Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2352: Turn Every Paige

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the long-awaited baseball events that occurred during Ben’s brief vacation, highlighted by Rich Hill’s return to the majors. They also discuss developments involving other quadragenarian pitchers, provide an update on their “2025 in 2025” Patreon campaign, and consider Bryan Woo’s parents’ dedication to attending all of his starts, […]

["Effectively, While"] Hello and welcome to episode 2352 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh, Fangraphs, and I am joined once again by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Are you rested? Did you miss us? Did you think about the podcast constantly? Did you answer a bunch of emails?

I know the answers to some of these questions. All of the above, yes. Did you miss us? Did you think about the pod constantly? Did you answer a bunch of emails? I know the answers to some of these questions. All of the above, yes. I rested, but also did answer a bunch of emails. And listened to you and Michael, you and Baman. Didn't miss a beat. Enjoyed it very much as a listener. And you covered all the big stories, like communism, mustard, Tour de France. You know, you touched on it all pretty much. Sausage. What I would have brought up had I been here. Yeah. communism, mustard, Tour de France, you know, you touched on it all pretty much.

Saucers. What I would have brought up had I been here. Yeah. So, you know, that was good to hear, of course. And so many things happened while I was away that had not happened while I was here. I was almost miffed about it. I go away for a few days and suddenly Justin Verlander gets credited with a win. Raphael Devers starts at first base. But most notably, of course, Rich Hill arrives and you've considerably.

I saved it. Didn't discuss that without me. You waited for me to arrive and celebrate with you. I had an inkling that he might come up just based on roster moves and rumors and reporting and everything, but then it finally happened and he drew a pretty tough assignment in the Cubs, one of the best hitting teams in baseball.

And I would say he turned in a pretty credible performance for any age, let alone a 45 year old. He went five, he gave up three runs, but there were a couple of errors behind him. Only one was earned and you know, he was not hit hard. Only one strike out, which is not what you expect to see from Rich Hill, a couple of walks. So it wasn't his finest performance,

but it was big league quality. He absolutely deserved to be in the show. You had an inkling it was coming. Is that because your vacation was actually to Omaha? Were you standing outside the stadium, the ballpark in Omaha going open, open, open? Let him out, let him out, let him out. Scouting him in person. So officially a 14th major league team for Rich Hill,

tying Edwin Jackson, who is a few years younger than Rich Hill, even though he's been out of baseball for several years at this point. So heartwarming, great news for everyone who's between the ages of Rich Hill and Justin Verlander, inspiring. I hope that he can continue. Selfishly, I hope the Royals will deal away pitching at the deadline, if anything,

so that they can solidify Rich Hill's hold on the rotation. Perhaps they'll deal Rich Hill away. Who knows? I was just about to say, you're thinking too small, Ben. You're thinking too small. What they need to do is deal him to a team he has not yet pitched for, so that he can push through to 15. That's, I think, the ideal situation. Yes, and I don't think I want it to be a stunt.

I don't think I want it to be a team signs Rich Hill for one game just to push him past Edwin Jackson. I enjoyed Edwin Jackson's itinerant career too, so Rich Hill has one game just to push him past Edwin Jackson. I enjoyed Edwin Jackson's itinerant. Sure. So Rich Hill has to earn it. Oh yeah. But I hope that he does. And 15 is a nice number. Half the teams during his era, it would be nice if he could have that on his card. And I think he can do it. I think he can, he can get to one more. Why not? Yeah. I have a lot of confidence in him. I love the notion of a front office whose primary sort of animating motivation

at the trade deadline is not improving their team, either now or for the future. It's not acquiring the best possible prospects they can or that infielder that's gonna tip them over the edge and really solidify their hold on the division. No, their animating goal is to trade for Rich Hill, to start him as a stunt, specifically to stick it to Edwin Jackson.

I wanna understand whose mind that is sitting in. That would be an intense approach to take, I think. But I think mostly what'll happen is that Rich Hill will continue to pitch for the Kansas City Royals and we'll see where it gets them. Really. I think that's what's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's been eventful time for oldsters. I mean, Venus Williams came back, Manny Pacquiao came back, and in baseball specifically, David Robertson returning, signed by the Phillies for several million dollars just for the remaining portion of the season.

Who's coming up then? Yeah, a favorite of mine, David Robertson. Sadly, I guess one 40-year-old in, another 40-year-old out, Jesse Chavez has declared his retirement. So he will not be adding to his total of stints with Atlanta unless I guess they sign him in some non-playing capacity now, which would seem appropriate. But yeah, so Hill in and Robertson in we have added to our, our stock of 40 year old pitchers or 40 plus year old pitchers, even though Jesse Chavez must be subtracted from that total. So very heartening to see Hill back here. Maybe we can get, if

Jackson and Hill remain tied, maybe we can do a tandem episode of this podcast. We can book Edwin Jackson and Rich Hill somehow and have them compare notes about the various teams that they played for and teammates. That would be a fun one if we could work that out. But I'm just, I'm very much enjoying that this finally came to fruition. You just, you have to believe you can never give up hope in Hill, we never did.

Right, I thought you were going to note the other vaguely Highlander-esque situation that we found ourselves in, which was that the day that Ridge Hill's contract was selected was also the day that Dickie Lovelady found himself off the Metz again. And look, Dickie Lovelady, Dick Mountain, there can only be one, you know? I will recycle jokes from a couple days ago on Blue Sky. You weren't here to hear them. Yeah. So jokes made in another medium don't count.

You gotta workshop that material elsewhere. And then when it's finally honed into a routine, then you use it unaffectively wild. There you go. It's all leading up to. So we will devote the back portion of this podcast to an interview about another legendary old picture satchel Page.

We will be talking to Mark Armour, the author and Sabre official who has devoted years or at least more than a year of his life to researching the history and career of Satchel Page and trying to get a count of games that Page pitched in, which has been quite nebulous up to this point. And he has now documented thousands or close to 2000 games pitched by Page over many decades in many states and countries. And it's all released now, it's all online so that we can all enjoy this wealth

of Satchel Page information. It's the Satchel Page project, and Mark will join us a little later to talk about that. So you really did discuss some things that I would have brought up. Not mustard, probably not a big mustard man myself, but I would have talked about the brewers. I would have talked about the walk-off catcher's interference. Of course.

And just to answer one of Bauman's questions, which was about my sunscreen application, I did apply diligently and I didn't get burned. I would say that I got a little color, which is not a good thing in my case, particularly. Any color, it's not really a flattering color. Oh, do you look like a tomato? Yeah, it's not that bad.

It was just, you know, a slightly darker hue and only in a few patches. I tried my best and obviously the best sun protection is to stay out of the sun, which is what I typically do. A little tougher on a Caribbean island than it is in my apartment, but I did my best. However, I did spend a day at the beach, as you two were wondering, and even though I was under an umbrella, some stray rays did find me and they left their mark. I don't think there's an SPF high enough to protect me with my level of melanin. It's just like, I don't think SPF comes in high enough numbers. I would have to be just

kind of constantly in a state of applying sunscreen to safeguard myself. So you need that like special European sunscreen that we're not able to get in the States. Yeah. Yes. The non-oily stuff. That's what I want. A spray on guy. Cause the other stuff it's just, it's so thick and it just, it gets like spray-on guy because the other stuff it's just it's so thick and it just gets like stuck in my facial hair and I just don't enjoy the oiliness of it. Do you need me to send you some sunscreen recommendations? Because as you might imagine as a resident of the valley, I have, you know, it took a little while because I previously famously come from the land of Twilight where you're just not going to see the sun for seven months out of the year.

Are you worried about it? Actually for folks up there, maybe a little more than you realize you need to be. It's good to have a little daily SPF regardless of what the sun is doing outside. But I had to really hone in. And now I have quite a regimen that I could, I got, and I got special, but I got special little UV gloves that I wear when I ride my bike. They're like special little gloves and they're not heavy, you know, like, because it's also very hot. And so you're in this constant battle, you know, it's like, God, how much linen can one person possibly own? But I got these special little UV

gloves that you wear and it protects your hands because you know you put sunscreen on the top of your hands and it disappears instantly. And then like you know if you're going in and out, if you're out and about, like you put sunscreen on and then you have to use the restroom and then you have to wash your hands and suddenly you're vulnerable again. Less vulnerable to bacteria but more vulnerable to the sun. And so not really an issue while biking, but I was like, oh, let's just get some, some little UV gloves.

