Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2339: The Big Thumper

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Richard Lovelady’s qualified embrace of the nickname “Dicky,” the return of players named “Otto” to the major leagues, Denzel Clarke’s increasingly extreme offense-defense divide, Cal Raleigh’s records (and MVP) pursuit, Bryan Woo as Seattle’s starting stalwart, the underrated Eugenio Suárez, Byron Buxton’s success, the loudness of Yankee Stadium […]

It's effectively wild and it's wildly effective at putting baseball into perfect perspective. Impressive for smart and impeccably styled. It's the wildly effective, effectively wild spin rate along shangle. That's the man of war. You might hear something you never heard before. Hello and welcome to episode 2339 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, I know people expect us to lead with Dickie Lovelady, and I guess we can give the people what they want.

We're not going to leave it. We're not going to. We just did. I mean, what, we're going to be mature now? We're going to, Ben, Dickie, and Lovelady. I'm happy for Dickie. Yes, because- I'm happy for all of us. I mean, really. Right, because we've all had to restrain ourselves for years whenever we talk about Richard Love Lady, because he didn't seem to want to embrace the nickname, and now he has sanctioned it.

He is signed by the Mets on a major league deal, and he has embraced Dickie. The thing is, though, that Richard is still his official baseball name. He still wants to be called Richard in any formal sense. On the scoreboard, he's going to be Richard. In print, he's going to be Richard. On television, he's going to be Richard. Possibly on podcasts, he prefers Richard. I'm not sure, but he has said that

his nickname in person is Dicky. If you just run into him on the street or his family calls him Dicky. And so there's still kind of a Richard-Dicky divide here. He's not fully embracing the Dicky, but I guess it's enough that we can feel comfortable or more comfortable calling him that. Excuse me. It was enough that it was in the official press release from the New York Mets, his new employer. Are you telling me?

Are you telling me that I have to issue a correction on a previous post that he is in fact just as much of a coward as Richard Fitz. First of all, nothing is ever wrong more true to me than learning that his family calls him Dickie. And I feel bad now, Ben, because that piece of information suggests to me that he has been working, pushing back, resisting some dick dicky moniker his entire life, maybe, right? Like, this is a man, he is Sisyphus, and the hilarious burden of his own name is the rock.

He is the boulder. He has been pushing up and up and up and yet it rolls back down to crush him again and again. Why would they put it in the press release if it's not going to be on the scoreboard? Yeah. Well, it was, it was kind of confusing because, uh, Anthony Tacomo, who covers the Mets for MLB.com, he did tweet that new Mets reliever Richard Lovelady has requested to go by his nickname Dickie. And so it will be Dickie Lovelady, but then also said that for posterity, he

will continue to be referred to as Richard in print on the scoreboard, et cetera. But he wants his teammates, fans, staffers, et cetera, to call him Dickie. So there is still some reservation, it sounds like, in some places potentially. For posterity. Is he a junior and we just don't know it? Oh, I don't know. Like, why, why, I ask that because like, for posterity, for posterity, Dickie, be a legend. What are you talking about? You, look, I'm not here to tell you that Dickie, love lady,

then the world is full of such profound terror right now. And I gotta tell you, Dickie Love Lady, that saved my entire day yesterday. But here's what I was gonna say though. So like, am I here to tell you that like Richard Love Lady is a great major leaguer? I'm not, I'm not here to tell you that. Let's set his inning in two thirds this year for Toronto aside.

He has a career IRA, just a Scotiabank under five. He has a 425 career FIP over like 99 innings. Again, I don't want to insult all the time and effort and work that he has put in. He just signed a big league contract, right? He is clearly a bigly contract, right? Like he is, he is clearly a man in demand, you know? So I'm not trying to denigrate the great Dickie Love Lady, but I am here to say that if what Dickie Love Lady wants is to be remembered, right? If he is concerned with questions of posterity. Sir, your name is the most remarkable and memorable thing about you.

I'm sorry, it just is, I didn't make these rules in much the same way that I standing there, you know, with you a babe in arms, with everyone overcome with joy and love on the occasion of your birth, I wasn't the one to say, definitely name him Richard though. You know how our last name is Love Lady? It'll be fine. You know, it won't torment him his entire life. It will not be a thing that is relentlessly remarked upon as he is in middle school.

It will not make people giggle around him in a professional context for his days. Long may they be. I didn't do this, okay? I am just reacting rationally to stimulus and the stimulus in front of me is a human man named Dickie Love Lady. I mean, Ben, Ben, Ben, Dickie, Dickie, Love Lady.

I was sitting in the Newark airport yesterday. I was waiting to come home. I was back East for a wedding this weekend. I'm waiting to come home. It's hot, as you know. Yes, we brought the heat with you from the West to the East. Hotter in the Northeast right now than it is in Arizona when you think about the real field.

And we don't do the humidity famously, Miserable. And Newark has had its issues as an airport of late. These are mild in comparison to the prior concerns. But the air conditioning in the Newark airport, not quite up to the task. It just wasn't, it didn't have it. Delays, weather, da da da da. I'm tired. I'm ready to be at home, I'm ready to be in a place where the air conditioning works. And I open up my phone and again, mostly when I look at it, horror, just full of various magnitudes, some silly, many dumb and quite cruel. And then Ben, there it is, Dickie, love lady.

Yes, an oasis in the news. An oasis! A cooling bomb, yeah. Yes, in the heat of our hell moment. Like it just, and I'm telling you, I need these guys to get together as like a group. You're Dickie Love Ladies, you're Richard Fitz. I just need them all to come together and say,

we know the jokes that are being made. In an earlier phase of our lives, those jokes were a heartfall to us because we were not yet big leaguers. But now, we are big leaguers. We are at the pinnacle of our profession. We've made it. You can call me Dick Fitz. You can just do it.

I know it's hard out there right now and I wanna give you this little treat. I mean, like now I'm setting up a whole other joke about Dick Fitz and a little treat. I'm gonna let it lay there and I'm gonna let everybody have their fun with it. But I just, Ben, why didn't they give him number 69? Like, Lee, do you know how many jerseys

the New York Mets would sell if they had given Dickie Love Lady number 69 and had put Love Lady 69 on a jersey? And then you could have Mr. and Mrs. Met holding it. And we could just write our own little stories. They don't have to assert a narrative of their own. We could have Mr. and Mrs. Met holding it and we could just write our own little stories. They don't have to assert a narrative of their own. We could do it.

We can provide that. Yeah. In honor of the late Met's legend, Seymour Weiner, just own it, really. Dick Pol blazed the trail for all Richards who came after him in MLB. And Richard Lovelady, Dicky Lovelady, he is a junior, I guess. His father is named Richard, and so his family also calls Dickie Tyler sometimes to differentiate him from his father. His father, I guess, also has gone by Richard, and so it's kind of a family legacy sort of situation here. But really, look, I'm sure that he has been tormented at times by kids who are mean and

will seize on any weakness. But the thing is, if you turn that weakness into a strength, if you own it, then you take that away from your potential tormentors. They do not have that ammunition. They are disarmed because you have embraced it. You have at least pretended and feigned that it doesn't bother you. And then they know that they can't bother you with that anymore. And therefore, I think that is the advice that Dickie should follow here. And I guess now more or less he is.

The distinction maybe he wouldn't want his fan grass page to call him Dickie And I guess now more or less he is. The distinction maybe he wouldn't want his fan-graphs page to call him Dickie. I guess he would want his... Why? I don't know. He wants the official designations to continue to be Richard, but I think he'd be okay with being referred to as Dickie on Effectively Wild. It's like a Dickie in the Sheets, Richard in the Streets sort of situation, except that I guess he's also Dickie in the streets, sometimes depending on who's addressing him in those streets. We all have moods, you know? I find it interesting. What a fascinating

little detail you've provided me. Our listeners are like, I can't believe anyone gave Meg this little present. So if his family sometimes refers to him as Tyler, Tyler, right? You said Tyler, because that's his middle name. He has been waiting for the opportunity actually to be called Dickie pretty much his whole career, because there are a lot of ballplayers who go by their middle name and that'll be what's on their player page, on the big board, in the ballpark. He could have just been Tyler Lovelady, you know? And maybe he didn't wanna do that

because maybe he thought Tyler Lovelady also sort of lends itself to a joke. But here's the thing, your last name's Lovelady. Nothing to be done about that part, you know? You just got a role with that piece of this. If he didn't want us to know him as some variation of Dick, and have that be in proximity to Love Lady, he would have just gone by Tyler. Or maybe he didn't think about it,

and then maybe he thought, oh, I've waited too long. Now, now it's out there. CB It is, as you would say, a load-bearing love lady. The love lady is really carrying a lot of weight there, regardless of the first name. When that's your surname, it's going to be notable one way or another. But the fact that he was named Richard also is just a gift to the world that I guess we can finally unwrap with fewer reservations at least than we had previously. And perhaps, you know, as we've said, the posterity thing really is the key to unraveling the whole psychology here because, you know, since he is a junior, I don't know about

his relationship with his father, but presumably it's meaningful to him that his name, which is also his father's name, is recorded faithfully in the annals of baseball history. And I don't want to take that away from someone just for a joke, but he made a decision, as you said, to let us make the joke in a way that we feel better about Dickie.

