I guess that is one reason. Yes, if you wanted to just get more games in in a shorter span of time for whatever reason, then this would be one way to do it. And I guess one thing that would affect it is if you're going up against a team that is also playing its- I was gonna say, yeah, like how much notice,

when do you have to let the other club know what version of you they're getting and vice versa? Because I, you might just say like, oh, we're getting all of the, you know, we're getting the B squad. We'll send our B squad. Or maybe you say they're sending their B squad. Let's send all of our, our best players to that game to try to get not a guaranteed win, but a higher likelihood win But yeah, like why would you do?

Can you imagine how pissed you'd be as a fan? That's the reason this wouldn't actually happen I mean there are a lot of reasons why but this that's primarily one of them kids Can you imagine you've paid your hard-earned? American dollars to go watch a baseball game. And then the PA guy comes on and is like, you know, rattling off the, the AAA roster and you're like, but this isn't cheaper. What the hell is, you would be furious. You, you pay some exorbitant fee for a Broadway show and then you get there and

there's the notice on your seat about the understudy is stepping in for the big star today. And it's nice, you know, good for understudies to get their day in the sun and maybe they seize that opportunity and there's a Wally Pip situation, which is kind of exaggerated the legend of Wally Pip. But you know, sometimes you get a chance and suddenly the sky's a star and you get the spotlight, you need your big break there, right? That's why there are all these fictional mostly stories about understudies

sabotaging the leads so that they can be at the top of the bill. But this has been an issue in other sports, like in basketball, with all the load management stuff where you've, you've set aside time and money to go to a game. And then some of the starters, some of the stars you thought you were paying to see are sitting that day. That's one of the reasons why they've tried to curb that kind of behavior. And yeah, not as much of an issue in baseball just because there are more players and no one player has that sort of outsized effect on the outcome of the game. But if you were, say, going to a game, because you thought that a certain phenom was starting that day and then that starter got scratched or something, that would be disappointing. But yeah, this almost reminds me of sometimes the conversations like during the

playoffs when we're talking about starting pitcher matchups and like this team has its ace going on that day. Right. And then you kind of run the numbers and you're like, well, should you counter with your best pitcher or should you kind of soft concede that game and say, yeah, we're probably not going to win that one anyway. So, so let's just throw some sacrificial lamb up there. Like that'll be our fourth starter game.

That'll be our bullpen game. And then we'll hold our ace in reserve for the game where we can prey on their weak pitcher and there will be an imbalance. So it would be sort of similar with the split squad games. If it weren't split squad versus split squad, maybe in fairness, it would be best. That would be a requirement. It would be a stipulation in advance.

Like you, you have to do like versus like. Yes. And then if you did that, I would guess that there'd be some coordination among the teams and the manager and they'd kind of feel each other out about, Hey, what are you doing here? Right. Kind of in the way that there is just a convention that you're going to announce your starting pitcher for the day, a certain amount of time before the game, you're not just going to show up and a different guy will be there after the other manager

sets his lineup. Like there are notable examples of that happening in postseason play for instance, but mostly they don't do that because I think probably well, a, these days you have pretty rigid rotations anyway, so there's only so much gamesmanship you could do. But we doesn't want him to do it for gambling reasons. Oh yeah, I guess there's that too. And also the spectator reasons that you were talking about. And it's just kind of a, it's like the Brinksmanship, mutually

assured destruction sort of thing. It's like, I don't want to deal with this, you know? So like, we won't do this either. Cause if we do this and we break the seal on just, we're not telling you who we're starting this day. Well, then our opponents going to do the same thing. They're going to be equally cagey. And then we're not going to know. And we're not going to be able to set our lineups.

