Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2345: Amazing Stories

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Brandon Woodruff and the minor medical miracle of players returning from significant injuries to be big leaguers again, the likelihood of players becoming or repeating as all-stars, Clayton Kershaw as an honorary all-star, the end (for now) of the Pete Alonso Home Run Derby era and the Derby’s […]

Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, How can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically Cross-check and compile, find a new understanding Non-effectively, why though, can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Hello and welcome to Episode 2345 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's,

presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraph's Hello Meg. Hello. I was just struck by a thought, and I don't know whether it was profound or dumb. The line between the two can be quite thin sometimes. But I was thinking, I'm amazed that more injuries

aren't career ending. And I thought of this because of Brandon Woodruff, who returned to the Brewers the other day, and pitched like vintage Brandon Woodruff, basically. Almost two years after he hurt his shoulder, pitching in Miami against the Marlins, he comes back pitching in Miami against the Marlins, and he shut them down for six innings,

and he struck out eight and he wasn't throwing quite as hard at least initially, though he got some of that speed back as the game went on, but he gave up two hits and one run on a solo homer and didn't walk anyone and that was that. And it kind of amazes me because that injury that he had could have been career ending, maybe in an earlier era would have been shoulder surgery,

always scary, repair the anterior capsule, missed a ton of time, obviously. And it always has seemed to me that the margins must be so small in the majors that you can't afford to slip that much. You can't afford to lose much of your true talent, your tools, because if you do, someone else will be clambering up behind you

trying to take your job. So I've always thought, well, the margins must be razor thin. And if you suffer some serious injury, all it would take is just lose a couple ticks, just lose a little range of motion, whatever it is. You lose almost two years of pitching experience. Other guys are honing their craft, they're playing their trade, they're getting better

at things. And you're just sitting there at least least for a while, weaker than you were. And it's kind of incredible that we almost take it for granted that so many guys just return from such serious injuries to make it back to that elite level, if not necessarily their prior level. And even if, you know, even if you weren't worried about the performance piece of it, right? Like, even if you could be assured that you would be able to return just like the time lost not only from a developmental perspective, but like other guys are just available.

They're entrenching themselves in the roster. They're you know, they're becoming your guys. And like at a certain point, are you gonna let go one of your guys for a guy you're less sure about it? It is kind of remarkable that it isn't a bigger problem. Now it does seem as if shoulder injuries are more reliably career altering for guys at this point than say the elbow. And depending on which elbow, not like which one of your two, but like which revision you're on.

But yeah, it's pretty amazing. I think that I get much more nervous for shoulder stuff than I do for elbows at this point. And you just don't know that it's not like you have boundless, endless time as a pro athlete, even if you manage to avoid injury altogether. So yeah, it's pretty surprising, I guess. It does seem like shoulder injuries have gotten less common, but more serious relative to elbow injuries. And maybe that's because of shoulder strengthening methods

and preventative measures that teams can take now, where the weak point in the kinetic chain has migrated down to the elbow so something is going to spring and maybe it's going to be your elbow instead of your shoulder. And I guess that's better in some ways because as you said, it's maybe more reliably repairable, but then it's not good either way. No, to be clear. Yeah.

I think given your druthers, you'd prefer to not have any sort of injury at all, but that doesn't seem to be the reality for many a pitcher. So I don't know whether to be more amazed by, let's see, I guess the things that amaze me about this, because people are hampered by injuries just in regular life, right? Like people will suffer some recreational injury and they're not even professional athletes or anything, but they'll still feel some ill effects from that. They'll feel some twinge.

It'll bother them in their recreational softball league or whatever it is, right? Or just doing household chores. And so that's why it just strikes me as improbable that so many guys can come back from this or UCL replacements or knee repairs or whatever it is. These are pretty serious injuries for an athlete one would think. So I guess I've got to give credit to in some order,

the surgeons, human ingenuity, just for figuring out how to fix these things, which in the past, many of them would not have been fixable. Probably Brandon Woodruff's entry, everyone who has a Tommy John surgery, various knee replacement tendons, et cetera. A lot of these things just would have been career ending at a certain point.

So some of it is science. Science has triumphed over the frailties of the human body. And then some of it, I guess, obviously goes to the athletes themselves and the hard work that they put in and the way that they dedicate themselves to this. And then I guess I got to hand it to the human body for being able to repair itself at least to some extent. I guess, you know, some of these injuries would not really be fully repairable just on their own.

They do require surgical intervention. It's not just a rest and rehab, rub some dirt on it sort of injury, but human body also pretty good that we have evolved to be able to fix ourselves because the alternative would be pretty bad if we just accumulated injuries with no capacity to recover from them whatsoever. We're not as good as like the lizards who can regrow things, but you know, we're not

bad, I guess we can come back from some stuff. There's a limit to our recuperative powers. I mean, there is a limit to our recuperative powers. And you know, it changes over time, right? Where like you get to a point where you're just like, oh, this is my body now. They're not going to tell me to fix this. They're going to tell me how to live with it, right? You get into the live in with it phase of your life. It's humbling.

I think I have, I don't know if I have the beginnings of arthritis or if I tweaked a tendon or a nerve or if I have tennis elbow or what, but like I think I've been undone by editing and not in my dominant hand, in my left hand. It's like my last two fingers on my left hand are like kind of twingy. I had something like that too.

I talked about that on a bonus pod actually, just like a little nerve thing where there was some numbness. Yeah. It's mostly gone away. I think again, the human body has risen to the task and has kind of repaired itself. But that is something that,

yeah, you can get surgery for that if it's the same thing that I had, but it's not serious. And it usually doesn't really get worse, and it's just kind of mildly annoying, and hopefully will just get better on its own. But it can be, yeah, if it's something where you're putting your elbows on your desk a lot, or you're typing, or something is not ergonomic enough.

These are the hazards of the editor writer, podcaster profession. Yeah. There's all this doubt of the laptop class, but here we are, here we are getting heard at work. Yeah. But yeah, I think you do, you're kind of apportioning credit to the right folks. And I think that this is maybe a place where I don't know that I want to speak to like Woodruff's conditioning in particular, because I don't think that he was like especially bad or especially poor.

But it's like, this is where the fact that these guys are in better baseline shape earlier in their careers than they've probably ever been. I do wonder if there's sort of a benefit to that that we're not always thinking of, right? Because you're able to sort of launch into recovery for whatever injury you have from a more sort of physically sound baseline, you know? So I suspect that that has something to do with it too. But yeah, how these guys approach their rehab process I think makes a big difference. We kind of make fun of the like, Jack, like we're going to attack our rehab. But it's true.

And not all of them end up coming out the other side of that looking better. I think about this as a very different kind of guy and a different injury too. But like, you know, Yuri Perez is back now and he was like this such a string bean, right? When he was a prospect, we were like concerned, we're like, he's going to break. And then like, turned out they did. But have you, have you watched any of his starts for Miami since he's returned? You look at him and you're like, wow, you got stronger during your rehab process. You used that opportunity seemingly to really, not remake your body, but just add good weight and muscle.

And he looks fortified and in a positive way, right? And not every guy emerges having been transformed and not every guy needs to. But I do think that how you start and then how you sort of work through that process, it can make a big difference in your ability to come back, you know, either as yourself as you were or potentially a better version of you. I guess in Perez's case, maybe that would have happened anyway, just because he was so young. Right, yeah.

The man strength might have happened just in the course of normal events. But it's true that sometimes the rehab can get you in better shape than you were, which is why there's sometimes the illusion or the belief that you come back from a surgery throwing harder, which typically is not the case. It can be the case if you compare to immediately prior to the injury, where maybe you were feeling the effects of that. And yes, you can strengthen yourself in other ways,

potentially, as you are in the rehab process, but it's not necessarily that you got the fresh ligament and now you're back and better than ever. But yeah, I do consider it a minor miracle have processed, but it's not necessarily that you got the fresh ligament and now you're back and better than ever. But yeah, I do consider it a minor miracle every time someone comes back from, from one of these things. So we'll take what we can get to celebrate because the other thing is that, yeah, you can come back better from a conditioning perspective.

But one of the things that players compensate for declining skills, even in the absence of an injury, if they're just getting old and losing bit by bit, they can compensate by getting wilder. They have the benefit of experience. And they just know how to make the most of whatever skills remain to them. And you'd think that just not being able to pitch for a couple years would sort of hamstring your improvement in that area. Maybe not, because I guess you're still around the game and you can still study stuff

and you can think about what you would do better. But to the extent that players still learn from experience as opposed to just getting the data just imported into their brains directly now. Right. Then you'd think that it would be better to be playing continuously than to be not playing for a sustained period of time during which

maybe there's like a mental break and breather and that can be beneficial or maybe it could help the rest of your body, less wear and tear, but you're not really learning as much as you would be, as everyone else is learning while they're pitching and you're just sitting idle. So that's just another thing

that makes it kind of amazing to me. But then again, it used to amaze me that players could get to the big leagues at all and then have a higher gear. That's kind of why I co-wrote a book about player development, because it kept amazing me that, wait, you know, you mean Rich Hill could be good enough to get to the big leagues, but then suddenly he discovers something about himself or Justin Turner or JD Martinez or whoever it is. Like they're, they're already at the pinnacle of their profession. They're already among the best of the best. And yet it turns out that they weren't even maximizing that latent talent.

Cause I just always used to think that, man, you must have to scratch and claw to get there. It's so competitive that you must have to absolutely bring every last shred of ability out of your body that you can. And then it turns out that no, a lot of guys get there and they're like, oh wait, I could be way better than this actually. So that never ceases to amaze me either. I'm just amazed by everything. I'm just observing my environment, just constantly gobsmacked. This is the closest you've ever come to sounding like Stone or Ben.