Well, Richard Fitz, your move. Not a lot of Dickies. Yeah, not a lot of Dickies. And I have also been captivated by another name development elsewhere in the NL East, which is that there are multiple major leaguers named Otto now. And I mean first name Otto, not counting Glenn Otto. There's an Otto camp for the Phillies and there's an Otto Lopez for the Marlins. And this has mystified me because by my count, there have been 18 previous Ottos in the majors,

but almost all of the Ottos were in the late 19th century or early 20th century. I associate Otto with that time period. It's very World War I in my mind. So 17 of the 18 previous major league Ottos were from before the end of World War II. And mostly long before that even, there was Otto Knaib and Otto Hess, Otto Miller, Otto Kruger, Otto Denning, Otto Denninger, Otto

Schomburg, Otto Williams, Otto Bluge, Otto Vogel, Otto Jacobs, Otto Huber, Otto Reddig, Otto McIver, Otto Briggs, Otto Mitchell, and of course, Otto Ray. And then there was a long Otto drought. Drought. There was an Otto interlude until Otto Velez, who played from 1973 to 83. His given name was Otaniel, but he went by auto. That was the last auto for about 40 years in the big leagues. We went without autos for that long, and suddenly we have two autos at once in the same division, no less.

An autoresurgence. It's an autosence, and it has flabbergasted me. And I was looking at the baby name data from the Social Security Administration, which goes back to 1880. And during that period, at least, auto peaked as a given name in the United States in 1889. That was peak Otto, which is why there was a wave of Ottos in the early 20th century in the majors. And Otto has fallen out of favor for quite some time. And in fact, did not make the top 1,000 male baby names

from 1974, which was about when Otto Velez showed up, through 2011. And then it finally cracked the top 1000 again. And Otto now in 2024 was the 274th most popular male name, which is not super popular, but is like peak Otto since the 1920s. So Otto has come back in a big way. It's as popular as it's been in about a century. And so this may be just the vanguard of an Otto resurgence that we may be seeing in the majors for decades to come.

And you know, I kind of like it when an old name comes back into Vogue, or at least it's a little less of an outlier, an auto-outlier. Is that something? No. We need to workshop that. Yeah, but I like it when a name that I associate with a previous era comes back and is reclaimed by a new generation. So we'll see if my daughter is a classmate of any autos, not yet, but I will be keeping an eye out. An eye auto. So I wonder if the decline in popularity is a result of the fact that auto, do you think that you can differentiate in the way you say the word auto, like an

automobile or an automatic? Do you think that there's like a... The fact that we don't call cars autos anymore so much that maybe there's a permission structure for auto to return as a person name? I can't account for it coming back because I worry that all of the autos are defined by the fact that it sounds like other things. It sounds like you're saying automatic auto. Like auto, now it doesn't mean anything, you know? I've said it out loud so many times, it doesn't mean even one thing. It's not a nickname for AutoKemp or Auto Lopez. It is their given name. For some of the

Otto Kemp or Otto Lopez, it is their given name. For some of the old timeyottos, it was a middle name. But yeah, these are the genuine articles or autocult. We're trying to make this into something and it's not really working. I think we is a little strong, just a fair word. I'm still back on Dicky. Yeah. Dickie. Okay. So that's the name news for today. Here's an update on Denzel Clark, an offense defense update because he is testing the extremes even more than the last time we talked about him because last time we mused about, okay, how extreme could the offense defense divide be for him to remain

playable? And he's really testing the limits because through 87 plate appearances, as we record here on Tuesday, my man has a 28 WRC+. That's amazing. He's batting 190, 218, 250, and he has struck out in about 45% of his played appearances. Wow. Which for almost anyone else, you'd say unplayable. Unplayable. Got to demote him, and yet he is so good on defense and he has continued to make some spectacular catches. Yeah. continued to make some spectacular catches. Statcast has him at nine runs of fielding run value, and that's in just over 200 innings.

He's seventh on the Statcast fielding run value leaderboard, and everyone else above him, with the exception of a couple catchers, has had three times as many in, at least, like all of the non-catcher position players and even the couple of catchers ahead of him, Patrick Bailey and Alejandro Kirk, even they have more than doubled his innings total. He is one run of fielding value behind Pete Crowe Armstrong and Julio, and they have almost 700 innings out there. Right. And again, he is barely topped 200.

And so he's at 0.6 war, according to FanGraphs, in 27 games. That is more than playable. That is very valuable if you extrapolate that. And as we talked about last time, you can't necessarily extrapolate the defense and say he's on pace for X runs because sometimes you have to have those opportunities. Although the more I watch him out there, the more I think that he just creates his own opportunities. Yeah, he's special out there. It's really something. He just gets to everything to the point where I know that he was reputed to be a good defender

as a prospect, but if he's this spectacular defender, then I feel like I should have heard more about that than I did before he arrived if he was routinely making the kind of catches that he has made in the majors thus far. He's made improvements even in his small time in the majors, but unless he has just advanced by literal leaps and bounds since he was in the minors, then I'm sort of surprised that the defense didn't pop even more, especially because he hit in the minors. He had a 120 WRC plus in AAA before he was promoted this year, and that was pretty much par for the course for him at AA the last couple of years. And so this offensive ineptitude and

complete power outage is sort of new. And I guess that's, if you want to be an optimist, you'd hope that the bat will come around. But with anyone else, probably with this rough a start at the plate, you might say, okay. He'd be in the minors. Yeah, he'd be back, you know, a little more seasoning. But the glove is so good that can he maintain this?

Can they keep playing him at this level of offensive ineptitude and let him try to work out the batting in the big leagues because the glove is so advanced? I don't know. And part of it is like, on one level, I'm going to present a land of contrast here. On one level, like what do they have to lose by letting him try to figure it out in the majors, right? I think that whatever early optimism some foolish analysts might have had about the A's, who could say who that is, has largely faded, right? This is a team that has settled into the bottom of the AOS standings. They're 32 and 48 as we're recording their 14 games out of first place, right? So they are

probably in a spot where they are not likely to move or go anywhere. So maybe you think the best thing for him to do is to just have to keep figuring it out at the big league level because he doesn't have anything left to do at AAA. He needs the challenge of big league caliber pitching to sort it out. On the other hand, you're not going anywhere as a team. You have the luxury, if you think from a developmental perspective, it would be better for him to like go down and be able to really focus on the bat and try to retool the swing or whatever you decide he needs to do. I haven't looked at his swing enough to say like, oh, there's an obvious hole. He's got to go to, I mean, clearly it's not, here's my controversial take, clearly not

going well, but you know, they're not a game out of first place and one game out of a wild card and oh my God, they got to go, you know, press for wins wherever they can and you know, run saved or as good as run scored. And so let him, you know, show us this bat. Like they do have the flexibility just because of where they are as a franchise to decide what they think is best for him long-term developmentally and then have him go do that, which perhaps suggests that they think the answer is For him to just face big league pitching and have to figure it out

But it's pretty bad that the defense is like yeah really quite spectacular I wonder how he feels, you know, this is a question that he's not likely to answer honestly, at least at this juncture to media, but I do wonder what the tone and sort of tenor of internal conversations with him have been because you can be super confident, you can be, you know, a big leaguer and obviously a skilled one in a way, but you know, when you have a 28 WRC plus, you know, it's bad. Like I'm sure Denzel Clark is not confused about any of this.

So I am curious, what is the conversation that they're having internally? Yeah, and it's not like he's hit the ball better and he's gotten unlucky. It's just the expected stats are just about as bad as the actual ones. And that is the concern that one would normally have about a young player who's struggling like this at the plate.

