Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2317: Wake Up Babe (Ruth)

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Trout’s latest injury, Pete Alonso’s renaissance, a Daulton Varsho recovery catch, Andrés Muñoz the cat guy, and the called strike zone (sort of) shrinking. Then (40:49) they bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Carson Otter to talk about his background with baseball and the podcast, share his baseball-related […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2317 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. We will soon be joined by one of those aforementioned Patreon supporters, a Mike Trout-tier supporter. And speaking of Mike Trout, we lost him. We lost him, Meg.

It's over. Did you ever really have him, you know? It's just, it's so sad that I essentially assume that even the most minor injury, or what seemed to be, is season ending. It's like, well, that's it for Mike this season. If he returns, then I'll be pleasantly surprised. And it really does not seem to be super serious.

And yet we have seen similarly unserious injuries sideline him for an improbably long time. And we've gone through just not only how often he gets injured, but then how slow his recovery is compared to the typical recovery time. And it always seems to happen the same way. And I don't know if this is an angel's issue or if it's him or it's Ron Washington or what, but so he ran down to first base and he was busting it and he was still speedy.

And then there was a little bit of a awkward, he was favorusting it and he was still speedy and then there was a little bit of a awkward he was favoring a leg nursing a leg a little bit and then he went out to play defense and then he took himself out of the game good discretion is the better part of valor then they say it's nothing serious it's a day-to-day and you know just precautionary reasons and just better safe than sorry. And then I believe he suggested that he would probably play the next day, which you got to think by this point, he should know by now that like, even if he felt fine, take a day, just given the history, I understand that he wants to get out there and maybe his

history makes him even more eager to get out there because he knows that if he goes on the IL, he might never get off. But you got to think at this point, like you should start to take it easy. It's like we were talking with Jose Altuve the day before where you start to know yourself and understand your limitations and everything. And he's made some concessions to that, Trout has, but still, I guess on the inside feels like the guy who could go out there.

So it's presented as nothing and day to day, and he'll be right back. And now he's on the aisle with a bone bruise in the knee, which again, doesn't sound like it should be that serious, but then sometimes a bone bruise can linger. I mean, that can turn into Anthony Rendon situation where someone says it's a bone bruise and then someone else says it's a fracture and maybe the treatment is the same, but the diagnosis is different.

Anyway, in theory, this should not take him out for that long. But it's my trout. So who knows? It happened so fast, man. I mean, it didn't like, this is the the result of years of sort of shifting perception of him and a new understanding of his health and his ability to like bounce back. I really did like, I was like, what if he eats a bunch of meat? You know, I was like, it's all those, I think it's our fault. I mean, like if I were apportioning the blame more you and Sam and Jeff than me, because like by the time I became a regular co-host, the heyday of the Mike Trout specific hypothetical had sort of passed.

But one of the ones where we cursed him with some affliction. Right, to make him less good. Yeah, and tried to figure out how good he'd still be. Turns out with this affliction that he seemingly has in real life, not that good, unfortunately. And he had just such a strange slash line as it was, batting 179, but slugging 462.

Nine homers, which put him among the league leaders, but then almost a 30% strikeout rate, which would be the highest ever for him. And yet also the expected weighted on base was almost 70 points higher than the actual weighted on base. And he had a 159 BABIP, so there was all sorts of strange stuff going on there. Because he definitely was hitting into hard luck. He's 66 points south of where he should have been on the weighted on base average, which put him, it was among the bigger gaps. And so you would think that that would have equalized at a certain point if he had kept doing what he was doing, unless it was like a symptom of

some sort of old player skills, all or nothing, selling out for power. I don't know. I tend to think that if he could have just kept going that he would have had a more normal slash line. He would have gotten over the Mendoza line at some point. He was basically gallowing and yet, but with maybe some encouraging indicators that he could have been better than that. Yeah. The underlying contact stats were definitely stronger. It does seem like he was getting, he was underperforming relative to what the quality of his contact might suggest. But you're right that that contact was like so concentrated because he was also

whiffing more and chasing more and you know, they're uptick and strikeouts. So more and you know, they're uptick and strike out. So it was sort of an all or nothing kind of approach and he can still barrel it, you know. Yeah, when he hits one, it looks like Mike Trout to me when I see him get around on a ball and he still has that quick swing and it goes, yeah. And so I just see a single swing and I think, oh yeah, that's the Mike-trade I remember.

Yeah, it'll bounce back and maybe it will if he does, but you just have to wonder like what state, you know, bone bruise is one of those funny things because like the particulars of it matter a great deal, right, like sometimes you get a bone bruise from trauma, but he didn't have like a traumatic injury. Yes. I mean, not this go-around.

Right, well, even last year with the knee things that he had, he didn't even- Right, it wasn't like he made contact in a weird way or something. Yeah, he didn't even know how it happened. He wasn't even aware of one of the times that it happened. It just, it got sore later, which was, I think, among the more disconcerting aspects of it. Cause you couldn't even point to

this happened. If he could just avoid doing that again, then he'd be okay. No, it was just that he was on his legs, that he was playing baseball and okay, they got him out of center field, but is that enough? So yeah. Right. And it's like, do you have bone rubbing on bone? As an aside, bones shouldn't rub against each other, you know? No. Like it's good that we have stuff in between them to keep them from going, rararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararar Well, that's what I think every time I read about Chris Bryant's back affliction, which just it sounds career ending.

I don't know anything, obviously, but every time I read about it, it just sounds like how could you even hope to get back on the field? I know. Good for you for trying, I guess, but it just sounds like this can't be something you come back from. Yeah. I feel for these guys. I know how it feels to be, and I'm going to apply additional caveats to this. My back isn't great, but it's not, I wouldn't put it in the category of like debilitating

every day or anything like that. I have stretches of it being uncomfortable. I had to do physical therapy, et cetera, but it doesn't cause mobility issues. You know, it doesn't create interference with my ability to do any like daily life things, you know? These are like the, they have you rate your pain and what have you when you go into for PT for this stuff. And so I wanna, you know, be appropriately appreciative

and also like circumspect about how bad my back is relative to Chris Bryant, but just relative to a lot of people. Having said all of that, I want to give people a correct impression of the level of discomfort and debilitation I deal with, which is not profound, thankfully. But I know how it feels to have your own body kind of humble you, you know, as you progress in age. And I'm not so old or anything like that, but I'm 39 and I can't do some of the stuff

I used to be able to do. When you're like 25 and relatively able-bodied, you just think you're going to be like that forever. You know, you don't have a lot of mortality around it. And then stuff starts hurting. And I know Sam has talked about this. You get to a point where they're just like, yeah, that's just how it's going to feel now. You can do stuff to sort of mitigate it to an extent, but there's just like, your baseline has changed. The baseline of your body changes as you age.

And it can be very disorienting and it can feel humbling and it can feel pretty sh**ty, you know? And I say that as someone whose job it is to like fix commas and stuff. That's kind of underplaying my role, but I'm not a professional athlete. So I can only imagine how it feels to have been, you're just like the best boy for so long. You're the, and in my trout's case, literally the best boy, no better boys than you for so many years, right?

You're the best at it. And then your knees are just bad. You're Chris Bryant. You have this wonderful start to your career and you just think you're going to be a key player. You know, we did a franchise player draft, I don't know, 2018, 2019 as a site, and I took Chris Bryant. I took him late in the round because I think I picked a little bit later and I felt like, oh, I got really good value here. Because it was just like, this guy's incredibly talented. And so I don't know, I just find myself having a lot of sympathy for these guys. And then they get all this garbage online about like, you're not trying, you're not

trying to come back. And I know that sometimes, depending on the player, they can seem less enthused than others. We've had our conversations about Rendon, but I do think that there is a very human part of this that it's just like, I can't be quite what I was before. And that's not to say that what you are now is bad, but it is different in an appreciable way. And sometimes it comes with like pain and that sucks. So it's just like, wow, your body is going to break down on you because time only moves in the one direction. Jared Ranere Yeah. Unless you're Pete Alonso, who was the next player I was going to bring up.

Lauren Ruffin Okay, I was going to say, or unless you're Babe Ruth transported forward in time, which is like, what's the opposite of a callback? It's like a foreshadowing of... Yeah. Yeah. It's a tease maybe, but it's a call forward. Our listeners are, I'm so jealous. That's all I'll say.

And then you're going to, you're all going to listen. You're going to be like, Meg was right to be jealous. That's the very reaction. Anyway, we wish Mike Trout well. And we hope of course that he avoids the fate of recent seasons where this just lingers and lingers and lingers and then he just gets shut down at a certain point. It's a long way away from that.

It's just that we've seen that happen often enough that that's immediately where my mind went and maybe where his went. How could it not? How could it not? After his past few seasons. So hopefully he avoids that fate. Okay. Peter Alonso though, he has already equalled

his 2024 FanGraphs War total. He played all 162 games last year and he amassed 2.1 FanGraphs War and now he has played 32 games and he has amassed 2.1 FanGraphs War, and now he has played 32 games, and he has amassed 2.1 FanGraphs War. I meant to say, by the way, almost eerie, and this almost makes it more disconcerting that Trout has played exactly the same number of games

that he played last. Yeah, and five played appearances apart, 29 games, 29 games, 126 PA, 121 PA, one homer apart. It's too close for comfort. He was better overall last year, but his, yeah, but still, that's just like, that's some hypothetical gone wrong, where it's like, what if you just, your season freezes at a certain number of games? What if you knew that you were only allowed 29 games and 120 plus played appearances?

How would you use them? That's going to be the next hypothetical, but yeah, hopefully that's not what's happening here. But Pete Alonso, 141 played appearances compared to 695 last year, and he has already equaled the value that he produced. That's amazing. He's gone from 122 WRC plus to 210. He's just improved dramatically across the board. And it's not just the results, but it's the quality of contact. His expected weighted on base would be by far a career high. It's he's just absolutely raking and I love it. I love the, I don't know that he's thinking of it as the Pete Alonso revenge tour, but it kind of is that where people doubted him.

You doubted him. I doubted him. I certainly didn't foresee this. I didn't foresee improvement really in his future, at least not notably or lasting. And we'll see if this lasts, but it doesn't even have to last because if he just coasts from here on out and provides the production that he did

for most of last season, then he will close to double his value from that season. And I don't know if teams will be kicking themselves for not signing him when they had a chance, but he'll have another chance to test the market because he will opt out if he ends up just like splitting the difference between where he is now and where he was last year. He's going to go out there and he'll be a year older, but he'll be coming off a much stronger

platform year. And we'll see whether that makes any difference. It's a little bit of a funny circumstance because the team he's like revenging on is the team he plays for. Yeah. You know, like. The team he spent his whole career with. Right. The team where fans like him and he's had a lot of success.