Yeah. It's like so incredible, man. Yeah. Well, people can decide for themselves whether this turned out to be profound or dumb or a bit of both. But yes, speaking of pictures returning from injuries, I just wanted to. I thought you were going to say, speaking of recreational cannabis, anyway. I saw some research from Neil Payne at his Substack, which aptly enough is called Neil's Substack,

and he did some research about the return rates for All-Stars. So most of the All-Stars were just announced, and then we get the all-star snubs, and then we get the, oh, all the snubs ended up being all-stars anyway, round of conversation, which we mostly tend to skip here on this podcast. But Neil looked at the return rates and like what increases your odds of coming back to the all-star game next year if you're in it this year,

or future all-star games down the road. And obviously if you're younger, then that helps. And if you're better, then that helps. And if you've been better in the past, then that helps also. But one of the big predictors is just, are you a batter or a pitcher? Oh. Yeah. So Shohei Otani, I guess, tends to split the difference in these things.

Though this year, he'll have to settle for just being a one-way all-star, I suppose, but I know. What a loser. Yeah, if you were an all-star batter, Neil found going back to 1990, then your odds of making the following year's all-star game are 41.5%, I guess technically those aren't odds, those are probabilities. But you know what I mean. If you're an All-Star pitcher,

then your chances are just 28.5%. So merely by being a batter, you are such a better bet to be back in the All-Star Game, which I guess doesn't really surprise people probably because it's just always better to bank on batters, primarily because of injuries that tend to strike pitchers and when they strike, they take them out of commission for quite some time. So that's really the reason probably, but still it's a stark difference. Yeah. I would imagine that injuries are really sort of driving the bus there.

And then, you know, the pitcher population includes relievers and they are famously more volatile from a performance perspective. So you can imagine there being bigger swings season to season. But yeah, it makes sense to me that I think that once you've been an All-Star, and look, I don't want to make anyone who is the lone representative of their team because their team has to have one feel bad, so I'm not going to name any names, but I think that those people sort of accept it and we know who they are. I think that since there is a fan voting component to the whole thing, Once you've been an all-star, I do think it

takes a little bit of time for people to sort of accurately or dispassionately assess your performance, which isn't to say that like every repeater is undeserving or anything like that, but you can imagine there being a fall off and then maybe someone kind of sneaks in because in the collective imagination of fans, they are an all-star. So like, of course they should be there because they're an all-star, but maybe they're not playing like an all-star.

This is perhaps my way of trying to be a little bit nicer to Petriello about the Luis Araya stuff because people maybe haven't let go of a particular version of him. And I don't know if I allowed for that enough in that conversation. But yeah, I think that you end up with a good number of repeats, but then you get the first time or is it so fun? I don't care about selections in and of themselves most of the time, not

anymore. I've been sassy about it in the past because sometimes the guy who should get in, he doesn't get in as an injury replacement, and then you have to prepare to riot and gnash your teeth. But generally I don't care much, but it does seem to really mean something to these guys. Uh, a lot of the time, although sometimes Ben, I suspect that they wish they could just go on vacation. I do. I do suspect that sometimes they're like, great. I'm an all star. Yes.

And I suspect that sometimes they do decide to go on vacation. Sometimes they're like, great, I'm an all star. Yes. And I suspect that sometimes they do decide to go on vacation. That does happen too sometimes, but I get it. Oh, you mean like the injuries. I think they still have to go though, don't they? Don't they have to go now if they've been named and they say they're injured? Don't they at least have to participate in all the hullabaloo? I don't know.

I feel like they're around a lot of the time. Maybe they just decide to go. Yeah. If they want to go, then they go. But I don't think it's like they'll drag you to the All-Star, kicking and screaming, just put you on a plane. I don't think that's going to happen. Yeah. Perhaps not. But I think that there is something to what you're saying, just like the halo effect of having been an All-Star even once.

Because I know that I felt that way when I was a kid, and I would collect baseball cards, and I would have special dedicated binders or sleeves within the binders for All-Stars. And sometimes... That's so nice. Yeah, sometimes the card would say All-Star, or maybe sometimes I would just know that they were an All-Star,

but that to me, that was like a binary difference. You either were an All-Star or you weren't. And I knew less about baseball back then than what provides value, perhaps, and maybe the All-Star selectors did too, but it was a meaningful difference to me. It was just an All-Star. Even a one-time all-star. You can just call yourself an all-star forever.

That'll be kind of in your baseball obits when you hang them up. Someone will inevitably mention that you were an all-star. Even if it was kind of... Now, sometimes if you were like a notorious fluke of an all-star, like you had a hot first half and then you were like a notorious fluke of an All-Star, like you had a hot first half and then you were never good again. Or yeah, you were just on a terrible team and you were the only person who was having a half decent season.

Then sometimes it doesn't burnish your credentials quite to the same extent because you're almost remembered for being a perhaps less than traditionally deserving All-Star. But for the most part, I think it's a nice thing to hang your hat on. I will say that as much as we might be able to identify those folks sort of in the moment, and I think that we can, I don't think we remember that particularly well.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm not, well, first of all, I'm not gonna remember who the White Sox All-Star selection,, I'm not going to remember who the White Sox All-Star selection was it Shane Smith was Shane Smith, the White Sox All-Star selection. See, I did remember. Look at me. Look at me, Ben. But I'm not going to remember six months from now that Shane Smith was the White Sox All-Star

selection. And 10 years from now, you know, depending on the kind of career he has, I'm not going to see one All-Star selection for Shane Smith and then immediately go, oh, it's because he was on one of those crummy white socks teams. I might remember that for the Rockies this year just because, oh boy, is it still not good. But I don't know. I don't, I can't even tell you who it is.

Can't even tell you who it is right now, Ben. Who's the, is it? Wait, wait, I'm going to guess. Can I guess? I think I know. Do you know? You should look it up and I'm going to guess. I'm going to. wait, I'm gonna guess, can I guess? I think I know. Do you know?

You should look it up and I'm gonna guess. I'm gonna. Yeah, I know. This is fun because it's also an exercise and does Megan know who is on the Rockies right now? Is it Hunter Goodman? It is indeed, yeah. Yeah, Hunter Goodman.

Look, see, Goodman, there you go. It's right in the name. Yeah. Oh, no, Goodman. Look at, see, Goodman. There you go. It's right in the name. Makes it easy. Lived up to his billing. A very light case of nominative determinism, maybe. But yeah, I might remember Shane Smith just because he is the second Rule 5 pick ever to be an All-Star. Oh.

In the season when he was a Rule 5 selection. Right, right, right. Yeah, not ever, ever. Right, right, right. Yeah, not ever, ever. Yeah, after Dan Uggla, who did it in 2006. So that's pretty special. Now I am going to remember. That's memorable.

Now I'm going to remember. That's memorable. And what a nice thing, you know? It's a good story for them and they need some of those. They don't have a lot. You know, they're kind of thin on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. I almost, speaking of the modern day Marlins, I almost took away from Brandon

Woodruff's return by saying that it was against the Marlins. Maybe I implied that, but you know what? The Marlins have been playing better of late. They've been playing like a legitimate major league team. There are worse teams out there. There are worse teams in the NL East even. We'll talk about one of them soon. I can't believe we haven't gotten there already, but we had to like smoke a little weed and these are where you're at. Yep, yep. And also, while we're talking about All-Star festivities,

it is the end of an era because Pete Alonso declined the Derby invitation. Just never thought I'd see the day. Is he okay? I know, I'm worried about it. I, I, okay, so I'm going to ask a question, but first I have to confirm my understanding. He was just named an All-Star, like legitimately, right? Like on his own? Yes, I think he was. Not Soto, that's the controversy in Queens. My sense is that

there have been times in the past where Alonzo's participation in the derby maybe facilitated other All-Star related stuff for him, but if he's just like an All-Star, maybe he's like, look, I got my contract. I've satisfied myself. I am an all-star just for my play, and I don't need to do it anymore. Because there was a while where Pete Alonso was making the league minimum, and he would make more from winning the derby

than he did in salary in a year. And you kind of understood, like, okay, I get you, man. This is something that you take seriously and you have demonstrated skill at and you're making your money tonight. Peter Alonso doesn't need to do that to make his money. He needs the Derby payday a little less than he did, but he seemed to do it for the thrill of it.

Just, he was a Derby guy. He took it so seriously. He took it so seriously. He took it so seriously. And you know what, maybe that's why, because he said, I've never really fully enjoyed the three off days. I just want to be in the best possible position to help this team win in the second half.

And he's not fully going to get the three off days, because I assume he's still going to be going to the game. But maybe the Derby commanded so much of his mental and emotional energy that it drained him. Maybe he knows that about himself that he wants to help himself and help the Mets. And it's not about the Derby curse or you screw up your swing or something. It's just that it takes everything out of him to try to win that derby, to train for the derby. And he just knows himself now that's part of getting older and

experience. He said, I feel like I'm in a groove with certain things. He did say I definitely will do it again. It doesn't mean no forever. So I guess, you know, that presumes that he will continue to remain a fearsome slugger, but he's open to doing the Derby again someday. And I hope he does. Even if it's like a, a farewell, even if he gets the Clayton Kershaw honorary legends spot in the Derby instead of the game, just, just get him in the Derby someday again. I, okay.

