Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2303: Bat After This

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley have an in-depth discussion on all aspects of the sport’s topic du jour: torpedo/bowling-pin/juggling-pin(?) bats. They also banter (59:58) about the abysmal beginning of Rafael Devers’s season, Aaron Judge’s interviews, MLB’s attempt to make up for its MLB.TV outage, the vibes at Blue Jays games, Willson Contreras eating bat tape, […]

Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise From small sample size these fun facts must lie It's effectively wild A strange but good hang Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello Meg.

Hello. You sound sick. I do. Yeah. Don't you mean I sound deeply resonant and sonorous? Meg. Hello. You sound sick. I do. Yeah. Don't you mean I sound deeply resonant and sonorous? Maybe that's the way you meant to phrase it. Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant to say. Yeah. Yeah. I feel fine, but I sound like this. So get used to it, folks, because that's what it's going to be like for the rest of this episode, hopefully for not too much longer. But if you don't enjoy how I sound, I hope you will enjoy what we talk about because we've got some good stuff to discuss.

Sometimes I think 13 years into this thing almost and 2300 plus episodes, what else could there possibly be to talk about that we haven't talked about already? What could keep us coming back? What could keep all the listeners coming back? And when we wrapped last week's recording on Friday, little did we suspect that the very next day

baseball would be consumed by talk about bulbous bats and that we would all be obsessed with bulbous bats and discussing meaty, girthy wood that the Yankees debuted on Saturday or didn't debut on Saturday. We just realized that they'd been using it for months, which we definitely have to discuss because that makes me question everything.

But here we are. This now has broken baseball containment. I think normies, casuals are kind of interested in this. Like, whoa, the bats are big. The barrels are big. Are the Yankees cheating? What is happening here? So clearly the bulbous bats have changed baseball forever. Baseball reference had a stat that the Yankees are the first team ever to have a team OPS of 1200 or better through the first three games of the season. Sure. And what other possible explanation could there be? Right. Besides the bulbous bets. I worry that this is perhaps indicative of a broader state of grump on my part. But I found myself very, very annoyed by all this, Ben.

Not the bats themselves. I don't care about that. I have enjoyed our listeners immediately leaping to pedantic objections about the fact that these are being called torpedo bats. Yes. I think we may have gotten more emails about they're not shaped like torpedoes than about anything else about the bats. Yes. I think we may have gotten more emails about or not shaped like torpedoes

than about anything else about the bats. I think that our listeners have a point. Yeah, me too. Because you know, when I was searching for a sort of visual comp for these, I came up with like, I don't know what they're called even. You know, jugglers, not like balls, but like the pins. Are they called pins? Yeah, I think they're pins, yeah. Pins, like that. I know one of our listeners suggested like that they resemble something like a bowling pin

distinct from a juggler's pin? Pin? I don't know. I think they're both pins. They're sort of similar implements. Yeah, longer grabby parts though on a juggler's than on a bowling pin. I'm not well versed in munitions. I wouldn't say that that's a strength of mine having a good sense of the catalog there. I will say that having watched my fair share of like dad action movies that these look more like like missiles to me than like torpedoes. Sound off in the comments

submarine heads. Yeah, you're talking to one. But yeah, no, I'm with you. And I'm with the listeners. I think it's less like a torpedo than it is like a bowling pin. I believe even someone at Louisville Slugger who worked on the design of this thing said that it was shaped like a bowling pin. So I've been referring to it when I'm not calling it meaty and girthy. I'm talking about it being a bowling pin shape. I don't know that there's only ever been one standard torpedo shape, but at least on a modern torpedo, I think there's less of a bulbousness to it. So torpedo bat sounds good. I think it's kind of catchy.

It sounds cool. Yeah. You can't call it a juggler bat. People will be like, what the f**k does that mean? So I understand the instinct, even if I think that it's not quite a flush comp. But people have been reacting to this. They have exhibited a sense of paranoia, candidly, a conspiratorial thinking. And Ben, I put to you as someone who is similarly adverse to conspiracies, unless they involve showing his dog and are very much kidding as I am. What is the alleged conspiracy here? We can see them, you know? Like their bats are, and they're within the specs and already other players, first of all, there are other players already in the league who use them. There are players who already after this weekend are using them anew. I saw a screen grab from the today's Phillies game that Alec Bohm now has a torpedo bat.

And so what is the alleged, what is the conspiracy here? Like what is the, what is the allegation? The other thing I would note just for the sake of the Yankees of it all, Aaron Judge isn't using a torpedo bat. Aaron Judge is just using his regular old bat and Aaron Judge has four home runs. He is, he is responsible for a not small bulk of the, of the team wide OPS that everyone is referencing. So I just look, it's funny looking, it's a little goofy. I think from a physics perspective, it's interesting. Is it actually potentially superior to sort of concentrate the girthy bit where one sweet spot might be?

See, it's just like, you know, what are we doing? It's Monday. We're not even doing it, first of all. It's the Archer style phrasing here on some of these quotes. So the guy who was the lead inventor, seemingly, Aaron Leonhart, AKA Lenny, who is a former Yankees analyst. He has a PhD in physics from MIT.

And he was kind of their liaison between the front office and the field staff last year. And now he works for the Marlins. So I don't know what that means about how much the Yankees value the bats if they just let him go to the Marlins. But I don't know, maybe they figured, well, we have the bats now.

Why do we need Lenny? Who knows? Or maybe the Marlins said, we have't know, maybe they figured, well, we have the bats now, why do we need Lenny? Who knows? Or maybe the Marlins said, we have no hitters who can hit for power, so our only hope is you're gonna need a bigger bat, so we better bring on Lenny here. Yeah, so I don't know. But the quotes that he had about this,

he spoke to the athletic, he spoke to Jeff Passon. He said, it's just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you're trying to do damage on the baseball. And the thought process was, why don't we exchange how much wood we're putting on the tip versus how much we're putting in the sweet spot. Just try to take all that excess weight and try to put it where you're trying to hit the ball. And then in exchange, try to take the thinner diameter that used to be at the sweet spot and put that on the tip. So it's not even us. We're not snickering at it. But

when he's doing it, Lenny, I mean, come on my guy, be a little less horned on me. No. He's just trying to describe his work. He's probably sitting there like, look, I know how it sounds, but this is, I've heard it all before. Yeah. He's like, I didn't come up with the terminology sweet spot. I'm simply, so, you know, we, I think it sort of remains to be seen what the ultimate impact of this will be over a long time, like, you know, bat shapes come and go, and there have been all kinds of changes to bats and switches back, you know, sometimes remember the ones with the funny handles. Yeah, the axe bats.

The axe bats, right. Axe bats and there's some hockey puck shaped knob bats. Sure. There are the ones with the little carve out at the top, you know, it's like there are all kinds of different bats. And guys tend to find, you know, they'll find one that works for them and they stick with it. And then sometimes, you know, I feel like once a year we're good for a story where a guy's like, my last bat broke and I had to

use so and so's bat. And then I was like, this is the bat for me. And you're just like, okay, now you're just that bat. I just look, I don't, again, I don't want to be a grump and I don't want to overstate the case. I think that a lot of people kind of had an initial reaction to this and then got over it. And maybe the, the annoyance that I should be having been is not with those who would look at this situation and yell cheating, but with the Houston Astros who we have talked about, you and I not generally actively agitated by the banging scheme anymore, unlike some people who are. And I'm not judging that reaction is just not my emotional truth, Ben. You know, it's not true to me. But I do think that one of the lasting impacts of

that scandal was that there is a sort of instinct to jump to cheating as a explanation for outlier performance. And I think that's, you know, that's been a thread that sports fans have pulled at as long as there have been sports. Yeah. And there's been cheating as long as there have been sports. Precisely. Right. And so like they've had cause.

But I do think that having a modern example of it at the team wide level where it manifested as this shady, sketchy thing. It has made us believe that to be the most salient and obvious explanation in moments like this. I get that, but I also just beg of people to be like, what is the second piece of evidence of cheating? Because one way to cheat is to not do the cheating in a way that is very visible and then in the view of the leak

and then you potentially get caught. Like what is the, Ben, what is the conspiracy here, right? What is the? I think it's mostly, I mean, first of all the I think it's mostly I mean first of all I think it's people who just aren't in the know mostly they're just kind of right casually seeing a headline and all they hear is the Yankees used new bats and They hit nine home runs and they started a game by hitting three home runs on three pitches for the first time Any team has done that on record and they think?

on three pitches for the first time. Any team has done that on record and they think Yankees favoritism and they think the bats must have produced the home runs because the home runs happened and therefore the bats caused them logical fallacy. But these things happen and they don't really inquire that much more deeply and they may not know that the bat regulations allow some leeway and some customization. So I don't think that anyone credible is alleging that the Yankees are cheating in some way. I think it's sort of low information commenters and there are a lot of those. In fact, those are most of them, I think, not to sound too condescending, but that's what you get. You get kind of people driving by on a baseball story

after not usually picking up on baseball stories and following baseball stories the way that we do or the way that most of our listeners do. There was someone who tweeted at me after I put out my story on this. I think it looks like a Brewers fan who says, if the Brewers went into Yankee Stadium with those bats and hit 15 home runs in three games

They'd already be banned and the entire Brewers org would be sent to prison by Manfred And so there's some there's some hyperbole potentially there. There's also I'm sure some trolling There's some enmity against the Yankees sure, but people are also I think just sort of having fun But yeah, it's we're not accustomed to hearing, unless you're super plugged into baseball, you're not really accustomed to hearing about bats being different in a way that you might notice, especially in a way that sounds like it should be cheating.

Just we made the barrel bigger. Now, that's not exactly what it is. They made the barrel thicker, but also longer and closer to the handle and it doesn't violate any rules. First of all there aren't many rules about the bat to begin with. It's there are like three rules basically. It's the bat shall be a smooth round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length, the bat shall be one piece of solid wood."