Yeah. Right. And so it's like, yeah, I'll show you friends, buddies, pals of mine. I wonder how he, how the whole thing is kind of washing over him. He's probably very stoked about the whole thing because he seems like an earnest boy as we have discussed. But it is funny when the team that is reaping the benefit is the one that did not sign him to a more lucrative contract.

Although at one point they did try. So I guess maybe, you know, if you're, if you're Pete, do you, do you mostly blame your prior representation? Is that where the bulk of the blame falls? Or are you mad? Are you mad at the current Mets or are you mad at your past self? You know, that's a, that's a doozy of a question really. Or maybe you're not mad at anyone.

Who knows? Maybe you're not mad. Yeah, I might be really. Or maybe you're not mad at anyone. Maybe you're not mad. Yeah, I might be mad, but maybe he's not mad. Maybe he's just thinking, hey, I'm showing what I can do and I'm vindicated and what's the difference between 30 million and however many more million that I would have had and maybe I'll have again this off season

when I take another crack at this. Do you think his fortunes will be dramatically different as a free agent though? This is the thing. It's like, I get that you've demonstrated a new thing. You sort of satisfied a question in a way that is to your benefit, but like he's still like the fundamental profile is the same in terms of like the stuff that might presage future decline and he's going to be a year older. So like I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated again by what his free agency will end up looking like because I could see this like really changing

things and I could also see it making not a lick of difference. I wonder if the most likely scenario is that they rework something and add a little time on the back of their existing deal and he just doesn't go anywhere. Like that seems like a possibility to me, but who knows? Yeah, he's a little faster than he was. His like, his throws are better. It seems like he's a little faster than he was.

His throws are better, it seems like. He's just took some super soldier serum or something. Well, that sounds like I'm accusing him. I'm not, but I mean, I'm sure some people are suspicious about what is happening here, but I think he hasn't done it long enough for me to dramatically reevaluate who he is as a player. So it really obviously depends that we've only seen a sixth of the season or whatever it is.

So how he ends the season will determine, I think how his free agency would go. But yeah, this doesn't seem fluke-ish, what he's doing so far. So it just, he looks great. And he said he refined his swing mechanics. I mean, I guess there's some details about that, but it's not like the most dramatic overhaul

I've ever seen that you could immediately understand what happened. And I don't know whether it's training, nutrition. I don't know if he's just changing his whole life because maybe it was a wake-up call for him that teams were evaluating him differently than he was evaluating himself potentially. But yeah, he looks like a new man.

So good for him, I guess. And we'll see. But yeah, he's, I mean, he's lapping the rest of the Mets who are off to a fine start, but no one is close to him in terms of war value. And he has more than doubled Juan Soto's war value I don't expect that to continue, but I'm saying it has happened thus far So who knew who the marquee acquisition actually was to this point? It's been the polar bear. So that's fun That's wild. That's so wild Wow baseball rocks, man. I'm sure you saw the Dalton Varsho play.

I did see the Dalton Varsho play. Seems to normally have. Here's a drive to deep center. Varsho back. And did he catch that ball? He caught that ball! I mean, Dalton, we know you want a go glove and we know you're good, but quit showing off, would you? He fell and he caught that ball.

So this seemed to me like the ideal of the kind of play that I think we were talking about the other day, the distinction between a great play all the way. Yes. A great play that becomes great after you screw up and then you salvage it. A great finish to a play. Yeah, right. And he's obviously a great outfielder.

He's a tremendous fielder. Yeah, he's capable of making fully legitimately great plays. But in this case, yeah, this was his first game back. And I don't know whether that was part of it, but he slipped. He slipped going from the grass to the warning track. And then he made an incredible recovery. And it looked like there was just no way

because he just completely fell and rolled over and then somehow just took a stab at it over his shoulder and got this ball that was about to fall on the warning track. And then nonchalantly, it's just like, you know, it didn't even show anything until another outfielder came over and then he was grinning a little bit and he got into it and his team was tipping their caps from the top step and everything. But at first he's just kind of casual.

Yeah, I made that play and Just almost no look like behind the back, take a stab at it. So yeah, I think this would be the kind of play that I would show to people when obviously he could have made this look much more routine if he had just not fallen down. He was still by the wall, but I think the catch probability was pretty high. And he would have gotten to it pretty easily given his skills and his starting position. It wouldn't have been that challenging a play even though it was almost at the wall. And then he made it far more challenging and yet made it super impressive in a sincerely impressive way.

I do think the ability to, I don't want to sound like I'm too down on stuff. Like the ability to recover and finish strong, I think, is very impressive. You're increasing your own degree of difficulty, but overcoming that degree of difficulty is still something to be like, whoa, I can't believe he was able to do that. This definitely rates where for most fielders, you make that mistake, you fall down that way. And that's just like a vista double. Like that's how slow guys get triples, you know, is the place like that. And how fast guys get inside the park home run. So there is a timeline where he trips and then it's just debilitating. But no, he was able to like run. It was wild.

He's really something. I am still sad that he is not sometimes catching, but I get it. I get why. Yeah. And he was asked what was going through his mind as he fell before making that catch. And here's the quote, I said a profanity word. Said a profanity word. It's like he's warning Shane that he's going to do a profanity or something. I said a profanity word. So wholesome. That is very wholesome. You know, some of these guys, they have a lot on me in terms of their ability to be a pro athlete that I lack. The number of differences is sort of profound, but also I think that their ability to just

like walk in and not overthink it is often to their benefit, you know? And I would not be able to do that. I overthink it is often to their benefit, you know? And I would not be able to do that. I overthink everything. So I sometimes envy them. They're just like empty brain. They're not, you know, I'm not saying that Dalton Varshall is like a dummy. I have no idea, but just being able to lock in

and not have the, oh God, you fell down, you fell down. Like I would immediately be upset with myself about the fall. And I wonder if he even really remembers that part of it. I know he knows it happened, but probably didn't register because he was just onto the next bit of it. Speaking of wholesome, did you see Andres Munoz of Your Seattle Mariners?

You already know what I'm going to say. Oh yeah, Cat Guy. Yeah, big time Cat Guy. Yeah. Big time cat guy. He volunteers his time. He donates money to the Seattle area feline rescue. And his quote was, I think they are the best friend of a human. That is why I love to take care of them. Pets give you a lot of happiness.

I feel like they make you more happy. And that is why it's really important for me. Yeah. That's so sweet. Yeah, it's so sweet. He and his wife are both like very involved in animal rescue in Seattle. And yeah, look, people should have the pets that speak to them.

You're a dog guy. Yeah. I like dogs, not an anti-dog take. There is a saying about the best friend of humans. Right. And you know, we could quibble, we could differ. We could kibble over that. There is a saying about the best friend of humans. We could quibble, we could differ, we could kibble over that. Could kibble over that. I don't quite know what kibbling over it would mean in practice, but we could do that.

I was going for a pet food joke. It's not my best work on this episode, but yeah, I think that is many people I know and care for you, including have the same opinion on the best pet for you. For me. And so and I don't begrudge anyone other pets. I do think the like lizard snake pet thing is a choice that I have more private judgment about than other pet choices. But I just think that if you want a pet and it's a dog, great. Having said all of that, again, I would argue that there is a dog over representation in terms of ideal

pets. And part of this is you can bring them to the ballpark and it goes well. And you can't bring, I wouldn't recommend bringing your cats to the ballpark. That's a terrible idea. Like I love cats. I love my cats. Would never, because I love them, would never consider bringing them to the park. A disaster perhaps unparalleled in pet ownership.

And so I think that dogs, they're getting their day in the sun a lot of the time, and look, they're all very good boys and girls. But there are some good cats out there. And it's good to have feline representation that doesn't involve Tony Gonsolin. I know Tony Gonsolin loves cats, but he imitated a cat during a Dodgers postseason video thing. The Fox crew, when they do the interstitials at the beginning where it's like, here I am in this room that looks like a music video set and I'm yelling and I'm smiling and I'm looking at the trophy and I'm looking at my teammate. And Tony Gonsolin is like pretending to lick his own hand and then groom himself with it. And I'm like, you're giving the cat people a bad name, Tony.

That's too much. You're being a little weird with it. I'm not saying he's weird with the cats, but that was weird. And so to have wholesome cat representation is important. You know? And also, I don't know why cat ownership is, is mildly gendered in a way sometimes. I mean, the stereotype. I don't, I don't know what that arises from.

I don't know if there is actually a gender difference when it comes to proclivity for pets or anything, but I like when it's swapped, when it's reversed, when we have the cat man, the cat guy. The cat man. Yeah. So good for Andres Munoz. Not to be mistaken for the cat man. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't really know the origin of that stereotype either, but yes, I appreciate a fella standing up and saying, hey, we love these cats. Yes. And it's true that they give you a lot of happiness. I mean, you know that subjectively if you're a pet person, but also the studies show the science says it's like a life hack for both of you, kind of, because I always feel like it's like the self-reinforcing thing where my dog makes me happy and then I make

her happy and it's just this self-sustaining, self-replicating, we're making each other happier, and the happiness is being created out of nothing. It almost feels like we're cheating. It's just being in proximity to each other. And even just like the dopamine or the oxytocin or whatever the attachment hormones, the chemicals that get released when you just pet your pet or your pets get snuggled by you. And it's just a great system that we've worked out here,

where we just kind of make each other happy by doing nothing other than just like seeing each other. Yeah, it's awesome. It feels like a cheat somehow. It feels like a law of conservation of mass or energy. It's like matter cannot be created or destroyed. It feels like there should be like a finite amount of happiness or something, but there's not. You can just generate infinite happiness by having this pet. And sometimes they will make you just beside yourself with either annoyance or concern or sadness or whatever it is.

So it's not pure unalloyed happiness, but still it works out. Oh, worth it a hundred times out of a hundred in my opinion. And I know not everyone's a pet person and I appreciate the people who are like, I'm not a pet person and they don't have a pet, you know, cause there are a lot of pets that don't have the best people taking care of them all the time and that makes me so sad. So it's really when someone knows their own limits with respect to pets, I think that's a good thing to know, but also pets rule man, like pets are great and you love them so much and they don't know your name,

you know, that's the other thing about them. You love them and they do love you, but they don't know your name. They don't. Last thing, there was a athletic article, a joint piece by Jason Stark and Kent Rosenthal and more, I think more was, you know, Sarah's, but it says more. A bunch of other people like contributed reporting at the end. Yeah. Yeah. About not a change in the strike zone, but a change in the buffer zone surrounding the strike zone. Yes.

