Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2330: Tapped Out

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Taylor Walls fulfilling a preseason podcast prediction by being ejected after tapping his helmet following a questionable call (and the many notifications Ben and Meg received from EW listeners), Luke Weaver’s stretching injury, the Rockies’ purported improvement, the decline of the closer as bullpen protagonist, a miraculous softball-delivery […]

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Hello and welcome to episode 2330 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulia Fangraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, are you out from underneath all the emails we've gotten? No. Have you dug out? Still digging my way out of the Taylor Walls correspondence. Yes, I was notified by many people in many ways, in many different media about Taylor Walls.

Every time I thought that the deluge had stopped, there was another message from somewhere. Really it was in the immediate aftermath of Taylor Walls tapping his helmet to object to a call. Yes. I must have had four or five different notifications subsequently from different apps and places, just people coming out of the woodwork to notify me about this. It was just like, you know, not just the standard email and text and Discord notification and Facebook notification and then suddenly a singing telegram showing up at my door and someone throwing

a rock through my window with a crumpled up note around it that said, Hey, did you hear Taylor Walls? He was ejected after tapping his helmet. And then I'd go outside my apartment and some stranger would have cost me and say, Hey, Ben, Taylor Walls, did you hear? So that's still sort of happening as I move about the world, but I'm, I'm grateful to everyone who let me know. Yeah. I was going to say like, do you feel loved Ben? Does it make you feel loved?

Yes, it does. Because it's a nice thing to have people be like, oh my gosh, I've witnessed a red ass be a little bit of a red ass and then an umpire be a red ass back. I have to tell Ben quite nice. It just reminds us that there are people out there in their world going about their business and something happens that makes them think of us or effectively wild. And then they hurry to their various apps and notify us one way or another. Now the stragglers were notifying us of this news for some time after it occurred. Days, really. Yeah. There was just no danger of us not knowing about this.

But thank you to everyone for just absolutely making sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that we would one way or another encounter the news that Taylor Walls did do this because it was a long awaited event. And it's sort of an obscure event or I would have thought it was, but then it turned into big news. I don't know how many people who notified us just the Paul Revere's of the Taylor Walls news. I know that Paul Revere didn't actually do the things he's purported to have done, but

there were many people who actually did let us know about Tiller Wasp. I don't know if they were all watching Ray's Astros live or just it spread through the grapevine and then it just was kind of a cascade, just waves of walls, notifications, crashing against our shores. But yeah, look, it was a Sunday afternoon. It was a one nothing game. Astros were up. It was a pretty high leverage moment, nine thinning.

And home plate umpire, Nick Lentz made a call and Taylor Walls did not appreciate that call. And he made his displeasure known and Taylor Walls probably had a point here. It did look a little low. Taylor-Walls is not the caliber of hitter who an umpire will defer to. I mean, I don't know that umpires actually defer to hitters these days because they're graded on everything.

But the classic example of a Ted Williams or a Joey Votto or something like that where it's like, if Ted Williams says it's a strike, it was a strike son, that's not Taylor Wells. I don't think that umpires have that healthy respect for his sense of the strike zone. Although he probably had a point in this case and Josh Hader got a generous call and Taylor Wells did the helmet tap

after protesting strenuously in other ways. And Nick was not gonna have this. And Wells denied that this was his intent. He said that this was not a reference to the automated ball strike challenge system, that he was told by the umpire, you're not going to do that, you're not going to tap your helmet.

And so at that point, I know that they think that's disrespectful. I watched the video and I could see where he may have thought that. But I think like the context clues around it, I'm looking at him in my body language is saying like, dude, I didn't hear what you're saying. I didn't say anything to him leading up to this.

If I'm gonna tap my helmet, I'm going to do it while I'm looking at you asking you a question, trying to understand what you're telling me. I find this thoroughly unpersuasive as an argument because like if what he's trying to he says he's trying to like signal that he couldn't hear or that the um couldn't hear him. You don't tap the top of your head for that. couldn't hear or that the um couldn't hear him. You don't tap the top of your head for that. That's not a universal like, hey, I can't hear you. Your ears aren't on top of your head as far as I know. Taylor was. If they are, you have more than two.

Right. I've seen the ears on the sides of your head. If it were like a headset sort of situation, like the replay review signal, if you couldn't hear through your headphones or something, then you might tap your head like that, but they were standing next to each other. So it seems like an odd gesture. And even if it were, even if it were meant to be like the, the headsets that well, there's

no other way to interpret that. Then I want a review of the call that I was just given. So I understand these guys end up shifting into I don't want to get fined mode after the fact. And you know, at a certain point, you got to get back out there and deal with umpires again. So you maybe tell a little bit of a fib in an effort to smooth the way for the next umpire you have to interact with. So that guy doesn't think that you're a malcontent, but like, come on, come on, come on. Like, not a, not a credible, not a credible thing. The way to do it, the diplomatic way to do it, Taylor, is to say, yeah, I, I did that and that wasn't, that wasn't, I was frustrated by the call,

but that probably wasn't the best way to handle it in the moment. And then move on, you know? But like, on that, yeah, because you didn't like the call. You didn't like the call. And guess what? You were right. You were right not to like the call. It was seemingly not a very good call. It was a little bit off. That's the only thing that almost makes it sound more credible is that I don't know what the point of protesting is really. I, it's not like he's going to get some long suspension for doing this. I don't think. And he did get angry after he was ejected because of this gesture.

Then he, as he said, got his money's worth. And so it wasn't as if he was from the start saying, this is all one big misunderstanding and I never meant to give offense and believe it. Yeah. And so it wasn't as if he was from the start saying, this is all one big misunderstanding and I never meant to give offense. And yeah, and he continued here. I just remember going to get into the box, kind of adjusting my helmet. That is what happened sort of from a certain point of view.

And then hearing him mouthing something, I was like, I think I said, huh, what'd you say? I can't hear you. And at that point, I have no recollection of it. And she's just blacked out for this entire interaction. But after seeing the video, it looks like I tapped my helmet, but it was totally unintentional.

Something I was not consciously aware of at all. His hands just independent of his psyche just gestures. It was just an unconscious gesture. So then he comes out and he's like, we're not doing that. You're out of here and tosses me. Just to be so on edge thinking that somebody is just trying to be so disrespectful and show you up at that point. I think it was premature.

So he's saying that the umpire was just too defensive that he was interpreting Taylor Wells's actions in the umpire was just too defensive, that he was interpreting Taylor Walls' actions in the worst possible light here, that he is thinking everyone's out to get him, and really, Taylor Walls' intentions are innocent here, and that Walls could not remember ever having been ejected from any game ever, and that this is out of character for him. I don't really remember any time that I've been thrown

out of a game since I've played baseball. I kind of want to apologize to him if that's what he thought that I did. But at the same time, like dude, after missing a call, you have to kind of understand the situation. You can't just toss me for something when you're not totally sure that I was doing it intentionally to disrespect him.

So, okay, so I think that there is a nugget of truth in this part of it, which is that like, in a moment like that, where the stakes are incredibly high, I think that you have to have a little bit thicker of a skin if you're an umpire. But in the umpire's defense, what Taylor Walls is basically saying in that moment is, I welcome the hastening of the day in which you no longer have the same kind of employment that you currently enjoy because of a challenge system. You know, we've talked about this as like an in-between point between a full zone and a full robo zone and not, but like, it is like a very rude thing that he is saying. I would maybe argue on par with like deploying the magic words or saying something about his mother. You know, it's like a like you're cutting to the core of the man.

What he should have done. Here's another approach he could have taken. A diplomatic route option two, door number two, would have been like, you know, I got in the habit of doing the challenge system in spring training. It's such a great system, and it allows our wonderful umpires

to continue to do their work, but gives us some recourse in moments like this. And I just, you know, I got in such a habit, I didn't even think anything of it. That would have been a lie also. Yes. It's just laying dormant for the past couple months since spring training. And then it just came out, it manifested itself. And someone could have asked him about that and then he could have said I mean I have seen such quality zones so far this season I haven't had occasion right I'm just saying that like maybe not the first time the Taylor world is like put

his foot in his mouth and honestly this is a way lower stakes kind of moment for it than some of his other yes. So I'll take it. You know, go be fixated by the challenge system. It might be good for you. It keeps you from being squirrely. Yeah. And so look, I've watched Hitchcock movies. I'm familiar with The Wrong Man.

Sometimes you get framed. Sometimes actions are misinterpreted. We've all been in that situation where someone took something we said the wrong way. And then you're on a train, someone offers to kill someone for you, you kill their person and then it happens. Yeah. Hyjinks ensue and someone has to go to an island and kill a lady. It's really upsetting. Yeah. Or you end up dangling off Mount Rushmore. These things, you know, misunderstandings, they can occur. And so look, if his intentions were pure here, then I hate to smear him. But the thing is that for the purposes of

our bold preseason predictions, which is why we were notified so diligently by everyone in every possible medium, it doesn't actually matter what his intentions were. Oh, I was going to say, wait, am I misremembering your bold prediction? Okay, I see what you're saying. No, it was this. Yes. Okay.

