Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2357: Pinstriped Panic

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about umpire Jen Pawol’s promotion to the majors, whether the MLB Speedway Classic lived up to its name, Nathan Eovaldi’s Gibsonian season, another big blow to the practice of pitcher hitting, a “breakout” question, an optimistic Twins take, the Yankees’ concerning (to Yankees fans) slide, Roman Anthony’s extension, whether […]

Give it, give me, give me, Effectively Wild. Give me, Give me, Effectively Wild. Give me, Give me, Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 2357 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally and, like the Rockies, after going down 9-0 against the Pirates, before beating them 17 to 16. We have come all the way back to your podcast apps a little later in the week than usual.

I guess I should say, Meg, you are of fan graphs. Yeah. Just in case that has not changed since last week. Hello. It has not changed. I am still of fan graphs. That is what I am of. Hello, how are you?

Okay. You are in fact fan graph yourself. I am. So, yeah. Well, so much has happened since it's been a bit since we have potted. So we have a lot to catch up on. But a bit of breaking news. Just before we got on the mic here, we are about to meet a major leaguer this coming weekend.

Quite an exciting one. Jen Powell will make her debut on the bases first and then behind Home Plate as a major league umpire. First woman to ump a major league game long overdue, obviously, and she's been waiting in the wings for quite a while, and we've talked a bit about that at various times. But finally, I guess I'm happy that this is happening. I'm also happy that we got the first female ump before robot umps. It doesn't seem like too much to ask some form of robot ums, that is. So I never know whether to call it there. People say, no, it's not robot umps.

It's a BS. That's different from robot umps. But it was never really robot umps. It's a computer that is taking part in the calls to some extent. So I don't mind that. But anyway, I'm glad that we expanded the pool of potential umpires. beyond just men before we welcomed in the cameras and computers. Yeah, it was always sort of a puzzling delay, right?

I mean, like, not puzzling insofar as the umpires at the major league level tend to be quite long tenured, sometimes to the consternation of fans, right? Yeah. But, you know, once you get promoted, you tend to stick up there for a good long time. But that doesn't mean there was no churn, right? And that doesn't mean there was no movement at all. And so it was a bit puzzling because there's nothing about the experience of umpiring other than a proclivity to be persniquity that is particularly noteworthy. And that's not like a gender distinction.

A lot of persnickity to go around, you know, much persnickity. So there wasn't anything about being an umpire that seemed like it needed to have a, a particularly gendered valence, and yet it did for a very long time. So good, more please, I suppose, and then I hope that we get to the place that the NFL has reached where there are just a bunch of female officials, and it is largely unremarkable and unremarked upon because it is simply a part of the standard operating procedure of the league. But yeah, here we go. I'm sure the internet will react normally, but I hope that it's a good time.

It's funny to like root for umps, you know, because really you don't want to know about umps at all, right? But to be a very good umpire is often to be, you know, someone who has blended into the background because it's not the purpose of our viewing, right? You're not there to see the umpires. So it's, I hope that the trajectory that she and, enjoys is an acknowledgement of a barrier being broken and then that we just don't think about her very much at all after that, you know, it'll be an indication that things have kind of gone well

and that her umpiring career is off to a strong start. So yeah, there we go. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if she says something herself to that effect. Yeah. About how she's proud or happy to be a trailblazer, but that she just kind of wants to do her job and for it not to be remarkable. Though Obviously, it's going to be remarkable after 150 years or so of Major League Baseball for this to be the first. And MLB has been a trailblazer in some respects and is diverse in some respects, but not in this respect. No. I don't know if it's last major men's professional league. I mean, certainly of the big ones, I guess, in North America, certainly the NBA has had female amps for, gosh, almost 30 years.

think. And even the NFL, it's been about a decade. Never, never great to be a decade behind the NFL when it comes to. Yeah, no. Granted, I guess there are more officials per game and per league in those leagues than in MLB. I guess the umpiring pool maybe is a little smaller, but that's not the best excuse. No. And, yeah, I don't know why baseball was uniquely slow or especially slow in this respect. Because there have been other female umps who were umpiring prospects at least or got close. And certainly some of them had abuse hurled at them and faced all kinds of treatment that led to their exit from the game. I don't know why MLB would necessarily be worse or baseball would be worse in that respect than other sports.

But, yeah, it doesn't reflect particularly well on the fact that it took this one. Especially because the minor league or minor league equivalent for baseball is just so much more robust than it is in those leagues. And so you would think that if one of the barriers is, well, we need opportunities to train folks to be ready, you just have a lot more opportunity. Even with minor league contraction, you just have a lot more opportunity to integrate the female employees. hires into the process because you have you know you have all of this affiliated ball for them to to be training through so it is a weird delay and yeah it doesn't it doesn't feel great when when the NFL is is kind of lapping you just because you you have a you have a bat to ball sport that you know women predominantly are the ones to play at least you know high level competitive

of softball. And so you would think that there would be a, just in the former player of roughly equivalent. And I don't mean to say that they're the same sport. Obviously, they're not, you know, softball is its own thing. But in terms of there being like a pool of young people who have played that sport, either because they've played Little League up to the point when they would have been diverted to softball or because they've played softball, it's like you have a pool whereas for you know for football there is a growing flag football apparatus um and i think that the NFL is in part of why they are being so supportive of that endeavor is to you know generate a a fan base of of young people who have played whether it's you know contact or flag

but also, like, it gives you a talent pipeline into coaching, officiating, et cetera. So that MLB would be lapped by the NFL, both on the officiating side and, frankly, on the coaching side is like, hey, we're not doing our very best, are we? But now we're doing a little bit better. And that's nice. It's nice to be able to report progress on this sort of thing because that kind of news has been sort of thin on the ground of late, hasn't it? Yeah.

I guess maybe that could account for the NBA being earlier, just the, The fact that there's been a robust, obviously, amateur and professional, female basketball. But, yeah, I guess the NHL, actually, I don't think, has had a regular season female official. I can't speak to that at all. In various prospect showcases and exhibitions and skills competitions and such, but not in a regular season game. Gotcha. So, MLB, not last. Not last.

Those big four congrats, I guess. So Jen Powell, who is 48 from New Jersey. And, you know, not a shock because she was working spring training games this year and last year. So she was clearly on the cusp. But she will be working the bases Saturday at Truist Park, Braves Marlins doubleheader, and then behind the plate on Sunday. Nice. People will probably be upset about some of her calls, hopefully not because she's a woman, but because she's an umpire. Right.

Yeah. Anyway, I haven't had a favorite umpire for a while since. He got burned. Pat Hohberg became disgraced. So I guess this is Jen Powell sliding into a spot vacated by Pat Hohberg. Not directly, obviously, but also in my affections. Now I can root for Jen Powell. Hopefully her Ump scorecards will be up to grade.

We'll see. She'll be judged like anyone else once we get the scorecards. Yeah. All right. So so much to discuss. Yeah. I don't even know where to begin. I guess maybe we could do a little bit of news roundup

and then we can talk about Yankees fans being at DefCon 1 and the Yankees being on the verge of falling out of a playoff spot and a Marlins assisted sweep. The Marlins being one of the best team in baseball in the past couple months. What is happening here? But just a little roundup here. What did you make of the Speedway Club? Classic, which was branded by some as MLB's Fire Fest, which seems like a slight exaggeration.

That sounds a little strong to me when I saw that headline. I was like, okay, now, relax. Yeah, I get there were some disgruntled people because it was Saturday, and there was rain. And so there was a long rain delay, and then the game was postponed to Sunday. Yeah. And perhaps they had not planned for having, what, 91,000 fans there during a rain delay. And so they ran out of some items at the concessions, and there were bunless hot dogs and cheeseless tacos, the horror. I know, the depravity, the conditions.

Anyway, then they played on Sunday, and it seemed okay. And there was also a lot of sharing of either obstructed views or extremely distant views. Yes. You know, you put this place at Bristol Motor Speedway at a NASCAR track and they just, they built the diamond in the middle of the track. And I saw a lot of people saying, you know, cowards, why don't you just extend the field to the entire middle oval or just make it some weird dimension? Why even have a regular baseball field inside this irregular location? But, okay, they wanted it to be a different location, but not a travesty. I guess I understand. Generally, I feel like I'm in favor of mixing it up a little bit.