So what happened here is that MLB with the knowledge of the umpires, shrank the buffer zone in MLB's zone evaluation system for the umpires, which used to be two inches on each side of the zone. They shrink that to three quarters of an inch on each side. And the strike zone itself is technically same dimensions, but because the buffer has shrunk, umpires have tightened it up a little bit.

They've given a little less leeway. And it's not dramatic. It's noticeable to the players. It's not something I had noticed from watching games. I don't know that it's something you could see with the naked eye that obviously, unless you're a player and you're right up close and it's affecting you personally

But the offensive stats have barely budged in any direction the batting average the walk rate the strikeout rate So it's it's much to do about not much in that sense But some players are upset about it And I guess a big part of why they're upset about it is that they feel that this wasn't communicated to them. And MLB seems to be saying that they were actually the impetus for it and players disagreed with that. MLB said it was the players who told the league that they would like to see the strike zone be called more closely to conform with the rulebook zone, which sounds like something players might say, I suppose, but players

the athletic spoke with did not share the view that the impetus for this change came from their side. And it seems to not have been conveyed to the players and perhaps even to the teams themselves very clearly. And so your front offices even were kind of unaware of what was happening. It says the league is adamant that the managers and front office execs were informed

that front offices were updated on the specifics of the empire's labor agreement in writing and that there was no intent to keep anyone in the dark. It says officials spoke to all 30 managers about the change at the winter meetings. officials spoke to all 30 managers about the change at the winter meetings. They spoke with all 30 club front offices at the general managers meetings. So that's MLB's side of the story.

But more than two dozen people from all of those groups, managers, front office executives and sources with ties to the union told the athletic they had no recollection of the league briefing them on this change. Just a collective amnesia. It was so boring. It was so buried in the briefing that they all forgot. It's a Mandela effect. It's a Manfred effect.

It's a they said, they said. I don't know what to make of this. I don't want to discount the possibility that there was a more profound failure of communication here. I want to be clear that I love every single one of my coworkers and their perfect angels whose work I never have to correct. But as someone who occasionally has to wrangle group projects with instructions and then

I'm inundated with questions that are very plainly and clearly answered by the instructions. Yes. I do have some sympathy for the possibility or the notion that this was communicated and there is someone in the league office who is actually pulling out their own hair and frustration that folks are acting surprised by this. Yeah. I'm just saying it's possible. I'm not saying that that's what happened. It is very possible that clearer, more direct communication

that perhaps this was communicated, but it was like in a memo with a bunch of other stuff. And maybe that other stuff took hold focus because it was likely to have a bigger impact. I don't know. Like all of that seems possible, but it also seems possible to me that someone is like, I told you that this was coming. We were really surprised by this.

Yes. Yes. We love getting emails, which we will talk about later on this episode, but sometimes we'll get an email and a person will point something out and then we will chat each other and say, didn't we say that? I thought I said that. Didn't you say that? Checking our own memories. It happens fairly frequently. And I'm sure that this happens when I listen to other people's podcasts. We're the people on it.

So we're going to be paying closer attention than someone who's probably commuting or showering or doing something. Your recall is not going to be perfect probably. And so that happens sometimes. But then it makes me question, I thought I said that, which and then sometimes I'll go back just to make sure that I'm not imagining that I said that. Or maybe we didn't communicate it clearly enough and it didn't make as much of an impression as it should have. Anyway, it's kind of a nothing burger when it comes to the actual results. It's like, it's maybe one less called strike per game. And pitchers don't care for that, obviously, but it's, I'm almost impressed that they noticed, I guess, because it's really, it's fairly negligible.

It's just, it's like in the shadow zone, there are just pitches that aren't being called strikes there, there are more balls in the zone, because the umps know that they got to tighten it up. And in theory, that's what people want. They want it to be the rule book zone. And it has been, it's more accurate than never before, according to Statcast.

So you'd think that that's kind of what you want, but then they don't like when you change anything, especially if they think that you didn't communicate that to them, then it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under them and their livelihood is at stake here and they are really good at what they do. And so a tiny change, they could actually pick up on that. But it does feel like this would have just come out in the wash in any earlier era because we just wouldn't have even noticed this. We wouldn't have been able to measure this. Like the zone used to change a lot. Yeah. And it used to be different zones in each league and different zones for each umpire.

And sometimes they actually would change the strike zone dimensions in an intentional way to produce some sort of effect and big changes. And this is the tiniest. It's only measurable because we have the finest distinctions that we can pick up on now. And, you know, it matters when called strike a game, it might be an important called strike. And so I get that. And, but gosh, a high rankings executive in one front office said that his team for weeks has been trying to figure out what's going on. They believe the decrease in called strikes on the edges will have ripple

effects that include personnel decisions, philosophies, everything, everything. I know there's the Bill James line from the 88 abstract where he said an inch in the strike zone means far more than 10 yards in the outfield. And so this really is like an inch or a little more just outside the strike zone. So I guess that speaks to the importance of the territory in this area. It is the most important real estate in the game. And yet you'd think that the effect is good. And also if the zone is a teeny tiny bit smaller, that also seems like it's in the direction

that we would want it to go, given all the other complaints about baseball these days. Like if it's fewer strikeouts here and there, and maybe more balls put in play, or balls hit harder, or you're in a favorable count and you get the batting average up, it's not really producing any sizable effect. But if it did, it would be in the direction

that we would encourage MLB to tweak the settings slightly. So I don't care, but I am kind of, I'm struck by how much players care and teams seemingly care about this, but it does seem like we're almost victims of like how good we are at measuring these things that the slightest change, it's a big deal. It is amazing. I guess it really speaks to how all consuming the challenge system was because it's like, if this was a directive, presumably this has been the zone like since spring training, right?

And it's like, if you're noticing now, wouldn't you have noticed then, but maybe you were challenging calls, but maybe those were the calls you didn't feel like you had to challenge because they were right more often. You know what I mean? I'm just surprised that now is when we're hearing about it as opposed to a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, on the one hand, I get it and I am open to the notion that we are perhaps missing something about just how monumental this is going to be, but it just seems like this is what people say they want, right? So aren't

you happy? Yeah. It's just, yeah, the degree to which people are pissed at umpires, I don't know whether it decreases along with the increase in umpire accuracy, because umpires have gotten way better. At least calling things conforming to the rulebook zone. And yet we are so much more able to pick up on the times when they fail. We're just so adept at proving that they were wrong, I guess. And I mean, people have always known and insisted that they were wrong, but now we have data. And I do think that there's a distinction to be drawn here between teams and their relationship to umpires, fans and their relationship to umpires, team personnel when they are on the field and when they are not on the field and their relationship to umpires, because all of those are different scenarios.

And my sense of this is that the body that everyone's really mad at is the league because they feel like the league didn't communicate this as clearly as it ought to have, which again, might be true or might be y'all not reading your emails. You got to read the email. Yes. Yep. Okay. Let's read some emails that we received and we will be joined by a guest. If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben and Meg have to say. Philosophically and pedantically,

it's effectively wild. Effectively wild! Well we are joined now by a Patreon supporter, a top tier, Mike Trout tier, Patreon guest. As always, we are honored to be joined by one of our most generous patrons. This one's name is Carson Otter. Hello, Carson. Welcome. Hey, Ben. Hey, Meg. Hello. And you probably know if you have heard previous patron appearances that I always start off by asking what could have possibly possessed you to support us at this level.

I have been a listener for as long as I can remember, which goes way back to, I don't know when you all started recording this podcast, but- From the cradle, like just like from your earliest memory is listening to Effectively Well. My earliest memories are Jeff Sullivan and him making me crack up while I was, my job in college was driving around, I was a runner for a company and I would just put you and Jeff on and listen to the banter and try to focus on the road. I do remember getting an email every now and then from someone who would be angry at us for

causing them to almost drive into a ditch or something through some kind of conversation, which I can't identify with as a non-driver. But yes, please practice responsible, safe podcast listening while you are operating heavy machinery. And now you all occupy my headphones and AirPods when I'm using public transportation. And so I just felt as though I've enjoyed the podcast so much and gotten so much out of it. I felt the Shohei Otani size deferred compensation was due. Actually, we have a Shohei Otani tier and it's lower than the Mike Trout tier. So this is even higher than the Otani size contribution. You can kind of tell when we developed those tiers based on how we ranked Mike Trout and

Shohei Otani. Will you adjust the tiers with changing F4? Like ranking in F4 whenever one... We have considered that and we've, I think, decided that it would be just too cruel. Yeah. We have to honor Mike Trout's legacy on this show and in baseball and all the greatness that he gave us and we cannot demote him. So he could be moved from center field to a corner. You could move him down in the lineup. Who knows? He can be on the IL constantly, but he will always, I think, occupy the top tier on the Effectively

Wild Patreon. You can't take that away from him. I think that's fair. Yeah. So what is your baseball background? My baseball background is I'm just a diehard fan. I have been since, unfortunately, since I read Moneyball, I fall into that trope of, you know, guy who works in finance related industry, read Moneyball. So I just love baseball and have since a very young age playing like fantasy baseball, doing that, that, that stuff. But I moved to Washington, DC after college and my wife and I live across the street from Nationals Park. And so I get to go to plenty of games, whether they're national professional here, or we also have a great drivable minor league system around us and colleges as well. So just get to consume baseball at all times.

And did you grow up there or were you rooting for another team first? And then you adopted the Nats or? I was originally born in Atlanta. So, uh, went to some Braves games at a young age, but then we moved to Bloomington, Indiana, and I was there from kindergarten through college when I left for college. And then I moved down to Mississippi, went to the University of Mississippi, and then up here to DC afterwards.

And you had a job that was kind of tangentially related to Nationals Park, as you informed us via email. You said that you work in commercial real estate asset management and used to manage three properties adjacent to Nationals Park so you can discuss the rental premium properties get. And I guess this is relevant to owners always wanting to franchise and become real estate developers and how that revenue is classified as non baseball revenue, even though clearly the proximity of that real estate to a team enhances its value.

