Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2342: The Extension Extension

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the return of Richard Lovelady, the MLB season debut of knuckleballer Matt Waldron, the superlative Zack Wheeler, how other knuckleballers in baseball are faring, Rich Hill’s wait for a call-up, Shohei Ohtani vs. Vinnie Pasquantino, Jacob Misiorowski and the leaguewide rise in pitcher extension, James Wood’s four intentional […]

Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise. From small sample size, these fun facts must lie. It's Effectively Wild. A strange book could hang. Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulia of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm okay and I'm pleased to report that Richard Love Lady is yet again with us. This is just the way that we will start every episode of Hopefully Wild Now, just checking in. Is Richard Lovelady a Major Leaguer? Dickie Lovelady, some may call him. Yes, he is, the Mets. They acquired him, then they designated him for assignment, and now he's back.

He signed a major league contract, back on the active roster, at least for now. Wow, what a whirlwind, how the turnt least for now. Wow. What a whirlwind How the turntables have turned in a real roller coaster. Did they Take my advice and change his number to 69 don't believe so, but there is still time I mean, I guess how many times are they gonna do this probably a couple more I'm not surprised me and in other news about pitchers that we have followed being back in the big leagues,

Matt Waldron has arrived. Knuckle baller extraordinaire, whom I unsuccessfully attempted to have on this podcast for quite some time, but followed affectionately from afar. He had an injury to start the season and then he was rehabbing in AAA and he just made his major league debut of 2025 for the Padres. So that's exciting. He's back.

Did you watch any of that start by any chance? Unfortunately for him, he ran into the buzzsaw that is Zach Wheeler, who no one can score on. So, yeah, Walter was not great. I must admit, he did walk six batters. He did not quite make it through five. He allowed four runs, but even if he had allowed one run, that would have been too many. Too many. It would have been, it would have been too many runs. And I want to talk about the Wheeler of it all in a second. But I also just have to say, the leader in the clubhouse for the sweatiest boy that we've seen in the, what I understand that it is

the East Coast in the summer. It's a sweaty affair a lot of the time, a sticky mess, a dewy disaster. Your butt's not dry for a while. Really, until you hit September, do you have a reliably dry ass? But it wasn't the bottom that was the problem for him. It was the top. Yeah. Well, we couldn't see the bottom. That may have been a problem too. But if there was swamp ass happening, then it was hidden from view because the pants are less transparent, perhaps.

Wow. I can't believe that you're igniting that. Opened Pandora's box of banter there. We'll set that obvious piece of misinformation aside for a moment and just say that it was at least not a sweaty enough situation that it was obvious as opposed to his jersey top, which was so sweaty that John Crack remarked upon it within moments of him taking the mound. And look, I'm not saying anything about Matt Waldron as a person. He might be sweaty. I don't know.

He might be a, you know, some people, they're sweaty people. They're more sweaty than I am. And I live in a hot place where I sweat a lot, but like, nothing wrong with sweating. You know, your body's way of trying to manage your temperature. And certainly not the only pitcher who in this era of terrible jerseys has had a sweaty top such that it can look like an entirely different color than the rest of the uniform. Many pitchers changing mid start, you know, changing into something dryer. But this man was sweaty from the very beginning. He was just the sweatiest boy. And I wonder if the Phillies hitters were like, you're not going to Thor strikes.

He looks nervous. He's so sweaty. I wonder about that. Here's another thing I'm wondering about. You don't have to remark on the sweatiness. You've already shown that you do not have integrity on this question because if your pants lander, I can't believe cannot believe that we would do this again. Here's a concern that I have about the 2025 season

We used to live in a time when Chris sale was like the pitcher who didn't have a Cy Young, right? Right Chris sales didn't have one and then he won last year wonderful campaign for the Braves faded late We all know the story now We are in an era where the guy who you just assume at some point has won a Cy Young because how good is this guy? How has he not been able to do it? Is Zach Wheeler, right? How does Zach Wheeler not have a Cy Young? Madness, insane, such a good pick. I'm very worried though, because you got some really good guys right up at the top of that leaderboard for starters

in the National League. And I think that the fan momentum, the narrative is for Skeens to win a Cy Young this year, right? And he's pitching very, very well, as well as Weaver, as well as Webb. You know, there's got this little cluster of guys. Mackenzie Gore, man. Good for you, dude. Wow. Sorry, I was just, I had the leaderboard up and I was going through the NL names and I

was like Mackenzie Gore, look at you, Hayes DeSlozardo, it's been less good lately. Anyway, I don't have a vested interest in this and I don't know that I really care about the does a guy manage to win a Psy for my own purposes. It matters to the players very much. And I think that it can make otherwise robust Hall of Fame cases more complicated when you can't point to that guy as having ever secured a Psy young, right? Like you just have to account for it. And I think that we do a fine enough job of that and you don't, you know, just because you haven't

won a Cy Young doesn't mean you can't be a Hall of Famer, but like it becomes a thing. You have to like navigate around, you know, and the voters have to explain and da da da and Jay has to have a whole paragraph in his write up about that. So it would just be more straightforward if this guy who has just been one of the best starters in baseball lately could win a Cy Young. And I feel, I feel background anxiety for Zach Wheeler because again, I think the narrative momentum and I don't know if that will matter. I don't know if it'll matter. And who knows what the second half will bring, right? Second half, which we are officially in, right?

We're officially in the second half. I sound very manic, but I'm really worried about Zach Wheeler. I'm worried that it's not going to happen for him. And he's so good. And it's just, you know, he's one of those guys where I think you have a really good idea of what kind of start you're getting out of him to Patterson. And yesterday, you know, he gave a leadoff hit to Luis Reyes and then obviously no hitter,

no perfect game was on offer. He'd already blown that. But then I, they had this moment where he struck out Manny Machado and the camera caught Manny Machado walking away going, oh wow. And I was just like, yeah, dude, like, I don't know how anyone's doing anything with that today. How is anyone doing anything with this guy's stuff today? And they largely didn't.

So anyway, this is me expressing background anxiety for Zach Wheeler and his, you know, the time is ticking for him, right? Because didn't he like proactively announced he's going to retire when this contract is over? Yeah, sort of. We'll see. Sort of. He could change his mind, obviously, but yeah, he's 35 years old.

He doesn't win a Cy Young. Maybe, but yes, I think his traditional stats would not quite be Cooperstown quality. And as we know, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a starting pitcher to enter the kingdom of Cooperstown these days. It's just like the voters have not necessarily lowered their standards to account for the differences in pitcher usage. And so you might look at Zach Wheeler's stats and say 111 wins.

I know you don't really pay much attention to pitcher wins these days, but even so, that's a very low number by Hall of Fame starting pitcher standards. And I don't even mean to say that I necessarily believe him to be a Hall of Fame worthy pitcher. I'm just saying that it's nice to have that box checked when the time comes to sort of take stock of one's case

because I think it does, it sways people in a pretty profound way. Yeah, if he doesn't meet the standard, then it's because he didn't get good until relatively late. He didn't really fully flourish until after he left the Mets. He had some solid seasons with the Mets, but he became a real ace with the Phillies. And now probably his peak, if you've era adjusted, at least his peak would be pretty close to Cooperstown quality, but he didn't really have his...

Yeah, like he didn't have his first really... Well, he had one season that was pretty good at age 24 and then he got hurt and then he didn't really have another until he was 28 and then he wasn't with the Phillies till he was 30 and then he was hurt for part of that season. Or no, that was 2020, so that was short season. And then, yeah, it was like, 2021 was like his first truly extraordinary season

where he was Cy Young runner up. So he has been by any war metric, the best starting pitcher in baseball, the best pitcher in baseball over a period of several seasons. And maybe that is enough for a lot of voters to say, yeah, sure, put him in. But it is harder, certainly,

even though there are plenty of starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame who didn't win a Cy Young. There's Phil Neuquo, Bert Blylevin, though obviously it took a long campaign to get him, and Nolan Ryan, which always surprises people that he never won one. My man, Mike Messina, who had to wait several years despite being overqualified in my mind, Don Sutton,

Jack Morris, who had his own narrative in his corner, Jim Cot took forever, of course. So yeah, I don't know. It would help certainly if he had the hardware, but yeah, he's amazing. He's been great and he had about a 0.5 ERA in June with like a 1.5 FIP. So yeah, he's been dominant. And Waldron actually hadn't walked that many batters in AAA. He kind of had the control under control, which was heartening. And he set out to throw many more knuckleballs this season than he had previously. And so I was extra excited to see what he could do.