And so they just kind of figure, eh, you know, maybe we could gain an edge here in an individual game, which is why sometimes you see it in a particularly high leverage spot, but on the whole, let's not. It's just, this will be a headache for everyone spot, but on the whole, let's not. It's just, this will be a headache for everyone. So maybe with the split squad games, if you had teams matching up and each had to do a split squad,

then they would coordinate and they would say, we're sending our A squad here. And if you want to, now you could still have kind of that conversation about, well, do we want to divide you could still have kind of that conversation about, well, do we want to divide it up fairly equally so that we have some good, legitimate major leaguers going here and others going there? And maybe that's best from a spectator fan interest standpoint. Or do we want to essentially forfeit one of these games and just load up on one

and try to win that one? And then will the other team do the same and how does that affect our calculus? But yeah, I don't think this benefits anyone really to water down. It benefits certain players who might be making major league money for a day or two here or there and get to say they were big leaguers

and get to be the subject of a meet a major leaguer segment on Effectively Wild. But beyond that, I don't know. Which is everyone's motivation for everything they do in professional baseball, being on Effectively Wild. Skeens was like, I cannot start the season until I've talked to Effectively Wild, I must do it. Yep, that's on the bucket list for everyone.

So yeah, I don't think this is a good idea. To be clear, I don't think Kate is a good idea to be clear. I don't think Kate was suggesting that it's a good idea. To be clear, I don't think the email thought it was a particularly strong one either, but. Yeah, there would be some analytical coordinations and opportunities for gamesmanship that could happen here. Teams would not discount the B-Squad game.

They absolutely would not do that. Especially if they suddenly have to pay a bunch more guys, major league money over the course of a season. They're not gonna discount those tickets. Are you out of your accord? They're not gonna do that. And so you would, people would get so worked up if their day at the ballpark, their time to go.

Cause like, you know, it's like a whole, it's a whole day and it costs money and the food's expensive and increasingly you can't bring your own in and like you'd get, you would get a whole bunch of very grumpy people, I think. And I don't think they'd be wrong to be grumpy. I think they'd be within their rights. Yeah, right. And so I wonder whether you'd try to hide it

or announce it beforehand because no one would show up. It'd be kind of like, I don't know. I guess there's a little bit of this like day game after a night game. Sure, yeah. Or like second game. You're not seeing the good catcher probably. Yeah, or second game of a double header or something.

You know, you might get some starters rested, but not to this extent. But you might, if you had to announce this in advance, then you're right. Teams certainly don't want to cut costs or cut prices, but they might have to because like, what would the demand be? Like there'd have to be some sort of dynamic pricing to reflect this or who's going to go to the B-Squad game if there's an A-Squad game. Now, maybe it's in a different location,

but still like it would have to be kind of cut rate pricing I think to get anyone to go if it's announced in advance. Maybe, but you know what, then maybe not. Maybe not. All right, and George says with the Dodgers signing Roki Sasaki, could MLB teams be limited to having only two or some number of Japanese or NPB players on their roster? I believe NPB teams would welcome this as it would limit the number of Japanese players

leaving for MLB with a cap of 60 possible slots, two per MLB team. The players association would be fine with it as it would ensure that the remaining 1140 roster spots across the 40-man roster of all 30 teams, 1200 minus 60 Japanese players, would go to American and non-Japanese foreign players. This could also prevent any one team, such as the Dodgersgers from gathering too much Japanese talent at any one time. It could also diversify the location of Japanese talent so that it would be better distributed across MLB clubs. Would this be feasible?

And I guess also would this be desirable? So this would kind of be like turnabout is fair play. Like foreign leagues tend to have these roster limits on what is for them, foreign players, right? So to protect the sanctity of the domestic leagues to make sure that native players can still have a role and a prominent part in those leagues, their roster limits there so that you can only have

so many players coming from, like in NPB currently, I think it's, yeah, I think it's there so that you can only have so many players coming from like in NPB currently, I think it's, yeah, I think it's up to four non-Japanese players on NPB rosters right now. And I think no more than three can be pitchers and no more than three can be position players and that's, that's changed over time. But typically, yeah, non-US based leagues, non MLB leagues will have those sorts of strictures so that a team in Japan doesn't say, we're just gonna make our entire roster out of quadruple A guys, frying the American miners

and we will shut out Japanese players from the Japanese league. So it would be that, but in reverse. So you could only have so many players from NPP, let's say, or I suppose from a certain country. Well, and some of like, and some of the foreign leagues have like developed, they've opened up developmental roster spots, right? So there are guys who aren't on the main team, but I, so first of all, I don't know if I think the union would care particularly much because the international players are still members of the union.

