Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2326: Mile High, New Low

Episode Date: May 24, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Rockies being so bad that mostly innocuous stories about them now seem like examples of organizational incompetence, a wild loss by a Rockies affiliate, and why recent terrible teams have been so bad, then (36:56) answer listener emails about catchers framing poorly on purpose, penalizing hitters when […]

I'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, bantering bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling giddily, equaling effectively wildly. Hello and welcome to episode 23-26 of Effectively Wild, a FanCrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of FanCrafts and'm joined by Ben Humburger, the ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing better than the Pittsburgh Pirates, though. Congrats to the Pirates on scoring more than four runs in a game for the first time in a month.

They scored five. So they scored the minimum number of runs you can score. That is more than four. And also, they lost the game regardless. But still, they avoided a record setting streak. So you gotta take your wins where they come, even if they come in losses. This is a small, it's maybe the definition

of a moral victory, but one victory nonetheless, you know? What are you gonna do? Well, the Rockies would settle for any sort of victory. It seems to me that people are piling on the Rockies understandably, but all sorts of lull Rockies stories are surfacing here. Obviously the lack of success on the field. That's enough. As we record here on Friday, they're eight and 42.

They still have not won another game since the last time we mentioned the Rockies record, which was I think several episodes and at minimum a couple of days ago. Yeah. So you now have to go back to the 1895 Louisville Colonels to find a worse start to a season. Those Colonels started 7 and 43. So worst 50 game start since 1895. But it's not just that, it's not just the losing. It's everything in the orbit of the losing.

So some of it is actual bad baseball related stories. So top prospect pitching phenom, Chase Doehlender, he's hurt now. He has forearm inflammation, which is never a great sign for a pitcher. So that's bad. But then you also have the stories that just go to show the Rockies incompetence.

Actually, there was one of those, when Doelander was called up, it briefly became a little Rockies dunk on the Rockies story because his call up was spoiled for him. They couldn't even call him up and spring the surprise on him correctly because he got an email from the hotel telling him that his reservation was confirmed or something before the team had told him that he was getting the call. And so they screwed up even telling one of their top prospects, you made the show, he got an email first. There are a couple of failures here that I see because I feel like I don't know anyone

in Rocky's PR, so I'm not trying to be a pill. You could spin that as intentional, right? You could pretend that this was a fun way of letting him know that he had made the show. They could have salvaged it, Ben. Like you could have made the case. Like he gets this email, he's like, oh, what's this about? And then he calls, you know, he calls someone in the org

and they're like, ah, we were trying to figure out how to tell you and we thought we'd, you know what I mean? Like there's a way you can do that. Yes. Yes. And I think some of these stories, it's just because it's the Rockies. Right. We're assuming incompetence.

Exactly. Yeah. And so another one of these, if it had been some other teams taught prospect and that happened, it would have been sort of a silly lighthearted. This is my call up story, huh? It was spoiled, so what, it's still exciting, obviously. And there was one of those maybe this week, Matt Gelb tweeted, an all time moment this morning at Coors Field, Johan Rojas went into the stands, this is Johan Rojas of the Phillies, Matt Gelb covers the Phillies, to make a phone call, security guards wouldn't let Rojas

back onto the field. They did not believe he was a player. Zach Wheeler had to fetch him. And then Matt ended the tweet, Rockies forever. So he was kind of courting that interpretation that this is Rockies. Now this could just as well be a dunk on Johan Rojas that he couldn't convince anyone

that he was a major league player and Phillies fans might be saying, yeah, I'm not so sure either. And it is kind of funny that Zach Wheeler had to vouch for him essentially. I don't, I don't know whether he was in uniform or not, or he just still didn't look like a big leaguer, like he's cosplaying or something. He's fairly slight for a big leaguer, but does's cosplaying or something. He's fairly slight for a big leaguer, but. Sure. Does this reflect on the Rockies as an organization that have a security guard or two in that area

didn't give him the leeway? Who knows, maybe they were doing their job. Maybe they were just being as strict as you would want security to be. Anyone could claim, hey, I'm a big leaguer, let me on the field. It could be a ruse, but I don't know whether this really reflects on, yeah, this is top down, even down to the security guards.

The Rockies don't know what they're doing, but this kind of went viral because we're all poking fun at the Rockies these days. On the one hand, I'm going to give them a pass, but mostly because I'm going to sideswipe the entire apparatus of affiliated baseball. The biggest pain point in any org when you're trying to do your job, whether that job is being a big leaker or being a media member, is the whims of the security guys and the retirees working on complexes. And the degree to which they feel like they sometimes want to give you the business when you are just trying to get where you're supposed to be.

Yeah. Wasn't this a storyline with the Yankees and Juan Soto that reportedly he had negative feelings because a security guard had prevented a family member and his chef, I believe maybe from entering a certain area of Yankee Stadium. And then the Mets offered him a suite just to show off. We wouldn't do that. There's no limits. Yes, you're welcome everywhere.

We will roll out the red carpet for everyone associated with Juan Soto. Right. And, and so on the one hand, yeah, I think sure. It is kind of more maybe about ROAS than it is about a particular security guard. But this is a point of friction that I think could be present in, in any big league ballpark and on any big league teams, like complex, it just, sometimes you get a, you get a person who is like, uh, really trying to feel powerful in their day. And, uh, and, and to your point, like, we don't know what he was, uh, what credentials he may have had, what he was dressed at, like, you know, there is an interpretation of this that is, Hey,

I'm sorry, I want to take you at your word, but like, I don't want to be the person who let someone onto the field who isn't supposed to be there. You know, I think there's an innocent or at least well intentioned reading of this interaction. And we're missing a couple of pieces that could kind of tip it one way or the other. But yeah, man, like sometimes you get up there and you got your badge on and you got your BBWA card and they're like, oh, family entrance is down there. And I'm like, well, that's fine. But I'm not affiliated with any of these people. Can't you see my lanyard, sir or ma'am? Yeah. Right. So I'm just saying it's a, it's a, I don't know how you train around that, right?

Because like, it's not reasonable to ask the folks working in the ballpark or on the complex or whatever to be like, here's a, you know, a Facebook in the traditional meaning of sense of that word, memorize the faces of every guy in affiliated ball. Like, that's not not gonna be a thing. But maybe this security person was having a, here's my one opportunity to exert power in the world during my day, bonehead moment, you know? Could be either, could be either. Now another story in this genre from this week,

I'll read the headline from the Denver Post. Colorado man hit in the eye by foul ball, sues Rockies in part part blaming team's poor performance. And yeah, and so the lawsuit stated, defendants longstanding, defendant being the Rockies in this case, defendants longstanding poor performance on the field has contributed to a game day environment

in which spectators, particularly those in luxury suites are less engaged with the action on the field has contributed to a game day environment in which spectators, particularly those in luxury suites are less engaged with the action on the field. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a do-or-swear. Come the f*** on. What are you? The Rockies suck so much that why would we be paying attention to the action on the field? Thus, we are more likely to be hit by foul balls and it's the Rockies fault. I'm sorry again to do a swear, but come the f*** on. Like I, I think that there are, there have been plenty of instances of teams that have been derelict in their responsibility previously.

This has been resolved now, but have been derelict in my view, in their responsibility to extend netting. And I am endlessly sympathetic to the notion that like a ball off the bat can be going so freaking fast and you can't, it's not about your nose in your phone. It's just fast and you're a person and that's a projectile. And sometimes you get gotten it's it's never good. And the best you can hope for is that it doesn't cause like permanent damage. And obviously there have been some tragic cases. And so like that piece of it, I say, I wish this gentleman well and hope he has a full and speedy recovery.

But also, come on, like you don't have to guild the lily with that accusation. You could have the most, if only because you could have the best, you could be the best team in baseball, the most dynamic team. You could be so exciting. And the fact of the matter is that like people just look up and or at other stuff or chat with people in the course of a game. If anything, the thing that is more likely to drive you to distraction in this moment is the fact

that you were in a box, not that you were watching a bad baseball team. Right. They got food, they got hot dogs, they have all of the fixings for those hot dogs. So you're sitting there, you're trying to decide, what do I put on a dog? Is this like a big moral choice? Is it fraded with like details of my personality in a way that I don't understand because people are so weird about hot dogs. And then like there are people coming in sometimes asking if you want a beverage and you're like

chit chatting with people. The whole point of having a box is that you're there with a group of other people and the organizing principle of your outing is the group you're with and less the game. And so like this is this piece of it silliness to my mind. And again, like if he got hit by a ball, I don't want to. Yeah, we're not making light of the man's injuries, but no, definitely not. There has been this long standing baseball rule, of course, where there was this binding precedent for almost a century, which was basically you pays your money and you take your chance, right?

Just, you know, you're the back of the ticket says, Hey, heads up essentially. Like if something hits you, that's on you. And that has been called into question in recent years. And this comes up less often, fortunately, thanks to the extension of the netting in most places. And so you have fewer impact injuries like this, but there was a case a few years ago where this was kind of overturned.

And so now it's an open question again, there is a Colorado law that protects the stadiums or the teams from liability when fans are injured. But the attorney for this man is arguing that this is an exception for a few reasons. And some of them may be meritorious. I don't know. But the attorney for this man is arguing that this is an exception for a few reasons, and some of them may be meritorious. They argued that the team did not extend netting enough to protect fans.

They argued that the team encouraged non-spectating behavior like dining and socializing, mounted televisions that distract fans from the game, and luxury boxes that obstruct the view of the field. Wow. I don't know about the legal merits of all of that. I guess if you're saying course field, it's just too nice a park and the beer is good and the view is yes. How can I pay attention to this team?