So is that what you're getting at here? Yes, that's what I'm getting at. Unfortunately, I'm a pro laborer and I have all of those beliefs, but what I did was I managed the financials for the three mixed use developments that are just right across the street from Nationals Park as well. And we've talked a little bit.

I think though, I can't remember the episode numbers the way you can, Ben, but there was an episode about the Minnesota Twins who, and there was one development next to a field that could look in. And I remember you all talking about being curious about what are the premiums that they could get for those views. I have good recall of things that we discussed. I have not memorized the episode numbers to be clear. I don't have some sort of, yeah, like, yeah, I don't have those powers of recall, but I

can find those things if I put my mind to it. But yes, I know what you mean. Okay. So you do the pre-work before the podcast of, you know, of pulling the episode number. Okay. So I was just thought you just could pull those out of your head. And I was very impressed. Remember them all back to episode one. So that's what spurred that, you know, kind of introduction. And actually one of the really cool things about Washington, the Washington nationals Actually, one of the really cool things about the Washington Nationals and one of the buildings that I helped manage is the architecture of the apartment building.

If you look out from Home Field out down what is called Half Street out of the left center view, you can see there's a glass facade building on the left side of the street. And what they did was they actually, rather than having it be kind of your standard rectangle shaped building that keeps straight walls up and then a roof at the top, they took that corner where you could view Nationals Park and they curved it backwards. It's more of a curve. And by

curving what they did was they allowed for more units with balconies that can view into the center field and see Nationals Park. Yeah, it was fascinating that they, you know, I always thought that was really cool. And then I went and joined the company that owned it and got to work on it. So people will pay a premium to live by the ballpark and have a ballpark view. They will, or that was assumed in the underwriting, but then RealPage came along and it just kind of is very automated.

There's like a slight, you know, I would call it between 50 to $100 a month premium that could get added to the rental rate for the units with views within to the field. But now, unfortunately, there's so much is just automated of the market. Rents are automated based on that real page software. And you had another baseball connection that you briefed us on before you came on. You said I landed an opportunity to essentially be a tops notary.

So I can give some background into those experiences as well as share one of my favorite experiences which was with Joey Meneses. So tell me about what a Tops Notary is and also tell me about Joey Meneses. So a Tops Notary is, you know the cards where there's, that are signed by the players? Yeah.

Unfortunately, I'm not a big fanatics fan and fanatics is purchased. And so there's some removal and changes in operations that are happening now to my knowledge. I'm not an employee, but one of my former coworkers, her brother-in-law works and coordinates, works with tops to where they will mail, like they have people like myself in different cities with long time, and they've been in the game for a long time.

And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time, and they've been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people who have been in the game for a long time. And I've had a lot of people players day. But I just was my former colleague. She was like, hey, you love baseball.

I shouldn't be doing this. She was like, I was in Florida and I went to somebody's house who had a really cool mustache, and I think his name was Raleigh, and I was like, Raleigh Fingers? She was like, yeah, the fact that you know that you should be taking these assignments from me. And so I connected with her brother-in-law now that what they do is they'll text me,

hey, are you free, you know, for around this time? And I'll be, absolutely, because I will always find time for baseball. And then I will then they'll mail me the cards. I will then text with the player and or the player's agent to coordinate a time, whether it's at the ballpark or whether it's at their apartment. And I will go meet with them and I just get to go sit, help them sign cards and get the opportunity

to just talk ball and hear more about their lived experience in baseball and just kind of hang out. Well, that seems like a pretty sweet gig. Yeah, it's not bad. It's very cool. And Joey Meneses, I was fortunate enough to be able to do a card signing with him when I believe they were the cards where he hit the home run in the World Baseball Classic

for the team Mexico. So I got to go just hang out with Joey and he was just one of the kindest. All the players are kind, all the players are very nice, but Joey was an 80 grade in those categories in terms of just how he was just so welcoming and so friendly. And then he, he lived in the neighborhood as well. And so anytime he was out on his electric scooter, scootering to and from his apartment to the complex, sometimes we would see him when we would be out walking the dogs and he would just stop, say hello and wish us well.

Wow. So you're like friends with Joey Manessa is what you're saying. You're like, you're like buds, you know, kind of. Kind of, you know, I like to think so. He knows my dog, Maggie, which is, you know, a big deal. And he knows, he knows the wife. We took him when his, when he had his wife had a child, she was pregnant when he was first, when I first met him. And so we got to, we took him some cookies and some congratulations sugars to celebrate the birth of his first child.

Well, I like to think that I'm John Brebbia's friend, but I don't know that I have as strong a claim to that as you do to Joey Meneses. So the restraining order hasn't arrived yet, Ben? Not yet. No. Yeah. You'll have to put me in touch with Joey Meneses at some point. We'll just increase my network. Yeah. Well, I mean, Ben, you do reach out to people cold. Yes.

If my memory serves me right. So, you know, I do use absolute discretion in terms of phone numbers that are given to me. So, you know. I'm not asking for Joey Meneses' phone number. Just, you know, maybe a reference someday. You never know. If you need to CC me on an email to Joe, if you're able to find that, but I would be happy to serve as reference.

All right. This is paying off already. This is exciting. In addition to the Patreon support, which is literally paying off also. All right. Any other backgrounds you want to give about what you do or your history with baseball or the podcast or anything else before we answer some emails? Not really. I'm just a diehard baseball fan, junkie. You know, I try to go to all kinds of games and I love to go by myself actually to a lot

of games and just kind of sit there after a long day and just I'll put an airpod in and most of the time it's effectively wild and it's like I'm just hanging out at the ballpark watching some ball with y'all so appreciate everything you guys do. It's a really great show and really strong community just really appreciate it. Well thank you so much. Thank you. Well, I guess we could do our sponsored segment here. We could do our What If Sports, What If of the Week? That's what I'm dubbing it. We didn't name it. What If of the Week, yeah.

It's kind of catchy, right? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, we weren't asked to call it that, but it just came to me. Yeah. So this is our segment where we tell everyone that they should check out our sponsor for this segment, What If Sports? And What If Sports is a simulation service where you can concoct all kinds of hypotheticals. You can join leagues, you can join fora where you can discuss with other what-if sports members,

hypotheticals, and find people to play with, and you can, to your heart's content, explore all sorts of silly slash thought-provoking questions, the kind that we would often consider here on Effectively Wild. What would happen if this player played with that player, if you transported this team backward or forward in time? If you constructed your own team made up of players from every possible era just all jumbled together? All these questions that we consider in our how different would baseball be kind of questions. This is an actual tool one could use to answer them

as opposed to us just coming up with answers off the cuff that have no basis and an objective reality other than what is in our brains. So. Does Vroom Vroom guy fall? Is he simulatable? No, I think the emphasis is more on using real players and putting them in hypothetical

situations than in creating custom characters, but you could find the closest real life person who mirrored those effectively wild characters. And so we would recommend that everyone check out the website, whatifsports.com, which is where you can of course get answers to all of your burning questions about what if sports and they're actually working on a special landing page just for us, which is whatifsports.com slash effectively wild. And there instead of a promo code, you can just click a link and you can sign up for Hardball Dynasty or Sim League Baseball for $1 a piece for your first season. The site says exclusive offer, end soon, act fast.

Gotta get my infomercial voice going, but you can get great discounts here. So again, that is whatifsports.com slash effectively wild, our own tailored bespoke landing page. And we will link to that on the show page in the podcast description, so you can explore the possibilities of what exports to your heart's content.

And now we will explore the possibilities of a hypothetical that was sent to us that I thought is one of those that on the surface sounds instantly like a bad idea and may very well be one, but still interesting to consider the implications. So this comes to us from Andrew. And the subject line starts with, hear me out, which is always a good sign.

Hear me out, home teams provide their own umpires. Okay, Andrew says, sorry to offer such a silly hypothetical so early in the season when there's still a lot to talk about. Never apologize for offering a silly hypothetical year round our inbox is open, but I can't stop thinking of this extreme rule change. It's a reconception of the umpiring situation

in such a way that it embraces the human element and makes it part of the game itself rather than an imperfection. Here it is. Instead of MLB assigning crews to games, home teams would be responsible for providing the umpiring crew for each contest. Would that be a conflict of interest? Of course! There would be instances of home team bias if that's what the umpires were being paid to do. It could add a bit more of a home field advantage and some intrigue to matchups where the away team is literally playing against both the other team and the umps who are in fact being paid by the home team. So what's stopping a home team

from just calling everything a strike and ruining the game? Punishments. Not like corporeal but other kinds of punishments, I believe. Now that we have the ability to rate umpires statistically, from simple bad call ratios to performances in high leverage situations that can tell with reasonable accuracy how much an umpire's call affected the game, there could be incentives slash punishments for how much your umpiring crews over a season affected gameplay. The team whose umpires gave them the largest increase in expected wins based on whatever variety of factors

one chooses, favoring the home team, bad call ratio, bad calls in high leverage situations, et cetera, might lose their first round draft pick, not be able to sign international free agents for a year, face an extreme luxury tax bill and so on. Anything deemed unforgivably egregious and blatant, like calling anything within a foot of the plate a strike in a must-win game,

could lead to more serious punishments, such as a postseason ban. On the other hand, teams whose umpires cost them the most might gain supplemental picks in the draft. Likewise, the team that is most frequently on the receiving end of bad calls as a visitor might gain supplemental picks too. And the umpires themselves could have an incentive once the playoffs roll around and home teams no longer provide their own crews, the most accurate umpires for that season would be selected for playoff games. And Andrew concludes,

it could add some intrigue to the season where umpire performance has a long-term effect beyond each individual game. Fans of tanking teams would be delighted each time their player is called out on a pitch five inches off the plate. Fans in the playoff chase would be weighing their desire for the home cooked calls, but not in such a blatant way

that they end up facing consequences. And it would create some wonderful narratives about which teams are most blatant. Want Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals, and Dodgers giants to be even more heated? Add in the fact that the home plate ump is on the home team's payroll. No longer have to worry about robot umps since human error becomes a part of the season as it unfolds. So we have heard Andrew out. What do we think of his proposal? Carson, do you want to start or shall we? I guess I could maybe start my because my mind was starting to think of the ways in which I could

game the system. Yeah. And if I'm a tanking team, why would I I would actually be incentivized to team, why would I, I would actually be incentivized to just find any guy off the street. Like if the Washington Nationals, for example, weren't prohibited from picking within the top 10 next year, they could come across the street, say, Hey, Carson, do you just want to be close to the game the way you are with your card signing? Why don't you come umpire this game for us and make sure that we lose and that the other team wins? And at that point I have no incentive as a human umpire to face the consequences of the Playoff implication and the nationals do not face any implication if anything they benefit from the fact that they have worse calls against them

that they have worse calls against them because they aren't receiving my favoritism because I'm calling anything that's close to the strike zone a ball. Okay. Yeah. Meg, what do you think? I think that the biggest problem with it is that it too greatly distances the potential consequence or benefit of a good or bad zone from the game itself, right? Because if you're a contending team, if you're really any kind of team, you still want to win for the most part.