I have to ask a question about the Kershaw of it all because, you know, we talked about how we appreciate that this spot exists, right? The spot that allows you to name a guy to the All-Star game, even if, you know, his play doesn't necessarily merit it, which I think we can all feel comfortable saying is true of Clayton Kershaw this year. But has Clayton Kershaw, like, confirmed that this is his final year? Or are they just so worried that it will be that they're like, well, we got to get him in there one more time because if this is it and then he doesn't get the All-Star stand up. Like what, I find myself flummoxed by that selection.

I think that like, you know, we've obviously expressed our frustrations with Kershaw of late. But I understand the rationale for him being like the kind of guy who gets that treatment. But typically when, like we knew that Miggie was gonna be done, right? We knew that it was Pujols' last ride. Like we were, we knew, we don't know, do we?

Yeah, that's what I was saying on one of our recent episodes when I was wondering, well, is it a slight to get this? Cause it's like, well, I assume you're retiring. Cause you sort of suck. Yeah. I think actually, Miggy was the honorary all-star in his second to last season. I think it was, yeah, it was Pujols' last season, but Miggy had one more. So I guess it doesn't have to be the last hurrah, though I was wondering why Kershaw

and not Scherzer and Verwander. We've talked about them all just going into Cooperstown together. Why not being honorary All-Stars together? I joked about, was I joking about Richell being the fourth? But I wonder whether, I assume that they asked Kershaw whether he wants to do this, and I don't know

whether that is a sign, whether that's a tell that maybe he is looking at this as his last year and Scherzer and Verlinder aren't if the offer was extended to them. But yeah, I did wonder why him this year or why him and not the other two, but maybe he'll be asked about that if he hasn't already, as far as I know, he hasn't said anything definitive about this being it or this being his farewell tour, though he has certainly entertained that possibility in the past. Yeah, I imagine he's gonna get asked about it a lot

and the fourth and fifth time, he's gonna be a little less courteous about how he answers. Yeah, probably. Okay, well, I do to talk about the National League East. And I suppose we can segue from Pete Alonso to that. Yeah. Not to the Mets so much as to the Nationals.

Yeah. They have cleaned house. They have dismissed both their Pobo, Mike Rizzo, who was the second longest tenured top baseball operations executive in Major League Baseball after the unfireable Brian Cashman. And they have also fired manager Dave Martinez, who, as we know, insists that coaches make no difference,

but the learners evidently think that managers might. So package deal, often the manager goes first, and then the GM or POBO gets a little lease on life. They're kind of on notice, but it's not kind of a tandem. And also often it's not done about a week before the team is preparing to make the number one pick in the amateur draft, and then quickly pivot to trade deadline considerations soon after that. So the timing is curious, certainly. I'm of two minds about the draft piece of this. I do think that it is seemingly obviously disruptive to have a shakeup in personnel like this so close to the draft, right? I don't think we're breaking any news here, but it's not as if the pobo is the one who's

like, going out to games and scouting the guys, right? You have an entire scouting staff. That's AJ Preller and scouting the guys, right? Like you have an entire scouting staff. That's AJ Preller. Except for Preller, right. Yeah, but like, Preller aside, Preller being the exception to many GM-based role, but typically you're gonna have a scouting staff

and you're gonna have a director, a scouting director. You're gonna have a senior person specifically devoted to amateur scouting. And as we noted in the system overview you're going to have a senior person specifically devoted to amateur scouting. And as we noted in the system overview of our hilariously timed nationals list, Sunday, disrupted. It's not like all of the scouting reports like walked out the door with Mike Rizzo, right?

So they probably have a very good idea of what they're going to do, which isn't to say that they necessarily have a name fully finalized, but both to pull Rizzo out of the room who undoubtedly was talking to ownership about their selection, who probably was having some amount of communication with agents around potential guys that they might take. That piece of it is disruptive and then obviously you're moving guys around in your front office to compensate for Rizzo's dismissal and now you're doing that literally. I mean when they announced it, it was almost literally a week precisely to when their pick would be due, which was just hilarious. So it's going to cause some amount of disruption.

I don't think that it necessarily is going to fundamentally alter the trajectory of this draft for them, but they kind of need to get this draft right. Not only because they have the first overall pick, but because this is an organization that hasn't had a tremendous amount of success drafting and developing their own guys. They do have this impressive core up at the big league level, but that is largely constituted of players that they got in the Juan Soto deal, right? It isn't even as if all of their other trades have really borne fruit, right? Like they famously traded Scherzer and Trey Turner and they didn't really get anything

for that. That one hasn't worked out at all really. It hasn't worked out well for them at all, right? So there's the part of it that is like, wow, doing this right before the draft is freaking weird you guys. And then there's the part of me that like is sort of mindful of the realities of how that process works that thinks that this probably isn't going to change too, too much. But you know, it's, it's also a draft where like the very top of it isn't like transcendent. And so you want to be able to bob and weave later

does not have having risotto there compromise their ability to do that at all. I don't know. We're just going to find out. If it were the Strasburg draft or the Harper draft, then I guess it wouldn't make a difference who was actually making the official ruling because everyone would just have the same sort of consensus opinion. Whereas in this case, and maybe the nationals had already made up their mind about what they were going

to do and maybe they will just stay the course unless the interim GM, Mike DiBartolo, who's been there for a long time, and is I'm sure very familiar with Rizzo's thinking on this and could have his own difference of opinion, who knows? But yeah, it's not like this is gonna set them back from an information gathering perspective so much. It's just about weighing the competing concerns

and what you wanna do on draft day, and do you want to go cheaper and try to save something for later in the draft. So, but I don't know if Rizzo, I guess, was some sort of draft savant other than picking the obvious and great number one, when he had the opportunity to, then maybe he would still be making this pick. I don't know. I guess it's a lot of failures that the nationalists have had, and they're not all on Rizzo,

they're a lot on ownership as well, but I think to some extent also on the player development, because the Nats, they have a reputation for being fairly old school, right? Like pretty scouty and not scouty in the best way, maybe. I don't want to use scouting as a derogatory term. I just mean that less progressive when it comes to maybe like synthesizing the scouting and the more data-driven player development. And we've talked about that on some Nats preview pods and just the de-emphasis on speed and velocity, which could be a good

thing potentially if it saved you some injuries. But yeah, there's just a little bit of old school in that organization. And they've made some changes in recent years, right? There was a pretty big turnover in their dev staff back in 2023. They brought in some new folks. So it's not like it's completely unchanged from years past, but it's nowhere near where we would say progressive orgs that do a good job with this stuff are sitting, either in terms of the size of the staff or the infrastructure that they've brought to bear.

And I think the timing of the announcement really really, I think does underscore the piece of this that hasn't changed and is still a major gating factor to their success, which is like, okay, if you're the learners, and you're unhappy with Mike Rizzo, why are you firing him now? Why didn't you fire him, you know, prior to the season starting? Why was he able to direct an offseason for you? Or why don't you wait? You know, it's just like, this is when you choose to insert yourselves into this process, right?

Like what's different about him now than it was a couple of weeks or months ago. Now the team isn't performing well, obviously, like the Big League club is doing poorly. They had a long losing streak. There was all of the drama with Martinez. Like that part of it, the manager piece of it is far less surprising to me than the Rizzo of it all. But if they were at 500, would Mike Rizzo still have his job? You know what I mean? Like is that piece of it is so strange to me. And I don't know if they have a justification for that. That's, that's different than vibes, right? Cause the stuff that's good on this team is stuff that he helped to bring in and the stuff that's bad is being held back at least in part by your, you're the learners

in this situation, Ben, so sorry about that, your refusal to invest in- I'm rich. Yeah, you're rich and you're staying rich by not putting much of your money into the club, at least not lately. Now they have historically, right? They have been willing to spend, but they're in this like weird quasi for sale space and you know, it's like, why don't you

decide if you're going to fire yourselves? You know, like make that decision. And by fire, we mean make yourself even richer, unimaginably wealthy. And to be clear, like, I don't think that you can look at the most recent stretch of this, you know, of Rizzo's tenure and say that it has gone well. I think that they did well in the Soto trade, but their inability to either bolster the team before that such that keeping him made sense and their inability to really supplement this impressive group such that you're not sitting like, what, like 15 games under 500 or whatever it is?

Like they're 37 and 53. The Rockies are like, we would love to be 37 and 53. How wonderful. But like, you know, they're like the pirates. That's not where you want to be, you know? And it isn't to say that they don't have players who I think will be good for them and aren't, you aren't worth building around. They absolutely do. But you have to think about what do you understand the timeline to contention to be for your club? And maybe that's just the argument for getting rid of Rizzo, but it's like Mackenzie Gore has blossomed this season.

He's the guy we all thought he was going to be. Well, he's a free agent in like two years. And then Abrams is a free agent the year after him. Are you gonna try to keep those guys? Gores a Boris client, so that might be difficult. But are you at least going to try to keep him around? Do you keep Abrams? If you decide not to do that, well, do you trade him now? This is about how far away from free agency Juan Soto was when you flipped him. So are you just like perpetually rebuilding if you do that? Does it compromise whatever window you have with wood and Cruz and you know, hopefully

Susana and Sakura who as an aside left his start like two days before the list ran after one inning This is like they're they're one of their very good pitching prospects who like has been good, which has been a thing that they have not been able to develop. Well, guess how easy it is to try to find out what's going on with a minor leaguer the day that GM gets a shit can. Not the easiest. People not in certain texts. Yeah, they're not as inclined to like give you the update on Travis. Yet another guy from the Soto trade though.