Hopefully, I know that the universal concern is the Pants and was and perhaps still is, maybe they haven't fully rectified the Pants situation and maybe it was more enduring as we have discussed. I know they said that some changes to the uniforms were going to come next season. I think, I don't know if it was specific to the pants because they did fix the lack of tailoring personalization of the dimensions and but the fabric was unchanged. I think they tried to get more consistency in the shade of it.

And they were wearing the brown pinstripes. So the color, the most, the PAMP problem is really a problem with home whites, not with any of the other colors. I think the other colors are less obviously transparent and that's been true, that's been true in prior eras when the pants were a little sheer but not this sheer. But they were wearing the brown pinstripes yesterday. They weren't wearing the home whites because they were on the road. They were in Philly where it's swampy. Yeah,

no? I mean, it's not swampy, but like it's, you know what I'm trying to say. So. It's muggy, it's humid. Yeah, there, I thought that this would be the season of the knuckleball. One of my bold predictions, as you probably do not recall, was that there would be three or more actual, real knuckleballers who would throw at least 20 knuckleballs

each in the big leagues. And Waldron was the first to do it. And there's still some time, but checking in on the other likely candidates, I thought there was Corey Lewis of the Twins. And that's not going so great. He's in AAA with about an eight ERA on the season in 12 games and lots of walks, not even all starts. So yeah, that hasn't been great.

And then Kenny Sirwa was the Tigers guy signed out of Indieball and he's been doing okay. I guess he started in high A and pitched well and then got promoted to double A and has been not so great there. But yeah, there are still some knuckleball pitchers in the pipeline, but no one who's knocking on the door seemingly. So Waldron is our hope. So that's good. Glad he's back. Still making our man Rich Hill wait. His arm is just languishing in triple A. You can't waste those bullets from Rich Hill wait. His arm is just languishing in AAA. You can't waste those bullets from Rich Hill. Like he gotta, there's no such thing as a pitching prospect. You just, you gotta get these guys to the majors.

Don't have them just fire those quality innings in AAA when he could be up in the big leagues. He spent the entirety of June in AAA when he could be up in the big leagues. He spent the entirety of June in AAA. Meanwhile, the Royals had a middle of the pack rotation. They were not Wheeler-esque as a team. Their starting pitchers were 15th in war, according to fan graphs, and I believe Rich Hill had a significantly lower ERA

in AAA than the Royals did in the majors. We will not discuss his FIP, but the strikeout rates are strong and he's had a bit of a Homer prone problem, but you know, he's still missing bats. He's still taking the ball out there. So hopefully one of these days he's put his time in. I think he has more than earned this promotion. He's had five starts in AAA in addition to some lower level starts for ERA there. 11 strikeouts per nine. He can't be too fussed about it though because he has the the opt, is the opt out, is he able to just continue

to opt out or having not opted out? Is he just like bound to not now? I think it was reported that he can just go if he gets an offer from someone else. Got it. So he's, you know, and some of this might be the freedom of not having choices, which sounds like a funny way of phrasing it, but you know what I mean. Like some of it might be, he's just like, I'm going to keep pitching and stay ready. And then if someone calls, great. And if it's the Royals, wonderful.

And if it's someone else, fine. But it is, you'd think it would happen at some point. And you know, who knows, maybe what ends up happening, Ben, is that as guys move around at the deadline, whether it's the Royals or someone else, maybe they're like, well, now we really need a reliable sage to hold down the fifth spot for us because we traded a guy or what have you. So I'm not worried about it. I think he'll have his moment in the big league sun again.

Yeah. Yeah. The Nationals have their AARP patches on their sleeves now. That could be a good fit. He could be rotation mates with Mackenzie Gore, the young gun and the old crafty lefty. Yeah. Yeah. I think that if I'm Rich Hill, I refuse to go to Washington for that reason. I say, no, no, these jokes, they are too easy. I will spare the comedy gods the displeasure of having to watch such easy jokes. We've already suffered enough this year with the Roman Anthony situation. Can I say something? As someone who's starting to get a concerning amount of mail from AARP, they really try to get you young. How funny is that? A lot of really worse options for a Jersey patch, in my opinion.

AARP does some good work. And it's not just for discounts anymore. You know how your grandparents aren't constantly, I'm saying this to all of our listeners, how they're not constantly calling you about being scammed? Part of that is the help of AARP and educating them about scams. That's a good thing. That's good. There are jokes. Sure. But didn't they have a crypto sponsor behind Home Plate for like a long time after that crypto exchange had gone under? Am I?

Yeah, I guess it's on brand for baseball to have that sponsorship. I guess it doesn't help baseball beat the allegations that it's a sport for old people, which, which seems like it's increasingly less true. If you can say, maybe I should say decreasingly true just because the, the audience seems to be getting younger, but still there's something to that. So yeah, maybe there's a, I guess it makes sense as a sponsorship perhaps if you want to reach your potential target audience. They don't even need to mail you letters. They can just put patches on the sleeve. Yeah. It's like 39 is early when you start ramping up that recruiting. I mean, like,

okay. Yeah, they look, uh, I think they know that much like one's sort of unavoidable mortality that it might take a little while for you to be persuaded because you're negotiating an uncomfortable transition in yourself to like a person who needs an AARP membership. True. Nothing wrong. It is a funny- It's a time to come to terms with that. Right. Yeah. It's a funny contrast though, because I do feel like we have a range of stereotypical ages associated with some of the Jersey patches.

Like obviously ARP is known as an association for retirees. And then like you have Nintendo putting the Switch on the Mariners patches and it's like young people. How do you like your Switch? Though also old people, because Nintendo's been around for quite a while. For quite a while. Yeah, I've enjoyed my Switch too, but mostly Mario Kart. We need some more games. We got to get Donkey Kong Bonanza out there soon enough. So in other news about pitchers that

we pay attention to, Shohei Otani threw the hardest pitch of his MLB career. And it was tracked at 101.7 miles per hour. And as Jeff Passon noted, this pitch came against Vinny Pascuentino. Yes. Otani previously hit 102 miles per hour in the World Baseball Classic, also against Vinny Pasquantino. And the Pasquatch had a viral tweet where he quote tweeted Passon pointing that out and just said WTF.

It's as if he is being targeted by Otani. Does Otani hold a grudge of some sort against Vinny Pasquantino where he's like, I gotta reach back for a little extra against this guy. I gotta have my best. Maybe it's a mark of respect for Pasquettino. Like this is the guy I gotta dig deep. But I would feel targeted, I think, if I were Vinny.

Yeah. Raise your hand if you've been personally bullied by Shohei Otani. That is pretty funny because like how much other exposure, I mean, surely he's had in his time with the Angels, I bet he had a start against the Royals at some point, probably, right? Like, but you know, with Pascantino out with injury as often, like had they faced off against each other in nonWBC context? Good question. I'm trying to determine whether I am peeved at Shohei for throwing that hard, because you know I get on pictures cases when they threw too hard sometimes. Because you feel nervous. Yeah.

