Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2334: The Overshadowed Debuts

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about depictions of the pitch clock in popular media, how the lack of advancing visual fidelity in baseball broadcasts makes it harder to identify when clips come from (and other ways we might distinguish eras at a glance), Hunter Dobbins drama and why it’s harder than it used to […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2334 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulia Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. So funny. Ah, you know, we're recording on Thursday, you know? It's just like the horrors are. Sure.

You ever feel like your job's really stupid? You're like, oh, this is dumb. From time to time, yeah. Having a time to time over here. That's how I am. Yep, time to time. Hasn't helped that it's difficult to do our jobs when the internet is not working,

which has also been the case on Thursday. Thanks Google Cloud and Cloudflare, but fortunately we can at least record the podcast and hopefully post it when it's complete. Speaking of which, immediately after I posted our most recent episode, I thought of something else that I had meant to say about that poker face baseball episode that we talked about,

season two, episode five, Hometown Hero. Most of our discussion and our critiques last time were about the specifics of the plot of that episode, but there was one other thing I made a note of while watching that actually will apply to any representations of baseball on TV or in movies from here on out. And so I am curious to see how they'll handle it. And I know now that Poker Face handled it

by essentially pretending it didn't exist. I speak of the pitch clock. So this episode, as far as we could tell, portrayed an affiliated minor league team, seemingly a high level one. And as far as we could tell was in the present day. So presumably pitch clock in effect, or it should have been at least. But at the end, at the climax of this episode, as we discussed last time, there's this dramatic

moment and it comes down to whether the guy who's pitching is actually gonna throw as hard as he possibly can or not, if he's gonna make it look like he can't throw that hard because that's connected to the crime that is committed in this episode. And as I was watching, I realized he's certainly taking his sweet time here. And in fact, there should have been a bunch

of pitch clock violations called during this scene because I timed it. And as far as I could time it to when the ball was received by this pitcher, it's kind of tough to tell because of the way that it's shot. But as far as I could tell, there were three pitches in this last sequence. And the first one, the first pitch of the inning,

51 seconds elapsed from the time that he gets the ball to when he actually throws it. And you could say, well, maybe they got a special dispensation because this is like his last game and he is the titular eponymous hometown hero. And you can do that if you have that sort of situation where you know that a guy is going to get a standing ovation

and he's going to want to take some time and doff his cap and all of that. You can pre-register that with the league and get an exemption for a pitch so that that guy can have his flowers without getting called for a pitch clock violation. So, OK, let's say that that happened. I don't know whether you can do that in the minor leagues, but let's say you can. We'll write off that first pitch

where he's getting an ovation. Then 34 seconds, the second time that he gets the ball back. And then the final most dramatic between pitch sequence, 52 seconds. Because there's all this like looking around and he's contemplating what to do. And then you need to get a shot of Charlie Kail, Natasha Lyonne in the stands,

or multiple shots of her looking at the picture, the picture looking at her. And then the scout who's actually an undercover cop is behind home plate, and you have to see that. And then there are fans in the stands who are chanting his name name and the drama is building and the suspense is created by this break, but it kind of broke my immersion

because I'm used to the rhythm of present day baseball now. I was thinking, this is going on much too long. There are like three balls being called on this picture during this sequence and no one is reacting to that whatsoever. So they essentially just decided to disregard this and pretend that there's still no clock. And I wonder whether future baseball media

will do the same or whether at some point the pitch clock will be so ingrained that it will just be noticeable when they take too long to create that suspense. It's funny because it feels like it could be something that lends itself to dramatic tension, right? Like racing against a clock is a dramatic trope that often yields these moments where you're like, I'm not going to get rid of time. But you're right, they just seem to be like, no, that's easier to, it's sort of like the pandemic, how most shows are just pretending that 2020 didn't happen.

There's like no, COVID doesn't exist in most scripted drama. Like never happened. Cause it's just easier to not engage with it and do alternate reality where everyone's like, what are masks? Which I'm kind of okay with, because when they go in the other direction and just, if it's set during the pandemic. Right, you're like, cool, I'm back to okay with because when they go in the other direction and just if it's set during the pandemic

Right, you're like cool and back to eating my hair. Awesome. Right. I don't really want to relive and revisit that at this point It hasn't been long enough. I don't know. Yeah, it would be long enough for me to really revisit that But implies an end that hasn't quite come yet Like there was a Stephen King novel a couple years ago that was set during the pandemic, and so every page, there was something about masks and hand sanitizer and social distancing, and it was just, it was tiresome, you know, because it wasn't really adding anything other than to situate it within that time period,

but it didn't have that much of an effect on the plot, as I recall, so it was just kind of exhausting. Anyway, I guess I'm fine with this. This was one of the concerns, I don't know if it was concern trolling or sincere concern, that the pitch clock actually would diminish drama because of this very thing. That it would lead to less time to savor big matchups

and people were recutting the Otani versus Trout matchup in the WBC to make it conform to the pitch clock because that was in the WBC, the pitch clock didn't apply. And people were going back and timing famous plate appearances from history to see if they would have violated the pitch clock. Mostly what they found is that they wouldn't actually have violated the pitch clock because a lot of them were from earlier eras where baseball was brisker anyway. And then also I think the one where they cleverly recut the Otani trout confrontation to make the pauses shorter, it didn't actually seem to diminish the drama at all.

And I have not noticed that whatsoever with baseball since the pitch clock that I'm, I'm thinking slow down, let me enjoy these big moments. Cause we may have even talked about, is there some kind of exemption they could have here, like a high leverage moment loophole or something where the pitch clock doesn't apply because it's one thing to have a pitch clock. so you can speed along some low leverage matchup in a blowout in the late innings. But maybe when you get the really exciting moments, no, you actually do want to let those moments breathe.

But I haven't felt that those moments have been asphyxiated. I think they have been able to breathe just fine. It's long enough. You know, we only need so many crowd shots of people looking nervous, I think, to enhance that moment. It's mostly about the situation, not about the fact that you have five extra seconds to savor the situation. You know, it just requires a little bit tighter editing.

I don't think that it would be an issue. I think you could achieve the same effect without it. And you don't necessarily have to like keep cutting to the pitch clock. Like it can just be, it doesn't have to be a part of the plot. Although again, I think that there is potential for it to be an effective part of some plot somewhere, right? Because again, ticking clock TV can be right. Like Kiefer Sutherland just got to like terrorize a bunch of people in Southern California for years. It's hot clock ticking down, ticking down, ticking down. I had another thought about that poker face episode

that I meant to share, could I share it? So, you know, there's the guy who is meant to read as a scout and he is actually an undercover cop. And he did read like a scout, but from like 30 years ago. And it's funny because there was a guy in the shot of him, there was a guy sitting next to him in like Much more of a modern-day scout fit right like he appears to be wearing wicking material He's got a polo and I was like that guy looks like he could be a scout like yeah

Should have had that guy do it would this be the guy who would read as a scout today too? like with a cigar in hand. And I understand sometimes you lean on a trope for the audience more than for the character in universe. But I thought that was a little funny. I will say I watched the next episode after the baseball episode. It's my favorite one of the season so far. So you have good stuff ahead of you. We won't talk about it on this show because to say that it's a baseball episode would be a lie.

It would just be a blatant lie. But it was my favorite one so far. I think you'll have a good time with it. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. There is something intentionally old school about Poker Face just because it's kind of a Colombo homage and just the music that's played sometimes and the car Charlie drives and the way that it's shot and everything. They're sort of a 70s aspect to the show. So I don't know if that's what they were going for. I like scout fit though. That's a good term. I don't think I can claim responsibility or credit for scout fit. I think scout fit might be a, that might be a Kylie McDaniel turn of phrase McDaniel Turner phrase, a scout fit. I've seen Kylie wear that same scout fit. I'm sure.

Because you hear about the front office fit. I don't know if there's a clever term for it, but the half zip is kind of the standard, maybe some kind of khakis or something. And I guess there's a meaningful difference between a front office fit and a scout fit, though maybe there's some overlap these days. Definitely some overlap. Definitely some overlap, converging more and more all the time. Along with the nature of scouting and front office folks, probably less of a differential than there used to be. It does make me have like a little bit of judgment for the front office version of the scout fit, because like the scout fit is practical. I mean, it's a costume,

right? Like you are signaling any number of things to those around you. There are some brands that we could run through that I see pretty regularly. I don't want to overstate how often I'm like sit hanging out on back fields or anything, but just like, you know, I'm around Scouts sometimes. And so there's a practicality to it, particularly here in Arizona and there are regional variations in the scout fit and they are weather dependent. And then sometimes you'll see like front office types in the scout fit and they're like, you're not at the field though. You're in air conditioning a lot of the day. That's your AJ Preller.

Well, sure. But his scout fit is unique. It is singular. It falls under the proper use of the word unique and is, you know, more basketball short forward than the typical scout fit. So that's what I'd say. Speaking of time and the passage of it, I was musing about this the other day. So I went to my 20 year high school reunion recently.

As I mentioned, it was good. It was really nice. Yeah. The turnout was decent and some of these people I see regularly and some of them I haven't seen in 20 years, so a bit of a disparity there, but yeah, it was nice to be back. It was nice to see everyone. A good time was had by all, as far as I could tell, certainly had by me.

One of the things that they did, because we don't have a huge school, we didn't have a huge class, and so they do combined reunions, where it was like 20-year, 15-year, 10-year, 5-year, something like that. Actually, Declan Cronin of the Marlins and a former Effectively Wild guest. It was his 10 year Regis reunion. So I was telling him over text cause he was hurt still with a hip injury at the time

and he was rehabbing from it. I think now he has been activated, but also assigned to AAA. But I was texting with him about whether he could find some way to extend his rehab such that he could attend his 15 year Regis reunion and we could hang out there. But evidently that wasn't his top priority. He did say that he had checked his schedule and he was

hoping that he'd be in town for a Mets game or something, but it didn't, didn't work out that way. But I said, if I saw any of his classmates, I'd say hello for him. Anyway, my class seemingly was the last to get black and white yearbook photos, which we learned because while we were eating, they were flashing the yearbook photos

of the people who attended this reunion just in the background. And it was kind of fun because the first time they would cycle through them, everyone would applaud when your photo would come up, all of your classmates would applaud. Some people got louder applause than others, but it was like being back in high school again.

And there were black and white photos for our class. I don't remember when they were taken, maybe before senior year. and there were black and white photos for our class. I don't remember when they were taken, maybe before senior year. And all the subsequent classes were in color. And I have a couple of friends from that class who now work and teach at the school. And they said that they thought that our class

was the cutoff going from black and white to color. Now- So interesting. We're not ancient. They had color photography in 2005. Yeah, but like maybe they thought it was classy. Maybe they were like, this lends a dignity to these, you know, no offense, like probably some of them pimply faced boys who are about to embark out into the world.

Undoubtedly. Yeah. So it's not like the technology didn't exist. Right. This wasn't our 60 year reunion or something. I mean, even then the technology existed. It's not that new, but maybe there was a continuity because previous classes had had black and white going back to when the school was founded more than a century ago.