Even tanking teams aren't interested in really, really throwing it. But the consequence of having UMPs who are particularly bad or the benefit of having ones that are particularly good doesn't accrue to you for, you know, months or even years, depending on how you think about draft-fit compensation in this case. And then what do you do in the interim? You just got jobbed in a game in a way that's going to be a problem. We accept, particularly you and I, Ben, accept a certain amount of human error when it comes to umpiring because we think of the strike zone probabilistically, we like pitch framing, all of these reasons we've laid out over the years. But I think overarching that tolerance is an understanding, which I don't think is us

just rooting for catchers to be able to keep framing that, you know, you have a lot of chances in an individual game. You have a ton of chances over the course of a season and things tend to balance out between, you know, calls that are favorable to hitters and calls that are favorable to pitchers. And you don't, you don't even have to wait the whole season to see that balance out. You're getting that benefit and that sort of check on the impact of terrible calls almost right away. So I think that when you're thinking about incentives in the sport, part of what you want to do is make sure that you're lining up the timeline of that incentive in an appropriate way with

like the consequence of the thing. If you throw a fastball at somebody's head, you're not going to wait until the end of the year to find out what your suspension is. You want there to be a consequence for that right away to disincentivize the behavior in the future. And I think that this pushes out the timeline too far between the quality of the call and the potential reward or punishment for getting it wrong or getting it right. You want it to be more immediate than that.

And then there's like the gaming of it, which is like, hey, we just want to watch some baseball though. You don't need to be doing your little games. Play your big game, not this little game, you know? Yeah, the thing that I like about it, or one of the things is that I do like home field advantages and I do like quirks of different environments and ballparks.

And so I like the idea that you'd be sort of in hostile territory going into another team's park. If anything, I wish that home field advantage were bigger than it is in baseball because in basketball, for example, home field advantage is quite significant in the playoffs and in the NFL, it's quite significant. And in MLB and hockey, it's just, it's so random that there's almost nothing to it. And of course it's just sort of the standard 54% ish home team winning percentage over time during the regular season. And so I do like variety and I like different strategic considerations and one team reaching

a different conclusion than another team would reach. And so all of those things I like, but yeah, the actual implementation of this, as I was reading the question, I kept thinking that I would want these wrongs to be righted. And then I was immediately, my mind was going to like, well, they should like get an extra strike now or something. And now it's like, well, now we're overcomplicating everything because why are we debiting value and then crediting back? It just, it seems very convoluted. Why go to those lengths?

And I guess that's why Andrew is saying that it would be more of a delayed recompense that you would get payback later. But then, yeah, that is kind of unsatisfying because you would have lost the game by the time you get your supplemental pick the next year. And not to mention, it's sort of implicit within the structure of incentives and disincentives that is being laid out here is an understanding

that the zone should be called correctly, right? The reason that it's bad that you have a wonky zone is because it's not fair and you're trying to disincentivize that. But then if you're in that business, just have the umpires be third parties that aren't employed by the teams and are instead employees of the league with their own union or representation. And that you're just like, just do it directly. You don't have to do this rigmarole where like seven months from now you're like, by the way, great zone, you get a draft pick. And also like the population of umpires themselves, this would be a very strange profession to

suddenly be trying to like work in because what are you've been taught your whole career like call a fair zone call a zone that is consistent call a zone that is you know in compliance with the rulebook understanding of the zone and now you're going to be told to call a wonky zone but hey by the way the team might end up getting extra draft picks or losing draft picks later, depending on what you do. Like, what do you, how do you make sense of that? What are the ethical guidelines of being an umpire in that instance? Right? Like, what, what are you meant to do? Yeah.

Yeah. And in my situation, you know, I should have asked first to make sure, are we sticking to the umpires union because that clarifying if this is an actual umpire or if you have liberty to select whoever you want. But I also, to Meg's point, I feel like it can be gamified, the incentives though also could change throughout the year, right? Like if I went into the off season and we played and we accrued all of this good umpiring

throughout the beginning of the year. Now we're entering the playoff push and I'm looking at the stats, the robo zone scores, and I say I've accrued all of this. So now I have a buffer. And now, like in September, while they all matter the same mathematically, they do tend to mean a little bit more in those those find that final month. Now I have the ability to accrued that cache of goodwill. Now I can spend it on on having bad umpires and a rigged game for my team to secure those necessary wins.

Yeah, one thing that came to my mind immediately, we've talked in the past on the show about the institution of the e-bug, the emergency backup goaltender in the NHL, which is like, you have to have a designated emergency goalie around just in case the real professional goalies all get hurt. And every now and then it happens. And we've talked about this because I think we've gotten questions about, could you do this for pitchers or something instead of position player pitchers or emergency catchers or something like that. But I was looking up the rules for the emergency backup goaltender and they cannot be paid team employees because they could be called upon to face the home team if needed by the visiting team. And so, yes,

there would be an obvious conflict of interest there. And in this case, we're talking they're actually on the payroll. And I think if Richard Hirschberger or one of our other historian experts were here, I think this might actually be more or less the way umpiring worked originally, actually be more or less the way umpiring worked originally, back when umpiring first became professionalized. I'm looking at a history of umpiring by one Larry Gerlach. And I'll just read you one paragraph here. The nationwide popularity of the game after the Civil War led to the professionalization of baseball

and in turn to professional umpires. In 1871, the newly formed National Association of Professional Baseball Players continued the tradition of unpaid volunteers by allowing the home team to choose the umpire from a list of five names submitted by the visiting club, but gave the arbiter greater authority by limiting appeals to decisions involving

rules interpretation, not judgment. In 1878, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, organized two years earlier, that's the NL, instructed home teams to pay umpires $5 per game. So the home teams were paying the umps, at least briefly there. And in 1879, NL President William A. Holbert appointed baseball's first umpire staff, a group of 20 men from which teams could choose an arbiter. The approved list and compensation did not free the umpires from the Homer syndrome, ruling in favor

of the home team as a civic gesture or suspicion of collusion with gamblers. Indeed, in 1882 Richard Hyam of Troy, New York, former manager and NL player, was banished from the league for advising gamblers how to bet on games he umpired, thus earning the infamous distinction of being the only umpire ever judged guilty of dishonesty on the field. So yeah, for a little while there, it was a bit of a wild west. And there was the American Association, which pioneered the creation that same year, I think, 82, 1882, the creation of an umpiring staff that was hired, paid, and assigned to games by the league itself.

So it took until 1882, and the first major league by some people's definitions was 1871. So there was about a decade in there where there was a lot of Homer umpiring going on and home teams paying umpires. So Andrew is essentially suggesting that we go back to the reconstruction era when it comes to umpiring.

I guess that's what he's advocating here. Just go back to the roots, go back to the beginning. We've lost our way as a sport and they had it right originally. One blind spot I had there was the MGMification of baseball and the implications that that could have. I would fear to see the outcome of that. Yeah, I always feared the outcome of that. My fears are usually justified. I like certain elements of this,

but I think and gosh, it would be so disorienting for players imagine, because even now players complain about minute variations among umpires when it comes to zones, for instance. And in this situation, if you'd be going from extreme to extreme and super biased umps and ones who were actually playing it straight, like it would probably impair your performance in that sense too, because you just have a hard time developing a sense of the strike zone, cause you'd never know what it was from day to day more so than is actually in evidence today or even before Quest Tech and PitchFX and everything, there'd be even more variation.

Unless you think that ultimately teams would converge in their strategy. But I think you're probably right, Carson, that there would just be different incentives and different competitive considerations and different teams would reach different conclusions and maybe even the same team at different points in the season would.

So yeah, I think you need just a better way to balance the scales more quickly. And maybe it's just that you actually have the umpires be good at umpiring and not biased. And maybe we've come up with the solution to this problem that we have created in this hypothetical. But one of the benefits could be we no longer would likely see the strike zone on the screen of on television when watching games because it's subject to the umpire of that day. Though we could just get rid of those. Yeah, I guess we're getting rid of those anyway, maybe with the challenge system.

So, but okay. Have we considered all the implications? We never consider all the implications. I think that's hopefully why it's fun as a listener, that, I mean, you could tell us, you are one, Carson, but whether, is it good when we fail to consider something? It's good because we can percolate on the ideas and the things that make the words left unsaid,

which is why I like the sponsor name. It's like the what if, you know, it draws the mind in. It's like, what if? Yeah, cause I think some people think it's frustrating when they're thinking of something and the hosts that they're listening to are not thinking of that thing and they have no way to communicate with the people who are coming up empty. But then other people, I think, Will Leach has said that he quite enjoys that.

And it becomes almost more participatory because you feel like you're adding something to the conversation, even if you're not quite party to it, unless you support us at the Mike Trout tier, and then you can be. But yeah, I could imagine it going either way, because if we were just infallible, and we considered every single implication, maybe people would be impressed by that. And I guess we have to have some minimum baseline of knowing what we're talking about, or why would anyone listen to us? But if we never left anything unsaid, which it seems like we probably wouldn't given how much we podcast, but somehow sometimes we don't.

And then that creates an opening for listener interaction. Because- Yeah, I was going to say, that's why we get emails. Right, exactly. People correct us, they supplement the things we said, and then it does become a conversation, and then we can say what they said, and they can respond to what we said they said,

and that's what we enjoy. One of the things I enjoy about the podcast is the long form version of it, and how deep you guys do go, but if you had no cap on where you stopped, the length of your podcasts would be extremely long to cover all of the topics. Oh, yeah. I often think about that because, you know, we podcast a lot, but we barely scratch the surface of what is happening in baseball because, of course, every team has

its own dedicated podcasts, right? They go incredibly deep and they talk about every single game that happens. And we don't do that, we just dip in and out and still we have so much to talk about. But we're barely even getting to what is actually happening on the field because there's so much happening that who could ever keep up. So it seems like we're attempting to be kind of comprehensive in a way, but we know that we could never even just a small fraction of, of what we could potentially talk about on this podcast. That's a frightening thought probably for some people hearing me

express that, but that's including your co-host. Yes, I can imagine. I simply have to do other things sometimes, Ben. Not always, but sometimes. I have a strike zone-related thought that is pretty far removed from the question, but can I run something by the two of you? Sure.