So check, check and check. It's just a few regulations there. There are a few others about the indentation at the end of the bat and colors and that kind of thing that don't really relate to this. But it's kind of anything goes as long as it doesn't break any of those rules and it doesn't break any of those rules. But I don't know that most people know that because teams haven't really tested this that much in this particular way where you could see a picture of the bat, whatever we're calling

it, the juggler pin bat, the bowling pin bat. Look, I don't think that people are wrong to point out that it looks more like something else, but I get torpedo bat is catchy. I don't have the same reaction to this. It doesn't make me as mad as Ghostrunner versus Zombie Runner. Yes, that was precisely what I was about to say. Because Ghostrunner, as we've established, is a thing that is different from the Zombie Runner.

Whereas a torpedo bat is not a thing where someone calls this a torpedo bat and I say, no, that's already a term for this other kind of bat. It's just maybe a misnomer sort of, but not one that bugs me that much. So if torpedo bat catches on, I won't be mad about it. Anyway, whatever that is, you look at a picture of it side by side, at least a closeup, and you might think, well, that doesn't look like it should be allowed, that seems like it's too big,

it's too bulbous, it would be too easy to hit the it's too big. It's too bulbous. It would be too easy to hit the ball. And that's maybe misleading too. But I, I get why people who aren't really paying attention to baseball and just, this just flits across their vision in one ear and out the other. And meanwhile, they say the Yankees are cheating. Oh, well, sure. But, but think about it, you know, for a minute casuals, there's so many of them lose into this podcast. Think about it for a minute though. Cause think about it for a minute. Casuals, there's so many of them who's into this podcast. Think about it for a minute though. Because think about it.

Because you can see it. You can just see it. You can just see it. You can see it, Ben. He's holding it in his hand and then there's the TV and then they show it at home and we see it. And the umpire can see it. The umpire's a broad discretion to be like, hey, knock that off.

You know, they could look at it and go, hey, you gotta get a different bet, that bet, no good. They could do that. You know, and so anyway, I'm admitting to being a grump. It's Monday, I'm having to get back into a more normal work schedule, you know, and I will admit struggling with that a little bit. You know, I'm all gas, no brakes.

Lately. I find this fun, this story. I enjoy this story. I like it too, but I find the, I just need people. Look, it's my fault actually. It's not that people are low information. It's not the echo of the banging scheme. It's not any, of the banging scheme.

It's not any, it's me and the dog. This is my fault. I did it. I have no one to blame. Every other real life disinformation that we were constantly bombarded by all day. But this is why it's bothering me because it's a fun story and I'd like to be sitting here debating the nuances of bowling pins versus, is like a non-horrible context for torpedoes? Like this is the other- Non-violent torpedoes? Yeah, because like you don't really, you don't, you know,

that's like, it's not a like, acquire this arsenal and don't use it kind of a weapon. People are like, let's launch the torpedoes. Ready, ready tube four, you know, that's kind of the anyway, that's not the point. So I'd like to be sitting here debating the thing, but instead I am just confronted once again with this conspiratorial mindset. And I, I, I'd like to be done with that. Well, let's, let's tune it out. Let's have the debate and the nuanced discussion that you wanna have. By the way, according to my Googling, they are juggling pins, but also juggling clubs,

which makes them even more bat-like. I mean, it's already a club. Yeah, club bat is confusing though, because you club a home run, or I feel like club is deployed in a baseball context already. And so we couldn't call it a club bat. And again, a juggler bat, that sounds, that sounds ridiculous.

I bet if they were called juggler bats, um, that there would be a greater appetite to ban them because then it, it sounds clownish already. And you're like, I can't do a clown. Did you see the Trevor McGill was one of the people who was like, ah, they're only getting away with it because of the Yankees. My guy, listen, you guys just had a bad weekend and I get that you're all very hurt and the staff is not in good shape and it will be in better shape soon, hopefully. But if you're going to go into Yankee Stadium and you're going to get knocked around, you

got to have some self-respect and call their ballpark a little league ballpark with bad dimensions. Like, come on, something bad. Yeah. And most of the Brewers did, to be clear. Pat Murphy, their manager said it ain't the wand, it's the magician. Yes. What a great, what a great line as an aside. Pat, well done buddy. Like that is, I wish I had written that myself. Really good. He also said, it's not like some magical wood or anything else. And he also- I'm just saying. Yeah.

Nestor Cortez, of course, ex Yankee who didn't think there was anything special about this because he had encountered them before. He said, I think those were going to go out regardless if they had a bowling pin bat or a regular bat. And yet it's Yankee Stadium, it's a band box, the wind was blowing out, the Brewers pitching is far from what it was. Those were a bunch of early season, low velocity meatballs

for pretty good hitters in conditions that were conducive to power. And also four of the home runs were hit by Aaron Judge, who does not need any help from different pets As he himself said which I very much enjoyed where yeah, we were essentially just like yeah, I don't think I need to do Judge like literally have you looked at my stats? Do you think I need to do something different? How much better could I be? I do I will say I I'm incredibly skeptical that there is like a hidden gear of power that Judge has not unlocked, but I would like him to like take a week, you know, like one week

and use the Juggler Club bat. See, it doesn't roll off the tongue easy either. That's the problem. Torpedo bat is like, it's like a torpedo. But I would like to see him sort of use it for a week and just see because like what if Then what if there is what if there is like what he uses it and then he hits like 10 home runs in Two days and then he's like, oh, I guess I got to use this bat, you know Yeah, what if you did that been holding him back?

I love it though because the Yankees look they've often had big bats in the figurative sense and they've also had big bodies in the literal sense and now the lumber is literally large, at least in some places, they just added ounces in all the right places and subtracted some where they didn't need them so much. I was also kind of confused by Trevor McGill's quote. He subsequently claimed that he was misquoted, but didn't specify how. I almost believe it because his quote was so confused.

So here's what he said, as it was reported by the New York Post. I think it's terrible. We'll see what the data says. I've never seen anything like it before. I feel like it's something used in slow pitch softball. It's genius. Put the mess all in one spot.

So wait, he thinks it's terrible, but it's genius. Then he says, it might be Bush, as in Bush League, it might not be, but it's the Yankees, so they'll let it slide. And then he continued to say, took a minute for the shock to go away, since from the bullpen, they looked like bowling pins. We weren't able to process it, but that's the game.

It's a big data race with science and technology playing a huge role in baseball. Now you can't hate them for trying something new. That quote took me on such a journey, just so many different directions. It's terrible. It's slow pitch softball. It's Bush league, but also it might not be Bush League and it's genius and you can't hate him. So he just needs to refine his thoughts. He needs to think this through a little more because he's a little all over the place there.

But really what fascinates me about this now, as you were just saying, we can see them, they are right in front of our eyes. And yet they have been, and we evidently didn't see them for the longest time. And this is what amazes me. It's almost like, you know, you read those stories about how you do a study and if you tell someone you prime someone to look for one thing or they're distracted, then they don't see the very obvious thing that they might otherwise notice, the invisible gorilla experiment,

the inattentional blindness phenomenon. So maybe you're watching baseball and you're just assuming, yeah, they're the bats. They look more or less like the bats have looked for the past century, and you just don't notice. Now, once you see a picture of it, it seems obvious, except then I'm reading about, okay, the Yankees,

not only were they using this in spring training, no one reported on this, no one noticed anything or said anything about it publicly, they were using it in the first game of the season, no one brought it up because they scored four runs that day, not only that, they were using this in games last year, including during their run to the World Series. According to Jeff Passon, and I believe Jason Dominguez said this too, Jean-Carlos Stanton

was using the bulbous bats in October when Jean-Carlos Stanton was going off and having a dominant postseason performance. He was evidently using the torpedo bats or whatever we're calling them and I went back and watched some Stanton highlights and I was like freeze-framing and zooming in and trying to turn the resolution up and I was questioning everything because I was like, okay Yeah, that does kind of like now that I'm looking for it Yeah, it looks but I can't quite tell and I was sort of psyching myself out Yeah, I think it's actually it's easier to tell in a closeup

in a still image than it is on a screen from far away, even if it's a zoomed in camera angle. I don't think it's immediately obvious. And even now that I'm looking for it, I think that was the case. I believe the reporting, but if you've just told me, look at his bat and I knew nothing about the bulbous bats, I don't know that I would have noticed anything amiss.

And that's just amazing to me because again, it's been in plain sight. It's hiding in plain sight. And you know, in spring training, reporters will write about anything, any excuse, any whiff of a story they will seize. And so the fact that not a single person picked up on this must mean that it is actually pretty subtle. And the reason that this has caught fire, first of all, we might still not know about the bulbous bats. If Michael K voice of the Yankees on the Yes Network, just brought it up on the air. That's what made this pop off. This is what made this a subject of conversation that Michael K. just tweeted it out.

He broadcasted it out. And then everyone was like, what, the bats? So how long could this have gone on before we would have noticed if Michael K. hadn't just said this on a broadcast during a game when the Yankees were doing some historic home run hitting because that's the other thing. If this had just been some generic game

when he had mentioned this, we probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. If the Yankees were getting shut out in that game, we would have said, oh yeah, okay, the bat barrels are a little thicker, that's interesting. But no, because of the timing of it, everyone assumed, oh, well, that's why they just had this historic home run feed and franchise record and tied for the second most home runs

hit ever and second most home runs hit over a two day period, et cetera, et cetera, must be because of the bat. So all these things conspired to make this a major sensation after it being completely off the radar as one would want a torpedo to be if one fired one for months maybe for years these things were being experimented with it doesn't totally shock me and I think it's because bats are really weird to look at man like they Sometimes you'll see like a still image of a hitter and the angle that the that the bat is at when the photo was taken makes it look like he's got like

a little baby bat you know he's got a little tiny guy not girthy it's bush I mean other people hear it too right it's not just me thinking like a 12 year old. Okay. Well, it's still, it's just a lot for a Monday. It's an implement that does play tricks on you. It looks different depending on the angle that you're viewing it at, that you're standing at relative to the angle it is pointed at. It's just, they're mysterious, Ben. They are like something out of myth, the bat myth. So I'm not surprised that it escaped notice for a while. I am perhaps a little surprised that it managed to get

through spring training without anybody saying anything about it. But- And it's the Yankees too. to get through spring training without anybody saying anything about it. And it's the Yankees too. It's not a team with a tiny beat writer contingent. This is New York media. This is the baseball writing press. It is.