It's not like, yeah, it's not like the NASCAR MLB crossover is particularly meaningful to me, but it's maybe meaningful to some fans and that's fine. And yeah, like we have this phenomenon of the alternate broadcasts and then we also have the alternate sites. And it's just, hey, anything you can do to juice ratings, get people interested. It's a long season. There are a lot of games So fine, in principle, I am perfectly okay with it. So, okay, I am too. I'll start with that because I don't want this to be a grumpy take. I think that when you take a baseball field and you put it in the middle of a NASCAR racetrack,

particularly a venue that has the kind of capacity that that one does, If you buy a ticket to that, I feel like your expectation should be that the baseball is going to be a small part of your experience, right? Yeah. Not actually the main event. The main event is that you get to say you were there, right? And you get to stand in line and you get to tailgate. I think there maybe was some tailgating. I imagine that part of the problem with their rain delay plan was that many people,

understood their experience exactly the way I'm describing it and so were there very, very early and then had probably been drinking and then were grumpy because it was raining and they had to wait and then they were running out of things, et cetera. So, you know, some of it is that.

But I also think that, you know, the place where this failed for me apart from the fact that like, you know, it rained. It was obviously raining. I turned it on. And I was just like, they're not playing this game. And then they tried to play after the rain delay had ended,

but the rain had resumed for a while. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Someone's going to get hurt. Not enough dry and die in the world. Also, where did they bring? They had to have brought in the diamond dry, right? Because this is not a part of like infrastructure for NASCAR, is it? Right?

It had to have been shipped. So then it's like, who decided how much diamond dry? And did they anticipate needing. as much as they did, clearly not. Then did they restock overnight in case it rained again the next day? So, you know, these were some questions I had. But I think that the part of it that failed for me, and I will completely own the piece of this that might be like,

I don't care about NASCAR at all. And it's not a, I have disdain for NASCAR. I don't really have a, I don't, it's not for me. I don't, I don't. I don't really get racing sports like that. They've never resonated Formula One. Like, you can take it and make it fancy and, like, European. And I'm still like, eh, that's not for me.

So I will admit that there might be any number of people for whom the visual from home was really cool. But for me, the visual from home looks stupid. And so I was like, where are we here? Right? Because you can have your understanding of the appeal of the project be, well, yeah, people in the Speedway, their view of this game is going to be quite poor. But, like, they're there to have the experience of it and buy the hat with the racing stripe and, you know, fine. But really, the core audience for this from actually watching the game and having it present some sort of cool aesthetic deviation. from the norm is for the folks at home,

but I don't know that it was really successful on those grounds either. So that's like, that's one thing. The other thing I guess I'd say about the notion of like putting games in venues that are not typical is that I would like there to be some amount of staying power to that.

I think I'd like to prioritize that. Like, you know, when you do a game at Rickwood, when you do a game in the field of dreams field, like I think that even the field of dreams field like they maintain as an actual venue and obviously like you have the potential to rejuvenate and revitalize historic venues that have fallen on disrepair that hopefully are in communities that can make good use of them going forward right that it doesn't have to just be hey we're parachuting in for a game or a series and then we're out of here and you tear it all down and

it's like you know it never existed no like builds that in as a as a civic resource like that's really cool and there are I think are a lot of potentially very neat venues that would afford that opportunity and would be a better viewing experience both for the folks there and the folks at home this felt the most gimmicky yeah also I'm sorry I'm gonna be annoying for a moment it's Bristol baby why is there no comment why is there no it's it's bristle comma baby no there was no comma so it's bristol baby like we're being presented with a weirdly named baby like yes here is our baby bristol baby yeah what why is there no yeah you're aligned on the lack of punctuation i'm with you on that it's bristle baby no i'm at it's

hard for me to even avoid adding the pause because i know how it should read and I know where the comma should go and yet no comma to be found and it's just like behind home it's Bristol baby it's Bristol baby happens when you have a podcast co-hosted by a couple of editors but I agree that it was gimmicky and and that's kind of the feature not the bug in some ways it's like now I wouldn't want to attend regardless of the ring delay because it's kind of like you go to a rock concert at a stadium or something, and that can work out sometimes when you get the communal experience of 50,000 people, singing in unison, and it feels like you're in this small city that has gathered to just show your collective devotion to some artist or something. And that can be really nice and almost transcendent at times. But also, if you're sitting really far away, you're watching the screen more so than you're watching the tiny,

ants on the stage. And so you're wondering, what did I even, why am I here? Why did I pay all this money and come all this way to just watch something that probably I could watch a YouTube video and it would be basically the same and maybe even better because it would sound better. Right. And yeah, so you can kind of question it. And so I wouldn't want to go to this, but I guess I'm glad that it exists. I'm sorry it didn't go off without a hitch here. But I'm fine with it in principle proceeding, play baseball in weird places. It's okay. And this, was definitely more contrived because there was no real baseball connection to this venue, which was, I guess, part of the selling point.

But that's why Rickwood was special. And to some extent, the Field of Dreams game, which was kind of the first in this genre recently. And that was even kind of contrived. It wasn't exactly where they shot the movie, you know. But still, it had a theme. It had a kind of connection to this mystical past of baseball and aura and spirits and such. And it meant a lot to people to whom that movie means a lot. And so it works if you can find places like that.

There are only so many places that are suited for that kind of here's a perfect place with a baseball connection where it could play. So I'm okay with them expanding the palette a little bit. Yeah, but I think that the list of there's a perfect place is longer than two, right? And I was fine with the first one being more gimmicky because it was the first one. There's like a proof of concept thing that needs to go on there. So, you know, I don't think that this was like a travesty or a fraud, right? Like, no one was in a tent with a cheese sandwich wondering how they were going to get back to a place with adequate medical care, right? Like, this is, this was Bristol, baby.

But also, I think that there is an opportunity for these to not only feel fun and fresh, but also to serve some sort of purpose in terms of how the game communicates. its understanding of itself or establishes connection to communities where there isn't a major league team and never will be a major league team. And so I think, you know, there are probably places even within Tennessee that would have been more obvious choices for that. And I don't have a ready list, so I don't want to be overly critical. Like, I don't think that this was some problem. But it did feel like a missed opportunity to not continue the trend from from last year's game and part of it is that like I thought that that Rickwood game was so well done and all of the attendant media with it was so

interesting and I really felt like it they did a good job of like of nailing it you know and they set themselves a very difficult task insofar as that place is sacred to so many people the story that they need to tell is one that comes from a chapter of baseball's history that they are justifiably not proud of And I thought that they really, you know, they struck this balance of honoring the men who had played there and not shying away from, you know, a legacy that is not uncomplicated, fraught, you know, and unflattering to major league baseball. So part of my impression of Bristol, baby, is, why isn't there a comma, bent? Like, I'm losing my mind. And anyway, part of my reaction.

I hate to break this to you. I know, but like somebody, they have copyrighters that work for the league. Somebody, maybe it was a motor speedway issue. Maybe I'm, maybe there's a tradition at Bristol, maybe that I'm not fully, I mean, because look, I'll, I'll admit I am, I'm ignorant to the, the tradition of NASCAR just in general. But, but anyhow. So I think part of my reaction is definitely just a letdown from last. year, which I thought was a really special, a really special thing relative to how these have kind of played in the past, right?

This wasn't like a movie tie-in. This wasn't an aircraft carrier. This was like the game really, you know, wrapping its arms around a part of its history that is important for us to wrap our arms around. So that was cool. And this was like, you know, Ellie goes fast, so put it in a bus car, but racing shrimp on the side of the, sure, sure, sure. I've just learned that there's a children's bookstore in Bristol, Tennessee, called It's Bristol Baby with no comma.

Now, that is perfectly fine. Yeah, that's for Bristol babies. It's Bristol baby. Right. Like that, yeah, like. Completely different situation. Yeah, leave it to a bookstore owner to have some reference for the. Yes.

And a bit of a sense of Bristol. I wonder how many babies are named Bristol. Probably more than a lot. Yeah. No, I would imagine a lot. It's not a bad name. All right. Other news.