But then also adding onto that. Yeah. And the team is so bad that why would I be watching what's happening on the field either? That seems like more of a reach in my non-lawyer opinion. But that added to... Anyway, I'm just saying we could laugh at the Rockies' expense or pity the Rockies purely based on the record of the Major League team. We don't necessarily need all this other stuff. Now, I'm not above having some yucks at the Rockies' expense. When Rockies owner, Dick Monfort says something funny when the Rockies do something that reveals incompetence,

hey, I'm right there with you. But some of these things, I don't know, we don't need to reach is what I'm saying because the Rockies record is right there. That's the punchline. Right, they provide plenty of fodder. And yeah, I don't know about the legal merits of that. It seems like if the park is such a good time,

don't you know that going in? Don't you know you're like, isn't that a, you're assuming a certain amount of risk because you're like, I'm gonna go there and have a great time. I'm gonna have a blast of a time. And in the course of having my blast of a time, I might get, I saw a guy at a D-backs game. The place where I think people are really at risk of getting got is often like right behind home, but up in the, in the boxes,

right? Because the netting only goes so high and you know, where do you foul a ball back? Often straight back, right? And that's why, you know, you see plenty of tweets from press members being like, oh my god, I almost got my laptop or I did get my laptop or here's the place where the, you know, it takes a funny hop. I saw an older gentleman get like grazed him a ball, but he was, he was quite elderly. And you know how when people get quite elderly, they get like the tissue paper skin and then he just bled all over the place. There was his arm. It didn't get his head, but they had to like come and take care of him. And I,

I think about that guy like every time I go to chase now I'm like, where is he? Is he okay? Like what happened to him? But like that wasn't, it wasn't his fault. It was just like the ball was very fast. He looked like he was paying attention. I don't know. The lack of collagen's fault more than anything else. Yeah, and like the thing is that like there is a risk about it and I think that it is incumbent upon teams

to take precautions to the extent they can. And there was a while where they were being all weird and fussy about it and that was doofy and people were getting hurt. And then I think like they got scared that they were gonna face real liability and they changed a bunch of stuff. But I don't know. I had too good a time, but also not a good enough time because of the baseball. Just seems like a very strange little argument to me.

So yeah. Well, let me pivot from Rocky's losses to a Rockies affiliate loss because the Rockies triple A affiliate, the Albuquerque isotopes. Now they are in last place in the Pacific Coast League Eastern division. So hey, help is on the way, but they have only the second worst record in the PCL. So they're not that abysmal. They have a winning percentage over 400 in fact, what the Rockies would do for that. But they lost the other day in a pretty fascinating way. And I will play the radio call,

and then I will explain what people were hearing. Okay. The three, two payoff. Line drive, base hit right center field. That one's going all the way to the gap. That scores Garcia. Pache ran into a teammate. Pache ran into a teammate around third base.

Is that obstruction? Is that obstruction? He ran into a teammate who was out on the field to celebrate. And the ruling is out. He is out because he ran into a teammate. The game is not over. But now trying to score from third is the runner from first, Weber, but it should be a dead ball, or is it? No, they say it's not a dead ball, and now two runs have scored, and now the ball game

is over. I do not believe what I have just witnessed. Okay, so this was brought to my attention by a fun Twitter account called at scoring changes its MLB scoring changes and this account, it highlights what it says scoring changes in MLB and explains them and gets into interesting rules and quirks. And so this account had a long post about the ending to this game between the isotopes and the Reno Aces. This was on Wednesday. So it was one out, bottom of the ninth, Albuquerque was ahead four to three, but Reno had the

bases loaded. And this story, even though it involves the minor leagues, it involves a lot of former major leaguers. So Connor Kaiser hit one in the gap, which seemed like it would be a double, seemed like it would clear the bases and easily result in the walk-off win. And Aramis Garcia, he scored from third,

so that ties the game, it's four to four. On second, the runner was Christian Pascha. And he was rounding third, it looked like he was gonna score the winning run, but then he ran into his teammate, Ildemar Vargas, who ran onto the field with a cell phone. I think it was a staffer's cell phone because he was going to film the celebration.

Oh no. But he prematurely ventured onto the field and knocked Pache over. Oh no. But he prematurely ventured onto the field and knocked Pache over. Oh no. And that's unintentional interference. And so Pache didn't score. Now the runner who was on first, Andy Weber, he stopped before he got to third

and Kaiser rounded second and he was all ready to celebrate. And so he kind of, he went off, veered off for what he thought was gonna be the big dog pile for the hero. But Pache was called out, too unassisted because of this interference by his teammates. So it was still four to four.

And so it seemed like Reno had squandered this walk-off win. But, but while this was happening Isotope center fielder Sam Hilliard another former big leaguer. He thought the game was over Understandably this ball just rolled all the way to the wall There was no way he was gonna be able to get the ball in so evidently he flipped the ball over the fence No, yeah gave the ball to a kid because he thought, oh, game over, we lost. I might as well make a fan happy. And because he flipped the ball over the fence

and it was only four to four and coach or player interference is not a dead ball situation. So then according to the scoring changes Twitter account flipping the ball into the stands should be an error on Hilliard. And the penalty should be that the base you were going to at the time of the throw you're awarded plus another, meaning that Weber, the runner who stopped short of third, he should be awarded third and home for the walk-off win.

And that is what happened. Weber came around to score, and the final score was 5-4,. And that is what happened. Weber came around to score and the final score was 5-4 Reno over Albuquerque. Now, as we speak, the scoring has not been corrected or changed. So even though this was tweeted by the scoring changes account, the scoring change has not happened and Hilliard has not been credited or debited with an error. I messaged the proprietor of the scoring changes account, who I think is a former scorer stringer, and they said that as far as they're aware, the scoring change hasn't happened. And it's possible that it might not, because perhaps the scorer wasn't aware that Hilliard chucked the ball into the stands.

Oh, I see. And in that case, then maybe the walk-off will stand and the runner will score just because the play was still live and the ball wasn't dead and he just kept running, I guess. He just went home. Yeah. So I don't know whether it ultimately will be scored as an error on Hilliard or not, but either way, I guess it was sort of an error. That's why he didn't get the ball in,

despite the delay in the play, as everyone was sort of figuring out what was happening here. So it was kind of like a, it was a walk-off interrupted and then resumed. It was almost like a double walk-off. It was like a walk-off for multiple reasons. So I don't think I've seen that exactly.

The scoring changes account person said that the first runner would be unearned because he reached on an error. And since Pache's interference should have been the third out, then that runner who scored the winning run, the walk-off run also would be unearned. But the scoring changes person said, absolutely the dumbest, silliest, best baseball ending

to a game in a long, long time. So the Rockies said, hold our beer and the Albuquerque isotope said, we will, and we will see you and raise you a weird way to lose. So the Rockies haven't quite accomplished a loss like that, though they've certainly had some silly ones. I don't know, man. It's like, I don't believe in curses. But you do start to wonder, like, is there a larger force at work? Surely the force of Monfort's monfortness is insufficient

to have achieved results like this, right? Surely that's not enough on its own. Yeah. Oh boy, how bad would you feel? Really bad, you'd feel really bad. Yeah, it was, cause the celebration was paused. Everyone was ready to, I mean, Vargas was ready to film the celebration and then it seemed like, oh no, there isn't going to be a celebration,

but then there was. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Just wow. And I think it was Wild Wednesday, a promotion. So well, maybe it was on purpose then maybe the whole thing was leaning into the theme of the evening. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you think it means anything that we're now on 121 watch or whatever with the Rockies just after the White Sox did it, the season after the A's, though they sort of salvaged things and ended up at 50 wins. They were on a trajectory to be one of the worst teams of all time. Is this new? Is this different? Does this mean anything? Or is it just a few isolated examples that happened to run together? I suppose on some level it would be silly to say it isn't something new and different because look at how bad it has been, right?

There is a literal unprecedentedness to some of this stuff, the idea of there being very bad baseball teams is not at all new. In that respect, we have seen ebbs and flows of this stuff, maybe not quite to this degree of depravity, maybe not, and I'm using depravity as a word on purpose because we are getting into territory where it's like, so I'm doing kink on Maine, like, what are we about here? Um, but the notion that there have been really bad teams is not new. Now, some of the worst ones that we might all think of have come on the back of, like, a recent expansion of the league,

and so it's a new franchise, and it's got, you know, it hasn't had its, had time to get its sea legs under it, and all it has are like the best the couple of guys who weren't protected in expansion drafts or whatever. Right. So like, I think that the circumstances historically have been different, but the sheer badness is to a lesser degree, but to a degree still present. The Rackies, they're an expansion team. Give them a break. Right. There you go. How long have they been around? Right. So the piece of it that I think is worth interrogating in terms of what it might say about the game is that once analytics

sort of took hold on a league wide basis, and we can quibble with that, right? We can talk about the different degrees of commitment, dollar spent, staff sizes, infrastructure built, but like every front office, even the Rockies has some sort of analytical bent. Is it sufficient? I mean, clearly not. Is it robust? It hasn't really been historically. Is it on the same level as advanced, as well informed as an organization like say the Dodgers? Clearly not.

But no team is like, you know what we need to do? We need to bunt a lot, right? The basic building blocks of analytics have been sort of assumed. And I think I thought that that would establish a floor for performance. And I think that I was insufficiently sensitive to the prevailing headwind that was a lack of commitment to investment in the club at the big league level. I did not fully appreciate how dire that can get. And so I think in some ways, it's a new kind of bad. This is tinged with something else.