Right. Right. Just keeps paying dividends. Not Socorro, Susanna was in the- No, Susanna, yeah. Yeah, it was in the, yeah. And he's been dinged up this year too, right? Although back to throwing bullpens.

So I just, you know, they're in a weird spot as an org and I don't think that moving on from Rizzo is necessarily the wrong decision. Again, like I think the last couple of years have been fairly disastrous for them. How much of that is his fault versus ownership's is a little hard to say, but he hasn't been able to convince ownership to spend. So like, you know, we talk all the time, or at least I do about how getting your owner to spend is a skill and it's one that he hasn't been able to deploy effectively lately. So like, it's probably, you know, all things being equal, like you want to try a new thing, but doing it a week before the draft where you pick one one is unhinged. Like I even if I maintain that, I don't think it's going to be like wildly disruptive to their process or change things all that much. Like it's just a very strange, like imagine you're the kid they draft, you

know, you're the young man they draft. Now you're mostly just going to be so happy that you've gone one one, but also like what, what an org to be drafted into. That's wild. It's a wild, it's wild. That's wild. Yeah. So, and then there's the deadline, although I guess they don't have that much

to do really probably as a function of where they are and what they have, which is part of the problem, but right. Yeah. They don't even have a lot of like veteran role players who are going to yield all that much for them from a prospect perspective. Like, I guess Garcia is probably their best option from a trade perspective, but then you're probably selling low on him because his surface stats aren't very good this year. So I don't know, man.

It's a weird, they're in a weird morass, an unhinged morass. Yeah. And Rizzo texted Barry Sreluja of the Washington Post and said, the sun will come up tomorrow. That's the job. I had a great run, navigated that ownership group for almost 20 years. It's a nice little parting shot. So, you know, I'm guessing that he was tired of dealing with them and perhaps the feeling was mutual. And so I would guess that there's a little bit of bad blood there and that that could have contributed to the timing.

Who knows exactly what precipitated this. But Rizzo, he's always kind of wanted to compete. He hasn't really been a let's tear down and be bad for a really long time type of guy. So I imagine that he's frustrated also by how long this rebuild has taken and also by the lack of investment among the learners. And I don't know how much of that is that they've just decided that they don't want to spend anymore because they are still maybe interested in selling this team. And how much of it is just that, well, it makes some sense for your payroll to be a little lower when you're mid-rebuild than it was when you were building up to try to win a

World Series, which they did successfully. So I think they've probably over-corrected when it comes to slashing payroll, but I also don't know that if they'd had more of a middle-of-the-pack payroll over the past few years that it would have made all that much difference because they do have the most losses other than the Rockies. Other than the Rockies, yeah. Since they won the World Series, which is just quite a turnaround, quite a downturn. And as we've noted, they got a raw deal

because they happened to win the World Series just before the pandemic. Yeah, so they didn't get to take their victory lap with fans in the stands and an attendance boost and a revenue boost and all the rest. So that sets them back a little bit, but it's not just that. It is funny though, is that the Soto trade, that's the kind of thing that could get you fired if you're the person who's pulling the trigger on that trade. Even if it's Soto, it's probably to some extent

an ownership level decision. You're not doing it on your own, but even so if you completely... That would be so wild. Sorry to interrupt you, but that would be so wild if you did do it on your own. And then you come in and like learners just sitting there like, excuse me? Like, no, yeah, you're definitely not trading Wonsodo without ownership input.

Yeah, so, but that is still the thing. You're in charge of steering the return. And if you completely blow that and get nothing back from your franchise foundation player, then that's something that could hasten your exit. And instead it was just the opposite, that he could not have nailed that more, that the Nats have two All-Stars,

one Soto, not yet an All-Star, the Nats have multiple All-Stars, one Soto, not yet an All-Star. The Nats have multiple All-Stars who came from that trade and could just as easily have three. I mean, their best three players by far are Wooden Gore and Abrams, the three of the guys that they got back in that trade. So could not have worked out better and yet nothing else has worked out enough to save his job. So maybe it got him a longer leash, but yeah, the whiff on the Turner and Scherzer trade. I'd have to go back and see what we

or other people said at the time. I don't remember if that trade was criticized or praised at the time, because Caput Ruiz was a good prospect, and Josiah Gray was a good prospect, and I believed in those guys at a time, and they've just sort of stagnated, and Ruiz has just been sub-replacement level

for a few years in a row, and Gray hasn't blossomed and has been hurt, and so those were the centerpieces. And that is probably closer to the median outcome when you trade your young cost controlled superstar than the Soto trade is, which is just one of the reasons why it's generally a bad idea to do that. And the Soto return is, is the outlier even more so than the return for Turner and Scherzer. But, you know, they didn't have to trade Turner at that point.

There's all sorts of what ifs and if onlys. And they kept Strasburg. OK, that turned out to be a bad investment. But they always- That wasn't their fault, though, really. Yeah, I mean, he had an injury track record, obviously. And it's tough to bet on pitchers, but they had to keep someone like one of their free agent guys after winning

a World Series. And it's not as if they chose unwisely by retaining Strasburg instead of Rondone. Doesn't make much of a difference. Now, you know, could they have kept Harper before that? Could they have kept Soto? Could they have kept Turner? You know, you keep all of these guys, suddenly your payroll's leading the league. But there's things that they could have done that I don't know that it would have made them a good team right now, but would have made

them a lot closer to it. I think one of the things that's striking about them for me as, you know, you're going through like their, the sort of current state of affairs for them is just, I think you're right that spending more in the last couple of years wouldn't necessarily have catapulted them to contention. They weren't really destined to be like a, I don't know, I feel like there were moments where people were like, maybe they'll be like a trendy wild card team. But I don't think that they even got picked that often this, this off season. But it's not just that they, you know, are a ways off.

Like they are, they have so much to do. You know, it's like, they don't have good role players even, right? They have to figure out like, what are they going to do with Ketrick? But they don't even have like the, you know, this is going to be dismissive of him at his peak, but you'll know what I mean. Like they need, they need the, the Kike Hernandez types, right? Like they don't have those guys where it's like they can sub in and play a competent baseball during times of injury.

They can start and it's not going to kill you. You're not going to win with them, but like you need there to be some level of production away from your stars, both to take pressure off of the young guys because they're going to have their periods of fits and starts and adjustment to the league and adjusting to people's adjustments, but also just to give you a production baseline that they don't really have right now. So you're right, I don't think they could have spent their way into really contending, but I think they probably could have spent their way pretty easily into like 10 more wins just by like

picking better or different role player guys, right? Like there's just a lot, they're at that spot on the wind curve where like you actually can get meaningfully better for not a ton of money, which isn't to say that you're getting like playoff better, but you're getting closer to respectable. And once you've achieved that with the, you know, some of the, the talent that they have from that Soto trade, then you're in a position to like potentially outperform just because like maybe, you know, those young guys take a big step forward or they have an outsized production year and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, we're sitting at the deadline.

We're only two games out of a wild card. But they're so far away from that. The system's improving, I guess, but it's still below average. It's not like they're going to be able to really supplement outside of their good pitchers at the top, like their other interesting guys are either, are always away and there aren't a ton of them. So like, what do you mean doing that? I've been thinking about Richard Fitz starting ever since you said Fitz and starts, but he's not a national. So then,

Hold on. I yesterday I had, I had the Red Sox on and one of the announcers and I don't know who it was said, it gives you more wiggle room for Richard Fitz. And I was like, okay, I get why he can't go my dick. I get it now. I'm hearing it. I want you to know I'm hearing it. I'm hearing it. Because I was like, wiggle room for what?

You want to have wiggle room? Thank you You wouldn't want to have a wiggle room for it? Thank you for giving me an opportunity to say this. Because I was like, I don't want to post this on Blue Sky because it sounds a little too horny on main, but wiggle room for Richard Fitz. I mean, oh boy. Yeah, now we see where he's coming from. Yeah, oh boy.

Even that, even that. All right, Richard it is. No, boy. Oh, boy. Even that. All right. Richard, it is. Understandably so. So, yeah, there is a big drop off though from that top three, the player proceeds of the Soto trade to anyone else. There's just, there's no one else who's been half as valuable as that trio, as any member of that trio on their roster right now.

So Wood looks like he could be a great franchise cornerstone for years and scores among the best pitchers in baseball. And Abrams is very good too. But yeah, after that, it's pretty thin, at least on the big league roster right now. So, good luck, Di Bartolo, with everything that is just suddenly falling onto your plate. The timing, the timing really did kill me.

And not just like the proximity, the draft more generally, but it broke, like, I mean, just like really at the exact moment almost that like Rob Manfred's gonna be walking out to be like, welcome to the 2025 draft at the Battery. And congrats to interim manager, Miguel Cairo, who I think the last time he was an interim manager was replacing Tony LaRusso on the White Sox. So it's got to be better than that. I would hope I have a soft spot for Miguel Cairo.

Sure. Yankees days. I, I enjoyed him, you know, sure-handed glove guy and utility type. Yeah. Like a Miguel Cairo. Yeah. Oh yeah. No objections here.

I was going to circle back to say when we were talking about the derby that I do like when there's new Derby blood. But Pete is the exception to that. I think I'd be in favor of Alonso being in the Derby every year for as long as he wants, just because I was so fascinated by the hold it had on him. But generally speaking, well, look, I guess I'd like to see Ohtani and Judge every year, if that were possible, if they were willing to do it.

I get why they're not. But beyond that, I do like seeing a new cast of characters. Oh yeah. And the names who've been announced and confirmed thus far are pretty compelling. I would say pretty intriguing, including James Wood of The Nationals. But also Ronald Acuna and Cal. Cal? Gotta get Cal in there.