But yeah, maybe I need to talk to somebody about memory. No, what he was thinking, I don't think that impacts the accuracy of the prediction. He was not within the bounds of your prediction, as I recall it. Yeah, he was ejected for making a helmet tapping gesture, which he undoubtedly did. And you can read the intent however you want, but obviously the umpire read it that way and he was ejected for that. And thus, I get credit for a successful prediction. You do.

Yeah. And you know, maybe he does have an ear on top of his head. Could be. I guess we must allow the possibility that he has always understood the way to gesture for I can't hear you, will you speak louder is to tap the top of one's head. I don't know the social mores of every society on earth. Perhaps that is an approach that some take. But I think the more likely explanation is that he was being pretty rude. And even if he was right, the way that he went about

expressing that kind of rude, and then he got ejected for it and you got to score a point. So here we are. Yeah. Well, that's behind us. It was an eventful day for the podcast. This was pretty big news across baseball, which surprised me slightly. It wasn't just for the sickos who are tracking our bold preseason predictions. This was big news. Like this was one of the top posts, if not the top post on the baseball subreddit.

People were into this because I guess they're into spite. And that's what this seemed to be and confrontation and interpersonal drama. And so, yeah, this really resonated. And thus I was informed also on Twitter and also on Blue Sky. I think I left out a few other places where I was.

Yeah, carrier pigeon singing telegram, as you said. I was fascinated not only by the reach that this seemed to have, but also there was so much confusion about why he had been ejected. Like there were a number of people who I think did not interpret this gesture in the way that it was, I'm sorry, Taylor, obviously meant. And so didn't understand why he had been tossed for it. But yeah, I don't know, maybe it'll, it just reminds everyone, hey, remember that great thing we were doing

in spring training? We should bring that back. Yeah. And it's really a relief because when you receive that many notifications via that many channels at the same time, your mind goes to the worst case scenario. Yeah, dark places. I looked at my phone and I saw how many inbox notifications I had and I was like, did something

bad happen? Yeah. Is this a test of the emergency broadcast system? And in a way it was, I guess, but not that serious an emergency. And so to learn that, oh, it was just a helmet tap related ejection. Well, that's a fun reason to be bombarded by people telling me things. So, yeah, it was fun. Thanks for everyone who let us know.

And thanks to Taylor Walls for making that prediction come true. So it's been an eventful few days in baseball for other reasons as well. And I guess, as we often do with these Tuesday pods, when we record on a Tuesday, often they become a podcast potpourri, kind of a grab bag because we last recorded Friday afternoon and then there was a lot of baseball that happened between then and Tuesday afternoon. And so these become kind of ketchup pods. So I guess we could start with this. Now, you didn't begin this episode by asking me how I was, as you often do, because we had pressing Taylor Walls related business to get to. By the way, if we've actually managed to get through

this discussion without calling Taylor Walls, Tyler Wells or Taylor Ward or anything. I think we have. I think we have, but you never know. Sometimes the wrong name can slip out. So apologies if we have Sometimes the wrong name can slip out. So apologies if we have had any misnomers here, but I think we did okay. But I guess one thing that I was going to say, if you had started with your standard question to me, is that I am doing well because unlike Yankees closer Luke Weaver,

I did not warm up before I worked out this weekend. And that was clearly a problem for him because warming up to come into a game, he made the mistake of stretching, which we have just established on this podcast is a drastic mistake in so many circumstances. And he hurt his hammy. And now he is out for several weeks, most likely, which is quite a blow to that Yankees bullpen.

And yet again, we are confronted with the ills, the dangers of stretching. OK, so Ben, I think it is a low blow for you to invoke someone's injury as a way of masking your jabs about static stretching. And I will remind our listeners that what I'm advocating for is not static stretching. You should stretch dynamically. I just think that like you, you speak like a 30 something who doesn't have back problems. And on some level I envy you that, but also sometimes stretching is good actually. Doesn't mean that it can't go awry, but my goodness. Yeah, I don't know exactly what kind of stretching

he was doing here. It was, I think after he was warming up to get into a game. So maybe it was dynamic. Maybe it was a proper acceptable, permissible stretching. And sometimes you do everything the right way and something goes wrong regardless. So I do wish him well in his recovery. Just saying, you know, be careful out there

if you do insist on stretching. I mean, yeah, you should, anytime you're engaged in physical activity, you should be careful. You should have exercised some amount of care. It's not a controversial take. My goodness. Here's something related to relievers and closers actually, while we're on the subject.

I received a message from my pal, Zach Cramm, formerly of the Ringer, now of ESPN, who did not notify me about Taylor Wells. He assumed that someone else had already done that and he was right. But he did message me about an article that was published in The Athletic about the potential end of the 500 saves closer club, if you can even call it a club because Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman are the only members. It's quite an exclusive club, but it was basically about how Ken Lee Jansen, he's approaching that 500 save milestone. He could join that group, but no one is even close. No one active, I guess, unless Craig Kimbrel comes back to the majors, which could happen any moment now, but it seems like closers these days are not really racking up the saves the way that they

once were. And the article went through various explanations and Zach was not entirely satisfied by those explanations. And so he was wondering if I had any alternative ones. And I did. The article kind of went on about just how you know, there's more turnover in bullpens these days and you just don't have established closers who are sticking in that role for as long. And there's not as much cache to the closer role anymore and saves are not as highly valued or not seen as quite as precious and save opportunities are distributed more democratically than they used to be, which is certainly true that it's

less just inviolable. If you are the capital C closer, you get all the save opportunities. If you're not, you don't teams play matchups now and they have more flexible bullpen hierarchies and they might bring someone in because it's just a good situation for that person and teams just tend to be a little less precious about who gets to save opportunities, at least on a lot of teams. The one thing that came out of our discussion about what other factors could be playing a part here. I suggested that it's also probably that teams are quite

reluctant now to use relievers on many consecutive days in a row. And so that's really what has changed that in the past, if you had a save opportunity, you would get that closer in there even if he'd pitched the two previous days or games or three, you know, you might go four in a row that used to happen. That's vanishingly rare these days. And so I think that's a big part of it that relievers are just generally full-time relievers are getting into fewer games than they used to, pitching fewer innings than they used to, not dramatically,

but you look at say, Mario Onorvera and Trevor Hoffman, and they were pretty routinely getting into the mid seventies innings at least, or, you know, pitching in 70 games or close to 70 games. And basically you've just sort of lopped off 10 games or 10 innings or so from a full-time relievers regular season workload. And I think that it would be sort of disproportionate. It's like the the number of save opportunities that you lose is almost out of step with the innings reduction or the games reduction, because probably all of the games that you're not pitching now would have been save opportunities in the past, you would have been pushed to a third or fourth consecutive game when it was a save opportunity. And

so now that's not happening. And you're just unavailable that day. And thus you might pitch 10 fewer innings, but they were all save opportunities that were passed up. And so that's what we decided was a big factor that you might still have say, an Emmanuel Classe, who is still sort of a heavier workload guy for a reliever and is still racking up 40 something saves a year, whereas someone like Josh Hader, even if he's getting an assist from an umpire in certain situations, or an Edwin Diaz, maybe they're more in the 30s now than they used to be. So that's a big part of it. But then I was thinking, it's a little like an analog

to the starting pitcher as protagonist discussion that we've had, where that's maybe the thing that is lost a little bit when starters don't go as deep into games. You're just the game used to revolve around them, and now it doesn't. And maybe the closer is kind of the bullpen protagonist, or the closest thing to that. Like it's all building up maybe the closer is kind of the bullpen protagonist or the closest thing to that. Like it's all building up to the closer and it's all the bridge to the closer and the setup men and it's a relay race and they're passing the baton to the closer. And now that's not necessarily true anymore.

And no one really bats an eye if you hear, oh, the closer, he's just down today because he stretched too much. No, because he pitched the last couple of games. It's just not a big deal. But that does mean that you get a little more unpredictability when it comes to who's gonna be in those high leverage spots. And initially we sort of celebrated that.