So, Harrison, I don't know if this is true of Nationals games. Do they do the K-zone on their broadcasts? Do they have a K-zone that they show? I believe they do the K-Zone on their broadcasts? Do they have a K-Zone that they show? I believe they do. It's on this nascent network that really is difficult to watch. And so most of the time now I just either watch games in person or listen on the radio while watching the beginning.

Do you happen to know if that zone overlay is sponsored? Is it like called a particular thing in relation to a sponsor? I do not know that. Okay, well, it's not terribly important to the question, but so the Mariners have a strike zone sponsor, and they don't have the zone up all the time. They show it like, they generally show it

when there are like controversial calls or borderline calls, when the crowd gets particularly loud and the booth either wants to egg them on from home or say, no, no, I will clip this all, got it on the edge. This is the thing. When they show it, they say, let's take a look at the EQC Tracer. EQC is the sponsor. For those of you who aren't from the Northwest, EQC stands for Emerald Queen Casino,

which is one of the tribal casinos in the state of Washington. We don't have sports betting like DraftKings and whatnot in the state of Washington, because you have to go to one of the tribal casinos to do that, which is good from a revenue perspective for them and also for my sanity when I go home. But I had the thought the other day, you know, some of these zones are called like, I don't

know, Jim Kazoo's strike zone hour or whatever. Like they have completely ridiculous names that are mostly about getting the sponsor's name out there as much as possible. And I think generally teams try to like hone in on things that are known for reliability or accuracy or precision, right? Like, I don't know, pick a thing, but I, I am here to submit the following. I have not had quite the same level of disdain for the strike zone overlay as like say Craig Goldstein, friend of the pod who hates it.

And I don't like it either. And I think it incentivizes all kinds of grousing and bad behavior on the part of fans. But I haven't really had a ton of trouble with the accuracy of it, which I think, especially as it pertains to the national broadcast, is one of Craig's issues. And sorry, Craig, if I am wrong, sound off in the comments. I think that part of the reason is that EQC sounds scientific. It sounds like a missile guidance system. Don't give any Washington government contractors any ideas, Meg, please. It's about a casino. It is a place that is creating the illusion in you that you are going to win money from

the house even though on balance the house is going to win. But it sounds official, right? It sounds like it's a scientific something or other. So anyway, this is an insight that I had and I guess my question to the two of you is, am I crazy? Is that indicative of a failure of thinking on my part? Does it sound official to you, EQ am I crazy? You know, like, is that indicative of a failure of thinking on my part? Does it sound official to you? EQC Tracer? Does it sound like it? It reminds me more of QVC, I think. That was what came to my mind first, but I see what

you're saying. Okay. Well, then maybe it's just a Meg thing. No, I didn't get QVC. I agree with Meg. It's an acronym with the letter Q. It feels like that's a strong letter. It just kind of, I don't know why. Controversial letter these days. Oh, yes. But yeah, it sounds official. It has a, anyway, this isn't important, but it's just a thought that's been knocking

around my noggin because I'm like, why am I less bothered by this than Craig? And often the answer is just like, Craig is easily bothered. But I wondered if there was something more to it than that, you know? No, I could see that, Meg. It's like if they did one here in the Nationals and it's like the Lockheed Martin of that, like I'm thinking, or like the Raytheon, I'm thinking, oh, this must be very scientific. And EQR does, like if you told me, hey, that building is leased by EQR, I would think, oh, okay, what government consulting do they do? Sounds official.

Yeah. I don't know. EQC, I guess they left out- Oh, EQC, yeah, I apologize. Yeah. Well, I mean, why would you have the acronyms of local casinos across the country from you committed to memory? There's no reason. I guess they looked out that it wasn't the Boeing strike zone, because that would not inspire similar confidence. Anyway, moving on, what's our next email? Well, it's funny. I was just saying how sometimes people will write in to point out things

that we did not consider. And in response to our first, our inaugural, what if of the week last week, we got some people who wrote in to point out that there probably were sports betting implications that we didn't consider about what if you only had to pay if the home team won and if the home team loses, then you get to go home for free, you don't have to pay. And a few people wrote in.

I think this didn't really come up in our conversation because our minds are pure and innocent. Yeah, it's just like the driven snow. It doesn't even occur to us to think about sports betting implications. But Adam wrote in to say, I thought it was funny that the first hypothetical in your very specifically not sports betting sponsored

segment is both a form of gambling and would almost certainly result in a huge increase in sports betting. My initial thought was that teams would want to place huge mattress Mac style bets on their own team to lose as a hedge against needing to refund the tickets. But that would of course be a huge conflict of interest. Instead, I would expect every team to place a bet

on the home team to win in order to control their costs. If you bought a $50 ticket to an evenly matched game, you could place a $25 bet on the home team to win. Win or lose, you walk away having only spent $25. Of course not every game is evenly matched, so we would likely end up with really weird demand based on how good the road team is and who the expected starters are. But yeah, we got a few emails to that effect that there would be some sort of arbitrage opportunities here or financial hedge. That's, you know, I'm thinking,

I don't sports gamble. I don't appreciate that I have to walk by at that MGM every day on my way home walking past the stadium. But I did go to Vegas for a bachelor party one time, and my only hedge, that bet that I made, was just bet against the Ole Miss Rebels in football because they let me down. And it's the emotional, the idea of, okay, well, if I lose, if we lose, I'm upset, but I still get money.

And I could see fans just kind of goal-seeking to whatever the odds are, what the payout would be for the, I guess they would bet for their team to win the amount that the ticket would cost. And so each time you go, you are essentially you wouldn't, if the team wins, you would make the ticket cost in the bet. Yeah. We have some smart listeners. We're talking to one right now, but we got another question or response along those lines from Mulder Batflip, who looked at this from more of a financial perspective, and maybe Meg would speak this language better than I do. But some people in the Discord comped the pricing scheme of getting a refund for a loss

and paying more for a win to sports gambling, but I see it as a different kind of gambling financial derivatives. Yeah. Yeah. What the hypothetical describes is not dissimilar from a futures contract. And were this scheme to be implemented and baseball survive its implementation, it would usher in a new era of financialization for baseball. Oh, that sounds beautiful. The secondary market for tickets would see tickets selling for an ever changing price

based on the market's view of the likelihood of payout. You could even see pods in multi-strategy hedge funds that use, say, underpriced diamond backs tickets as a hedge to diversify their risk portfolios. To be clear, this would be bad for baseball, but it is fun to think about. Well, your mileage may vary on the latter part, but I agree on the former. Would we get a movie, a baseball movie that included Margot Robbie explaining the ticket scheme in a bathtub?

Because then that might be good for baseball in like a, not a lasting way, but briefly would raise the profile. People love to, sometimes people will bring that clip Not in a lasting way, but you know, briefly would raise the profile. People, people love to, sometimes people will bring that clip into things and I'm like, I don't think you're actually trying to explain short selling. I think you want to just look at Marco Robbie. The most dynamic of pricing.

Okay. Here's a question from Matt. A friend and I were tossing this question back and forth the other day and now they have batted it to us. If you could have access to one Statcast stat in an effort to discover the true talent level of Babe Ruth compared to today's players, what would it be? Swing speed comes to mind as something that is fully independent of external factors, but I'm not sure how revealing it would be without further context. Obviously no one size fits all answer, but which would be the most

insightful without any other information? So we want to gauge how Babe Ruth compares to today's players, and we can have one Statcast stat. What would be the most telling? I mean I feel like there are a couple that would tell you something that would offer some interesting insight. Like, you could look at EV 90, right? So rather than looking at his average exit velocity, you could look at his top end exit velocities. I'd be curious to see how hard he's hitting the ball.

That's not the only way you could gauge that, but that's one that jumps out to me, I guess. Pass feed. Could you argue though that EV is somewhat influenced, ball come fast and ball go fast out, and because they were likely throwing slower that the EV might not be, and not that I know the answer, I'm just trying to think hypothetically

what would be the best number to know. Right. I guess in this scenario, I don't know if it's like a, we have the babe in a combine sort of situation or... Love the idea of the babe in the combine. Get the babe in athletic testing. That's my answer. I want to see him doing the 40, you know?

Running the 40 in those like spandex shorts. The last couple of combines, the way that they have set up, sorry to interrupt you Ben, but they have like, they do it at Chase Fields every year and they have on the suite level, they have like one side of the suite level devoted to media outlets so that you can like do interviews with guys who are at the combine. And then the other side is like the, and each team gets a suite. Last year, especially, our suite was overlooking the athletic testing area so we could see the guys doing the 40 and jump in and stretch in and all this.

I want to see the babe do that. Bring him forth and make him run in a straight line. I would like to, I might be the most telling, honestly. Like, gauge this man as an athlete before you ever see what he does with a bat in his hand. Yeah, the great Kam Bambino. Kam Bambino! Ben, that's very good. Oh, I like that very much. Combambino!

Oh, I'm gonna make sure Bauman uses that in some of his Combine cover. Combambino's fantastic! I'm so jealous of that. Oh my god. The young babe was slim and lithe. And, you know, he gets a

rap as the older babe. Yeah, when he was full of venereal disease and boosts. Hot dogs and beer and yeah, all the rest. But you know, he like he lit his wife on fire and then that's a callback to a mean joke. Yes. But I think yeah, I mean, you could get something out of just pure sprint speed, I suppose. But he's not known for his speed exactly. I mean, as a young guy, he had some, but it's, it would give you some sense of

overall athleticism, I suppose, but that's not the only testing they do. They like, yeah, measuring, they stretch, they do all their stuff, you know? Yeah. It seems like you would want something related to swinging and hitting when you're talking about Babe Ruth. Maybe that's misleading, but it's tough because the same complication that always arises

in these questions about measuring the true talent of players from earlier eras is like, do you give them time to train? Does he get to use his regular giant bat? And so his swing speed would be slower and that would affect his exit speed. Like I guess he would just give him a modern bat and see what he could do with it.