And I feel especially nervous when Shohei Otani is involved. But I think I'm more inclined to give him a pass just because he's still essentially working as an opener at this point. Maybe he's just feeling that fresh UCL, but also he knew that it was two innings max probably for him, which is not to say that it cannot still be damaging for your arm if you throw one pitch that hard, but it's maybe a little different if it's coming at the end of a complete game or something as it was with Tarek Schubel or if it's Jacob deGrom in prior years

and he's just firing pitches like that with regularity. There were fewer pitches on the day for Otani. So in that role until he's a little more stretched out, maybe I'm more understanding without being biased, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. This is not what I, this isn't what I meant to look at. This isn't what I meant to look at. Stadhead. Surely you know, I don't want to compare them. I want, oh yeah, I've had that happen. That makes me feel old. You can leave it in. I look ARP. They're coming for me, Ben. Yeah, you already feel old. I guess that's what

they want. So yeah. Well, let us know when you successfully determine whether Ohtani has faced fast Quintino in other instances. Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. In other notable pitcher news, we are recording on Tuesday. Jacob Misurowski is starting on Wednesday, and we will get another edition of The Miz pitching for the Brewers. And this just brought to my mind how unfair conditions are for hitters these days, which is a thought

that probably a lot of people have when they watch him pitch and just see how hard he's throwing and how unhittable he has been thus far. But specifically, I think he pairs his high speeds with extreme extension. So he gets great extension, which is not a shock. He is very tall, obviously. There's not a perfect correlation between height and extension, but there's some correlation. And it has to do with just, well,

how much extension you get. That's sort of tautological, but- How far down the mound as a- Yeah, how long your stride is. Just, are you a short armor, that kind of thing. Or how flexible are you? And extension, as measured by StacCast, it's how far in front of the pitching rubber

a pitcher releases the pitch. And Jacob Isarovski is at 7.6 feet. That's even taller than he is. He is 6'7", but is at 7.6 feet. That's even taller than he is. He is 6'7", but this is 7.6 feet. And he is tied in that metric with a couple guys, including Tyler Glass now, which is also not a surprise. The only pitcher with longer extension this season than the Miz is Alexis Diaz, who is a mere six foot two.

So again, a perfect correlation there. But very few guys get better extension than the Miz, which is unfair really, because very few guys, if any, throw harder than he does. It's Paul Gervais, by the way, of the race is up there also. He's 6'10", so that tracks also. But yeah, it's unfair because the perceived velocity of Misrowski is gonna be even higher because he's releasing the pitch so close to the plate.

And it just, it makes me marvel at the fact that anyone hits the ball these days because even in the Stratcast era, even in this decade that we can go back and track this, there has been a significant league-wide extension in extension. So for the first five years of the Stat-Cast era, 2015 through 2018, the average league-wide extension on all pitches was six feet on the dot. And now it's like six and a half feet.

It was six and a half feet last year. This year so far, 6.4 feet. So we're talking five, six inches. The typical pitcher is releasing the pitch closer to the plate than was the case in 2018 even. That's not that long. And it's not as if the average height has changed by an enormous amount in that span of time.

So I would guess that this has to do with the fact that we're tracking extension now that it's so easily measured. Once you can measure something, you can more easily improve it and you can get extra length. And so famously 60 feet, six inches, that's the distance between the mound and home plate.

Well, the pitchers have just subtracted six inches from that distance. Obviously it's less than that because they're releasing well in front of the mound and the rubber, but taking six inches away, that's like a significant percentage of the distance that they have just evaporated. It's just, it's gone, they've disappeared.

And so there's even less reaction time for hitters now. And obviously over this span, the average speed of fastballs at least, and you know, every pitch type has increased. And so we can track that easily, pitch effects to step, cast going back to 2008. And in that span of time, the average four seamer speed has increased

by 2.5 miles per hour, yet another new high. So far this year, 94.4, 2008, it was 91.9, even 2015, it was 93.1. So not only have you added this speed, but you have also increased the perceived speed by subtracting from the difference. And this is like, it's a meaningful amount over a fairly short span of time in the grand scheme of things. And so it's really impressive to me that hitters have kept up at all, given that this is going against them in addition to the defensive

improvements and everything else. But that's, it just, it really hammers home for me how preposterous it is that pitchers are still delivering pitches from the same distance that they were in 1893. This is just, this is over a decade, less than a decade that we've seen these measurable significant changes. And even if the pace of change has accelerated since we can track these things now, you know that there's been some increase over the preceding more than a century, century and a quarter or so. Pitchers have gotten taller obviously over that span. So in 1893, I looked up the weighted average height by batter's faced in 1893 was five foot ten and a half. That was the average pitcher height weighted by batter's faced.

And this year, so far, it is six, two and four fifths. So yeah, so the average picture is a little more than four inches taller than he was in 1893. So you can forecast some corresponding increase in extension in addition to just, you know, I'm sure like deliveries have changed and so much more effort in the wind up. Like I'm sure that, you know, the difference in extension outstrips the difference in height there by a good measure.

And obviously the speed differential is enormous. So it's just a completely different problem. The physics are completely different. The stuff is so much nastier and the pitches are being released so much closer to the plate that I can't believe that this still works. You know, people, people marvel at like, wow, we still have 90 feet between bases and that's more or less still getting the job done. I know the bases are a little bigger now and everything, but like, you know, it's still

okay. Like the batters are faster, but the catchers are stronger and maybe the pitchers are delivering the pitches faster and everything, so it all more or less works out. It is much more improbable to me that we still have anything resembling baseball. I mean, it's so different from 1893 in any number of ways, but the fact that

you can still have pitchers throwing to hitters from that same distance with a mound now and all the rest and it still works as well as it does is incredible and a testament to the improved skill and athleticism of the hitters too. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, like I don't want to say that perceived velocity doesn't matter because like velocity matters.

So of course perceived velocity does. It's not enough on its own in much the same way that just like actual measured fastball velocity is not enough on its own. But we're also, I mean, not you and I specifically, we're really good at making the commas go in the right spot. But like the part of it that is, oh, this guy can throw really hard, but maybe his shape is bad. Well, they're better at fixing that part of it too, right?

Like there are just so many things in working in concert together. You have, you know, several generations of people with better nutrition. So they're taller and all of their strength and conditioning stuff is better. And our ability to minutely analyze, you know, their biomechanics in a way where we can say, okay, yeah, let's adjust your release and let's think about what your pitch mix should be based on whether you're a natural pronator or supernator and also we can make you throw harder and then we can design the hell out of that pitch and make it better because we're changing your grip, we're changing how you're cocking

your wrist or not. It's just, it is so remarkable that anyone ever gets a hit. And then, you know, but the flip side of that is like you look at Mizorowski and he's been sensational since he got called up. But like even in his starts where he has been so good, we've seen how the command isn't always there for him. He's not always able to put it where he wants to so good. We've seen how, you know, the command isn't always there for him. He's not always able to put it where he wants to or throw strikes. And so then you're like, okay, well, yeah, people can get hit sometimes. Like they can do that.

The Miz, the answer to our earlier query is that they had matched up one time before and this was in April of 2023. And Pasquentino struck out swinging single to left and then struck out looking. And that is his prior regular season matchups against Otani. So I don't know, there's nothing in the time in between the WBC and his experience yesterday that would suggest that he's done anything particular to offend Atani unless singles really bother the guy. So there's that. According to baseball savant, Mizorowski's average four seamer speed thus far in the big leagues is 99.6, but his average perceived speed 101.7. And only the now injured Ben Joyce

had a higher perceived velocity this season. Not that many people had a higher regular velocity either, but that's a full two ticks more on top of already sitting almost a hundred. You know, so, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be a hitter. two ticks more on top of already sitting almost a hundred. You know, so yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be a hitter. It's really something.

I would just say this is affording me an opportunity to promote and make reference to our member mailbag because Matt Martel actually answered a question about Mizorovsky and extension and perceived velocity for last weekend's edition. So if you're a fan graphs member every Saturday morning, bright and early, you can wake up to our mailbag answers. You don't have to be a member to ask a question,

but it's only available to read to our members. So check it out. Yeah. Nice perk, fun. Yeah, and that makes it more impressive that hitters actually are striking out less this season. And the strikeout rate has plateaued a bit in recent years, which we've talked about, but this year it's actually down.