There was a novelty to it. It was, oh, Andrew Miller's pitching in the sixth inning. And this guy is getting a save and isn't this enlightened? And now maybe that's kind of old hat and we've moved on from that. So what I'm asking is, do you think that that has any impact on the entertainment value of games that you can't necessarily count on that bullpen protagonist who's going to be out there in that situation for better or worse. You get familiar with their mannerisms, you live and die with them, you can't live with them and you can't live without them and you just know they're gonna

give me heartburn in this situation but they'll usually nail it down and now you're never entirely sure who's gonna get that safe opportunity. And then that kind of trickles down to the rest of the bullpen assignments and who knows who's going to get this opportunity. And so you end up with this parade of relievers and sometimes they're lesser known. Like closers used to be more famous than they are now, I think, or there's, there's a smaller group maybe of designated closers. Like if I, if you quizzed me on who's the closer on this team at any given time,

I think I would have known that for more teams at more times than I would now save for some exceptions. If you have an Edwin Diaz-esque introduction, then okay, maybe I know about that. But I think maybe fewer teams have that now. And maybe fantasy players could weigh in here on whether it's quite as important to be up on your saves and your closer hierarchies. I guess I think I maybe think about it a little bit of a different way,

because you're obviously right that the designated closer role is less common than it used to be, or at the very least less rigid in terms of when that guy comes in. But I think that there's something to the entertainment value that works in the favor of modern baseball, where you are much more likely to see the best availability allowing, right, with all the usual caveats about usage and health, but you are much more likely to see the best bullpen arm that a team has in against the best hitters in a team's lineup in the late innings now than you used to be, right? Like as clubs have become sort of free from the constraints of a designated

closer, although I still think that there are a good number of teams that have like a designated closer, whether he's deployed consistently in the ninth is... Right. It's a little less rigid, but I guess usually there is some guy who has that label, at least. Yeah, there's a guy like at the top of the pecking order within a bullpen. And when he comes in, might vary much more than it used to. But I also think like, you're far more likely to see that guy like you're far more likely to see that guy in a spot that involves the best hitters on the other team or a super high leverage moment or both. And I think that has a tremendous amount of entertainment value. So again, like there are definitely exceptions to this and there are a lot of teams now that will do, you know, if not forever, then for long stretches like closer

by committee. But I think that one, those teams tend to be worse teams than the ones that have designated closers. And, you know, having the flexibility to move a guy around gives you the option to say like, no, we, you know, we want to see Emmanuel Klaas say against the best dudes that he is going to possibly face. And, you know, if they come in the eighth, that's fine. But we're going to make sure that he's in there against like the very best guys. So I don't know, I, I'm, I'm less worried about that. I think that there are plenty of very good relievers who have fairly firm roles. And then the place where there's deviation

is exactly when they might come in. So, yeah. Yeah, it does seem like we're at a little bit of a local minimum when it comes to just the save counts, the career save counts of the leaders, which we've talked about being at a minimum with other things too, like the active leader in home runs, the active leader in war, the other active leader in other stats for various reasons, changes in usage and some randomness. We just have seen a bit of an ebb there. And Zach said, not

counting Kimbrill, there are five active players with 200 saves. Klasay is the only other one with more than 116. Again, I don't think there's that much mystique associated with certain save thresholds necessarily, but we probably will see less of that going forward. I don't think we're, we're losing as much from that as we might lose see less of that going forward. I don't think we're, we're losing as much from that as we might lose from members of other clubs or 300 wins or even 200 wins as a starter. I guess things have just generally gotten a little less rigid, at least relative to an era immediately preceding this one when it comes to pitcher usage, when it comes to lineups and batting orders, when it comes to even player positions. And we've seen more multi-position guys and more just, oh, maybe you

could play this position, even if you don't quite fit the mold of someone who would play that position. And mostly I applaud that, or at least I appreciate the less rigid thinking, the more open-minded thinking. But it does, I guess, make certain things a little less predictable, or at least differently predictable than they used to be, and it causes an adjustment. So that can be jarring at times. This is not as jarring, I think, as the decline of the starting pitcher protagonist, but I hadn't really considered the closer as the bullpen protagonist and

how that changes things. I don't think that there's nothing to what you're saying, right? I think that there is on the part of teams, there is a perceived sort of transience to that role. And I think that they can, depending on the club, there's obviously variation team to team, but some clubs are a little more like, eh, these widgets are all the same. As others, we have a rolling list of guys who we can take into that spot. But I think that that part of it is often driven by either them being very good at developing pitching or them being really bad and like being like, who can we fit in there

who might allow us to, if only for a moment, like be a little bit more comfortable in the late innings than we've been. And then when they prove to be bad too, then they're kind of sent on their way. But we got some named guys who are consistently seeing the highest leverage spots and, and you know, listen to they come later like Often or later in the game, you know for all of our quibbling about this. It's not like you're seeing Closers deployed in like the sixth. No, not in the regular season at least and if you did think how exciting that would be You'd be like whoa, what's going on? It's exciting. Got to tune in got to send Ben and Megan email

Yes Whoa, what's going on? It's exciting. Got to tune in. Got to send Ben and Megan email. Yes. I think it's a good thing to like keep an eye on because I do think that there's narrative value in having... I'm going to do a big swear. My apologies. But like, you know, it's there's narrative value to having like a f*** you guy at the end of your bullpen. And being able to be like, oh, I'm sorry, did you think you were gonna maybe rally to win? No, we gotta f*** you guy, that's what he's here for. You can tell, but to your, this may be in a weird way

lends credence to your point and to the article's point. I think it is something that teams are a little nervous about, like they have an appreciation for the narrative value that, you value that a traditional lockdown closer whose usage is predictable has because especially after Edwin Diaz's intro stuff went viral, which I'll just remind everyone he started with the mirror. But anyway, it feels like every time the quote unquote closer for a team is being summoned for the bullpen and the broadcast starts to go to commercial, you see the lights come down and the music come up and everybody, and like, look, we could just, I know that

you're not going to defer to other people's closers being better than your guy. I know. I understand. You got tickets to sell. You got a being better than your guy. I know. I understand. You got tickets to sell. You got a ballpark experience to ensure, but they're not all, I don't know if everyone needs a little song and a dance, you know? Yeah. You have to attain a certain status to make all that rigmarole worth it. I would just give it to anyone, but still.

Yeah. Yeah. When you were talking about the f**k you guy, I kind of thought you meant the guy that you curse on your own team. No. Because that's. He's saying that to the other team. Yeah, I see. He's saying that to the other club.

Yeah. Because that's also an age old fan closer relationship too. Oh yeah. Tales all this time. Yeah. Where you're just like, oh God, this guy again, he's just gonna put me through it, even if he does eventually nail it down, you know, that the winning

runs going to be in scoring position and then he's going to wriggle out of it somehow. And yeah, that's also like maybe in the past teams would have been more beholden to that guy because he was believed to have some sort of closer mentality that no one else possessed. And now it's, it's, you know, if it's a constant tight rope act, well, maybe someone else could just get that opportunity instead, potentially. All right. Congrats to the Rockies on getting to double digits. They have won their 10th game,

major milestone that every team celebrates at some point during a season, some sooner than others. But this episode sign of the Rockies apocalypse actually came prior to that 10th win. After their Saturday loss, they lost, they got swept this weekend, the Mets swept them, they lost their 22nd consecutive series. That streak is still alive as we speak. And Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer, he was asked what he had to say to the Rockies fans who wanna see some sort of progress. And so his message of hope to Rockies fans was, stick with us, I think you are seeing progress

if you were watching the game closely. And then he continued, today was not our best game, admittedly, it was an eight to two loss, but we have been playing good baseball for the last 10 days. We just haven't had the W's coming. And I like that approach of just a team off to one of the worst starts of all time. No perceptible improvement in terms of record, but just, hey, if you're looking closely, then you're seeing some signs of progress. And I wonder how closely you have to look.

It almost makes it sort of a mystery box. Like if you can't tell how the Rockies are improving, it's on you really. You're not scrutinizing them closely enough. And then we've been playing good baseball for the last 10 days during which I guess they've hadn't won or certainly hadn't won much. We just haven't had the W's coming. And that kind of thing can happen.

You could lose a bunch of one run games and balls could bounce the wrong way and there can be a bunch of unfavorable outcomes for you. But I don't know. I tried to figure out what it was that the Rockies were actually doing under the hood that was so much better over that period. And I'm not sure that I came out with an answer. So I guess I'm not watching closely enough. LESLIE KENDRICK It's like, it's like one of those like magic eye puzzles where you have to like, disrupt your field of vision.

Are those bad for your eyes? I hope not. Like if you do them a lot, does it like cause ophthalmological damage? Is that even the right word? Ophthalmological? I'll allow it. Okay, cool. Yeah. I think I have to get glasses soon.

I told you that. I think it's coming. Okay. Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot actually. Not within the context of this specific quote, which I'll admit I hadn't seen because, you know, how much attention am I paying to the post-Gamer remarks of the Colorado Rockies? Not a lot. I have one human life to live, you know? Yeah.