It would be new to him and it would probably feel light as a feather. And swing speed alone is tough because I don't even always know what that means with a contemporary player because it's just, it depends on your size and where you hit the ball and what kind of hitter you are. And it's not like higher is always better

and there's a direct relationship there. So I'd say probably not that, even though it seems like that would be a good one because it doesn't depend on the pitcher throwing or the condition of the ball or anything. It's just how hard you can whip the bat around. So, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's something to that. But I just, and you're not using a dead ball, presumably,

so that's going to affect the exit speeds. You want to compare to... Use a dead ball, but give him an aluminum bat. Now I just want to, now I just, I have so many ideas. We're changing all sorts of variables here. Now this is not going to be very scientific. Do that and have Showalter talking about his body composition on TV. Give it to me, Campambino.

I'm furious I had thought of that. I am so mad. So full disclosure, I think when you've, my wife sent me something the other day. It's when you turn 33, you stopped listening to new music or something along those lines. And I think I turned 33 this past year and I don't know what it was, but baseball stats, I think I just haven't been able to get into the statcast data. I think it was like I learned the walk rate, K minus BB had all of that. So I haven't been fully into the statcast.

So I just Google or DuckDuckGo searched statcast stats and pulled it up just to see, hey, maybe could that percolate an idea. And it's sorted by barrels per plate appearance. And which seems like a good hitter statistic in my mind because I look at the top five and it includes Aaron Judge, O'Neill Cruz, Fernando Tatis and like, oh, that's great. And also Jorge Polanco. So yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Jorge Polanco. We are respecting Jorge Polanco pod now. Yeah. Not always trueanco pod now. Not always true. True now. So I don't know if that's the right statistic, but given that they're all having excellent years, Jorge Polanco included, I think that that might be the stat that I would choose

just by default based on my naivete. Yeah, I guess I'd probably lean towards Meg's initial inclination, which was some sort of exit speed, high percentile, EV-90, whatever it is. So Max can be a little misleading sometimes. So you want to look at a certain percentile there. And that would let you know, okay, is he swinging with Stantonian power here? And again, there would be complications and did we just transport him here and he's never seen modern pitching and would he even make contact to begin with when you're throwing him sliders when he faces Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam,

in the hypothetical where, you know, I had to think about that for a second. Said that he could strike out Babe Ruth. Adivino facing the Cumbambino. Yeah. The Giambino was a John Sterlingism. Giambino. Yeah. But yeah, I think something like that probably just to get a sense of the strength. But yeah, you just, I don't know, that would be like if you plopped him down with no preparation though. And then what does that even tell you? I guess that tells you something. You just, I don't know, that would be like if you plopped him down with no preparation though,

and then what does that even tell you? I guess that tells you something. If you're trying to measure not his potential, but just the difference in the caliber of play from one era to the next, then you would want that to be sort of a pure experiment. You wouldn't want him to train. So yeah, maybe something like that, I guess well probably be the best and to your point Ben It would matter when in time you were bringing Babe Ruth forward to our combine We're like, this is what we're using time travel for Yeah, I think we would get emails about that and people would be like surely there are other things that would have a bigger impact On the world and it's like no I need

an excuse to say call them be, as many times as I can. So good Friday show. I don't know, it would be so fascinating. He's far enough back in time. But clearly, I'm not here to like offer a take like Babe Ruth was a bad baseball player. That's divorced from reality. But I remember when we were in the context of the reality. But I remember when we were in the context of the Willie Mays documentary, maybe we were talking about how like, you know, you look at him in his heyday and you're like, you could, you could take that guy and just bring him forward in time. And at least from an athleticism and conditioning perspective, like he'd have to adjust to the modern game. sure, but just in terms of him as a physical athlete, fit right in, right?

No doubt. Looks amazing. Looks like the guys sitting in the clubhouse today, or at least some of them. And with the babe, it was far enough back in time that things were different and you couldn't say that about him, at least at certain points in his career. And so this is part of why I would be keen to dig in on the physical side of things, just to be like, okay, so if we take this guy, how divorced from a modern-day athlete is he even. And then, yeah, seeing him as he is on unaltered and just be like, stand in the box, buddy. Let's see what you got. Like you could have college pictures

be the ones that threw to him. That would probably make it. And it wouldn't tell you about the amazing part, but like as a warm up, you know, it's like get used to college speed and then come back in a month. And, and let's see what you could do. Although he wouldn't return because he would just be like, the modern world is fascinating and then he'd go confused on Tik Tok or something. You know what? I'm, I'm pivoting here. You're talking about pitching actually made me realize I have an epiphany.

Yeah, I want him to pitch. Yeah. Because the, yeah, we were, I was primed by the question to think about swinging and, and that is the first thing that comes to your mind with Babe Ruth, but hitting is this reactive activity and pitching not in the same way. And really, if you wanted to know what the caliber of play in a league was, I think say average fastball speed would be a pretty decent proxy for that if you just had one number.

I think that would be pretty good, right? Like that would be telling, even now, comparing different levels of professional baseball and indie ball and amateur ball, et cetera. So I think that if you took Babe Ruth, and let's say that he's in his prime or close to his prime as a pitcher at this point and he was one of the best pitchers in baseball, then if we just knew how hard

he threw that alone, I think that it sounds simple, but because he's a two way player and we could take advantage of this, I think that would be the most telling thing. And then we would know what kind of pitching he was facing as a hitter and that would tell us a lot. So if I only get one data point, yeah, I wouldn't even need to know pitch types and pitch movement and all of that. Just tell me how hard did Babe Ruth throw when he was at the top of his game as a pitcher. And I think that would answer a lot of questions. Glad I got there because we would have gotten some emails about that.

Oh yeah, we would have gotten some emails about that. We love the emails. To be clear. Yeah, I just, I feel bad about the emails where we overlook something obvious. Right. And then it's a Friday show and we're not going to record until Tuesday or something. And I can't correct the record until then, you know, 90 identical emails. Yes, exactly.

Or I could wait, but I can't because I'm not wired that way. Okay, last question. This comes from listener, Patreon supporter, Adam, who says, I knew Matt Olson played every game last season and that he seemingly never takes a day off. I was surprised to see that he hasn't missed a game since 2021, putting him well above other active players for consecutive games played and the longest since Miguel

Tejada's ended in 2000. I thought that was going to change this year with Atlanta maybe after all the injury issues that they, I don't know whether the usage patterns have and obviously they've had other injuries that maybe has kind of compromised their ability to give players days off. But I kind of thought maybe Snitker would say, okay, I'll, I'll take the foot off the pedal here a little bit because yeah, maybe it backfired. Maybe it contributed to that injury stack. Maybe these guys are getting a little older, harder to do that. Okay. But Adam says that's not exactly the point of my message. I noticed an interesting tidbit in the consecutive games rule by the MLB rule 10.23c defining consecutive game streaks. A consecutive game playing streak shall be extended if the player plays one half inning on defense or if he completes

a time at bat by reaching base or being put out. I, I like being put out as if, yeah, that's like you're sulking or something. Like I'm put out about this. This is, I'm in a foul mood. A pinch running appearance only shall not extend the streak. If a player is ejected from a game by an umpire before he can comply with the requirements of this rule, his streak shall continue.

It's that last sentence I find interesting. It seems to me that a player can extend the streak simply by being added to the game, even as a pinch runner, and then immediately getting ejected. Now the ejection will have to be carefully executed as to not come with a suspension, because then that would interrupt your consecutive games played streak, I suppose.

I don't know why MLB went through the effort of carefully defining how much a player has to play to get credit for actually participating in a game, just to say, but if you get ejected, it's fine. You can keep your streak, especially considering an ejection is a result of the player's bad behavior and would have been avoidable. Will

this ever actually come up? Probably not, but how can you not be pedantic about baseball? So, yeah, they do define exactly what constitutes playing in a game, appearing in a game for the purposes of a streak, which you would need to do because that would inevitably come up. But then it is kind of a get you out of the end of a streak free card. If you can just get yourself ejected without being suspended, then you could take the rest of the day off and it will not end your streak. So it does seem like there's potentially an opportunity there. But then the question is, how can you reliably get yourself ejected and not risk suspension?

You got to like do the tap, tap, tap hat thing, but like every time, even when it goes, it goes in your favor, even, even when it's called, you just are like, no, no, we're going to tap, tap, tap. And then eventually the home plate number would be like, you got to get out of here. You're too annoying, you know, maybe that. And tap, tap, tap. It's like what happened to Jung-Hoo Lee before they straightened out that that was just a mannerism that he has and he didn't mean anything by it. But yeah, I think that might even be too risky, I think, because I could see an umpire getting miffed enough by being shown up or believing

that they were getting shown up, that they might punish you more harshly. Usually, what percentage of objections are accompanied by a suspension? Probably pretty low, right? Because- And it's not the umpire that levels the suspension, it's the league. True. Yeah. I feel like the league at some point, like the way the NBA has, once you reach a certain level of number of technical fouls, you receive a suspension. And I could see the league one going in that way. Or I could also see an umpire who, you know, luckily we have great umpires and they who love the game and they could see you making a mockery of the game. And, you know, you've done this the past three games and it's on a four game home stand.

And on Sunday, they just say, you know what? You're rejected before you even get a chance to be entered in as a pinch runner. And then thus disqualifying you from your consecutive game streak. I guess the umpire plays a part in the sense that they file a report. So maybe they could color the league's response

if they dress it up a little bit, or if they request or advocate for a certain punishment, maybe that would sway an official. And they could kind of bait you into doing something that will get you suspended, because often what will get you suspended is making contacts with the umpire and it can be almost incidental contact sometimes.

Yeah, quite fleeting. Yeah, and almost mutual. It's like they're getting up in your face and kind of, yeah, it's hard to avoid bumping chest protector or something. So not touching, can't get mad. If you did that to an umpire, they'd probably kick you out. They'd probably be like, get that little sibling stuff out of here. Yeah.

So I think you'd be okay. As long as you didn't make contact with the ump and you didn't say something reprehensible, if you're just saying the magic words, questioning their calls, you're not going to get suspended for that unless you're doing this regularly You're not going to get suspended for that unless you're doing this regularly to the point where they discover that it's a scheme and that you're trying to exploit this loophole to extend your streak or not end it at least and get the day off. And if that happens, then maybe they would make an example of you because you're making a mockery of the game.

But I think you could get away with it once. Could they could they make an example of you by not ejecting? Oh, yeah, I guess that'd be maybe an even more fitting punishment. You are forced to play this game through to fruition and your consecutive game streak will be broken as a result. Yeah, you'd have to have like the opposite of the heave-ho gesture. It'd be just like, stay there. Yeah, that would be the best response.