Yes. Sorry guys. I wasn't on the ground. I'm in the New York chapter. I'm ashamed secondhand, but I wasn't at spring training, which maybe it's my fault for not being there. I was going to say, were you in Florida and you forgot to tell me? No, but by the way, I said torpedoes radar probably should have said sonar, but it doesn't

really work with the expression. And also, I guess, technically you could have a torpedo show up on radar that that could happen in some context. Anyway, save your emails. It's probably too late. We probably got one by now. I mean, you could have underwater radar and also I guess you could have... They could come out of the water.

Yeah. I mean, you could have photon torpedoes showing up on radar, I guess. Maybe. I'm sorry. Could you have photon torpedoes showing up on radar? You know it's not real, right? You don't think you're watching a documentary? I want to believe. But yes, so much of this flummoxes me because this is the epicenter of the baseball world. This is the brightest lights. These are the biggest stars, sometimes literally speaking, and no one noticed. So here we have Jazz Chisholm and we have Austin Wells and we have Paul Goldschmidt and we have Anthony Volpe and all these guys are using these bats and just no one noticed Cody Bellinger also using the bats.

Just wild. I would love to run an alternate scenario where Michael K doesn't just volunteer this information on the broadcast and we would still be none the wiser quite possibly. Yeah, it's interesting because it does suggest that there is an avenue for conspiracy that I had not considered, which is that they were simply relying on us not being able to notice these differences to get away with it for a while, you know, but that's silly. I'm not saying it's a fruitful avenue. Yeah, it's not saying it's a fruitful. Yeah. It's not being hidden.

It's just, it's right out there. So you couldn't keep it secret except I guess by just not mentioning it's not drawing attention to it. And evidently no one would notice, but yeah, it's not confidential. It's not like the Yankees were even the only team that was experimenting with this The the Cubs have been trying it out the twins You mentioned boom a junior Kevin Arrow of the Rays has been using it Adley Rutchman Davis Schneider of the Blue Jays the Red Sox were trying it in spring training

Cody Asche the former big leaguer and current Orioles hitting coach said I think that's not something that's unique to the Yankees I think a lot of teams that's unique to the Yankees. I think a lot of teams are doing that around the league. They may have some more players who have adopted it at a higher rate, but I think if you're around clubhouses, all 30 teams, you would see a guy or two who's adopting a bat that is fashioned maybe more specifically for their swing.

That's maybe a little bit different and more specific than these bats, but still. I think that's probably the next progression in hitting, finding out where you hit the ball in the sweet spot and putting more mass there without changing too many things So it just makes me wonder what else are we not noticing that is right in front of our faces I wouldn't have thought that something like this could escape mainstream attention for too long It's almost like when we started questioning whether the pants were always this transparent. I have this thought.

Were the bats always this bulbous? We just never noticed. I still think that, and perhaps this is cope on my part at this point, but I still think that the pants really are different. And I realize that I'm about to say that horny baseball fans somehow successfully ignored girth. Um, but I don't know. I just think there are too many people looking at rigs for them to not have noticed the pants

being transparent before anyway. There does really seem to be an immediate bat envy though, among all the other major rakers. I mean, it really is. It's very much like, oh, they've got bigger ones. I want to try the bigger one. Oh look, like if you're a big leaguer, why not? You know, why not give it a try? You're probably not gonna, I mean,

I guess the trick of it is that you're not gonna know that it's the bat helping you out. Just like you might not know that it's the bat helping you out. Just like you might not know that it's the bat hurting you, I suppose. You might switch to the bat. You have to get used to it for a little while, and then maybe you have success, but is it the bat? Is it the guys you're seeing?

Is it the placebo bat? Is it not the actual bat itself, but the fact that you now think that you have a better, bigger bat, and so your performance improves. Did you see the the Volpe quote about this, which really gets at the bat envy aspect of things? It's probably just a placebo, Volpe said.

A lot of it is just looking up at your bat and seeing how big the barrel is, but it's exciting. Oh my gosh. your bat and seeing how big the barrel is, but it's exciting. I think any 0.01% mentally that it gives you confidence, it helps because, you know, sometimes your bat's not as big as you want it to be. It happens to every guy and just you look at the bigger bat and it just gives you renewed confidence. I guess I'm happy that there are finally men paying attention to girth. But look, what? Just because it's Monday, I can't make jokes?

What? What do you got to say? Huh? No. I, ridiculous. What a- Ridiculous. Oh boy.

Well, I've come around to it being a little more fun now, I guess. I think I have, because I do love a good dirty joke, Ben. That's the thing about me is I have an immature sense of humor when it comes right down to it. But I don't know, I'll be interested to see. I'm sure that, you know, one of the future sort of phases of this is a guy who switches to the girthy bat and then decides to switch back because it doesn't work for him. I do want the control group of Judge with the bat. I want to see that.

Yeah. I want it to be replaced without his noticing because evidently none of us noticed. I'm sure that hitters would notice, but if we could somehow swap it in so that he wouldn't know and then we could measure so that it could be kind of a double blind thing, because again, I don't want him to have

either the placebo effect or to psych himself out because the bat's different. I just want him to go about his business as he normally would with the more bulbous bat. Yeah, it would be fun. I think that it's fine. I did have people, friends of mine who are not big baseball fans text me today and be like,

sweet are they cheating? And I don't care for that piece of this, but setting that aside, I mean, it's always nice to hear from my friends, don't get me wrong, but I wish that their takeaway was not that the sport had a cheating scandal in the beginning of the season. But mostly I think it's all very silly and fun and strange

and science is cool. And I think that's what I got on this. Yeah, I think those were my takeaways. Stanton cryptically at the time blamed his elbow woes. Remember how we were talking about what's up with Stanton's elbows? He blamed them earlier this spring on bat adjustments. And at the time, I didn't know what he meant by that.

And I don't know what he meant by that. And I don't know that anyone else did either, but in retrospect, it sort of sounds as if he's attributing his elbow woes to the torpedo bats. Do we know that? No, but he did blame them on bad adjustments. So I don't know whether they're bad. And he was using these bats.

So I wonder if that was true even, Let's say that he was using the Torpedo bats and they contributed to his remarkable run last October. Would he accept that knowing that the costs might be that both of his elbows would be bum elbows the next season and he'd be potentially out for the year? Who knows? Indefinitely, would he make that bargain? Who knows? And I don't necessarily believe that that's the case, that even if he was using the torpedo bats, even if he thinks, because again,

it's the same maybe mistake that people are making where they say, oh, Yankees use different bats, Yankees hits lots of homers, Yankees hit lots of homers because of bats. And perhaps Stanton is thinking the same thing. I switched bats and then my elbows started hurting in a new and different way. And he might very well be onto something there. I guess it's possible, but also Stanton gets hurt a lot, not necessarily in that particular way, but still it's gonna take more than one injured John Carlos Stanton,

who may have been implying that these bats were responsible or contributed, for me to think that, uh-oh, every hitter's gonna suddenly come up with bum elbows, although, that would be the tragic O. Henry ending to this if the hitters all switched bats to try to keep up with the pitchers whose elbows are springing left and right and then the bats made the batter's elbows spring.

Are they heavier? I know that the weight is distributed differently and that could have its own effects. I don't mean to say that it doesn't, but are they also heavier than? I don't think so. No, unless unless you want them to be. No, it would be down to how the the distribution of the weight is interacting with your swing and your muscles rather than it being heavier. Okay, I just wanted to understand. I'm trying to ground myself in facts here and dirty jokes because you know, those are thick on the ground at the moment.

And of course, the the fallacy that I keep dancing around here is the post-hoc ergo propterhoc. Of course, you may recall from that West Wing episode that has that title, and also Latin. But I think that this... You can't give that to the West Wing, Ben. You can't just give the West Wing Latin, because then we lose it,

because I'm not revisiting that show, are you kidding me? No. Bart, it's a scholar, but he did not come up with that term. But I think that these bats, so if we drill down into how they actually work and whether they work, I think the science is sound. I would need to see more data and maybe the teams that are recommending these things to players

Perhaps have that data or at least a firmer grounding than I do just reading what smart people have said on Twitter and reading the rationale that Lenny gave here and Lenny obviously has some scientific Credentials, this is not a fighting necklace type of fad here. This is not junk science or snake oil, I don't think. That said, I think the effects might be overstated. I mean, I don't know that any of the people using the bats or recommending the bats are overstating them. I think just anyone who's jumping to the conclusion that, oh, Yankees hit nine homers because of bats. But otherwise it sounds like people are being pretty measured in their expectations of what these things will do. But it makes sense to me that you are concentrating

more of the mass in a good area where it's going to be useful for you, where you can do some damage on a ball where you could maybe make contact with a ball that you might not have hit or you might not have hit squarely and These won't benefit everyone and you can shape them differently depending on your proclivities but I think it's useful for say Anthony Volpe the Explanation for him was that he was hitting everything off the label like he was getting jammed and so okay he's just kind of putting more of the meat

of the bat on the place where he tends to contact the ball. And this sort of fine grains, wood grains analysis is possible now because of stack cast and because of the various tracking tech that we have, where we can say not just that, oh, he missed that one, or that was a miss hit, or he whiffed, but why and how and where exactly did he whiff? Was it in or out?