Big dumper. Yeah, Byron Buxton in the Derby. Love to see that. So, you know, O'Neill Cruz, of course, is capable of hitting the ball as far as anyone. So. Announced today. Yeah, that's a pretty strong,

literally, start to the field. I'm into it. Yeah, I think it's a fun, I think it's a pretty fun group. I am going to work really hard to not feel nervous about Buxton's participation. I just, I don't believe in the, I think that this has been studied

and there's not really much evidence for like a Derby related down tick in second half performance. But I just, you know, I worry, I worry about the man wanting to remain healthy and able to play. But yeah, I think it's a good, it's a good mix of guys. There have been years where you've like remember when Mookie Betts was in the derby and we're like, well, that's dumb. And he was like, my wife wants me to do it. And look, that's a, that's a fine reason to do stuff. But we were all kind of like, you're not going to have very many hormones. And then he didn't. But this year's field, boppers, just like a bunch of, a bunch of boppers, we're going to have bop bop bopping.

You never know for sure. Sometimes there are boppers who failed to bop on Derby day, but sometimes, yeah, they kind of play to type where it's like, this guy, really? I mean, Mookie's got power, you know, in most years he can hit homers, but he's not the prototypical power hitter you want to see in a derby. No, definitely not. It was very silly. He knew it. We knew it. We all knew it. We all knew it. But again, he was like, my wife wants me to do this. And so there he was in the derby, out in the first round.

Yeah. And Byron Buxton talked about how his son Brixton, Brixton Buxton. Brixton Buxton? I believe so. Oh, my God. He's excited he wants him to do it because he wants to be out there bringing him refreshments or a towel to wipe off the sweat during the derby. So that'll be a nice father son moment.

And yeah, look, there's always some risk of regression because you do well enough to gain entry to the derby before the All-Star break. Then maybe you're due for a little bit of regression after that. But I'm a little less worried about Buxton from a physical standpoint these days than I have been, because I do feel like the root cause was addressed. I'm not taking it for granted that he's just going to be an everyday guy forever now, but I'm not thinking of him like Mr. Glass to the extent that I have for the past several years. He's kind of graduated in my mind to a higher tier of dependability. So I guess that's good I'm acknowledging that it's an irrational anxiety then I don't I don't have any particular reason to think it's gonna be a problem

I just feel nervous. I feel nervous. I need a full year, you know, I need a full healthy year I think before I can let it go. Brixton Buxton. Brixton's a fine name. I'm not taking exception with the name, you know, we've made fun of some children's names on this podcast. The emails, they didn't like it, Ben.

You know, they weren't in our corner, a lot of them. They thought we were being uncharitable. And look, Brixton is a fine name. It's a fine name. I think it's a little highfalutin, but like- It's a lot of syllables. It's a mouthful, but- It's the combination with the last name

that is like Brixton Buxton. You sound like- I kinda like it. I think it's sort of satisfying to say- It sounds like a PG Wodehouse character. Brixton Buxton. It does, well maybe that's why I like it. But Brixton and Blaze Buxton also.

Brixton and Blaze? Blaze Buxton. Blaze Buxton also a son of pattern. Brixton and Blaze? Blaze Buxton. Blaze Buxton is a great name. That's appropriate. That's fantastic. Wow. Brixton Buxton. You just really have to try hard to say that name.

You do have to focus. You have to concentrate. Yeah, it requires concentration. There's going to be a teacher somewhere in that kid's life who's like, I don't, can I just, do I have to say your last name? You know, most of the time you just say their first name, so it's probably fine. But like on the first day, they're gonna have to be like Brixton Buxton, you know, concentration. I also meant to say when we were talking about the short term all-stars or the flukey All-Stars, the guys who have good first halves.

And philosophies vary on whether you should prioritize the guy who's having the good year, or the guy who's really the star, whom you want to see on that national stage. And I used to be more of a hardliner, where I would say, no, you should have to have played like an All-Star in that season. You should be the best player that year to get to go.

But now I'm more in the category of, yeah, but do you really want to see that? Like, it's a spectator experience. Yes, you want to make the player feel good about getting to be an All-Star, but also you want people to watch the game and enjoy the game and tune in to see the actual stars. So I've kind of come around to balancing it more towards the, you know, you have

to be good. I'm not saying you can have a horrendous first half or just be heard or something and still just get in on reputation. But if you're, if you're half a war behind the other guy or something, I mean, that's chump change. That's within the margin of error anyway. But yeah, I'm a little less of a, it has to be like a first half absolutist.

But I think there was previous research that Neil Payne did last year that showed that the All-Star selections do map onto war more closely than they used to. And thus they do track more closely with the early season performance than they used to, because it is a little less reputation based and it is a little bit more merit based.

I guess if you're defining merit narrowly as that season, as opposed to your past performance. So it's kind of an odd dichotomy because I guess it is more feasible now to become an all-star by having a really excellent start to a season, but also it has to be a legitimately good start to a season probably like a war wise productive first half

as opposed to maybe some fluky babbit first half, if you're a reliever or something. I guess that probably still happens, but maybe to a lesser extent. So you have to be legitimately good, but you can be legitimately good for a smaller sample and still have a pretty decent shot to make the game. Yeah, that strikes me as about, right?

It's interesting, because this year they did, when they released the final results, they like indicated who came, who got in on the player vote versus the fan vote, which I don't know that they've always done. It was interesting to see some of the splits there too, but yeah, I don't know, I feel like it's mostly gotten, it's mostly okay, you know? I'm not mad about it. It's been quite a while since I've been upset about an All-Star selection or non-selection,

but I guess before we wrap up, just wanted to address, well, two things, maybe one, we got the latest Statcast data dump, this one on catcher positioning, knee down versus knees up versus standard crouch. And now this is tracked and there's data and Mike did his breakdown and Matt Trueblood did a baseball prospectus breakdown

and everyone's digging into this data now. And nothing's super surprising because we know that one knee down has just become dominant. And not just dominant, but just almost universal. Just to the extent that it's strange to see an exception, to see someone in a standard crouch with neither knee down. And that's another thing that amazes me, while we're just regaling you with stories about things that amaze me,

is how quickly that flipped. Just, because we knew it was, you know, like as of opening day this year, every starting catcher was doing one knee down, and even Wilson Contreras, well, he's not catching so much anymore, but even he had switched, like the last holdouts had switched, but now that we have the actual percentage of pitches that were caught,

and this is, I guess, going back to 2020 when we got the Hawkeye-based stat cast. And in 2020, short season, but in that season, 24% of pitches were caught with one knee down. And this year, early this season, or when Mike did the cutoff mid of last week, I think 94%. And in fact, that's increased as he noted since Austin Barnes is no longer a big leaguer because he was one of the holdouts. I like to think

that he took a principled stand or I guess a principled crouch in this case and said, no, I'm not going one knee down. You can cut me, but I'm not doing it. I'm not just gonna fall into line with all these other catcher sheeple. And they were like, okay, you're gone then if you refuse to put one knee down. I doubt that's how it happened.

Yeah, I don't think that's quite how it unfolded either. Other reasons to release Austin Barnes, who I think has signed a minor league contract now with the division rival Giants. So best of luck to him. But to go from 24% to 94% in the span of five seasons, to quadruple, to go from a relative rarity to just almost everyone always is doing that. It's hard for me to think of something else that has flipped that quickly, because it doesn't take that long for the league

to catch up and get on board with analytical trends these days, but that's fast even by the standards of like conformist major league mechanics. Yeah, the other thing that I was gonna maybe point to is also catcher related just in terms of like the not sudden but rapid prioritization of guys who could frame versus guys who couldn't. But even, I mean, that took longer, that took longer than one knee down.

Although I will say this, so, you know, this is like taking the league by storm. There's been all of this writing and analysis about how it impacts catcher defense and mostly how it doesn't, though there's this perception that it leaves guys vulnerable to like, you know, more pass balls or what have you. No one has told broadcasters that like there isn't evidence that this makes catcher defense worse. Because I feel like once a broadcast, I hear someone talk about how in the one needs to answer, you're going to be vulnerable to

this and that. And you know, I guess we'll time will tell they could, we could see something change. But like my understanding of all the studies is that like it doesn't make things worse. Yeah, we did some stat blasting on that. We had Tanner Swanson, the catching coach, who's often credited with helping popularize this on the show. This is another thing that infuriates Petriello when he's not upset about Louisa Rice.

He's upset about people claiming that one knee down catching is bad for blocking or whatever. And no, the data does not support that. Does not suggest that, no. Yeah, the only thing Mike could find where there might be a slight impairment of catcher performance is with throwing, which makes some sense that maybe

you're in better throwing position. Though catchers, like they have a hop now, they're adapting even now to getting into throwing position more quickly from the one knee down stance. But it is striking because Mike had the numbers and if you're not inclined to believe the numbers, then I guess you're not gonna believe these numbers either.