Nathan Avaldi just does not allow runs. So that's not even a recent development. That's just this season. We touched on him briefly when we noted that he was not an all-star somehow, which seemed like an actual significant snub given how he has allowed this year. And he has continued that. Now, his most recent scoreless outing came against the Yankees. So, of course, you know, pushovers barely counts.

But he is really just having himself a season. Like, he is inserting himself into fun facts that involve Bob Gibson, which makes sense, given that he has a Gibsonian ERA at this point, 1968-esque. And I saw a stat from opta stats that he's allowed one run or less than 13 of his last 14 starts. Yeah. Excluding openers, the only other MLB pitcher in the modern era to do that 13 times in a 14-start spin is Bob Gibson in 1968. And, of course, that has the same caveat that I always apply to these comparisons of modern pitchers and the runs they allowed to pass pitchers and the runs they allowed, because I haven't checked, but I'm going to guess that Bob Gibson pitched a lot more innings in that span of 14 starts than Evaldi, even though Avaldi did just go eight in his outing against the Yankees. But point is, he's been really excellent, and I don't know if he's unsung, but not sung enough for someone who has a 1.38 ERA.

And it's not like his peripherals are too shabby either. Obviously, they're not sub 2, sub 1.5. Right. They're pretty robust also. Right. And I do wonder, like, if he ends the season this way, and odds are that there will be some regression that goes on here. His FIP is almost a run higher, which is still fantastic, but higher. But, you know, he has, I think, maybe eight starts left if he makes all his regular turns.

Fangrass has him if we do the on-paced projection for 45 more innings. So if we do the math there, if he can just keep all of his opponent scoreless for the rest of the season, he could get down to a 0.98 ERA. Yeah. So Gibson is in play. That is still viable here. and yet he is too full wins above replacement behind Terrick Scouple, according to Fancrafts. Now, I don't care that much about award races these days, but what if he were to finish this season, a qualified season, somewhere in this ERA range?

Do you think that that has any cachet still? Would that help him in that race? Or are we also conditioned to look at the FIP and look at the strikeouts? Terrick Scoopal everyone knows is great. He's the ringing Zion Award winner. Like in some earlier era, this probably would have been enough for Evaldi to leap up that leaderboard. Even though he's pitched fewer innings, he did miss some time. So that alone, I mean, Scoople has almost 30 innings on him as crochet has even more on him.

So that would probably hold him back. But still, man, that is a very low ERA. And only three unearned runs, too. So it's not like he's been helped out that much by the scores. So I suspect he will get, I mean, if he continues to pitch this way, particularly if there's any movement above him, that he'll get some amount of down ballot consideration. I do think ERA still matters to people, right? Like, I don't think that people are that FIPPILT, you know. I do think that voters are trained to have sort of trained themselves to.

look at other estimators. But I do think that people have their sort of preferred flavor and it's not fit for everybody, right? So I think that he will get some consideration if things stay this low. I do think that I think that innings part of it is a bigger barrier for him to your point than than any, you know, fealty to FIP causing folks to look kind of a scantz at it, though to your point, like it's not like his FIP is bad, you know, like he's having a tremendous season. But I think that the gap is wide enough between him and scoble, crochet, and Framber for it to be a meaningful difference, even though he's clearly pitching very well to have, I mean, as we're recording this on Wednesday, the same FIP as Framber with, you know,

almost 30 fewer innings. So I think that the time piece of it will be a bigger barrier. But he's having a great year and you know has been so important for them yeah um relative to to my expectation i continue to find their deadline weird but um just because you know hey you have a nathan ofaldi and a couple other good pitchers although not so good that they could consistently overcome that mighty mighty mariners offense uh over the weekend but um yeah but who can really yeah um but yeah he's he's been he's been great and if scuba falters if something happens to a couple of guys ahead of him I wouldn't be surprised to see him on people's ballots certainly yeah to be clear I'm not suggesting that he's been better or more valuable than Terek scoobal just just raising it as a thought

exercise mostly to point out hey Nathan Avaldi he's been excellent and so he's been excellent and you know we want to we want to have the awards races be more of a race and have them be more of a race in a way that doesn't involve anybody getting hurt. And so I think it's fine to yearn, you know, to yearn for something fun. Yes, I yearn. Yerne. It's a yearning time. Patrick Corbyn has pitched more innings than Nathan Avaldi, or at least an inning more. But he is now second on the Ranger staff in innings trailing only Jacob de Grom.

Amazing. I remain resentful that Clemens stole my Patrick Corbyn prediction in our bold predictions draft and then had a less bold prediction. His prediction that Patrick Corbyn would throw 100 innings has already been fulfilled, whereas I was going to go with he would lead the team in innings, which would still be very much possibility. Not that I want to Grum to falter down the stretch either. Yeah. You're having a really hard time, you know, like you're out here with all of your guys, making. the majors from the minor league free agent draft and yet you got scooped on a different bold prediction however will you live you know i did have a bold prediction related to the yankees

not making the playoffs so that's that's looking a little better shall we shall we do are we ready to do this or would you like to talk about roman anthony first oh yeah we should talk about roman anthony i i guess maybe we could fold that into the the al east state of of that division conversation But we will certainly get to that. Just wanted to shout out that maybe the last high-level bastion of the designated hitter has fallen, that Japan's Central League of the NPB will be adding a designated error. I said that backwards, right? I said the last bastion of the DH.

I mean, the last bastion of pitcher hitting. I was so confused. I was like, what does that even mean? Did somebody die? Like, what's going on? The DH is raiding the gates. The last bastion of pitcher hitting has fallen now and will be sacked by the designated hitter barbarians, as some people still consider them. But 2027, the Central League will be adding the DH and falling into lockstep with just about all of professional baseball these days.

I don't know the answer to this question. Like, what's the highest level league left? What leagues even have pitcher hitting at this point? Like, is there, I don't know. Even like the major leagues in other countries, the independent leagues, they're pretty much all DH only at this point. Like, college is, are pitchers hitting anywhere? Like, where are pitchers hitting these days?

Is it just extinct? Someone will know, but write in and let us know when the Central League switches over to the DH in a couple of years. what will be left, if anything, or will we not have pitchers hitting anywhere above, like, Little League or high school, I guess, is high school going to be the top, the peak for pitchers hitting, perhaps? But some part of me was almost sad about this weirdly, even though I've been a pro-DH anti-pitcher hitting person. But I guess the difference here is that I don't really watch Japan's Central League. And so, like, there's part of me that kind of appreciated that there was this last vestige of this storied baseball tradition, even though I think that that tradition's time has come to be changed. And I was an advocate for that in MLB.

Central League pitcher hitting, that's someone else's problem as people who are regularly watching Japan Central League. But the OPS league-wide down there, we've talked about the just deadball era pitcher extreme year of the pitcher. pitcher or era of the pitcher in NPB, and the Central League is the lower offense of the two, the Pacific League, has had the DH for 50 years since not long after the American League added it. So the OPS in the Central League this year is 629, so that is an entire league hitting like Michael Harris the second this year. He has a 629 OPS.

He's actually hit quite well of late. He has really raised that, which is sort of sad given how his season started. But, yeah, that's the whole league. And so much as the DH was implemented in the 70s in MLB as a way of boosting offense, that is probably a big part of the rationale here, even though I think it was sort of pitched as well. Everyone else has a DH now, so we might as well, too. I mean, it makes sense.

It's not good. To be the lone holdout there, it gets harder and harder because then pitchers are even less prepared and it's like you're the outlier and it just seems weird and anachronistic and nobody's practicing it and then people come from anywhere else in the league or anywhere else in the world or the Pacific League or whatever and they're completely unprepared for this throwback retro task so it gets harder and harder really to cling to that but I'm sure that there are people who were pro pitcher hitting who are much sadder than I am and much more sentimental about that practice Yeah, I don't. I think that it has largely faded, though, because do you hear, you don't hear very many people talking about how they're not really. Yeah, I think people who were raised and grew up as National League fans and were steeped in that for decades, I think probably would still switch back if they had their druthers. And they do make the reasonable point that it does affect your roster construction and your bench and all of that, even if the.

decisions about when to pinch hit or pull a pitcher had become pretty push button by the end. Yeah. It still, it did really give you an incentive to not just have it be relievers all the way down on your roster. And, you know, there's a limit on that now anyway. But, yeah, we definitely have less DH discourse because why would we at this point? Like, the battle has been one or lost depending on your perspective. Yeah, you're right. People would let things go.