I'm not going to get baited into ejecting you. But okay, so how, remind me again. So how much do you have to appear for it to count as a game in a consecutive? Okay, a consecutive game playing streak shall be extended if the player plays one half inning on defense or if he completes a time at bat by reaching base or being put out a pinch running appearance only shall not extend the streak. So I guess, yeah, anything other than that. So, wouldn't the way to do it that would guarantee you would have to play a little, but you have to play a little, right? You have to play a little.

So wouldn't the way to do it be to just fake an injury? You could pinch run, I guess. You can pinch run and that shall not extend the streak. But if you pinch run and then get ejected, because it says if a player is ejected from a game before he can comply with the requirements of this rule. So I think that's what Adam's saying. Like it doesn't extend it if you pinch run,

but if you get ejected before you even have an opportunity to play, then it counts. Your streak shall continue. And so thus you could pinch run and immediately get yourself ejected. And in theory that should still count. But wouldn't the more straightforward way then be to like, cause in this scenario, you probably have some sort of understanding with your team that you're going to do this, right?

Yeah, probably. And if you're pinch running, you're taking that bat out of the lineup, whoever you're running for. So wouldn't it make better sense for you to play a half inning in the field, get your streak credit, and then say, ah, my ankle, and then you've gotten what you need and they can have whoever you would have been pinch running for come in and pinch hit for you, and then play the rest of the game. Isn't that the more, isn't that the better way to do it? Yeah.

I think you field in the bottom or top of the first, whichever it is, and then at which point then, you can just be polled after that, half-ending or at bat with the ideal replacement. And you probably don't even have to fake an injury because you've just satisfied the requirement. Well, if you have a legitimate injury, then you might want to do Adam's trick

because you wouldn't even want to play a half inning in the field if it's something that- Yeah, put you on left. Yeah, I guess it's probably okay. But if you truly are immobile and you don't want to aggravate some injury, and Cal Ripken Jr. had some instances like this where he was nursing some injury and anyone else

would have taken the day off or taken a lot of days off. And he didn't, he played through lots of injuries and maybe that was not great for his performance and also the team. But, uh, that's a separate conversation. But yeah, if you were incapable of playing in the field and you thought, well, that's it, I'm done for, my streak is up, then maybe Adams, you could just, they could carry you out to first base

and you could say something rude to the umpire and then you could get immediately ejected and then they could carry you back to the dugout and you would have fulfilled your obligation as Carson Sissley would say. The poor umpire is like, why am I being told to go, excuse me, I swear, go f**k myself, I'm just standing here, like what on earth?

But at that point too, you're taking up one of the active 25, is it 25, 26 man roster spots, right? And you're doing disservice to your team. Would they want to carry you out there at that point? If you're putting, you know, you're shortening the bench. Yeah, I mean, if you are like, if you're gonna go on the IL, like if you have like an IL worthy injury,

then they're probably gonna be like, hey, so your streak is nice, but we gotta, but it wouldn wouldn't, I don't know that would we consider that an interrupted streak? Like if you went on the injured list, is it interrupted? Cause you're, it, once you come back, you're playing in your game. Yeah. I think that's still, that still snaps your streak, right? Cause it's gotta be you playing all the team games. Otherwise, Howard Conjr would have been like, oh, you could have taken all the time you wanted.

Yeah, right. Yeah, so I think that wouldn't work. But yeah, I think your team would probably not want to prioritize the streak over the team's performance unless you are the face of the franchise, like Cal Ripken Jr. and the streak takes on a life of its own and becomes a draw

and sells tickets, then it might actually be worth extending it as I guess Cal and the Orioles decided that it was, even if it hurts you on any given game, it might be better for the franchise or ultimately better for baseball because you get a nice memorable moment when he actually sets the record. So it could create really enjoyable vibes at the ballpark. You know, it's like when the walk on the teams up by so much or they're down by so much. And so like the walk on gets to come in and play and the crowd gets engaged. I could see that.

Yeah. Okay. Well, this has been a pleasure for us, Carson, hopefully for you. Is there anything that you would care to plug or a cause or a place people can find you or anything else? A plug. I just read an amazing baseball book that I think everyone really should read. I thought it was really great called Home Stand by Will Bardenwerper. And it's on what he does is he goes and spends a summer in a city where they were subject to the minor league contraction. And he just goes through the implications on the people in the community and what the impact is.

And I thought it was really great and really good for us as we all review and see the further and further and further corporatization of the game that we love and it feels a little bit more sterile every year. So there's that piece and then the other one, if there's any Nationals fans listening, I assume you do not, but please stop booing Bryce Harper when he comes back to Nationals Park. Like it's just old. It's tired. If we want to do something fun, when he strikes out, we put a Got Milk

Up thing on the Jumbotron, something like that. Don't boo him. Just imply that he's going to get a debilitating foodborne illness. Yeah. Some Phillies fans got upset with me because, you know, I won't boo, but when Bryce had a home run and they're all celebrating and they're around my section and you know, I just pointed at my ring and I said, where's your ring, Bryce? You know, like you can have more fun with it, but we don't need to boo, right? Like, so that just kind of gets on my nerves a little bit. And I think we can all just move on. He did what was best for him and his family.

Yeah, I don't speak for Nationals fans the way that you do, or at least you speak for one Nationals fan yourself, but I always think, yeah, at a certain point, let the grudge go. You'll be happier, everyone will be happier. Remember the good times, the fond memories that you have of that guy. I understand it's different circumstances when a player leaves via free agency, as opposed to being shipped out. Like Juan Soto, for instance, of course, Juan Soto had an extension offer,

which in retrospect, I think he made the right call, at least as it comes to the financial amounts involved. But yeah, it's a little bit different if you don't have a choice to leave, if you're Mookie Betts or someone and they just send you out and, you know, I guess in that case, there was also potentially extension conversations, but people don't blame that kind of player for that as much as they do if you actively decide to leave and take the top dollar. But again, that's the way that it works in sports. That's the way that it works in most walks of life, most, most fields, most industries.

The people booing Bryce Harper would almost certainly make the same decision if they were faced with it, or at least if they are faced with the equivalent of that in their fields where someone offers them a big pay bump. Have you passed up potential sizable pay bumps in your history? Consider that before you boo. But yeah, I guess I get it initially, immediately. But especially if then things work out for you

after the guy goes. That's like, you win a World Series without him as you were just saying, like you could taunt him over that if you want, but you kind of have one up on him. So. Yeah, he literally said like, I'm gonna bring a championship back to DC and we did.

So, you know, like we can taunt him over that type of stuff. But look, and to your point, you know, we don't boo Trey Turner. There's a lot of former Nationals in the NL East, and it's really tough to be a Nationals fan and see them come to your home ballpark wearing a different jersey, including Juan Jose Soto Pacheca in a Mets jersey. But we don't boo those guys, and they've made the right decision for themselves, but before that, they were traded.

And, you know, I, unfortunately, I fear the nuance and all of that thinking is a little bit lost and I'm seeing it more and more as in the dialogue and discourse around salaries and the upcoming potential call by the ownership groups for a salary cap. It, you know, it's like, we don't, people don't come to your job and ask you to take less money to not take an alternative. So why should we penalize baseball players when they do what is in their best interest?

Well, thanks again, Carson, for your support and also for keeping us company today. Yeah, my pleasure. It's great to chat with you all. Thank you all so much for the podcast you guys continue to produce and content you continue to write. Much appreciated. All right, great book recommendation by Carson because the book he cited, Homestand, Small Town Baseball

and the Fight for the Soul of America, will, I believe, be featured on Effectively Wild next week. Meg is going on vacation. I'm gonna try to do a book roundup episode. And that was one of the ones on my list, so stay tuned. One more submission for a term for a towering bat flip. Mason says, I'm surprised Bat Blast didn't come to mind as quickly for you as it did me.

Here's today's Bat Blast. Bat Blast, I like it. Also, listener Shane says, harkening back to the discussion of umpire positioning in episode 2314, you both assumed that umpires would become much worse at ball and strike calling following any potential future introduction of ABS due to lack of practice.

I suspect the opposite may be the case. There's certainly a large body of evidence relating to the risks of operator skill degradation when working with increasingly automated systems such as nuclear power plants and aircraft autopilots. And don't get me started on the risks of autonomous driving systems that may rely on human operators in abnormal conditions.

However, there's also a significant literature relating to the benefits of repeated and timely feedback for judgment-related activities. Assuming the umpires maintain their usual position behind the plate, I would propose that umpire perception of the zone may well be improved by the constant feedback, correlating what they see with the ball strike ABS calls.

Just another consideration to throw into the discussion. And here's something else to consider about bidets. Bidets for days. Thanks to the multiple people, including Patreon supporter Peter, who wrote in to explain why the Dodgers would have needed to tear up the cement and remodel the bathroom

to accommodate Roki Sasaki's request for bidets. It's because unlike a home bathroom where I have an outlet next to the toilet, I can just plug it in in a public bathroom or a more public bathroom, you probably would not have outlets next to the toilet and you would not be wired for electricity and be able to just hook up your bidet attachment. And so you'd have to run power in there and uproot your original toilets potentially. Listener Patreon supporter Leslie wrote in to say that Janet Marie Smith, the planning VP of the Dodgers, was on the latest episode of Baseball Tonight, the podcast, and she gives a lot more

details about the bidet installation. She says that the club has already had bidets before the most recent renovation, but they decided to install full Japanese style toilet rooms, which required redoing the ventilation and lighting, as well as the plumbing and electric. So that's why it was a more expensive job, but worth every penny. As is supporting Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash

effectively wild and signing up just like Carson Otter did to make some monthly or yearly donation to help support the podcast, help us stay almost ad free, and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Alex L, Joe Crawford, Charlie Deeks, Andrew Dwayne, and Abbey Noble, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free FanGraphs memberships, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, autograph books, so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fanraphs.com. You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild.

And you can check the show page at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. And also a link for the last time to an outing this coming Sunday, May 4th. If you're listening to this before then, there's still time for you to join me and fellow listeners and other people who worked on the Ella Black podcast series

at Cypress Hill Cemetery on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, one o'clock Eastern. You can come pay your respects to Ella and maybe make some friends along the way. Meet part of that community Carson was talking about. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for today and for this week.

Thanks as always for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Effectively wild, effectively styled, distilled over chilled beats, effectively mild.