But since 2020 and through Wednesday, he wrote catchers in a knee down stance have been worth plus 169 fielding runs, while those with both knees up cost their teams 152 runs. And it's worse than it sounds, as he said, because the knees up catchers had about a third as much playing time. So the fact that they had been about as bad

as the one knee down catchers were good in less playing time makes it even more clear that there is a preferred way to do this. But that is another thing just that strikes me because like how could this have flipped so quickly? Like if there is clearly a better way to do it, because this is another case where I typically believe that players more or less know what they're doing, or at least they know than a lot of, say, Saber Metric 1.0 people gave them credit for. And there was often like players, they don't know what they're doing and I know Keyboard Warrior. And then it turns

out that maybe the players did know, or it was a blend of both. Like often the players, they have a point. They're pretty good at this. They've devoted their lives to it. But there are also a lot of situations where they clearly were not doing the best thing. Whether that is defensive positioning, which seems to have improved by leaps and bounds, not just with the shift, but in the outfield, especially in recent years. And like pitch selection and location

and just being tied to establish the fastball and fastball counts and fastballs low and other fastball maxims. Like a lot of these things were probably not right. And then the catching stance, that's another thing that gobsmacks me because how could it have been that if there's such a clear advantage, and I guess I know how it could have been, it's that we

just didn't realize how valuable framing was, even though teams and catchers, they always knew that there was something to receiving. In fact, that was one area where players were ahead of the early Saber Metric studies that said, oh, there's nothing to this framing thing. And that was kind of pre-pitch FX. And then, you know, there were some studies that showed like with or without you comparing different catchers with the same pitchers. And okay, yes, actually, catchers do make a difference,

but it wasn't until we really got pitch FX and we could track the pitch locations that it became clear that, oh, wow, this actually makes such a difference that it's the most important thing for Ken's to care about. But it is kind of incredible that like five years ago, it was best practice. And there might have been, who knows, some front office people at that point who were saying one knee down, one knee down, and it just, it took some time

to resonate and kind of cross the blood brain barrier, you know, like the front office field staff barrier there. But it is amazing. Like if that's so clearly the better way to do it. Not that it always was, because as Mike noted at the end of his piece, like the catching position, catching technique, catching equipment,

there have been all sorts of evolutions over the years. And, you know, catchers used to just stand up all the time and they didn't have masks and they didn't have guards and just everything was different about catching technique back then. And of course, there were some catchers who always caught one knee down. And Mike cites some example of that, but it just wasn't the dominant form until recently and probably it should have been sooner.

Like there are some of these strategies that have become dominant now where I don't think they actually would have been the optimal way to do those things in an earlier era. Something like swinging for the fences, trying to hit for power. Yeah, okay, Babe Ruth came along and he was like, hey, what if I just swung hard

and I tried to hit the ball over the fence so that I could just score some runs automatically? That seems like it would be good. And yeah, that was a great insight and he also had the talent to be able to capitalize on that and then everyone else kind of copied him. And there were some others who had that epiphany prior to him, and maybe they weren't just as good as he was, but also the live ball came in and it suddenly

became more feasible to do that because the ball would travel more. So it's not like today's swings were necessarily optimal 120 years ago. Like in the dead ball era, you did want to bunt and manufacture runs and you couldn't reliably hit the ball over the fence and guys weren't as strong and everything. So sometimes the optimal technique changes with the times and the conditions, but it does certainly seem like probably the one knee down stance was better, would have been better for years before it was widely adopted. Do you think it's because they were worried they looked funny?

Maybe, I guess, because that was just the dominant way to do it. And so there is always the resistance, even though there had been people who had been one knee down or even like sitting down completely Tony Pena style or something. But but yeah, that's always part of the reluctance. That's part of it with defensive positioning and shifting too. It just seems weird. That's not how it's always done. But that does speak to the fact that how it's always done is sometimes not the best way to do it.

Because the other thing that seems to be advantageous is less wear and tear on the knees, not crouching. And even though catchers have knee savers and better conditioning and everything, they do seem to agree that this is actually less strain on them not to be doing the full crouch. And there is some evidence that catchers have been more durable in the past few years.

And we noted it wasn't entirely Cal, but catchers have hit really well this season. So there's kind of like a catching Renaissance and maybe that's all tied to the fact that they don't have to be back on their heels and straining their knees constantly. I think that there's definitely something to that. And I also think that it's like,

I want to return to the like looking weird thing. I think it's more that they're worried they like didn't look athletic and then they get out from behind there. They're like, oh, you gotta be one knee? You're grandpa? I think that's why people still refuse to believe that this isn't an impediment to defensive performance.

Because you are literally back on your heels. It seems like it should be bad, because you're closer to the ground, and so you're more likely to get those low strikes and low calls and you can kind of make hay at the bottom of the strike zone there. But also you could imagine that maybe you'd be a little less flexible or something,

or it might seem like you'd be able to adjust your position a little less and then get out of the crouch a little less, but nope, doesn't really seem to make a difference. And you know, like the, oh, you should throw fastballs up in the zone. Well, maybe that wasn't always the case because maybe you need to throw fast fastballs

or high spin fastballs to make that the optimal location. So I don't wanna just look back and say, gosh, they didn't know what they were doing for decades at a time. I think these things do develop for a reason and it's probably a smart reason, but then maybe it just doesn't adapt to the different conditions quickly enough because people become set in their ways. And I think that, you know, some of it too is like not in a contrarian way, but wanting

to like zig where other people are zagging, right? Where it's like if everyone is doing deploying this particular strategy, maybe your optimal strategy is to do something else because Everyone's doing the same thing. It doesn't work as well with catching because it's like Yeah, and the balls either get by you they don't you know either frame them up or you don't but I do I do wonder with some of this stuff if what we're seeing is trying to extract advantage by doing a different thing while there is like, you know, concentration in a particular approach. There is some added nuance to this though that Mike mentioned briefly and TrueBlood at

baseball prospectus dove into more deeply, which is that it's not as simple as one knee down better. That is true maybe, but also it matters which knee is done, which I hadn't really thought about that much. And I don't know that all catchers have considered that either, but there's something to that that I'll just quote from True Blood here. It makes framing easier if your left knee is down, you enjoy the stability of a knee on the ground either way, but with the left one down and the right knee up, your glove arm has much freer range of motion.

And of course, Matt can make these blanket statements because sadly, still no left-handed catchers in the big leagues. So it is the same for everyone. And he recommended that people try this. You can crouch while you're listening, if you're in a place to go one knee down and you can see that extra space to move your arm without the leg on the same side crowding it

or needing quite the same type of flexibility in one's hip to achieve the right angle is tremendously helpful. But which knee is down is not the only variable, not by a long shot. Another crucial one, for instance, is which handedness of batter you're working against. As a rule, a rule as helpful as the one saying left knees down work better than right ones, having the knee closer to the batter down is the better way to ensure the maximum number of strikes. Because of where the umpire sets up and the way the catcher's body generally tilts

when working into either position, you set the stronger edge and give yourself a better chance of earning strikes by having the leg on the outside part of the plate be up and the other knee down. With a lefty at the plate, then, you're cannibalizing some of your precious advantage from being left knee down good because you're also outside knee down bad.

And he notes that the league has noticed this, that not only has one knee down become prevalent, but also the quote unquote correct knee down based on the badder handedness has also gotten more common year by year by year. So this is also something that players and teams are paying attention to. This is why I love catchers. It's just, there's so much nuance. There's so much technique to this position. We watch catchers set up every single pitch that we ever watch.

And yet you can be oblivious to so much of this and maybe even catchers can sometimes. So this is the kind of thing that maybe you lose in a full ABS environment. And a lot of people are shrugging and saying, who cares? We didn't even notice this before. So now suddenly you're lamenting the loss of the, oh, which knee is down, tactics here. But now that I know about it, I think it's kind of cool.

Although if this then just becomes so accepted that there's a best practice, then I guess suddenly everyone will be doing that knee down when it makes sense. And then there won't be any variation that we'll be losing anyway. How sad that will be. It's also complicated, but but delightfully complicated. We can get so granular, not just how many knees are down, but which knees are down. Also down, the New York Yankees.

Let's end with that. We talked about NL East. Let's talk about AL East, where there has been a change. There has been a changing of the guard. There's been a toppling of the first place team. The balance of power has shifted. The Blue Jays have been streaking. The Yankees have been slumping. The Blue Jays took four from the Yankees head to head,

but it's not just that. It's been a bit of an offensive surge for Toronto, an offensive slump for the Yankees. They also now have Clark Schmidt, who has to have UCL surgery. So he's done, although they are calling up a promising prospect who's just got nasty numbers in the Niners, but we are all going to have to carefully learn to pronounce Cam Schlittler. Yeah, Which I think I just pulled it off, but I think that's harder than Brixton Buxton. And much higher stakes.

Yes. Much higher degree of difficulty and higher downside risk. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could get real messy on the broadcast there. I'm going to have fun with it. I'm not on a broadcast. I get to have all the fun I want. It hasn't gone great for New York lately. It's funny because in like the first half of the month they were pitching well, but their offense really couldn't score any runs. And then in the second half of the month, they've been scoring all these runs during this like recent swoon when Dan wrote it up. He said five runs a game, but their pitching has been atrocious.