And so maybe they were hesitant to switch over to color perhaps. And maybe our class was the last one where they prioritized that continuity of lack of color over just seeming more modern. And so that reminded me of the passage of time, and I was thinking of this in a baseball context, because one thing that I've noticed lately is that there's been a flattening of time in sports highlights and baseball highlights specifically, because you know how you could often, you can tell,

you can look at old clips from earlier eras in baseball history, and if you have a feel for these things, you can almost instantly place roughly the era that they come from. Even if you don't know what that highlight is or who that player is, you can kind of tell more or less when it's from just based on the video,

just based on the quality of the video. Is it black and white? Is it color? Is it high definition? Is it standard definition? Is it like really low definition? Is it like it's, you know, you just know, or the camera angles

and a lot of it has to do with just the image quality or framing itself and forget about who is in the picture and what they're doing. It's just, it's purely based on the image alone. And I've noticed now that over the past decade or so, the images haven't changed that much because once we got to the high definition era, once you started getting baseball streaming or being broadcast at least in 1080p and 4k is more recent and still not always what you're going to get, but the leap from 1080p to 4k is not nearly as noticeable as the leap from standard definition to 720p to 1080p to 4K is not nearly as noticeable as the leap from standard definition to 720p to 1080p, et cetera.

So it's like we have essentially frozen now the aesthetics of the broadcast, at least when it comes to the image quality. And so I've been fooled a couple of times, or at least I've noted to myself, oh, that was from 2017, that clip, but it looks like it could be from this season. Like there's just no difference in the aesthetics of this image. And so I'm wondering how we will be able to tell. What will we key in on to say, oh yeah, this is from,

and this doesn't just apply to sports broadcasts or baseball broadcasts, it applies to photography too. I mean, it's the same thing. You look at photos from when we were kids and you can tell that time has passed, not just because we were kids in them, but also just because of the image. Like it's just, it's softer. It's not as high res. And then once you get to digital and you, you hit a certain megapixel threshold, you just can't tell anymore. Right? And so my daughter's baby photos, presumably, are gonna look like photos look 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

I don't know, unless we're in hologram world or it's all VR or AR or something, like maybe I'm just not anticipating the next technological leap that will make that standard. But if we're talking about 2D still photos, how much more can they change realistically? And so maybe this is just a moment in time, a snapshot, so to speak, where this is meaningful,

this is notable to us because we are used to during our lifespans and the previous history of photography going back to the beginning, that there was a clear and continuous improvement and sharpening and enrichment. And so maybe now we're in an era where from here on out, there won't be much of a difference. And so centuries hence, a still image will look more or less like a still image does today. And so this might be kind of myopic thinking from us to think that it should be in flux

and that you should be able to just eyeball it and say, yeah, this is from the seventies. This is from the forties. You can just kind of tell instantly. And maybe in the future there will be no confusion about that because it'll just be, yeah, images have looked like this as long as we can possibly remember. But for now, it's a little jarring to me. So I wonder, in a baseball context, what we will actually see that will enable us at a glance to say, oh yeah, this is from that decade, at least, if not that specific season. You might have answered your own question a little bit at the top, which is, depending on the camera

angle, the pitch clock, right? The visible pitch clock will certainly serve as a cue. I want to return to your broader question because I'm just fascinated by it, but also I find the most confusing stretch to actually be right before regular HD, like standardized HD, because sometimes you'll see a highlight and it'll be like this is from 2008 and I'm like I was about to graduate from college, like it doesn't feel like it was that long ago, then you have to grapple with how long ago that was. Yeah. Can feel uncomfortable for different reasons, but there's like that that weird like kind of interregnum

between when standard def was was normal and HD was normal and you might find yourself a little surprised like oh that was only that long ago. But I think I think the pitch clock is one thing that could serve as a fairly typical visual cue. Especially if you're if you're talking about broadcast footage like video not still image because you may not see the pitch clock but you can tell from the pace, at least relative to the immediate pre pitch clock era. Right. Even if you don't see the pitch clock, which again on the broadcast, you very often do at least sometimes in the course of an inning, you know, when they do the shot from sort of behind home plate, you'll often see the outfield clock that the batter can see, right? And sometimes depending on the high home, you might get the pitch clock in the pitcher is able to see in the shot.

You might be able to tell some from positioning of the fielders, right? I think that that will be, you know, that might be a little bit subtler to cue in on just because it depends on whether or not, you know, like, was that a team that was prone to like dramatic and field shifting before? How close are they? It might become very apparent if we ever implement the pie slice rule, right? That might be another visual cue. This is like a less reliable thing because I think it has sort of phased in over time, but the sort of proliferation of various pads and guards might serve as a good indicator of general era less than a particular season.

But we've seen the, I feel like that has sort of marched onward and now they're very transformer depending on the guy. Obviously the individual players help to situate you, but that might not be a particularly reliable season indicator. You can get a sense of it particularly with free agents,'re all of a sudden they're in a new uniform, like, oh, or like if you remember, oh, that's a guy who played half a year with that team because of a deadline deal. But again, that requires you to remember. C flaps are an indicator, right?

I feel like those became much more common in recent memory. Like I remember baseball without the C flap. It was scarier at times than it is now. If we get the challenge system, that's going to be a good indicator. Cause all of a sudden you're going to get a lot of tap, tap, tap, right? Cause you hear me tap, tap, tapping on my own head when I was doing that. Yeah. Especially if we get full ABS, that would definitely be a noticeable difference, I suppose,

just because, well, even if umpires are still signaling calls and strikes, maybe the mechanics would be a bit different or at least on screen, you'd probably see something different. Of course we've had K-Zone now for quite a while. That's another thing that can affect it. Even if it's not the image quality, just the presentation. And that could be, is there a strike zone box on there? How are they doing the Chiron? What are they showing?

Is there a bedding line on the bottom? Yeah. The various widgets. I guess you wouldn't really be able to tell from pitch speeds, maybe where the flames activate. Are the flames at a 95 mile per hour pitch or a 97 or eight mile per hour pitch? Otherwise you'd probably need a larger sample if not for the flames, but that sort of thing. Yeah. The various broadcasters insignias that are on it, right?

We went through the Bali era, then now we're in the fan duel era. Of course, if it's pandemic era, then you can instantly tell. That's very noticeable. Cardboard cutouts, empty stands, weird sounds. Yeah, that you can always clock quite quickly. But you were like, it can't get worse than this. And then throwing senators to the ground. So anyway, been a day, Ben.

You know, here we are having one of our days, one of the ones. We do get to have it. So we should be grateful for that piece, I suppose, but there's other stuff that's less good. Another one I was thinking of, this may have actually prompted my initial consideration of the subject because I was reading friend of the show,

Matthew Trueblood, he wrote something for baseball prospectus about catcher framing versus throwing and how the relaxed rules against running the relaxed restrictions have changed the priorities for catchers vis-a-vis framing in potential base stealing situations and how maybe they're more eager to get themselves in a good throwing stance now than they were when it was just all about framing because no one was really running anyway, and now people are running more so you do have to balance them more. And I think he showed, he showed before and after clips of various catchers and he showed

a 2017 clip of JT Real Muto and that was one of the ones that made me realize, I guess, other than the fact that he was with the Marlins still then, the clip itself looks more or less the same, aesthetically speaking. Visually, it was just as sharp and this was eight years ago now and that kind of made me realize it. But one thing Matthew noted is that obviously the default catcher stance has changed. Yes, I just wanted to see that. Yeah, so that's the thing. If you could only see one pitch, let's say, if someone, if it was like a geoguessor,

but for baseball kind of thing, and they just showed you one pitch of a baseball broadcast and you had to place it in time, at least if not in place, is the catcher in the traditional old school crouch, or is the catcher in a one knee down stance? That alone might tell you, not that there weren't any catchers who did one knee down, but now it's almost universal. And so that would be quite a clue to say, oh, this is probably 2020s at least, or it's

not earlier than that because the catcher's not crouching. I think that that is, yeah, that's, it's not that there's a strict bright line, but the near uniformity in stances now I think helps you to narrow it pretty precisely at least to a couple of years. I was going to say the torpedo bat, at least to a couple of years. I was going to say the torpedo bat, but we didn't notice them the first time around until all of a sudden we did. So that's probably not a super reliable indicator. You could tell maybe uniform trends and the two of us, we don't notice those

things so much, but patches patches on the sleeve. That I noticed uniforms much more than you do. I don't remember uniform numbers to save my life. I cannot... I mean, a couple, but it's not something that I have logged. Yeah. Or the decals on the helmets. Just more ads, generally, on players' persons would be one tip.

Yeah. And I think the City Connects would help you locate it like, oh, here we are in that stretch where like Nike had a lot of that blue fabric they had to get rid of. Oh, here we are in the stretch where they had a different kind of blue fabric that they had to get rid of. Here's the stretch where everyone looks like a gamer for whatever stupid reason. Here's where the Nationals stopped wearing the perfect cherry blossom City Connects Yeah, can I tell you something? Yeah, I've seen the the D backs new City Connects in person twice now They look a lot better in person than they do on TV. They're much more obviously purple in person than they are on TV

They weren't wearing them when they beat up on the Mariners yesterday when I was there, but, you know, the spirit of it was in the ballpark. They're very popular. A lot of people like those. I saw the Big Dumper. That's good. They didn't win. No, they haven't won a lot lately. Yeah.

But, I guess another, you kind of alluded to it, but in one of these clips in True Blood's article, there is a betting ad right behind home plate. That's a tell. And then yeah, the pitch clock countdown, even if you can't see the clock itself just on the Chiron, sometimes you see it. And I guess fashion choices and changes that we'll see over time, whether it's sliding mitts or it's maybe if we get more and more personalized player gear, like those customized bats, which I thought were actually quite entertaining,

that we saw on Player's Weekend, bats that looked like pencils, that sort of thing. If that becomes... I didn't like that. I kind of did. But maybe it was just the novelty of it. I don't know. I felt like I was in... You remember that Robin Williams movie, Toys? Yeah. It's not good. I'm not here to defend toys, not caping for toys. Weird movie. Anyway, felt like something out of Toys. No one needs to rush out to watch that movie. This is not me saying. Not a recommendation. Yeah, that's not a good one. Yeah. So if that becomes standard or I guess custom cleats, that's much more common than it used

to be. So just- Although they cycle through them so quickly. I think that now that that has become part of the personal expression canvas, which I am not opposed to that. I didn't like the pencil bat in particular. I just found it, I don't know, something about it was like, nah, it's not for me. But I like the personalized cleat thing and it gives so much opportunity because they do, as we've

discussed, like they often go through multiple pairs. I still want to know how they break them in without getting little blisties, but that's a conversation for another day. But they do change them out so regularly that I feel like it's likely to be a little flummoxing. I suppose you could maybe, depending on, again, this is more of a broadcast thing than a photography thing, but if you have imagery of anthem singers or celebrities in attendance, you know, you might be able to isolate a particular world series based on whatever Fox procedural we're being told we're going to enjoy that year. You know, that might help to kind of, although like if, if either Rob Lowe or who's the other guy? You know, the other one who looks ageless. Help me. In the Marvel movies, Ant-Man. Who is Ant-Man? What's his name again?

Oh, Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd. Thank you. If Paul Rudd or Rob Lowe were there, good luck. Could be any one of a number of decades, really. Yeah. Sticky stuff inspections. Right. Sometimes you see politicians and that. But yeah, I think there are clues. I think the most reliable way to get a sense of a season is probably just the personnel on the field, right? The players, how old they look, whatever stats you see of them.