Yeah, right. They never come back and bite us later and persist for decades. No, not at all. And update on breakouts. I haven't talked about this lately, and people are probably happy. People, unspecified people, I don't know who that would be. Not anyone on this podcast, certainly. But I saw this tweet that the official MLB account sent just a couple days ago.

Joe Adele clubs the 22nd. Homer of his breakout season. Okay. Can we classify Joe Adele as a breakout hitter or having a breakout season? Yes. He's having a better season, certainly. He has improved the long, ongoing saga and struggle and debate about whether Joe Adele is good, has not really been resolved.

He has a sub-300 on-base percentage, but he does. He does have a career behind homers. He's hit 23 now. He has a 109 WRC plus. Yeah. He still has 0.9 war, and so breakout feels a little strong to me. Given that he's come from 77 WRC plus to 87 to 91 to 109, it's a good progression. Things are heading in the right direction.

Yeah. But barely above average is probably not enough for me to go breakout there. But, you know, he's been waiting. We've been waiting for the breakout for Joe Adele for so long that I understand the impulse. It looked like more of a breakout earlier when he was playing better. Yes, yeah. Yeah, he has had... Controversial.

He was hot, and then he was cold, and then he was hot and cold, and now he's kind of hot again. But, yeah, it's pretty tepid overall. I would probably stop short of calling it a breakout at this juncture. maybe earlier, as I said, in the season, it would have felt like a more natural descriptor for him. I will say that I'm happy, you know what he is, if he hasn't broken out, he's quite rosturable. And there was a time where that did not look like a, you know, a given for him. So in that respect, I'm happy for him and his champions. I understand why people liked Joe Adele coming up.

And I do wonder, you know, this is an unknowable. timeline, but you do wonder with Adele, like, how things would have progressed for him the shape of his production and career if he hadn't come up in 2020 under the circumstances of that season and had been given, you know, more time to marinate in the minors, not only because he wasn't in the majors, but, you know, with the, with the aid of an actual minor league season, right? So there is a part of his sort of trajectory that I think is very much not his doing, right? And isn't entirely even the angels doing, even though goodness knows that as soon as they think a guy might be ready, they're like, can you be in Anaheim tomorrow? Yeah.

But, you know, he's a rosterable player. He's a big leaguer. He looks like a big leaguer. That's good because that's a win. That's not always true. Yes. It's a win, and he's been worth almost exactly a win. All right.

So I guess we won't torture the Yankees fans any longer by waiting to get to them. Although, really, maybe the torture is talking about them. Yeah, I was going to say. It would be kinder to Yankees fans not to talk about the Yankees for at least a little while, but I guess we must. I did want to present the Yankees are about to play the Twins, which historically has been good news for the Yankees. So if anything can break them out of the slump aside from Aaron Judge's return, it would be an upcoming series with the Twins.

Joshean of the excellent Joshian Baseball Newsletter, Joshian.com. He presented the week after Dust has settled trade deadline dust, that is, take on the twins' deadline, their sort of mid-season fire sale, which was that he now, he sees the vision, I guess. He's saying that ultimately, mostly, they traded relievers. And they traded a lot of relievers and they traded good relievers. Sure. One of the best relievers. But they got starters back.

They got some prospects back. They now have six or seven at least kind of competent to quality starting pitchers. Yep. Penciled in for next season. They still have a pretty decent core position players depending. And they just don't have a whole lot of money committed to. next year's roster, and if we presume that they will be sold sometime soon, and that someone else will be signing the checks than the poll odds who refuse to sign checks or avoid it at all costs,

then the twins could potentially make some sort of off-season splash this winter, and they could find themselves heading into next season perhaps poised to be the favorites in that division yet again or at least to be contending and that maybe as much of a shock to the system as it was to see the volume, the number of players who were removed from that roster and just like players are piling on requesting trades as they saw the way the winds were blowing and Carr's Correa and Griffin Jacks and others just kind of like, hey, ship me out of here too. I want to flee this sinking ship and it could be kind of a depressing rest of the season. But perhaps this isn't actually embarking on a big rebuild or a huge lasting step back

and that maybe Minnesota could bounce back from this quickly. What do you make of that take? I think that that is a reasonable take with, you know, the appropriate caveats that Joe added that we kind of have to see what is the next iteration of twins' ownership's commitment to spending. And we won't know, we won't have a sense of that until, I mean, at the very least until an owner is actually named in a sale is executed, but really not until they've had an offseason or two to sort of enact their vision for the roster. I'm skeptical that we will see a ton of spending on the twins part this off season just because it seems like the timing of them getting a sale done is far enough out that. their ability to be significant actors in the free agent space is going to be somewhat stymied. But my take remains pretty similar to the last time we talked about this, which is that it is

a frustrating thing for Twins fans. It is understandable that they would be skeptical that brighter days are ahead, both because that historically hasn't really been true for them, at least lately. And it's not guaranteed that new ownership will be better, that they will spend, that they will spend wisely that embarking on a tear down will result in championships. But I think that given what seems like a clear mandate to have reduced payroll that they being the front office, the team itself, did a good job of positioning themselves about as well as they can for the future. And some of that is that I suspect Joe shares my opinion, which is like, oh, yeah, the

opportunity to get out from that carless-cray deal? Fantastic. I don't think that they're going to come to regret that all that much. But yeah, I think that they, they did well, given challenging circumstances, we should just try to avoid talking past each other because I think that what most twins fans would tell you is the problem is the way that the rest of this season is going to suck out loud. And the sort of murkiness of what the future holds, that's a perfectly reasonable emotional experience to be having. And I hope that if they're, uh, twins fans are looking for a way out of being mired in that feeling that they might let in that, you know, this was, this was done in a way that seems like it was well executed. And as much as you might be sad to see Durango, as much as you might have thought that Varland was going to be a part of your future, what have you.

Like, I think that they're better position for the long run today than they were before the deadline went down. Some slight solace there, some chicken soup for the Minnesotan soul. And you get to feel however you feel about it, right? Like, again, I think that having a, adopting a posture of skepticism in the face of both teardowns and potential new owners is a prudent, that's a prudent posture. Can one have a prudent posture as I sit here getting mad at the Bristol baby? But I think that that's a reasonable perspective to have as a fan, because like we said, it's not guaranteed that it'll go well and you're not guaranteed to like get a big spender

and you just don't know anything about who their new owner is going to be but there are tear downs that are done poorly where you don't see any potential for the guys who have come back to really help move the needle and in a reasonable timeline and I don't think that's what happened here so yeah okay well let's talk about the east then where you You have about as big a vibes differential as one could imagine. They've shifted, as one might say. Vibe shift. Yeah, they've shifted multiple times throughout the season.

But right now, you have the Toronto Blue Jays riding high atop the AL East. They have been winning one game after another. They are now up to a 583 winning percentage as we record here, midday Wednesday. They are three games up on the Red Sox. vibes might be even better in Boston, even though they were terrible as recently as last week, because the Red Sox had a fairly, you know, dud of a deadline and underwhelmed. But they keep winning games as well. And they did just extend Roman Anthony, one of their young top prospects, 21 years old.

And he's now, they're finalizing, according to Jeff Passon, an eight-year contract with 130 million guarantee but you know that covers through the 33 season 2003 and then there's a club option after that and then there's some escalators and awards incentives and such and so it can go up to a hundred million more 230 million to be the next so this buys out all of his remaining club control seasons he had a lot of him he's a rookie plus a couple of free agent years with the option for the third free agent year and of course if he finishes top two in rookie of the year voting then he would get a full year of service for this current season and then this deal would lock in three free agent years with a club option for a fourth so kind of complicated but the upshot is that hey you you

get some certainty with roman anthony for even longer than you already had so great the red so firing on most cylinders, Blue Jays, been great lately. Yankees, vibes have not been worse in quite some time. Rancid. They've been bad at various times. Rancid vibes. It's disastrous. It's catastrophic.