But I have been thinking about like, what do we expect these guys to say? You know, like what? Because like they're bad. They're bad in a way that is like on some level unfathomable. To have 50 losses entering June is like, you know, what do you even, oh, their run differential improved now they only have a negative 183 run differential. They have a one- Maybe that's what Warren Schaeffer meant.

We're being blown out less. We're being outscored a little less than we were. And that's progress. I don't know if you really want to hang your hat on beating the Marlins, you know? Like, have some perspective, I suppose. But I just, the Marlins, you know, like, have some perspective, I suppose, but I just, the Marlins run differential is more than a hundred runs better.

It's still very poor, to be clear. The Marlins have a negative 81 run differential as we are recording here on Tuesday before games have started, but good God, good. The A's are at negative 116. Man, that's, that's worse than I thought it would be. So anyway, all that's to say, like, what do we, what are we really expecting of them in this moment?

Because like, this is catastrophic. I imagine, I don't know if Monford is going to sever professional ties with his own children. If anything, if they clean house, maybe that kid gets a promotion. But I don't think he's a kid at this point. He's like a brown ass person. But it seems to be well regarded. But, you know, still like the boss's kid anyway.

Yeah. Beat that rep. All of that to say it is catastrophic. I can't imagine senior leadership with that team surviving this off season, right? Like they might do the thing that doesn't happen quite as often as mid-season manager firings where they start to jettison front office personnel like before the season's over. Like it, and I don't say that knowing anything, it's just like, this is like, how do you make the case to your fan base that no, we will keep this group intact? You know?

And that doesn't mean that every single person who works for the team is going to get let go, but you have to imagine that anyone who's director level or above will be. Yeah. There seems to be pressure building, even local media coverage to that effect. And we've heard from Rockies fans who have kind of cheered us on and said, yes, keep pointing out how bad this organization is because maybe if we embarrass them enough,

then that will actually spur them to do something different here. So they're through the looking glass and it's just, let's make it even worse in the hope that sunlight will be the best disinfectant somehow that will just burn it all down instead of just suffering a death by a thousand cuts every season. Sure. And so that's coming. And in some ways, like they have to keep playing to cash game checks and to, like, you know, fulfill their obligations as a Major League franchise, I suppose. But like, the actual end point of this season, I think, is understood.

So like, what do they say? What do you possibly say? You know, does it make anyone feel better to point out in instances where perhaps there perhaps there will be guys who start to emerge, you know, maybe they maybe, you know, but like, if you're a Rockies fan, do you really want to hear about that? Like, isn't it too dire circumstance? Isn't it too dire circumstance? You have 10 wins, it's June 3rd. Let's. So I've tried to figure out what it was

that Warren Schaeffer was suggesting that we see. So over that 10 day period, I think the Rockies went one and nine. So he was right, the W's hadn't been coming because W's, that's plural, and they had only the one W. Over that period, they had only the one W. Over that period they had the worst offense, worst position players by FanCrafts were only the fourth worst pitching staff. So maybe that's an improvement, but they allowed 52 runs and scored 22. So they

were outscored by 30 runs over those 10 games. So that's an average of three runs per game. And over the course of the whole season, they have played 60 games as we speak, and they've been outscored by 183. And so that's 3.05 runs on average. So it's better. It's trending up. It's better. Yeah. I can't even, I'm looking really closely, Warren. I'm trying to figure out what exactly it is that I wasn't seeing about what the Rockies were doing well over that period, but I'm having a hard time.

And yeah, the A's have lost 18 of 19 as we speak. I think it's not going well. The second I brought up on the pod, Hey, these were good all along. And they're kind of a decent team. And your bold prediction about them finishing second, maybe it wasn't so bold because look, they're basically there. And then nosedive they've basically not won since. Yeah.

I suppose that a thing we have to appreciate and allow for in these moments is that like fans and the media and you know, looky-loos from other sports who are like, how many games have they lost? Are not the only constituency that he has, right? That's not the only audience that he needs to speak to. He also needs to speak to the guys on the team. And I cannot imagine, I simply cannot imagine what it must feel like, the special kind of weird hell that you would feel like you were in if you were a player on the Rockies right now. Because like, hey, you're in the majors. It's this, it's your lifelong dream.

It's the thing you've always wanted and you are doing it every day. But are you like on an ecumenical level, is this actually playing major league baseball or is this some, some different worst thing that you're, you're doing? Right. So I just, I, I cannot imagine what it must feel like. And I cannot imagine the challenge that you would have as a manager in that moment trying to, we gotta go play again buddies. Like, you know, get your dudes ready to go out there every day to like hear the, and hear your Colorado Rockies and then they take the

field and you start tossing the ball around and you're like, this is fine. And it's not fine. It's not okay what you're experiencing. And some of it is your own fault, but not all of it is. You shouldn't have been put in this position. So like you're in this weird hell where you're having to reevaluate the thing that you've wanted your entire life. And so maybe if that is the circumstance, you want to hear your skipper say, no, there's improvement here. It's getting better. Maybe you want that. Maybe that's what you need to be able to sleep through the night all the way, you know? Maybe, yeah. Or maybe it backfires and what your fans wanna hear, at least at that point, is an acknowledgement

of just how dire the situation is. And so then it becomes, your bones smoke up my ass here. What exactly has been better? Treat me like an adult and tell me the truth. Yeah. Let's ask for some specifics here. I want some followups. What exactly has been better?

Yeah, but that is different from, yes, your employer who maybe doesn't want to just hear doom and gloom from you constantly and wants some more upbeat message, even if there's no basis for being upbeat. And then, yeah, your fans, your players, maybe you don't want them to be ground into dust by just how depressing that would be. I think I would pivot to selfishness in that situation. I would pivot to... As a player, you mean? Yeah.

Not that there's that much you can do from a baseball standpoint to be selfish as opposed to team first. But I mean, in terms of just what I'm prioritizing as my personal goals, I'd just kind of be like, well, silver lining, probably not gonna lose my job here. Like some sort of job security in the sense that the bar here is really low. So maybe I can get some playing time and I can work on myself and my skills

and I can try to perfect my craft. And then I'll be ready when this team or a future team is ready to compete and then I'll be better there. So I kind of try to look on the bright side, but maybe that's just my lack of team spirit of esprit de corps. Well, and it is a challenging thing because like, you know, presented with that kind of failure in a team environment, it does strike me as a very thorny interpersonal challenge, right? How do you conduct yourself in the clubhouse in the face of all of that?

Do you and your guys adopt a,-against-them kind of thing? How do you navigate talking to the dude next to you? I mean, I guess in all honesty, the marginal difference between you and whoever is in the locker next to you in terms of both the amount of responsibility you bear for the losses and the talent you possess relative to them. It's probably quite narrow in some regard. And so maybe you're just like, what are you going to do? But soldier on. People get angry in those moments. They get very grumpy you're having to You know, you don't want to be too dour because everybody's down

But you don't want to be too happy because they're gonna be like what's wrong with you. We just lost another game We've won ten games like how are you happy? This is in a happy time You know, maybe that's I think understanding the Rockies might help us understand our broader moment. The more I talk about it, you know, like how do you navigate that is challenging. And people are, people are feeling angry and powerless, you know, and they're going to be a little snippy. Do you take that personally? Hard not to, but what are you going to do?

They're not wrong. It seems like it's really, it would be very hard. I don't envy them. I really wonder how often, how often are the guys on that team in contact with having their union rep rep contact with the union. Like, are they can they file a grievance against the Rockies for like employing them? You know, why? Why do I shouldn't have a job?

If you're under no, but like, I'm not qualified for this. If you're under team control, like imagine that you're your pre free agency player and like they're not all doing a bad job. I mean, they mostly are, but I feel like this doesn't feel fair to me. This feels like torture. This feels like I should be able to get out of here. There should be a special parachute clause in the CBA.

It was a disaster. You know? like a general mercy rule. Right. I don't want to like, you know, I don't want to make light of this, but like there are procedures in the rule book for what to do in the event of a disaster. They call it a restocking draft. Yes. Yes. You know, like, and it's designed for again, this is very grim and so I'm not trying to make light of it, but it's like, you know, if the team plane goes down What do you do? Like how do you? Restock like I think they do call it a restocking draft with my memory serves and so And like, you know

It's a lot like an expansion draft in a way where like teams get to protect a certain number of guys and then they have to expose others. Anyway, I just wonder if this qualifies as enough of a disaster that they should get to invoke that clause. Yeah, because they have become a cross sport mainstream laughing stock in a way that is fairly rare. The White Sox did it last season, but the Rockies, they've broken containment, they've broken baseball contain and now they're the subject of all sorts of memes, people comparing their number of wins since the start of May to the Indiana Pacers, to Scry the Shelflers, right?