Rob Mendes just wrote about this for baseball prospectus, 21.9%, which obviously is still very high historically, but is actually quite low in the context of recent years. This is the lowest league wide strikeout rate since 2017. And even if you limit to position players, since we've gone to the Universal DH in that span, it's the lowest since 2018. And that's sort of surprising. I don't know exactly how that has happened, because it's not as if the stuff has gotten worse. And by the way, that extension increase, it's still there even if I limit to a certain pitch type to four seamers that's a little less

pronounced the difference, but it's still up there. This is record extension this season so far, just for fast balls tied with last season. Cause you know, even though fast balls are faster now, they're throwing fewer of them. And you never know if that could affect extension or something, but still directionally the same trend. So the stuff getting nastier and yet hitters are putting the ball in play a little more. It's nice to have a plateau just because there was that just year over year increase for

more than a decade. It just seems like a runaway train, but they've gotten a handle on it somehow. I don't know how to explain that exactly, whether it's the new advanced pitching machines and training against those pitches, not in games that has helped, whether it's other incentives, whether it's that double bank shot of let's deaden the ball and maybe we'll make it a little less rewarding for hitters to swing for the fences and maybe that'll make them go more contact oriented. That was one of the ideas behind the defensive positioning in the infield restriction too, though I was not convinced that it would actually have that effect because if anything it seemed

to help the high strikeout, pole-oriented guys. It was just like, okay, now you don't even have to worry about putting the ball in play and going the other way. You can just keep doing what you're doing, but something seems to be working here. So it's good, I guess. I don't know how much credit to give to the league as opposed to the hitters, but yeah,

I'm kind of amazed that the stuff keeps getting nastier and yet hitters are putting the bat on the ball at least a little more often. Yeah, I am encouraged by it. One, because it felt like it felt like a kind of intractable problem, right? Like it was just your point of runaway train, we were never gonna, never gonna back. That we would never be able to arrest the trend and we would just get to a point where like we had to stop playing baseball because the disadvantage between hitters and pitchers was so profound that like it just would feel unfair every time you went up there.

And so I feel relief, although I, like you, don't know that I have felt satisfied in particular by the answers as to why. And so I wonder whether it will be a trend that continues or if we just see a one-year dip that is the result of some idiosyncratic combination of things likely including the deadening of the ball. But it's good if only to get a break from the discourse about it because there was so much and it wasn't, you know, sometimes I get down on discourse because well it can be kind of stupid and annoying at times. And sometimes unnecessary, right? Like hand wringing for no purposes if we don't have better reasons or real ones to have anxiety. But also, the tone of it can suck. But it was an important question. We needed to dig in on why can't these guys stop striking out?

And I still think we have to do some work in that regard to have a satisfying answer? Yeah. This season specifically, I suspect it might have something to do with the tightening of the strike zone and that reduced buffer when it comes to the umpires being graded, which has perhaps made them just clamp down even more, just a little bit, but a little bit could be enough to at least contribute to this effect. What I'm I apologize if you said this before, and I was so busy trying to get Stadhead to work and make me feel young again that I missed it. But is there a meaningful change in the distribution of those strikeouts? By which I mean, like, is it the guys are like striking out swinging less or

striking out looking less? Or is it pretty even between the two types because that might point to an answer or at least part of one as it pertains to the strike zone and how it's being called you know. Yeah that's a good question I guess even if it's called differently that could affect the swing decisions that hitters are having if they're picking up on that. But yeah I don't I don't immediately know the answer to that, but yeah, it's, it's not just a one season effect. It's this dip that we're seeing this year.

Maybe that's attributable to that at least partly, but it's, it's also, they've just arrested the rise just over a few years. So there's, there's something going on here. over a few years, so there's something going on here. And I think Rob looked to see, is it like that a new generation of lower strikeout guys has come into the league, or is it that old guys who were high strikeout have been phased out,

or is it just the same guys who were cutting down? And it didn't seem like there was an obvious answer there. And so, you know, like there are some lower strikeout guys who've come into the league, but also some guys who were there have struck out less. So yeah, it's encouraging. I think it's very good. Maybe the maybe there were older strikeout guys and then they got their AARP card and they're like, oh my gosh, look at all the benefits. I get to save how much when I rent a car? My gosh. I should just join. It could also be that it's all Luis Arise. Speaking of arresting the rise, Arise is part

of this himself. Arresting the rise, Arise, arrest, I can't make that work, but I'm gonna keep trying. Sounds close, but we got an email from listener Keith who drew our attention to Luisa Rise's strikeout rate where my attention has often been drawn, but we haven't talked about it this year, I don't think. And Keith said, I'm sorry if this has been addressed

recently, but I don't think. And Keith said, I'm sorry if this has been addressed recently, but I don't think anyone is talking about the season Luisa Rice is having. The following statements are true, at least according to fangraphs.com. And that means you can trust those stats. Luisa Rice is striking out at a 2.1% clip. Tony Gwynne never had a K rate below 2.6%.

It's been over 60 years since someone has struck out this little. This feels like an exciting race to watch. I'm imagining a world where this race to not strike out is analogous to Joe Dee's hitting streak. We all check the papers every day to see if a rise didn't strike out, but instead no one is talking about it unless they are. And if so, please direct me to that conversation. So I have seen people talking about a rise, but not necessarily about how low his strikeout rate is, even for Luisa Rise's previously established standards. And it really is extraordinary,

because Keith included some stats about just the lowest strikeout rates of all time. But I like to look at K percentage plus, which you can also find at fangraphs.com. And that is that is your strikeout rate relative to the league. And I know that there was a season when I tracked this and I was monitoring, could Luis Arise have the lowest K percentage plus ever? And he didn't end up doing that, but he is right now like really making a run at that

because in the modern era for a qualified hitter, like this season, Luis Arise's K percentage plus, it shows up as 10 on fan graphs. Cause he's, I mean, I just said the league wide rate is 21.9%, he's at 2.1%. He's like a 10th of the league rate. That's unbelievable. If you export to a spreadsheet,

then you get this out to many decimal places. And it turns out to actually be 9.5 is his K percentage plus if we need that level of specificity. But the only qualified hitter ALNL modern era, I mean, you know, post 19th century who has had a lower K percentage plus than Luis Arise currently has is Joe Sewell, who is a notable non-strikeout guy in the 20s, the 30s, and he bested this figure three times. So 1932, 1933, 1921, but barely, barely better than Arise is right now. Like his K percentage plus was 7.5, 9.2, 9.5.

So Luis Arise is the most strikeout averse hitter since Joe Sewell, and he's even close to Joe Sewell. He's better than Nelly Fox now when it comes to not striking out even relative to the league. Now, this may not be good for his overall productivity, which has also been lower. Yeah. See the prior discourse about Luisa Rice. Yeah.

I often find the Luisa Rice conversation tiresome because it's... Baffling. Yeah. It seems to me to be largely straw man based, because I don't find that that many people think that Luis Arise is an immensely valuable player. And yet you have these saber types who were like pushing back against the perception that Luis Arise is like an amazingly valuable guy.

And I don't think that many people have that perception. I think people typically understand what Luis Arise is. He's a high average hitter and not much else. Just a high contact guy that's his one just extreme skill and AD tool and he doesn't do a lot else, which is perfectly fine. I mean, I love Luis Arise. I find him highly entertaining. I'm glad an outlier like him exists.

And also I can hold the idea in my head that he's not an immensely valuable player. He's, you know, he's been a pretty good player. He's been very playable. He's been worth starting. He's an above average player in past seasons. But yeah, like if this were still the 80s or something, maybe people would really be pumping him up

just because he's batted 350 or whatever and, oh, he must be amazing. I don't get the sense that that many people are thinking that these days. So what are we worrying over? Why does Luis Arriz have to be a culture war? Can we not just enjoy him for what he is? But I do. Anyway, like last year he struck out 4.3% of the time. He has more than halved that this year. And he's barely been a league average hitter. And he's not on track for

a batting title currently, though I would not at all be surprised if he ends up winning another one with yet another team, but you know, he's been a replacement level player, according to Fandrath's War. So the entertainment value certainly outstrips the value value, but that's okay. I want him to be good enough that he can continue to play, obviously, and he's like worth starting,

but I don't get the sense that he's really been that overrated. I mean, yeah, we pay more attention to him than we would for an equivalently valuable player who had a more generic skill set, but I think that is appropriate. I also find the conversation around him somewhat confounding and I feel bad because some of the people whose responses to it, I find the silliest are friends of ours. But like, it's like, what did Louise do to you, Mike? Like, it's just like, got this, got this, being as bonnet about it. I do think that like it takes people and by people, I mean fans, a little while to readjust to current performance.