Look, there's a lot of Yankees' dumerism that goes on and is often unwarranted. But in this case, the Dumeers have a point because it has been bad lately. They have almost. fallen out of playoff position. Yeah. And they looked like Locke earlier this season. As we speak, they are mid-game. They've just started their game with the Rangers.

But they are currently six and a half games behind Toronto. And just a half game up on their current opponents, the Rangers, for the third wildcard spot. So it's possible that by the time people hear this, they will be out of playoff position. Yeah. That's pretty bad. But also their deadline additions, the cavalry, the reinforcements, just completely self-destructed immediately. And I was pretty kind to their deadline. I thought they did a decent job of shoring up some weak spots.

But boy, did almost everyone immediately look like some sort of double agent because on Friday, their new bowpen additions all melted down. Yeah. David Bednar and Camille Duval and Jake Bird, all bad, Jose Caballero, also bad. Austin Slater went on the IL with a hamstring thing. And then on Sunday, Jake Bird gave up a walkoff and then got himself option to delay, which is never ideal when you trade for someone that you expect to be a big league contributor. And then, you know, it's a quick hook, I would say. Just two terrible outings, and you're gone, at least for now.

But teams, they cycle through relievers. I mean, the Padres just sent down JPCers. Yes, they did. They come up, they go down. And it was a rude greeting, certainly. It was a terrible first impression for all of those guys. And all of them had been pitching pretty well when they were acquired. As we noted, David Bednar had been optioned previously.

He had a little minor league reset of his own, and of course, Doval had one in the not too distant past two and had lost his hold on a roster spatter, a closer role, and now Byrd is sent down too. And so I guess if you're a Yankees fan, maybe you're saying, well, they made moves in bulk, but they sort of shopped in the bargain aisle, I guess. You know, like other teams are going and getting Helsley and Duran, et cetera, and we're getting the second and third string late inning relievers who were traded at the deadline. And you never know what relievers are going to do over 20 or 30 innings. But that has kind of been a gripe about the Yankees under Hal and under Cashman of Late that unless it's like Judge or Cole that they're a little less willing to break the bank than they used to. Right. Maybe they'll go for the budget option. So, you know, I liked a lot of their moves, and you get McMahon, and you get all these relievers, and you get Caballero, and you get Rosario, and it's like, in aggregate, that should help you, but individual moves, not exciting, not really huge headline additions.

And then they all just backfired immediately in kind of an unpredictable way. So it's been bad for a while for the Yankees, and it's been particularly bad of late. And fortunately, Judge is back. He didn't have a great return game. And, of course, he's limited to DH right now. Yeah. He'll be fine, though. Yeah, probably he'll be fine, assuming there's no lingering effects of the flexer strain.

But, you know, it's a morale boost just to have him back. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's looking gnarly in New York right now. I thought that there moves in aggregate. I'm going to say this. and I'm going to tell you the truth, Ben, I don't remember remotely what I said about the East Deadline moves from our last episode.

But I think the thing that struck me is that all of the guys who they brought in, at least on the pitching side, had the potential to be useful. And all of them carry within them a seeming detonator switch where they are due for like a couple of blowups every year. They'll be going good and then things just go like right clean off the rails. It probably doesn't feel great. to have that happen for so many of them simultaneously. I think the thing about the Yankees that I find the most concerning in terms of their ability

to course correct over the remainder of the season and then play good baseball in October. And maybe there is a little bit of bias here. Maybe I'm just seeing it, you know? Maybe I'm imagining things, but I know I'm not. I can't recall a recent time where this club or really any of, other that has been in contention. There have been bad baseball teams that have played bad baseball, and you've just gone good gravy, how is this what a collection of talented professional athletes are capable

of? And I'm going to sound like a curmudgeon, but like the sloppiness of this team right now is shocking, you know, to the point that you wonder if they're all kind of in their own heads about it a little bit, right? that there is a compounding I don't want to say that it's the yips but like

I worried that Anthony Volpe needs to go into witness protection in New York because and it's not just him right like throwing the ball all around base running errors this was a couple of days ago

at this point maybe last week but like remember when Austin Wells just forgot how many outs there were and all of a sudden they had to play extra innings baseball because he just like gave himself up on the base paths because he was like, oh, there are three outs. And then I was like, there, sir, there certainly are not three.

There are three now, but we could have had a whole other little time to try to score some runs if you had remembered how many there were. So it's just like there's been a, I don't want to try to like, psychologize it too much. I don't know that there's like yips setting in, but like a malaise, a boneheadedness. Got to get that bone out of your head. It doesn't belong in there. I mean, some of them do, but not the ones that are affecting the Yankees these days. So it's like when you have a team that has dealt with the kinds of injuries that they have that is in a tight division race that has a resurgent Blue Jays and Red Sox team, you can't be playing this brand of baseball.

You just don't have the merger of error for error, you know, and they are exhausting that. and it might end up costing them. Now, do I think that the true talent level of this Yankees team, even with the injuries that they've had and the guys who they are not going to get back this year, do I think that their true talent is the kind of baseball they've been playing lately? I do not. And that's the good news for them, right? And they have not exhausted all of their potential reinforcement from the minors,

but you can't go get Duran now. He's famously a Philly, right? like you can't you're you're kind of done now this is not entirely the the team you have to dance with but it's close to so they got to figure something out i do wonder when teams play sloppy bonehead baseball like this that tends to result managers getting fired so like if i'm boon i am very nervous right now and i know he's survived he's survived any number of things right um but if they miss the playoffs entirely after being in the world series and having their world series run end the way it did i wonder i wonder i would feel nervous if i were him and i can't remember did they extend him this year they did extend him yeah not long ago was it after last season i think i don't remember yeah so it I mean, Yankees fans, if you polled them, or at least the ones I see on social media,

I think they would have fired Boone several years ago. Sure. There is this perception among Yankees fans that will never win with Boone, and maybe with Cashman, too, that the organization has just gotten complacent, and it starts at the top with how just not outspending everyone the way they used to, but that also there's just no urgency, there's no accountability, these guys have been here forever and certainly they have. Cashman has, yeah, it was February when Boone signed a two-year extension.

So, yeah, I mean, they like him. Cashman certainly likes him. I assume that they have a good relationship, that they work together, that they're on the same page, which I think Yankees fans would probably count as another strike against him. But that is how most GMs prefer that their manager operates, that they're not constantly warring with each other. But, yeah, you have to hold it against him at this point when it's been a running narrative not unfairly about this team for years

and cover your ears Dave Martinez, but who else do you blame but coaching and managing when your players are failing and flailing in these very obvious ways and just giving up outs and when this has been something that has been said about the team for years. And it's not just the team construction. You put up with some of that if you have a team full of old slow sluggers, which was kind of the rap on the Yankees a few years ago,

then you might live with not being a great defensive or base running team because you just mash homers and it works out in the end. You hope even if it's frustrating to watch at times. But they're not necessarily constructed in that extreme way anymore. And it's hard to pinpoint because it's like they've been a below average base running team on the whole, but not by that much. And they're not like the worst. And then defensively, they actually rate above average. Now a good deal of that is framing, which counts, obviously, but is maybe more subtle.

And, you know, you can still have very obvious errors. And the framing is just, it goes unnoticed. But like, it has kind of occasioned this larger conversation. about fundamentals in baseball and our team's just bad at the fundamentals now. And I find it to be a frustrating conversation just because it's tough to set the terms. It's tough to like, are we all talking about the same thing when we say fundamentals? Like define fundamentals. What is a fundamental exactly?

Is that base running? Is it taking the extra base? Is it not getting thrown out on the bases? Is it base stealing? Is it defense? Is it sure-handedness specifically on defense, or is it like just overall defense? Is it, you know, not hitting the cutoff man, throwing to the right base? It's like all this stuff that's just thrown into the soup of fundamentals.