Although it's interesting, we're talking about the Rockies, and a lot of the time when we identify ownership failure, some of it is about a lack of ambition that is a result of like private equity ghouls getting involved with ownership. And this is like a family outfit. So it's different in that respect. In some ways it's a throwback, right? Like, anyway, I don't know if I made a clear point in there,

but I'm driving at something. The White Sox were like that too, in the sense that they weren't intentionally tanking. And neither are the Rockies. They're trying, but they're just doing it really badly and everything has gone wrong. And so that differentiates it somewhat from previous terrible teams like the tanking Astros, the tanking Orioles. It's not as if the White Sox or the Rockies meant to be this bad. Now at a certain point, the White Sox did concede and they surrendered to the inevitable

and they said, yeah, this just didn't work and our rebuild fizzled much earlier than everyone expected. And so now we are going to make trades and everything, but it wasn't the plan in a long-term way, the way that it has been with some teams, Astros, Orioles, to some extent, the Cubs too. And so I guess you could throw the A's in there too, from 2023, where they were rebuilding clearly, but doing it more quickly. So I do wonder whether it's at all related to the playoff format. I'm open to the idea that this doesn't mean anything, that it's a coincidence that these truly terrible teams have coincided

or have been in back to back or back to back or belly years. Belly up years. Yes, exactly. Maybe the Rockies could still salvage things and return to not respectability, but not quite record breaking badness. But if they don't, could it be a product of the playoff format? Because one of the things that everyone forecasted when we had this expanded playoff field was this is going to lead to more mediocrity, but more teams trying, but not trying that hard because they just

they're going to get in. The bar has been lowered to qualify for the playoffs. And so if you're just 500 ish and a few things go your way, then that's good enough. And that has more or less come to pass, at least this season and last season, just not so much the super teams, the outliers, just a whole cluster of teams that are decent or started the season. Looking like they were. And so if you do have most of the teams at baseball

entering a season in good enough shape that you can say, yeah, this is a legitimate wildcard contender at least. Then does that mean that the bad teams, the few that aren't in that group are going to be worse because the concentrated talent on the contending teams will be such that they will eat up all the wins or that if you are in the camp of saying, well, we're not a contender, we're going the other way, then you have an opportunity to get terrible because it's kind of a buyer's market. And if you are one of the teams that's zagging when everyone's zigging and you're saying, okay, we're in a down cycle, everyone else is in a up or moderate cycle. And so we will give them our

talent. Again, the Rockies don't really fit into that box because they're not trying to do this. But just the distribution of wins, I wonder whether that means that there would be fewer to go around for the worst teams. Because these teams are so bad that we're talking 19th century here. We're talking when teams were barely professional outfits and you had multiple teams owned by the same people

and you just had historical upside in this for decades at a time. So I think on the whole, it's good for baseball that a lot of teams are in it. And then if anything, it kind of creates intrigue that the worst teams are this bad. Even if I feel bad for those teams, it is tremendous content. So

I don't know. I'm not willing to say that it's meaningful or that it will continue, but we've seen enough of this lately that it does spark speculation at least. Yeah, I do think that the differences betwixt and between them though are important. The common thread between the A's, the White Sox, and the Rockies in terms of the source of their failure, or at least a very significant one, sits with ownership. But I thinkarice of extraction of an indifference to sentimentality, an unwillingness to, you know, view owning a team with coming with a certain baseline responsibility of spending. He's in his own little category.

And then you look at the Montforts and I think that obviously their willingness to spend has, depending on the season, been appreciably different than what Fisher has been willing to do with the athletics. Now, I think we would all agree that like that club has not typically spent well, but they have spent, right? Like they did sign Chris Bryant, they signed Hernado to that extension and we all know how that went,

but like they were willing to commit money there. They've brought in, you know, they've been a real friend to like, OK relievers, just like a real pal. And so, and it's sort of waxed and waned, and they're not running a payroll that's in line with some of their contemporaries in the division. But they've had a willingness to spend, they just haven't done well. His story is one of misguided efforts to contend and nepotism. And then there's a common thread between him and Reinsdorf where you get a commitment to loyalty to existing members of the organization, sometimes because they are literally your children,

and sometimes because they've just been around a really long time. And there is something on the one hand that's kind of admirable about that, but also it is insular and misguided and it bucks the broader goal of making sure that you just have the very best people, whether or not they share your last name or have been around a long time. And so there are some commonalities there, but it's like a different thing and you have a stinginess on Reinsdorf's part, but it doesn't, I don't think, you know, line up entirely with Fisher's. And so there are differences. And I think that being sensitive to those differences is important because they reveal the various like pain points

that an organization can have in the modern game. And there are multiple pathways to failure, and we are perhaps alighting on some of them, and how severe they can each end up being, how devastating they can really be to a franchise. See, I feel like I rounded into a point much better on the second attempt. Sometimes you gotta throw out the first pancake.

Although, the first pancake, if you don't burn it, it still tastes fine, even if it looks bad. Yeah, I burned the first pancake. That's not relevant to my example. Yeah, you're like the isotopes trying to win on a walk off and they failed the first time and then they got a reprieve. Way meaner to my first try than I was even being, but sure, we can go there if you want to. But anyway, I just think that like there is a there's differences here. And it's instructive to me because like I said, and this point, I do think I have

maybe had rolling around my head for a good many years now, which is that if you are trying to win, if you are not engaged in an intentional teardown, even if that intentional teardown is in service of winning eventually, but if you are not trying to suck the things we know about the game and where value emanates from, should provide you with some baseline protection from being just like a laughing stock. And I think that we've pretty conclusively shown that that is actually not true. So there you go. All right. Well, we have some emails. I might have a stat blast. Let's start with our what if sports, what if of the week, where we shout out our sponsor for this segment, what if

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You can discuss it in the forum for what have sports and other players, and you can get a great deal, a discount for Effectively Wild listeners only, or people who hear about this website, not on the podcast, which is that you can get a $1 offer for a season of either Hardball Dynasty or Simile Baseball. So just go to whatifsports.com slash effectively wild and click the links. You can also find that on our show page and hey, if you have availed yourself of this offer, or if you're an existing what if sports player, write in, let us know. We can get some organic sponsorship here and some people, some personal

testimonials from actual players and listeners of the podcast. Okay. Yeah. Tell us how it goes. So first here is a response to our hypothetical from last week about hit by pitches and the no-go zone and setting a boundary so that if a pitch is a certain degree inside then it's a hit by pitch even if the batter manages to get out of the way. So Thomas wrote in to say,

Your recent discussion of whether hit by pitches should be awarded when the pitch is in the batter's box even if it doesn't hit the batter reminded me of a similar proposal Chris Bassett recently made about catcher safety. So Chris Bassett, Blue Jays pitcher, he proposed this after his teammate Alejandro Kirk was forced to leave a game after being hit by a backswing. So Julio hit him with a backswing. And he was a bit shaken up. He didn't leave immediately. He went through the concussion protocols. He is seemingly okay, but this was a hard hit for him. And as Thomas says, Bassett argued that there should essentially be a hit by bat equivalent to the hit by pitch. That is that the batter should immediately be called out if his bat hits the catcher on the backswing.

Bassett who is on the Players Association's executive subcommittee said, I've talked to a number of teammates about this and I'm pretty adamant when I say there should probably be a rule change where if the hitter does that to a catcher, they should automatically be out and then it's just quickly going to change a swing. I mean, a bat is a weapon. You can't be out of control. If you're out of control, you're out, like fix it. You can't have guys get hit in the head.

Julio's a great hitter and I'm not saying Julio, I'm saying throughout the course of the league, guys that are swinging like that, it's mostly one-handed finishers, it's a weapon. If you can't control it, you shouldn't be hitting. Kirk did not actually back up Bassett here. He said he didn't think that a penalty was necessary, that it was just an impact, even though it really hurt.

But Thomas asks us, he says, what are our thoughts? I kind of like it. It's so scary to get in the head. I could imagine it introducing some perverse incentives for catchers to try to get hit. Right. But hopefully rigorous concussion protocols would remove that, not to mention just self preservation. But yeah, we have talked about just the rise of catchers interference league wide and how catchers are getting hit more often. Yeah, this was going to be my question. So I'm not, I think that there are guys who they have these big finishes to their swing and sometimes they are finishing one handed.

Although I don't think that there are a ton of guys who are routinely finishing their swings one handed. So I don't know that that piece of his concern is really like, if we were to go and watch every single at bat over the course of a season, I don't know that that's happening quite as much, but I wonder how much of this is really about the way that certain guys are swinging and finishing their swings

and how much of it is that teams and catchers alike are pushing guys up, they're pushing them much closer. And so I'm not saying that there hasn't been maybe an uptick in the number of catchers who have suffered, you know, maybe meaningful injury on the backswing. But I suspect that if we were to apportion blame for that rise, that more of it would probably sit with the phenomena of guys moving up toward the plate rather than there being either a meaningful change in the way guys are swinging, or maybe he's not even alleging a change so much as he's noting that this is a phenomenon that's a problem.

But I think a lot of it probably has to do with guys moving up to try to frame better than it does with. Yeah. Yeah. We are sort of blaming the victim in this case, I guess, to some extent, but maybe that is why Kirk sort of was like, oh, not so fast. I don't know about Kirk's positioning specifically, but Right. Yeah. I don't either. So yeah, league-wide catchers have moved up and it does seem to be better for framing purposes to intercept the pitch before it drops more because you're getting a lot of extra strikes on the low pitches in particular. And it might even be beneficial for blocking who knows. And so I guess it might make sense that hitters are swinging harder. They are bigger and stronger and they're swinging for the fences and everything.