Was it high or low? Was it early or late? And so now we have this greater precision and you can quantify and measure exactly where the ball is making contact with the bat, and you can develop these individual profiles for players. And yeah, maybe a one size fits all bat probably doesn't actually make sense for everyone. And probably for a lot of guys that it does, but maybe it can

compensate for a weakness, some sort of tendency that you have, and you can just ameliorate that somehow. So it makes sense to me that it would work. It's not going to be some one weird trick thing that just solves modern pitching, but I think it could help a little bit. And if it saves you a whiff here or gives you a hit there, a ball goes over the fence instead of dying at the warning track, then why not? And if you don't like it, you can be like, Hey, I'll go back to my non-propeto bat. I am no longer a juggler. I will not clown for you anymore.

I want everyone to know. I know that clowning and juggling not always the same, you know? Not all clowns are jugglers and not all jugglers know how to clown. And so don't write an email. Just, I know. But I'm saying like, I won't juggle for you anymore. That doesn't have the same gravitas

as like saying I won't clown for you anymore. This is like, you know, clowning. It's like a whole thing. It's not just that a lot of them can juggle story, not all of them. Yeah, they're more like actors. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's somewhat notable that it's not just all young guys who were adopting this. It seems to be

just a real range. Even on the Yankees at Paul Goldschmidt and Anthony Volpe or Austin Wells, you have a range of almost 15 years in age and experience there in the big leagues. And even someone like Goldschmidt, who's had maybe a Hall of Fame career just using the old standard bats is convinced to try this thing. So that says to me that it's sort of an easy sell

or at least that the Yankees have had the right people selling. And I think it's somewhat new in the sense that the bat has remained fairly standard for a long time. In the 19th century, you had more bat experimentation. We talked about the curved bats on an episode not long ago, and they had bigger bats and they had flatter bats, but they just kind of conformed. And over the past few years, I remember Eno Saris wrote an article in 2021, I think, for the athletic

about how there were companies that were measuring the minute differences in bat density and size and specifications. You get a batch of bats from the company and all of them are a little bit different. And so, right. Yeah, they're not exactly the same. You can't make them identical. Right. And so you always hear about the bat whispers and Etro and, you know, how he would, people would tap them against the ground and listen to them or lick them if you're Yaseel Pweeg and,

you know, keep them in special storage cases. And just, we got to talk about something that was maybe weirder than the licking that happened this past weekend to courtesy of Wilson Contreras. But, but yeah. Yeah. And Ted Williams, all these people reputed, you know, people who are students of hitting would always pay close attention to their bats. And now it's just more quantified where, okay, we'll just detect the ones with the highest quality wood and just the densest and the best shape and have that tailored to your hitting profile and then you could be matched with a bat. I think it was more about sort of finding the existing bats that were already optimized to you than it was

doing a custom bat, but maybe a bit of that too. So this is just the next step really. It sounds simple when you hear it, which is probably why a lot of players seem to be getting on board with this or are at least intrigued. It's just, it's not that tough a sell. It's just, even though the physics might be kind of complicated,

you can kind of explain it in a very simple, explain it to me like I'm five sort of elevator pitch. And I think it's kind of convincing. I think that that's right. I too am struck by sort of the variety of hitter who is keen to give this a go. Some of that is like, I think all age groups are susceptible to marketing. And there's like a marketing component to this, right? But yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, you got guys who are fussy about their bats. You got guys who are keen to try anything to make stuff easier for them at the plate. And, you know, I think because

the, the physics of it is, you know, physics people, not everyone like is going to understand exactly what's going on there. I'm not saying that. I have done deep analysis here. But I think that it could lend itself to the impression that, yeah, this will work for everyone. I don't know if that's true. So, I don't know. The bats, they're girthy. It's just like body composition or recomposition. But for bats, it's not that you're necessarily losing weight or changing height or something. It's just kind of the the makeup is changing a little bit

And I think it's probably overdue. I started out by saying oh, this is something new that we haven't talked about But of course, it's sort of like the Simpsons did it if I could be self-aggrandizing when it comes to Effectively wild talked about it at some point which often is because someone else asked us about it, not because we brought it up. So I was looking through the listener emails database because I knew that we had had a few that touched on something like this. And so episode 1902, which was an ancient effectively wild history, we got a question that was kind of along these lines. And Mike asked about bigger diameters

for bats that he used when he was growing up and would this make sense? And then going back a bit further, episode 1053, Andrew wrote in to say, clever use of finances is something we prize in a front office with more avenues of spending being restricted. There are fewer ways to differentiate teams while lots of exciting changes are happening in nutrition, biomechanics, injury prevention, mental skills, and analytics applications. I haven't heard about any innovations in the equipment itself being done by individual teams.

What gains do you believe could be made in an engineering lab for a team if the Dodgers for example had a bat fabrication lab that could produce the perfect bat for each individual player who could hit the ball 1.5% farther while still passing the scrutineering of the league. How long would they be allowed to use it before the league stepped in to level the playing field or other rich teams caught up? Well here it's a rich team. The Yankees leading the way seemingly. If a win really is worth 8 million, is there a win to be found in equipment development

for less? I think we had other questions along these lines. It's just like, is there an equipment innovation that we're all sleeping on? And so people were thinking of these things. And I don't know why this didn't happen before other than just the same old inertia and resistance to new ideas.

And also just having to actually construct the thing and having people know what they're doing there. But I wrote about this at the Ringer and the headline was just let MLB hitters have their bulbous bats. Not that anyone has taken them away, but I think they need it. They need the helping hand.

They need the bigger barrel because- Yeah, let them do it. Yeah, they've've been behind the pitchers always get the goodies. The pitchers always have the shiny new toys and Christian Yelich another brewer who did not at all cry foul about the Yankees using these bats And if it is a technological advancement on the hitting side It would be cool because we've kind of been playing catch up with the pitching side. And that's always been the case. Historically, it's always pitchers do something, hitters react or adjust or try to, but every year it's some new nasty pitch or existing nasty pitch with a trendy new name. It's the sweeper, it's the death ball, it's the kick change. How many times have we talked about how pitching is nasty now

and they throw from the same distance that they threw from in 1893 and they throw so much harder now and they're so much taller that they release the pitches closer to the plate and the movements and the technological advances, the pitch tracking came before batted ball or bat tracking and the high-speed cameras

to help the pitchers refine their grips and then when to pull pitchers and parades of relievers, and which pitches to throw and where to throw them. And batters just have not had the same sort of breakthroughs. And they've got their weighted bats, which came after weighted balls, and biomechanics equipment, which pitchers have too. And then maybe the Traject Arc machines

and other improved pitching machines, maybe that helps, but clearly it hasn't reversed the pitcher batter imbalance. And so coming off a season when the league batted 243 with a 312 on base percentage, which is like pre American League DH numbers, then yeah, why not give this to them? And and I kind of I likened it to defensive positioning. We know that the league-wide batting average on balls

and play fell to a more than 30-year low last year, and that's even after MLB banned the infield shift. And so we saw that for the past couple decades, that defenders were gaining an edge by shifting their positioning in the field. So this is the equivalent for hitters. It's just shifting the positioning of the bat barrel in addition to shifting the positioning in the box. Because of course, my move back in the box revolution that I launched last week, if you could pair that with the bulbous bats,

then you'd really be in business. Yeah, be cooking with gas there. I agree. I think that, you know, we have for so long seen innovation concentrated on the pitching side, which isn't to say that there aren't, you know, hitting coaches who are trying to work this stuff out or that, you know, many of the same pitching facilities that we talk about don't have a sort of hitter side to their work, they do. But I think that there's a gap and we've talked about a lot of ways that we might close it. And if all it takes is a newfound appreciation of girth, then that seems like an easy fix to a thorny problem.

And then, you know, the runs will come. I don't know. Maybe, yeah, we'll see. I am curious to see when we get more information on this, if we can start to quantify things because we have this bat tracking data, which is to some extent public. If we do have some before and after guys,

which I guess we will, we already do, then we can compare and we can say how did this change their bat speed? It seems like this could perhaps enhance bat speed or does it change anything about their approach at the plate or does it just are they doing the same thing but getting better results and in what way does that pay dividends? Is it exit speed? Is it squaring up the pitch? Is it making more contact? Is it all of the above? Is it none of the above? Will this just prove to be a fad and it'll burn out quickly? Who knows?

What would you guess? Like, let's say less than 1% of hitters are using these particular types of bulbous bats right now. But suddenly everyone's heard of them who hadn't before and everyone's perking up going, ooh, what? Bigger bats? By the end of this season, and we won't be able to answer this probably because clearly we can't even tell when people are using them or not from afar, but if we could, if we had

perfect knowledge of who was using this sort of bat, what do you think the percentage will be by the end of this season? Like, will this sweep the league by storm and it'll just very quickly become the dominant model? The way that we've seen, say, some materials, replace old materials, and the bats are stronger now and they shatter less. And there's also a new official supplier

of the bats in MLB these days. It's not the Louisville slugger anymore. It's Marucci, right? So lots of bat stuff is in flux. Do you think this will like take the lead by storm or do you think it'll be still a small minority and subset and will still, it'll raise our eyebrows when we notice that one of them looks weird. Well let me answer your question with one of my own. What percentage of major league hitters would you say are using Axe bats? I don't know. Right. It's Marucci and Victus by the way both the new official bats I guess. But yeah that's the thing I don't know. It seems like we've heard less about Axe bats than we did when they were the new hotness and we were all talking about them. Because with the axe bats, it was like, this can help you not have hemate bone issues. And also maybe it can help your swing path or your bat speed or something. But it was also largely about just not breaking that annoying little bone that no one knows exists until you break it because you're a hitter.

Do you... Okay, so here's an additional point on that. Part of what I think kind of derailed adoption there is, do you recall that one of the more prominent Axe Bat adopters was Chris Bryant? Oh, I don't. I remember Mookie, but I don't really remember Chris Bryant just in general these days. I wonder if, you know, the face of these things

ends up dictating their eventual path. Yeah. At least to some degree, because again, I do think that some of this is like, is marketing. And that's not to say that it can't be effective or good. Like, you know, I like some of the pants I've bought on Instagram, but I do. The answer to your question is that like a week from now will be the high point of adoption for this bad.