But- What stats they display on the broadcast? Right, yeah, sure. But again, like if you're not, it's going to put you in an era and maybe even like a reliable range of years. But I do think it would be hard to use, if you can't use that to isolate a season, like if you can't look and go like, oh, that must be, you know, 2023. I don't know if the other indicators are going to help you narrow it to a particular season, right? Like at some point it's like, what do you remember? Hopefully the name of Paul Rudd. He's everywhere.

Why did I forget that guy's name? Yeah, if you can see a full broadcast, then there are going to be enough context clues for you to pick up on it. They'll probably just tell you the date on some level. Like at some point it'll just be on a, you know, maybe not for that day, but they'll be like, you know, on Monday and then they put the day up there sometimes. I just mean more if you're glancing, you're seeing just a snippet, you're seeing a single short highlight and you're trying to place it. And it's a little disorienting. There's just a, a time is a flat circle aspect to the visual fidelity of everything

now really. And there are some differences when it comes to cinematography in movies, people complain, oh, it's lit differently and maybe badly and everything is too bright and all these things, but the resolution isn't really changing. And sometimes now of course you get the up-res old movies that are just sharper than they actually were when they were first broadcast or displayed. And yeah, I don't need that necessarily because I mean, sometimes it's, it's awkward because you're seeing details that the director did not expect you to

be able to see at the time. And so it's a little anachronistic in that sense also. But yeah, we're gonna be dealing with a lot of that really when it comes to just recording quality. You can say this about music too. I mean, music, there are stylistic shifts that allow you to place things somewhat, but then it's not quite the visual fidelity,

the recording method, it's more about the music itself. And there's just this general idea that things aren't changing as much, that things are just kind of culturally static because we all have these shared frames of references because everything is a reboot or a sequel and nothing is ever really new anymore to the extent that it used to be and we're all kind of living in

this perpetual present. People say that about fashion too, that you can look at at what people are wearing today versus 20 years ago. I mean, as we've covered on Patreon bonus pods, it's often the same fashions much to much to your dismay, in some cases when certain things come back into style. And that's always been the case that there's a cyclical aspect to fashion, but there's a perception at least

that that's changing less than it used to, that we all just were kind of, we're steeped in this sort of one way of seeing things. And it's tough because the accumulated culture, now that culture is recorded and preserved every new generation that comes along, there's just more and more for them to catch up on or more realistically not catch up on and just be oblivious to because there's just so much that happened that you could in theory watch, like the cultural canon either has to expand to encompass more and

more stuff, or you just, it's sort of a sliding window where you just disregard the earlier stuff. Like when I was a kid and I tried to familiarize myself with the greatest movies of all time, well, that was 25 years ago, probably at this point. And so there's been a quarter century more movies and some have sort of slipped out of the cultural regard and others have ascended. And if I were doing that same exercise now, if someone who's my age now, that I was then, tried to do that same catch-up,

it would take a lot longer because they'd have 25 years of more movies. And we're used to this with baseball because there's so much recorded baseball history, even if it's not the footage, it's the stats, it's the events, it's the game logs, it's the play by play. And that I think is, is a good thing about baseball. It's certainly something that I immersed myself in when I was becoming a baseball fan, but it's intimidating if you're just getting on board

in season 150 or whatever it is of Major League Baseball. Like, do I have to catch up? Do I have to watch the previously on Major League Baseball? And so probably not ultimately. And the more and more baseball there is, the more unwieldy it will be to do that. And so you can't really expect everyone to just be up to speed on

everything. Yeah. I mean, I will say that if you're, if you're struggling and you need to like separate wheat from chaff and like, what do you, why do you can skip toys like that? That's okay. But yeah, it's like, it's, it's an impossible thing, right? And this is true across sports. It's true across film, it's true across... I have so many books, Ben. Am I going to read all of them even in my lifetime? I don't know. They might just be a thing someone else has to move one day, right? But yeah, it's hard to know, but it can situate you. It can help to situate you. I think we'll have clues. I think we'll continue to have clues. We think that baseball stays static and then it changes

and think about how much change we've seen just in the last couple of years, like so much. So I think we'll be able to lock in. But then again, what if Rich Hill is pitching? Is it 2005? Is it 2025? You know, he does age. He looks exactly the same as he always did. He looks different now than he did.

No, how dare you? He's not like, it's not a bad thing. He looks exactly the same as the others did. He looks different now than he did. How dare you? It's not a bad thing. I think it's fine to look the age that you are, right? Nothing wrong with that. Yes, sure. Yeah, embrace it. Yeah.

But Robert Murray of Fansighted, I believe, reported that he has an opt-out with the Royals on June 15th, so we could be approaching a decision point, potentially. Oh, boy. Do you think he'll grant us an exclusive interview if he decides to opt out? I mean, I think we could probably get him on if we tried again. He has come on before, so why not? He was very gracious. I'd like to have him back. We didn't ask him about haunted pools even one time.

No, we didn't. Maybe next time. Yeah. Next time. Another change, I think, is that it is harder now, well, let me figure out how to phrase this. I was gonna say it is harder to be inaccurate. Now that is clearly demonstrably untrue

because it is in fact very easy to be inaccurate. What I mean is that in a non intentional way where you're trying to pull the wool over, over people's eyes, basically the old Rob Nyer concept of the tracer, where he would look at things that players from earlier eras claimed when they were just recollecting some memorable game and they would always get details wrong, if not have fabricated the entire thing. And so with more modern tools, we can go back and we can try to find a game that meets that criteria.

And very often there isn't one. And so you kind of maybe give them a pass because well, A, yes, maybe there is a little bit of creative license and embellishment that goes on there, but also they didn't have baseball reference. They didn't have fan graphs. It was hard to look things up. And so you went with your memory and memory is fallible.

Now, as we know, there is, of course, a rampant misinformation, disinformation problem, which will probably only get worse as we get more fully into the AI era. And of course, there is just a whole political party that is essentially employing those tactics at this point. Two great effect, unfortunately. But in a baseball context, I was thinking of this because have you followed the Hunter Dobbins drama?

I saw that Hunter Dobbins said that he would not play for the Yankees under any circumstances, even if they were the last team to offer him a contract. And I'm sure he has a reason for that, but I don't know what it is. And then I was like, okay, sure. He gets to not like them. That's fine. And I'm sure everyone else reacted to that very calmly and that there were no

words spoken. They did win that game that he pitched, right? The Hunter Dobbins start against the Yankees. They ended up winning that one. I think so. That was quite a debut for the Yankees Red Sox rivalry for him to Kool-Aid man in and be like, you couldn't pay me to play for the Yankees. Just rookie hunter dominance. No one was really wondering about this, I don't think, but he, he was very enthusiastic about being a Yankees hater. And probably that's a pretty good strategy to endear yourself to Red Sox fans. I was going to say, yeah, I guess you don't care if Yankees fans hate you because you've established that you won't play for them. Right. They do already.

Right. Now, you know, I'm skeptical that if there were only one team that were willing to offer him a major league salary and it was the Yankees that he would take some principled stand and say, no, I will not actually play for you. There have been a couple of famous examples of players saying this before. There was the Ken Griffey Jr. example where he said back in the 90s that he would under no circumstance play for the Yankees. And then he explained many years later why this was, which he said was because when his dad, Ken Griffey Sr., was playing for the Yankees fairly late in his career. Junior was sitting with him in the dugout

and a security guard made him leave, made him vacate the premises. I guess Yankee security guards is a big story line these days with Juan Soto, et cetera. But he was told that George Steinbrenner didn't want kids around, didn't want hangers-on about. It was a Drake LaRoche unfriendly environment and also a Ken Griffey Jr. unfriendly one. And at the time, evidently, Ken Griffey Sr.

told Jr. to look out onto the field where Greg Nettles and his son were both there. And Greg Nettles' son, I guess, was taking grounders. And so the implication was that maybe there was something racist going on here. Yeah. Maybe it had to do with Nettles' standing with the organization. Who knows? Maybe it was inconsistent security guards applying policies.

I don't know, but that was what Junior took away from that. And so he held a grudge. There was also Vlad Guerrero Jr. Had a anti-Yankees grudge until recently, but I think he walked that back before he signed his extension with the Blue Jays because he didn't want to limit his options too much. But Hunter Dobbins, who's from Texas,

and it was kind of confusing why he had this enmity toward the Yankees. And as he explained it in this initial Boston Herald story, it had something to do with his dad. I think the implication was, well, his dad was a Red Sox fan, and also Dobbins the Younger claimed that his father had been drafted twice by the Yankees

before being traded to the Diamondbacks. And I guess the implication was that he held a grudge because the Yankees, I don't know why you'd be mad at the Yankees necessarily for drafting you twice. Seems like they like you. And then trading you, you know, that happens a lot in baseball. It's not usually like, I will never play for you

like some, an ego Montoya situation if the team trades you. But anyway, I guess there was supposedly a connection there. And then he was asked if he had a least favorite Yankees player and he said, all of them except Andy Pettit because Andy Pettit and his dad were really good friends. So there's been a second phase now to the Dobbins drama where people have fact-checked Hunter Dobbins' dad on this. So Joel Sherman, who's, you know, pretty good reporter,

he took it upon himself to fact-check Lance Dobbins, Dobbins the Elder, and evidently, this story does not hold up. None of the details of Lance Dobbins' history as relayed by Hunter Dobbins are actually true. And- Does Lance believe the version that Hunter believes? I'm trying to identify where the breakdown

in communication was. Is it that Lance's understanding of his own lived experience is not in line with reality? Or was there like a hunter was a little kid, heard a story and misinterpreted it the way that little kids can and then told it, this happens in families all the time.

It just generally doesn't involve the New York Yankees. The way that it's been branded to this point is essentially Lance Dobbins lied. Okay. Now, I think your alternate interpretation is still on the table as far as I know. Sure. But Joel Sherman, he like chased down this story.

He was Woodward and Bernstein-ing this thing. Sure. He talked to Brian Cashman, who's been with the Yankees since the mid-80s. He said he couldn't remember the Yankees drafting Lance Dobbins. They checked with the Yankees amateur department, no drafting of Lance Dobbins. He reached out to Andy Pettit and Andy Pettit was like, I do not know this man. Neither I nor anyone in my family remembers Lance Dobbins. And then also contacted Joe Garagiola Jr., the Diamondbacks' original GM and Buck Showalter. And they were all

asked, do you remember Lance Dobbins? And was there a trade for Lance Dobbins? And no, no one remembers Lance Dobbins. And there's just no record of this happening on baseball reference, which is pretty conclusive. Like he was not drafted in any of these drafts. There's no record of this transaction, et cetera. So that seems like a pretty open and shut case. And so then reporters went back to Hunter Dobbins and questioned him about the inconsistencies there. And I feel kind of bad for him, maybe both Dobbins's.

I don't know, but Hunter said, "'The whole backstory, it was stuff I had heard growing up "'and seen pictures of from my dad,' "'which raises questions, like were there doctored photos "'of Lance Dobbins in Pidstripes or something? "'I don't know. "'At the end of the day, it's just from my dad and what I kind of grew my love for the game.