And I do that with, with swimwear. I have what we refer to as my sun protection pants. Yeah. Just like, you know, you can wear them in the ocean or whatever, because the trunks, they leave a lot of leg exposed and that's just more surface area that can be burned. Well, in calves that you have to apologize for apparently. Right.

Yeah. Don't be brandishing those under any circumstances. People who don't listen to the Patreon thought, what are they talking about? Why is Meg body shaming Ben for his calves? Here I am making fun of Bauman being off topic and suddenly we're on a sunscreen jag here. Anyway, in the true land of Twilight, everyone is particularly pale. You should see those vampire complexions,

but Pacific Northwest as well. Anyway, I did want to speak up in your defense because you brought up Warhammer and you referred to it as a video game. And Bowman smacked you down and says, it's not a video game, Megan. And I'm here to say that you're both right, actually. It's not originally or primarily a video game,

but there are many Warhammer video games, many video games set in the Warhammer universe. So you were not wrong. I wasn't, but I do, you tell me if I have fundamentally misunderstood Warhammer. I associate Warhammer with like painting the little, the little right fellas. I imagine they're not all fellas, although canonically I imagine many of them are fellas. Um, but like you paint a little, the little guys, miniature models, yeah. Yeah.

But there is a, I was about to say, what's really the difference between Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons, but we have other stuff we have to do. Yes, yes, we do. And one other thing that we have to do that also transpired while I was away, we have to thank our Patreon supporters

for answering our call, rising to the occasion and fulfilling already our 2025 in 2025 campaign. We have blown a little bit past 2025 actually. So we didn't even need the rest of the calendar. We didn't even need the space between podcasts. So this is very heartening. Just ask and you shall receive. I believe it's tough to tell, but I think Lawrence McDaniel was lucky caller supporter number 2025, but

we are equally indebted to the many others who signed up in the past few days and also in the more distant past. And by indebted, I don't mean literally, this is not a loan. We don't have to pay you back. Hopefully that was clear. I guess we pay you back in podcasts. Yeah, I think we have a mutually beneficial relationship with our Patreon supporters, where we talk into the mics for many hours a week. talk into the mics for many hours a week and they give us some money so that we can keep doing that. And everybody wins, hopefully. They feel that way. Yeah, I feel that way. Money's worth in podcasts and also perks. And we don't have to stop at 2025 to be clear. There could always be a stretch goal. I guess we painted ourselves into a corner. We should have aimed higher in retrospect because we've already hit 2026 and 2026. So that's not

going to cut it. So I don't know. Slogans work clearly. So I don't know. We need to do snappy slogan to induce people to sign up that is tied to a year or something. But now that we achieved that milestone so readily, I feel like maybe we've been selling ourselves short. I mean, there are people who tell us repeatedly that we should actually pitch the Patreon more often than we do, which is not often. We say at the start, it's presented by our Patreon supporters, we thank a few of them at the end of the show,

but we rarely proactively pitch Patreon support and enumerate all of the many benefits that you can get by signing up. And some people say, hey, you should actually mention that from time to time. And when we do, it does tend to pay dividends. So you're right, people. I think the folks are right. We want to strike the right balance. It's such a, you know, it's just a strange, what an odd job we have really.

And I'm so appreciative of it and I want the show to keep doing well and make enough money for us to be able to keep doing it. And also I don't want to bother people, but you do have to bother people. I'm just grateful that our listenership continues to support us, even though we are not one of the 100 best podcasts, according to Time Magazine. I feel like I've let everyone down. It's like, would we have been like, did they look at it and go, look, it was one of the hundred best or just, you know, tenure, but then that may come around. Who could say, you know, um, there were no other baseball podcasts on the list. So I, we, we haven't been exceeded in that category. It's really just, uh, it's just a slight at sports podcast specifically

and baseball podcasts even more specifically. I thought Ben that your association with the ringer might pull us over the line. Like, I mean, yes, there were represented on that. You guys did great. You had so many and I'm, I'm thrilled for you. And I was like, welcome. One half of the show is a slugging man. Pull us over the greatest.

A hundred of them. I dipped one half of the show. Is this what you're gonna pull us over the greatest? A hundred of them. I dipped into my Jimmy Stewart there, sorry. But even though we are not one of the hundred greatest, we are still appreciative of everyone's support and we could not produce this good, but apparently not the best podcast without any of you. So thank you very much.

Yes. And I neglected to mention last time that you can sign up for a much. Yes. And I neglected to mention last time that you can sign up for a year. Yes. Patreon is, it was originally a monthly thing and it's still associated with that. But we do offer annual subscriptions for those of you who don't like to have recurring monthly charges and who also would like to sign up for a year and get a discount. Yes.

So you can do that and that's appreciated as well. That's an option for you. Yes. Just for your information. Okay. Thanks to everyone who signed up and will sign up. Now here's something that I learned about Brian Wu, whom we've mentioned a few times recently.

He's had himself a fine season. Yes. He's had himself a fine season. And he had another fine outing that it was revealed was on the day that his grandfather died. This was actually his All-Star debut. And it took on special significance because his grandfather was nearing the end of his life and he lived to see his grandson be selected as an All-Star. And his grandfather John was 95 years old, so a good long life and he was watching when Wu made

his All-Star debut. And he died last Thursday while Wu was pitching against the Yankees. That was the game when he lost the no-hitter in the eighth inning. And I think he lost the no-hitter on his 96th pitch. Yeah. And given his grandfather's age, that was sort of numerologically significant to Wu. But what I learned in the story, aside from the stuff about his grandfather, was that Brian Wu's parents travel to all of his games. They go to all of his starts. This is probably well known to Mariners fans, I imagine. I'm sure they're shown on broadcast, but they go to all the starts, even on the road.

And that is pretty impressive to me. That is admirable. Cause you would think if your kid becomes a big leaguer, what could make you more proud, especially if you're a sports fan, a baseball fan, and of course you would want to be there for their debut and you'd want to support them and everything. But how long does that last? Right?

Like, you know, at what point does the thrill not wear off, but subsides slightly. And that's a lot of travel to be traveling with a big league team year in and year out. Brian Wu is in his third major league season now. He's made 59 starts. He's 25 years old. Presumably, hopefully he will be pitching for many more years in the big league.

So are you committing yourself to your whole career you're following your child around? I don't know that I would have this level of commitment. My daughter hasn't reached the age where I am expected to go to sporting events and rehearsals and such. And so I don't know how heavy a load that would be or what a joy it would be alternatively, we'll see. But boy, that's

a lot of travel. And I assume they have good accommodations and travel arrangements and everything. But still, if you had a kid who was a big leaguer, do you think you would make that kind of commitment? Or you'd be like, yeah, I'll come to all your games. And then after a season or two, you'd think, well, that was fun. But I do, I do have a life of my own, even though living vicariously through you to some extent and very proud of you. But also I think I'd have to draw the line at some point. Maybe there are exceptions to this.

None come immediately to mind. And even if they did, I wouldn't offer them like the cities that are home to big league teams, they all have something interesting to recommend them, right? And I clearly am biased in Seattle's favor, but Seattle, especially at the time of year where Wu would be pitching, wonderful to be there, except for April, then it's cold. You could stay, the Wu's, you could stay home for those ones. It's very miserable at the ballpark that time of year. But I don't know, I don't know where his folks are in their life professionally. Like I don't know if they're retired or if they're still working.

But if they're retired, like I don't know, that might be a really fun way to like go see the country and get to experience a bunch of different places. And you know, you're going to maybe get a trip up to Toronto every year. Like, I imagine Brian Wu would be accommodating were his parents to say, so hey, like we're slowing down. We don't want to be away from home. I know he grew up in California. I don't know if his folks still live there, but like we'll do a couple of series a year, but we're going to be a little more homebound. I mean, I'm sure that that woo would allow for that. But while you're, while you're spry and, and able to do it, I don't know, maybe it would be a fun, a fun thing. It's not like they have to be on the road the entire year, right? And if they are living

up in Seattle, which again, I do not know, because I am not acquainted with the woos. But if they're up in Seattle for, for most of the year, like by the time spring training rolls around, you're like, get me to Arizona already. Good grief. I haven't seen the sun in months. I don't need sunscreen, except maybe I should wear it a little more than I typically do. But I'm like one of those sparkly vampires, you know, making them sparkle was really a choice. I, you know, yeah, let's re-litigate Twilight for the next hour. How about that? Well, we did do a long ago podcast segment

about the baseball scene in Twilight, which I will link to on the show page for anyone who wasn't listening back then. So yeah, I think maybe I would make it once or twice around the league, and then I would have seen all of the cities that one would go to in the course of following one's major league son around the league.