And then it'll taper, right? Because guys will, they'll get their bats they'll go I love it and then some of them will go nah it's not for me it doesn't feel right in my hands I feel like it's changing my swing in a way that I don't like. They won't hit a homer the first time up their team won't have nine. And so you will have a tapering off of that high point does that mean that every guy who uses it will dislike it?

No, I'm sure some of them will try them and like them fine. I'm sure some guys again will try them and be like, it makes it feel like my mechanics are weird. Like I don't want to use this. Some guys will be like, it looks funny. Other guys will be like, I don't want my name in the girth jokes quite so much. So like, I'm going to let that go. You know, I think that like a week from now is when we'll probably see the peak of adoption

and then it'll adjust as guys try it out. Interesting. Yeah, you might well be right. That's my guess. But I don't know. Again, it's like I said, like, you know, it's not like I dislike everything I bought off Instagram. I want there to be an Instagram store where it's like, where's the good version of the thing you're advertising? I'm okay with it being 20% more expensive if it's actually good.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Where's that? Fashion version that will self-destruct and ruin the environment. And I try very hard not to do that and to just buy less generally. I don't know that I'm succeeding. I've been stressed lately, but yeah, anyway, that's we've, we've wandered a field here now, but um, I wonder how many guys will say like, I am doing it here. Weird bat. You know what I mean?

Yeah. They might not necessarily announce that they have started using weird bat. Right. This bat behold, this bat. But I wonder if we could look back at this and just think, Oh, they didn't even suspect this was the beginning of a sweeping evolutionary change. It's like when there's some mutation and suddenly there's this adaptive trait and the old species gets phased out in favor of the new that can survive in this environment. Or maybe you're completely right and it will just kind of peter out and we'll all forget about that week when we were obsessed with the bulbous bats.

I think that there will be some guys who use them and like them. I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility at all. Like I, and I don't want to, I don't want to insult Lenny, you know, I'm not trying to overstate the case or anything. I think that it is good to, especially when the sort of base model of these things has been pretty static, to try something and see if you can enjoy some benefit from it. And I'm sure some guys will. I also think that at this stage in the season, you're maybe a little more inclined toward experimentation because you're like just getting going and you're like, oh, no one's gonna read too much into a cold start

unless I'm Rafael Devers. So he has to be hurt, right? He has to still be, it's funny. Are we gonna talk about Devers? Should I save my Devers thoughts? I'll talk about, yeah, one last thing I'll say about the bats. Okay, I'll save my Devers thoughts. Just that hitters, they haven't even really been able to cheat that effectively, by which

I mean in terms of equipment, that is, maybe sign stealing, I tend to think the effects of that are overstated too, but equipment wise, the pitchers had sticky stuff and maybe the effects of that were a bit overstated too, or maybe just the adoption of the hardcore spider tack sort of stuff was overstated. But there were real effects there. We saw that manifest in the spin rate and everything. And then after the crackdown happened, that changed. But the most famous ways that hitters can cheat, or at least can even attempt to get

an advantage on the field, they don't even seem to work that well. Like bat corking, very overrated it seems like. Maybe it doesn't actually help except perhaps placebo, but it makes the bat less massive, less weighty. So it might help in the sense that you could get more bat control or swing it a little faster, but then there's less oomph behind it and it seems like it's kind of a wash. And then the donuts that hitters use in the on deck circle to make their bats feel lighter at the plate. Evidently, that doesn't do anything as far as people have been able to determine.

If anything, it just fatigues you much like static stretching before an exercise, which feels like it might help you, but actually probably doesn't. But I think that I'm just glad that hitters have something here. They have a shiny new toy, and we'll see whether the toy breaks or whether it actually pays dividends that we can detect.

Because to this point, basically all that hitters have had is that they're a little less breakable than the pitchers have been. And that's a pretty big advantage, but cultivating mass, the bulking phase on the barrels, that could help, but we will see. So I think this is fun and fascinating and we can move on and monitor the bulbous bats. I wanted to stick around because I feel like I've successfully talked myself out of my grumpiness. And now I want to just be able to enjoy the jokes for a little bit longer.

So I need I need some hitters to be committed to it for at least long enough for me to get get some more jokes off, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The downsides, aside from the fact that it might seem strange, Carlos Correa, who is certainly not someone who's afraid of new concepts, he's a stat head, he is not using one.

I thought you were gonna say, not someone who's afraid of cheating. Well. I was gonna be like, bet, my God. Why not both? But, sorry. He's not using the bats, cause he said cutters, sweepers, sliders, any pitch running away

that you hit further down the bat, those are tougher to hit hard because it seems like the downside should be small because if you're hitting the ball off the end of the bat, it's probably a miss hit anyway. So if you hit it even worse than big whoop, but he noted, okay, if there's a pitch that's not running into you, but is tailing away from you, then maybe. So it just depends on the player's profile and their swing pattern. And I think even the advocates for this bat would not suggest that it's better for everyone just across the board. That's how we end up with the old model of bats, which is just the standard bat with some accommodations for for strength and size. So it's more finely tailored than that. So it's a fun story.

We will continue to talk about it as events warrant. Yeah, so we talked about Devers because he's he's not using the bulbous bats and maybe he will be motivated to because yeah things have not gone great for him. What is it? Most strikeouts through X games, however many games he's played, it's been rough. It's been rough. I'm of two minds about it because on the one hand, it's an, it's an undeniable rough streak. And you know, he was dealing with the injury stuff and coming back from that his, you know, position was unsettled throughout much of

the spring. He didn't really start hitting. So that could either let you let him off the hook apart from any other acknowledgement that like the reason we're paying attention to this particular cold spell is because it is happening at the very beginning and doesn't have the cushion of having hit before, right? Like, you know, is happening at the very beginning and doesn't have the cushion of having hit before, right? Like, you know... And there's a spotlight on him because of all the spring training drama.

Exactly. Now he's a DH. And so I think that, you know, no hitter is going to want to go over 16 or whatever. But this is hardly without precedent within the course of a season. It's interesting and noteworthy because of the positional drama, because again, it's at the beginning of the year. And so it's not like he has, you know, two months of having hit 300 to cushion a little slump. This is just what his batting line is right now. And it's also notable because we have to wonder like, is there something going on from a health or injury perspective that we're not aware of that could explain all of this, but also like, maybe he's just out of sorts because the spring was unsettled and he is dealing with a little bit of, you know, still being, it was a shoulder, right?

That he was nicked. He had the shoulder thing. So like, I'm not necessarily concerned about what this will mean for his entire season. I am curious what percentage of his current struggle can be attributed to the weird sort of slow ramp up this spring versus something that is either an injury that has persisted or a new injury. I think that, you know, that is worthwhile. He probably needs a blow by which I mean a breather which wouldn't again kind of like his performance with different context to the start of the episode wouldn't be funny. But now hilarious Ben. Everyone's just look they're teeing us up. They're asking for it. I mean a rain out is banging a game. I mean we don't even have to try really.

It's just it's too easy, frankly. We don't even have to be creative enough. But yeah, with Devers even putting aside the shoulder stuff, I would think that mood wise, he's probably not thrilled by the way things went down. I know that ultimately he got on board and it's all about the team and he did the thing that they wanted him to do and that is probably best for the team. But I still wouldn't expect him to be thrilled about it. Yeah, he's probably not stoked.

Yeah, like he's been with this organization a long time. He was kind of a cornerstone of the franchise. They seem to have made him some sort of assurance at some point. And he's 28 years old. So I think at that age, it's tough to get into that mindset of, yeah, I'm just a DH forever, especially because he seems to pride himself on his defense. Perhaps he overrates his defensive performance, but nonetheless. And I was just thinking, like, if you like playing baseball, which I think most baseball

players do, that's stripping away a big part of playing baseball. Not that you can't have fun as a DH and not that being a DH can't be very valuable, but you're taken away. You have to have the fun of the thing. I mean, maybe depending on your preferences, but like being out there on the field, you just feel much more connected to the game. You're running around out there. It's just, it's different. I like going to the park and just fielding grounders

and if you told me that I could never do that again, that would stink and it's not even my job. So I think that would be tough at that age and with his relationship to this organization to adjust to that with a new guy coming in, even though it's Alex Bregman, an older, more accomplished guy nonetheless. And I think just resigning yourself to that would be tough.

And then even if you were on board for it, it's an adjustment and he hasn't really DH'd that much in his career. He's 25 total games and 105 total plate appearances there. It's just not a lot. And we know that it takes time to adjust and that full-time DHs are maybe less susceptible to the DH penalty than part-time DHs are, but that's because they figure out how to flip that switch

and get themselves in that DH mindset and do the preparation and all of that. And I wouldn't expect him to have that routine down by this point either. So even if there weren't some physical questions, it wouldn't shock me that some of these things might be weighing on his mind and dragging down his performance. Not that I would expect 0 for 16 and 12 strikeouts. It's more that than the 0 for 16.

That's really noteworthy. Yeah, the strikeout piece of it is noteworthy. And you know, your point about the full- time DH thing is well taken because part of what I think we've attributed to, attributed full, like genuine full time dedicated DH is doing better is in part that there is a routine and that they are able to get themselves into a mindset where they're able to do it. And unlike the DH spot where you are cycling guys through, you aren't putting a guy who is coming back from injury or needs a day off or at least a half day off in that spot. And if he's compromised, then there's that. I's like living in a terrible little nightmare. And it has to be incredibly frustrating.

And if I were him, I'd be like, well, this is why maybe he didn't want to mess with the guy who signed for a while for the guy who might not be here. That part of that part of their decision making is interesting to me because the way that that Bregman's deal is structured, like how long is he going to be a red silk? You know, he could opt to not be one fairly soon. So yeah, it's just an interesting thing to upset the apple cart with that particular roster dynamic in mind. Having said that, like he is much better at third. So I get it, but also.