Oh, he's gonna get down on himself. It going to be bad for his long-term development. And yet, even as he is struggling so much at the plate, he has the positive reinforcement of making incredible catches on seemingly a daily basis. It has to be so bizarre. Yeah, it's got to be so weird to be at the plate and be overmatched and feel like I don't belong here. And then you get in the outfield and you're in your element. It's such a strange differential that, I mean, look, I hope for his sake that he hits better, obviously. Sure. Yeah. From an effectively wild hypothetical standpoint, there's part of me that wants to see how low he could go at the plate and still be

a viable big leaker because he is actually worth playing if he continues to play defense like this, but we're really testing the outer boundaries. So not the auto boundaries, the outer boundaries. And I really want to see just over the course of a season, how extreme could that differential be? Perhaps we will find out. But elsewhere in the AL West, let's talk about Meg's Mariners for a moment here. And let's talk about a guy who has no trouble either at the plate or behind it.

Cal is incredible. He's just getting better as the season goes on somehow. AL MVP voters are getting nervous. They're getting a little sweaty. They're tugging their collars because they might actually have to have a tough decision if this continues because Aaron Judge, he's plummeted all the way to a 227 WRC+, preposterous that that's like post-slump judge. And meanwhile, Cal is on pace for everything. He's on pace to top Aaron Judge's AL single season home run record. He's on pace to set the catcher home run record, both the home run record for a primary catcher and the home run record when the player is actually catching. He's on pace to set the catcher home run record, both the home run record for a primary catcher and the home run record when the player is actually catching.

He's on pace to set the switch hitting single season home run record, move over Mickey Mantle, move over Maris, move over Judge. It's Cal's time and it's really unbelievable what he's doing. And with anyone else, I would say, well, surely a catcher can't keep this up. He's barely taken a day off. AMT – Barely taken a day off, Ben. Barely. BD – But he barely takes a day off any season. And so that is completely in character for Cal. And he hasn't even showed any ill effects from that in previous seasons. It's not like he has tanked late in the season. In some past seasons when Salvador Perez would play constantly,

he would sometimes decline down the stretch, which you might expect of a catcher who's barely taking any time off. But Cal has not really shown some significant first half, second half split. If anything, he's probably been a better hitter later in the season. And so, you know, that probably gets harder to maintain the older you are, but you can't necessarily forecast based on his past and say, the wheels are going to come off if he keeps playing this often. And the thing that often holds back a catcher when it comes to award contention is that they just don't play as much as players at other positions. And so even with positional adjustment and framing value and all the rest, it's hard to rack up the war that someone would

when they're playing every day. But Cal does play every day. he's just about the best player and baseball judge aside when he has. Ben, here's the thing about me. People talk about the importance of objectivity in journalism, right? And what they really mean is they want you to be honest, ideally. It's not that you don't have biases. We're chock full of them. You want to acknowledge your biases. You want to be able to make a dispassionate assessment of the facts as they are presented to you. And I have confidence in people doing that. In fact, I tend to think that when you are wrestling with that responsibility, that your

chances of providing to those who might read or listen to you an objective analysis are actually better than someone who claims a completely dispassionate, unbiased view of the world, so you have blind spots. And so I've rejected the notion that one can't say have a favorite team and still be a good analyst, right? I think we have a lot of examples of that, you know, where you're able to sort of engage with the club and still be a professional and still really, you know, you want them to win, but you're not saying they're the best when they aren't or that they don't have

flaws when they do. And the Mariners, I think, tend to make that easy for you, especially if your fandom stretches back aways, because like, how do you put lipstick on that pig? You know, a lot of the time you can't. They've been a bad baseball team. They've been a bad team, frustrating team. The flaws have been obvious, often glaring. Having said all of that, I did send a text to a friend yesterday who was also in sports media, Mariners fan, baseball's not her primary thing. And I was like, I'm struggling with how to talk about Cal in a way that doesn't make me sound like a terrible homer. And I want to acknowledge there have been times in my career as a writer where I have been a little more obviously

homerific, right? You know, some of the defensive Mike Zanino, the enthusiasm for Kyle Seeger, perhaps a bit much, right? But I often acknowledged that. It was a big much. And look, I want to acknowledge and say up front that like, you know, as things stand today, I think Aaron Judge is the MVP of the American League. Cal Homard yesterday, so is Aaron Judge. Great player despite his little slump, relative basis, right? Judge adjusted, slump, but a minor slump nonetheless.

Having said all of that, I think that it's very tight and air interest doesn't have a lot of room to falter. Now, Cal needs to keep producing at this clip too. Look at how honest I'm being. You can construct a case that maybe judge is playing or having results fall that are slightly out of step with his, say, expected production based on the quality of contact, which seems insane to say because my God,

what quality of contact there is. You could venture a similar accusation at Cal, but I would know that the ratios are apparently similar. Now, Ben, here's what I'll say. Do I think that doing this when you have played in only two fewer games than Aaron Judge and have played many, many of those games, the majority of your games, 59 of the 76 games that you have appeared in have been at catcher. Would I hazard to say there is something incredibly impressive about this level of offensive production

from the guy playing the most difficult defensive position on the field and doing it at an incredibly high level. Would I note that Cal only has a 276 BABIP? Is that because he hits a bunch of home runs? That's not your problem, Ben. You don't need to worry about that. But would I also note that Aaron Judge has a 448 BABIP? I would note that. Do I think that that suggests that he is a fraud?

No. I have not lost track of the world. Do I think that that suggests that he is a fraud? No, I have not lost track of the world. I am not unhinged. I am simply saying that this is kind of a race, you know? There's a little, and it's June 24th. We don't really have to care about any of this right now. All we really have to do in this moment is appreciate the fact that these two guys

are both playing out of their gourds. They are playing tremendous baseball. Is one of them obviously a better defender than the other? I mean, look, yes, the answer to that is yes, but that's fine. Yeah, you can rave about Cal without any acquisitions of Mariner's bias because everyone is raving about Cal. He's been amazing. He's a five-win player already. It's amazing. Yeah, he was already an excellent player and he has basically equaled his value from last season war-wise, home run total-wise in about half the playing time. It's rare for a catcher season to

be eight wins above replacement even, and he's on pace for 10 double digits. I mean, legitimately, he's making a run at the most valuable catcher season of all time because, at the most valuable catcher season of all time, because yeah, he has a Bavip that is not really out of line with his pretty pedestrian in that category career average, and yet he's batting 278, which in this day and age, that's a high average hitter, and he has historically been a low average slugger, but he's not so much this year.

He's striking out less than he ever has, and yet still making quality contact, obviously, and still is playing just about every day and is a good defensive catcher. He's not a framing god, I guess, but he's the next tier down. He's like a really comfortably above average receiver and does everything fairly well behind the

plate. So it's just the complete cowl package really. It's just been extremely impressive. It's extremely impressive. And I think that like, look, I'm going to say some things that maybe only resonate with other Mariners fans in terms of how much it might sway you to be impressed by a season. And as you've noted, not a lot of work needs to be done for you to make a case that like you should be impressed with the season. It's an objectively good one. But like I also am struck by the fact that last year, the Mariners pitching staff was so remarkably consistent. In 2024, they had four starters who started at least 30 games and woo Brian woo made 22 starts, right? Yeah.

Remarkably stable group. And this year, their rotation has been defined by injury. He's having to bring in new guys. He's having to work with, they've had turnover in their relief core too. Like they've, you know, they're bringing guys back, he's still having to catch brash and Munoz and that's hard. And then he's got this middle relief group that has been sort of not revolving door, but there's been changes there. So it's like, this is a guy who is continuing to be a very effective catcher. And he is the degree of

difficulty on the thing that we, I think, have a harder time quantifying, namely, like the game calling rotation management piece of his job has leveled up in terms of how hard it is, and yet he has still managed to perform this way. And I hesitate to really bring attention to it because I worry about our famous jinxing powers, but the fact that he is doing this while playing just so, so much, it's really remarkable, you know? It's a remarkable thing. And I think it would be naive to think that at some point, over the next couple of months, he might not go through a stretch

where his own production slumps slightly, where you see the wear and tear. I'm thrilled just in terms of, what he means for the franchise and the step forward he's taken in a year where he signed this big contract extension for him to get to do all of that. And then like obviously be the starting catcher for the AL All-Star team. I'm excited for him. Part of me is like, I wish that this guy would get a little break, you know?