And then I'd probably say, okay, not that you cannot keep seeing new things in the same cities, but still. And also I wonder how Wu feels about it. I'm sure, I assume based on this close relationship that they do have a good one and that his parents would not be following him around if he weren't okay with that and they didn't get along quite well. So I'm sure it's nice.

And if and when they're not able to make that anymore, then you might miss that and you'd be happy to have had that time and cherish it and everything. But also if you're in your mid-20s and you're a big leaguer, you kind of want to like, live your life. Yeah, I wonder, you know, I'm sure they they don't pressure him

to like hang out after the game show, because you'd have to navigate that, too. You know, let your grown son, who, you know, might want to be out on the town or something, right? Like you don't want to be bugging him to, hey, let's socialize, let's meet for brunch, let's meet up after the game, you know? If your son wants to go out or hang out with his teammates

or friends or whatever. And then, I don't know, I never really wanted so much. I mean, I appreciated the parental support, but also was very conscious of like, if I had family watching me do something, I was just aware of that in a way that I actually didn't really love. So, and nothing against them.

That's just my own self-consciousness really. So yeah, you'd have to navigate that. How do you give your son some space while also following him around the country constantly? Yeah, I do feel the need to, for the sake of accuracy, note that Wu's most recent start did not go particularly well. He gave up for earned against the Astras,

preventing a sweep, which would have been useful for the Mariner Astras, preventing a sweep, which would have been useful for the Mariners purposes, but you're right, his prior start was superlative. That's what he was saying. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes even if your son's a pretty good pitcher, as Brian Wu is, he's gonna have a bad day. And then that's gonna be a bad day for you.

I guess it would be a bad day for you even if you're not there in person. But if you have traveled to that start and you have to watch your son struggle in person, I'm sure they're used to it. Obviously, he famously struggled before he was a big leaguer, so they've seen it all before and maybe you're inured to it to some extent. I'm just saying that's commitment, I think, to carry on that routine into a great big league season. But he's only improving with time. So stick with him, I guess. Yeah, I think that their faith will be rewarded. He is doing pretty well,

last start notwithstanding. So yeah, the only thing I was thinking as you and Bauman were bantering about the Brewers and I was in the place of a listener, just powerless to chime in until now. The only things that I think that are kind of notable about the Brewers that you didn't touch on so much is just, I think depth is sort of their superpower. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. And that's, it's an easy to overlook superpower. And it's not very flashy, but I think that has been their hallmark, if anything.

That's kind of been their defining characteristic in my mind. And I know some people think of them as raise north, and obviously they have a lot of front office overlap between those two organizations, but just the way that they managed to keep contending and, and keep turning over the roster and still just being good. But a lot of it comes down to, you know,

you look at their individual stat lines and you think, how are they doing this? And it's not that they have so many spectacular individual seasons. It's that they just, they don't really have any bad players it, just kind of quantifying how much playing time went to replacement or sub replacement level players. And I think that has been a strength of the Brewers. Just, they don't have holes really. And so their highs aren't quite as high as some of the flashier teams perhaps, but their lows aren't as low.

And they just, they run really deep. Like if you just look at the number of hitters they have who have an average or better WRC plus, or you could do the same thing with FIP or FIP minus on their pitching staff, just a lot of guys and not so many that you'd single out other than the Miz or, or Woodruff since he's been back, you know, they might have a standout season or two, but mostly it's just competence all the way down. And that's probably an underrated skill and something that I'm prone to overlooking.

You know, you want standout performances. I'm sure that if you ask the Brewers, like, would you want a guy who's, you know, a superstar offensive producer? They'd be like, sure, we'll take one of those. That sounds nice. But not having to rely on waiver wires when a guy goes down, it's a lot to that.

I think that that puts you in a position to be able to other a lot. Now, one might argue, and I think that you would be within your rights to say that like come October is that depth the best asset to have. And we have watched Brewer's teams fronted by tremendous pitching not really be able to reach escape velocity when it comes to the postseason, in part because their offenses have under produced. So I do wonder, I think that they are built

to succeed during the championship season. But I do wonder if they sometimes limit themselves a bit once October rolls around because they don't have the standout guy. But they're also like a month of good run from Jackson, Jackson Churio away from just like having that guy, right? It's not like they don't have candidates on their roster as it's currently constituted who might be able to get hot and sort of give you that, that next level of offensive production. They just, you know, in the season that those guys are having right now, we haven't quite seen that. So there are a lot of Caleb Durbins on the, on the brewers, like spiritually, there's only one literally, but like, as we talked about at the time of

that trade, hasn't he always, but it's like, it's like in the Shining where it's like, you've always been the caretaker here. He's always been a brewer. Like, hasn't he really? They had that standout guy in Christian Jelic. They signed him to be that guy and he was that guy for a year or two. And now he's just part of the pack. He's leading the team in home runs, but he's a 120 WRC plus guy and they just have a whole lot of them. They have eight hitters with at least 250 plate appearances who have a hundred or better WRC+,

and that's even with William Contreras underperforming and maybe playing through an injury. And that's not even counting the latest addition to the 100 WRC+, club for Milwaukee, Andrew Vaughn, who has played in only 10 games for them, so let's not get too excited, but it is nowhere near- I've never been excited about Andrew Vaughn even one time in my entire life.

Sorry, Andrew Vaughn. Yeah, it's probably too soon to say that the Brewers have fixed Andrew Vaughn, but you know, he's hit a couple homers for them. He's walked more than he struck out in 10 games. And they have picked up, they picked up Vaughn and they picked up Quinn Priestor from the Pirates. So they, just these cast offs from the White Sox and Pirates

who have been productive for them, especially in Priester's case. And we don't think of the Brewers as much, it seems like, as we do the Rays and the Dodgers when it comes to, oh, they're gonna pick up this guy off the scrap heap and fix him instantly. But maybe they should be in that conversation. We do talk about their knack for pitcher development, but yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say I associate them with that ability on the pitching side, although I will say that the place where I see their strength from a dev perspective, and maybe this is like a distinction without a difference, but it's less, hey, we acquired Quinn Priester who like, thank goodness Quinn Priester has been good for them because at the time that was like a desperation trade and they gave up a competitive balance round pick for that. Like that was, at the time we were like, oh my God, but he's got an ERE in the low three. So jokes on Meg. But the place where I have kind of traditionally thought of the brewers like really showing what a standout

they are organizationally is less like, let's pull in a Quinn Priester and fundamentally change him or like, you know, like the Mariners example of this from a couple of years ago was them getting Paul Seewald and like taking him from like a mid reliever for the Mets to like the guy he was for a couple of years and more the Brewers having a really strong demonstrated track record of looking to talent markets on the amateur or international side that haven't yielded for other teams quite as much and like doing a lot with them right so like they have so many Indieball guys, or have over the years, where

it's like, we're gonna pluck this guy out of Indie Ball, we're gonna go to this Division 2 college in a cold weather league and draft that guy and we're gonna turn him into something. But I, which isn't to say that that's like totally a distinct skill, but I do associate it with it more on like the front end of a guy's pro career rather than like shifting a guy midstream. But I don't know, like Quinn Priesters has been pretty good. His FIP's higher than his URA, but like he's having a, it's fine, you know? Yeah. They, they signed one of my and Sam Miller's spreadsheet guys who we signed for the Sonoma Stompers, Santo Saldivar, was signed out of low level Indie Ball

by the Brewers. Sadly, he did not progress to the big league ranks, but hey, he got his shot in affiliated ball. So yeah, they do cast a pretty wide net, which has helped them, I think. And really, they have turned over their roster. They've essentially executed a rebuild without ever being bad.

They didn't really take a dip. They didn't take a step back whatsoever. This was essentially a flawless, I don't know whether people even realized that a rebuild was happening, but it sort of happened right under our noses. Neil Payne wrote about this the other day, and not only do they have one of the best records in baseball this year, but they're one of the younger teams in baseball.