I've also seen some people joke that he's struggling because he can't hit against Garrett Cole this season, which just another obstacle for him to overcome. We talked last time about the MLB TV outage on opening day. I assume you got the email, I got the email, producer Shane forwarded me the email he got about an offer that MLB is making to make us whole, to make recompense.

Unfortunately, MLB TV experienced a technical issue yesterday that resulted in a temporary inability to access our live game streams while our technical team addressed this issue immediately. Not immediately, but you know, pretty quickly. They got to work addressing it immediately. Yes, I'm sure they were working on it. And restored access as soon as possible.

There we go. We understand how disappointing this was to fans who were eagerly awaiting the start of the season. For that we apologize. MLB fans deserve the best streaming experience possible and we will continue to strive to provide that to thank you for your support of the National Pastime. MLB would like to offer you $10 off any purchase of $25 or more at MLBshop.com. How does that make you feel?

You feel like, yeah, this was where they've made up for that. I just... Like, it's good to have acknowledged that there was a problem. I think that that decision was the right one. But I just, you know, the thing about it is that you can't say the way you're trying to make an inconvenience right is by giving you a discount on you getting more money. You know, that's just not, that's not a real thing, but it would be better to just send an email being like, Hey, we, uh, we were also affected by this AWS outage. We're really sorry that it affected your opening day experience. We hope that, you know, you were able to catch your favorite team and that you continue to do so as the season goes on like better to offer a simple

technical explanation with no discount then offer a discount as a I mean what they the way to do it if you're gonna go that route is to say That you get $10 off on your renewal next year Yeah Or just give me a credit for just give a credit just like a day the Equivalent of a day of MLB TV or something. I mean, it's not that huge a gesture, but that would be appropriate Or yeah, if you want to put something I'm not gonna buy anything at MLB shop comm right now I mean also the like purchase minimum

Right like if you want to give me store credit, I guess. Okay. But don't then attach that to admit I don't know how many things they have in the store that you could get for less than 25 bucks. Yeah. But I'm sure something so so let me do that if I want to. But yeah, just give me a small refund or something. But not just here's some extra incentive to spend even more money than you would have spent, but also, I guess, technically less if you were planning to already spend some, which I wasn't. So for me, this doesn't do anything. I think that the the guardians approach to things where you actually got something tangible for free and it wasn't even their mess up, you know, Like that's actually trying to offer a real make-good. This is trying to get you to support fanatics. I don't know how I feel about that, you know? I'm sort of disappointed, by the way, not to go back to the bulbous bats, but bat adjacent

that Judge didn't hit for on that day because he had a couple cracks at it. This was one of the better chances to do something like that because he had what, two plate appearances, I think, where he was aiming for number four and kinda came close. I think one of them was against a position player pitcher, which if he had done it that way, then it's a little tainted that

way too. Yeah, there's a discount that you have to apply to that. Yeah. But yeah, he hit a double off the wall too. So he kind of came close to doing it. So that would have been fun for him to do that amid the home run barrage. And he also, he had some quotes. Aaron Judge, scintillating player, not the most scintillating quote, which is probably partly or largely by design.

But I do wish once in a while he might just let that Jeterian facade. It's never going to happen. I know it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen, man. You got to let it go. Jeter hasn't even done it post-career. He can't come up with anything interesting to say most of the time.

But I looked at this story, Aaron Judge hits Grand Slam in Multihomer Game, and there's an embedded video of him doing the post-game sideline interview, and it just says, Aaron Judge, colon, quote, we went out there and executed, end quote. Oh, Aaron. That's your quote about, I didn't even click, Aaron Judge colon quote we went out there and executed and That's your quote about

Click because if that's your pull quote if that's the teaser that's supposed to make me click we went out there and there is Yeah, this is a nine homer game where you hit Including a grand slam and you're using bulbous bats and the best you can come up with is we went out there and executed That's funny. There's an executed creep. We constantly, Craig Katsutera talks about this too We just players are constantly talking about executing usually pitches, but not always but if you hit nine home runs Right. You gotta give me a little more than that I mean he acknowledged that seeing the bleacher creatures jumping up and down You have to step out and catch your breath there for a second before you step in the box Get your heart rate going a little bit. It was definitely fun

So some pandering to the bleacher creatures in there and then he had and this is just a classic of the genre When the player is told about the previous players who accomplished the thing that they did and then they have to Sometimes they will say it's humbling just to be mentioned in that group and then I get angry because I say no It's not humbling. It's the opposite of humbling It should make you have a bigger head because being humbled Rafael Devers is being humbled right now You're Aaron judge your hit homers left right. That is the opposite of humbling, but it's not that he didn't opt for that one. It was, Judge is the fourth Yankee

to have at least three games of three or more homers, joining Lou Gehrig four times, Joe DiMaggio and Alex Rodriguez. So what does Aaron Judge say in response to that? Quote, it's a special group. Anytime you get mentioned with those guys, what they've done in the game and the careers they've had, it's pretty special. Our story is not done yet. I'll keep adding to those lists. It really is. Our story is not done yet. Oh, good gravy. It's like if you put in some sort of like LLM prompts,

like what cliche would a player use in this situation? That's what it would spit out. Just the most uninspired pablum. It's a special group. Anytime you get mentioned along those guys, it's pretty special. I mean, look, I'm sure he's been given that prompt a zillion times in his career

because he has done a lot of special things. And ultimately, I guess, what are you really supposed to say? Like, cool. What are you supposed to say? Like, I don't, that's cool. You know, I don't know what I would say exactly. Right. Prompted with this, especially if I was asked this

many times, I mean, if someone said, you know, the company that we keep in the podcast realm, you know, just the number of baseball podcasts out there with 2,000 plus episodes, you know, they're not a lot out there If you started listing names and and someone said, how does it feel to have effectively wild listed in this group of prolific podcasts? What would I say would I say it's a special group of podcasts anytime you get mentioned with those podcasts what they've done In the podcast space the careers they've had. It's pretty special. Our story at Effectively Wild, it's not done yet.

Keep adding to those lists three times a week. Keep cranking them out. I don't know that I would come up with something super interesting to say. Also, it's like Yankees he's being asked about, so I'm sure he's been asked to like give some generic quote about Lou Gehrig a zillion times or Joe DiMaggio or whatever. So, and you know, you can't say anything that will get people riled up because you didn't

pay obeisance to the Yankees legends. So you just say something generic and you get out of there and no one gives you guff about it except for me right now in this podcast. But it's just like the most baseball bot cliche 3000 kind of Bull Durham-ish answers. And I just, he's like a literally larger than life character, incredible baseball player. Just give me some small semblance of that. When you open your mouth, it might be in there, but he's just, he's not letting it out ever and probably never will.

And he's probably right not to, but I just wish he, he would go against his better judgment one time. It's just safer for him to not say anything of substance at all in moments like that. And I don't say it like if he were to be honest, he'd, he'd necessarily, you know, step in it or anything like that. But I don't think he doesn't strike me as a guy who's like itching to talk to the media and presented with great players to comp himself to. I think he's just content to let that pitch, you know, sale by. It's just easier that way. So yeah, but it is what

a nothing. What a lot of words to say. Really nothing at all. No, I wonder what do you expect if you're a Yankees reporter and you've, you've put that microphone in Aaron Judge's face so many times and teed him up for that one? Are you thinking this time is it like a Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football? This time he's going to give me a good copy. This is going to be, this is going to be a barn burner. He's going to give me right now. And I don't, you know, I don't fault them for asking. You gotta ask.

You gotta ask the question. Of course you do. But I'm sure everyone's going into that interaction pretty clear-eyed about what they're gonna get, is my point. We're all going through the motions. I have to ask you this question. You have to kind of answer it in a completely bland and inoffensive and forgettable way. And then you'll go about your business and I'll go about mine. Right. I have to remind you that the shows could be shorter.

You have to keep them very long anyway. I'm kidding. You just are sick, you know? You've got a frog in your throat. You got to get it out of there. Did you hear Susan Waldman, who I like a lot. I think you like a lot, but pretty, pretty brutally given it to your Seattle Mariners and Formerly your Dave Sims who you noted the other day you miss Dave I do miss the voice of the Mariners now one of the voices of the Yankees stepping behind John Sterling's Mike with Susan and

Dave Sims was watching those offensive fireworks and Susan was making some jokes at the expense of your Seattle Mariners. Look at this by Jazz deep to right center field. That's out of here. Another pay now for the Yankees. They're killing Milwaukee. It's 13-3. You're not going to know what to do with this. Your old team didn't score 13 runs in a while. Don't rub it in. Be nice.

Welcome to the New York Yankees, Dave Sims. How do you feel about that? I'm going to put the microphone in front of your face, Meg Rowley. How would you care to react to Susan Waldman's comments to Dave Sims about the Seattle Mariners and their offensive ineptitude. I think that what happens in the Yankees booth is fundamentally none of my business. Dave

is going to have to get used to any number of things. Middling pitching, an effective offense, you know, it's going to come and go. She's not wrong. I mean, she probably is wrong. She's not wrong. Was I being a little bit rude about their pitching? Yeah, I was I was being a little bit rude But I'll remind everyone middling last year to middle in last year I'm sure the Mariners haven't had a a full regular season month where they have failed to score 13 runs So I would not bet on that. I would Look if ever there were a team that we going to make you go, maybe I should look

it up, you know? I don't know. I can't let that just stand and copy. I got to fact check that one. It would be Seattle. Look, things feel different when you're making in front of your own guys versus when you're hearing someone else do it. I don't like it.