At the end of the day, I don't go fact check my dad or anything like that. And then he was asked like, you know, is this a distraction or anything? And he said a little bit, not really. My whole focus is on Saturday, getting ready to face the Yankees, et cetera, et cetera. Then he was asked like, did you talk to your dad?

Or are you gonna talk to your dad about this? He said, I imagine we'll talk in the future or something like that. It's been a bigger deal than it really needed to be, which is probably true. So he did say, he was asked if he had discussed the story with his father and he said, a little bit, not really. So I don't know if there was some communication there.

I think your alternative interpretation is possible that it's just that Hunter Dobbins misremembered this somehow, which happens, but it is also highly possible that Lance Dobbins exaggerated, told a little fib, told a little white lie, probably a victimless lie. I guess now his son is sort of a victim because he's at the center of this whole thing, but probably didn't anticipate that his son

would be a big leaguer one day and would make this bold declaration about how he hates the Yankees. What I haven't really seen noted so much is that Lance Dobbins was, I believe, a professional player, but in Indie ball. So baseball reference has a record of Lance Dobbins' pitcher, who he played in 96 and 97.

In both of those seasons, he pitched, he played in an Indie Ball league called the Big South League, which I had not heard of. It was an Indie League, and I guess I hadn't heard of because it operated for only those two seasons. So it was very short lived. He also did pitch briefly for the more famous Frontier League in 1997. So his whole professional record, 91 and two thirds innings pitched 8.64 ERA,

10.8 runs allowed per nine, which I guess tells you why he did not have a record in affiliated balls. So it is very possible that Lance Dobbins did exaggerate and he had pro aspirations and he did briefly pitch in pro ball and maybe he exaggerated. Maybe he said, you know, to impress his son

or inspire his son or who knows, said, yeah, the Yankees drafted me and then they traded me and I just never made it or whatever. Like this kind of thing is probably fairly common just in life, not only in baseball. And it just, it doesn't come to light as publicly as this. And still a developing story here. So if we get word from Lance Dobbins

about what exactly happened here, maybe Lance Dobbins will throw Hunter under the bus and be like, yeah, kid just didn't remember what I said. I never said this, who knows? But hopefully this is not causing any friction between the two of them. But people lie a little, you know, there's a self-aggrandizing tendency, whether it's on a dating app

where you say you're taller than you are, or you fudge on your resume a little bit, or this has happened from time immemorial in baseball, it's just that now these things are recorded and preserved. It's one of the things that I value about baseball, that you can actually check things. It's nice to have a reality that we all more or less agree on, a shared reality of baseball stats and record keeping,

which has been very voluminous and diligent. And I don't know that there's really any human endeavor that is better recorded than baseball has been over the past century and a half. And so I like that. It's nice that we can actually know things objectively about baseball and that for the most part, we don't disagree about the basic facts. We disagree about what the facts omit or our interpretation of things. But generally, if someone played for a team or didn't play for a team, we know that or don't know that pretty conclusively.

But I have some sympathy because it would have been really easy to get away with this until fairly recently, right? Like you could say, yeah, that team drafted me and who was going to call you on that? And really how would you even check that if you didn't claim that you had a big league career? Now, if you said he pitched for multiple seasons or something and maybe that was part of it, well, that might be a bit easier to look up. But even that, like, how are you going to find someone's minor league statline prior to 20 years ago or whatever? Like, Hunter Dobbins was born before baseball reference. By the time he got old enough to remember this story

or to have heard it, baseball reference would have been around. I don't know when they added minor league data exactly. But for most of history, you could have claimed, yeah, this team drafted me and it just would not have been true. And probably a lot of people, maybe a lot of people listening

have some family member who embellished their athletic accomplishments a little bit. Even if it's just, I played in college or I was a high school star, or I had a big game in high school or college or something, unless, you know, like, what are you going to do until now? Newspaper records are now digitized and you can look that stuff up easily, but what are you going to go to the library, just scour the microfilm to try and catch your uncle in a lie or something? You could skate with this stuff. And now you can't so much anymore. Nicole Zichal-Beshear Yeah, I was going to say like every,

you know, every bar in a Midwestern affiliates city has a guy who's saying, you know, I threw a couple of frames for them 10, 15 years ago. Unlike most of the time you approach that with some amount of skepticism. You know, you go, uh-huh, I bet you did, right? You go to your high school reunion and you hear a guy's pitching in the majors

and then sometimes it ends up being true. I mean not in this moment, but you know, I think that when it's your family, even if you have that skepticism, like you're gonna take the general contours of the story and go, yeah, some version of that's probably right. I think that a lot of people's instinct in that moment would be precisely the same as Hunter Dubbins's, where you would go, wow, dad, that's crazy. And then you'd move on. And to your point, like most of the time, that story is going to stay contained, right? And then, you know, sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. I wonder what the most graceful way to get out of it would be. I mean, it might just be for his dad to say, yeah, you know, I told him about my time in Indie Ball when I was, when he was really little. And I think I just

maybe wasn't clear on the details. And so he's kind of misremembering my experience. Although if it's something they talked about a lot, you kind of can't get away with it. I guess it depends on when he told him and how often he told them and in what level of detail. Right, because it's the sort of thing where, especially if your kid then shows an aptitude for baseball, I imagine, and I don't want to impugn the integrity of his father, but I imagine it's something you talk about more than one time, right?

Like, dad, what's this gonna be like for me? Yeah, you'd think, right. And also you don't question things that you're told when you're a kid, because you just- Wow, you were a way less annoying kid than I was. Yeah, at a certain point you do, but it depends on your family. Sometimes maybe you have to question everything all the time,

but often your parents tell you something and you just, you take that as gospel. And even if it's something unusual, it doesn't seem unusual to you, because it's the only reality you've known. I've had that experience sometimes where in retrospect I look back and I think that was weird, but it didn't seem weird to me at the time.

Maybe you realize later that it's weird. Oh yeah, everybody has that experience. And it's not always a negative one, right? But everybody has that experience of like, going to the sleepover and going, oh, that's how you do things in your house. That's different than my house. In some, sometimes in a small way, sometimes in a very big way, sometimes in a way that's

fine and sometimes in a way that makes you realize I'm going to need therapy later, you know? It really can depend. It can. Yes. And unless they had run into Andy Pettit, which I guess was within the realm of possibility, he's a Texan too. Like it's just, it's not gonna... Sure. It's a big state though.

Yeah. It's pretty big. It's not gonna come up. And, and if you don't over embellish, now if you claim that you were some big league superstar or something, that's gonna be hard to maintain that fiction. But yeah, they drafted me and you know, I just, I never made it for whatever reason, or you even invent some grudge or grievance about why you didn't make it and they held me back. Okay. You're probably not going to get exposed unless your kid makes the big leagues and plays the Yankees and spouts off about how he never wants to play for the Yankees.

That's the worst case scenario for Lance Dobbins. Like, you know, if this was an intentional fabrication exaggeration, he's probably been sweating a bit. I mean, sure, he's happy his kid's a big leaguer, but he's like, is my 20-year-old lie finally going to come to light here? Hunter's going to blow up my spot inadvertently. So yeah, it's just, it's an unusual circumstance. As most people don't get called on it. Remember Ipe, Ipe Mizuhara, Shohi Otani's interpreter. Among his lower stakes deceptions that came to light last year

was that he had seemingly exaggerated things or entirely invented them on his resume or like on the Angels media guide. He had claimed to have graduated from a school that he had never attended seemingly. And he had claimed to be an interpreter for other teams and players in the big leagues and they were like, we have no record of that. And so that didn't come to light until his other misdeeds came to light. And then suddenly people questioned and said, huh, I wonder what else is a miss here.

But if he had never stolen money from Shohei Otani or been caught doing it, then that probably would have just sailed by because you don't expect rigorous fact checking maybe in a media guide, or at least it's not done probably. And he probably just gave them a capsule bio at some point. And they were just like, sure,

why would he lie about that? And you know, it's, you can just get away with things surprisingly easily, but then other things now it's harder to get away with. And that applies to hopefully at least some types of crime. I mean, violent crime and not to... What a weird day to record this episode. I know. Just like a weird day to record this episode. I know. Yeah, just like a weird day and a weird time.

Harder, I think, to be a serial killer these days. Sure, because of your cell phone. Well, yeah, there's GPS, there's credit cards, there's cameras with facial recognition technology. You have to show ID for everything. There's more coordination among law enforcement agencies than there used to be, because there used to be almost none. It's just, it's hard to move around and not have your records attached to you

and DNA and fingerprints and all the rest, right? It's just, it's harder to get away with hopefully some strings of crimes and sprees. I don't mean to like give you, I'm not trying to give you the business, Ben, you know? It's just a funny, it's just, what else are we going to do but find it funny? I mean, hopefully other stuff, but like in this particular moment while we're doing our PatGast job, yeah.

Most people are still anti-murder, hopefully, it seems like. I think that that is true. I am not going to laugh about that. I think that that is a real thing. Yeah, let's hope that that holds at least. And so I think that has been a change. It's just, you know, it's a little bit of the surveillance state sort of thing and then just digitized more easily accessible records. And in some ways that's good. And in some ways it's kind of oppressive and big brother. But in this specific way, it backfired for Lance Dobbins

seemingly. Yeah, we like it when technology prevents serial killing. You know, I think that we're an anti serial killing podcast in general. I think that like, what would Netflix do with itself at that point? If we if we eliminate all the serial killers, we just have to keep rehashing the same serial killers over and over and then the serial killer groupies who form romantic bonds imprint on the notorious criminals. It's going to be hard for them out there. So there are some constituencies that are probably less anti-serial killer than others, but generally I would say we're

anti-serial killers. Yeah, we are. Certainly we are. Certainly we are. The answer to your question might be maybe they have to go back to producing good documentaries. Murder Mystery Podcasts. Yeah. I like it when the mystery, you know, if you're going to do crime, like the one about the

art heist in Boston. That was nice. Yeah. And then the documentary was good, right? Because you know what it was mostly not about? People dying. That was good. I liked that part. Yeah, that was pretty good. It was called Last Scene, by the way, the WBUR podcast. That's the one I heard the least. I think there may have been multiple ones. I don't know. I didn't hear a pod about it. I watched the documentary on Netflix.

Isabella Stewart Gardner. Yes. Yeah. Good doc, you know? It was weird when everyone was like, Ted Bundy's so hot. And I was like, he killed people like 15 minutes from my house. So I'm going to take a hard pass on the Ted Bundy's hot thing. He's a good example though, in that he escaped from custody multiple times. And I think the second time he was away in the wind for some time, he committed more murders because he just, like, I think he took a flight too.

Like you can't get on a plane now, just like as an escaped convict. I don't think, hopefully, like you know, even if you don't have a real ID, you might have a hard time getting on a plane pretty soon. So it's just, it was just, you know, you could wing it. You could be on the lam a little better back then. Yeah, we were not as relentlessly tracked as we are now. But what I was going to say was like, we are opposed to serial killing, killing of any kind really. The one-offs we're not really big fans of either.

I don't know that I would put dad embellishes story to his son in quite the same category. It feels important for us to say that just in case this gets back to Hunter and Lance and they're like, hey, so I don't know that Ted Bundy is the comp I'd put on this particular set of behaviors. But yeah, it's like sometimes you tell a little tale and then the little tale grows over time. And then you're like, wow, now the kids in the bigs, guess this little tail might get away from me.