Like I wish that he would have an opportunity to pause and reset and rest that dumper, you know, cause that's an important, that's an important dumper for them. So it's been the production on its own is so remarkable. The sort of wiggle room and room to breathe that it gives the rest of that offense to have someone who isn't Julio producing the way that he is, I think really important, you know, so it's just the biggest need that this team had in the off season last year, probably a year from now is consistent offensive

production to get that from a guy who was also a plus contributor on defense season last year, probably a year from now is consistent offensive production. To get that from a guy who is also a plus contributor on defense at such an important position, who clearly has the respect and sort of a good relationship with the rest of the staff, like it's a very special thing and I'm not such a Homer that I can't say that like judge has been to this point in the season better, but again, like he's got to keep pace. And I'll put it in those terms because I don't want anything bad to happen to Aaron Judge. Do you think Maris would be around if we're getting into?

CBL. I don't know. JG. Probably not, right? Because it's done now. CBL. Yeah, it should be that if Cal gets close, then Aaron Judge should have to follow him around and not play in his own games. See, Ben, you've constructed such a perfect scenario because it means that we don't have to do more Marist. And also, Judge isn't playing. And so then Cal can win MVP. See, this is perfect. And it's not that he's hurt. He's just in awe. He's like, I must follow the dumper around the country to bear witness as witness was born for me.

I think that's a great solution. Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure the Yankees would be fine with that. We got a question months ago just before opening day from Daniel Carroll, a Patreon supporter who wanted to know whether Cal was the best player in MLB who has not been named to an All-Star team and whether we would call that the Tim Salmon Award. And I suggested Tim Salmon Award, that's a good name for it. I'd probably call it the Tony Phillips Award. And I noted that he was

not the best player in terms of career war. I think that that was Brendan Nimmo to that point. Oh, sure. Maybe still is, he has not been an all-star, but that Cal definitely would be the best in terms of current value. And then Daniel did a little war per 600 calculation and came up with Gabriel Moreno and then Michael Harris II. And Cal was a little bit down around where Yiner Diaz was, well, not anymore. Cal has obviously ended this argument, but soon we'll rekindle the argument because he's going to be an All-Star. So she's not going to hold that distinction that long.

Right. The only AL player with more All-Star votes at this juncture is fittingly Aaron Judge. So I don't think that there's any concern. Yeah. It's not going to be an All-Star snub there. Glad the fans are getting that one right. So I guess that probably means depending on how Detroit's rotation lines up, I guess that means that we will see Scoobel throw to Cal to start the all. That's, that's good billing.

That whole spread is a good lunch. Funny that you mentioned Wu, cause I was gonna bring him up too, because I feel like I underappreciated him because he seemed to be maybe the third fiddle. If there are that many fiddles, I don't know if fiddles go beyond two and a second one, but behind

Logan Gilbert, it was like when the Mariners had this great homegrown young rotation. I don't like the past tense that you're using to describe that, but go on. It was like, it was George Kirby. It was Logan Gilbert. And then it was also Brian Wu. But he's been the guy in this rotation, not to mention Luis Castillo too. But I saw a stat in the baseball reference newsletter that he's pitched at least six innings in all 15 starts he has made this year,

which is pretty impressive in this era. The third longest streak by a Mariners pitcher to start a season doing that after Randy Johnson in 1993 and Mark Langston in 1987. So it's been a while. So it's hard for starters to go six that consistently. Very few do that these days. And he's been the stalwart while Kirby and Gilbert were hurt. I just did not anticipate that the Mariners would have the 19th best rotation thus far by Fangrass War, but the seventh best collection of position players and fifth best WRC Plus. Clearly Cal doing a lot of work there, but not solely Cal. And now it's, I guess,

more or less at full strength, but it has been shorthanded. And those guys who I thought of as really the marquee young Mariners starters have not been at their best this season or have not been available or both. And yet there's been Brian Wu just consistently quality starting. And I guess it's not so much that he has gotten so much better on a rate basis. It's more that the other guys who I had ahead of him have not been at their best, but he is also leveled up in a sense in that he's doing it, but doing it more consistently and more durably. So shout out to Brian Wu.

I was familiar with your game, but I guess I did not give it its due and your game has gotten better. Yeah. And he's been the most dependable starter on that team. He's been the most valuable pitcher on that team. Yeah. I think that the combination of quality and length that he has given them has been incredibly important.

And, you know, they're not quite at full strength. Like, I'm not optimistic about how much Bryce Miller we're going to see for the rest of the year, put it that way. When you're getting PRP, like, sometimes it's okay. You know what, Ben? Sometimes it's okay. But I'm worried about that. And I don't say that with inside information, just to be clear to everybody. But I'm like, I don't know how much Bryce Miller we're gonna see. But yeah, like, Wu has been really terrific, and like, he's, you know, striking out more guys, he's walking a couple more guys too, but like, he's striking out more guys than last year.

Fastball Velo looks solid, and he's just, he's going out there every five, he's been available. The other person, while we're on the subject of the Mariners, I want to say, we talked about this within the context of other guys, but is he the, the best picture on the staff? No. Has he generated positive war by our accounting of it? He has not.

But I do want to say that if we're giving props for being available and being pressed into service, that we should just take a moment to appreciate the work of Emerson Hancock, because sometimes being around, that's what they need, Ben. They need you around. Yep, it's true. Yeah. And while we're talking about underrated mariners, I wanted to mention a former mariner who maybe belongs in that bucket and who also just won Player

of the Week along with Cal. Eugenio Suarez hit his 300th career home run. Congrats to him. And I saw the analyst Vivian Peltier on Twitter said, serious contender for most underrated active player right now in terms of his whole career, not just current value. I think there's something to that. I've always been surprised every time I've seen Eohenio Suarez's stats. He had that year where he hit 49 home runs, and that was a bit of an outlier, but he's hit 30 plus a couple other times, a few other times. If you set the starting year and ending year accordingly, he will be high on various home run leaderboards. He has now topped 30 career war,

according to FanCrafts. He is, I think, the 25th most valuable active position player. He's a very good player. It looked like he was kind of done. The Mariners big dumped him a few years ago and it seemed like maybe that was that and he had that slow start with Arizona last season and then completely flipped a switch and was incredible after that. He's now having his best WRC plus ever in his age 33 season. He's already hit 25 bombs. He's about as good as he's ever been at this age. And he was kind of written off. He had that down year with the Reds in 2021. And then his last year with Seattle, he was like still good defensively, but kind of a league average hitter. And the bat has bounced back. Like he's a good player, just a really solid player, Eohenia Suarez.

LS. I think the thing that has sort of held back the perception of him has been that there is a good bit of streakiness throughout his career, right? Where there have been these long, long fallow periods for him. I mean, like, he was in danger of just being released by the Diamondbacks last year before injuries sort of necessitated them keeping him. I mean, like he was in danger of just being released by the Diamondbacks last year before injuries sort of necessitated them keeping him. And then he, you know, went on this incredible tear in the second half along with the rest of their offense. And you know, he is even this season has, you know, long stretches where he won't necessarily hit super great, but he is fairly consistent in terms of his ability to actualize power.

And so when he can combine better contact with that, you get a month like he's had in June where he has like a 199 WRC plus. But there are stretches where it just like, it doesn't seem to happen for him and it can be very frustrating. I think the other thing about Eiohenio is that like, I don't seem to happen for him. And it can be very frustrating. I think the other thing about Eohenio is that like, I don't know that there are many guys where I have heard more consistent raves about just like what the clubhouse presence is like, you know, that he is recognized as being like a really positive clubhouse presence, that he's good with the rookies, that he's like a good veteran guy, that he gets along with people.

The flow, hey, honey, it's so dry here. What are you doing? Because it looks amazing. Drop the haircare routine, my friend. So yeah, I think that he's a great little player and he's had seasons where he's been incredibly productive and he's had slumps, but he seems to pretty consistently find a way to rate the ship, which I find impressive. And like, you know,

you don't want to read too much into one season's worth of stats, but like the difference between his first year in Seattle and his second in terms of the quality of his third base defense was like quite obvious. And you know, for a guy to do that at 31 is saying something. So yeah, like I think he is definitely underappreciated in his own time. I wonder, you know, the Diamondbacks injury situation is just so catastrophic that and Suarez got plunked yesterday, right? Yes. Yep. He's day to day, unlike Corbin Carroll, who's out for a while with a broken wrist chip. Yeah.