I'll allow it. Susan's a pro. She's not wrong. Feels unnecessary. But she's not wrong. Yeah. It's a little cruel. It's a little twist in the knife. It's a little Yankee exceptionalism, but that's what one expects from a voice of the Yankees. Right. I mean, it's like, I'll say again for the thousandth time, if some of you guys took that John up, I quote, less seriously, God will let the Jets win, but whose fault is it? Also wanted to read an email we got from listener Tessa, who responded to our brief aside about

the vibes being off at the Blue Jays game in Toronto. And Tessa wrote back to say, here to confirm that the vibes at the Blue Jays games have been weird. I have only gone to the home opener, so cannot report on beyond that. And also we probably can't fully separate the weird vibes from the general state of the team's performance.

Sure. There was a weird baseball is an escape from daily life. And so you need to be respectful message that played before the anthems. Then during the American anthem, there were some scattered boos. However, much fewer than I was expecting or have heard at other events recently, I saw on Reddit that security was telling people who were booing to stop, which is just purely bad vibes.

Also, apparently someone was kicked out for wearing a Canada is not for sale hat which they have since apologized for not wearing the hat I assume but for kicking them out but if that happened imagine what the instructions to security were ahead of the season they had a similar message ahead of the four nations games and there was way more booing during the anthem yeah the PWHL games I've been to have had a bit of booing during the American anthem, but no announcement to try and curb it in advance. However, the general vibes at a PWHL game are quite different from an MLB game, but

we do love to boo problematic players in the PWHL. I'm very interested to see how it goes the rest of the season, especially if relations between the two countries continue to degrade, especially since many of the players on the Jays are American and likely of a more conservative persuasion. How much does Roger's ownership care about upsetting current or future players by not trying to limit political dissent in the stadium? Will this further limit the Jays' ability to sign free agents even more than the possibility of drinking milk out of a bag. So thanks for the

in-person on the ground report, Tessa. I just like, it just seems like a, a fool's errand, you know, um, to try to police a ballpark that size. So you got to let people express themselves. People up there have a good reason to be mad. And I think letting them apart from anything else, letting them kind of blow off steam on the day when like most people are watching and not like they have to get it out of their system and should move on. I don't mean to suggest it that way,

but it also just seems like strategically not the most optimal. I will say I saw the hat that the guy was wearing and I support your message, but you can't do red hat white. No one reads it. You can't do it. People aren't going to think that you're doing what you think you're doing. So that's just my, that's just my little piece of advice. Like I get it, but it's not, no one reads the hat. They just see it and they're like, Oh, I know what that guy's about. And you're not about that. You've made clear by the hat that you do have.

So just like, that's my, that's my two cents on that. Couple other little oddities. So we were talking about the bat licking and I said there might be something even stranger. Did you see Wilson Contreras chewing on his bat tape? Just really just, yeah. Took it off the bat where I guess it was coming apart and so maybe because it was unwinding itself, he wanted to remove it from the bat handle,

which I understand that part, but what I don't understand is why he then put it in his mouth and not just in the corner of his mouth. I mean, not that that would be a really normal and expected thing to do, but he just, he, he wadded it up and just put it in there like it was a piece of gum. Yeah. Like it was gum. What, what's happening here? No. So Ben, do you have any hoodies?

You have hoodies? Many. Do they have the little, they have the little drawstrings on them? Oh yeah. You're asking if I've chewed on a little? Yeah. It's like that but worse. It's like that but it's like...

Yeah. Those things they get all salty. Crunchy. Yeah. And then you're like, what did I just do? I got to wash this. I got to wash it and think about whether I've done this in public and people have seen me doing it.

I think about it at 3 a.m. You know, like you got to, you know how you live your life. But this isn't even quite like that because a hoodie, you know, you can, you can wash it. Uh, you're not actually pulling on those strings very often. They are, they are unperturbed. You know, they have, they are largely unsoiled. A bat, you're, you're spraying stuff on the bat on the bat, you might have pine tar on the bat, you're rubbing

the bat, you know, you got your hands on the bat, you have all kinds of stuff on your hands, you know, you could have, even with the gloves, you know, even with your batting gloves, you could have all kinds of stuff on there. You're not washing those, they're made out of gloves, you could have all kinds of stuff on there. You're not washing those. They're made out of leather. You're not washing them. It's disgusting. It's like he took it off the bat and immediately forgot that it was bat tape and thought, oh,

look, Laffy Taffy. Right. And just put it in his mouth. And it would be one thing if he had done that and then been like, bleh. But he didn't spit it out. No, he was like, yeah, this was the taste I was expecting and planned for. Right. Like, I don't get it. Is this a thing that catchers or hitters do? I can't recall seeing this exact behavior.

I don't know. Baseball players are, there are many splendid people and I am not shocked by almost anything I see on a baseball field, but this is up there. So I just, I don't know what to make of this. At first I thought, okay, he's just going to put it in his pocket or something for safe keeping like he doesn't want to litter. And even I guess like, I don't know, you put it in your teeth for a second. Maybe I wouldn't, but, but okay.

But no, like, did he consume this? Did he spit it out when he got back to the bench? Did he swallow this? Did he digest this? Or is it like gonna reappear 24 hours later? Yeah, I don't know how digestible bat tape is. Is this biodegradable? Is this? I think you would poop it right out. Yeah. I mean, it's not good. You know, you shouldn't, it's like when people chew on pens too. It can't be good for your teeth. It can't be good for your teeth to be chewing on that.

Hope we get a follow up from some intrepid reporter to ask what was happening there and what befell that bad tape. This season has already given us really a couple of great gifts. I mean, all timers just with that and with Jack Lider getting hit in the beans. And not even just getting hit in the beans. It wasn't even like, it didn't seem to faze him like it. You know, it was just a toss back to him. It wasn't full speed. He seemed surprised but not pained by this. But the best part of the reaction was Garrett Crochet just standing on the top step for the Red Sox,

just completely cracking up, hand over his mouth, almost slapping his knee about lighter, getting hit in the beans here, or hopefully in the cup, which is probably what happened and why it didn't phase him. But just, you know, already, the season is so young, we got bulbous hats, we've got- Sorry, I'm just watching, I'm just seeing them react to it. And it's really, you know, that's nice also. It's just dudes being guys, baseball players,

just the ultimate dudes. I can't believe that you didn't note this initially. I think that the person standing with crochet in the dugout also laughing, that's none other than Richard Fitz. I'm pretty sure that that is Dick Fitz right there. That's old Dicky Fitz watching someone in a, you could say they were in a two ball count. Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you?

Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you?

Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you?

Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? Could you? citing Contreras speaking to the broadcast team. That was a bad taste, really bad. I don't try to put pine tar or spray on my bat, but it was disgusting. It was a bad taste. But then why was there a follow-up to say, but what did you think it was gonna taste like? I don't know.

I don't think that there, I don't think that there was- That just raises more questions in my mind. Yeah, and then MLB.com's John Denton asked Contreras I don't know. I don't think that there, I don't think that there was. That just raises more questions in my mind. Yeah, and then MLB.com's John Denton asked Contreras if he would make the tape eating a habit, here I'm quoting from Defector, credit to Denton for asking Contreras whether he would have made tape eating a habit

had he homered instead of striking out and credit to Contreras for answering honestly. If I hit a homer on that, I'm doing it every time, he said. And he probably would. for answering honestly. If I hit a homer on that, I'm doing it every time," he said. And he probably would. Gross. Gross. A weird and wonderful pastime we have devoted large parts of our lives to.

Can't believe that the other laugher was Richard Fitz. Do you think that his parents have regrets naming him Richard? It's probably a family name. Richard is a fine name to be clear. A perfectly real adult name, you know? Not a- Yeah, it's hard for me to think they have regrets because well, maybe it's much like the eating the bat tape. Do you have regrets?

Yes, but then why did you do it? Similarly, if you would be bothered by people applying the obvious nickname for Richard to your name when your last name is Fitz, then you might question why you did that in the first place. By the way, looking at the John Denton article, Contreras does confirm that it was his first and hopefully last time eating bat tape, and he did it because he was worried about a pitch clock violation because he had already used a timeout. With this clock, you have to do things that are out of your control and I had to do that

instead of striking out. Well, I struck out anyway, but I'd rather strike out swinging than by the clock. I don't think chewing the tape was a bad thing to do, but I was just running out of time. I had no time. There's an unexplained innocence in the world that I want to access but struggle to every day. I will say, and then I'm mindful of the fact that we've been recording for an hour and a half and you have a sore throat, but we made a lot of hay last year about the various Jacksons, all of the Jacksons. We are about to be crushed by chases, Ben. There are so many chase prospects.

There are various spellings. There are a couple of different ways that it is being spelled, but chase, chase as far as the eye can see, you know? Chase after chase after chase after chase. Some of them, some of them pitchers, some of them batters. Unfortunate. I want people to prepare themselves for the eventual attempted musical composition on my part of making Chase DeLotter's Last Name part of the De Lovely song. But anyway, what is going on with Chases? Why are there so many? It's just so many.

It's a shocking number. We have Chased the Lottery, we have Chased Burns, we have Chased Petada, we have Chase Burns, we have Chase Petty, we have Chase McDermott, we are up to our necks in Chases. So Chase Mydroth, Chase Mydroth, also in Chase, you know? And then there are the Chases who are already in the majors. I guess Chase McDermott debuted. So Chase McDermott, Chase Silceth, something like how many chases do you know? Do you know anyone named Chase like a human being in the

world? I don't think I know one chase. I think I do know one chase. Yeah. No, it says certain chase. Dole under certain Did I already say him? Yes, I think so. Are overrepresented in baseball because of the demographics of baseball relative to the general population. And also I think a lot of it is that we are beyond most of the baseball player age group now. And so the naming trends of people who are just entering the league are unfamiliar

to us. And so if you are that age, nothing sounds unusual about that. But to us, maybe people in our cohort did not have that name quite as often. And so it makes us wonder what is happening. But it is not the children who are wrong, perhaps. Maybe it is just us, but also, yeah, you can see these waves cresting. And we've done stat blasts about this. We've talked about this before with other names and tailors and Tylers and just all the rest. Like we're just, we're followers is what it is.