They're only, I think, four teams with a younger batter age than the Brewers, and aside from the Tigers, they're all teams that are well out of contention. So they have built this lineup out of largely homegrown guys, or guys who've made their major league debuts with the Brewers at least. Even their pitching staff is below league average in age. So they've essentially set themselves up where they are productive and contending today, and also have just come up with a young and homegrown foundation that should stand them in good stead for years to come.

And they've done this while losing Craig Council, while losing David Stearns, the architects of previous Brewer's teams, and losing Corbin Burns and Willie Adamus and all the rest. And it's maybe a little less extreme than the Rays commitment to turn over any time anyone gets good, but it's the same sort of idea, except if anything of late, they've been even better and consistently contending than the Rays.

And yeah, it helps to be in the NL Central as opposed to the Ale East, certainly. But still, it's quite admirable. And maybe it's because they're the Brewers or it's Midwest bias or whatever. I don't know. They don't get quite as much shine for this as some other teams do that are sort of associated with greatness or with moneyball and progressive sabermetric operations and all the rest, but they absolutely deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as any other team when it comes to front office acumen

and talent finding and talent development. So it's pretty impressive what they've put together. Yeah, it's very impressive. And you're right to say that like they have managed to, because I think of the level of roster churn, but the way that that roster churn has been executed have really turned it over. I mean, isn't Woodruff the only guy left at this point? It's basically-

Brolta's been there for a while, but yeah. Yeah, him and Peralta and Jelic are really the only guys who are part of what we would have associated with the last good Brewers team. So, and it's not like they've been bad lately. I do like that they have like a good Cubs team to kind of push them. Like you need, you gotta have at least two clubs in any given division that are like really going for it. Otherwise it's like you're going to get blown out in the first round of the playoffs. I'm sure of it. Speaking of the value of depth.

And in this case, there's, there's a little less value to it. Actually in this case, it's less depth than it is just the frontline guys not being tested. The depth not being tested or plumbed whatsoever. The angels, I was aware that they had not used many starting pitchers this year, but I don't think I had quite realized the extent of it. They were taking five man rotation quite literally. They had not used a sixth starting pitcher until their first game back after the break when former META Major League or subject Ryan Zephyrjohn served as an opener. And up to that point, they had used the same five guys all season long,

which is quite a rarity in this day and age. The Rays actually were close. I think they've used six as well, but the Angels had just used five. Rob Means at BP looked into this and found that no AL or NL teams since 1901 has made it through a season with fewer than five starters. Only five teams have used exactly five starters and only five teams in the 30 team era, dating back to 1998, have even made it

to the All-Star break using only five starters. The 1998 Giants, the 2000 Braves, the 2000 Cardinals, the 2003 Mariners, and the 2012 Reds. It's even more improbable that it would happen in this day and age, given the injury rate for starters, given how late the break is, etc. But the Angels, of all teams, became the first team in more than a decade to do it. And they now have demoted Jack Kahanowitz and replaced him with the similarly challenging to spell Zephyr John for now. I mean, on roster resource on their depth chart, they just have four starters listed.

Right. So, but Kahanowitz was not good. No. He struck out guys at a slightly higher clip than he did last season, but not high enough. So he has been optioned. But the interesting thing is that if I tell you, oh, this team has not had to use a sixth starter,

you'd think, oh, well, their rotation must've been really good then. Because, you know, that's half the problem with a pitching staff is that guys get hurt and then you have to dip into the minors and you have to bring up your sixth and seventh and eighth, the ninth and thirteenth starter. And usually there's a step down from your five front line guys. So if you have consistency, kind of like the 2005 White Sox did where they just sort of had healthy pitchers

all season long, and they just rode those guys and it carried them all the way to the World Series. The Angels though, have combined this consistency with a lack of productivity. Their rotation has not actually been very good. It's just, it's like, these are the guys that they wanted. This is how they drew it up. They have not had to break glass in case of emergency, or I guess the emergency is just that

like they're starting five were not very good. Yeah. And they have overall had a better than expected season. They're, you know, on the periphery of the wild card race, which is probably more than anyone would have expected. More than I expected. Yeah, and part of that, I guess, is that they have not had to dip down into their depth such as it is. And yet, prior to the All-Star break, using only five starters, their starting pitchers ranked 20th in FanGraph's War.

So, like... And the Rays, who I just mentioned, also didn't really test their depth unusual for them. They were 17th in starting Pitcher War. So interesting combination of like having the guys, they don't even, the Angels don't have any starters on the IL. It's not like they're waiting for someone to come back.

This is their rotation. This is what they wanted it to be. And everything's gone as well as it could have. And they're still just not a very good group. They sign Kikuchi and they have Jose Soriano, who was recently dubbed by Alexandra Whitley at baseball prospectus. This line, Soriano is one of the league's most fascinating pitchers as perhaps the only known case of positive angels pitching development. Oh, jeez. It's slight slight hurt by purple leaf, but not by that much because Alexander was noting

that Soriano set a single game record for ground balls, which I had not realized. But he just had a start where he went seven innings and he was facing the Phillies and he got 19 ground balls, 19 of the Phillies, 21 batted balls against Soriano were grounders, which was a single game record either in the modern tracking era or just all tracking data going back to 1991. So Soriano is pretty good and underrated, but yeah, just an interesting kind of dichotomy there of like, it's just plan A and yet plan A being mediocre at best. Yeah. And I'll be so curious to see like, what are they, what do you think they're going

to do with that deadline? You know, like they're not really in it. This isn't a playoff club. They've had, you know, they've had guys who've had good years, kind of surprisingly. I think we're all happy for Joe Adele. You know, you talk about Kukuchi, you talk about Soriano. Like if they want to be sellers, they have some guys who have had good years, but like what are they gonna do? They're not gonna, they're not gonna add, are they? I mean, I've given up, I guess, trying to predict Angel's deadline behavior,

but it's not like they're trying... Post-deadline behavior for that matter. Right, for that matter. But, you know, Otani famously not on their team anymore. So the last push to get that guy into the postseason, and that's somebody else's problem now. You know, and if you talk to Dodgers fans, it might not happen. They're crashing out hard, Ben. They're really struggling.

They have a hard life, you know? It's really the thing. Everything is really hard for them. Yes, we feel for them. Yeah, I do. But I'll be fascinated to see sort of, what do they, how do they understand themselves? You know, this is always the question that we have to ask.

Well, here's one other thing I saw as seen on blue sky. This was observed by one Ryan Boyer. So you were just saying that sometimes there's sort of a Highlander situation and, you know, there's one Dick or Dickie out and one Dick or Dickie in. And in this case, this is kind of a variant of that, which is comparing two players who are tied in some way. And the, the platonic ideal of this, the one that brought me the most joy was of course, Joey Meneses outperforming Juan Soto

after the Nationals traded Soto over the remainder of that season. And I'm always interested in that. And this was how we got into Cam Devaney versus Adam Frazier the other day when the guy who... We got in. Well, you were forced to get into it, perhaps against your will as a function of being my co-host. But yeah, I like when one guy is dealt for another guy

or one guy replaces another guy, and then the guy who had the lower expectations when, when like one guy is dealt for another guy or one guy replaces another guy. And then the guy who had the lower expectations outperforms the other guy. And this was one of your bold preseason predictions about Isak Paredes and Kyle Tucker, which was looking good for a while. Tucker's going to end up being better, but Paredes, you know, he, he gave him a run for a while there. He was a, he was an all star also, so both ends did okay on that deal. But this is a good one that Ryan Boyer pointed out.

Roki Sasaki, speaking of Dodger's dismay, and Miles Straw. Because as you'll recall, Miles Straw was added to Toronto because the Blue Jays had picked up international bonus money with an eye toward perhaps persuading Sasaki to sign with them. And they were reportedly a finalist, whatever that means. So at the last minute, they were trying to add to their bonus stockpile so that they could convince Sasaki to sign with them or sweeten the deal. And one move they made was to trade for Miles straw and take on his salary from Cleveland in exchange for getting some extra international spending money. And when that quickly didn't pan out the way that they wanted it to, because Sasaki then turned right around and signed with the Dodgers, I think some Boudre's fans bemoaned that move.