Wrist chip. So, okay, well, we'll get to that in a second. Because like wrist chip, I'm like, do I have to go in there and like go get it? Like, the chip doesn't, does it go? Anyway, bones. But, you know, depending on the severity of Suarez's injury, and I know Naylor got tinked up in that game yesterday too. Like I know that the Diamondbacks are only two and a half games out of the last wild card spot,

but Carol is gonna be out for, you have to imagine at least a couple of weeks, and then what is that swing gonna look like when he comes back? Like it's not hard to imagine him being able to play again, but being compromised on the back half of that. And Gabriel Moreno finally went on the aisle that took a long time, which is weird.

Like he got plunked in this nightmare game against the Reds that ended up getting delayed and they had to finish it later because of storms and like a foul tip took a bad bounce., but he only just went on the injured list, like, and we've talked a lot about all of their pitching injuries. So I wonder if that's all preamble to me wondering if, you know, a month from now is Eohanagoswara is going to be wearing a different uniform than he's wearing because he seems like an obvious trade piece,

especially since he's a free agent after the season. So it's so funny. It's like, can we take Eugenio Suarez's bat and like graft it onto Ben Williamson's defense? And he could just go back to Seattle. Yeah, sure. It's called a chip fracture, by the way, also known as an avulsion fracture. An avulsion fracture. A piece of the bone. It's not like a free floating. It's not like a... Okay.

It's not like he has a rock in there, you know? No. It's like a piece of the bone gets pulled away from the main bone, but it's still connected. It's not a loose body in there like a bone chip. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want any loose bones.

You don't. No. Your bone chip. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want any loose bones. That seems like your bones should be pretty firmly fixed. I've always said that, you know. Cowell has nine stolen bases, by the way, career high for him. Amazing. He can do it all. He can do it all. And there are times when he gets thrown out, but he's at least, well, there are a lot of ways to be athletic. So, you know, there's that. But like part of why I love catchers is that catchers demonstrate the variety of athleticism that we can see be really good at baseball. And I think that's so beautiful, right? Like you can have like a sort of binary yes, no, athletic, not athletic sense.

And then you watch catchers and you're like, oh no, like, you know, Alejandro Kirk is like a bigger guy, right? But he is incredibly athletic. And you watch the way that like his hips move and the flexibility there, the way he rotates. And you're like, oh, this is a very athletic body, even though it might defy like a stereotypical, you know, he's not built like a wide receiver, right? And then there's Cal and Cal is like, you know, he's not built like a wide receiver, right? And then there's Cal and Cal is like, you know, I think we talk about that

Dumper. We talk about that Dumper a lot as well we should. But like you look at him and you're like, oh, this is like a very athletic guy and he moves really well for a catcher and maybe just like moves pretty well, you know, and every time you watch a broadcast, sometimes I will watch Mariner's Games depending on the team they're playing. And if I have a particular affection for the booth of the other team, like I'll watch the other teams broadcast constantly talking about how, oh, you got to watch out out there. He'll run on you. He'll run on you that Cal.

And I'm like, that's right. He will run on you. He'll run that dumper all around the field. Run it all around that dumper. Well, while we're tipping our caps, we can tip our caps to someone who has not been caught when he has run this season. Perfect 13 for 13 in stolen base attempts, that's Byron Buxton, who I was going to bring up on our Friday show and then we ran out of time and then we got this impassioned email from Patreon supporter JD, which is a long list of stats about Buxton's exploits this season.

Yes. And he really has been great. Yes. It's been heartening to see because we've all just rooted for Buxton. It's been tough times for the twins lately, but not because of Buxton, who has been great. Since he returned May 30th, he came back from an absence after that collision with Carlos Correa. He is sixth in position player war since then in all of the major leagues. He has 151 WRC plus on the season. He's got 17 homers to go with the speed. He's still sort of doing it all.

He's in his age 31 season now. We've all just been waiting for him to be healthy. Last year, he played 102 games, which was good for Byron Buxton. And this year, aside from a couple of games he missed because of a bereavement leave and then the absence after that collision, he's been healthy. He's been available, he's played 61 games, 262 plate appearances. I almost am afraid to bring it up, but this is the best he has been aside from his partial season in 2021 when he also played 61 games, but that was the

entirety of that season. And he had about the same playing time that year and he had a 171 WRC plus and he was even more valuable then. He was about a win more valuable in those 61 games than he's been in these 61 games, mostly I guess because, well, he was even better at the plate, but also he was an even more superlative center fielder at that stage of his career. And now after injuries and surgeries, perhaps he's a little less so, but he is still a plus defensive center fielder, at least according to Statcast. I know Defensive Run Saved has him around average, but I think watching him and seeing at least some of the stats,

he's still quite good out there. He still makes impressive catches. I think he has learned not to go all out at all times. I think experience has taught him that sometimes it's best not to lay out because bad things can happen, but that has not really hurt his ability to play that position well. He has still been a very good hitter. And so this is kind of the Byron Buxin that we've been waiting for. And I guess the key was his most recent knee procedure, he had the pleica removed from his knee, which is-

He had the what? Yeah. It's a fold in the tissue lining the knee joint and it can become painful, it can get irritated. And it turned out evidently that he just had improper pleica development. There was like a thickening of this tissue from birth, really, that this was not a… Oh, so it was like a congenital thing? Yeah, it was not a new ailment. And I don't know whether he was misdiagnosed

or whether this should have been picked up on earlier. I guess it's fairly rare as evidenced by your reaction to the term plica. Plica, it sounds like something out of Star Trek or like Avatar or some other pretend thing. It was like a sharp stabbing pain that he experienced. And so they removed it and he's been pretty pain free since then. And so I know when he had that surgery, there was skepticism like, oh yeah, this is going

to be the thing that's finally going to fix the knee. Right, right. But there were some people who knew what they were talking about who said, no, this actually, this could be real. This could help. And it has. And you know, he's been been a more disciplined hitter. He's been more selective, he's walked more.

I'm happy that he is healthy for now, for the first time in a while, maybe for the first time ever in terms of the Plica. And it's nice, he's playing happy. He's always made me happy when he's playing, but it seems like despite the twins failings lately, it's not on Buxton. And he's still an elite base runner,

percentage base stealer. I'm just pleased that we are finally seeing this version of Buxton and I hope it can continue. Plica. I've hesitated, you know, I don't want to engage in too much woo here, you know, except Ryan Woo. We can talk about Ryan Woo all day long. But you worry so much about the sustainability of his availability and it feels like bad

luck to talk about him. So I'm just so thrilled that he has been not only healthy and available and good, you know, just really good. And like, it does go to show that the medical stuff can be kind of a mystery for these guys, even when they have so much scrutiny on their medicals. I mean, particularly for a guy like him where it's like, they've just been trying so hard to keep him healthy and able to be his best player, but Plica, Plica. Plica. Yeah.

So that's fun. Good job, Byron Buxton. Long may he play and remain injury free. So that's been a highlight of the season so far for me and for Twins fans. Okay, let's talk about a low light, which is noise in ballparks. G. Jeffy of Fan Crafts,

he had a post on Blue Sky about this the other day that seemed to resonate with people. And he posted, at the risk of sounding like an old, my word is Yankee Stadium just a non-stop barrage of canned noise. There's a damn bumper between every pitch. This ballpark does not let the game breathe a goddamn bit. And of course the concessions are bottom tier. Do better, Jay. Worked up. And a lot of other people worked up about that too. And I've ranted about Yankee Stadium, we both have probably. Yeah, I don't care about it.

We've complained about it in any number of ways. Yeah. And have gotten very little pushback on that score. If anything, we've gotten pylons. We've gotten people saying, yes, you are right, it stinks. And I complained about it because it's impossible to get into the place. There aren't enough entrances. If it's a high attendance day,

you're going to be waiting for a while. There's the security theater, there's these long winding lines. It's really not good from an ingress standpoint. It's also just soulless and not distinctive, and it has these signifiers of the old stadium in terms of the facade, but without any of the character. Sometimes character can accumulate over time, but I don't know that it's going to happen

for this place because it's just constructed in such a way, whether it's the moat between the rich people and the less rich people, Or it's just the fact that there aren't as many good seats that are close to the action because of all the luxury boxes and everything. That was the great thing growing up going to the medium Yankee Stadium, not the old, old one, but the moderately old one, the intermediate Yankee Stadium. The one we know as old Yankee Stadium. It was great. I used to love to sit in the upper deck behind home plates, such great seats because it was an overhang. It was like close to the field. And so you felt like you were seeing everything, but you were also not as far removed as you are in the new stadium.