So yeah, there's just a lot of dunking going on here and that's got to wear you down one way or another. It has to be so wild to be like, you know, a sports fan, like the kind of sports fan that would like put on ESPN and watch SportsCenter or whatever. And you're too, but you're not a baseball fan and your two touch points for major league baseball

are Dodger super team problem, question mark, and the Colorado Rockies. That has to be so disorienting. You're like, what's going on in this crazy sport? Well, I wanted to extend the streak of me mentioning college baseball to an unprecedented probably three episodes in a row, just to salute the opposite of the Colorado Rockies. And that is of course, the 59 and 0 LSU Shreveport team that just won the NAIA World Series. And look, I could not tell you a thing

about LSU Shreveport, could not have told you that they existed several days ago, but 59 and nothing, the first ever undefeated college baseball season. I don't care what level, what division, what conference that is, that is pretty darn impressive. Cause as we were talking about with the Rockies the other day, like they're making me question

a truism about baseball, which is that, hey, anything can happen. Anyone can beat anyone else. And I still generally believe that. And LSU Shreveport just as strong an argument against that going 59 and 0. I mean, the Rockies, 9 and 50. LSU Shreveport, 59 and 0.

Those are almost as different records you could have in the same number of games. Their team slash line was 361-493-601. They basically like triple crowned as a team. And that is pretty impressive. I don't know how the LSU Shreveport Powerhouse was put together. I look forward to learning more, but I have to tip my cap

I have no choice but to tip my cap to this Shreveport team the pilots they they had 27 double-digit wins. Yeah, their run differential was the opposite again of the Rockies They had a 37 nothing victory. They had a 42 to 4 victory They outscored their opponents in the NAIA world series, 49 17 steamrolling over everyone else. Yeah. It's, it's quite the feat, a challenge, no doubt. Very impressive. Regardless of the fact that, you know, you're like, Oh my God, Ellis, you went, had a perfect season and you're like, street port rate. But, um, it's impressive. It's incredibly impressive.

I'm excited for you to have started to like come around on college baseball. You don't need to add any qualifiers to it. I know you're in whole hog, um, because we had, we had thrilling regional play this weekend. Uh, got to watch a great deal and good games yesterday. Lot of top-seeded teams going down, getting eliminated. Some real underdog stories, some terrific performances. It was almost universally great. And I will say, Ben, I think that I want to issue you a challenge around college baseball. I want you to watch regional weekend next year. I mean, it's too late for you now.

You can watch the super regionals, but I want you to watch. I want you to watch. And I want you to watch it through squeeze play on ESPN., I would say that there is a good bit of media criticism of ESPN's Sunday Night Broadcast. We have perhaps offered constructive criticism of that broadcast at various points in this podcast's history. Squeeze Play is beautiful. It is fantastic.

This is like, they have their studio crew and then they whip around to the different games at key moments and it's less chaotic in terms of the whip around and you have more... Well, I guess they do quad box on Red Zone. It has less of a... Look, I don't mean this in a literal way. I'm saying that for defamation purposes. It has less cocaine energy than Redstone sometimes does, which sometimes you're like, I don't know if that's done without illegal stimulants, but it's just, it's great. Squeeze play is

great. It is proof positive that like there is a way to do good baseball broadcasting on ESPN. It can be done, which doesn't say that it is always a problem on the Sunday New Broadcast, but like sometimes it isn't the very best all of the time. And so it's just, it's great. And you should watch it. You should just watch one weekend of it. And You should just watch one weekend of it. And I think it might turn you around, you know? It really might. It might change things for you. And some of it is like, you know, they have such a great... Like, the group is really good. Like, they have Chris Budden and Chris Burke and Mike Rooney,

and like that crew is just really good. And I guess Matt Schick is on there sometimes too. So you know and then they got all kinds of guys out and about doing actual commentary at the games. So sometimes you're sitting there, you're watching squeeze play, you're having a great time and then who comes who comes through your TV but the voice of good friend of the pod Mike Farron.

You're like, oh it's Mike, he's in Athens. What a treat. How wonderful. You get to watch Oregon State, blank USC, in Corvallis with a Pac-12 logo behind home plate. Very satisfying. I didn't enjoy watching Wake Forest Coach very obviously issue a homophobic slur on TV could have done without that, but I did say it was an almost perfect weekend, not

an actually perfect weekend. Well, I'm open to trying new things. You got to, next year, I'm going to- I don't want to get set in my ways. Now I'm issuing a challenge to our listeners because as we have learned, I'm not going to remember I did this. I'm not going to remember that I threw the gauntlet down and told Ben that he has to watch squeeze play during regionals action.

I'm not going to remember, but it's important that he do it. He should do it because it's great. And then he'll be like, Oh my God, college baseball. And then, and then Ben, we can have Bowman back on and you can play a name game with him. Oh, yeah. That's satisfying. I could turn the tables on him. You could turn the tables on Bowman. Yeah, that is exciting. Okay. So save some of that notifying us about Taylor Wall's helmet tap energy for next year when this rolls around and we need a reminder about this And to be clear

we aren't saying don't send the emails because we don't want to end up with a tragedy of the missed predictions problem where everyone assumes well someone else is gonna tell him because sometimes Then no then someone might not tell us at all and then we won't know. They're on the side of sending it. Yeah, we welcome your emails. We so appreciate that you're engaged with the show and that you're looking out for stuff that's related to it. We don't wanna sound too down on it. It is funny when like two days after the thing has happened,

you're like, surely no one has told them about this. Yeah, right. That, that's a little, you can appreciate how it's funny. You know, you can appreciate how it's a little funny. If some time how it's funny. You know, you could. Yes. If some time has elapsed, you could. If you wanted to, before you go to the effort of sending the email, say, check effectively wild social accounts, check, check Meg's blue sky. Just, you know, see if maybe we've commented on this already.

But that's that's one way you could go. But yes. OK. While we're speaking of world serieses, I did want to mention something that happened in the women's college world series. And you must have seen this viral clip which occurred. Oregon's catcher got hit in the eye with some dirt. Emma Cox that was sprayed by her pitcher, Lindsey Grine. And it was, many people likened it to Randy Johnson killing the bird. And it wasn't the same,

obviously. The dirt didn't die, fortunately, but it was similar in its sort of geometric perfection of just many things having to come together to produce a certain outcome, which in this case was not as tragic. But what happened here, and I had to rewatch this a few times to figure out exactly what happened, but Grind is delivering

and kicks up a little clod of dirt with her cleats during her pitching motion. And then this clod is airborne between where she's delivering the pitch and home plate, and then she lets go of the pitch and this pitch sails in 67 mile per hour, nasty pitch on the outside corner. And it contacts the flying still suspended in the air dirt clod. And then that dirt clod turns into a dirt spray.

And one of the chunks of the clod then ended up in Catcher Emme Cox's eye and another in her glove. And so when I first watched this clip, I didn't understand what she was reacting to. I thought that maybe a bug had flown into her eye or something like that, but it was actually dirt and it was caused by the pitcher. And she was mystified at first too, because like the umpire was confused, the catcher was confused. No one knew where the dirt came from. It was just this kind of freak occurrence. And even they didn't understand what had happened until they saw the video.

And there was some fine camera work and commentating here. And they captured exactly what happened and slowed it down so that we could tell. And this is probably a case of, if you tried to recreate this a zillion times, you wouldn't be able to. Oh yeah. I did wonder though, and my mind immediately went to

effectively wild hypothetical territory, which was basically like, is there some way that a pitcher could kick up dirt as a means of distraction? Not even necessarily that the ball would intercept that dirt and then propel that dirt toward the plate. But even if there were just a spray, it's like your classic, you know,

street brawl sort of maneuver where someone's knocked down and then they grab a handful of dirt behind their back when their salient is not noticing. And then you spray that dirt in their face and they can't see in their clown at their eyes and then you can either get away or get a shot in. Yeah, it's always happening to me. Yeah, me too. If you could do that, though, like as a pitcher, if you could have your motion

such that and I guess there's no mound in this situation. I don't know whether that affects the physics of it all but hmm if there were a way to kick up dirt Just distraction like you know Even if sometimes you're using the rosin like there might be a puff or something like anything to distract the hitter Now you don't want the dirt to end up in your catcher's eye. That's right. This is the problem If this became an actual strategy, I would suggest that the catcher were a visor or something. I'm thinking of this as a means of distracting the batter.

I don't know whether the dirt had anything to do with the fact that the batter here just stood and watched this pitch sail in. But you'd think that it could be distracting for a batter, too. If the pitch was coming out of a dirt clod or cloud, cloud of clod, then how could you focus on the pitch and see the seams and all the rest? And of course, if you could engineer it such that the ball was actually going through this clod

and then causing just little bits of it to go every which way, then you'd be extra distracted as a batter. I'm just saying there might be something to this. I love that you have constructed a thing that is somehow even harder than just pitching well in the majors. Like doing clod, dirt clod, hacky sack while pitching so as to, they'd never let you do it

because they're like pretty keen on you not being able to purposefully distract the hitter. They will allow you to like, you know, you might have a delivery that's a little discombobulating, fine, but they don't want you actively distracting anyone. Like if you have a string hanging off your glove or you have a frayed sleeve or something they'll come out and stop you.