Why would we do this? This was a mistake. This was setting money on fire, et cetera. Well, as it turns out, so far, Roki Sasaki negative 0.2 fan graphs war and a near 34 and a third innings before he went on the IL and Miles Straw 0.7 fan graphs war. He has hit the way that Boudre's fans feared he would hit. He has hit like Miles Straw,.7 fan graphs were, he has hit the way that Boudre's fans feared he would hit.

He has hit like Miles Straw, but he's also fielded like Miles Straw. And he has contributed to the Boudre's being, I would venture to say by far, the best defensive team in baseball, which is not unexpected, but their lap in the field, at least when it comes to the stat-cast stats,

and largely without Dalton Varsho and Andres Jimenez missing and all the rest. So they can, they can glove it. If there's anything that leads to a team perhaps being misappraised or underrated other than depth, I think it's defense still fairly easy to overlook. And Straw has contributed to that. He's been great in center when he has played.

So Straw looks like he will end up being more valuable for the Blue Jays this year than Roki Sasaki will have been for the Dodgers. And I get that Sasaki is under team control for many years to come. So the book is not closed on this one. But still, this is a good example of this genre of delightful fun fact. Yeah. And you know and now the Blue Jays have four games on the Yankees as we're recording here on Thursday afternoon. So you can either score runs or you can take them away. If you do one end of that equation really well, you tend to end up being pretty valuable for your club.

And the last thing I will bring up along the lines of taking runs away and being valuable in the field, the Ronald Acuna throw. Yeah, man. I think it entered the Pantheon or did it? Maybe we can debate whether it entered the Pantheon of outfield throws. Because I think I saw someone say, I forget who, my apologies, but I think someone mentioned somewhere that we hadn't had a new throw kind

of minted as an all-time great. Like, you know, you see the Ichiro throw or the Yuenis Cespidus throw or the Ramon Luriano throw, just to name some modern examples, or the Dave Parker throw in the All-Star game. And it seemed like it had been a while since we had a new entrance to that canon. Does the Acuna throw crack that club for you? I believe he said that it was one of his more impressive throws. It certainly was. I think in my mind, it took me multiple watches and replays, I think. It didn't, I was almost taken by surprise as I guess the runner on third was and potentially the third baseman too. There was a, either a deke or... I think there was a deke. Like I think that Nacho deserves some credit for how that went down. I

don't think that he, that felt like it was intentional to me, I thought that there should be credit apportioned to both ends of that defensive relay. Maybe just being humble, but didn't he say, I thought he said that he wasn't even expecting to throw maybe, but maybe he was deking people in the quote too, but one way or another, he played it pretty casual.

He recovered well if that's the case. And so Acuna makes this catch and this flat-footed throw and it's a double play and it goes from deep in right field on the fly to third base and on the fly throw. That's always so aesthetically pleasing. Agreed. As long as it's not like air mailed, And on the fly throw, that's always so aesthetically pleasing. Yes. Agreed. You know, as long as it's not like air mailed, kind of a lollipop, you know, lob type of

miss the cutoff man throw, that can still be impressive in a sense, but it's not necessarily a good throw. But when it's on the money and is on the fly, that's a pretty impressive combination. So everyone just seems sort of surprised like, wow, I didn't see that coming. We knew that Acuna had a nice arm, but that goes on his personal highlight reel, I guess. But it's the question, does that then enter the sizzle reel that you would show

if you wanted to show someone a montage of, here's a highlight reel of great baseball throws. Would you put the secuña throw on there? I guess I resent the question. If only because like I'm I don't ever feel confident that I have a sharp enough memory to have an exhaustive catalog. But I would say yes. Part of this is me taking an opportunity to be a little sassy about that sespidus throw because it's like yeah It was a great recovery

You know, I'm just a jerk about this throw which was great, but also part of Yeah, so I think that on those grounds like sure I I when I saw it I was like, holy shit So it got it got a they got a holy shit out of me. So maybe that is its own answer, you know? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, he was kind of at the place where the foul territory down the line meets the warning track. Yes. Just at that little corner there in Redfield. So he was pretty deep. And I guess what makes it impressive, that's the thing. When I saw it from multiple angles and then watched the replay, I wasn't watching live, but even so when I watched it the first time, not slowed down or anything, the standard broadcast angle, I didn't fully

appreciate it. I guess because it looked kind of lackadaisical or low effort, not to say he wasn't hustling or anything. I just mean like, it didn't look like he got everything on it, you know? So visually- I think that's why it's a holy shit though. Cause you're like, he didn't even have to- Yeah, that's why I think it took me a minute. I had to reappraise it cause I saw it the first time

and it didn't look like there was that much oomph behind it. And so it didn't really leap off the screen to me. Yeah. And then I saw, wait, he didn't actually put that much muscle behind it, seemingly. Right. And it went all that way with some mustard, as you would probably discuss on it. Or horseradish. I don't know which of the many varieties of mustard.

Yes, horseradish. It's the perfect food, as I learned. Yeah, I bet you're not a horseradish man, either. I'm not. If you're not a mustard man, you're almost certainly not a horseradish man either. If you're not a mustard man, you're almost certainly not a horseradish man. No, I'm not, no. But this was a spicy throw.

And it was, I think the fact that it was flat-footed, that it was not a case of, you know, when a outfielder will just get their whole body into it and be flying, they will launch themselves. Yeah, along with the, with the sort of Superman it. And then it looks like, OK, they actually got everything they had into that row, whereas Acuna just did not look like that. And he wasn't even camped under it in great throwing position.

There was no crow hop. He he wasn't like positioned. You know, he cut it almost with his back to the field a little bit going away from the ball and then just casually turned, you know, took a little step, but not even a hop and just absolutely launched it. So it did require multiple viewings

for me to fully appreciate it. But then, yes, it did sort of sneak up on me. It was like a sleeper build, you know, to drop another little bit of bodybuilding lingo on you, which I know you love. What is that? Well, it's like when you have your pump cover on. So this is-

Okay, you're making stuff up. I'm not. You're like, you're doing a goof at me. You're doing- I could just fabricate terms and you might not know the difference, but I'm not, I swear. I think second only maybe to baseball

and I don't know, video games, like the specialized lingo that goes along with fitness or lifting, I think just thrills me. So a pump cover is basically just like when you're wearing something that covers up your physique in the gym and then maybe you remove your pump cover once you get your pump. Oh, okay.

So, you know. Sorry, I have another question. Are you lifting naked generally? Like, is that part of the culture? No, but people, you know, you've been in gyms, so you've seen the attire of people will wear revealing things or non-constrict things, or they want to either show off some skin or just be flexible, have freedom of movement, not overheat, etc. But I tend to wear baggier stuff, as some people do,

but some people will call that the pump cover, and then that'll be the preliminary stage of the workout. And then once you get your pump going, then you remove the pump cover. Because you're too hot? the workout. And then once you get your pump going, then you remove the pump cover, then you just, maybe you're hot or sweaty or maybe like your, your physique is ready to be unveiled now because sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you remove the pump cover, sometimes there's a sleeper build where, you know, maybe it depends on which portions of your body are most developed,

or maybe, let's say you're lean, but you're not bulky. And so when you're wearing a big shirt or something, people might not know you lift. And so then you remove the pump cover, or you remove your shirt, or whatever it is, and suddenly, oh, sleeper build. Okay, he's pretty built under there, right? So this was like the sleeper build of Throes, where it didn't seem like anything special to me. And then I looked more closely and I realized, Whoa, that guy's cut. There's some serious strength here. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. I am just, I think that if I were part of this community, I would be yelling kiss at bodybuilders all the time. Cause boy, it sure sounds like you're talking about other stuff, Ben. I gotta tell you, it sure sounds like you're talking about other stuff than clothing. There's certainly some homoeroticism happens at times. You know, it's the male gaze at other men and not necessarily in a sexualized way. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just a male mutual admiration society sort of situation.

Right. Well, we can save further discussion of that for our next Patreon pod, I suppose. But I think it's so funny because like the more you have described it in these moments the more I'm like Yeah, that was a hell of a good throw man. That was such a good and because it was it was right on the money That's so interesting to me that the nachos come out and said like oh this wasn't I wasn't Looked like he knew exactly what he was doing I mean like I was just impressed by both ends of that as I said I was like wow those, those guys are really,

they really pulled something off there, which I guess is like when you're at the gym and you pull something off, you know? And then you're like, oh, look at how that guy's put together. I'm picking it up now. I'm getting familiar with the lingo. Looking forward to you working these terms into your lexicon.