And it was loud in an organic fan-driven way, not that there wasn't some piped in noise and music and everything, but that place would get loud just from the fan noise. This place, you could hardly hear the fans because they're just drowned out by this canned noise. It's not just Yankee Stadium. This is an epidemic across baseball, across all sports really. It's the basketballization of baseball because in

basketball there's constant noise even during the action. In baseball, usually historically you've let the baseball breathe a bit while they're actually playing. Now, more and more, the sound intrudes onto the actual action where it's just, yeah, between pitches. As Jay said, there has to be like a little jingle or some kind of pump up the fans. And it's just hard to go to a game.

I don't think it's about being old. I think if anything, being old, maybe should the noise bother you less because it's harder to hear. I don't know. But like, I mean, I get there's a tradition of each generation complaining about the loud music of the young whippersnappers and the get off my lawn aspect of it. But does anyone like this? Do even the youngs like this? Is it that we're kind of programming this for a TikTok generation or something? It's the concern that even with the pitch clock,

people are just going to zone out and second screen and attention spans will be so short that you have to constantly call their attention back to the field. So Yankee Stadium might be the worst offender in baseball. It's among the worst offenders, but it's not the only offender. I do find Citi Field to be much less egregious in this respect and also just to be a better place to get into a ballpark and to watch a game and has some actual character, even if it's kind of like, you know, artificially let's recreate an old timey feel, it's somewhat successful, whereas Yankee Stadium is not. But this constant barrage of noise, it really does make it difficult to carry on a conversation, to just go to a game and talk to someone, which is the selling point of baseball

as a spectator experience. Even in the pitch clock era, there's a lot of downtime and baseball breathes. And that's one of the things we like about it. And you can carry on a conversation and you can just chat with a friend. And it's really difficult because of this just oral assault that we're subjected to. And I just don't think most fans like this. Yeah. I don't want to say that I know for sure that Yankee Stadium is like worse than other parks. It seems loud on TV is in a way that is like noticeable. And so maybe that suggests that yes, in fact, it is sort of uniquely or maybe not even uniquely, but particularly loud relative to other parks. I think part of it too is that like there's the not being able to hear people that you're at the game with and not being able to have a conversation.

And there's also like, it leads to some like exhaustion. You get like emotional fatigue because when the games own rhythms and beats dictate more precisely the pump up moments, because I think pump up moments are fine. You know, the like get loud. Although when I went to the D-backs Mariners game when Seattle rolled through, saw Brian Woo want one so it didn't. It was little league day. And I don't know how loud of a kid your daughter is, but you're familiar with the concept of

children screaming, especially collectively. They really like doing that, which is fine. That's part of being a kid. And you know, part of Little League Day is that it does bring an energy to the ballpark. But whoever operates the video board at Chase Field just did the get loud cue as many times as they normally would. By the end of it, I was like, you could do it less because they are piercing with their screams,

those little leaguers anyway. So like, I think that there are moments where like getting the crowd engaged and pumped up like is fun and it lends an energy to the thing. And you know, it doesn't have to be like totally silent and state, which I don't think is what you're suggesting and certainly isn't what Jay was suggesting. But if you're always loud, you know, if you're always making some noise, then if there's a moment in the game that like genuinely calls for ruckus, you've spent your ruckus.

You're exhausted. You walk out of there a husk of your former self because all of your ruckus has been dispensed and it's like the fourth inning. Yeah. It's a boy who cried wolf sort of situation. Right. A boy who cried ruckus. Making that amount of noise constantly. It's just you have to yell to be heard over the PA. So it's tough. I mean, it makes you appreciate some more minor league experiences. And granted, there's still a lot of loudness at some of those games too, but some of

them, it's at least a little more. And I'm not saying we need to go back to a time when autos ran rampant in Major League Baseball. And there was- It doesn't need to be like golf. No pipe to noise, but yeah, it's just too much. It's just- It's a lot. It's become like, you know, it's one of those like torture scenes where they're just blaring metal

or something. It's like, it keeps you away. It's like, you know, some kind of noise set up to scare away deer so that they don't eat your plants or something. That's how I feel about going to a game at Yakey Stadium these days. So it's not ideal. Like a little deer who can't get inside. It's not ideal. And you want the thing to breathe. You don't want to come away exhausted. And some of it is expectation to your point. Like

when I go to a Seahawks game, I expect to be hoarse and have my ears ringing by the end of it. Because that's what it is to go to one of those games. You're on your feet a lot. You are constantly yelling, up down, up down, up down, up down. That's part of the experience of going. But you know that going in. And so you're comfortable with it. This isn't what it always was for baseball. And you know, in some places I've already complained, I think about

global life on, on this podcast, but I simply must say again, that whoever designed the acoustics, I don't support carceral solutions a lot of the time, except for whoever designed the acoustics of that ballpark, because it's not even just that it's loud, although it is so loud. Well, yeah, if it's indoor, if there's a dome, then the reverberations. It's so loud. And it's like just noise. It's not like I'm hearing, you know, whatever horrifying, annoying, overplayed

pop country song, because sometimes you're just like, I beg these boys to listen to anything else, dear Lord. You can't even make it out. You can't even get mad at whatever grievance Morgan Wallen has right now, because who could tell it was him singing? The sound just bounces.

Yeah, well, if I had been in attendance at Yankee Stadium for a recent game, I would have tried to cheer if I wasn't in the press box, obviously, because Jazz Chisholm, he lost both of his cleats scoring from second base in a play. And I've never seen this happen. That's delightful. I didn't know that. Yeah. I don't know that I've seen one cleat lost, let alone two. But his explanation was, and I quote, I was so sweaty, my socks were wet, everything had just slipped straight out and gritted. It was hot and humid. So I get it. This was Sunday.

But I don't know that my feet have ever attained that level of moisture, that like my feet were so sweaty and my socks were so wet that just my shoes fell off. I don't know whether he was going at his appointed 70% here because it seemed like he was going beyond that as he was motoring home and trying to score. And he had a collision of sorts with the Orioles catcher Maverick Handley, the excellently named Maverick Handley. I hope that he will be okay. But Jazz's size

10 and a half Jordan ones, just one of them flew off on his way home, like between third and home and he just scored with one shoe on and then the other shoe came off thereafter. And Aaron Judge said something to the effect of he has not seen someone lose both of his shoes. He's seen one cleat come off running. Because it's common to see a helmet come off. A cap can come off. Other accoutrement can come off. But like both cleats coming off. I don't know that I have witnessed this before. And so it makes me question, should players be playing under conditions where they're sweating so much that their shoes come off? I mean, we've seen many players just vomiting left and right lately, though that hasn't seemed to hurt Elie De La Cruz. He

just comes right back and hits a home run after upchucking. A lot of Reds vomiting, really. Remember when Hunter Green was doing that all the time? Yeah. Does the shoe fit in this case? Is there an issue with sizing if your cleats are going to come off like that? Because it seems like potentially a safety issue. It could be if your shoes are not tight. You don't want them to be too tight, but my goodness, like shoeless jazz. I mean, this is how nicknames start. Oh, yeah. Reading a lot of baseball history, a lot of baseball nicknames are second generation baseball nicknames. It's like someone who has a similar name to some other player who preceded them,

and then they get nicknamed after that player or that player's nickname. And so shoeless jazz, maybe that catches on and I would welcome that. Oh yeah, Shoeless Jazz is great. Yeah, I've just never seen something like this. And then when he got back to the dugout, Jazz asked Jason Dominguez to tie his laces. He put on fresh socks to be clear, which is a good thing, but he asked Jason Dominguez to tie his laces because, Jazz explained, they say he's the best shoe-tier. I didn't understand it until

he actually did. It took me like a minute to take off my shoes just now, which suggests to me that maybe Jazz Chisholm doesn't know how to tie his shoes properly. Like he was taken aback by how tightly they were tied by Jason Dominguez. I wonder if he had the experience of like, you know, when it's really hot and it's really humid and you're retaining water, you know, and you get puffy. I wonder if he had a puffy problem.