And if they're coming up through the miners, then they're part of that union now too, which is the same entity. So yeah, once they're stateside, they're in the union. So I don't know about that part of it. I would be curious to see if there is a preference within the union. I bet they would not tell us. Even if there is, they have a lot of international players in their brotherhood as they refer to it now. I guess maybe in the sense that this would kind of constrain

teams from going and getting the best players who are the higher paid players eventually, maybe the union would not like it because it kind of, it limits opportunities for players or it limits where they could sign potentially and it limits, yeah, like, you know, if the, now Roki Sasaki obviously isn't making much money, he's an unusual case, but like, if the Dodgers, let's say they had had Roki and they had had Otani or something before, like Yamamoto was available. And so the Dodgers were like taken out of the bidding for Yamamoto, that probably wouldn't be something that the union would want.

that probably wouldn't be something that the union would want. Then again, like you'd have to define this, you'd have to make clear, is this nationality based? Like, I don't think we want like quotas based on nationality. I mean, we're just, that's how we started this episode, talking about how we don't want that.

We don't want restrictions on players being able to immigrate, and we want this to be a global game. That's one of the strengths of the sport and of MLB as a whole. So I don't want that kind of protectionism. Yeah. I think that mostly, um, this is like a solution in search of a problem. This is like, you know, you're, you're mostly, you just don't want the Dodgers to have nice things, which is fine. Like you don't have to want the Dodgers to have nice things. You can say the Dodgers smell and I would prefer that all of their things be bad and also smell. But I don't think

that this is really an issue. The percentage of players in Major League Baseball from Japan is players in Major League Baseball from Japan is a drop in the bucket. It's still quite small and even if it were bigger, like, okay. So I think that we are once again trying to solve a problem that is the Dodgers having a really high concentration of very talented players and it manifesting in a way that is particularly aggravating to people when it comes to Sasaki because this was an area where like the money wasn't supposed to matter and it didn't because he was willing to be posted before he was a true unrestricted free agent. But also they're still really good at developing guys and he wanted to be on the Dodgers. So there we went, but in our haste to regulate the Dodgers out of their various competitive advantages, I think this would have knock on effects

that would be less good. I bet MPB would love it because they would love to. Yeah. That's the other thing. Cause we've talked about that and we want NPB to remain a strong and vital league and to have talent. And we've talked to Jim Allen about that, has been on the podcast to talk about it. And we have kind of wondered just with this exodus of talent and also with players who were testing the limits when it comes to how quickly they can be posted in Sasaki's cases, or even in some cases, players

who are bypassing Japanese professional baseball and going straight to American professional baseball or American amateur baseball. We have fretted a bit and some sources over there have fretted a bit about whether this will undercut NPP's capacity to remain a strong league that enhances the incredible popularity of baseball in Japan as evidenced by the very strong ratings that the Tokyo series just got. And MLB, of course, is very eager to tout those ratings and the revenue that could be coming their way from the enthusiasm for Major League Baseball in Japan. And that enthusiasm does extend to Japanese players

who come to MLB and Excel, but also we wouldn't, for the sake of Japanese fans, want NPB to be deprived of top players from the get-go necessarily. So yeah, in order to protect not like MLB from being, you know, just swamped with foreign talent or something, but to protect NPP from just a brain drain, but you know, like arm drain, bat drain, whatever it is, like, that might be something that I guess it could get to the point where,

but then what are the incentives? Like does MLB have the incentive to impose that for the greater good of NPB because MLB does want there to be, I think, a healthy league in NPB. But then if it's kind of competing for the same talent, then it gets murkier there. So yeah, the incentives are murkier there. So, yeah, the incentives are sort of interesting there. But there could come a time, I guess,

where, and I don't know that like the level of play in Japan has like been significantly affected by this as of yet, but extrapolating, could it get to that point where maybe it would be better for that league or other Asian leagues let's say to impose something like that just to ensure that we keep having these different ways of playing baseball and different high level popular leagues around the world, which ultimately I think we're down to the sports benefit and maybe MLB's benefit then yeah, I guess it could make sense. Ben?

Ben, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I've been made aware of something. Okay. Remember how like we, when we were, we were talking about the hats, we were talking about the hats recently. And I said one thing that people need in their marketing department,

you need a person whose job it is to say, hey, there's an accidental in this photo. And then, okay. So, I think I know what you're about to tell me. We need to expand the thing we're searching for accidentally. Yes. Have you seen? Are you referring to the Chesapeake oysters?