And ultimately, who cares, right? It doesn't actually matter. It's not a fib that is particularly impactful. It is sort of funny. I wonder if he comes to accept he being Hunter, that this story is one that he either, and again, I don't know if this is an instance of a tall tale being told or a little kid misremembering something and then adding to the myth over time. But whatever the truth of it is there, I don't think it very much matters. But I wonder if Hunter will say, oh, well, he'll just call Brian Cashman and just be like, so hey, look, I'm pretty happy with my situation where

I am. And I know that I'm not like a free agent or anything, but like, I would like to retract issue a correction on my previous post. You know, I would work for you guys if like, you know, the moment came around, it would be really funny if Cashman then went and targeted him in trade, you know, just to like, be like, call him on it. Just like, yeah, here's a funny thing. Yeah. Here's a funny thing that we could do. Hopefully he doesn't give up too much to get him in case he actually does stand

by his words here. But yeah, maybe in light of information that has, that has come to my attention, maybe now my, my grudge can be retired here. But look, for all we know, the story of how his dad was drafted by the Yankees, maybe that inspired Young Hunter to believe that a baseball career really could be in the cards for him. And maybe I played a couple seasons in the big South League would not have lit the same fire under Young Hunter.

So who knows, maybe it was for the best, but the coverup is worse than the crime, so we'll see. I'm curious to see if there's additional detail here, because I want to know just to what extent Lance went to to perpetrate this fiction, if indeed he did. Like, if there were photos, was there like a poorly

photoshopped portrait of Lance Dobbins, like with his arm around Andy Pettit or something. It was just like, you know, one of Lance's pals with his head cut out of the photo and Andy Pettit's head pasted in. It passed muster with the six-year-old Hunter Dobbins, but now he'll look back and be like, oh, how did I not see through this? Yeah. Although I doubt like he's like, oh yeah, prove it dad, like produce photo

evidence. Or maybe he met Andy Pettit at some, some social function, some charity events and staged a photo to corroborate the story. Yeah. Yeah. I will say that the, the Andy Pettit of it all is to my mind, the strongest piece of evidence that this was just like active embellishment on his dad's part. Right.

Because it's a weird detail for a little kid to manufacture, right? It doesn't feel like the sort of thing that a child is like, and then, you know, so I do wonder if, you know, like, you know, fathers and sons, man, that can be a touchy thing. And maybe you want to just, you want to impress the little guy and be like, you gotta, you gotta do it for your old man. I didn't get to do it for myself. I mean, now I'm, now I'm ascribing all sorts of psychological motivations to a person I've never met and probably never will unless he hears about this pod and then is like, I also think that it's weird people were so into Ted Bundy again. Yeah. Right?

It's like you don't have to get hot for this guy in addition to being a serial killer. He's dead now. So you could just let that go. Yeah. Lance could come on effectively wild if he wants to tell his side of the story. He's welcome. Joel would be so pissed. Joel would be like, Hey, I reported this thing.

I worked on this story for years. He just tweeted it out. He just went on a podcast. Yeah. I reported this thing. I worked on this story for years. I just tweeted it out. I just went on a podcast. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, you know, the political figure is connected to someone and they deny knowing that person. And then someone produces the gotcha photo of them next to each other.

And sometimes it is an actual gotcha. And sometimes it's like politicians meet a lot of people and they go to a lot of events and they don't actually know these people. And so, yeah, I stood next to that person one time. Maybe we were introduced. I don't know. But that happens sometimes too. All right.

I'm just thinking about the time that your crazy ass mayor like invented a story about a friend of his who had died in the line of duty and that whose picture he supposedly carried around with him for years. And his staff like, you know, high school, like genealogy projects, like style. Stained it with tea or something to make it look like it had been in his wallet the entire time. Don't, don't rank Cuomo, not even one time, you guys. Just follow you make good choices out there so that I can stop hearing about your stupid mayor. My God. All right. I wanted to end with some stat blasting, but you wanted to plug an exercise

that our pal Michael Bauman is conducting. Yes. So are you a sad baseball fan or even a curious baseball fan? You could be anywhere in between those emotions, I suppose. But Bauman is inviting you to participate in the 2025 Fan Exchange. And you might ask yourself, what is a fan exchange? Well, from June 16th through the 23rd, you will watch a team other than your own. And we will link to Bauman's post about sort of the conceit here and some of the general guidelines that he is laying out. But basically what he is inviting you to do is to pick another team. And he has made up a list of suggestions for your potential exchange team. And you will

before the 16th, you will fill out a little survey, which has a bunch of multiple choice questions. It doesn't take very long. I think when I did the survey, it took me like six minutes to do. It's mostly multiple choice or a couple of free form. And basically it's asking you questions about how you feel about your current favorite team. And you will, you will do that filling out, you will do that before Monday.

And then you will watch another team the way that you watch your current team. So you will replicate the behavior that you currently ascribe to baseball, the time you spend doing it, but you'll just watch a different team, right? And he's, again, he's laid out a couple of, he's laid out suggested pairings here with a few rules. So like no local rivals.

So if you're a Mets fan, you don't have to watch the Yankees, the Angels, the Angels fans won't watch the Dodgers. Hunter Devins doesn't have to play for the Yankees. Correct. No recent World Series opponents. You're not going to get a team that is playing your favorite team in the week that he has decided for this because that kind of defeats the purpose of the experiment. He is trying to keep you within one time zone of your original favorites so that you don't

have to, if you're in New York, you don't have to stay up and watch LA games, right? There are some bits and bobs he had to do around that because of where guys where teams are traveling, etc. You'll see the the suggestions that he lays out here tried to stick to that as well as he could. And he also tried to not stick yet with like a similarly bad viewing experience. So they don't worry if you're a White Sox fan, you do not have to watch the Rockies. And this all assumes that you have access to MLB TV or can watch MLB Network in a way

that will give you reliable access. If that's not true, you can pick a different team. Also MLB TV offers free week long trials, so you could use one of those. Also just note that at least on the DBAX broadcast, and I think that this is true just across MLB TV, that they have gotten into the deep, deep sales part of the season. So you can sign up for MLB TV and watch games

for a pretty deep discount if you're interested in that kind of thing. I'm not shilling MLB TV, I'm just saying like, if you're thinking about it, this isn't a bad time to hop on board. And then at the end, you will fill out another little survey, and then Bauman's going to tell us some stuff about the whole thing and what people learned and what they enjoyed. And it's just, you know, we can get kind of like myopic about baseball sometimes because

you watch your local team, you see them play other clubs, but it's within the context of competition. You might not get to see a bunch of a different league or even division depending on which games you're watching. And so this is an opportunity to expand one's view and to have a better sense of how other fan bases are living, the media they consume. He encourages you to go follow the Beat Riders for this new club and read their work if that's the thing you do for your current club. But it gives you, hopefully, a broader appreciation for the sport, a broader perspective on it, one that will enhance your enjoyment of baseball generally and potentially your own team.

So we will again, we will link to the post where Bauman lays this all out, which has within it links to the fan survey, his rules, his suggested pairings. And so we hope that folks will check it out and engage in the exercise and have a good time while they do. So yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, that's fun. That's a nice thing. I think it's what we try to do here at Effectively Wild is introduce people to the game at large,

the league at large, as opposed to the one team lens that a lot of fans look at the sport through, which has its advantages, certainly. But there's also something to just, yeah, trade in places, walk in someone else's shoes of fandom and get exposed to other players. And I like that exercise, so I look forward to his takeaways. And I guess I can't really participate because I've already shifted from a single team centric vantage point to more of a league wide look, which costs me some things, that perspective of looking at things on a local level

and experiencing things through the lens of that one team, I think on the whole, I prefer it this way, just getting to enjoy every team, or at least aspects of every team and all the good players and, and pick and choose the broadcasters I like and all the rest of it. It's nice to have that kind of choice, but you do sacrifice something when you lose that attachment to one team that you just have this ride or die.

But I like that, uh, the exchange program concept. And you don't have to give it up forever, right? You're just, you're just doing it for a week to, to try something. Think about it like a baseball vacation or as Bowman puts it, like a, you know, it's like you're on a, a semester at sea, except they're, they're playing baseball. Yeah. They're playing baseball at like a, at the Indy Speedway. Why can't they play baseball on a boat, Ben?

You know, why can't they play it on a boat? They play basketball on boats. They put Disney out on boats. They put all kinds of Disney stuff on boats. They can't put play it on a boat? They play basketball on boats. They put Disney out on boats. They put all kinds of Disney stuff on boats. They can't put baseball on boats. Yeah, they could put baseball on a boat. We need to get an aircraft carrier. I think they did do an aircraft carrier, but it wasn't, it was in port.

It was not, I don't think it was, it had not set sail. Yeah, that was, I think a minor league homer it had not set sail. Yes. You know? Yeah. That was, I think a minor league home run derby, but it happened. Oh, okay. It wasn't a game. Did they not have enough room? Air car carriers are huge.

They are. They are very large. Yeah. Okay. Well, some fans might decide, hey, I could live like this all the time. Sure. It depends on what your regular affiliation is and what you're switching to. But some fans might discover

that the grass actually is greener. It might not want to go back. We'll see. Yeah. Maybe it'll be a life-changing experience for you. You just don't know. Yeah. Oh, and I meant to say

that there was some bad picture injury news. What else is new? Jackson Jobe is the latest to undergo Tommy John surgery as a tribute to Dr. Frank Jobe, who pioneered the surgery. No relation, of course, but noteworthy nonetheless. And that stinks. You know, the Tigers have been great, even with out great contributions from Jobe.

But given that he'll probably be out for next season too, assuming this is regular TJ, then that sets back his prospects and the Tigers' hopes to some extent. And it's been, I guess, just generally an unspectacular season for the Jacksons. I mean, maybe Merrill has had the best year of the Jacksons because he signed his extension and then he got off to a great start, but then he missed four weeks with a hamstring

strain and then he came back and I guess overall he's been about as good as he was last year, which was excellent. The other Jacksons though, Jackson Jobe hadn't been that great and now he's heard. Jackson Churio has had a bit of a sophomore slump, a little bit of a regression. He's got the low OBP, not a lot of walks there in the slash line. And he was so good late last year that it looked like he might just be absolute superstar and that hasn't happened so much. And Jackson Holliday has certainly had an enormous improvement.

And Jackson Holliday has certainly had an enormous improvement. So that's a big leap for him, but even now, not quite the leap to what he was expected to be right out of the gate, which was maybe the expectations were too high. But he's been an above average hitter, and that's a victory. He's not a star or anything yet, but he is still so young that maybe he is at least assuaged, some of the fears that he would just be a bust somehow, that he just wouldn't be able to hit big league

pitching at all. Yeah. He has another leap still to make and I don't doubt that he will make it. So that's progress, but he hasn't gotten all the way. So on the whole, I don't know, it's like a one and a half out of four good Jackson seasons so far this year. It's not the best. No, it's not.

But they're also young, you know, we'll get more. We'll get more opportunity. And I do think that like Jackson Holiday, like turning the corner, at least on the notion that like, oh, this might be like unplayable is important, even if he is yet to, you know, rise to the level of being able to be what he was hyped as, as a, I wonder, here's the thought I've been having in the last week. It's about Jackson Holliday, but it's mostly about Ethan. Do you think that anyone's impression of Ethan Holliday, and by anyone I mean like anyone with any sort of decision-making authority in a front office, is remotely impacted by Jackson's performance.