Updating your priors can take a little bit. So I'm sure that there are folks out there whose vision of Luis Arriz is him from a couple of years ago when, if you look at his war production pretty much anywhere, he was a legitimately quite valuable player. He wasn't Aaron Judge, but he was a good player. I think often miscast in the field, but a very good hitter and a valuable one. But I think that most people's reaction and affection for Luisa Rice is a stylistic one. And this question really points to why because as we have talked about many times on the pod, it is nice when you have sort of biodiversity in the ecosystem. And we live in a time of baseball where there can be a lot of the same kind of guy doing

the same kind of thing to varying degrees of success. But I want there to be Luis Arreza's in the same way that I want there to be Aaron Judges and I want there to be Jose Altuve's. Now I'm imagining the front cover of Multiplicity, except it's like baseball players. It's just like, oh boy, there are so many of them. You could make an entire team out of Aaron Judges. To be clear, I think that if one is given the option between making an entire team out of clones of Aaron Judge and an entire team out of clones of Luis Arizis, you should pick

the judges every time. That's a better mix, even if you strike out a good bit more. I still think on balance, that's the value proposition. Now I'm imagining Aaron Judge catching. I didn't have that much coffee. I don't know why I'm so peppy today. I'm really tired. Maybe I'm like a toddler, you know, where you pass over into being hyper because you're so exhausted. You're overtired. I'm overtired. I am overtired. Anyway, I think that

like most people's affection for him is like this is an aesthetic that we don't see in the game very often. This is a style of offense that has been phased out for the most part and for good reason if one understands like the purpose to be value generation on the field. But it's nice to have guys like this because it gives you something else to look at. It gives Luis Arriz a fairly narrow path to being a playable big leaker. And when he has a season like this, you can see how the wheels can come off. And if you're not hitting for as high an average as he has historically, you might get yourself in a position where even setting aside the defense, you're like either underwater or just barely at, you know, replacement level.

So I don't think that the 286 batting average version of him is either as fun to watch from an aesthetic difference perspective or as valuable quite obviously, but the idea of there being a guy who, you know, hits 350, who challenges for 400 for a lot of the year, and like, you know, has an ISO around 100, that's fun. Like, it's fun to have. I don't want the whole league to be made out of that guy, but I want there to be a couple of those guys floating around. Because at some point you're like, must we bop?

We must bop always? No, sometimes we do not feel like we want to bop. We are overtired. We would like to hit a respectable single, you know, a working man's single. Yeah. Yep. Maybe he's taken it too far. Dan Szymborski had a post on him a little while back about how he has entered the contact rate death spiral.

Yeah. Maybe he's swinging, making a little bit too much contact even for him. But even for him. I'm now kind of invested in this race. So thank you to Keith for bringing this to our attention again. And we will monitor this and see,

track the chase to track down Joe Sewell in K percentage plus. Now, one hitter who is not contributing to this decrease in strikeouts is James Wood. He was walked four times intentionally the other day by the Angels. And the Angels are an outlier when it comes to intentionally walking people, which I wanna get to that in a second.

But Davy Andrews just wrote about this for Fangraphs. Alexandra Whitley wrote about this for Baseball Prospectus. And there's like a small group of guys who have been intentionally walked four times in a game or five times in Andre Dawson's case. Yeah. It's like a dozen guys and, you know, it happened to Barry Bonds, of course, multiple times, but this does not happen very often. And all of the conditions are arrayed against it happening

in 2025. And as Alexandra noted at BP, Wood has some added degree of difficulty on account of fewer intentional walks in this era, fewer lengthy extra inning games, because some of those four free pass games were just extra long ones, the kind that we don't really get in the Zombie Runner era, no desirable pitcher spots for opponents to target. That was a big thing, of course, if you were batting eighth. I mean, maybe you weren't going to be intentionally walked four times in a game if you were batting eighth usually, but like Gary Templeton, that probably applied to him because if there was an almost automatic out batting ninth,

then there were more intentional walks. And none of the intentional walks against Wood were cases where, say, the pitcher fell behind 3-0 and just decided to put him on. They were all just proactive free passes. They were all when he came to the plate. There were no real pitches thrown. And so, Alexander concluded,

"'If you use those conditions, you can pretty quickly narrow this down to the most respect shown to a non-Barry Bonds hitter since Roger Maris or maybe ever. And I guess it sort of worked more or less. I think the Angels lost that game, but not because they kept putting James Wood on. There was one run scored in these situations,

which came on a fielder's choice on an inning ending double play. So James Wood or the hitters behind James Wood did not really make the Angels pay for this decision-making, but this is wild that they decided to do this. Like teams aren't doing this to air and judge and for this to happen to James Wood, who is very good as we have discussed,

but he's not on that level where it would make sense seemingly analytically to do that. And as Davey chronicled at Fangrass, it's not like he had some stiffs batting behind him either. And Davey ran the numbers on like the differential between the hitter who was walked a lot and who was batting behind them. And it's not that extreme.

Like Luis Garcia Jr. and Ahmed Rosario were batting behind Wood in this case. And okay, that's not like great lineup protection, but those guys are decent hitters. So it's really incredible that this happened. And it wasn't even Ron Washington because Ron Washington is now out for the season, seemingly dealing with a medical issue. This was Ray Montgomery, who is the Angels' interim manager. And so, man, we've had so many just weird Angels managerial decisions

with a number of different managers. So you might've thought this would be a wash thing, but no, I guess, Ray Montgomery carrying on the tradition. It does suggest sort of an organizational philosophy right now that it hasn't shifted around. It's so bizarre. I just find it so, so strange. I can't account for it. I understand. I'm not one of those people who thinks there's never a time when it's strategically prudent to intentionally walk someone.

I think we know that there are, and I also think that there are a lot of, not maybe a lot, there are cases where it's like the math is pretty even, even if it tips slightly toward just make your guy face him and see what happens. And so I can understand there being times where even though it might not be like the sabrometrically obvious choice, a manager decides like for other reasons that they're going to do it, but like, it's a lot. It's really a lot. I also wonder, I don't know how you would quantify this. And I think that as with most of those things, batter skill is really just what matters the most.

But like, you wouldn't worry about pissing off everyone else like at a certain point. Aren't you saying you're a bunch of schmoes? What if they say, no, we are no schmoe. Yeah. We are not a schmoe. I guess they were in this specific instance when it came to getting revenge or proving their medal. But this has been a long term thing. The Angels

led the majors in intentional walks in 2023. That was still the Phil Nevin era. And they led the A's that year. And then last year with Wash, they were tied for the major league lead with the A's, but this year they have just lapped the league. The Angels have issued 30 intentional walks and the Mariners are second with 18. So this like has a percentage difference. That's like two thirds more intentional walks for the Angels.

That's, you know, just 67% more. And I did just quickly check and that would be the biggest percentage difference between the number one intentionally walking team and the number two intentionally walking team, at least ALNL going back to 1955, which was when intentional walks became official. So over that span, the average is just 11% more that the first place intentional

walking team, 11% more intentional walks than the second place team. And they're just 67% more. And I guess with the smaller numbers these days, it's easier maybe to outpace the second place team by a lot on a percentage basis. So the number two on that list would be 2022 when the A's, who also issue a lot of intentional walks over a long term, they outstrip Seattle by, I guess, 54% and then 2007, it was Atlanta over Houston, 44% in 2001, Milwaukee over Atlanta, 39% and then 2019 and 2023 in 1955.