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh no. Oh God. What a gift. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh no. Oh god. What a gift. What a f***ing little present.

I have been given on this Friday when so much is so grim and I am so tired and I have edited so many words and I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish the podcast because I'm crying because this is so funny. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. What this is. I'm sorry for the big squares, but holy Moses. Oh my God. No, are there no women in your, are there no women? There's not a single woman working in your, oh my God. Oh, and the stern little, the stern little face

that that bird is making as if to say, I know what is next to me on the end. I had to go and look and see if this was real. I assumed it had been doctored. Oh my God, Ben! It had been doctored. Oh my God, Ben! Ben! Ben!

Ben! Ben! Would you care to describe, since podcasts are not a visual medium, what we are cracking up about? It just, oh my God, oh my God. I can't, you're gonna make me describe it? I am, yes, I am. Look, it can only be described as vaginal. Like imagine if Georgia O'Keeffe was like,

but I like baseball and let me, the night. Okay. So like what they're going to be, the Chesapeake Bay Sox are doing like a gimmicky night, a gimmick night, where they're going to be the oyster catchers. Ah, I see. This has already been removed from the announcement imagery on the website. From the team. And we're not going to forget though, buds. And so like they have a, like a bird, a shore bird, American oyster catcher is a kind of

bird, and you know, native to the Chesapeake, native Chesapeake Bay presumably. And so like they're going to have oyster catchers, but then they have this, they have an image of a baseball mitt and there's like an oyster. It's supposed to be like a shucked oyster and it has a little pearl in it that has sort of like the vague impression of seams like it's a baseball, except it just looks like a diagram from health class really. It kind of looks like- Yeah. I mean, it does also look like an oyster, but I guess what you're saying is that an oyster itself kind of can, well, I mean, like the way that this oyster is

drawn in a way that can only be described as fleshy. And the pearl in this case is a baseball, which is a word that we used to refer to a clean, unrubbed baseball, sometimes referred to as a pearl. But the fact that that's in here, which is, it's not normally when we eat an oyster on a half shell, that's not still in there. And so maybe the correspondence, the anatomical correspondence is not quite as clear, but it's also, I guess it's the color also. It's fleshy, dude. It's a fleshy, yeah, oysters are not this color, right? I mean, that's a big part of it.

Like this is flesh colored. Not the shell, like, you know, the actual like oyster. Yeah, the oyster itself, but this is the shell, which is flesh colored. That's the issue here. Yeah, I feel like if the shell here were like dark colored like an oyster, then this would maybe not be quite as eye catching, let's say, but oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah, this is, it's fun when these things happen, you know, when a minor league team steps in it in some way and does something silly that we all get a little laugh about on a Friday afternoon. Oh my God, it's on the jerseys. It's on the sleeve of the jersey. Oh, I needed this so bad. It's probably too late to change that. Well no. I needed this so bad, Ben. I, oh.

Yeah. When is this taking, so this is the AA affiliate of the Orioles, and this is the alternate identity for the Baysox, is the oyster catchers, but it's like, it's throughout the season, right? Like it's, okay, it's dates for the select oyster catcher home games, which they have not yet announced, so they can, they don't have to like,

take them off the schedule. They could say, yeah, these, we're all at the end of the season, actually, giving us time to perhaps redesign the logo and the uniforms or something. But, this is excellent. We're excited to introduce the oyster catchers as a fun and meaningful way to connect with our fans

while it's certainly having that effect. It can be very meaningful. Sometimes it's only for a night, but all bad. And highlight the Chesapeake Bay watershed health and heritage. Yeah, we're about watershed health. That's important. You know, like Chesapeake used to be very dirty

and then it got cleaned up. That was the last good thing RFK Junior ever did. Wow. Wow. Ben. Ben. The Grand Junction Chubs all over again. Isn't this lovely? Okay.

So here's the thing, Chesapeake Bay Sox. You need to learn from the Grand Junction Chubs because they got very defensive. When people were like, hey, so you know what that sounds like though, right? And they got mad and they were like blacken people on Twitter and they were all- Which made it so much more funny and led to the Streisand effect.