It will not happen even one time in my entire life. But yeah, sure. I do occasionally joke about on gear. Or on the sauce. That's the sort of sauce talk that I could probably engage in more so. We were talking about actual mustard. Yeah, we were talking about actual mustard. We were talking about actual horseradish.

We were talking about... Is it because it's... Do you not like the way that it makes your nose feel when you eat it? Is it like a nose hit issue? I think it's that I'm anti-flavor. Yeah. I think I'm Tim Waltz's caricature of a white guy or something. My wife theorizes that I'm some sort of supertaster. And so it's overwhelming? Yeah. I don't know whether that's true or whether I just have a blamed palette, but

yeah, I'm not particularly adventurous when it comes to condiments. When it comes to condiments. Whereas like I have never met a sauce that I won't try, which isn't to say that I don't end up regretting trying the sauces. Sometimes you're like, wow, but I'll try every one of them. I love a sauce. It's like a constant push and pull with the fridge. Like how many condiments do we really need? I'm like, I don't know. We haven't reached the upper bound yet. I'll tell you when we do. What were we talking about? Oh, the Acuna throw. Yeah, I think it was pretty special and I'd be comfortable with us bringing it up a lot. And I think, look, this doesn't have to be like a permanent decision.

You know, we can grant preliminary entry into the Great Throw Hall of Fame. Yeah, the throw is Mount Rushmore, Mount Throwmore. We can chisel out a throw and then chisel another throw in it instead. Right. And so I think that as the throw more is currently constituted, like, sure, yeah, put him in there. And then if better throws come along, we can boot him, which he didn't do with that throw, didn't boot it. It is interesting that you can use sort of flavor terminology when it comes to throws in baseball.

I said, you know, spicy, you could call it throw spicy. You could say he put some mustard on it. You could say there was some sauce on that throw. So there's a lot of overlap there. All right, well, we have a guest waiting in the wings. Not literally, Can you imagine if we had guests in our interview segments waiting while we bantered for... I wouldn't bring up sauce if we did that. I would try to be respectful. I'm comfortable.

I don't feel like I'm wasting your time, but I'm comfortable exploring the boundary of it. I wouldn't do that with a guest or being so generous to spend time with us at all. Exactly. And we don't want to keep Mark Armour from his quest to uncover yet more Satchel Page games, which we will talk to him about after the break. Oh, Tommy, the stat blast, the beef boys so chouette Les avis paye dans tes super Une fête La la la, la la la, la la la, factivement saurage

La la la, la la la, la la la, factivement saurage Well, if you go to Satchel Paige's page at FanGraphs or Baseball Reference, you'll see stats from about 400 major league games. If you look at the lyrics to the song Satchel Paige said by the Baseball Project, you'll see the line, Satchel Page said by the baseball project, you'll see the line Satchel pitched about a million games. Somewhere between those two figures lies the actual number of games, Major League and otherwise, that Page pitched over almost half a century. Back in 2023, Mark Armore set out to nail that number down and he has an answer, 1853, though that number could be higher when you hear this. It is a living document.

Mark is a prolific writer, researcher, historian, and saber bigwig who has won just about every kind of hardware, saber hands out, and he might have to make room for more in light of his latest work, the Satchel Page project, which was just publicly released. Mark, welcome back to Effectively Wild.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Well, Satchel Page is one of the most famous players ever, but I would hesitate to call him one of the best known. We are aware of the myth and the legend of Satchel. Was your goal here to find out more about the man? Yes, I think so. Like many baseball fans or historians,

I thought I knew a lot about Satchel Paige, but I think that I felt like what I knew lacked the specificity that I was used to in most of my history work, whether it's baseball or something else. Like, stories you read about him would say things like, sometime back in the 40s, somewhere in the Midwest, this happened.

I'm not saying that the people that are telling those stories did anything wrong. I just think that I grew up expecting a little bit more dates and facts in my baseball history. And so I didn't really feel like I wrapped my hands around what Satchel Page was doing all those years in a way that was satisfying to me. I kind of did this because I was curious myself, honestly.

And in doing it, yes, I learned a lot about him because he said he traveled and pitched everywhere and he pitched for a long time. Both those things are of course true. At the end of the day, the broad strokes of his story are, I think, true. But I just wanted to know more. The last couple of years, last decade, has really been marked by us firming up that historical understanding not just

for players like Page, but across all of the players who played in the Negro Leagues and in the barnstorming teams. And there's all this incredible resource for folks trying to backfill missing information. I'm curious, sort of, what has your process been for trying to find the appropriate Page documents? Because I think you're right to say he's not maybe the most well-known, but he is one of the best-known NegroLeaks players and certainly has gotten dramatic treatments and songs, as has been noted. So it's a little surprising that there have been so many gaps.

So what's the process been for you in trying to piece together the day by day? Well, the most significant part of my process has been going through newspaper archives. And these are fairly recently available, when I say recently, like in the last decade. And it started out that you could get the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. But then over time, many small town, even small town

newspapers are now online. Not all of them, maybe not even close to all of them, but many. And I subscribe to a lot of these. And so the really simplest answer is that I would start with 1926, which is the first year that he pitched professionally. Although he did pitch in Mobile in 1924 and 1925, I've literally found nothing to back that up in newspapers, which is not to say that it's not true.

I expect it is true. But anyway, I started in 1926, and I literally would search for Satchel Page in January 1926 in these newspaper archives. And there were several. And then I would go to February, and then I would go to February, and then I would go to March, and then I would go to April, and I would go through the whole season until I got to the end.

And then I would repeat that for 1927. And I thought I would stop as soon as he slowed down, but unfortunately he didn't really slow down until he was 60 years old. So I really went up into the 60s, into the 1960s, I mean. And then because I was on this role, I decided I would sort of keep going and even pick up the old timers games that he was in, in the 1970s. And then when I got to the end, when he died, I actually then started over with a different newspaper archive, found

new stuff, and then I went through and did it again. I did it, I think, four times over time. And so it's not rocket science, it's just painstaking, the process to get it all. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you it was onerous, it wasn't. It was kind of fun, honestly. To what extent do you think so much of this was unknown because of just the conditions at the time, the places he was pitching, the ways that those games were

documented or not documented by the press at the time, and those records and writings preserved, et cetera? And then how much of a contribution did Satchel himself make to his own myth? And you know, there's so many colorful quotes of Satchel's or possibly apocryphal quotes, who knows, or just anecdotes, tall tales, potentially, which I think we all enjoy. And even if you're someone like us, who's wired this way where we like the facts and figures, that doesn't mean that we can't appreciate a good story, even if it's not verifiable.

And so I guess this isn't entirely about, oh, let's fact check the legends of Satchel Page. It's just about fleshing out the reality. But was part of it that Satchel sort of wanted to keep these things somewhat obscure? Would he want someone to be documenting the number of games he actually pitched in? Yeah, no, I agree with everything you said. And I love the stories. Satchel was a great storyteller. And I could, you know, if somebody uncovered an interview that Satchel Paige did in the 1940s that I hadn't seen before, I would be the first person to read it because he was a delightful raconteur about his career and about everything. But there are good reasons why he was polishing his own

apple. And one of them is that for much of his career, when he was essentially a hired gun, is that for much of his career, when he was essentially a hired gun, a lot of his promotional material had to do with the stuff like, he's pitched 25 no-hitters in the past year and he's won 100 consecutive games or whatever it is. He said a lot of things like that, or his promoters did. Most of those things are not really true, or really even close to true. But I think that he was a promoter. He was promoting himself the same way that

a comic or a musician would promote themselves. Once he got to be in his 40s and he was mostly on his own, year to year, signing with a different promoter, he was telling stories about himself, which I think had to happen. So I don't really all blame him for that. And if you go back to the places where it is verifiable or more verifiable when he was pitching

for the great Negro league teams that he was pitching for, like the Crawfords, Spitsford Crawfords, Birmingham, Kansas City Monarchs. His records are incredible. I mean, they don't need to be polished. He really did most of the things that he said he did, maybe not quite as often as he said that he did. He didn't pitch every day. He pitched more than anybody's pitching today, by far.