Yeah, they get on you pretty quick. Also have you seen the old movie The Blob? Oh yeah. So you keep saying Claude and I keep thinking beware of the Claude Hicks. It has an aside. I know that my references are old, but like you guys should go watch the blob. The blob is wild.

The blob rocks. And the best part of the blob is the song that they play at the beginning of the blob. Beware of the blob. And you're like, yeah, I should. That blob's coming for me. You're going to trap me in a diner. Yeah. It's very merry.

Yeah. It's very merry. Yeah. But it reminds me of maybe the Carter Caps hop or Jordan Walden when they did their weird little pitching motion. And, and that was legislated out of existence and part of that was the distraction. And part of it was just that they were getting closer to the plate and releasing the pitch closer to home plate, but it was seen as an unfair advantage and there was a bit of a crackdown. And so yes, probably if you manage to somehow have a delivery that worked, that didn't slow down your momentum and just incidentally you happen to kick up a cloud of dirt every time. Right.

Maybe, but I guess on what grounds? I guess probably just your general, if there's not a rule against it, then an umpire can rule on it anyway. Or there probably is some language in the rules that this would apply to if you were seen to be doing it intentionally. I guess you could argue, hey, this is just my natural delivery.

You know, it's like a Taylor Walls. I didn't even realize that my hand was doing that. Just my cleats kicked like a Taylor Wells. I didn't even realize that my hand was doing that. Just kicked up a clod and who knew? Okay, so I have two thoughts. First of all, they wouldn't believe you though, because you would do it often enough, presumably that they'd be like, so, hey, no, you're doing that on purpose. And even if it were your quote unquote natural delivery, they have no problem legislating people's deliveries. They legislate people's deliveries all the time.

They're like, no, this violates other rules of ours. Sorry, tough luck. Figure out a different way to pitch. And guys, to their credit, very often do. So works out fine. But like, yeah, they're not going to they're not going to let you do that. And it would especially it would especially give it away if when you came in, either to start the game or from the bullpen, they played beware of the cloud. I think I'm on to something. Yeah, you'd have to have it be plausible deniability. It couldn't be that you're kicking up the cloud every time, but you'd save it for a high leverage moment where you just,

you know, it's almost like a pitcher putting something on the ball. Only in high leverage moments do I kick up the cloud. Yeah. Maybe like now. You know, you bring out the nail file or something, just one of those old doctoring the pitch kind of situations. I do think it would be distracting for a hitter, even if the dirt didn't go into their eye.

If there was just a spray of dirt or if the ball was coming out of a cloud of dirt, that would be difficult to deal with, I think. So competitive advantage if you could figure it out, at which point it would be immediately outlawed. Yeah, because so like, you know, I think the particular set of Claude, Pitch, Physics, Catcherface in this instance, suggested it would not always happen, but like, you would have risk, as we've noted to your actual teammate,

which presumably you wouldn't be keen on, and you know who's gonna get really pissy if they end up with Claude in their face The Empire the Empire is gonna be like hey, I didn't I didn't want you to kick a Claude to me It's an odd word Claude. It is yes, it's not like the to be clear. We're not saying like the name Claude It wasn't like she kicked a very tiny person named Claude into her catcher They wouldn't let you do that either though, just to be clear. Just anticipate the hypothetical. No, they would not let you take a tiny wee magical person and kick that person into your

catcher's face. It'd be like, no, no, not at all. Yeah. I suppose it becomes a safety issue at a certain point. Often our hypothetical discussions, I get all wrapped up in what would happen and how could you do it? And then I don't consider the implications, which is that someone could get hurt.

Yeah, I guess someone could get hurt. That's no fun. I'm trying to think of this Rube Goldberg contraption of a delivery here, somehow making this work. Don't spoil it by talking about serious safety issues. But here's the thing though, Ben. You know, dirt in your eyes is one of the worst things. You know, you get dirt in your eye and you're,

you never, it takes a while to feel like you got all the grit out. And then like sometimes it like really gets up in there and then you have to go see a ophthalmologist. Which one is the actual doctor? Ophthalmologist. As opposed to an optometrist, who's often not a doctor, right? It'd fit you for the lenses, yeah.

Oh, for the lenses. So do I, if I think I need glasses, do I have to go to an ophthalmologist first or can I just go to an optometrist? I think you can just go to an optometrist unless maybe you're concerned about why you need glasses and you want to get at the underlying issue there. I think the underlying issue is that I'm about to be 39. 39, yeah. I wasn't going to say it. Like, I don't, look, I'm not a doctor and I haven't been working in the vision field for very long, but my suspicion is that I'm 39, you know, or about to be. And so,

you know, it's not that I can't see anything. I can still see pretty well, in fact, but I just have noticed I've noticed the decline. And especially at night, which, you know, when you're driving concerning, you're like, oh, but you're not talking about farsightedness. You're not you're not at a reading glasses stage. No, I don't. Okay. No, I don't need glasses. It's like stuff that is tiny. I used to be able to read at a distance pretty easily, even if it was quite small, because I don't know if you know this about me, Ben, but I had better than 2020 vision. I could have flown fighter jets. But but now I can't. And so I don't know if they would even tell me I need glasses. They might just say, hey, you're almost 39.

That's going to happen. Yeah. Welcome to vision for most people. Right. Yeah. Right. Oh, I know I've, I've lived high on the hog for a long time. I've been, I've been very sassy about it.

Quite proud of my vision, even though I had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Is the carrot thing even real? I do like carrots. I've eaten a lot of those. I think so. I think that was enough. It doesn't help your vision? No, but I mean, it's good to eat carrots.

I do like carrots regardless, yeah. Yeah, they would like still have benefit to you even if they don't make your eyes better. Yeah. And optometrists, they are capable of examining the eye for visual defects and figuring out why there is a fault of refraction there. So that's within their purview. Fault of refraction. That's a great band name. Yeah, it's not bad.

Fault of refraction? Wow. That has to exist, right? There has to be some bespeckled guitar player who started fault of refraction. Oh man, that's like a feelings music name. bespeckled guitar player who started fault of refraction. Oh man, that's like a feelings music name anyway. Okay, well, while we're talking about hopping,

as I was a second ago, I did want to draw our audience's attention, and possibly yours, to the George Springer play. Did you see the George? I did not. Okay, I will send you the little clip here. We had another instance of a replay review of someone who was barely off the bag, but above the airspace of the bag. And it was George Springer. Oh, well, he's hopping. He was hopping on third base over third base. He pulled into third. And he had a little bit of an ankle issue, nothing serious, but he was just sort of testing.

He was gingerly testing the ankle. And so he was bouncing up and down on the bag a little bit. And so the tag was applied to him while he was bouncing. And he was called safe on the field. He was clearly like on the bag, over the bag before the tag was applied, but on replay review, that safe call was overturned because he was technically centimeters above the bag

while he was at the apex of his hop. And the fielder kept the glove on him there. And I don't know that anyone wants this. Well, the A's did, they got him out, but other than that. I mean, good for, I gotta say, I don't think he should be out. I think this is like, good for, is that Schumann?

Is that Max Schumann who did it? Like good for him, honestly. Yeah, heads up play. Heads up. But really, I'll be cool, just, you know, exploiting something that was never intended to be the purpose of replay. And this just seems like a specific circumstance where there is a solution for this.

And we've advocated for it and Dave Cameron used to write about it for FanGraphs multiple times, which was just like, once you have possession of the bag, as long as you're in the airspace above the bag. Yes, you're safe. Yeah. This is not even an oversliding situation where sometimes even that seems kind of cheap because it's barely lost contact and physics and momentum and you know, you beat the tag and throw and, but people will the tag and you beat the throw. But people will always say, well, slide better. And control the slide better and hey,

you are supposed to remain on the bag. And sure, technically speaking, but in this case, this isn't even that, this isn't even an over sliding situation. You're on the bag. He was not trying to advance. He was not letting his guard down. I mean, he was, I guess, but I can't even blame him. He was not like lazy. He was not distracted.

Yeah. He was just, just hopping, just testing his ankle above the bag, barely suspended above it. Yeah. This just seems like a case where it wouldn't be that hard to say, yeah, once you're on the bag, like you can vertically go off it a little bit and that's okay. You're still considered to be on the bag. Just, I can't imagine that like, this is the way that anyone really envisioned this. Now we've had replay and we've had this issue for a long time. For instance, you just said the word Dave Cameron wrote about this for fan graphs to put it in context

for how long it's been. But, but a little bit of a musical mood I've discovered. It's because I was examining the statistics of one Austin Crab, who's a Padres Brats by, because we're working on the progress list. No, Crab, but you can sing the blob song for that too. Beware of the Crab. Anyway, I think it would be a welcome addition. And also, again, just give it a little go.