And probably in the past we would have included like executing hit and run and laying down sack buntz and that sort of thing that you just don't really see that much anymore. But I don't know. Like I'm willing to buy the blunders are up because it's not even just. just the Yankees. There have been some other notable two plans lately. And maybe there's something to it. Like, in general, I'm suspicious of the idea that professional athletes are worse at anything than they used to be. Just because, like, they're, they're just getting better at most things. They're getting bigger and stronger and faster, and there's a bigger pool of potential talent. And, like, player development in baseball has certainly improved by

leaps and bounds in a lot of respects. But I'm willing to accept that maybe as it was improving by leaps and bounds in those other respects, certain fundamentals have been neglected. So, you know, maybe if you do have all these tools and you have your trajectory machine and you have your edgertronic and you can do all these wizardly things in bullpen sessions, like maybe you're just focusing all of your attention on that and you're not running the drills and you know there's like load management that goes on and okay maybe we'll skip infield practice today because we want to give guys a blow or whatever and so I'm maybe it just has

been deemphasized and maybe there's some merit to deemphasizing it because like base running it's it's hard to reckon with this because it's extremely frustrating when someone makes a bad out on the bases and it's quite costly in the moment but on the whole it doesn't matter that much, it seems like, like, at least according to the best stats that we have, the disparity between the best and worst base running teams in baseball in a typical season, it's just not that great. Like, the range right now between the top and bottom base running teams at Fangraphs is like two wins, you know? It's like, it's nothing in the grand scheme of things.

And so if there's an opportunity cost, we're like, okay, let's give guys more time off and we won't practice this today, or we'll focus on their swings or their bullpen sessions or whatever it is, and we'll just drop this drill. That might actually be a calculus that kind of makes sense. And yet, in terms of fan frustration, bad base running really kind of punches above its weight. Like, that can kind of label your whole team as fundamentally flawed and incompetent. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to that. And I think that if it were just the base running, So I agree with you on the broader point. My sense of like baseball is not that it is sloppier today than it used to be,

that there is like an indifference to the fundamentals. I think that there is some of what we might be interpreting, and I don't think this is true in the Yankees case because they are so old, but some of what might be interpreted as a lack of fundamentals as it pertains to base running is perhaps a misinterpretation of a more calculated risk from a, you know, base running perspective. Like, we want to press the issue and try to be more aggressive

on the base paths, and we're going to accept that sometimes we're going to get thrown out. I'm not saying that that's necessarily describing the Yankee situation, but, like, I could imagine that being true at the, at a league-wide level. Or on defense, like, you have great range, and so you're going to flub some balls sometimes,

too. Right. And I think that there are so many incredibly talented fielders in baseball right now. I don't think that the defense as an exercise, you know, as a practice, has declined. No. I think that right now the Yankees are dealing with the unfortunate reality of bad base running and sloppy defense.

And those things feel mutually reinforcing to fans, right? Where it's like it reads as a lack of care, an indifference to the stakes. I'm not saying that the guys on the Yankees are indifferent to the stakes. I think they are, you know, if anything, they might be too aware of the stakes and it's messing them up, right? But that reads so terribly to fans. I think you can survive the perception of it when it pertains to one part of the game, but when you have that combination and you're losing and you're in third place and you might fall. out of a playoff position, you're just, you're just toast, man. And like the thing that I imagine is having a bigger impact on the course of their season

writ large is like all their pitchers are hurt, you know, not all of them, but a lot of them and sure they're getting some of them back and heels back and what have you, but like the true story of their season probably has a lot less to do with any individual-based running error. It has a lot less to do with Volpey leading. the major scenarios. But those things don't help, right? And, you know, I think that when you fail to rise to the occasion to mitigate the effect that injury is having, you're just going to frustrate your fans.

And do I think that it means that they will be bad forever? No. But I think that, like, they didn't really have room for sloppy defense. They didn't really have room for sloppy base running. And that's what they got. And that they're getting some of that stuff from younger guys who, in theory, should be some sort of guard against the effects of age on their roster just makes it worse. It's the perfect storm of issue, personnel, and, you know, place in the standings. And people are just going to, they're going to get the sports talk radio treatment for that.

And I don't think it's completely unreasonable that they be given some guff. I'm not saying you think it unreasonable, but, you know, this is like the reality you find yourself in. And I do think that part of what is being read into the situation on the part of their fans is the way that that World Series ended and sort of the, you know, the defensive miscues in that series, you know, some of their best players not playing as well as they ought to have or as well as fans expected them to, rather than feeling like a shocking break from a, you know, a long march of success, this feels like a continuation of a theme.

And the thing that fans are really worried about in any given moment isn't that they, that their favorite team sucks right now, but that their favorite team will suck forever. And even Yankees fans worry about that. and I will refrain from commentary on how reasonable a fear that is. But, like, even Yankees fans feel that. And it's a lot easier to talk yourself into this being the beginning of the end when it feels like it extends all the way back to a painful World Series loss. Yeah, it's been a persistent problem. And even beyond that World Series loss, it's not like that was completely out of character.

Of course, that was extreme. but it wasn't like anyone was saying, oh, wow, the most fundamentally solid, perfect team for them to have this happen. No, it was kind of a continuation of a trend that people had been saying this was an issue with the Yankees. It just, it all piled up in one half inning there. But, yeah, like when it goes on for this long, then you do have to lay that at the feet of the manager, I would say. And even though I was sort of saying, well, in the grand scheme of things,

how much these mistakes matter. And if you're focusing on all these other ways to improve, then maybe it comes out in the wash. I think that's true to some extent. But also, like, you got to remember how many outs there are. I mean, that's not too much to ask. You can work on other aspects of your craft and still maintain your focus in the middle of a game.

Like, you can do both of those things. It's not either or. I couldn't believe it. And they won that game if memory serves. Yeah, they had a couple great comebacks. Yeah. They had a couple great comebacks. I think, you know, Volpe had had an error in that game.

He homered in that game. So, like, there's a push and pull to these things. And, you know, you're only one good win streak away from being able to construct a narrative that, like, you, you know, you got low. You reached a breaking point. And then the boys rallied, you know, and they surged back. And, you know, here they are the mighty bombers. But I haven't had the rally yet. So it's a problem.

I do think that they, as an organization, are going to need to have a little bit of soul searching about, like, what do we understand our mandate to become the offseason to really try to improve some of the parts of this roster that aren't up to snuff? Because, you know, on the one hand, you have Aaron Judge for forever. And so, you know, you kind of accept on some level that, like, he is not going to, that every season isn't going to perfectly maximize him, but also every season at this end of his contract that isn't perfectly maximized feels like a waste. Because he's just going to keep getting older. That's what happens. And he's, you know, he's already in his 30s. So it's just, I don't think that Yankees fans have had a bad life. I mean, maybe they have, but not because of the Yankees, right?

Their sports fandom has not been marked by failure, even if they root for the Jets also, right? Yes. There are some who would say that it's incompatible with the good life to be a Yankees fan, but not everyone would agree. Yeah, not everyone would agree. All the people who don't agree live outside of the five boroughs. but I am sensitive to the correct observation that many a Yankees fan has made, which is this is an old team. This is a team that has some big contracts that are around for a long time,

and it might require a little bit of bobbin and weaving on the part of the front office. Now, they're also a smart team, their team that has good player development, they're a team that has, you know, some talented players in the minor leagues. This is not like an insurmountable problem provided that they can, you know, identify some good talent and also in the event that it proves necessary, convince Steinbrenner's suspense. So, you know, like they're the Yankees. They're doing fine. They're in better shape than a lot of organizations. But the vibes right now are.

Yeah. Things were looking up earlier this season, not just because they were winning, but because they had integrated some homegrown guys and some younger guys. and it wasn't just the judge show. Right. But, yeah, it's the fundamentals conversation. We've talked about hustle a lot. I've kind of been on the beat for 10 years or more that, hey, some of this hustle stuff is eyewash

and it's actually okay if there's an almost sure out and it's not that big a situation to just lighten your load a little bit and you avoid injuries and that benefits both you and your team in the long run. And I think teams have learned that lesson. And Sam wrote recently about how players aren't really running out, drop third strikes anymore that the batter runner isn't really a runner. They just kind of accept their fate. And, you know, it's a silly rule to begin with. But it's just part and parcel with this. Maybe we aren't really sprinting at all times when

we're almost certainly doomed. So I think that's okay. But there are moments where it matters more and it's high leverage and you actually do have to sprint and you do have to avoid these very simple mistakes. And, you know, we don't fetishize fundamentals as much as we used to, I think. We're just much more into the new agey stats. And maybe our eye has been off the ball a little bit, or players' eyes has when it comes to certain things that baseball players who were far less good at baseball and less physically skilled, maybe they compensated by really nailing these fundamentals. I wish we could measure this more accurately. It's just that, But no one really agrees on how to define fundamentals.