Hmm. Will we ever know? I could see it if Jackson had just been a star right out of the gate in the big leagues, then yeah, I think maybe that might have helped Ethan to some small extent. You're still gonna be, if you're devoting a very high pick to someone, you're gonna evaluate them on their own merits,

not just who their dad or their brother was, but if there was a progression from Matt Holliday, really excellent player, to Jackson Holliday, even better than his dad. To, wow, what will the next Holliday be? He'll be even better than Jackson. He'll be just an inner circle Hall of Famer. I could see that if there was more hype and buzz around Jackson right now. And just, you know, we've talked about the nature nurture and the bloodlines and all of that. But yeah, I think if there were, if we were talking about Jackson more,

inhaling him more, and if there hadn't been the concerns last year about his initial adjustment to the majors, then it could only help his prospect stock. I think only a little bit, but yeah, a little bit. Yeah, interesting. Okay, all right. So to wrap up with some stat blasting here. realize it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to day, stop lost. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] My eye was drawn to the fact that we had two noteworthy streaks of one run outcomes for teams lately. The San Francisco Giants, who've been on a bit of a heater lately, but have not really been blowing anyone out, they've been winning the close ones,

which you have to do, or at least helps you to do, but they won six games in a row by one run. I'm sure I'm not the first to look this up or publish this, but I did some stat heading just to see how notable that was and that is pretty notable. So from June 4th to June 10th, the Giants won six games and just all one run margins. And that has only happened four times at least since 1901,

which is what I could easily stat head at baseball reference. So the California Angels had the same six game streak in 1989, the St. Louis Browns in 1916, and then the record belongs to the Chicago Cubs. Also in June, early June of 1927, they won seven games in a row by one run. So that is the record.

So the Giants, they were almost there. They fell just one short of tying that record. And it wasn't just that they had the streak of six one run wins. They also had a streak of eight one run decisions because they had also lost a couple by a run, I believe. So they had eight consecutive games where they had a one run margin one way or another and that's also pretty notable. That has been exceeded 12 times in history. The record is 11, which was done by both the 1985 Dodgers and the 1967 Reds.

They both had 11 games in a row decided by one run, either way. And the Dodgers, they went three and eight in those games. The Reds, they went seven and four. So you can win most of them, you can lose most of them. The Giants went six and two. But also somewhat noteworthy was that at the same time, the Giants had this streak of one run wins going,

the Braves had a streak of one run losses going. So on June 4th, both of these streaks started, Atlanta lost five games in a row by one run. And that is quite rare too. Six or more has happened only eight times. And the record there is also seven. By the senators in 1919, they lost seven games in a row by one run margins.

And that was right before 1920. That was right before live ball era. And the senators of course were notoriously bad for large stretches of baseball history. And so maybe it makes sense that it would be some earlier eras. I guess you need a combination like the Giants, not a great offensive team, good pitching team, right? Yeah, they've had a pretty successful bullpen at least to this point, which I guess is why the coin flips were going their way in some of those games maybe, but they seem like a team that would be kind of wired to have some closer margins maybe one way or another.

But we're not in a notably low scoring era, really historically speaking at least, and you might expect a little bit more of this in some eras that were lower scoring because that just lends itself to smaller margins of victory maybe. But yeah, June 4th started two historic streaks of one run outcomes that benefited the Giants and hurt the Braves. So I'm sure the Braves felt very frustrated by that, right? Would you feel any amount of comfort from the fact that you're like so close? And correspondingly, if you're the Giants and you're having all of this like good fortune,

do you think they are attributing that in turn? Not like the front office, but if you're a player on that team, or you're like, wow, we're just like really nailing it down. Like do you attribute that to skill or luck in either direction? If you're on the field, I bet there's a real mix, but I would be curious to hear from them being like, yeah, look, we can just really lock it down when we need to. Or is there some awareness that we are getting a little lucky sometimes here. Cause like, you know, there there's, it's not like there's nothing to it to your point. Like you, you have to have a particular kind of pitching staff.

You have to, you know, be able to bring in guys in the right leverage moments in those, in those games. It's not like it's not skill, but it's not only that. Right. Like that's the other. Look in a little bit skill too but it's not only that. Right? Like that's the other- It's largely luck and a little bit skill too. It's largely luck. Like you can be a good team that just, you know, has a couple of bad bounces and otherwise

would have deserved to win. Like I just, you know, I just, I'm curious, like how guys kind of grapple with that. Cause I could see it going to number always. I think people overrate the importance of a good bullpen when it comes to one run out comes to, because that's what people always say when you say, oh, this team is winning a lot of one run games. They'll say, yeah, but they have a great bullpen. But that does not always hold true.

It often doesn't hold true. It doesn't always translate. For one thing, you don't know that a bullpen that has been good to this point will continue to be as good, but also you can have a good bullpen and still just not have a great one-run record and vice versa. So the Giants, they're 17 and 12 in one-run games this season. Historically, I haven't found the teams have a whole lot of humility when it comes to attributing one-run performance to just cosmic the universe, fate, luck, et cetera. No, they think they're, they're clutch boys.

They're like, we are the clutches boys. If someone could pinpoint a quote where a player on one of those teams that was very successful in One Run games was like, huh, yeah, we really lucked out. We had nothing to do with this. Yeah. You don't typically see that. It's always about like, yeah, we're gamers and we're grinders and we're gritty and we are clutch. And maybe it's advantageous to think of yourself that way. Even if you're not, maybe there's

a placebo effect. Who knows? And maybe it's best to think that you do control your own fate. I think baseball players, well, there's a mix. So on the one hand, baseball players are very superstitious. And I think that might have something to do with the fact that their careers and their performance is very luck-dependent. Maybe more so than in most other sports. There's just, there's so much luck that comes into these things.

And so it's probably unsettling to think of how out of control you are of your fate on the field specifically. And so maybe you say, if I wear the same pair of underwear or I eat the same chicken before every game, somehow I can sway the outcome here. And maybe that's comforting on some level. And on the other hand, I think players don't, well, maybe it's the same hand now that I think about it, but I think players, they don't want to attribute

their success or lack thereof really to factors outside of their control. It's like that Max Muncie quote that we talked about the other day where he didn't want to think that astigmatism was contributing to his slump or Or that getting corrective eyewear was why he was hitting better because he wanted to think right that it was his hard work That did it and I was saying gosh

I would look at it completely other way It would be a load off my mind to think that this wasn't my fault that it was something out of my control and now I've controlled it by getting an eye exam and wearing glasses. And that's my contribution here. But I think players, they often want to think because they do put so much work into these things and their career and their whole success and self-worth literally and figuratively is tied up in this. And so they don't want it to just be like, yeah, yeah, it's a ball bounced my way today and it won't.

They have some sense of that because they know that that's the case and they will talk about it philosophically sometimes and be like, oh, it'll even out and you know, it's bad luck today, good luck tomorrow. Like they have some sense of that, but I think in a larger level, they wanna feel like they have control.

And so I think that most teams and frankly, most fans of those teams often default to this group is special. Maybe it's random for most teams, but yeah, I'm citing the Tobias from Arrested Development meme a lot lately, but there is a lot of that thinking. Yeah. It's a tough business. Getting through it every day would be hard. I try not to begrudge these guys whatever they have to say to like go through, you know? It seems like it would be impossible otherwise. And yet, yeah, it all depends on your perspective because you could very easily say, well, I don't have to sweat it because some things they just happen, you know? You have to

reach that level of Zen where you can just be like, you know, like, entrust my fate to the universe. And Atlanta's nine and 19 in one-run games this year. And so those outcomes, if you reversed the Giants and Braves outcomes in one-run games, I'm guessing that they'd be quite close in terms of their records. Like that counts for a lot of the difference in the fortunes of those teams and the Braves being disappointing and the Giants exceeding expectations.

Not all of it, I don't think, but those records overall would look a lot different if you reverse those one run records as well. Totally. Okay. Here is one about unjust wins or vulture wins, maybe. Just pitchers who get wins. And I know we care less about that these days, but still it's kind of a historical curiosity.

When someone gets a win that even by the standards of pitcher wins, they don't really deserve. This happened the other day in a Tigers game. The Tigers were playing the Orioles and Craig Calcatera noted this in his newsletter, Cup of Coffee, and he wrote, the Tigers won five to three. And Craig wrote, the Tigers didn't have a pitcher go five, so it was up to the official scorer to decide which reliever got the win.

Chase Lee faced one batter in the third inning with a runner on first base and struck him out. Sawyer Gibson Long pitched four and two thirds innings, getting things into the eighth inning, struck out five and allowed one run. The scorer, however, gave Lee the win. Someone please make that make sense. Well, I think I can make that make sense. I think it actually does make sense, but it is sort of unjust in a sense

because Sawyer Gibson Long contributed maybe five to six times more to that Tigers win than Chase Lee did by WPA or RE24 or whatever, just because Chase Lee, he did his job, but his job was to get one out. So, but I think as was pointed out by MLB scoring changes on Twitter, there's a different rule that applies here. It's the one where the official scorer can just decide who gets the win. That's what happens when the starting pitcher is not the pitcher of record because he left when,

like if a starter doesn't go five, but their team is leading when that starter gets pulled and they never lose the lead, then that starter is not eligible for the win because he didn't go five. But that's a different situation from this case where the Tigers didn't have the lead at the time. They took the lead when Chase Lee was the pitcher of record. And so that's why he gets to be. It's like rule 9.17,

the official score shall credit as the winning pitcher, that pitcher whose team assumes a lead while such pitcher is in the game or during the inning on offense in which such pitchers removed from the game and does not relinquish such lead. So I think the actual rule that governs this, that's not what happened. The starter left the game, but it was tied at the time. And then the Tigers took the lead when Chase Lee was the most recent pitcher. So Lee is the pitcher of records. That's not a new thing. And I don't think that's a judgment call

by the official score. I think that's just how it's supposed to happen. But I got curious about lopsided cases like that, where one pitcher clearly contributed more to a win, but didn't get the win. And so I put this question to Michael Mountain, Patreon supporter, sometime effectively wild guest, and he helped out with a few stat blasts for today

because he now has a Retro Sheet database set up and so he has gained new powers of querying. And so, as he said, the list would probably be a lot of vulture wins for a closer who blows the save in the top of the ninth and then their team goes back ahead in the 10th with a different pitcher coming in to finish the game. But that's not quite what I'm talking about.

One that he flagged is a game where Keith Fulk, this was June 20th, 1998, Twins versus White Sox. And Keith Fulk entered in a tie game when the pitcher did not complete five innings through two and two thirds innings of scoreless relief while the White Sox took the lead, but then Matt Karchner and Bill Simas combined to blow the lead in the ninth. Simas stayed in for the tenth and the eleventh, allowing another run in each inning, but the White Sox offense rallied to walk off in eleven, giving Simus the blown save slash win combo.