He was pitching probably four or 500 innings a year. But I think he didn't need to brag, really. But I think the bragging is sort of funny as well. I don't really mind it. I guess that takes us to our next question, which is having filled in so many of these gaps, how would you describe his statistical record as it stands now? How does it differ from the understood official MLB record line that he has? One of the challenges of this is that the work that SeamHeads has done and other organizations

that have bought into that work has been remarkable and I'm not taking anything away from any of it. And one of their goals or maybe their primary goal was to create a major league encyclopedia. And in order to do that, you need box scores, you need the offense and the defense to balance out. And I get that. And there is a notion of what is a major league You need the offense and the defense to balance out. And I get that.

And there is a notion of what is a major league and Paige wasn't always pitching in major leagues. And also he wasn't always pitching against major league opponents because the major league teams that he played for, even at his very peak, like Mike, when he was pitching in Pittsburgh, and he was probably as good a pitcher as there's ever been, he was pitching many games against local teams. They would play Josh Gibson on Saturday and they would play the Dayton Pipefitters on Wednesday and he would pitch in both of those kinds of games. And Seamheads is interested in the former but not the latter because they're trying

to do a specific thing and I think that's great. So what I was interested in differs from Seamheads and therefore Major League Baseball in two significant ways. One is I count everything and two is I don't need a box score. I mean, really at its core, I just really need to know, yes, there was a game, yes, Satchel pitched in that game. That's really all I need to know. And if there's more to know,

then absolutely I will put that in my spreadsheet. If I know how many innings he pitched, how many strikeouts he had, and what the score of the game was, sure, I'll keep track of all that too. But there are some games where I don't know that much. I just know that he pitched. And Seamheads really needs a lot more than that in order to count it as a game.

So to answer your question, Meg, I have paid right now winning, I think, 672 games in his career, which would include a lot of games against Josh Gibson and a lot of games against a bunch of grandfathers, or maybe not grandfathers, fathers. When Paige would say, I won 100 games last year, he really counted all the games the same. I think Page was very transactional about his career. So I don't think Page thought like, I'm pitching against great teams today and I pitched against a bad team on Wednesday. I think Page was just pitching.

And oftentimes, unlike with Jacob deGrom, who his best strategy for making money is to pitch against the best teams. That wasn't true with Paige. There were times when pitching against semi-pro teams was actually a better payday than it was to pitch for the Crawfords. And if that better payday was available to him,

he would take it. So on your site, marklaurencearmor.wordpress.com, you have the current breakdown, a bunch of tables of the game types, and you have 553 major league games there, which compares to Baseball Reference's current total of 403. That's combining his Negro Leagues games and his American League games.

So that's a significant difference, and I guess a lot of those we just wouldn't have stats for. So it's a lot of games one way or another. I wonder having done this research, whether you can sum up a representative week or month, let's say, in the life of Satchel Page or in his pitching performance, at least, if there was a certain season that's just sort of an average Satchel season, and I'm sure that varies wildly. But what kind of pitching schedule are we talking about or breakdown of competition or mileage accrued? One thing I would say about Paige, he wasn't a scientific absurdity

in that he really was gradually getting worse over his career. And he was pitching fewer innings, he was pitching fewer complete games. So, whereas in the early part of his career, he was pitching a lot of shutouts, a lot of three hitters with 18 strikeouts, even against major league teams. And then as time went on, his legend was probably growing,

but he started pitching five innings a game and then three innings a game. And he had to pitch more in order to sell himself so he couldn't pitch complete games. So the Satchel Page of the 1950s was a guy that was pitching two or three innings at a time. The Satchel Page of the 30s, which was Page at his best, was typically pitching Sundays would be the big game that was potentially would be in a big stadium and would be the big game that was, you know, potentially would be in a big stadium and would be hyped where he'd be pitching against another major league team, perhaps in Chicago or New York or Philadelphia or Washington.

And then over the course of the week, he might pitch another time or two, maybe not nine innings both of those times, but a little bit more. And that would be sort of, I almost hesitate to say typical, honestly, about any of his seasons, because there was always like a yeah, but. I mean, he would have seasons where you, I'm going through the newspapers and I'm saying like, okay, finally, this looks like Bob Gibson here.

He's pitching, you know, he's pitching on Sunday, he's pitching on Thursday, he's striking out a lot of guys. And then all of a sudden you see a story that's like, oh, he's jumped to the house of David. And he pitches for the house of David for like five weeks because they want to win some tournament, not five weeks, three weeks. They want to win a tournament. They pay him a lot of money, comes back, he wins the tournament,

and then he goes back and he joins his team again and he pitches like Bob Gibson. And he did that a handful of times, really at his absolute best. In the smack dab in the middle of his career, he was leaving teams for a time, and then he would come back. When he was in his 20s in Pittsburgh, the team owner was increasingly upset about this,

as you can imagine. And then when he went to Kansas City, that was probably the most famous time of his career because he was becoming more, he was famous even in white America in the 1940s. Most of the photographs you probably see of Page as a Negro leader with Kansas City. At that time, his owner was in on it. He would sell Page's services for a few weeks and he would get a cut. So it was a little bit more like that. And then after that, I don't know, I hate to dodge the question, but it's just hard to say what typical really means because he was, I will say this about Page, even when

he was 58 or, he pitched the three innings in 1965 for the Kansas City A's and of course, he pitched famous leap, gave up one hit in three innings. And even then, this was not a lark to him. He believed that he belonged in the major leagues then. And you can laugh and I can laugh, but every time he was given a chance to prove himself, he pitched well. I mean, and then they would then the take would be like, well,

yeah, he pitched well today, but he's just kind of a fluke. It's not that he can't keep that up. And then he would go away for a couple of years. He wouldn't, he wouldn't go away. He would go away from mainstream baseball circles. And then they would give him another chance and he would do it again. So it's kind of hard to look at his record and say that he ever really failed until he was like 61 years old or something. Yeah. Richell's got nothing going. I'm curious if there, and I imagine a lot of this had to do with whether he was playing

a recognized pro team or the local beer league team, but were there particular stretches of his career that proved sort of more stubborn to track down than others? Yeah, definitely. And the hardest part for me was the times that he pitched in Latin America. I don't speak Spanish or read Spanish, so the newspaper work was really beyond me. However, I enlisted the help of people who do. This is the great thing about being in Sabre, is that there's always people around that know how to do stuff that you don't know how to do. I had a couple of people that just thought

this was the coolest thing ever, including a friend that knows somebody in Cuba who was able to go to the library and get his daily log for the few times that he spent time in Cuba. So that was the hardest for me. It was the hardest in the sense that I couldn't do it, actually. So I had to enlist some help. But he pitched several dozen games in Cuba, in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Venezuela, and

the Dominican. And some of the stuff has been written about in such a way that I could find it. But because of the way I did this project, didn't do me any good for someone to say he was 12 and 8 over that summer. I needed the daily log. That was the requirement that I gave myself.

So I needed to know what he did on each day. So with that, I really needed somebody that could go in and get the newspapers and I found somebody or a few different somebody's who could do it. So you have put together a map which would make for fine wall art. You have a bunch of digital push pins in every place that you have documented a Satchel Page pitching appearance

and you have gathered games from 46 states across six countries all over North America. Do you have a favorite find, whether it's just the most unlikely location or competition or exhibition, just something that wasn't previously known or that wasn't previously known to you that stood out along the way? There's a bunch of things I didn't know because I didn't know that much,

but there were a couple I'll mention. One was stunning for me when I found this. In 1948, Page was signed by Bill Vak to pitch for the Indians. And in the middle of the season, he was pitching on his own. In the early part of that season, he was actually barnstorming. And he got signed sometime in early July. He pitched his first game, I believe, on the seventh, his first American League game. And then a few days later, there was an, what I will call an in-season exhibition game, which major league teams used to have. Even up until like, I don't

know, 10 or 15 years ago, you know, like the Mariners would play Tacoma in the middle of the year. And they had a game on, which was, you know, so Paige had one American League game in his, in his resume, on his resume. And there was a game in Cleveland against the Brooklyn Dodgers. And I believe it was either the day before the day after the All-Star game, the Brooklyn Dodgers, you can imagine the middle of the season, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians who are both in the pennant race, in two different pennant races, the Dodgers come to Cleveland and they play a game, which obviously does not count. And in the game, this is why it's interesting to me, and I knew nothing about this game. In this game appeared Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Satchel Paige and Larry Doby,

who were the only four African Americans in the major leagues at that time. There had been a couple of other guys who had come and gone, but these were the only four active players. They all played in the game. There was no like Jackie wants the day off or anything or even you think he'd give the catcher the day off, no. All four of them played in the game. And to me, there's two things that are amazing about this game. One is that the game happened at all. It just seems bizarre that this would happen.