But yeah, if this holds up, this would be the most that any team has ever been out of step with the rest of the league. And you know, it's like you name some of the other clubs that are high up there, like, I don't know that we have like a comprehensive theory of Dan Wilson as a manager, but like, you know, it's like WASH, Dan Wilson, these are guys of an era that isn't, you know, but like.

Big age difference between WASH and Dan Wilson, but yes. Big age difference between Wash and Dan Wilson, but yes. Big age difference, but you know what I. They are from an era when intentional walks were more common. More common, yes. But boy, what a thing, very strange. Wash is okay, I'm worried about Wash. Yeah, anyway, in other intentional walk news,

I saw that the Tampa Bay Rays as a franchise finally caught up with Barry Bonds in intentional walks. That was something that people tracked that I saw updates every now and then that the Rays, despite, you know, having many more plate appearances than Barry Bonds did in their history, Barry Bonds walked intentionally 688 times and the Rays just equaled that. They are now at 689 and it was like,

Barry Bonds did that in 12,600 plate appearances and the Rays were like 165,000. That's so funny. Yeah, anyway, that fun fact finally fell, but it was a good one. It was a stalwart. I saw that trotted out there many a time and now I guess we've got to retire it,

but a well-earned retirement for that fun fact. Yeah, what a thing though. That's like really something. A few other things we have to touch on here There were there were a few just weird fun fun facts and occurrences For instance the fact that will your brave of the Red Sox had an inside the park home run and a grand slam Yes Separate separate home runs in the same game. Yeah, I mean you could have an inside

But this was this was two different dingers. Feels weird even to call it inside the park or run a dinger. That almost implies over the fence to me. Yeah, I mean, it's just so rare to have inside the Parkers and triples these days with the way that parks are configured and base runners being conservative and everything. But Sarah

Langs had the stats. He is the sixth player on record to do that. And the first since Roger Maris in 1958. So it's, it's been a while. 1958 Roger Maris, Jim Tabor, 1939, Charlie Geringer, 1930, Everett Scott, 1923, and of course, Jaco Fields in 1890. Yeah, so that's pretty special. And I don't know, maybe Fenway is a good place to do that. What with the weird bounces and walls and, you know, balls can get away when an outfielder misplays one. There's almost in every case,

a misplay on it Inside the Park Home run. Almost always. It's very rare to have just sort of a straight, legitimate, like somehow you beat that out, even though no one screwed up. But still, Grand Slam Inside the Parker, that's an exclusive club. So that was a fun, notable occurrence. And then Sarah also had the stat. So there was a game, Orioles Rangers.

This was extra innings and it was a back and forth affair. Trevor Rogers of the Orioles and Jack Leiter of the Rangers both hit and they are of course pitchers and they both had plate appearances. And Sarah noted that this was the first game with the DH rule in place where each team had a primary position pitcher bat. And not just since the Universal DH was instituted, but since the DH was instituted in 1973.

And this is excluding Shohayotani games, of course. But yeah, I did not expect to see in the Universal DH era a pitcher for each team batting in the same game. And that hadn't even happened in a DH rule game going back to the beginning of the DH. So that's pretty special. Yeah, how about that? That's, yeah, that's quite odd.

Jaco's sounds like it should be like a really good sandwich shop, right? Yeah, I can see that. Gotta go to Jaco's, gotta it should be a really good sandwich shop, right? Like, yeah, I could see that. Got to go to Jaco's, got to get my Italian sub. You know, we need a, you'd probably call it a hoagie if you were at Jaco's. I bet Jaco's would be a hoagie kind of establishment, right? Maybe like a sporting goods store. I could see that too. Sure.

Yeah. Jaco's is also a good, I mean, like you wouldn't call an animal Jaco's, you just call it Jaco because that's the Jaco's is also a good I mean like you wouldn't call an animal Jaco's you just call it Jaco because that's the Jaco that's a cool That's a cool name for like a cat. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well Jaco. Yeah, it's Jaco What's going on with me today man? some kind of something I'm in some kind of something. Jaco's given name was John. John Joseph Fields, I think Jaco, vast improvement.

He was born in- Jaco. Wait. But he went by Jaco, not Jocos, right? I invented Jocos as the sandwich chef. Yes. Just to stay in my own brain for a second. There were a lot of Jocos back in the day.

We need to bring this back like Otto and Dietrich. I love it. Jockos. Jocko Fields, Jocko Thompson, Jocko Conlin. Two Jocko Conlins. Jocko Conlin times two. Yeah, Conlin with an A, Conlin with an O at the end. Jocko Halligan, Jocko Flynn. You know, maybe this had to do with the Irish representation in the game at the time.

I don't know, but yeah, Jocko's, Jocko. We need to bring back Jocko's. It's good for just an athlete. I mean, they're, for Jocko's it's not a bad, yeah. It's not a large, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, it does, it does, makes sense. It's more or less as much as two pitchers batting in a game in 2025 makes sense. Also, a weird thing that happened. I assume you saw this this Diamondbacks fan who reached over

the fence and I sure did Ben. Yeah, Diamondbacks Giants game. And there was a replay review and then it turned out that there was like a lot of lore about this fan. Yeah! He got involved here so this guy reached over the fence the Giants Christian Kass hit this ball and the guy reached over the fence and prevented the outfielder from catching it. Initially it was ruled a home run, but then they reviewed it and it was ruled a double because I guess they said it wasn't gonna go over the fence anyway. Well, and in between they ruled costs out.

So they, they conferenced, they ruled costs out, Bob Melvin lost his gourd, which like fair enough. And then they, they sent it to review and they determined that the fan had not interfered, but that it also wouldn't have been a home run. So he was placed at second base. Right. Yeah. And, and the Diamondbacks ended up winning and the game was over in short order after that. But then it turned out that this is a serial fan interferer. So this guy, people were digging into the archives and this guy has done this, I think at least five times.

He's done this, he's been involved. Four times that I saw. Yeah, well, he's been involved in an umpire review in four consecutive seasons. I think it may have been five total times, but people are like digging into the record here and he's everywhere. He's like, he's everywhere. He's like Zach Campbell or something, except I guess a little less obnoxious. Maybe he was, well, I don't know what his motivations are. I don't know if he's like, is he trying to help the team? Is he just trying to collect baseballs or what?

He was ejected from this game. He was ejected from this game. But I saw people saying, how has this guy not been banned if he's like doing this repeatedly? And I don't know whether it ultimately makes that much of a difference to the team's fortunes. Like, is he helping? Is he hindering? Does it not matter because we have replay review now anyway? It would be a little bit of a different proposition if he were doing this regularly

in a pre-replay era. But obviously he's jumping the gun here. He's a little too aggressive when it comes to reaching his glove over there. And I guess the stands are quite close there at Chase. Like there's no gap, obviously, between the fence and where the fans are really, as there is in some places. It's harder to do this in some parks, but he has really made a habit of this. So here's the thing about this that I don't care for. First of all, he practically fell into the field of this. So here's the thing about this that I don't care for. First of all, he practically fell into the field of play. Yeah, he fell over the fence this time.

Yeah, like he almost fell into the field of play. He didn't quite. So if you go back and watch and I have yesterday's up and I'm looking at it, I don't know what was said between them, but Alan Thomas comes over and has an interaction with this guy after the initial alleged interference. And it does not from a distance strike me as a particularly friendly interaction. And so I do wonder like, how aware of this guy these dudes are. And it could just, you know, it's a big moment.

It looked like interference to me. I can, I guess I understand why they eventually did not call it interference, but like, if this is an interference, it's as close as you can get without crossing the line. Cause he almost fell into the freaking field, you know? And so it's just like so far over into the field. It's wild how far over into the field he is. It's not about you, man. Like, no one's here to see you.

They're here to watch the baseball players. I don't want to pathologize this guy. I've never met him. Maybe he's a sweetheart. I don't know. But Iize this guy. I've never met him. Maybe he's a sweetheart. I don't know. But I did not care for this behavior. I think it sucks. And I think that you should just appreciate

that no one in the ballpark wants to remember the behavior of any fans at all, right? You want to go home and not have known about this guy. If you are at this game, you certainly want to go home and not know about this guy if you're one of the players. And so it's just it don't behave this way. This is bad. This is a bad way to behave in my in my opinion. And he's kind of like, like he's looking around like he's going to be applauded.