I wonder if his feet were kind of swelling because of the conditions. And so he loosened his laces in order to have his spikes fit more comfortably. And then they were, as it turned out, too loose. And then he ended up with no shoes on when it was all said and done. I mean, I don't want to overstate the case. It seems like this worked out fine. It is hard to run in no shoes at that kind of speed. One shoe, especially.

I want to see the sprint speed on that. Right, and that's like you're on the infield dirt. And so you're like going over a surface that doesn't feel good. And then you have to be mindful of the fact that like all the other guys still presumably have both of their shoes on, which means they're in spikes and you're in bare feet. And that seems like it could end kind of catastrophically.

I'm stuck on the notion that Jason Dominguez has tied other people's shoes enough to have a reputation about it any way at all, one way or the other. Yeah. He's a tight shoe tire. Yeah. The shoe tire. He's an 80 shoelace tire in addition to his other tools and talents. Yeah, that stood out to me too.

This was not even the most delightful play at the plate involving a New York team because did you see the Mets versus Phillies? Yes, I sure did. Yeah, the combined Nick Castellanos, JT Realmuto slide where in very quick succession, they crossed the plate and delightfully got two separate safe calls from the home plate hump. Just like, yeah, did the motion and then immediately did another one. Would it have been funnier if the second one, if the trail runner had been out?

I think maybe so, if because- In terms of the motion of the umpire? Yes, if the umpire had to segue instantly from safe call to out call and how demoralizing that would be. It was pretty funny though. It was very funny to see them both come in and then the repeated call. And it's funny because it's not as if, so Castellanos was the lead runner who was barely maintaining his lead over Real Muto.

And it's not as if Real Muto is so much faster than Nick Castellanos on the Philly sprint speed leaderboard. He is next to Castellanos, he's just above him. So it's not like he's at this stage of his career, some great burner exactly. But what happened was Castellanos did not read the play quite as well and so he held up. And so it was like a bases clearing double and Bryson Stott hit a ball to left center and Castellanos held up to make sure it would

fall and Real Muto read it better and saw that it was going to fall and so he didn't hold up and so he kind of got to second at roughly the same time that Castellanos was just leaving second and then Real Muto was hot on his heels having to restrain himself somewhat so as not to pass Castellanos and have an out result from that. And so they were both sort of synchronized sliding here and then getting the synchronized double safe call. And Riamuro was like grinning the entire time, which was great too. This was really special. And according to Statcast, they crossed the plate 0.31 seconds apart. And so Castellanos went third to home in 3.39 seconds and Real Muto went third to home in

3.35 seconds. And the third base coach just had to give them kind of a combined like go sign because he couldn't hold up one of them. They were essentially the same. And so Real Muto said if he thought Castie was going to be safe, I feel like I was probably going to be safe too. I mean, they were neck and neck. He was so hot on his heels that it would have been difficult for one of them to be out. That might have been, if anything, more amusing to me if it had been such a bang bang play that the 0.31 seconds had made the difference and Riamuto had

been out because he was held up behind Castellanos, but no, this was great. I think there's a montage like this in maybe major league where you see multiple runners crossing the plate like this. It happened in real life. So very amusing, very fun, very Phillies. It's very fun. It's very Phillies, and it's heightened by the fact that like, the sequencing has stakes, right? Like, you gotta have the lead runner cross first, because you can't get past on the base paths, then you're out.

So, I don't know why I said it like that. It just came out that way, it happened. I don't know, but yeah, it was delightful. I'm not remembering who said this, so my apologies, but I liked, someone likened it to the umpire looking like he was doing a breaststroke, you know, just like boom, boom. It was pretty, they were both on their horse as it were. CB Yes, it was really fun.

I think Bauman said on Blue Sky maybe that it brought back bad little league memories for him of I guess other runners being held up behind him perhaps. So maybe it brought some things to the surface for some people, but for me only amusement. The catcher on that play for the Mets was Luis Torrens. Of course, Luis Torrens is now the starting catcher for the Mets, because Francisco Alvarez has been demoted. He has been sent back down to the minors. And man, we talked about Denzel Clark and how

poorly he's hit while not being demoted to this point. Francisco Alvarez, he's got a 90 WRC+, which is not so bad for a catcher, but he was sent down because, well, he's struggled offensively by his standards. He was so good early in his career, it looked like he would just be an absolute star, and then he sort of stagnated offensively. So they're sending him down sort of to jumpstart him, hopefully get him going behind the plate. He's been a little shaky defensively too and the framing, which it was a great surprise to me that in 2023, his first full rookie season, he was an excellent framer and remained

a well above average framer last year. That aspect of his game has fallen apart this year too. So it's kind of a cross the board offense defense, unlike Denzel Clark, Francisco Alvarez wasn't really doing anything that well, not that he'd been horrible. So he's been sent down and obviously the hope is that he'll be back at some point later this season and he'll get himself in order and be back to being a big bat and a good defensive contributor. But that was fairly aggressive because it's not like he has been horrific and he has been an

everyday player and he's been pretty important to the Mets as a young guy and foundation of their future and everything. And so you don't lightly demote a player like that. And I don't think the Mets did likely demote him, but you know, there'd been some speculation that maybe a reset at least was in order and hopefully that will help him. Again, this is one where it's like it would be really fascinating to know with candor sort of what the internal conversations are like, because, you know, Davey, I think made this point when he wrote about it for us where on the one hand, like you can appreciate their urgency because they had this bad skid and now they're behind the Phillies and like they've, you know, had their fortune sort of turn. And so maybe you feel like you have to do something so that he can get an opportunity

to reset, but also that you kind of stem the bleeding at the big league level. But also are your other options really better? You know, I don't, I don't know, but I think the idea that a guy who has dealt with injury had an abbreviated spring training, didn't really have all that long of a rehab assignment and then gets thrown back in to a high stakes sort of division race might not be at a hundred percent, not because of any, you know, lingering injury, but just because he hasn't had time to like really ramp up the way that you would want him to, that

seems reasonable to me. So, you know, hopefully he kind of gets sorted in a way that allows him to kind of come back maybe after the all star break and really have a strong second half for them because you know, there's a lot that has gone badly in this most immediate stretch for the Mets, but like they're a good team and they surely would appreciate good production from that spot. So yeah, you know, I said a 90 WRC plus is good for a catcher and historically it has been, but this year, catchers have a 97 WRC plus league wide in no small part, thanks to Cal, of course, but it's not just Cal. And 97, I mean, that's almost league average for any hitter and usually you don't see

that. And in fact, there have been some weak offensive years from catchers lately because framing has been so prioritized. And yet this year catchers are really delivering on both sides of the ball and FanGraphs has positional splits back to 2002. And this would actually be a record mark for catchers over that span. The previous high is 95 in 2012. It has been a while since catchers over that span. The previous high is 95 in 2012. It has been a while since

catchers hit remotely this well. I mean, last year they had a 91 WRC plus. Even that is not bad, historically speaking. But yeah, catchers are really raking this year. Good for catchers. Everything's kind of topsy-turvy, upside down, the premium defensive positions. Like last year, short stops had their best offensive season in that span. Short stops had a 104 WRC plus last season and this year they're at 98, which is still pretty good. It's like the traditionally offensively inept positions have really been overperforming offensively lately. There's just been, we've talked a lot about the shortstop

talent, but catchers, catchers are hitting. Yeah, they're hitting, you know, they're not hitting as good as Cal. Well, no, but yeah, Cal alone does drag that average up quite a bit. He's doing a lot of heavy lifting both for his team and his position. It's true. But you know what? It's fine for him to do heavy lifting. He's got the dumper. That's where the strength goes. Okay, last thing, this episode sign of the Rockies apocalypse, which we haven't had a lot lately because Rockies, they've turned it on too. And they have, what is it, haven't they won, I think, as many games since the start of June as they had up to that point? Like they have nine wins, I think, this month,

something like that. Like they've been kind of a respectable baseball team of late. However, playing to type, there was an item in Bob Nightingale's Sunday Notes. Take this for what it's worth. But Bob Nightingale did report that Bud Black, recently dismissed manager of the Rockies,

and I will quote here, could be rejoining the Rockies, and I will quote here, could be rejoining the Rockies just a month after being dismissed as manager after eight seasons. Black is a strong candidate to replace Steve Foster, who is leaving his position as the Rockies director of pitching to become pitching coach at Texas Tech. Black, a former pitching coach for Mike Sosha with the Angels, has let friends know he has no interest in retiring and wants to remain in the game. I don't know if this will happen. I don't know how well-sourced Bob Nightingale is with the Rockies organization, but can you imagine not beating the allegations here?