And so when you couple that with the fact that the, you know, Blue Jays have won like their last nine games and, you know, some silly number out of their last 20, like, uh, you know, it's a bad, it's a bad combination. Yeah, they're nine and one in bad, it's a bad combination. Yeah. They're nine and one in their last 10. That's amazing. Um, so, uh, I don't know, like if you're a Yankees fan and you're feeling despondent, I guess the good news is that you still, um, at least by our reckoning have a very good

chance of making the playoffs generally. But yeah, your, your shopping list at the deadline just got longer. And unfortunately, the things that you need aren't necessarily in like super deep supply. So that's challenging. So yeah, it was surprising to me that the Inkeys got off to as strong a start as they did. I think it was surprising to a lot of people who maybe wrote them off a little not just after the departure of Soto, but really the injury to Garrett Cole, the injury to Louise Heal, just everything that befell them in spring training. And then they got

up to this great start and were arguably the best team in baseball and just hadn't missed a beat. And that was surprising. So maybe it's now that they've just come back to earth a bit though. There certainly is something and I don't want to harsh the mellow of Blue Jays fans who deserve it, and frankly, I'm rooting for them. I think it would be fine if the Blue Jays could make good here, but there is an extreme disparity when it comes to the underlying numbers. I'm going to channel Michael K here though, hopefully in a less abrasive way than Michael K,

cause he got in trouble for basically saying that the Blue Jays weren't a first place team and then they clearly were. What he was saying was that they didn't have the run differential of a typical first place team, at least compared to the Yankees. Like if you look at the run differential, the Blue Jays, even after this recent surge, they're plus 16 and the Yankees are plus 95, which I think is third

in the majors. The base runs disparity is extreme. The base runs record, the base runs run differential. So there's a base runs version of run differential, which is like what your run differential should be. It's another layer of abstraction. And there it's even more extreme by that. The Yankees should have the best run differential in baseball 123 and the Boudet should be at plus five. I'm not saying that this invalidates the Boudet's being good and having been good and being fun, et cetera. Just, you know, we tend to look at the underlying numbers because they can be predictive to some extent.

So you look at the base runs, the Yankees are nine games under their base runs record, which is, that's a lot. Like that's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. At the end of a season, that's a lot. That would make my eyebrows rise. And the Blue Jays are at the opposite extreme, plus seven.

Yeah. Good news. Good news. Guardians fans. When I look at the base run standings, they're no longer the number one outlier because they've been losing so much and failing to score so much that now there are only four games over their base run record. So, I guess I can stop.

It's all fine then. Yeah, I can stop picking on them so much for exceeding their base runs record. But the bad news is that their real record is worse now. Anyway, the Blue Jays plus seven, that is the most in the majors. The Yankees negative nine, that is the most, the least in the majors.

And if you look at it, a lot of it comes down to clutchness or the lack thereof. The Yankees have been extraordinarily unclutched, it looks like. If I just go by the the fan graphs clutch stat, which kind of compares your high leverage performance to other times, the Yankees batters are dead last in that clutch stat, and the Blue Jays are second, second best. And it extends to the pitching, even Yankees pitchers are dead last in clutch. Wow.

And the Blue Jays are 11th best. And you could look at it in terms of high leverage, low leverage, or runners in scoring position. However you slice it, it's really extreme that the Yankees are just failing and flailing in those situations. The Yankees have the worst TOPS+, the Jeff Sullivan stat head special.

They're at an 85 TOPS+, with runners in scoring position this year. That's just comparing their OPS with runners in scoring position to their overall OPS. So they have been the worst team in those situations comparatively speaking. Yeah. So it really stands out.

And I guess the good news is that that should not be true talent. That should not be real. That should not be something that continues or that you have to like clean house and change personnel. Probably they'll just be better in those situations. But obviously those games have happened and those failures have happened. And now they find themselves a few games back of Toronto and like neck and neck with Tampa and barely ahead of Boston. Like it is kind of, it's the dog fight that was foretold just belatedly. Yeah. It's taking on a different sort of vibe than it was forecast to,

but yeah, we are kind of getting the, the AL East race that we all anticipated. Yeah. It's weird. I mean,, you're right. On the one hand, there's comfort to be had in the fact that this isn't like a fundamental issue of roster construction, unless you think that they should have done more to like bolster their rotation and anticipation of injury. But, you know, the games are lost, right? Your record is what it is.

And I think it directs the way that you approach the deadline. And I think that its the way that you approach the deadline. And I think that it helps to inform sort of what your strategy is, maybe come the off season, but you're you're in a fix in a way because like those, you know, those games are lost. And the fact that they're coming at a time when, as we noted, like your division opponent is experiencing performance over and above what we might expect otherwise. It's just like bad timing. So it doesn't mean that their season is doomed or that they can't

make the postseason or that they can't rally to win the division. But their project is harder than it was. So yeah, and I know Blue Jays fans are probably saying, well, those numbers aren't really reflective of the roster right now. That's the roster for the season as a whole. And we had some injuries and some guys were out earlier. And, you know, that might all be true, but also like it's the old adage about a team's never as bad as it is when it's just going terribly

and it's never as good as it looks, looks not is when it's going great. So probably the actual true talents Toronto is somewhere in between, but it is interesting that they've done this. It's like the offense just turned on and they did have a mismatch between how well they were hitting the ball early on

and the results that they were getting. And so it's kind of come more into line with their stat cast stats, like probably that offense just should have been better all along. And now it is. And they've been doing this, by the way, without Dalton Varshow and without Anthony Santander. Varshow has been out since May. Santander was supposed to be one of their big free agent acquisitions. And they're doing this. It's like the same guys just kind of all got good and hot all of a sudden. And George Springer is playing like his old young self. And Alejandro Kirk's been good and Vlie's been pretty good and Ernie Clement. And I know Andres Jimenez has injury issues, but he's been decent enough getting on base

at least. And Addison Barger, who is kind of the king of contacts, not really translating to results. And now all of a sudden it has. Such results. Yeah. Home run, hit home run yesterday. Yeah, you just kind of catch up all at once. Like all of the bad luck that you had,

it just, it manifests those positive outcomes just in a compressed span of time. And it's like, well, I was not that bad and I'm also not this good, but it all evens out. And maybe on the whole, this is how good I am. Travis Sakura has right triceps soreness and has been replaced on the futures game roster. I know everyone was like,

but what are we gonna get an update on Travis Sakura? Needed that. That's one right now. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah. You're welcome. Joshian wrote about the Blue Jays earlier this week, I think on Monday and the stats he had, he drew the dividing line at May 27th, just to sort of maximize

the before and after effect. And I think the Blue Jays have since won again after he did this. But if you looked like through May 27th, the Yankees were eight games ahead of the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays were under 500. The Yankees were riding high since May 27th. Blue Jays like 11 games ahead of the Yankees, Yankees well under 500, Blue Jays 26 and 10, maybe now 27 and 10. And so it is a tale of two seasons and the Yankees,

if you draw the dividing line there, they've been a last place team since then. So I think a lot of it is just the terrible timing and that should probably fix itself. And the Bujays I think could still use pitching, I think. Although as Joe noted, it's kind of a tough staff to upgrade because what they really need is an ace, is like a top of the rotation guy, because they have some durable mid rotation types, and now Scherzer's back, and they have guys who like, other than Scherzer have been stalwarts, standbys, but maybe they don't go that deep into games, they're not dominant,

so what they need is like that guy you want starting the first playoff game, and that's not something you can easily obtain at the trade deadline. So maybe they just end up having to settle for getting some lights out relievers if they can. So yeah, kind of a tough staff to upgrade. But I hope it works out for them

because it would be a fun story. Like, this was kind of a make or break season to some extent for them, just because it's just been a disappointing squad, like high hopes consistently for the past several seasons and not playoff wins. And they just keep kind of falling short of what it seemed like their potential was. And then they've fallen short of a lot of free agents they were famously pursuing.

And then last year they had kind of a collapse. And so this year it was like, how long are we going to keep this core together? And then they keep Vlad and they extend him forever. And now if they can salvage something from this current core and make it back to October and maybe make a run for once, that would be an exciting story, especially given the slow start. I agree. I don't know if it totally undoes the frustration that they've had to deal with over the last couple of years, but it sure would go a long way to making you feel like the future is

promising. You've kept parts of the roster that mean a lot to your fan base and hopefully can anchor you going forward and then hopefully you're able to supplement it. And I don't know, maybe you have better luck attracting free agents to your team if you have a recent postseason run to point to. I mean, I know that they haven't been completely

out of the postseason over the last several years, but it's no time like the present, you know, or the future, as the case may be. Yeah, both would be good. But yeah, this felt like it could be a last gasp season. Yeah. And it'd be nice if you at least could get some air when you're last gasping, but then also you start to think maybe it's not a last gasp. Maybe there will be additional gasps after this one. And if I... It's not a last gasp. Maybe there will be additional gasps after this one.

And if I... If I do start at May 27th where Joe drew that line, If I do start at May 27th where Joe drew that line, the best offense in baseball since then by WRC plus has been the Rays, but barely behind them, the Jays at 120 and then the Yankees, despite their struggles, still 10th best, still comfortably above average, I guess. As long as you have Aaron Judge,

there's a limit to how bad you can be. Because it's that lineup I also thought at the beginning of the season, I was like, oh, it's not just the Aaron Judge show, it's homegrown guys, and they're actually giving him some support here, and who needs Juan Soto. And then he has been not bad, but less otherworldly of late.

And then some of the other guys have kind of come back to the pack and maybe Anthony Volpe is just not going to be a good hitter. Maybe. I know Yankees fans have been saying that some of them for years, but maybe that will be the case. I know Yankees feds have been saying that, some of them for years, but maybe that will be the case. And yeah, maybe if you just make outs every time that there's a runner in scoring position

or it's an important situation, that tends to be bad also for your prospects of winning as well. Yep. All right, some followups for you. Both the Blue Jays and Yankees won on Tuesday because I couldn't pull up the pages quickly enough while we were speaking.

I will note that I mentioned that the Yankees dead last in TOPS plus by their batters with runners in scoring position at 85. Also dead last on offense in high leverage situations, TOPS plus of 81, and their pitchers have a TOPS plus in runners in scoring position situations of 120. You want that number to be low, not high. That's your OPS allowed in those situations

relative to all situations. Their pitchers also have a TOPS plus of 131 in high leverage situations. These are all the worst marks in baseball. That's the worst by far. The Angels second least clutch pitchers in high leverage at 114, Yankees at 131. So a real outlier there.