And so I guess probably the bat might reach back a little farther, but I do think that, yeah, probably the greater change has been catchers coming up closer. And I wouldn't want to penalize a hitter for that if it's really the catcher creeping up. So, hard to say. Maybe, yeah, you could even make it specific where, if the batter obviously is out of the batter's box, and I guess this bumps up against my blanket advice

to all hitters, move back in the box, because then you're endangering catchers more. But yeah, if you could detect somehow, if you could apportion blame tracking tech wise and say this guy was too close, this catcher was too close and thus it's not the hitter's fault and it should just be catcher's interference or in this case, maybe the catcher actually was behind a certain line. Maybe there's a cutoff positioning there and you say, okay, then it actually was the batter's follow through at fault

or he was uncontrolled or something. But yeah, I think I sort of side with Kirk here is saying, I mean, it's dangerous. Again, we continue to question why anyone in their right mind would want to catch much as we appreciate and cherish catchers. This is part of the reason, but yeah, I don't know if this is out of control

or if it is out of control, whether it's actually the hitter's fault. But our new what if of the week is also catcher related and framing related. And this comes to us from listener and Patreon supporter, Daniel, who says, I'm in the process of listening to the episode where you discussed the description

of the home team umpire hypothetical and so I feel I have been given sufficient license to suggest a similarly ridiculous idea. So here's the idea. What if catchers tried to frame really badly? Thus far, players have operated under the reasonable assumption that making a pitch look more like a strike will make the umpire more likely to call it as such. And of course, all evidence seems to back up this assumption. Catchers who are particularly good at framing are able repeatedly to steal strikes from

just off the edges of the zone. But here I offer an alternative theory. Instead of trying to discreetly tug pitches back into the zone, a technique that requires great finesse, catchers could instead consider yanking pitches as far out of the zone as possible. The logic would be that umpires know that they're being evaluated on the accuracy of their strike zone, so they really want to make the right call regardless of what the catcher does.

If a catcher makes every pitch look like a ball, the umpire will need to perform a mental correction to determine if the pitch was a strike. For this theory to work, it relies on umpires mentally over-correcting the negative effect of the framing. Is this mental over-correction likely? Probably not, but who knows? As far as I know, no one has attempted this technique before. Well, that's true.

We're saying there's a chance. If the yanking really does just make every pitch look like a ball, is there any reason to believe that mental under-correction is more likely than an over-correction? I probably would not suggest such a technique to Calralli or Jose Trevino, who have shown that their more traditional methods of framing are quite effective. But as a Nationals fan, perhaps a hypothetical poor framer, Raybert Cuis could try it out. I bet it wouldn't go much worse than his attempts at framing thus far. Let me know what you think. So that's interesting.

Just, it's like the confusion strategy. Like if you're bad at framing, I like this more for the framer who's bad at it and is just like, well, trying to make it look like a strike is not working for me. So if I just go completely in the opposite direction, then maybe the umpire will over correct or at least correct appropriately

and I won't be dinged for that. correct appropriately and I won't be dinged for that. So here's the thing. I'm quite skeptical that this would work. I mean, to be fair, the question acknowledges the appropriate amount of skepticism, but having seen the rate at which umpires will miss a strike call on a pitch where the catcher sets up in one spot and the pitcher seemingly misses their spot but still manages to throw a strike and the catcher has to reach across the zone to corral that ball. That is very often is like, we need to, you know, adjust, make the appropriate adjustment because like umpires typically get calls right and does it, but, but like among the pitches they are likely to miss.

I think that that situation where a catcher has set up in one place and not in a, I'm trying to fool a batter who's peeking, although that does happen where they're like, I know you're looking and so I'm going to set up over here and try to like, you know, deque basically, not in that instance, but where there's, there appears to have been a genuine miss on the part of the pitcher. They misreleased the ball, they hold onto it too long, whatever. And the catcher sees, Oh, here's where the ball is gonna go and they they move and it's often a dramatic movement To secure the ball and then it is still a strike, but it is it is often called a ball

I submit that as evidence just because this is an instance where there should be a correction on the part of the empire to say, hey, that wasn't where it was supposed to go, but it still was in the zone. But they very often do not do that. And so I don't think that they would make the correction even with a bigger sample. They would just be like, what is this guy doing? You know? And can you imagine what this would do to picture catcher relations? It would be a disaster. Can you imagine? Let's

take, let's take the tandem from our last question, right? Let's take Chris Bassett, who as an aside, stink face, stink face boy. Bassett is a stink face boy. Now, is my impression of him as a stink face boy, in part being colored by the fact that he is a verbal stink face to the media a lot of the time? It could be. I will allow for that potential bias creeping into my impression of his face. Yeah, I will. But he is a grump. He's a bit of a grump. He is a known grump and a stink face. And so imagine for a moment that Alejandro Kirk, who I think is a good catcher, is doing this. And he probably wouldn't be the one doing this, right? Because the question allows for guys who are actually doing an okay job, they wouldn't do this because they don't need to engage in nonsense.

But imagine for the sake of the visual you're getting in your mind of Chris Bassett's stink face. Okay. That's why this is funny. So like go with me. Okay. So you got Chris Bassett, noted stink face boy and Alejandro Kirk angel, and he's trying to help out his guy and he's doing it by being like, here's my crazy reverse framing scheme. I think that Chris Bassett would walk off the mound into the batter's box and berate Alhondra Kirk in front of God and a stadium full of people. I think that's how annoyed he would get. I think it would be a disaster.

You would have to start figuring out a way, you know how we talk about trying to measure the positive impact of game calling and how we just, we still haven't been able to figure it. We would need to then be able to measure the negative impact of pitchframing goof-ass on the whole thing. Because I think you would get a public rebellion. You would get, it wouldn't matter. It could be it could be the Mariners pitching staff with Cal Raleigh.

They love Cal. He's good. He's so solid back there. He catches all the time. They're like, oh, Cal. No, wouldn't matter. They would turn on Cal. They would be like, the jumper's not that big. You know, it would be a disaster. So they'd have to get the pitcher to buy in on this strategy. I think they'd have to convince them that this would actually help.

They wouldn't. Yeah, it would be a tough sell. You would never be able to do it. The team and the pitcher would probably just say, why don't you learn to be better at catching? Right, they'd just be like, hey, what if you framed though? You know, like the thing about it is what if you framed? Yeah. What if everyone did this league wide though? So it wasn't just a single catcher trying this tactic, which would probably piss off

the umpires and that might make it to... Like as an exerciser? Just if everyone, if all of the catchers colluded and agreed, hey, this might actually work if we just muddy the waters so much that umpires just they don't even know what it is a strike anymore. Yeah. Do you think that throwing the umps off their bearings like that, if they were kind of left to their own devices, instead of having the umpires positioning and reception as a guide, would they overcorrect? Would they say that's more likely to be a strike now? Or because all of the receptions would be so inelegant,

would there just be fewer called strikes or a lower percentage of called strikes on the whole? What effect do you think it would have league-wide? I think it would have a... you'd get fewer league-wide. And I think it would not take long before the central office was like, Hey, I'm issuing a memo. What are you all doing? Like, this is, this is, it's bad for the sport. Like it's interfering with our enjoyment of watching baseball. Like, look, I understand that most people do not look at their TV when they are watching a bad framer and go,

I can't respect this man. You know, like I get that most people don't do that. I do that. I look at it and I'm like, I can't respect a catcher who can't frame. I just like, you know, like get a different job. So I understand that I am particularly attuned to that problem, but fans don't like it either. Like they might not express it in as judgmental a terms as I do.

They might not like peg it to framing in quite the same way. But when you got a guy back there who's just being sloppy, you get annoyed as a fan. You're like, eh, you know, I don't like this. Like this is unpleasant to watch. I do think the fans have a bigger and harsher reaction to like catchers who are prone to pass balls More than bad framers because that's like more obvious And you get you can just get mad at the umpire when you have a bad framer

But only to a point at a certain point I think even fans who are not super attuned to framing are like, are you being sloppy back there? Like, what's going on? So I say all of that simply to offer that I think that the league office would be like, hey, cut it out. You know, why are you doing this? Like you're surely you're not so invested in like salvaging the framing reputation of Kiebert Ruiz that you have to be doing this. It's sort of like an, have you ever seen the movie Stick It?

No. Okay, so in the movie Stick It, which is about gymnastics, and I will not get into the whole plot, but there is a, I'm gonna spoil the movie Stick It, everybody. It's okay with me. At the end, the gymnasts are frustrated by the judges, and they feel that the judges scoring has been unjust because one of the gymnasts gets deducted points because her bra strap is showing in the midst of a flip and the judges knock her for that and the gymnasts get furious and so they rebel and they decide amongst themselves who the best gymnast at each event is going to be and then the rest of them like

intentionally scratch basically so that the only score is The gal they've decided is the best one and it is this moment of like empowerment and uprising and the And it is this moment of like empowerment and uprising and the lead gal is the one to instigate all of this. And then she has reconciliation with the gymnast she's fighting with and it wasn't her fault because her family's falling apart. Anyway, all of that to say it would be like the movie Stick It. I'll take your word for it. Hey, Stick It's important to a lot of people. I know some gals at Bryn Mawr who like realize things about themselves upon watching Stick It. They were like, this was an important moment in my queer awakening was like watching Stick It and being like, I am feeling feelings about this. This is a true story.

Bring it on, but for gymnastics instead of cheerleading sort of? Or drumline kind of the equivalent for gymnastics? I mean, no, maybe kind of. I don't know, like they have like gymnast conflict and Jeff Bridges is in it and he's very good, you know? He's like, yeah, everyone loves Jeff Bridges and the tall Canadian brunette who's in a bunch of the CBS procedurals, FBI or NCIS or I don't know, some other law enforcement nonsense. Anyway.

The only reason I could imagine this working because it is quite counterintuitive that it would work because the whole point of framing essentially is you want to just receive it as quietly and neatly and elegantly as possible and make it look as much like a strike as possible. And no one does it like Jose Molina did, in my opinion. Even the great framers of today, they yank more than he did with his just beautiful subtle movements and no... Oh, about yanking in that context, by sure.