So in that case, Keith Falk kind of got chopped because he threw scoreless relief. Then this other guy comes in, blows the lead, gives up additional runs after that, and just sticks around long enough that he gets the win. And so that's kind of cheap. There are also a lot of games where there's an early pitchers duel that becomes a slugfest when the bullpen comes in. So the starter's not the pitcher of record anymore, even though none of the subsequent pitchers pitch

more than an inning and some of them allow runs. So for example, Irvin Santana pitching for Atlanta, April 14th, 2014, he throws six innings of one run ball with 11 Ks, leaves with a two to one lead, which is extended to five to one in the eighth. And then Luis Abilan allows five runs in the bottom of that inning, but the Braves batters rally for four

in the top of the ninth to win. And Abilan, he didn't even get a blown save because there was too large a lead when he entered. It wasn't a save situation, but he did blow it and then he got the win anyway because the batters delivered at the right time. For a starting pitcher, the highest game score Michael determined in a team win where the starter did not get the decision is Verne Law, who threw 18 innings against the 1955 Milwaukee Braves and then Bob Friend pitched the 19th inning,

allowed a run, and the Pirates walked it off with two runs in the bottom of the ninth. And so Bob Friend gets the win. I mean, you wonder how like people believed in pitcher wins for so long. Like, and they did used to be more meaningful because pitchers went deep into games. In fact,

deeper into games. Verne Law threw two games worth of innings in that game. And so it was a little more reflective of the pitcher than it is these days. I've stat blasted about that before, but imagine Verne Law throws 18 and then Bob Friend comes in, throws one inning, not even a good inning, and then happens to get the win. That's unjust. Yeah, again, no friend at all. No, not at all. You didn't react the first time,

so I had to do the joke again in case you didn't hear it. I didn't. Because I assume that's the only reason that you didn't laugh the first time. No, otherwise it would have been a prurious laughter, my apologies. Right, you would have been gonna be laughed and laughed. Yeah, it'd be nice if you could bequeath a win to someone,

just like, you know what? They deserve that one more than me. Yeah. It'd be nice if you could bequeath a win to someone. Just like, you know what? They deserve that one more than me. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a true friend. And Michael said, if you restrict the search to starts of nine innings or fewer, it's Matt Harvey in 2013. He threw, yeah, that guy, he had rough luck in those days.

He was like the proto de gram when it came to, he was dominant and the Mets didn't score for him. No runs of work. But in 2013, he threw a one hitter with 12 strikeouts, but the Mets couldn't score. And then Bobby Parnell pitched a scoreless 10th and then they finally scored. And Bobby Parnell was the winner. So by WPA difference, it might be that folk game that I noted from 1998. Michael says highest RE24 for a reliever who did not get the win in a game where the starter failed to complete five innings. Vernon Wilshire

for the 1935 Philadelphia A's, he was 4.8 runs better than average pitching from the third to the 14th innings. And then Bill Dietrich pitched a scoreless 15th, 0.6 runs above average. And he was awarded the win after an A's walk-off. For a regulation length game, it's Sean Lowe for the 2001 White Sox. He relieved David Wells after the first five batters of the game reached base safely. Then he pitched five scoreless innings,

4.7 runs above average by RE24. Keith Volk, Keith Volk again, pitched a scoreless 10th with 0.6 runs above average by RE24, Keith Falk, Keith Falk again, pitched a scoreless 10th with 0.6 runs above average by RE24 and he was awarded the win after the White Sox walked off. So here, it did even out in this case. Keith Falk, he had one vultured from him and then he vultured one.

So the scales were balanced sort of. And- Sort of. And then lastly, highest win probability added for a reliever who did not get the win in a game where the starter failed to complete five. Darrold Knowles for the 1967 senators. I've always enjoyed the name Darrold. I've never really had any reason to think about the name Darrold. I've heard the baseball name before and I've thought Darrold. Did they, was there like an H that looked like a D on his birth certificate?

Was there a Darrold? You're combining Darrold and Arnold into one name. Yeah. Or Darrold. Yeah. I don't know, but he, for the 67 senators plus 1.239 win probability added, he pitched Scores early from the eighth to the 17th innings. Yeoman's work from Darrold.

Yeah, no kidding. And then Dave Baldwin was awarded the win for three scoreless innings with 0.332 win probability added. For regulation length game, it's Will Seymour for the 1931 Red Sox or Wilkie. 0.72 win probability added, credited with a four inning save. Horace Lisenby allowed an unearned run on two hits while retiring three of six batters faced for a

negative 2.16 win probability added and yet got the win. So yeah, it still happens. I think pitchers probably sweat this stuff less than they used to when people used to be paid based on wins and losses. And it used to really determine your reputation, but still happens sometimes. You gotta feel a bit chopped by that. Sure. It can still, even though it might not determine your salary, it might not be the thing that gets pointed to in arbitration that somebody takes seriously. It could still feel bad because you're like, I did all this. We just want to be acknowledged so much of the time, you know, like that's really what we're working for.

Like, did you see what I did? You saw this other guy, he didn't do nearly as much. Why am I not getting the, to look at it? You know, we'll see more clearly, hopefully. Wow. You're on a roll. Thanks for, um, for hearing that one in real time and like really giving it the-

Genuinely. Yeah, you're like, oof, yeah, appreciate it. I meant to say before when we were talking about Hunter Dobbins, I believe Jazz Chisholm was being questioned about Hunter Dobbins when he made his error, or immediately before he made his error the other day while he was being interviewed live on the field. The first phase of the Dobbins drama, not the second.

And then also when we talked about Jackson Jobe's injury, I was going to just shout out the litany of other pitchers who have suffered serious injuries. It's so many. We don't even Renell Blanco, AJ Smith Schaver. That was a tough one for Atlanta. Both elbow surgery, Cole Regan's rotator cuff strain, that's tougher Kansas City though, more room for Rich Hill. Pablo Lopez, shoulder tear, that's tough, he's out for a while. Shane Bieber and Shane McClanahan had setbacks in their recoveries from previous injuries.

It's just, you know, it's... Bryce Miller went on the IL. Yeah, it's left and right, on the aisle. Yeah, it's left and right. Hands, hands, arms. Yeah, okay. And then also, speaking of like, being awarded things for dubious reasons, do you remember the stat, the game-winning RBI? Now, this, this predated our time as sentient people and baseball fans. But in the 80s, the game-winning RBI was an official stat

that was tracked and reported by Major League Baseball. I don't think I knew that. I don't think I knew it was official. It was real. Yeah. From 1980 to 1988, and it was not just an RBI, but a game-winning RBI, which was the RBI that gives a club the lead it never relinquishes

So you go ahead if for the final time and if you drove in that run you get the game-winning RBI there wasn't always a game-winning RBI because sometimes a run scores without an RBI being credit, but It was you know RBI that was the heyday of RBI and game-winning RBI. Oh, even better, even, even Clutcher. So they stopped tracking it at that point because it is fairly silly. And so the records, the career leader during the years when that record was officially tracked was Keith Hernandez who had 129 game-winning RBI in those seasons.

And he also held the record for the most game-winning RBI in a single season, which was 24 in 1985. So there are various game-winning RBI stats out there from that era, but a Patreon supporter of ours, DCC underscore D map, that's the username in our discord group, questioned the other day, who's the all time game game winning RBI leader and I didn't know and Michael Mountain took it upon himself to answer that question evidently Retro sheet still tracks this even though no one really pays any attention to it anymore Yeah and so I have the answer the all-time game winning RBI leaders and also the single season and They're actually fairly recent players.

So we've had some turnover at the top of that leaderboard. The all-time leader in game-winning RBI is Albert Pujols. Oh, how about that? Yeah, and he had a whole lot of RBI, so I guess it's shocking. But he did pass Henry Aaron, who was the previous all-time leader with 314. So it's Pujols at 328, followed by Erin,

Mays, Eddie Murray, Babe Ruth, Frank Robinson, Carly Strabsky. Yeah. You're not going to fluke into being at the top of that leaderboard, even if this is a semi-flukey stat in small samples. And also the single season leader is one Pete Alonso. Pete Alonso, or at least he's tied for the single season lead with Willie Mays. So 2022 Pete Alonso had 27 game-winning RBI, as did Willie Mays in 1962. Oh, and as did Joe Torrey in 1971. So they're tied atop the leaderboard with 27 apiece.

And then it's Jim Gentile, Babe Ruth, Hack Wilson, Al Rosen, Pujols again, Reggie Jackson, Rafael Palmeiro. So still mostly excellent players at the top of that list too, cause you need to get a certain number of RBI. But I guess it's even more randomness determined of course, because well, I guess it helps to be on a good team. I mean, it helps to be on a good team to get regular RBI because you want to be in a good lineup, but you have to have some some runners on for you. But this is probably even more dependent on team

fortunes because you can't get a game-winning RBI if you didn't win the game. So I don't know. The Mets only had the ninth most wins from 80 to 88 and Keith Hernandez still managed to be at the top during that era. But yeah, helps to be good. Also helps to be lucky. Also helps to be on a good team. So I will, this is all through 2024, by the way, I'll put those spreadsheets online in case anyone has been wondering who are the game winning RBI leaders they've been wondering ever since 1989 when these stats became a little less accessible. Okay. Michael also did one that was just about the most prolific lineups for each organization. Essentially like he tried to find the day when the lineup

that that team trotted out there had the most combined cumulative playing time for that organization, if you know what I mean. So like the players in the lineup that day, and he did a version with and without the starting pitcher included. But those players like had the most combined playing time for that team, for that franchise ever.

Does that make sense? Am I explaining this? Say it one more time. Like the longest tenured lineup essentially, the way Michael put it was like the day when the team put the most history on the field in one game, whether they knew it or not. So just like, add up all the combined played appearances that those hitters in that lineup had for that organization all time.

Okay. Whether it was before that day or after that day. So you might not have known that you were seeing this at the time, because you might've had a mix of like old guys who'd played for that franchise for years and young guys who were just embarking on a long lived tenure with that team. But that was the day when those players combined had the most playing time for that team ever. So he looked at the starting lineups for every game, from every active franchise, and also included pictures in one version, and I'll put this spreadsheet online.

And usually it only happens like once or twice that this all-time lineup was run out there, at least if you include the starting picture in there. So it's fleeting, and you might not know that you're witnessing it in the moment. And it is generally a mix of like icons, franchise icons to that point and guys who were just fledgling icons. Didn't know that they were going to end up being icons. And it's harder to rack up high totals now because there's more player movement

in the free agent era. And so, you know, players move around there if you were like, in the free agent era. And so, you know, players move around there if you were like, not necessarily one team guys, but just there's more turnover, right? So it's, you have shorter stints with each team. And so for legacy franchises, the highest total is often from before free agency or thereabouts.

So the all time record, and he included some teams that it's still the same franchise but they played in a different city previously. The all-time record for example if you include pitchers 1954 the Milwaukee Braves ran out a lineup plus starter that had a combined 69,055 plate appearances plus batters faced for that franchise. So it helped that the starter that day was Warren Spahn who pitched forever. So you get all of Warren Spahn's batters faced and he was batting eighth in that lineup, I believe also. And then you had Bill Bruton in center, Danny O'Connell at second, Eddie Matthews at third,

Andy Pavko in right, Danny O'Connell at second, Eddie Matthews at third, Andy Pavko in right, Joe Adcock at first base, Johnny Logan at shortstop, Henry Aaron in left field, Del Crandall at catcher, and then Warren Spahn and batting ninth, I guess. But those guys combined 69,000 plus plate appearances plus batters faced for that team. And if we want to look at a team that hasn't changed locations, the Detroit Tigers, they're second on the list and that Braves lineup, they had that happen 12 times and they went nine and

three in those games. The Tigers, seven times they had a lineup with 68,693 combined batters face plus plate appearances. So they had Dick McAuliffe, Mickey Stanley, Al Kailine, Willie Horton, Bill Frean, Norm Cash, Jim Northrup, Don Wirt and Mickey Lulich pitching. Those guys were a lot of lifers for that organization. And so the lowest totals are like around 30,000 and that's Miami, Arizona, recent expansion teams. Right. And also the Mets are down there too. The Mets actually a lower number than the Rays.