And then even if you agree on how to define it, what metrics do you use? There's no, like, fundamental plus, you know, maybe our pals at Sports Info Solutions could tell us something about misplays or bad base running plays and wonder whether those things have become more common. Also, like, if a defense takes advantage of a base runner's flub, isn't that also fundamentals? Sure. From the defense taking advantage of that, like it's kind of a zero. some game. And so sometimes it's one team catching the other team sleeping. And so maybe that's an example of good fundamentals by one of those teams. And then like anything else that we lament in the world, I think, and I always wonder, is this actually worse? Or are we just more

aware of the ways that it was always bad? Because in a baseball game, if someone makes a stupid, obvious mistake. Well, in the past, you might not have known about that unless it was your team and you were listening or watching or at the game or something. Now we know when anyone anywhere makes an obvious screw up because we can stream it or it's on social media or we can read about it. Like these things come to our attention constantly in a way that they didn't used to. So it wasn't like no one ever used to make bad baseball plays before. But now it's very visible when you do. And it's going to be the, leading post on the baseball subreddit, and it's just going to find its way to your desk somehow. So I never really know. And plus, it's like this age-old refrain, like every generation of old players says that the younger generation doesn't know the fundamentals. And you could go back to the 19th century and find people saying this stuff. And so that doesn't mean that it can't be true or that there isn't an element of truth to it. But I always want to guard myself against just repeating this frequent refrain that everyone always says, especially when it's tough to quantify.

I think it's important to separate out some of the defensive miscues from the base running stuff because I think a lot of base running distress on the part of fans is like, you didn't run it out. And you would have been out anyway. And there's that. And then there's like, you got to be able to throw the ball of the right bag, man. Like, come on. Like some of the, I think the defensive stuff. way more concerning for the Yankees than any of the base running, what have yous.

And granted, I'm not watching every Yankees game, so I'm sure we have listeners right now who are like, you wouldn't believe what happened on this day. And you're right, I wouldn't believe it. That's wild what you saw. But I do think that, like, I don't know that putting it in terms of fundamentals is even the right framework, right? like some of this is just you have guys who are who are old or slow or just aren't good defenders to begin with and when pressed or when they feel like they have to press because they're losing and they're in third place and they're falling out of it maybe you you act a little boneheaded and you throw the ball away good god i mean like i'm at the point and i can say this because i'm not a yankees fan so i don't have to deal with the consternation but it's just like oh my my God, Volpe, are you okay?

Like, this is bad, man. This is really bad. Two other aspects to this, I think it's partly the trajectory of the season. Always, it feels bad when you start out really well and then you go cold because you raise your own expectations for the team. If the Yankees had started slow out of the gate, it's not like Yankees fans wouldn't have been up in arms about that. But coming out of spring training where they had all those injuries and coal and heel

and everything else, expectations were somewhat lowered, but then they kind of put that behind them or seemed to because they started so well. And so right now, their playoff odds, corner fan graphs, about 79%, which might sound higher than you could believe if you've watched them a lot lately, but that's what the projections say. When the season started, or before the season started, they were at 64%. So their playoff odds are actually higher now when it feels like everything is falling apart than they were when the season started. So we've kind of people have maybe lost sight of the fact that, yeah, this wasn't the strongest team to start the season.

And then they sort of quieted those concerns for a while. And it reminds me of the 2022 Yankees team that had almost a 700 winning percentage before the All-Star break. And they were just running away with the thing. And they looked like they could maybe challenge records. And then they were 500 after the All-Star break. And it was like, what happened? What went wrong with this team?

And ultimately, they won 93 games and they won the division and then they've lost them the ALCS. But it was just a tale of two seasons. And that really accentuates just how bad it seems that things have gotten. The other thing, though, that is really perplexing about the Yankees is that they still lead the American League in run differential. Right. And I know when your team is losing the line,

lot and looking this bad. No one wants to hear about what their record should be. It's like with FIPP and ERA. I meant to say when we were talking about Nathan Avaldi earlier, you're right. There is a school of thought, even among people who are pretty pro-advanced stats. We'll say yes, but FIP might be good for what will happen next. But when I am interested in awards voting, I'm looking retrospectively. I only care about the runs that were allowed, and thus I look at baseball reference war or fan graphs RA9 were just what's your ERA that matters more to me in a a backward looking sense and that doesn't quite make sense to me i mean i right we talked about yeah yeah we talked about this it's like no you're you're trying to yeah i'm trying to change minds on that because

like quibbled we've had our quibbles exactly because that's a funny word because the the reason that FIP is more predictive of future ERA than ERA itself is is because it isolates the pitcher's performance. It's drilling down to what the pitcher actually did as opposed to luck or defensive support or whatever it is. And so FIPP, in a sense, could maybe be more telling about the pitcher's performance even retrospectively, not just looking forward. But that is kind of a comp to like, okay, if your run differential is good, well, that should be predictive. And it also, to some extent, reflects how well you've played. And yet ultimately the wins and losses are what matters. So the Yankees now best run differential in the league and best base runs record in baseball,

not just in the American League. The Yankees have the best base run record in the major leagues, and they are eight games below what their record, quote unquote, should be. Only the Braves are that much below their expected record, and no other teams more than four wins off that pace. And the primary reason for that is that the Yankees. have been just extremely unclutch, and we talked about this earlier this season, and it has not really corrected itself, but both the pitchers and the batters just have not performed nearly

as well in high-leverage spots with runners in scoring position, whatever split you want to look at. They have just completely crapped the bed in those big moments, and that's, I think some people would say, okay, that only confirms my understanding of this team and it's mismanagement and its lack of want or whatever like they're coming up empty at these big moments it's just hard for me to buy into that because we just know historically there's like no correlation in that metric like base runs over or underperformance from year to year it's just basically there's nothing that persists there and Neil Payne just wrote about this too like the Yankees even have not had a notable trend one way or another during the year in Boone era they've sometimes been above their

base runs record they've sometimes been below their base funds record, even if you try to correlate it with like fundamentals as well as you can manage it, it doesn't really seem to have much bearing on your underperformance of your run differential. Obviously, if your bullpen is regularly blowing up, that's going to be bad, but that has less of an influence than people think when it comes to like your difference from your expected slash deserved record. So it's hard for me to say that it's like a complete disaster when you have the best underlying fundamentals to use a different definition of that term. I don't know, like that probably only increases the frustration for a lot of Yankees fans

who are just thinking, yeah, like they have talent, but look how they're squandering it. Yeah, I think that as much as I talked about this feeling, I would imagine, like a continuation of a narrative, my impression of the Yankees as a team over this season is that like this is a more recent and acute problem that they are experiencing rather than a season long term. I think the fact that they've had the kind of season they've had, you know, setting aside their recent struggle is pretty remarkable given the injuries that they've suffered, right? So I think it'll be okay. But I think that when you've had a patch like this and that stretch of poor play corresponds with your division rivals having a very good stretch, course correcting can be too little too late.

And that doesn't mean that you don't improve as the season goes on. It doesn't mean that you don't sort of rescue bad performance, but it can get to a point where it's not enough if other people are playing well. Now, it doesn't mean that the Blue Jays are going to keep playing like they've been playing or that the Red Sox will either. They might find themselves in a more comfortable playoff position without much trouble, but they might not. Yeah, helps the Yankees.

One thing that's gone right for them, I guess, is that the Reyes have had a really tough time of it lately, too. They've just kind of completely collapsed since the start of July also. So that hasn't helped them, but it has helped the Yankees, I suppose, that there's not yet another AL East team overtaking them. Okay. Well, we will continue to monitor this pressing, developing situation in the Bronx. And I guess we can close, well, I did want to just give everyone an Andrew Vaughn update for one thing.