This would be the most Rockies-coded hiring after a firing that I've ever heard of because they fire Bud Black, who had just an extremely long leash given the lack of success of his team, and to even consider bringing him back in short order in a different position. Look, he may be better suited to be a pitching coach than he was as a manager. He has been a pitching coach in the past. He was a pitcher. I believe when he was fired, there are no ex-pitcher managers in the majors currently, I believe, which it's always struck me as sort of strange that there's so many ex-catcher managers, and I understand why, but so few pitchers relative to just how many pitchers there are in general. And pitchers, they've historically had to think about things too.

They've had to plan, they've had to be tactical. So it does sort of surprise me. But yeah, the Rockies, 9 and 11 to this point in June. So that's great. But if they were to rehire Bud Black, or even to strongly consider bringing him back just after belatedly sort of sending a signal, hey, we're making some sort of change. We realize that we need new voices. We need new people in the tent here. To bring back Bud Black, even if he's fairly qualified to be a pitching coach, that would just really reinforce the reputation the Rockies have for never moving on from anyone and just being allergic to change. Be unusual for someone to accept that demotion in the coaching hierarchy as well to say,

oh, you just fired me as a manager, but sure, I'll come back as a subordinate to the new manager. And in a role that just has to feel freaking cursed in Colorado too, right? Like that's the... So Texas Tech hired Colorado's pitching coach? That's fascinating. Yeah, I know. I guess they thought he was doing something, right? But...

That's so interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like maybe he just loves the team and maybe he was like, I don't know, they'll probably bring me back. Maybe he didn't get fussed about it. You know, I mean like maybe he just loves the team and maybe he was like, I don't know, they'll probably bring me back. Maybe he didn't get fussed about it, you know what I mean? Very Rockies. One of a kind. All right, a few updates for you.

Podcast favorite John Brebbia has signed a minor league deal with Atlanta. The Braves bullpen is 23rd in war this season, and hey, if they can call on Craig Kimbrel briefly, why not John? Bring Brebbia back to the big leagues. That's a challenging sentence to say. We talked about the post-run ritual of Brebbia's old bullpen mate Tommy Canely last time. We determined that he does not shave his whole body. His legs go unshaved.

Listener Dom wrote in to note that the discussion around Canely's self-imposed shaving punishment reminded me of this classic from a few years ago. This was a story headlined Marco Asensio to miss Real Madrid's Champions League opener with infected pimple after shaving his legs. He has a spot on his leg which means he cannot lift his sock confirms coach Zinedine Zidane. Yes, maybe Canely is trying to avoid suffering the same fate as Asensio. We talked about Hunter Biggie suffering facial fractures when he was hit by a foul ball in the dugout.

And I think Meg may have mused that she was surprised we don't see players impaled by bat shards more often. Well, we got a couple emails, including one from Aaron and another from Patreon supporter, Jan, who wrote in to say, in episode 2338, disgust injuries caused by foul balls and broken bats, I vividly remember and would like to point you to a thing that happened to Tyler Colvin in 2010. He got hit near the collarbone by a fragment of a broken bat and he missed the rest of the season because of it. Looking back, it seemed to be the perfect situation for this to happen. Two outs, runner

on third, taking off on a fly ball. He was that runner, and he went to the hospital for a few days to prevent a collapsed lung. I do remember that. The bat shard punctured his chest but didn't stick there. It didn't bleed that much. It was a maple bat, which have largely replaced ash bats. There's a shortage of ash because of an invasive insect species. And also ash is softer, and so maple doesn't break as much. There are fewer broken bats these days than there used to be. But there was some concern that when maple bats would splinter, there'd be big chunks and you could end up with more colvin situations. Fortunately, that hasn't happened again as far as I know. I think the bats are better made these days. Also, listener Daniel wrote in on Friday to

say, I was just watching the Braves at Marlins game tonight and in the top of the sixth, Dane Myers robbed Marcel Ozuna of a homer, but he didn't catch the ball. He had it in his glove, but as he came down, it came out of the glove and back onto the field. I bet there's next to no way to tell how many times this has ever happened,

but it was the first I've ever seen of it. Yeah, we've seen a lot of firsts in home run robberies this season, or at least unusual home run robbery or robbery adjacent plays. And I guess we need a new term for this. The home run robbery that prevents a home run, but does not prevent a hit, does not result in an out. Daniel suggested a blown run robbery, though he acknowledged that that's probably a better term for when a fielder inadvertently causes a homerun in the process of attempting a catch.

I guess the homerun was robbed, but the ball wasn't apprehended. As an appreciator of long plate appearances, just want to salute Nick Sogaard, who had a 19 pitch plate appearance in AAA. He fouled off 14 pitches, he ended up walking. Like a lot of people, I think that if I were the pitcher in that situation, it was Lazaro Estrada in this case, I'd just lay it in there at that point. I don't want to walk Nick Sogaard. Maybe it's sunk cost fallacy, but I've thrown that many pitches. Don't want to walk the guy. Not a great hitter to begin with. Then again, pitchers can't always throw strikes on command. Listener Kenny wrote in on Tuesday to say, in tonight's 9-5 win over the Red Sox, the Angels walked 11 times.

10 of those times were by three players, Mike Trout, Taylor Ward, and Luis Renjifo, who all walked at least three times. Additionally, none of them got a hit or reached base any other way. How often has a team had three players reach base at least three times only via the walk? Well, I stat-headed this one,

and there are only four previous instances of this happening, on record. The last time was May 22nd, 1996, Reds vs Marlins. Eric Davis, Barry Larkin, and Chris Sabo did it for the Reds. June of 1991, the Mariners Scott Bradley, Alvin Davis, and Harold Reynolds did it. May of 1973, the Reds Dennis Menke, Joe Morgan, and Tony Perez did it, and September 1939, the Yankees Babe Dahlgren, Bill Dickey, and Joe DiMaggio did it.

So quite a rarity. Well done Renjifo Trout and Ward, not so well done Walker Bueller, who started that game for the Red Sox. I should note that the stat head search I did was instances where hitters walked three or more times and had the same number of walks as times on base, but I must admit some slight discomfort with the statistic times on base, which counts hits and walks and hit by pitches but does not count. Other ways one can be on base, you can reach on an error, uncaught third strike, fielder's

choice, obstruction, lots of ways to be on base without getting a time on base, which causes some pedantic discomfort. And finally, I was alerted to the fact that this past Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the day when a black baseball team beat a team composed of Klan members. I'm reading here from a recap that I will link to on the show page.

On June 21st, 1925, the Wichita Monrovians, an all-black semi-pro baseball team I'm reading here from a recap that I will link to on the show page. There aren't that many accounts of this game, and so some details are lost. The names of the players remain unknown, the story says, but apparently both teams agreed to hire two Irish Catholic umpires to avoid appearances of favoritism. In this compromise, the umpires, World War I veterans WWIrish Garrity and Dan Dwyer were white, but as Catholics, they belonged to a religion targeted for hate by the clan.

So I guess that sort of made them a neutral party here? Or at least equally against both teams? I don't know. According to the Wichita Beacon, strangleholds, razors, horse whips, and other violent implements of argument will be barred at the baseball game at Island Park this afternoon. The article also said that umpires have been instructed to rule any player out of the game who tries to bat with a cross. Not sure how serious that account was, but in all seriousness, congrats to the Wichita Monrovians. Baseball history is a very rich text.

And you can help us continue to explore that text by supporting the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast coming, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Sydney Helfer, Larry Miller, Kirby, Dan Love, and John Kilroy. Kilroy was here. Thanks to all of them. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers,

personalized messages, autographed books, discounts on merch, and ad-free fan crafts, memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, comments,

intro and outro themes to podcast at fan graphs.com. You can rate, review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show notes at sub-edit at r.effectivelywild. And you can check the show notes at fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Zachary Goldberg is filling in for Shane McKeon today, so thanks to Zachary for his editing

and production assistance. Thanks to you as always for listening, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Anything is fair game, even Kike's dirty pants And maybe if you're lucky you will cold call by the chance You never know precisely where it's gonna go By definition, effectively wild