And yeah, so if you want this to go away, then don't do that. But also- Don't do it. You could embrace it. You could just lean into it. And I should do it on Mother's Day. That's the night they should do it. You know, they should be like, uh, uh, I, the problem is that it's already women's history. I can't pick the funniest time to wow. But yeah, thank God. Yeah. You know, look, if they, they removed the image already, I think they should just lean

in. Yeah. Lean in. Wow. I feel like a weight has been temporary, temporarily lifted. It's like no one get too excited. I'll feel crushed again soon, but for now, you know. It does make you wonder though, whether this was vetted and how many people looked at it. Cause of course,

the internet, like no matter how much you're testing you do before you roll something out, it's hard to mimic just the deluge of attention that you're going to get when you put something out on the internet. And granted the internet has just a collective dirty mind and absolutely will read into things that are not there. But in this case, like 15 people immediately, I can't even wait. Your focus group for this one. And no one thought, huh, straight version. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, like, look, in

fairness to my proposed, I mean, like, to be clear, I would let the person whose job it is on the marketing team to be like accidental dick, to be like, hey, I have other responsibilities. Like, I don't

want them, I don't want their entire job to be like looking for dicks. That seems like it wouldn't be very fulfilling. I regret that turn of phrase, which was not intentional. But anyway, I would let them do other stuff, you know, like they're a marketing professional. Surely they have other skills. But you do need that person. But it would be awkward to be the person whose job it is to be like, so hey, but you need someone on staff to be like accidental bit of anatomy, you know, like all kinds of anatomy might be awkward. Like you would want to avoid probably

accidental butts, accidental boobs, accidental lower bits, you know? Yeah. And I like that this seems to have been, assuming this is not a work and that they didn't do this on purpose to get everyone talking about the- Right, because this is the other, we have to allow. It's possible because we've been manipulated before and we've talked before about just minor league teams

or maybe like indie ball teams who are just like horny for no real reason or like, I mean, not that you need a reason to be, but like just horny mascots, horny like branding in a way that just seems calculated more so than this is like sex positivity or so. This is more like we want to go viral here. Like what can we do to titillate? What will get the internet talking about this? And it's intentional. And it's, you know, like,

this was designed in a lab to go viral and to get people talking about the Portland pickles, taking pick picks or whatever they did. Yeah, I didn't like that one, to be clear. I'm all for a little horniness in our... But the thing is that it's so rarely welcome, you know? Yeah, and that specifically. But also if it just feels like it's crafted and tailored to engender that reaction, it's a little less organic. Whereas in this case, it's so much more fun if it's just,

they didn't see it and then everyone else instantly saw it. Instantly. Yeah. That I think is just much more enjoyable. Yeah. Like again, it's like if, if Georgia O'Keeffe was like, well, one still alive and also really into baseball, she would design that. I mean, it would be more artful cause you, because it's Georgia O'Keeffe.

The museum in Santa Fe is wonderful if anyone's on a tour of the American Southwest and gonna be in Santa Fe, and they're like, I've already bought so much turquoise, what do I do next? Go to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, it's great. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure we had other emails, but sorry, this is breaking news, you know, urgent business on the pod. See baseball does have room for women. There we go. And makes me want brought a full circle oysters. I'm just, I'm going to say like actual oysters, not, not anything else. I'm just saying specifically that it makes me crave oysters right now, which I'm always kind of in a constant state of craving oysters because I just really like oysters and I'm not... Get your minds out of the gutter.

I'm just talking about oysters here. That is what I'm talking about, but I do love them. And we recently learned of a dollar oyster happy hour near our house where we moved to last year. And those are few and far between these days, like in Manhattan, where, you know, prices, right? So you used to get your oyster happy hours where it was kind of common to get dollar oysters.

And now the oyster happy hour is like, you're lucky to get 150 oysters, right? And so it's just, but we have found a dollar oyster establishment that has oyster happy hour, like every day for a couple hours in the afternoon. And I'm going to go sometime soon. Now it could be that they are just the absolutely most rancid oysters you've ever tasted.

I'm taking my life in my hands here and my intestinal wellbeing, because maybe they're cut in quarters. It's like, wow, how do they still manage to make dollar oysters work in this economy with this inflation? Maybe it's by getting the oysters that fell off a truck at some point. So I'm scared, but also excited. So we'll see. I'll report back. Hopefully I won't have another Brussels sprouts level incident. I was just about to say you're, you know, and it's interesting because you're not like, you're not a foodie, which makes me assume that you're not an adventurous eater, but

you are in a very dangerous way. Like wildly adventurous. I love oysters. I don't get to eat them very much anymore because like it's not that there aren't places in the Valley that serve oysters. It's just like, you know. Not ideal.