Go to... Regardless, I think the only case where this could be advisable is if you were just so hopeless that you just want to inject as much randomness and chaos into the proceedings as possible. But then you're not catching at the big league level if that's the case, right? Right, not anymore. If you were vintage Ryan Domet, and I hate to always single him out, but he always gets

singled out. But if you're him and catchers like him aren't catchers anymore, but if you were him, then maybe I could say, well, I'm doing this so badly, clearly, that this is not working for me. Maybe I'll just distract from how terrible my technique is by intentionally looking so bad that they then say, well, that some of these had to be strikes. So that'll be better for me than actually trying. I don't know that that would be the reaction of the umpire is the thing. Like, I think that your instinct that umpires would get

meaningfully annoyed by this is a good instinct. I think they would be like, what are you doing? Like, I got to be, you know, I gotta be crouching back here, my hands on your back, you're moving all around. What are you, man, what are you doing? It's like when I watch Jacob Wilson hit and I'm like, stop moving. The gifts from Davy's piece are just sitting high enough up

in the WordPress image selector that every time I go to pick an image, I just see Jacob Wilson going, dit dit dit dit dit dit. And I'm like, we need to publish more pieces so these get pushed down. Yeah. I don't know if this is relevant, but. That has not been a bar we've had to clear in this episode, clearly. But this season at least. So I was just looking at where the missed calls are on called pitches, taken pitches this season. So pitches that are in the rulebook zone this year that were

not swung at have been called balls 12.7% of the time. And pitches that are outside of the rule book zone that were taken have been called strikes only 4.7% of the time. So it's more common for what should have been a strike to be incorrectly called a ball than for what should have been a ball to be incorrectly called a strike. And I guess, you know, you're roping in some pitches that are just way,

way out of the zone and no empire could possibly. So really you'd probably look at, I don't know, pitches that are closer that are kind of in that could go either way region. But yeah, it just seems to me that this is a bad idea, which I think is essentially what the premise of the question was. Do you think that Ryan Domett sends an email to the league office every week being like, bring in ABS, or does he think it would make it worse?

Like, I want to know where Ryan Domett stands on a fully automated zone because he couldn't frame. He was a terrible framer. So does he want to wipe out the advantage of framing or does he, you know, and he's not an actor. Right. Like is it, is it that or is he, would he be so worried about what a precise robotic assessment of the zone would reveal about his catching. You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if he were asked,

where does Domet sort of fall on the whole thing? Or is he just like, never mention a strike zone to me ever again, please, ever again. I would like to ask him about that. And I don't know whether he would wanna talk about it, but I do wonder sometimes how aware he is of being that example that people reach for. I hope not at all. Yeah, I hope not at all also, but yeah, if he is of being that example that people reach for.

I hope not at all. Yeah, I hope not at all also. But yeah, if he is aware of that, does he mind? Does he feel like it's unfair because he didn't have those stats then or they weren't really being emphasized to him? You can't claim that he had no idea that receiving mattered, of course. This is a conversation that comes up with players from earlier eras and their walk rates He claimed that he had no idea that receiving mattered, of course. Sure, of course not. This is a conversation that comes up with players from earlier eras and their walk rates

and their on-base percentages. And well, it wasn't stressed and teams were telling you hit for average and put the ball in play. And so someone might say, well, if I'd known that anyone cared about on-base percentage or if I'd known it was valuable to walk, then maybe I would have. Now I don't totally buy that because there were players even then who walked and had high on base percentages. It's not like no one understood that that was a thing.

And also it is to some extent, I think you can correct it. You can change it, but it is selectivity and contact and discipline and patience. All those things, sense of the strike zone. There's something that is somewhat inherent or at least certain players are inclined one way or another even today. But framing is one where, well, everyone always knew teams taught catchers to present the pitch a certain way. It's just that it wasn't emphasized to the same degree and players weren't paid for it quite so much because it wasn't quantified and people didn't realize quite how much of a difference maker it was.

So Ryan Domet could justifiably say, well, I was in there for my bad and I thought I was doing a decent enough job when it came to the catching, but I just, you know, no one really drilled into me that this was super important and it wasn't stressed to me. So he could say that. I wonder whether he is a big fan of baseball reference war over fan graphs war, if he's aware of war. Cause he's way sub replacement level by fan graphs war

which he keeps framing and above by just as much in baseball reference war, which does not. So yeah, it's just the perception of him. And I guess it was toward the tail end of his career that this changed and maybe he wasn't even catching so much anymore, but yeah, it's rare that you have a player who is valued so differently. Not that anyone thought he was a gifted defensive catcher

back then, but clearly teams thought he was playable and even valuable as a catcher. And, but clearly teams thought he was playable and even valuable as a catcher. And now we look back and say, he should not have been behind the dish at all. Right. And maybe, you know, he is one of those guys I'm kind of rooting for us to, well, I want us to be able to quantify the value of game calling just in general, because I think that would be fascinating. But there is a part of me that hopes that we get like the ability to do that. And then we have an additional reappraisal of Ryan Domett because it turns out that he

was like the best game caller of his generation or something like that. And he can be like vindicated, you know, like he take it away. Yeah, it would be so satisfying. Yeah, that would just be a and it would be such a fun example to be able to point to and talk about like how our understandings of these guys can shift and change based on you know, what we're able to measure and how precisely and obviously I have no idea if he was like the most gifted game caller, but it would just be a nice bit of symmetry if we had an additional reason to issue a correction

on a previous tweet as it were. Yes, he was secretly Jeff Mathis or something with working with pitchers and calling pitches. And that's why he was back there the whole time. That was why. Yeah, he couldn't catch, but he could call. That's why he was there. Yeah.

Yeah, that would be great. It wouldn't have been so fun. It would. All right. Here's a question from Robert, Patreon supporter. Well, this is relevant to our conversation about truly terrible teams. The White Sox, despite having the worst modern record, were frozen out of the number one pick because of the draft lottery. And now it looks like it might happen again to the Rockies. When the lottery was implemented, you already discussed how it probably wasn't necessary for baseball because the picks aren't like NFL, NBA picks. Do you think these teams being so awful

and getting at best the 10th pick might lead to some adjustments? No, because, well, I think that the ostensible goal of the draft lottery was intention agnostic, but motivated by the Astros. You don't want, and I guess maybe the Cubs to a lesser degree, so you don't want the hard tank in pursuit of high draft picks. I think that the general sentiment that it is a trickier needle to thread is accurate, which is just additional inducement

to not do it. Because if you're going to do the hard tank and you might not even have it result in the very best guys, then you really shouldn't do it, right? At least in the Astros case, it like worked, right? Like not on its own. And obviously like they already had a Jose Altuve at home. So, you know. Yeah, and kind of in the Orioles case, I guess they've made the most of their top picks too.

Yeah, although like, you know, kind of, right? It hasn't netted them the same kind of success, but it, you know, they have gone to the playoffs twice, I guess. So I think that it is right to look at the sort of motivation behind that rule and have it and identify it as being like, you don't want teams to have a reason to be intentionally very bad. But I also think that you just want teams to not be very bad, you know, and having some inducement to avoid repeat seasons where you're terrible is good to have regardless of whether

or not it's because you're trying to be bad and tank or you're just like stumbling into it. I have greater sympathy for teams that, you know, you could conceive of an instance where like a club just has like really putrid injury luck and they are very, very bad. And it's, you know, they, they went into it with every intention to compete and they just got unlucky and it sucks that they aren't able to kind of recoup a draft pick on the back of that. But that's sort of like collateral damage that I'm willing to deal with in this instance. I think it's good to try to spread those things around.

If only because it reminds teams that the MLB draft is just really hard to, it is hard to do this with. You know, there are obvious guys who are like the best guy, which is partly why I'm, I'm always, I don't know, I worry I'm unfair to the Orioles. It's not that there aren't good people working for that team or smart people working for that team, but it's like, Oh my God, you thought that Adley Rutchman should go first overall? Ah, wow. Really out on a limb with that assessment. It's like, yeah, you just get that. What do we do? Anyway, you know, like sometimes you're like, hey, it's Gunnar Henderson. That one's probably going to work out.

Yeah. Sometimes it's a no brainer. Anyone would do it. Yeah. Anyway, all of that to say, I think I'm fine with it the way it is. And I am skeptical it will change. Yeah. I think what we said at the time and what the questioner was alluding to is that I just, I never thought that the draft pick was the primary reason for tanking. I thought it was sort of a sweetener,

but I didn't think you were tanking for the number one pick, necessarily, because in baseball, it's just unpredictable. There's just a longer lag time after the pick is made and that player arrives and just greater uncertainty about whether that pick will be an impact player. Right. And I don't think it makes sense just to tank for a draft pick. It's beneficial or was beneficial to tank in some cases because you're just aligning your incentives differently and your competitive goals differently,

and you're just dumping all of these players who are valuable now, and you're setting your sights down the road, and teams will pay a premium for those players in the short term, and in theory, if you execute it right and things go your way, then you'll reap the rewards in the long run, just because you took yourself out of contention

while other teams were actually trying to win. So I think that's the bigger thing is just, hey, we can accrue a ton of prospects and some of them will be draftees and others won't. Probably most of them won't because they'll be coming from veterans we've shipped off in trades. So I still think that's the case. And yeah, when the Rockies and the White Sox aren't trying to be bad on purpose, they are kind of the definition of a team that could use a helping hand. I guess it's, I wouldn't feel like they were being rewarded for some nefarious behavior that they had gamed the system.