That's, it's interesting because the Mets kind of have a reputation for like having traded away a lot of great players. I mean, they did, but you know, Mets fans rue some of those departures, Nolan Ryan, etc. Or like franchise greats who didn't last as long as it seemed like they might, you know, your Docs and Daryls and David Wrights, etc. So the Mets greatest or all- time lineup is 33,272. And it's from 1973, good team, Wayne Garrett, Felix Milan, Rusty Staub,

Cleon Jones, John Milner, Ed Krainpool, Jerry Groot, Bud Harrelson, Tom Seaver. So I will put this spreadsheet online if you wanna check your own team and see what it's cumulative longest tenured lineup was. If you do it without pitchers, then the numbers are a little lower, but not that much lower. And it's actually the 1974 through 76 Reds. Makes sense.

Big red machine. A lot of continuity there. A lot of great players, but 10 times during those seasons, they ran out of lineup that had Johnny bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Dan Dreisen, Dave Concepcion, Pete Rose, George Foster, Ken Griffey, and those guys had almost 60,000 play appearances. And so they're at the top, even though that was not a DH era team. The next team on the list, 1976 Red Sox, who had Carlton Fiss, Carl Yastremski, Doug Griffin, Rico Petrocelli, Rick Burleson, Rick Miller, Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, and at DH Jim Rice. And they ran out that lineup

only one time. So DH that gives you an extra slot where you can compile plate appearances, but nonetheless, the Reds are on top. So that was fun. And finally, there's one more which I commissioned. I put this one to Michael. And this is actually related to those Red Sox we just talked about and Red Sox rookies, though not Hunter Dobbins in this case. On the day that Roman Anthony was called up, there was another call up. The Red Sox called up Brian van Bell, who a 28 year old pitcher who was signed by the Red Sox as an undrafted free agent several years ago and has just been kicking around in the Red Sox system ever since, you know, not a highly rated prospect or anything. He's 28. He'll turn 29 in September.

And so I thought to myself, great that he got called up, but sort of stinks to be called up on the same day that your team's top prospect and maybe the sports top prospect is also called up. Not that it would have been huge headlines, Brian van Bell called up under the best of circumstances, but you don't even have that day to yourself. It's that's the Roman Anthony arrived day. No one cares about Brian Van Bell other than Brian Van Bell and his friends and family.

I guess it takes some of the pressure off. Now the really sad ending to this is that Brian Van Bell was then designated for assignments a few days later. So he didn't get into a game. So he is as of now, at least a Phantom major leaguer and you know, hopefully he'll be back somewhere at some point like Christian Montes de Oca and he'll eventually make his major league debut. But I was thinking of instances where someone made their major league debut on the same day as some superior player who

far overshadowed them, right? Like imagine that, you know, you make your major league debut, it's the culmination of your career to that point, your life's work, all of your ambitions and aspirations. It's the biggest day of your life, maybe. And yet you don't even get the spotlight on that team on that day because someone better debuted. We couldn't check call up day, but we checked debut day. Yeah.

And I wanted to know like the biggest differentials among players who debuted for the same team on the same day or in the same game in terms of war or playing time eventually, like what's the biggest mismatch, the most lopsided double debut. And this scenario has happened many times and like there are close to 2000, I guess, instances of multiple players debuting on the same day for a team because it happens

regularly on the first day of a season, opening day for that team. Because sure, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Multiple multiple debuting the best example, the most lopsided April 20th, 1986, Pittsburgh pirates, Barry Jones makes his major league debut. Good for him. Same day. Barry Bonds makes his debut. It doesn't help that in addition to not being Barry Bonds, Barry Jones is like

one of the more generic names one could have. Generic names and both Barry's. Yeah, Barry's Barry to the best. That's so funny. That's rough. You could imagine a scenario where maybe you're quietly a little bit glad, right? Because like, what if it doesn't go well? You know?

And then like no one remembers. No one remembers that you had a bad day your first day because Barry Bonds is there, right? Like nobody's remembering what happened to, I don't even remember the name of the Red Sox guy you brought up. Who, like, did he have a good day? Did he have a, was he? He didn't, he didn't have a, I mean, he may have had a good day, but he didn't pitch. Yeah.

Well, see, it doesn't matter. It didn't matter, right? Like it's a, you get a different day, you get a different day. And like, what if you, what if you give up? I guess that's true, right? If it ends up being your only day, then... But it's still... When you tell the story to your kids so that they grow up to hate another team for reasons that end up being completely false, you're not going to remember that Roman Anthony was there. You're not going to remember.

Probably not. It is funny. That wasn't even opening day. It was like the eighth day of the pirate season. That's so funny. Barry Bonds, to be fair, he pinch hit that day and then I think played center. And he singled in his first pinch hit plate appearance. And Barry Jones, I think he actually got a plate appearance

that day too and made an out out but he was a pitcher. So there were a little less cause for confusion. The nice thing was that Barry Jones, he had the better day all told because he got the win that day. Right. You know, we were talking about wins. That win stat blast was kind of in the vein of my bad holds stat blast from last week. So I'm thinking along parallel tracks here,

but Barry Jones that day, he came in an extra innings and he pitched for scoreless and he got the win in his big league debut. That game went 17 innings. That's probably why Barry Bonds debuted in that game too, why they both did, but man, to not even be the best Barry who debuted for your team in the big leagues on that day. So the war differential for those guys is 164.7 because Barry Bonds

164.4 war, Barry Jones negative 0.2 war. So that's about as big as it gets. And then the next biggest on the same day, Henry Aaron debuted in 1954 for those same Milwaukee Braves, that was opening day, Billy Queen debuted for the Braves and he ended up sub replacement level and Aaron was Aaron. And so that's a gap of 136.4 war. And actually, oh, there were, there were other guys, Ray Crron also debuted that same day for the Braves and was overshadowed by Hank Aaron. And then the only other one that's more than a hundred war difference

was 1925 Philly Jimmy Fox debuted on the same day as Albert Andrews, who was negative war career as well. So in some of these cases where there was a huge war differential, maybe they weren't all top prospects at the time. And back then there wasn't as much prospect hype or awareness as there is now. So some people may not have known, you know,

Billy Queen from Henry Aaron when they were watching that game, I don't know. But you know, Roman Anthony and Brian, oh no, I'd forgotten his name. See, it's already happened. He's already overshadowed. Brian Van Bell. Brian Van Bell. Yeah. In that case. Sounds like he should be rigging a quiz show. Yeah. There was a lot of hype for Roman Anthony. So it's a little different. Right. Yeah. They were like wearing costumes and, you know, deploying played-off jokes, but

who's here to criticize? Just me. I'm just saying that I get it. But one, I know that some of it is like the roar of the crowd and, you know, Anthony got this nice standing ovation when he comes up the first time. And, you know, like, I'm not saying that the pomp and circumstance isn't nice and that it might not matter, but there's so much of that journey that is so difficult for these dudes.

I really just think it would be hard for anything to tarnish it. I really do. I mean, he didn't get to pitch. That's probably a bigger disappointment to him than it corresponding with a more hyped prospect coming up that day, right? Like to be on the edge of it and then to not be able to, you know, get, have your name called. Like that's probably, especially because that game went to extras. Right.

Although what a pressure cooker of a situation that would be. So, you know, like maybe it's fine. But I think, I think it's pretty hard to diminish that feeling for these guys. Like it's such a thing, you know? The biggest differential in terms of career playing time was that man again, Warren Spahn, he debuted in 1942 for the then Boston Braves who became the Milwaukee Braves and he went on to face 23,602 batters. And on the same day that Warren Spahn debuted during the war, George Deal debuted

and had 36 career plate appearances, I think. So that's a difference of 23,566. So, you know, a little bit overshadowed potentially. But you're right, if you're the guy who doesn't get much playing time, unless you were a big prospect who was a bust or you had an injury or something, maybe you're just happy to be there. And it's fine for someone else to have their big day that is also your big day. It's a big enough team for the both of us, hopefully. Yeah, yeah. The last thing though is that like,

what if you are a good player? And it just so happens that an even better player debuted on that day. Yeah. There are 15 instances Michael found where a player who accumulated at least 20 career war, pretty good player, debuted for the same team on the same day

that a better player debuted. So for instance, Alan Trammell, he debuted on the same day as Lou Whitaker, which is appropriate. They were such long time teammates and so associated with one another. Lou Whitaker actually has the higher war, even though he is as of yet not in the Hall of Fame,

though he probably should be, but those guys debuted on the same day. Mickey Cochran, Hall of Famer, he was surpassed by Lefty Grove, who debuted on the same day, 1925 athletics. Omar Vizquel debuted on the same day as Ken Griffey Jr. Which you may know. Oh! Yeah, 1989 Mariners and Griffey. Far better player, obviously. Max Bishop. Not the only thing he's maybe better at. Well, yeah.

Max Camera Eye Bishop. Good player. Surpassed by Al Simmons. 1924 Athletics. Richie Hebner. Surpassed by Al Oliver on the 68 Pirates. Bill Lee, the spaceman. Surpassed by Auggie Galen on the, or that's a different Billy.

That's the earlier Billy on the 1934 Cubs. Spaceman's not that old. No. Rick Monday, surpassed by Sal Bando on the 66 A's. Alex Fernandez, surpassed by Frank Thomas on the 1990 White Sox, the second Frank Thomas. The latter one, Robbie Thompson, surpassed by Will Clark on the 86 Giants,

not Bobby, but Robbie, a lot of name confusion here. Dave Stewart surpassed by Pedro Guerrero on the 78 Dodgers, Carlos Carrasco, Cookie surpassed barely thus far by Michael Brantley on the 2009 Cleveland Club. Darrell Kyle surpassed by Jeff Bagwell on the 91 Astros. Larry Hile surpassed by Don Money on the 68 Phillies. AJ Persinski surpassed by Corey Koski on the 98 Twins. And finally, Charlie Jamison surpassed by Joe Judge on the 1915 Senator.

So in a case like that, if you are a highly touted player who's bound for good things and still, you don't get the spotlight on your special day. You know, it's like, it's like a bridesmaid wearing a flashier dress than the bride or something like that. You know, it's like, hey, this should be my day. You know, let me have my flowers. You didn't still have your flowers.

I guess the bridesmaid sometimes gets the flowers when they throw them. Depends. Do people still do that? I don the bridesmaid sometimes gets the flowers when they throw them, depends. Do people still do that? I don't know. I don't know either. Let you know what the next wedding I go to. Okay, that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening.

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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 one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big math equation.

You're all about these stats we've compiled, cause you listen to effectively wild. With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley Come for the ball, be banters free Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big conversation Effectively wild