Extraordinarily terrible timing by the Yankees this season on both sides of the ball. Also, since that May 27th date that Josien used to compare the rising and falling fortunes of the Blue Jays and Yankees respectively, Blue Jays did have the highest positive change in playoff odds, up 64 percentage points according to fan graphs. Yankees down only 12 percentage points in playoff odds, which was only the sixth worst change over that span, but by far the biggest decline in odds of winning

the division down 57 percentage points over that span. Only the Astros and just barely had a bigger increase in division odds over that period. Blue Jays were at plus 44 percentage points. So most of the percentage points that the Yankees lost went directly to Toronto. Also, last time we did a stat blast about the fastest instances of a player hitting

as many home runs as he had in the previous season. Fewest games to get to the same home run total essentially. And Al Kailine came up because he hit four home runs all of 1954 and then upped that to 27 in 1955. Quickly matched his total from the previous season. And I mentioned that 54 was his first full season, so he got better and stronger. I alluded to his breakout.

Well, listener Cole writes in to say, I was just listening to episode 2344 when you discussed Al Kalein's 1955 season, in which he went from four home runs to 27. As Ben asked, I wonder if they considered this to be a breakout or if Al was too highly regarded a prospect for that. And I couldn't help but break out,

Baseball Stars of 1956, a book by Bruce Jacobs, which I had found at the library a few months ago. The entire book is a time machine telling stories about stars Ted Williams, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle, as well as the origins of youngsters like Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, and Al Kalein, with about a dozen other players too. In the passage about Kalein, while it is mentioned that it is now expected he will

one day rank with other outfield greats who have graced the Motor City scene, the one and only Ty Cobb, Harry Heilman, Bobby Veitch and the converted first baseman Hank Greenberg, the author notes that Kailine never played a single game in the minors and seemed to be rushed to action due to a lack of depth among the Detroit varsity. Forced into big league action, the news quickly spread that K-Line had a strong throwing arm and good speed. However, the author explains that it took until the winter of 54-55 when K-Line spent his time working in a sporting goods store swinging a heavy bat out of the stock room when there were no customers around before he developed his power swing. As the passage continues, it specifically mentions that K-Line really laced into the

ball to start 1955. By the end of the third week of the season, he had already accumulated more home runs than he'd hit the previous year. After the season when it came time for contract renewals, his big breakout season helped him negotiate a $20,000 salary with team president Spike Briggs. Not enough players spending the winter working in sporting goods stores and swinging heavy bats out of the stock room.

Maybe that's why there isn't more offense these days. We've talked about effort level. Jazz Chisholm talking about how he gives 70% effort. I was musing about how, well, it can't really be 70% effort because if you took 70% of his sprint speed or his swing speed that probably wouldn't be good enough for the big leagues so maybe it's just 70% above some particular baseline that is acceptable for in-game use. Well this came up in David Laurel's latest Sunday Notes column for Fangraphs in which he talked to Max Scherzer and he asked Scherzer a question from a FanGraphs reader

Who said I'd like to hear how Scherzer differentiates intention and conviction from physical effort How difficult is it to mentally commit to the pitch but only give it 90%? So you keep some gas in the tank. Is it even possible to do that? And Scherzer said it's hard to put a number on it. You're above that, but it's definitely below 100%. There's kind of a range. You call it game speed. If you're ready to throw 100 pitches, you are going to be pacing yourself. You want to pitch deep into the game, so not every fastball is going to be a max effort fastball, but you also don't want to go below, say, 90%. If you do, you won't be throwing the pitch at game speed. So that's sort of what I was getting at. Maybe

that's the true floor for a percentage of effort level. And then the effort level the player is talking about is kind of the percentage that's available above that bare minimum, maybe that's how I'm thinking of this. It's sort of an exponential scale. I wanted to shout out a good fun fact that our pals at Optistats had. I think Sarah Langs was on this also. This was tweeted on July 6th. The Pirates were shut out in all three games

of their series against the Mariners after shutting out the Cardinals in all three games of their previous series. They are the first team in MLB history to have back-to-back series of three plus games with a sweep of shutouts for and against in either order. That's a good find. Would have expected that that had happened before.

And of course the three games before that was when they went wild against the Mets. At Optistats chose a photo of a stoic looking Paul Skeens, maybe a bit downcast who could say to accompany that discovery. Extreme, very variable results there in consecutive series. Also we have a 12-6 slider update. As you recall, a character on The Pit referred to a 12-6 slider, and we took the writers

to task for that. Dave writes in to say, while watching the Phillies-Reds game on Sunday, July 6th, Reds pitcher Chase Burns threw a pitch to strike out Kyle Schwarber in the bottom of the third. To me, the pitch looked like a backfoot slider that didn't have much east-west break or maybe a straight changeup. This led Cole Hamels, who was in the local Philly TV booth at the time, to suggest that Burns needed to stay with the 12-6 slider, which was an unhittable pitch. Yeah, I mean that was actually a really good slider.

Most of his sliders been sweepers. That was a 12 to six slider. And that's a great two strike pitch. That's what he needs to do with two strikes. Dave says just wanted to revisit the 12 to six slider. I have a Phillies fan centric, I positive view of Hamels, so I'm trying to be objective,

but maybe Hamels is onto something. Yeah, look, 12 to six slider, still a strange thing to say in most contexts. I still assume that 12 to six curve was what was meant, or at least what would have sounded more natural. But as we have discussed, there are certain situations where 12 to six slider may be appropriate, or at least maybe said one way or another.

It's not entirely unheard of. It's not a phrase that has never been uttered beyond the pit. Also shutouts. We talked about how there have been a bunch of them. Subsequently, Jason snark. Not Jason snark, Jason stark. Jason's not so snarky. And he wasn't snarking when he labeled this the year of the shutout. We love to label certain years the year of a particular trend. Jason found it puzzling too. He cited some anonymous executive saying how hard it is to hit, which of course we talked about too, but that doesn't change the fact that scoring is not extremely low relative to some previous seasons when there had been fewer

shutouts with less scoring. A bunch of people wrote in about this. James, Patreon supporter, traditionally there would have been more incentive to stick with a starting pitcher throwing a shutout because he's cruising. Now you would usually not expect to throw more than six or seven either way before turning it over to a couple of fresh bullpen guys throwing 98 plus miles per hour. I would expect that to be more likely

to keep shutouts intact. Yeah, you'd think better bullpen support. We may have mentioned that, but that hasn't changed so much since say last season. Aaron, Patreon supporter, also mentioned arm barn monsters as a possible reason for the increase in shutouts. But he added, doesn't the Manfred Mann

lead to higher extra innings scoring, increasing the season long runs per game number? So sort of skewing things, despite what seems to be not so extreme a run scoring environment. Reggie from Austin mentioned the same thing, that as Joshian noted, runs per game needs to be looked at as runs per game per nine innings

because the zombie runner rule creates more scoring from extra innings than we're used to having before the 2020 rules. That is all true, but I don't think it can quite account for this because there still aren't that many extra innings in the grand scheme of things. And even though the run scoring in those innings is way, way higher than it is in earlier innings in the grand scheme of things. And even though the run scoring in those innings is way, way higher than it is in earlier innings,

there just aren't enough of them to move the average that much. I asked Rob Mayne to baseball perspectives about this because he does a monthly series at BP where he adjusts the scoring and compares it to past seasons after essentially removing the effects of the zombie runner and also position player pitching. And so the overall runs per game average was 4.37 I noted.

Well, the runs per 27 outs is 4.43 overall, but that breaks down into 4.37 in the first nine innings, 9.22 in the zombie innings, 11.82 when position players are pitching. So the no nonsense number, as Rob put it, is 4.34, which is lower than the full season league-wide average, but not by so much that that alone would explain the uptick in shutouts. Ben C., not Ben Clemens, a different Ben C., said,

I'd like to humbly offer my theory that the offensive incompetence of two specific teams, the Rockies and the Pirates, may be to blame. Rockies and Pirates have been shut out by my rough count nine and 10 times respectively so far this season. Colorado and Pittsburgh also ranked 30th and 28th respectively in team WRC+.

There's obviously still a huge amount of randomness involved in terms of when runs are scored. And it definitely puts a dent in my theory that the team ranked 29th in WRC Plus, the White Sox have been shut out only four times. But I wonder if there's something to this. I don't know enough about past seasons to be able to tell if this rate of being shut out

is truly noteworthy or if the offensive incompetence of the Rockies and Pirates stands out in any way. However, I remember in earlier episodes, there was discussion of whether really bad teams were getting worse compared to past seasons. And I couldn't get that out of my mind during the shutout discussion. All good and valid points. I think I'm still partial to the randomness coupled with we're comparing early part of the season to past full seasons. Plus what I said about it maybe being not an extreme low scoring era,

but a pretty extreme all-or-nothing era. So you might get some high scoring games and some very low scoring era, but a pretty extreme all or nothing era. So you might get some high scoring games and some very low scoring games, shutouts even. And the average might appear to be unremarkable, but the variability actually would be that would bear further research. And you can fund further research here at Effectively Wild 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, John Norton, Jacqueline E. Kitchen, Eric Prosis, Gregory Lenahan and Brendan MacLeod. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access

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for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. How do you calculate war? Does it come from the heart? Talk to you then. Who's gone? Where are you? With their quips and opinions It's effectively wild Effectively wild

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