If they got a number one pick, I would feel like, yeah, these teams need help clearly because luck has been bad. And also, they just don't know what they're doing. And so if we do want more parity, then they need a leg up. And so give them a higher draft pick. And I guess that would be good. So I'd be in favor of that. But I also just don't think it matters that much either way. And I don't know that there would really be a movement to change this because it does seem as if intentional tanking has been discouraged for one reason or another. And there are other incentives and disincentives in the CBA, I think, that have as much of an effect there. So I don't know that there's really much of an impetus to change.

And I also think that, like, you know, to your point, it takes, it takes a while for those guys to arrive as reinforcement or help. But we also baked in assumption to them getting draft picks helping is that like they're able to do something with those guys. And I think we're assuming facts not in evidence for some of these teams, Not all of them, but some of these clubs, you're like, oh, great. You have a pick to develop. You shown an ability to do that lately, you know? And it's not like they're, it's bad across the board. Like I think, you know, I think the Rockies have done a good job of IDing talent in like the international amateur space, but you know, you're looking at their like chase something and like, oh, he got better once he got to Colorado.

I don't think that that's true. Like having watched Dillander pitch for them, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, Ben. You know? I don't know. Ben Grom 2 Okay, here's one more hypothetical if you thought the framing one was too far-fetched

and this is about a walk-off situation, a walk-off sack fly alternative. This is from Michael F who says, the D-backs at Dodgers game on May 20th ended in a bases loaded one out sacrifice fly. One thing I found interesting is that the runners on second Freddie Freeman and first, Tommy Edmond, did not move from their bases.

I understand why, since they can only provide a small amount of distraction with a very bad downside of being tagged out before Otani, who was on third, scores. But what if there were a different way for the defense to handle this situation? I present the following alternative. Situation, bottom of the ninth or extra innings, tie game, bases loaded, one out, the batter

hits a lazy fly out to left or center, which is an obvious sacrifice fly opportunity to win the game. The fielder, instead of catching and trying to throw out the runner going for home, lets the ball drop. The base runners are surprised and don't get a good jump from their bases. The outfielder catches it on the bounce and throws to third and then to second, ending the inning with a force out and not allowing any runs to score on the play. Would this work? I think it only has a chance as a surprise, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work a second time. So essentially going for the double play, trying to catch not the lead runner napping or being not aggressive and trying to throw them out, force them out so

that you invalidate the run scoring from third instead of making the dramatic attempt at a play at the plate. Just try to catch the other two guys on base napping. Would that work? I don't think so. No. You think there'll be two heads up? I think there'll be two heads up, but isn't part of the reason that they don't move in addition to not wanting to do like a goofy thing on that? Like they can't, yeah, they just like don't, no, I don't think it would work. I think you could potentially keep,

catch a guy napping like before the ball has been, I could imagine a disastrous scenario where a guy gets picked off and then you're like, and then you're all of a sudden it's two outs and so Sac Fly won't do it. Well, yeah, that doesn't help you though if there's already a runner on third, then that guy's going to score.

So you need to get two. So, but wasn't there already an out in the inning? Yeah. One. Right. But so I'm saying like you could, I could see a scenario where like you, you have an out in the inning, you have the bases loaded and maybe you like pick a guy off and then you have two outs.

And so then you have to get a hit is my point. Just the, the pitcher picking a guy off. You mean have two outs. And so then you have to get a hit is my point. Just the pitcher picking a guy off. You mean, Oh, yeah, yeah, that could happen. I guess. But, but if, if the ball is put in play, because it's true, I guess, the, the runners on first and second, they're, they're playing pretty conservatively there because they certainly don't want to get thrown out and the inning before the runner from third can score.

So if they're just sort of staying put and watching and expecting that the outfielder is going to catch it and try to have that runner, which is usually what happens, I could imagine if you brought this out once and you just, you know, no one's expecting this. Uh, this is everything has happened. So if this has happened to send us an example, but maybe cause you're not expecting that throw to come to another base or for the outfielder to intentionally drop the ball, to try to get the double play and a double force out. The thing about it is like, you also don't really have any incentive to run if you're the base runner anyway,

because even if it falls in for a hit, like as soon as the winning run scores in a walk-off, they won't count any other runs anyway. Yeah. Unless it's a home run. Like if you have a, if you have a bases loaded situation and they, the hitter gaps a double, as soon as the winning run scores, they stop counting the runs.

Yeah, I could imagine. I could imagine this, this working once and one time, but I just don't think it would maybe, maybe, maybe, probably not because we got to give big leaguers credit. They're pretty good at what they do and they are generally Paying attention to what's going on around them They are maybe most especially paying attention in that moment in that like that is a peak attention You're not like thinking about whether you can go catch a Pokemon in the concourse Yeah, but even if you're paying attention, you're not Probably running that hard

And so you might still be kind of close to the base to the point where even if you saw them let the ball drop, you might be just too far away from the next base to actually advance before you got forced out. It's possible. Maybe, but I think you'd just be standing there. I think you'd just be standing there waiting for the win. Yeah.

Huh, well, worth a shot. I guess it's worth a shot. I guess it's worth a shot if, see if, I don't know whether it's better if it's a shallow fly ball, because if it's a shallow fly ball where you actually have a decent chance to just throw the runner out from third,

then you should probably do that. Right. And so. Right, that's the other thing. It's like, what are the incentives of the outfielder? Yes. To try to get the guy at home other thing it's like what are the incentives of the outfielder? Yes, so if it's a guy at home if it's super shallow Then it would make it easier in theory to do the double force out gambit but it would also make it more plausible to throw the runner out at home and

You got to think that there's some pressure on the fielder too, because the conventional thing, the expected thing, is that he's gonna settle under it, and he's gonna get as much mustard on that throw as he can, and he's gonna lay out. And if the throw is not good enough, as long as it's online and decent, no one's really gonna hold him responsible for that runner scoring.

But if he doesn't even make the throw, and he tries this wacky trick play and it doesn't work, then people will say, if he had just done the conventional thing in his own home, he could have had that guy. And if it's deep enough, now maybe if it's deep, if it's super deep to the point where he wouldn't realistically be able to throw that runner out

who's tagging from third anyway, then does that make it more feasible for you to do this? Because those runners, it's everyone's gonna just kind of take it as, yeah, this is obviously going to be a walk-off sack fly here and their guard will be down. Maybe, I don't know. And no one will give you guff for trying something weird because it will be clear that you couldn't have thrown

them out anyway. Maybe that's the time you want to do it, even though it would then take even less alertness on the parts of the non-lead runners to get them because you have to make a farther throw to nab them. Yeah, yeah. Right. I'm in favor of being unpredictable.

Maybe not quite so unpredictable that you're doing anti-framing and trying to be as bad as you possibly can in receiving pitches that that might backfire. But this kind of thing, you know, you never know. Every now and then you just confuse someone and it works. Yeah, man. I mean, like, look, goofy, goofy stuff happens all the time. And I mean, this would be a pretty goofy, goofy. This would be like peak goofy, but look, I shouldn't underestimate baseball

as a way to have stupid ways to end its games. Cause there is- Yeah, we just talked about one. Quite a bit of precedent for that, so. All right, let's end with a stat blast here. Discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways Here's to day, still past Okay, so the other day I idly suggested that something was not stat blastable, and our listeners

always take that as a challenge. Yes, they do. Oh yeah, not so fast. And so this was when we were talking about Soto not hustling and how he stole a base after he ended up at first when he should have been at second on that ball that didn't go out. And he went into his trot off the monster.

He ended up at first and then he had a makeup swipe right after that. And I postulated that if we could find situations where a batter should have been on second and instead was on first, cause he was lollygagging, if we could isolate those specific plays, I bet you would find that those runners then take off for second at a higher than usual clip

because they want to erase their mistake, essentially. And I thought, well, there's no way we can really identify those cases where a runner was on first because of that mistake. It's not as if it's coded that way in the play log like so and so was admiring his would-be home run too long and thus ended up at first. But we got an email from listener, Patreon supporter Alex Wigderman, who works for Sports Info Solutions and so has access to data that we don't. And I believe, yeah, Alex is now the VP of football analytics for SAS. So he's freelancing here. He's getting back to his baseball roots.

Yeah. And he writes to us, turns out you can stat blast instances of a player not running as hard as they should and then attempting to steal to make up for it. Amazing. At SAS, we have tracked good and bad base running plays since 2013. These are situations where a player has done something notably bad, not taking a base, running into and out, or good, taking a base, avoiding getting out.

I took a look at situations where we charted a bad base running play by the batter that resulted in him being on first base with an empty base in front of him. There's definitely some data contorting involved here, but I figure this is the cleanest way of establishing an apples-to-apples comparison. I found just under 200 such situations. I then calculated the stolen base attempt rate by players in this situation in terms of the percentage of times on base where the player attempted a steal. I could see an argument for a different approach, but I figured I'd allow for more than the next plate appearance to matter, but also not get so fine as to worry

about the number of opportunities they had within that on base situation. Because there might be some bias in the stolen base rate of these players, I compared each player's stolen base attempt rate in this scenario to their overall average, and then took a weighted average of those differences weighted by that player's sample size in the no hustle situation. And I think that is a crucial step to avoid the confounding variable that could skew things because maybe the player who is more likely to admire their home run, maybe they're just not the speedy type, and maybe they would be less likely to, I don't know whether a home run hitter is, I think a home run hitter is more likely

to admire their home or two long than a non home run hitter because the non home run hitter, if it's anomalous for them, you might say that they should take that opportunity to admire it more than the slugger who gets lots of opportunities to admire homeruns. But I think the less powerful guy, he's used to not sure that that ball off the bat is going to get out. And so I think that's right. Yeah. He's not going to take it for granted.