Certainly wouldn't happen today. And secondly, that I literally had never heard anything about it. And I've probably, you know, I've read a lot of stuff about this period. And it was just something and the coverage of this game, which was not small in both New York and in Cleveland in the newspapers, but they wrote about it very matter of factly. And I think that newspapers tended in the early days of integration, they tended to not write about the history that was being made in front of them.

It was just matter of fact, Dodger first baseman Jackie Robinson got his first hit today, as opposed to like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. That was an amazing find for me to discover this. I mean, there's probably a lot of people that knew about this, but I was not one of them. And then when later in his in his life,

when Page was became much more itinerant, the games were not covered nearly as well. It was much more it was very similar in the 60s. Page games were much more like Fog Hat is coming to the county fair in your town, where either it would be mentioned maybe in advance, but not necessarily. They wouldn't send a reporter to watch Fog Hat

to report on the concert, right? So it was a lot trickier to sort of figure out what Page was doing all the time Anyway, the funniest story that I heard that I saw Was that Paige was in Anchorage? Which may be the only time he was in Anchorage. This was like in I think it was in 1964 and Paige was pitching a couple of games there. There was a story in the paper about Richard Nixon, who at the time was unemployed.

He was not president and not vice president anymore. Richard Nixon was flying either to Japan or home from Japan on some diplomatic seminar or something, I don't know what it was. flying either to Japan or home from Japan on some kind of, I don't know, diplomatic seminar or something, I don't know what it was, and they stopped in Anchorage to refuel. And Nixon, this is the story that was told, Nixon lands in the airport

and there's like this big hubbub in like the adjacent gate. And he learned that, he said like, what's going on over there? And they said, oh, Satchel Page is about to get off the plane. And so Nixon goes over to the gate and gets in line with everybody else and gets his autograph and talks to him. Which I think is very well deserved. I kind of respect that Nixon did that.

He knew when his better was walking in, I guess. So what is next for the project? And are there any stretches that have proven stubborn where you're trying to fill in some gaps? Do you want to put a plea out to the Effectively Wild listenership to send you some box scores and some newspaper articles? A couple of things. One is, yes, I do want to find more games.

I really, I've said this before and I may have underestimated this project a couple of times, but there are a couple of times that I thought that I'd kind of gotten to the end and then some other spurt came in. But I think that again. I think it's getting harder to find more. However, I do have on my website, there's a link to a list of what I call most wanted games. And these are games that, like what I just described, where I have evidence from a newspaper that this game was going to happen,

but no evidence that it did happen. And I can't count those because there's a lot of rain outs. And there are games where Page wouldn't pitch. It didn't happen very often. But he would have a sore arm or the flu or something like that, and he wouldn't pitch. It didn't happen very often, but he would have a sore arm or the flu or something like that and he wouldn't pitch. So I have these games as unconfirmed. And when that happens, I actually have been known to go into Facebook groups for these hometowns and post notes. And this has worked, by the way. I've had a couple of hits this way that people said,

oh yeah, I remember that game. I was there with my dad and they provided me enough information to convince myself that the game actually happened. So I've got a hundred, more than a hundred games, I think, that are in that category that somebody could look at. And some of them are in the sixts, so it's possible that somebody

was actually still around that went to the game. Some of them are older and it's very unlikely that that happened. But yeah, that's one thing. So, yeah, that's something that I'm interested in certainly doing. And there's also over time, I'll probably get even more information on the games that I do have. If you play with the map, you might give me feedback like that's not where that ballpark was. It was somewhere you have it close, but it's not really there. I tried

to use GPS stuff that I found on Wikipedia, but in some cases, if I didn't find it, then that pin is just going to be in the middle of the town somewhere. So I can sort of get feedback on missing data. Or I have seven innings, and you really only pitch four innings. I'm sure that there are mistakes like that. And as for what's next for the project, believe it or not, when I started this project a couple years ago, or maybe a year and a half ago,

I thought even bigger than this. What I told people I was going to do was I was going to work on a, essentially a life log for a Satchel page, which include all the other stuff he did too, like he spoke to the PTA meeting or something like that. And so that would be more of a travel log for Page. But then as I went along, I realized,

I probably should have realized this when I started, that the pitching games is really all anyone cared about except me, maybe. So I kind of put that aside. I did make a little bit of progress on that. And I discovered, for example, that for many years, like at least eight years, maybe 10 years, he would travel with basketball teams in the off season

or his off season, like say the Harlem Globetrotters. And there used to be in the 50s and 60s, there were other teams like the Globetrotters, not just the Globetrots, there were other teams like the Globetrotters, not just the Globetrotters. There were competing teams that would just travel around and play in high school gyms. Pagewood was just a PR guy. He didn't play. He would often be the coach of the other team, or he'd be involved in the gags,

where they threw the confetti at him or something. But anyway, I found a lot of this and I said, oh, this would maybe make a good story someday. Like, why did he do that? Or what did he get out of that? It's probably money is probably why he did it, but that's probably a boring reason. But yeah, Paige, the thing I'll say about Page, which is a question you did not

ask, but he was by many measures a fairly successful person economically. I mean, he lived in a big house in Kansas City. He was certainly upper middle class. He was a car guy. He had expensive cars that he traveled around with. People would say to him, why are you doing this? Why are you still pitching? He said, well, I have like eight kids at home, which is true. He had eight kids. He also had expensive hobbies. He was not a real car route, he didn't spend a lot of time on bad things, but he did have a car collection, a gun collection. Did not, he was not immune to the, to all of the horrors of segregation.

There were certainly a number of stories where that was a problem in his life, and he absolutely felt that. But he also was, he did better than most of his peers, or maybe even all of his peers did. So I certainly am not gonna ever criticize Page for the decisions he made to leave the Pittsburgh Crawfords and go pitch in North Dakota,

because I mean, he had two and a half strikes against him and he did the best he could. Yeah. Yeah. And you've already picked up dozens of games that you've added to the total since your Sabre presentation at the conference last month. And then since you published this online last week, which I assume is partly from your own work and partly from the crowdsourcing

that you hoped would happen. People looking at what you did and adding to the historical record. So hopefully that can continue and maybe some effectively wild listeners will pitch in. Well, yeah, I absolutely could not wait to get this out in the public. And the reason for that was the crowdsourcing. I talked about this project to, if you happen to be hanging around Saber meetings, a handful of times over the past year and a half, but the map is so exciting looking that I think it really gets people to say, I want my be I want my town on that map too the reaction that people have

Have have given This project is exactly what I wanted to happen which was get to work Well, we're glad you did as a lot of people have pointed out page is famous for saying don't look back But we're glad that you did because you found a lot you're gaining on him in terms of your knowledge of his life, I suppose. And I think we should bring back barnstorming and having big leakers just pitch in every which way. And for everyone, barely big leaguers pitch in big league games at this point. So I don't think that we're close to doing that, but I'm glad that you documented the days when it did happen and

have supplied some facts that really don't detract at all from the myth and the legend of Satchel. I think you've you've only burnished it really by documenting how long and prolifically he did pitch. So please do pitch in, no pun intended. If you're interested, we will link to all of the data that you've presented here and your various websites and sources, et cetera. Always a pleasure to learn from your learning. Thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate it.

I enjoy your show a lot, so it's always good to get on here. Well a few hours after we finished recording, Mark informed me that the count of Page games, which I had said stood at 1,853, has now been raised to 1,856. Three new games added to Page's pile. Mark's Small Town Facebook Group initiative paid dividends. He was able to add two games via that method, and on Thursday, after talking to us, he talked to someone who saw Page pitch in St. Joseph's, Missouri in 1967. All the details checked out, so Mark considers the game verified.

So his tally is up 23 games since the public release of the Satchel Page project a week ago. The work continues, as will ours, but not today, because that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening, and special thanks to our Patreon supporters, new and old, past and present. If you'd care to join their swelling ranks, you can do so, and we hope you will, by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks.

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