Not ideal. There is a place by us that has oysters but and the restaurant is great. I'm not gonna name it, because I don't want people to be weird. But also, they serve oysters, and it's clear that whoever they have doesn't know how to shuck them.

Oh, a lot of little gritty things in them. Look, I can't shuck an oyster either. I don't have that skill. I have tried to learn, and I don't do a very good job. But because I'm from the Northwest, I have a lot of judgment of people who can't trick oysters and claim they can. Like, no, you're lane. I also do have a strong preference for Pacific oysters over Atlantics typically, but not always. So anyway, that's been Oyster Talk with Ben and Meg. Love an oyster. I had great, I had really, really wonderful oysters when I went home for,

for my granddad's funeral, which like that sucked. But I mean, but, but the oysters we had after, they were top notch, which also the first time I ever ate an oyster was with that same grandfather. So it felt like it was kind of a full circle. He was like, we were digging for them. We absolutely did not have the necessary paperwork. That wasn't grandpa's style. And he was like, if you eat this oyster, like raw shucked on the beach, had never had one, was a small child,

I'll give you a king-sized candy bar because he wanted us to try them. And then he picked the biggest oyster you have ever seen in your entire life, like practically a gooey duck, you know? Oh yeah, that could put you off oysters for years, I'd imagine, if you have the wrong introduction. But you know what? Grandpa was a man of his word and I did get a king-sized candy bar,

but then I didn't eat oysters again until I was like in high school. Because I was like, you mean the thing that traumatized me on the beach that time? Right. Anyway, I love the bounty of the sea. I love a briny tasting seafood. A briny. Love briny stuff. I am all about briny. Yeah.

Yeah, man. Okay. Wow. Well, we had some oyster talk on the pod. Didn't anticipate that, but yeah, that was going to be the last email I answered anyway. So we got some bonus oyster talk. We were not interrupting. We were not depriving you of additional emails.

Oh, okay. This was just, just a extra innings we went into here. Thank you to the oyster shuckers. And yeah, the last thing I meant to say about that question from George was just, I guess it would lead to maybe more distribution, equal distribution of players coming from Asia to MLB teams, just because like, you know, if we were to quantify

like what proportion of war produced by NPP players has been for West Coast teams, let's say, like it would probably be somewhat skewed. And now it's the Dodgers, and maybe it's always been the Dodgers to some extent. And there was also a time when the Mariners were very much, there was a pipeline there and Ichiro and Jojima and Sasaki, et cetera, right?

So certain teams based on their geographic, yeah, Iwakuma based on their geographic locations have had an edge there and that's okay. Like, you know, teams will always have geographic edges for certain players based on where geographic locations have had an edge there. And that's okay. Like, you know, teams will always have geographic edges for certain players based on where they are. But it was just like, if you want exposure to the top talent from NPP, then certain teams are at a disadvantage

when it comes to recruiting those players, at least initially. But then again, I don't want to force the NPP players to fly farther to see their families if they don't want to either. So in general, I'm in favor of less restriction when it comes to player movement. So I think against this idea for now until this actually becomes a more pressing problem. I agree with all of that, man.

I'm still so distracted by the oyster. And I'm going to think about it all weekend. I think they should sell hats, have some courage, you know? Oh yeah, it's an opportunity for branding for merch. No, probably not. They're not gonna do it, but they should, Ben. They should have some courage and they should do it.

Because look, most people aren't gonna wear them. They're just gonna buy them. That's the thing about it. Like, and the person who walks out of the house in that hat, they deserve to wear it. They deserve to have the opportunity to buy that hat and then wear it, because they are also exhibit encouraged. So yeah. Wow. All right. Well, I'll let you get started on your weekend of thinking about this.

I'm gonna edit all weekend, but I am gonna think about it the whole time I do. Closing reminder to vote, vote, vote on our preseason predictions. Link is on the show page, ewstats.com. Do it before opening day. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening and a special thanks to those of you who 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.

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