So it could be that the home run admirers are less likely to steal than the league average. So we are comparing to themselves. So that's an important step here. And having done that, Alex says the result, no evidence of a difference in stolen base attempt rate in these spots compared to the player's overall rate. The overall rate is right around 7.5% of times on base

and the average difference is 0.1%. So extremely negligible. The one fun thing I did find was the guy who had the most such opportunities, the most times failing to get to second when he should have and then having a stolen base opportunity, it's Hustle Discourse Magnet Bryce Harper. Oh my gosh. failing to get to second when he should have and then having a stolen base opportunity. It's hustle discourse magnet Bryce Harper.

Oh my gosh. With five such situations. He attempts to steal in 9% of his opportunities overall, although he has done so one in five times coming off a base running bungle. For what it's worth, I didn't find any player who had attempted more than one stolen base in this situation over the past decade.

Plus, it's not something we chart very often and then you need the game situation to line up. So that went against my intuition. Yeah, mine too. Yeah, well, I'm always happy to be checked on that and for the hypothesis to be rejected and refuted as long as it's a well-constructed study. And this seems like if there were some signal here,

it would have shown up. So yeah, I'm surprised. No such thing overall as the makeup steal, I'm sure in certain instances there is, but yeah, on the whole, I guess not. I guess not. That's amazing. It is, yeah, okay.

I stand corrected in my speculation. Thank you, Alex. All right. We got a couple of questions that were related to a single play. I always like when there's a single play. It's not even a prominent famous play. And we get multiple emails about it from our eagle-eyed listeners. So for instance, we got one from Kevin who wrote in to say, Paul Goldschmidt just stole second in the ninth inning of the May 13th Mariners Yankees game and then was immediately lifted for a pinch runner. Is that as unusual as it seems? At least whereas here it was not a double steal and the runner was not injured It seems to implicitly admit a strategic mistake either the runner should not have been sent or he should have already been pinch run for

Unless the pinch runner is a worse base dealer, but better base runner And we got the same question essentially from listener patreon supporter We got the same question essentially from listener, Patreon supporter, Richard, who also said, here's one for the every time you watch a game, you'll see something you never saw before file, but one of the least interesting perhaps. Thanks Richard for flagging something that you acknowledge is not interesting,

but this is the same play. Goldschmidt reaches base on a hit by pitch, then steals second and is replaced with pinch runner Pablo Reyes. It made sense since Reyes is faster and was the tying run, but would have made perhaps a lot more sense when Goldschmidt was on first in the ninth inning. And so Richard wanted to know if anyone has ever been

pinch run for immediately after stealing second base, absent an injury and leaving out some unusual back end of a double steal by a slow guy who is now in scoring position. So we might need Alex Vigderman's help on this one too potentially, because this is tough data wise. So I put this to Ryan Nelson,

frequent stat blast correspondent. And he says, I pulled all situations where a pinch runner was brought into second base immediately after that runner stole second base. I also eliminated as posed in the question, any times that runner was a trail runner in a double steal or times that the player moved to second from a first and third situation.

This also doesn't count past balls or wild pitches. I found 142 instances of this happening. So similar to Alex's query where he found about 200, but that wasn't going back as far. This is, I guess, all of baseball history or all that we have retro sheet play-by-play data for. So 142 instances of it happening, but as Ryan notes, and as the listeners noted,

this ignores one big factor, which is injuries. For example, the most recent time this happened was for the Mariners on October 3rd, 2022, when Sam Haggerty, your favorite, stole second and was immediately pinch run for by JP Crawford. However, Haggerty was injured on the play. So some number of those 142 times would be the same, but it is impossible to say how many

without doing a research project on each one. The one before that was Manuel Margot, also due to injury on May 9th, 2022. Before that was Estruble Cabrera, also injured May 13th, 2021. And Ryan looked for other examples. He found that on August 12th, 2020, Francisco Cervelli stole second

in the top of the ninth inning versus the Blue Jays. He was immediately pinch run for. As far as I can tell, he was not injured. He played two days later, but I cannot find tape of the stolen base. So Ryan has provided the data and I will link to this spreadsheet on the show page, all of the instances of this happening,

including the ones that were injuries. So if anyone wants to do a video deep dive or scan through the newspaper archives to find out why the pinch running happened, then please feel free and report back on this very valuable and important research project. But the situation has happened many times, but whether it has happened, absent an injury, unclear. But this Francisco Cervelli case seems like the best evidence in the short

term that this is not unprecedented, but it's hard to query because one way or another, you're removed from the game. And it doesn't necessarily distinguish in the data. He was removed for an injury as opposed to he was just removed because there was a faster guy on the bench. But yeah, you would think that it would make sense to pinch run sooner if you're going to do it. Right. Yeah.

Okay. It's a good question. And yeah, I welcome further insight into that. Right. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. It's a good question. Yeah. And yeah, I welcome further insight into that. And then here's another one where Ryan was freelancing. This was just based on his own interest. And this was back on May 13th that he sent this one to me because at that point, he noted, the Braves have been one win away from being 500 on the season five different times already this year. Ryan roots for Atlanta and the Braves in those five opportunities have lost all

five games not counting the 0-0 record of course they were 0-1, 14-15, 17-18, 18-19, and 19-20 and they went 0-5 in all of those games. So they had five shots to equalize their record, get to 500, and they couldn't do it. They kept losing. And when Ryan sent this to me, they were 20 and 21. So they had a sixth chance to do it. And Ryan says, I wanted to know the record

for how many times a team has gotten one win away from 500 and lost before they did eventually get to 500. And the record is 10, which was done by the 1901 Athletics. In 1901, the Philly A's went 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5. And then they tabled this for a while, 43 and 44, 44 and 45, 3 and 4, 4 and 5, 18 and 19, 26 and 27, and 27 and 28 before finally getting to 500 at 28 and 28.

1912 Cubs, they took seven times. 1945 Cleveland, they took until their 89th game to get to 500 for the first time and they were within one game of it seven times as well. And in 1987, the Mariners also took seven tries. So the Braves having failed five times, they were at that point tied for 20th all time. When Ryan sent this to me,

the Braves were already tied for sixth all time because it would take them a minimum of six attempts to finally get to 500. If they had lost that night, they would have been tied for third all time. However, they were victorious. They finally did get to 500. So they took themselves out of the running for most attempts to get to 500 before actually getting there. But I'm sure they preferred to just be 500, though now as we record, they are back one game under. Again, they are 24 and 25. So I guess maybe they could still be in the running for just most times period over the course of the season.

I don't know the record for that, but they have already made it at least once. So it won't be their first time if and when they get back to 500 again. But yeah, I can imagine that being frustrating, especially because you start the season slow like Atlanta did and not every team that's going to be in this group is going to be good, but the Braves were expected to be good. And so the fact that they kept getting to 500, that felt like an important mark and milestone for them. Like, okay, we started off with this slow start

and people wrote us off, but now we've at least gotten back to par and now we can just get back to our winning ways. And yet they kept failing to do that over and over again. So I would imagine that was pretty frustrating, but that frustration ended. And yet now it's kind of back again. Would you like to hear some late breaking news

that is completely unrelated to that? Oh, sure. Ben Lively needs Tommy John. Oh, well that stinks. Yeah, sorry. Ben Lively was huge for me last year. My minor league free agent draftee. Yeah.

Yeah, he put in a lot of time and I was the beneficiary of that. So I feel almost responsible now for that workload if it contributed at all to his surgery. Yeah, it is your fault. Yeah. He was pitching well, he was pitching at least ERA wise. He was pitching better than he was last year and guardians kind of need him. Yeah, there ain't somebody. Yep, well that stinks.

Speaking of the minor league for agent draft, by the way, our official stat keeper of such things, Chris Hannell, he let us know that at ewstats.com, there is now a live tracker of the minor league free agent draft progress. Now, some people I think prefer not to monitor this that closely and to check back at the end of the season and say, who won?

I wasn't monitoring this at all. But if you want a live updated version of this, you can get it now by going to ewstats.com. And thanks to Michael Fazio for his programming assistance making that work. And I'm pleased to report that I'm out to an early lead. So- You wouldn't have mentioned it if you weren't out to an early lead, I suspect. I want to recognize the good work that Chris and Michael have done, but I also want to

recognize my good work in drafting this roster. Sure. Yeah, I just continue to be torn in two directions at once, grateful and impressed by all of the commitment and good work that members of our community have put into these exercises and distress that I will never remember anything again because my need to track these things on my own diminishes by the day. So I don't know what to make of that conflict, but it exists within me like two wolves.

Yeah, it's far from an insuperable lead here. So there's plenty of potential for you to come back. You are in second and I'm about a hundred combined plate appearances and batters faced ahead of you and you're ahead of Clemens by even more than that. So things have not gone great for other Ben. What a polite turn that took at the end by an amount that I will not name with any specificities. And in fact, it also tracks the projected totals, I guess according to the FanCraft's depth charts. And the good news for you is that despite my early lead,

your projected total is actually higher than mine. So Jason Martinez, the geniuses at Raster resource and the depth charts at fan graphs expect you to catch up. So we'll see. I'm proud though. I've hit on seven of my 10 picks thus far. I mean, that's pretty good for a full season. So, and most of those guys aren't giving me

a ton of playing time individually. It's just collectively that they've added up. Like you've gotten more from Bryce Wilson than I have gotten from any of my individual picks, but we're a team and we're pulling together here and seven out of 10 at this stage of the season, I feel pretty good about that hit rate. You should, I think you should.

And then the last little stat blast here, this was from Craig W, also a Patreon supporter, who said, I thought this might be fun for you. A buddy of mine was showing me this wall art he just purchased for his office. And he sends the link And essentially what it is, is an old school mechanical looking scoreboard or a replica of one, not life size obviously,

but something you could put on the wall in your office. And it's just, you know, the home team and the away team. And it just has like yesterday's line score on it. And today's, which is kind of weird. I guess it's actually not home in a way. It's yesterday's, oh, I see. It's the messages, yesterday's hits won't win today's games. So there's like a moral to it.