And if you look back at some of the prior incidents with this guy, sometimes it's with visiting players, but sometimes he's getting close to interfering on what would be, you know, plays involving the Diamondbacks. So what are, what are you? And he's like throwing it back and it's like, again, it's not about you, man. Like no one's there to... Yeah, he had a Dimebex shirt on. Yes.

But yeah, it's equal opportunity, I guess. And, and I don't know how old he is, but he's, he's a grown mature man. He's a grown person. Yeah. And he has a glove and I don't have a problem. There are some people who are like, Hey, you're a grownup. Don't bring a glove to a game. Yeah, I know.

I think it's fine. I mean, you know, it's sort of silly. Like what are the odds that, that, you're a grownup, don't bring a glove to a game. Yeah, I know. I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I mean, you know, it's sort of silly, like what are the odds that, but it connects you to a childhood tradition, maybe. Sure, I think that's fine. It's like, hey, you know, it's fine, but- But also-

Within reason, you know, like, have the glove in case the ball comes to you, but- Right. Don't go to it. Don't go get it. Yeah. I'd rather, when this happened, I was talking about it with someone last night and I was just like, I'd rather get hit in the face than engage Japan in your parents. And it's so wild to me.

I don't know. I'm not like a bashful person. We host a three time a week podcast. We talk a lot. I've never thought that anyone in a public place needs to engage with me this much. It's just like a completely foreign experience. I don't care for it.

Just, you're not on the team, man. Like, you're not there. You're not, that wall, it's not a big distance, but it's a large gap. We talked on Hang Up and Listen this week. We did a mid-season check-in on how things are going with the major league teams playing in minor league parks, the A's in the race. Mixed bag, obviously, I think going better for the A's in any number of ways than it

is for the A's. But a few notable things that came to my attention as I was prepping for that segment. So first of all, I think it speaks well of the fan appetite for Major League Baseball in 2025 that year over year attendance per game through the same point in the season is up this year compared to last year, despite the fact that two teams are playing in these very low capacity parks. Well, parks, yeah.

Yeah. It's barely up. It's up by 108 fans per game. But for it to be up at all, despite that, I think that's good. I agree. Granted, the A's were not drawing last year because they actively repelled their fans in Oakland. And the Rays are not the highest attendance team,

but they have still lost a lot of attendance. The Rays are the biggest decrease in per game attendance this year is the Rays, about 6,600 fans per game. The A's attendance is actually up on a per game basis because they had so poisoned the well in Oakland. Even though their attendance in West Sacramento, it's down since the start of the season,

even though kids are out of school and everything and that doesn't bode well. It's not even, it's now the hottest stretch of the year too. So, you know, that's not great. But I did notice as I was looking at this, that the biggest increases in year over year attendance per game are the Mets who are up by more than 12,000 fans. That's a lot.

Yeah. Those fans have not gone home happy a lot lately, but still they are number one, and the Tigers are number two. They're up by about 8,500. And that just goes to show, those were the two teams that finished last season in really exciting fashion,

and turned around their seasons, and made the playoffs, and then the Mets signed Juan Soto. And so the combination of signing a superstar and made the playoffs and then the Mets signed Juan Soto. Yeah, famously. So the combination, yeah, of signing a superstar and then finishing that season strong and making a run like that. And then the Tigers, too, finishing the season the way they did

and, you know, not going all out over the winter, but making some additions and, you know, scubalmania and all the rest. Like those two teams. And that's, that's what you want. That's what fans want. That's how you drum up interest and attention. And it's always nice to see that rewarded.

Yeah. And you know, teams play well and owners invest in their product to some extent. And then fans say, oh, hey, that seems like a pretty compelling product. I will support that. I will buy tickets. And so, you know, I don't know if that instantly pays for Juan Soto or not, but it certainly offsets the cost

and you're getting one of the best players in baseball as he has shown of late. So yeah, you want your attendance to go up and this may be more and more important, perhaps, as broadcast revenue stagnates, maybe, and attendance becomes, again, a bigger part of the revenue pie. Well, that's how you have to do it. Not that all 30 teams can be good at the same time,

and there's only one Juan Soto, but yeah, this is the carrot that you're aiming for when you spend and when you win. Yes, I think the fact that there is a so obvious seeming narrative here, right? You play well at the end, you get folks excited, you pay off that promise in the early going. And you're right, it's been a rough road for the Mets of late, but they spent much of the earlier part of the season before this skid in first place in their division.

They have Soto, they have all of the other exciting players who were already on their roster. And yeah, you want, you want there to, you know, these, I don't want to talk about owners like they're dummies, but like, make it obvious. Yeah. We spent some money on the team or in the Mets case, we spent a lot of money on the team and we're playing good competitive baseball generally, maybe not in this, again, in this immediate little stretch here, but like we're playing good competitive baseball. We have a lot of talent on the roster and people want to come out and see that talent. And I think that's wonderful.

And it's exciting when you see that, you know, in a city like New York where you have brought in this, you know, huge superstar within the game, you've spent all this money. It working out is good because you want the owners that have the kind of capacity that Steve Cohen has, which to be clear isn't all of them, to spend big. But it's also encouraging when you see this stuff in a smaller market. Detroit's not the smallest market that has a major league team by any means, but like it's an AL Central team and you know, presumably that's an easier division to win, but no, they're playing good baseball. As we've said, we don't need to like AL Central adjust the Tigers.

This is just a good team and you want to see those gains in, I think, mid markets too. So I think it's great. It's so exciting. Yeah. And on the flip side, the two teams that have lost the most per game attendance aside from the Rays are the Cardinals, who did nothing all off season and have maybe been more successful than you'd have expected, but did absolutely nothing to drum up interest or excitement. And the Orioles, who obviously are off to a very disappointing start, but also had sort of a disappointing off season.

So yeah, this narrative we've constructed, this works on the other end too. And just an update also on how those parks seem to be playing, because that was a question coming into the season. So the Rays playing at George M. Steinbrenner Field been basically neutral. And I guess it's kind of weird because they had a weird distribution of home games.

They front loaded their home games because famously wet and warm in Florida in the summer. And so they played a lot of home games earlier in the year when, when it was cooler. But overall it's been basically neutral. Whereas the A's and yes caveat, a half season of park factors is not enough. And usually we look at three full seasons, but this is all we have. We have a half season. So Sutter Health Park, park factor is right up there

tied with course fields to this point. So that's been that environment and now it's gonna get really hot there. So, you know, I know they're playing a lot of night games to compensate for that, but yeah, that has been a high offense park. There was some question cause a lot of people said, yeah, it's going to be an absolute band box.

And other people said, yeah, but the, the park factors actually, it was, it was a pretty picture friendly triple a park. And how will that translate to being a big league park? We don't know, but yeah, thus far it is translated to and this is not just because A's pitchers are bad. This is also comparing their performance and everyone's performance in that park to elsewhere. And it's been, it's been bad for A's pitchers in Sutter Health Park. Like you said, we, we don't know for sure like what it'll yield over a full season, but some of the, it's

actually a pitcher friendly park. And it's like, well, yeah, in the context of the PCL, it was pitcher friendly. And that doesn't mean that it can't genuinely be pitcher friendly. But I do think that sometimes that part of the caveat got forgotten too, where it's like, you know, that entire league plays in fricking band boxes and Sutter Health was less bad than the others, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be good, good. And it's been, in fact, bad, bad, you know? Yep. Bad, bad.