Like we, and you know, I guess the positive interpretation would be that we're suggestible in a good way like we hear something and we think, oh, that sounds nice. I will, you know, pay that this sincerest form of flattery by imitating that and naming my kids that name. But the less positive interpretation would be that we're all just a bunch of copycats and we are not original thinkers. And so we are so suggestible that we hear something and then immediately everyone says,

yes, of course, that is the name that we will name everyone in this generation. But nothing new. Obviously these things, they come in waves and names fall out of fashion and they go back into fashion and they're in vogue and they're out of vogue. And who can predict how these things happen? Sometimes there's a famous person who has that name. Sometimes it's just seemingly random and it catches on. I saw a breakdown of boys names by their prevalence based on how the state went in the last election. They're just a bunch of SEC baseball player ass names

and this Cohen with a K as a first name. It's like a hate crime. Baylor, Stetson, Kyson also with a K, Tripp, Sutton, Briggs, two Gs. Cohen with a C, Gunner, and we're seeing some Gunners in baseball now. Baker, I already made a joke about this on Blue Sky about how these are like your 2043 preseason Golden Spikes award favorites, but it's just like, we're gonna get some Stetsons, you know?

We got Stetsons on the horizon. They're coming for the game. I don't mind a Stetson. I kinda like a Stetson. Sure, the horizon there. Yeah, it's coming for the game Stetson. I kind of like a step sure fine Yeah, it's evocative. Yeah, it's not a it's not a Tragedy as they call it the subreddit that we discussed where it's a tragedy but spelled Trag edi I ch and There's half a million Members of that subreddit just the phenomenon we talked about where you change

one letter in a spelling, but you don't actually change the sound of the name. As long as it's spelled like the hat, I have no quarrel with Stetson. It does appear to be spelled like the hat. I wanna be clear too, I have a hilarious 80s baby girl name as a name. So I don't want to, I know, like Megan Ashley, I mean, that's not a name. It is, it's mine, but it's, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. We can end there, I guess. And let's all just, we'll be mindful of our surroundings and we'll try to look at the world with fresh eyes and think, what are we not seeing that we won't notice until the broadcaster says that this thing is happening on a day when nine home runs are hit? Someone pooping their pants. Maybe, but it makes me kind of heartened about the wonders of the world that could be lurking here. And we just might not know unless events happen to line up in just such a specific way that our attention was drawn to them. It's sad in a sense that these things might be inaccessible to us unless we are directed to them so explicitly. But it's also sort of a hopeful thing. I think it makes me think there are things just under the surface or not even under the surface,

just sitting on the surface that somehow have escaped our notice and what wonders are there for us to discover. So that's the lesson that I'm trying to take from the Boldness Bats. I'm seeing pictures of Sutter Health Park, pictures of it as they prepare for opening day, the home opener of the athletics.

And Ben, I'm sorry to not react to what you just said, but I have been distracted by this. I have allowed myself to pretend that this is not going to be ridiculous. I've talked up the A's lineup this off season said that they're like a good team. A shocking percentage of my full predictions were related to the A's, but this is ridiculous, Ben. This is, What specifically is, Oh, it's just, you know, here's the thing. It's a minor league baseball park, you know, and you look at it and you're like, that's a minor league park. That's where, that's where, um, that's where they play before they're fully cooked.

You know, this is a park for seasoning for, for going from being half baked to fully baked. Yeah. So much to anticipate and we will return to talk about it next time. Well, the news comes fast and furious in season, so we have jerks and profile news, we have Garrett Crochet news. We'll get to that next time, which will be soon, but a few follow-ups. Got this email from listener Dan,

who made MLB TV's Make Good discount offer seem even emptier. Dan says, I hadn't been planning to buy any new merch, but with this promo code, I figured I'd at least have a look at what was on offer. I picked out a few small items, and before I knew knew it my cart was valued at just over $100. I went to check out and discovered that I had qualified for free shipping. However, unlike every other online retailer with whom I have done business,

they did not automatically deduct the cost of shipping, but rather gave me a promo code to enter to have the shipping charge cancelled. Of course, you can only enter one code per transaction, so I had to choose between the $10 public relations discount that brought me there in the first place or the free shipping. The shipping charge? $9.99. Now I feel as though rather than an earnest attempt to apologize for dropping the ball on one of their biggest days of the year, MLB has simply found a way to bamboozle fans

into more browsing and buying than they would otherwise have done, without actually providing them with a make good. It's entirely possible that I'm being overly cynical so I wanted to hear your take on this. What do you think? Dan, I don't think you're being overly cynical. Rafael Devers on Monday went 0 for 3 with 3 more K's, so he's now at 0 for 19 with 15 strikeouts. I mentioned that Marucci and Victus are the new official bat providers of MLB. I did not note that Victus is owned by Marucci, was acquired several years ago. Elsewhere on the bat front, Ellie De La Cruz used the Torpedo bat and he single doubled and hit two home runs for a career-high seven runs batted in, so perhaps he will keep using it. There's just been more and

more buzz about it. RJ Anderson of CBS Sports spoke to some front office insiders who differed quite considerably on what the future holds for these bats. One front office source told RJ, I think they'll be banned. I think MLB will be compelled to establish a rule to prevent them from getting out of hand. And I think the interests of fairness will direct that rule to be something that more or less bans the torpedo design.

I would need to see much more before I could be confident that this will reach a level of unfairness given that hitters have been at something of a disadvantage. To be clear, hitters have accelerated the strikeout rate rise and batting average fall by going for more of a three true outcomes oriented swing for the fences approach because analytically that does make some sense. But I think part of why that makes some sense aside from the fact that the ball has been fairly lively over the past several Years is that it's hard to make contact these days harder than ever So if you were to prioritize contact that would be tough

So now it's a little more like well, we're gonna miss a lot regardless So we want to make sure that when we actually do make contact We really get a hold of one swing hard in case you hit it as they say Alan Nathan the physics of baseball Expert did put something on Blue Sky where he confirmed that there does seem to be a bit of an exit velocity increase perhaps stemming from this bat design. Tom Tango interpreted it as losing roughly two miles per hour in exit speed toward the head of the bat,

but gaining roughly three toward the knob, which does make a difference if you're hitting the ball hard and if you're lopsided on your misses, he said, when it comes to flailing versus being tied up. So he suggested that say Big Christmas, John Kenzie Newell might be a good candidate. Some other insiders RJ talked to were not as adamant that it should be banned, but expressed concern

about potential downstream effects. If the new equipment takes over, among them, batters crowding the plate if their lumber allows for greater margin of error on inside pitches. That's a good point. We already have a lot of hit by pitches. If you can hit the ball now closer to the handle and still make solid contact, then yes, you might be incentivized to get closer to the plate, which would lead to more hit by pitches. And the grim possibility of the league's offensive environment veering even further into the three true outcomes. Just what we need, a veteran scout said. Another incentive for

pitchers to not throw strikes anyway. Talk about banning, I believe is premature. Lenny came out and said that hitters have been using this in MLB as far back as 2023, and can something be so significant that it should be banned when no one was noticing it for years? Granted, I guess no one noticed Astro sign stealing.

Eh, that's not true. Actually, a lot of people noticed Astro Sign Stealing. It just wasn't publicly widely known. So RJ ran through some other previous attempted bat innovations and said, "'Most of these supposedly revolutionary ideas "'and advancements wind up as fads, not fixtures. "'The game isn't solved, nor is it easily hacked

"'or disrupted, not in a meaningful, sustainable way.' "'Quite true. "'If baseball were different, how different would it be? "'Answer, usually not that different.'" Now our pal Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus said this on Blue Sky, I don't know if it's a hot take or not, but a thought I tried to talk through on their podcast, Five and Dive, is what makes good hitters good is being able to barrel the ball more than others. If you don't do that consistently enough and tech just makes it so you do, that cheapens it for me. Now that's kind of a good point. If this flattened the landscape skill-wise,

if it was just sort of like turning the difficulty level down in a video game, then I could see that being an argument against this. I don't know whether the cliche about hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely being the most difficult thing in sports is actually true, but it certainly is difficult and I wouldn't want it to be otherwise. My co-host on Hang Up and Listen, Alex Kirschner, quote it certainly is difficult and I wouldn't want it to be otherwise my co-host on hang up and listen

Alex Kirschner quote Skeeted Craig and said golf allowed this with driver head size and it completely distorted the sport for the better for amateurs and in my opinion Absolutely for the worse for elite professionals and the upshot there was that just anyone could drive a really long distance Which was nice if you're not that great at golf But kind of made the professionals overpowered to the point that they have tried to dial that down again, whether by deadening the ball or deadening the clubs. However, Alex then followed up to say, I think I'm cool with bat barrel innovations because as Ben Lindberg argued to us on Hang Up and

Listen, that's me, pitchers are just too good and these guys need some help, but I'd keep it out of kids baseball. Yeah, I guess I could see the case for having kids learn with the regular bat, unless the no torpedo bat just becomes the regular bat. And I guess making it a little easier at first might help some kids stick with playing a sport. I think one difference there is that in golf, as I understand it, they just kept making the drivers bigger, like the head of the club just got bigger. I think the maximum allowable size changed and no rules have been changed in baseball as of yet. This is still within the legal limits. It's approved by the MLB rules committee and it really is quite subtle, again to the point that no one noticed it.

So we should probably pump the brakes a bit. I think I'm more bullish than Meg about this sticking around and players continuing to use it, but I'm bearish on it making enough of a difference that it would hurt the pitcher batter balance in baseball as opposed to improving it. More to come. Thanks to our Patreon supporters who make it possible for us to keep making more of these things. If you would like to be one, you can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast coming, help us stay ad free, and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Chris Jones, Grant Bergman, Zeeshan Lakhani, Lorraine Suzuki, and Ben Zimmer. Thanks to all of you.

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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 another episode soon. Talk to you then. We're going to be wild We're going to be wild A fan-grast baseball podcast Listen to our emails at last We're going to do a baseball trip Every weekday

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