And so it has yesterday's line score and then it has today's, which is blank. And for yesterday, it has this team, this unspecified team scoring seven runs on 11 hits and three errors. And so Craig says the question became, is this a line from an actual MLB game? I searched a history of pitchers wearing number 79 because the pitchers uniform number is on here also, and it says number 79. And it's only mostly recent players, as we've discussed, players are really exploring the studio space

when it comes to their jersey numbers these days. I went to StatHead and checked games with seven runs and 11 hits, but couldn't figure out how to add the three errors to get a distinct games list. Thought maybe you or your team of experts could work your magic. And Ryan did, and I sent this to him and he checked to see whether this had happened,

this combination of runs and hits and errors. And he said, no, it's not a real line. Only seven games had a team with a score line of two, zero, three, zero, zero, zero, two, zero, zero. That's what it is, The run scored by inning. None of those games had 11 hits or three errors. So this is invented at least among major league games. I wonder whether that's on purpose.

Like, do you think the designers of this wall art checked to see if they were infringing on a real game here or whether this was just random luck that they happened to find one that had not actually been accomplished, perhaps. Perhaps. Yeah, but that's the way it worked out. And I'll link to this, at least with the page that Craig sent us. This thing is 219 smackers.

Wow. Which is a little rich for my blood, but I guess the message, hey, can't rest on your laurels. Right. You know, what have you done for me lately here? You scored seven runs on 11 hits yesterday, even though you committed three errors.

Well, today you start with a blank slate and zero runs and you have to score some more. This thing in the image, at least, it takes up like the entire wall behind the desk. I just, I don't know. It's a little, it's a little ostentatious perhaps, but if you're a baseball person and you like baseball wall art and I have some,

then check it out. So kudos to the designers, I guess, for not basing this on an actual game. I will warn people that after I opened this link, I was then getting targeted ads for this very wall art for like days afterwards. So don't click unless you want this to be marketed to you. That is what I will say anyway.

There's just like no gap between when you click on a thing and when you start getting ads for it either it's, Right. Yeah. Let me pretend I'm not being surveilled. Yeah. And lastly, effectively wild keeper of the wiki, Raymond Chen. I ran that question about the force out the double play instead of the attempted play at the plate by him. And he's a good rules lawyer. He he's good at some of the obscure rules and parsing the rule book. And he does think it's

legal as we did, but thinks it would be difficult just because the throw takes a while. And so to get that throw in and double up two runners with the relay and everything, that's a tall order. But he did note that a very similar situation occurred on September 7th, 2023, Cleveland at the Angels, bottom of the ninth bases loaded two outs, not one. Randall Gritchick for the Angels hit a short fly ball to center that dropped for a base hit. And guardian center fielder Miles Straw picked up the ball on the bounce and threw hard to second,

hoping to get the force out. It didn't work, but it was the same idea of, let's not go for the lead runner here. Let's surprise people and we'll get the force out instead. But that was just a single out required and it, it still didn't work. So yeah, it's tough. It's tough. It is speaking of Raymond, by the way, he did follow up on our fart terminology from, from our last episode. Yeah, cause so we had the suggestion of the fart bat for the home run handout essentially, right? And when the ball goes off the glove or off the body

and you get a fielder assisted home run and listener Alex suggested fart bat for fielder assisted run that brings about tragedy or even just fart for fielder assisted run scoring tragedy and people generally like this. But Raymond wrote in to suggest a possible alternative or improvement. He said, I applaud the proposed nickname Fartbat for a fielder assisted home run. It fits with the pattern of fart acronyms for defensive miscues like fart slam. That's a pretty well known one. Fielder allows runner to score like a moron and fart alarm, the lesser known fart alarm,

which is Fielder allows runner to advance like a real moron. However, the phrase Fart alarm is so good. I'm sorry. Fart alarm. I love fart alarm. Yeah, very good. However, the phrase Fielder assisted run that brings about tragedy is fairly generic and doesn't highlight that it is home run related, which is true. It doesn't specify, could be any kind of tragedy. Right. Any kind of tragedy. So many kinds. Raymond suggested that we keep fart bat, but we say that its fielder accidentally rewards the

batter a tater. Amazing. It's so good. Which captures both the accidental nature as well as the fact that it's a one run. Yes. I love it so much. I think it's perfect. Yeah. Okay. So we'll go with that. And Raymond then did also suggest that you could go with Fart Bad, for Fielder accidentally rewards the batter a dinger, which, you know, it's not bad either.

No, but it's not as good. Yeah, there's just something about Fart Bad. Fart Bad, Fart Bad. And Fart Alarm, Fart Alarm, Fart Alarm.art. Yeah. And fart alarm, fart alarm, fart alarm. Yep. And Marybeth wrote in to say, you can't throw out fart bat without expecting responses to that.

And she told her husband about it and his punch up was fart glove for fielder assisted round tripper, given lift over vertical erection, which is maybe a tad too much. It's too much. Or just fart for fielder assisted round tripper given lift over vertical erection, which is maybe, maybe a tad too much. It's just, just fart for fielder assisted round tripper. And that's not bad. If we were going to shorten it, I think that would be a better way to do that

acronym, but yeah, I don't think we can improve upon Raymond's improvement of fart bat. Fart bat, fart bat, fart bat. I had a, an ex who had a cat named fruit bat. And so this is making me think of the cat named fart bat. No, fart bat, fart bat, fart bat. I had an ex who had a cat named Fruitbat. And so this is making me think of the cat named Fruitbat. The cat was named Fruitbat? The cat was named Fruitbat. Did it have like a weird face or big ears?

Yeah, I guess it kind of had a weird face. Maybe that was why, but. Cause you know, they have like those weird, they have those, they have their funny little bat faces. They're like scrunched in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, fart bat.

Fart bat. All right. Meant to mention, by the way, if you're interested in following updates on Effectively Wild Competitions in progress, Chris Hannell also did a post for the FanCrafts community blog, the first in a series, reviewing our bold preseason predictions. So he tackled some of Bauman's this time. I'll link to that on the show page as well. Last time Meg mentioned that Twins picture Joe Ryan resembles Billy from Stranger Things, well, listener Scott wrote in to notify us that there is actually a Netflix

Stranger Things night at Target Field July 9th where they are giving away an exclusive Joe Ryan slash Stranger Things bobblehead, or as it says Joe Ryan and then in quotes, Billy bobblehead. So yeah, this resemblance is not unknown. They have made merch of it. As a half Canadian, I think it's my patriotic duty to signal boost this message from listener and Patreon supporter Bohan who writes,

I have a cause that I believe is justified that I humbly request you help spread on behalf of Blue Jays fans all around Canada. MLB needs to stop ignoring the needs of Canadians when scheduling games. Monday the 19th was a holiday in most of Canada, Victoria Day, in celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday on May 24th. Now I know that America famously detached itself from the monarchy a few hundred years ago, is now perhaps in the process of reattaching itself, but it feels unjust that Canadian fans

would be ignored when scheduling games for our only existing MLB team after the Expos were ripped away from us. If you're not aware, I'm talking about the fact that the Blue Jays had an off day on a holiday Monday when most Canadians were sitting at home or on their porch. As you can see from this Reddit thread, the people are not happy about it. I can confirm that seems to be the case.

As noted on the Wikipedia page for the holiday, the day is informally considered the start of the summer season in Canada, and seeing as baseball is the summer sport, it just feels wrong that we do not get a baseball game to watch on a lovely May afternoon. This isn't the first time that it's happened either. And as a Jays fan,

I can't help but feel that MLB doesn't care about us. So please, if you can, help us get the word out that MLB needs to give us a home game on the Victoria Day Long Weekend Monday help us get the word out that MLB needs to give us a home game on the Victoria Day long weekend Monday. There, the word is out. And also a quick correction pointed out by listener Alan. Effectively Wild is a safe space for pedantry and I feel obliged to draw attention to a stray comment

that Ben made while talking about Pete Crowe Armstrong and his mother Ashley, who acted in the movie Little Big League. As Meg and Ben were riffing on this fun fact, Ben casually added, and the fact that he would end up on the Cubs. I am wondering if Ben was conflating 1994's Little Big League with 1993's Rookie of the Year, in which an adolescent flamethrower joins the Chicago Cubs. Little Big League was the Timothy Busfield vehicle centered around a child owning

the Minnesota Twins. It's an easy mistake to make, and the confusion can sometimes extend to include two other baseball kid movies that featured real MLB teams, The Scout featuring Brendan Fraser as Yankees prospect Steve Nebraska, and Angels in the Outfield. Both of these were released in 1994, and I'm guessing I'm not the only elder millennial who has struggled to tease these four films apart. Although it would be especially satisfying

if Ashley Crowe were in Rookie of the Year instead of Little Big League, it's still pretty dang cool. I don't remember exactly what I was thinking when I said that, but it is quite possible that that was exactly it. So thank you, Alan. And thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do

by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some month or yearly amount to help keep the podcast coming, help us stay almost ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Carter Rogers, Justine Dakotis, Alexander Pietras, Jay Swift, and Mike Cahill, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly

bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, autograph books, discounts on merch and ad-free fan answers, personalized messages, autographed books, discounts on merch and ad-free FanGraphs memberships, and so much more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email,

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And you can check the show notes at fan crafts or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks to you, as always, for listening. If you have a long weekend, we hope you enjoy it.

One way or another, we hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Take me to the diamond. Lead me through the turnstile. Shower me with data that I never thought to compile now I'm freely now a scorecard with a cracker jack of a smile effectively wild