And then if they don't end up liking the implementation, they can just reverse it. It's fine. Just like fix it. Yeah, seems like there's a fix for this. So I don't get it. Okay. We got our speculation about Jack Caglione's promotion

just in under the wire. Yeah, we did. On our previous episode before he was indeed called up fresh off of scoring the winning run in Rich Hill's AAA season debut. Oh my God. Yeah. So now everyone wonders when will Rich Hill follow?

That's what Royals fans are thinking to themselves. Okay. The Jack Wagon has arrived. The Cavalry is here. We have reinforcements. We have someone who is out-homered our entire outfield in the minors. Help is here. But... So is some chase the minors. Help is here, but so some chase, but yes, help is here. Yes. But, but this is just part of the solution. When will Rich Hill arrive?

Right. It's, it's always nice. I think when players come up through the miners together like that, I agree. I love that. Yeah. Like cool. Minor league teammates. They played together at triple A and then they make the majors and they can remember when, Hey, remember when we were back in the bushes, you know, just grinding. And that'll be like when Rich Hill shows up in Kansas City. Remember when we were back in the bushes? Is that what they say? Maybe not. Maybe that could be referring to all sorts of things. Potentially. I was going to say, goodness.

I'm imagining Richell showing up in the Royals Clubhouse and having his tearful reunion with his former AAA teammate, Jack Caglione, just, you know, riding the buses together, all they went through to get to that point. And here they are, the bright lights of the big leagues together again. So that will be a heartwarming moment if and when it happens and hopefully it happens soon. It would be really delightful if Richell gets up there and he's like, I don't know, can I be next to Cags? I kind of know the guy.

Yeah, we connected. That would be nice. It would be something kind of sweet about that. Yeah, Caglion's on his way and I think that that's great and quite necessary. I do think that they need more help than just he on his own can provide, even if he hits the ground running and there's no adjustment period, or there is, but then he figures it out and the chase doesn't end up being a problem. And he just hits a bunch of jacks and is tall and Italian.

They still, they still need more offense than that probably. And I hope that it helps them kind of rebound. You know, it's not that they are, I mean, like, especially as their rotation gets healthy, you can imagine them being like a very competitive team. I don't think that I would put the Royals in the same category that the Tigers are in, whereas we discussed, I think on the last episode, like, I don't think you need to apply an AL Central qualifier to the Tigers anymore. The Tigers are just a good baseball team.

Like, that's a good team. I think that team can hang with other good teams. The Royals are in possession of a very talented pitching staff and Bobby Wood Jr. and they need a little bit more than that. And so I don't know that, you know, Cags on his own is enough, but I do think that, you know, if they can continue to either, you know, sort of narrow this gap between them and the tigers at the top, or, you know, be in the mix in a real way for the wild card race, then maybe it spurs other action. But this is a good way for them to, you know, promote from within, sort of assess where they

are, and then I think make a more informed decision about how aggressive they wanna be at the deadline. And as we talked about, like, this is not absent, you know, aside from Caglione, this is not like a super deep or talented farm system. So, you know, their ambition for being aggressive at the deadline might outpace their ability to be aggressive at the deadline, depending on sort of what deals are on offer, but it

does let them make a more informed choice about like how they're going to play that, which is, we two months away. Yeah. I have one positive NL West note and one negative NL West note. I guess we can, I always like the bad news first and then end on the up note. So the bad news is Corbin Burns and his elbow, which I fear the worst. The worst has not been announced, but he is on the IL now with what is being called right elbow inflammation. He had to leave his start on Sunday. And it was one of those times where something was wrong and he knew it right away.

And he was very frustrated and he felt something and the velocity was down. And so now, you know, he's undergoing evaluations, but your mind always goes to the same place with a pitcher who is removed with an elbow injury. So I hope that it is not the worst that he somehow avoids going under the knife here, but that's a bummer. He was pitching well. The Diamondbacks need people to pitch well. They need people to pitch period at this point. Pitch it all. Yeah. And that would be a big blow, obviously, for them short term and long term. Their season has not gone the way that they wanted it to go. And if Corbin Burns is gone, then that's going to make it harder for them to pull out of this spin.

Somewhere, Michael Iass is probably saying, see, see, this is why I didn't offer him a long-term deal. Now, I don't know if he actually is or not, but. I know that he has not actually said that. And so I'm being a little unfair, but I dare him. I double dog dare you. I double dog dare you. I double dog dare you to say that in front of a microphone. Yeah, I don't think he's in any position to crow about the Orioles pitching stuff. I don't think he would say such a thing. I don't think he would

either. It would be a very, it would be such a heartless thing and I know that people have opinions about him but that would be a particularly callous way to interact with that news or anticipated news. If I were in his situation and I had declined to extend a long-term deal to a free agent and was roundly criticized for that, and then that free agent soon suffered a debilitating injury, the thought would cross my mind. Hey, some vindication here. This is why one doesn't invest long-term in a pitcher. Now, then again, you can't exactly say, well done me, because you look at the smoking ruins of that pitching staff and that team as a whole.

And it's not like you can exactly dance a little jig and say, see, it all worked out. No, we just, everything went wrong for us in a, in a completely different way. But obviously everyone knows that that is a risk with pitchers. And that is priced in and yeah, you should be more wary about pitchers long-term because that can happen. And so that's all the more reason to have pitching depth and develop your own pitching. And they haven't done that.

I didn't want to make this about the Orioles. This is mostly about the Diamondbacks and also about Corbin Byrnes, but he was recently an Oriole. So it's not that large a leap anyway. Hope for the best, but yeah, that season it's running off the rails. Yeah, and it stinks because, you know,

their offense is still producing. Corbin Carroll continues to have a really nice little season there. It's not that there's nothing good here. You know, Perdomo is still hitting well, et cetera. But you're also in a spot where like, well, for folks who haven't listened to our most recent Patreon episode, like I was at that game on Saturday. I went in on a ticket, which meant I got the lead when I was good and done, and that didn't take more than a couple of innings. But they're playing a sloppy and listless ball. They looked sloppy

and listless against Paul Skeens, which hey, Skeens will do that to you. But when you look that way against Mike Soroka, you're like, is that good? Is that how we want things to go? Probably not. That Saturday game, like Brandon Fath's good for one or two of those kinds of blowups a year, but it just isn't, it doesn't feel like they have any momentum.

It's kind of confounding. The vibe in the ballpark seems bad. So it's just like a disappointing thing. And look, like I'm a taxpayer in Maricopa County, so I don't want to overstate my praise of Ken Kendrick because I'm not particularly keen on potentially like helping to pay for renovations to this ballpark. But you know, you want, you want big free agent deals to work out, you know, you want ownership to be able to point to a couple of them and go, yeah, that worked. Yeah.

It was good that we gave Corbin Burns money. And it's a long enough contract that this can go the worst possible direction. And it might still end up being good that they gave Corbin Burns money, right? But you want them to come away thinking like, yeah, that that is exactly what we should have done. And instead, it's like, here's Monty, who's not good. And then it's her Rodriguez, right? Who's been largely unavailable and hasn't been all that great when he has been here's the good there have been positive sort of returns on investment, if you want to put it that way. Like, you know, Corbin Carroll's having a great season, like extending him and keeping him around long term seems like a very good move. Perdomo's right, having a good season. So it's not like none of these are working out. Like they look at this juncture anyway, they look smart for having let Christian Walker

go. But it's just, you know, I think that they are a team that is capable of playing much better baseball than they have. And they certainly are having to deal with the injury piece and that is having a really pronounced effect. But it's just such a competitive division. And the NL is so competitive overall that like, they have to play really, really good baseball the rest of the way to like, I think be in the wild card hunt here. Which, you know, that stinks, especially in a year where like, the Rogers are good, don't get me wrong, but like they don't look as

invulnerable as I think people, not me, were worried that they would. Little crowing by Meg there. Just a subtle. Look, I'm just saying that people were really nasty in our emails. Well the positive NL West news that I was going to relay, not positive for the Diamondbacks, I guess, but for the Dodgers, is that Mookie Betts can play shortstop, it seems. He has been a credible, dare I say, even an above average shortstop this season.