Yeah. And the conditions and safety and accommodations and everything, there have been many more complaints about Sutter Health Park than George M. Steinbrenner Field. and safety and accommodations and everything. There have been many, yeah, many more complaints about Sutter Health Park than George M. Steinbrenner Field. In Tampa, it seems like the issues have been, the only really like safety kind of concern I've heard is that there's just very little foul territory and you can run right into the stands. But aside from that, it seems like the complaint has been

because there's no third deck, it's a minor league park, spring training park, the winds swirl and blow in and it can get wriggly-esque and also the lights are not great by big league standards. And so that is probably why it has played fairly neutral despite, you know, having the same dimensions as, as Yankee Stadium. Right. I mean, Yankee Stadium has been also fairly new neutral this season at least, but yeah, you might've expected that park to play higher offense too, but there are other factors that

make it tougher for offense, but Sutter Health, obviously even Luis Severino is saying that it's just not a big league stadium and is reportedly maybe on the market. Maybe he would have been anyway, but it seems like you guys aren't thrilled with that, but he is speaking his mind and not walking it back. Now, I don't know what he expected when he signed a three-year deal to play there in December, like, you know, cause his complaints

are about like the atmosphere. It doesn't seem big league. He also has noted like, you know, the walk to the clubhouse. He can't watch the game between innings when he's pitching because he'd have to walk all the way to the outfield. And also it's not air conditioned out in the clubhouse, which seems ridiculous if that's not. That seems, yeah. But unless they really misled him about the upgrades that they were going to make, it was never really going to be a

big league park. And he did sign up for that. So if it, if it went beyond that and part of it, he's just, he's pitched poorly there compared to on the road. Actually both the Rays and the A's have worse records and run differentials at home than they do on the road. So there really hasn't been a home field advantage for either of them. But there have been visiting players who have complained about the mound being bad in Sacramento, about the batter's box being bad. Maybe that it's even an injury risk potentially.

I think Joe Ryan intimated that maybe Pablo Lopez's injury could have been related to pitching there and Zach Wheeler, the aforementioned Zach Wheeler said it was like, you know, cement the mound, the dirt is bad. Carlos Correa said it was the worst batter's box he's ever seen. So that's not good. But yeah, if the complaint is more about like the atmosphere and where the clubhouse is, that was known, I guess, when Luis Severino signed. Like I don't blame him for maybe having signers remorse

or he gets there and it's like, oh, this does actually suck. But it was kind of clear that it was going to suck probably. So I've seen a lot of people like kind of taking the piss out of him for this comment. And what he should have done was he should have called Joe Ryan and been like, yo, I have something to say about this, but I shouldn't be the one to say it. So can you?

He should have laundered his complaints through an opposing pitcher. Yeah, I appreciate that he didn't though. And he said some of his teammates felt the same way, even if they weren't saying so explicitly, but you know, to have an A going on records and you know, even if it's a guy who chose to play there, like still to highlight that, you know, with everything that's going on in Vegas or not going on, they had this for show groundbreaking, which was just sort of a farce with rented moving equipment and you know, there's just like more than a billion short of the funding there.

And so, yeah, like you can sell your MLS team and try to sell minority shares and A's, but he's, Fisher's going to have to make good on saying, yeah, my family's going to kick in a billion here. Cause I just, as of now, at least there's a big difference between and, and like the costs are increasing, not just, I mean, tariffs and everything else, it's making everything more expensive. And so the, the estimates for how much that park is going to cost have gone up. That's just, that's a mess.

So this is even more relevant because you could say 2028, they'll be out of there, but that park is vaporware as of now. I, so yeah, I saw a lot of people kind of given Severino a hard time about this. And sure, there's like, what were you expecting component to it? Certainly. And, you know, Severino got paid and arguably maybe got paid a little above market in part because of his willingness to go there. But I don't know, man, like you think that you can bear hypothetical indignities for a long time and then you're living in it every day and you're like, that sucks.

And I'm sure that his experience of it is being heightened by the fact that like he is not pitching particularly well. The team isn't doing super great. You know, I think that if the A's were in a position where they were like, you know, challenging for a wild card spot or whatever, that the reaction would be different. The atmosphere there would be different.

The vibe within the clubhouse would probably be more positive. If to your point, we knew like, oh my gosh, they're going to act like they really broke ground on the new park and we're only gonna be here for so long. Like that impression of it might change things. Although Seferino probably wouldn't be on that team anyway. But living in it every day. I mean, I've heard,

I don't think that this has factored into the reports of it quite as much. And fair enough, because who cares about us really, but the press box is tiny. Their accommodations for an Oxbox are pretty paltry. So it's not a serious thing. Having a big league team play there isn't serious. Some of the issues that they're having, I think, were anticipatable, but others, there's really not air conditioning in the clubhouse. Seriously? That seems like a union issue. Isn't that a grievance? What's going on out there? That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. This was going to be a mess from the jump. I think that we collectively wanted there

to be some charm to it. The idea of a big league team having a season or two in a minor league park as they deal with renovation or, you know, a situation like the Rays emerges where really no fault of their own, right? Like the fact there was this unresolved ballpark situation, certainly, but the reason that they're playing there isn't because they couldn't come together with the county or the city. It's because of a hurricane You know, that's not their fault But every misstep with the A's Could have been avoided if you'd had a different owner if the situation had changed if there had been better concessions

So yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I'm rooting for I mean I'm rooting for him to sell the team that the answer to all of this is for this guy to just sell the team and let someone who actually has the resources or the willpower to invest in it the way it deserves to do that. I want better for the players of that club and for the people associated with the team that aren't John Fisher, but I don't really want them to break ground in Vegas either because it doesn't make sense to put a big league ballpark in that city. It just doesn't, you know? So it's a real pickle.

That's a real mess. Yeah. Even though the Rays situation is also unsettled long-term, they will hopefully be back in the trap if it's repaired in time for next year. Whereas the A's are stuck where they are at least for a few years seemingly. So it's going to continue to be a problem. Yeah. And it will continue to be reflecting poorly on the league that it let this happen. And Rob Manfred has talked about his legacy as he prepares to retire after this current term. Yeah. And he said that expansion, which it's been a long time since expansion, the longest time

without an expansion since expansion started, he said that they have to get this A's and R's situation settled and it is still not. Now, speaking of Rob Manfred, he spoke and that's rarely a good thing. So we have more to say about some comments that Rob Manfred made that were reported this week by Evandrelic over at the Athletic, but we probably have too much to say to shoehorn this in at the end of an episode. So we'll save that for next time, but Rob, we're coming for you.

Yeah. Okay, a few quick things. I looked up that 2023 game in which Shohei Otani pitched to Vinny Pasquentino and the hardest pitch Shohei threw in those matchups was 98.7 miles per hour and then after that 96.8 so he doesn't seem to have had it out for him on that day. Also we talked about the league-wide strikeout rate declining slightly. The league-wide three true outcomes rate percentage of played appearances made up of walks strikeouts and home runs 33.4 percent so far this season that would be the lowest since 2016

I don't think there's a big seasonality effect to strikeout rate It doesn't change that much over the course of the season home run rate might rise But the walk rate hasn't budged that much strikeouts are down a bit and even the home run rate is down from its highs So more balls and play arises TTO percentage this season is seven point six percent that much, strikeouts are down a bit, and even the home run rate is down from its highs. So more balls and play. Arise's TTO percentage this season is 7.6%, so about 23% of the league average. Also when we talked about the Diamondbacks fan who keeps interfering, I meant to mention an update on the Catel-Martet situation.

Still unclear to me exactly what was said by that fan that brought Marte to tears or what the intent was at least Marte said in an interview a fan was up on the dugout shouting things about my mother He was like last night. I sent a message to your mother. He also said we have to do something about the fans They're going too far. They always shout things about me, but not about my mother. Everyone knows that my mother died in an accident They always shout things at me, but I don't't pay attention but when they talk about my mother it's a different story understandable I wouldn't say that everyone knows that Marte's mother died in an accident so it still seems possible that this was just a generic comment from the fan to Marte that touched a nerve with Marte

understandably but I don't know maybe we won't know that's fine the nice follow-up to this was that when Marte returned to Chase Field, he got a great response from the fans. Standing ovation, very supportive, and he got choked up again, but this time for a good reason. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Ashley Braban, Alex Clark, Jeff Tripodi,

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or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. How can you not be predented? A stat blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death, but we're sure to make you smile.

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