The stats say as much anyway, regardless of what system you're looking at. And Julian McWilliams talked to him for a CBS sports piece and Mookie said, last year playing shortstop was pretty much a fail. And he has said, every, I'm working on it. And, you know, he's really dedicated himself to it. And Mookie, he has the physical skills, but also he has the top of the scale

off the charts makeup clearly too, and just wants to be good at everything. And has a great work ethic and growth mindset, You know, he wants to do things that he... A growth mindset. I was hesitant to say it, but you know, just he wants to master skills that he has not had before. He embraces those challenges. And that was seen as potentially something that maybe was even a negative in this case,

because it was almost as if he wanted this challenge. Like, I don't think initially he did. He was kind of pressed into service as a shortstop. But then when that didn't go so great, not that he was a disaster, but, you know, he clearly like had some awkward footwork around there and he just looked like a guy who hadn't played shortstop in a really long time, which is what he was.

And Dave Roberts said as much in this CBS Sports piece, he looks like a major league shortstop right now. Whereas last year there were many times I didn't feel that way. I don't know that he spoke quite as plainly about that last year, but now. That's so funny. Yeah, now he's able to say that because-

I love that. Yeah, and Mookie said, "'Nobody comes in and just does something "'to that magnitude successfully right off the bat. "'Nobody that I've seen. "'I played a lot of games last year "'to build up some experience, so I knew what to expect. "'And now I gotta spend a little time this off season

"'actually training for it, so it's made it a little better. "'I still wouldn't say I'm good at it, "'but I'm serviceable.'" Oh, that's so modest. And that's, would even say that he's been good at it. And that's awesome because it's amazing that transition that he has made in his suite of positional skills

and having this unprecedented at this point in his career at this age with his positional history to do this. And I don't know that it was the ideal solution and it could have backfired. And there was a perception that, okay, maybe now he wants to prove the doubters wrong and it's actually going to be bad because he's not really cut out for this and they should go in a different direction. He's making it work. That is not the Dodger's problem at the very least. He's definitely not the Dodgers problem. Yeah. So salute to Mookie. I love me some Mookie and the bat has not been its usual strength, perhaps because he has not been his usual strength or wasn't at least to start the season, the weight loss, etc. The power has not quite been there.

He has a little broken toe now, right? Yeah, now there's that as well. So that could hamper your shortstop performance potentially. But yeah, but to this point he has made it work and I'm constantly impressed by him in every facet of his game. And it's just the fact that he went through what he went through this spring, not being able to keep any food down or any weight on

and then just rolled right into the season. And yeah, maybe that has had some effects, but he's still been an above average major league hitter. It's not like he's unplayable. He's still very valuable on both sides of the ball. So yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. I mean, it's, uh, I don't get the sense it's eye wash from him.

Like the humility to say like, yeah, it wasn't amazing before. Now it's better. It's still not as good as it could be. I mean, I think that I want to be realistic about like what the upper bound is here, right? Like he's, he's slowing down. He's getting older. My long-term prognosis for his shortstop defense would be different if

he were doing this at like 25. Yeah, he's probably not the shortstop of the future for the Dodgers. I mean, they better hope not, but that's okay. He doesn't need to be. He needs to be, to your point, good enough to play and not their problem. And he's easily that. And you know, I imagine that like, we'll see how it goes as he gets further away from his, you know, start of season stuff.

And who knows how the toe is gonna hamper him. So we'll see how that affects not only what he does in the box, but how he can like pivot and move in the field. But I suspect that Betts will look back on this season and view it as not a lost year, but certainly one that he's not going to point to as his best. But he's still worth almost two wins. Yeah.

So it's not like it's bad. It's just not as superlative as we've seen from him in the past. And for good reason, or at least for obvious reason. So. Yeah, and as we talked about before, that's the sort of thing where that context could be lost in the future, whether it's him breaking a toe and not actually going on the injured list for it, but just missing a little time or maybe being slowed by it,

or yes, just the intestinal issues and how that's affected him. That's something that you might not know unless you familiarize yourself with the history because he was in there. I would imagine though that a season like that could potentially be more satisfying on some level. Like not that he would wish to have these fates befall him.

I'm sure he would rather just have been healthy and not have a broken toe and have been at his usual playing weight and has been his usual fantastic self. But when it's all said and done and the dust clears on his career, I could imagine maybe him looking back and saying, man, that season where I just overcame every obstacle and my body was rebelling and everything was conspiring against me and I was having to play shortstop too. And I was weaker than usual and I made it work and was still the centerpiece, a centerpiece, a foundational player and premium defender for most likely a first place team and strong world series contender.

Like that's gotta be pretty satisfying. It's like, you know, you gotta grit and gut through it sometimes too. And so I'm sure he'll look back at being an MVP and winning World Series and, you know, being one of the best players in baseball and be quite proud of that. But also the season where things keep throwing up roadblocks

and you keep somehow steering around them, even if you're not your usual self. Yeah, why not? Sure. Yeah, I said it. So why not? That'd be satisfying on some level. Okay.

Last thing, I'm not a scholar of Japanese baseball history, but I dabble. just wanted to note the passing of a Japanese baseball legend, the sort of player who, if he had had this equivalent career in MLB, we might've devoted an entire podcast episode to him, such was his status in Japanese baseball. I referred to Shigeo Nagashima, who is known as Mr. Baseball,

and I was apprised of his passing by Shohei Otani actually posting on his Instagram, some photos that Otani had with Nagashima. That's how I learned that Nagashima had died at 89. Just Japanese baseball legend and was a key part of the Yomiuri Giants dynasty, the 60s and 70s. He was just like post-war icon of Japanese baseball and reading the obits and learning a little more about him, I can understand why Otani would have connected with him. I mean, I think a lot of players did.

But because he was like the Otani of his day, in a way, just not in terms of his playing necessarily, although he was a fantastic player, but he was like a national celebrity. Like, he was a tabloid figure. He was like, it was national news when he got engaged and got married. Like people were, were hounding him, following him around. He was kind of like the proto Otani, I think in terms of being in Japan, a real national celebrity and, you

know, almost like a, a figure of off the field intrigue for a lot of people. Yeah. So he was sort of a trailblazer in that respect. And then just a really fantastic player too. And he was a teammate of Sadaharu Oh, they were long time teammates and contemporaries and their careers overlapped for a long time with the Giants and they kind of powered that dynasty. But I think Nagashima was really the more popular

or revered figure. And you know, Satoru, oh, he's Japanese-born, but Taiwanese also, and you know, had to face just attitudes about that. And Nagashima, I guess, did not. And he was really embraced in a way. And so, Saraharu Oh is like much more famous in the States. He's kind of a global baseball celebrity because of his home run record and just how many homers he had and being likened to Babe Ruth. But as I was reading the obits of Nagashima,

I was thinking, man, well, if O is the Ruth, then Nagashima is the Garig. And I don't think that's a particularly original observation. I was heartened to read in an article from March, actually, that was about how Japan developed this whole generation of superstars and how they're following in the footsteps of Oh and also Nagashima and Robert Whiting, the great Japanese baseball expert and author. He actually did make that same comp. He said those two, they're like the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig of Japanese baseball. So I was not off there and probably this is something that people who talk more about Japanese baseball say all the time. But I was struck by the parallels

there because value-wise, they're like a dead ringer basically. There's an excellent site called NPB Stats that has stats for all Japanese players historically speaking and has advanced stats and also has them viewable in English, which is nice. Yeah, for me. And so they have career wars and everything. It's just nppstats.com. And if you go there and you look up Satoru Oh,

who he played longer than Nagashima did. He played from 59 to 80 than Nagashima did. He played from 59 to 80, and Nagashima played from 58 to 74, just all with Yomiuri, both of them. But the career war that nppstats.com has for O is 180.4, which is like, I mean, that's amazing, A. But also that's like dead on for Babe Ruth's career war. At least at baseball reference, I imagine it's not that different from fan graphs. It's also like 180

something. And then Nagashima is pretty much dead on with Gehrig's war. Also Nagashima is at 126.5, which I think is maybe about 10 more than Garrick, but they played almost an identical number of career games and not the same positional parallels there. So you can extend this only so far. And also I don't mean to suggest that like you have to put the accomplishments of Japanese players in terms of American players in order to like make it meaningful. I'm just trying to make the comp that might help illustrate to our listeners who are also not Nagashima experts, just why these guys were so special. And, you know, similar in the sense that the Giants were the Yankees, you know, they're kind of called the Yankees of NPB, and they were a dynasty and they won lots of championships just like Ruth and Garrag did.

So positionally speaking, not quite the same because, you know, Nagashima was the third basement and O was the first basement. So it doesn't quite match there. But statistically speaking, there are just a lot of parallels there. So a luminary of that magnitude passed and clearly that meant something to Otani and I'm sure many generations of Japanese players and fans. So just wanted to note that passing. Hear, hear. Well, the Rockies did it.

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And you can check the show notes and fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and Stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then I wanna hear about Shohay Ohtani Or Mike Trout with three marks