Yes. So Andrew Vaughn, since he debuted as a brewer, July 7th, he is the fifth best hitter in baseball, qualified hitter by WRC Plus, 261 qualified hitters over that span of about a month now. It's Nick Kurtz, Shay Languiliers, Kyle Stowers, Kyle Schwerber, who has almost overtaken Cal. in the home run department right now. He's up to 40 bombs. He's doing this thing. Yeah, I know, sorry. Watch yourself.

And Javon, 204 WRC Plus as a brewer, now in 85 plate appearances. 370, 435, 671. That's a 462 weighted on base average with a 362 babbitt. But, man, guy's really raking. He's walked almost as much as he struck out in Milwaukee. It's kind of amazing to me. It is spectacular. It is, I don't, I couldn't rightly say, you know.

No, me neither. It's just emblematic of the brewers just somehow, somehow they keep doing this. They keep finding guys, Quinn Priester Pirates cast off, solid starter for the brewers now. Solid starter. Half the field of NL Rookie of the Year contenders, and a lot of them are people you wouldn't have heard of before the season started. Yeah. They're running a heck of a team over there, it seems like, okay. They do a good job.

So lastly then, okay, we have the Yankees fuss to keep track of over the rest of this season. But how much intrigue remains in the larger playoff picture? We got an email from listener Greg on Tuesday about whether this is, in fact, a boring playoff race. And I guess great minds thinking alike, Davey Andrews, blogged about the very same subject for fancrafts. And this is, again, according to the playoff odds, it would seem. like the stretch run is shaping up to be dull in terms of like teams who are not currently in playoff position, catapulting themselves into it, that there just are not a lot of teams, especially in the national league, but to some extent across both leagues that like just

no one's in that in-between spot. It's like everyone's a virtual lock according to the playoff odds or is essentially out of it with, like, low single digits playoff percentage, aside from the Reds, really, were the only team that was kind of somewhere in the middle in the National League. And American League also pretty stratified. And comparing to past seasons at the same stage, this is notably boring, it seems like, at least with this expanded playoff format. And that seems like it should be the saving gross.

race of the expanded playoffs is that we do get races that really lasts up until the end of the season. And I'm kind of perplexed by this too. It sort of surprises me that this is the state of things or this is how the playoff odds assess the state of things because there are no really great teams. No one's really running away with things. I mean, it's as we've discussed, like there have been times recently where there's no team with a 600 winning percentage, which I think hasn't happened at the end of the season since 2013, I want to say. That's atypical, certainly. I mean, the best team right now, well, is the Brewers at 611, but everyone else is significantly below 600.

And so you'd think that that would lend itself to some good races, at least, that like, no one's that great, that everyone's kind of in the middle a little bit, but that does not actually seem to be the case. It just seems like most things are sort of set. Like, yeah, the best teams are kind of jockeying for position in training places, but who ends up with the best record in baseball does not necessarily determine anything in terms of the playoff field. Yeah, although having the buy is nice. Oh, yeah, definitely. And in a division race, I mean, if it's, you know, Brewer's Cubs, who wins that Central, that's a pretty big deal. And, you know, Phillies Mets, for that matter, as well.

And the Padres are within three games. of the Dodgers. I mean, it's not like the golfs are that great. Like, the teams are not trailing by a lot. But I guess it's a combination of, like, the quality or projected quality of the teams that are currently in playoff position and the lesser quality of the teams that are chasing them right now. It's, you know, like, no one has that big a lead is the thing.

I almost, I almost differ from the playoff odds, my gut of, like, how interesting things are is different from what the numbers say because the biggest gap between a first and second place team in a division right now is tigers over the guardians and it's only six and a half games right and every other division it's four games or fewer and four that's cubs brewers and like every other division it's three or two and a half i mean all these teams are still very much within striking distance as are a bunch of wildcard teams yeah I'm with you. I don't, it doesn't match up with my expectation. And it is really surprising because there aren't, you know, it's not that there aren't good teams, but there just isn't a, you know, there's no 110 game winner, right? So I find myself surprised. And I do think some of it is just like the way that folks moved around at the deadline. But I expected, I don't. I don't know, like, I expected the NL in particular to have just, like, this pitched battle, right?

And it was going to feel so thrilling. And it is exciting. I mean, there's something to it, right? And that we didn't end up with, maybe it's just that we didn't end up with the matchups we were expecting. And that's what's influencing people's understanding of this. But, like, the odds don't have, like, an aesthetic preference for the kind of pitched battle you get. Like, there's a computer. I didn't care about that.

But I don't know. I'm surprised. I wonder, yeah, if you did the math differently to focus on division odds, I wonder whether it would come out any differently and look more competitive. Because in terms of playoff odds, just flat out making the playoffs in any spot, then I sort of see why it's not that unsettled. Because in the NL, especially, yeah, you have the Reds who are two and a half games out of the last wildcard spot.

But everyone else is at least five games out and mostly are falling out of it as opposed to catching up. You know, does anyone feel good about, like, the Giants or the Cardinals getting back in this thing at this stage? No, including the Giants and the Cardinals. Exactly, right. And even the Marwins, who are just two games under 500, as we speak, there's six and a half games back in the wildcard race, they've had a great run. And they have certainly exceeded my expectations. I thought they would be among the worst teams at baseball, and they've been among the best teams for the last couple months,

which is quite an accomplishment. And they have really come up with some fines, and, you know, Yuri Perez looks great, and Edward Cabrera's healthy. And, like, you know, they've got something going there and some sort of free talent finds in a kind of razy way, which was the hope that, like, you know, Bendix comes in and maybe can kind of turn things over,

and they have prospects on the way and everything. So, yeah, like, they've been quite competitive. They've really separated themselves from the dregs of the league, as I think Josian pointed out. Like, you've got sort of six teams that are generally thought of as, as, like, bad. But a few of them, things are really looking up, you know? Yeah. The white socks. Okay, they're more respectable now.

Sure. It's like, I'm bouncing back from last year. Yeah. Couldn't get much worse. but but yeah like you know they're they're just regular bad now right and and there's a big difference between regular bad and they're what they were from last year yeah and and you have the aes who like they've got a great young promising core of position players and yeah john fisher is a tire fire and who knows where they'll play but they've got talent and and the maroans also and

then you have like the rockies the pirates and maybe the nationals where you just grew up in And it's like, where are these guys going? What are they doing? And ownership is bad and everything is bad. So the Marlins have squarely put themselves in that former group of, okay, so it's not as bad as it's been great. But they're not a great team currently. And they're not especially great at anything except, I mean, defense, I guess they're pretty good. But yeah, overall, not the best.

Don't see them getting in the thick of things here. And then the AL, you have this intrigue of, you know, can't. and the Yankees fall out of it and can the Rangers overtake them? And then you have the Guardians who are just the game back, so they're very much in it. But everyone else, are you feeling good about the Royals right now, the rays, the angels, the twins? Yeah. So, yeah, like, they're really only, I guess, there's like one team that realistically could end up in the playoffs that is not currently in playoff position in the NL. And in the AL, I guess you could put it at three probably.

but yeah yeah so but if you looked at it in terms of the division races i think maybe it would paint a slightly different picture yeah that's what i'm picking up on here maybe that is what you're picking up on there because you're right it's like the the midness um puts you in a spot where like you know the division feels winnable for a lot of these clubs even though they're not like the most amazing but they're also not really like pressing their advantage more broadly I don't know. Yeah. It's kind of a, I don't, I'm having fun, though.

I'm still having some fun, largely, I'd say. Yeah. Sure. You know what I'm also having fun doing, watching the Gilded Age, as I know that you are. This is one of the shows that we share. We watch them together. I have not seen Sunday's episode, though. I know you've not seen the most recent, but this is about.

It's really important you know that because I'm given to understand that it's dramatic and I don't know what happened. Something happened, yes. But in the episode prior to that, the fifth episode of this third season, there was a baseball scene. So the Gilded Age is a baseball show by any definition now. And we got a question from listener Zane who said, I need a deep dive into the Gilded Age season three episode five baseball scene. Is it accurate? Baseball is more intense than I thought. All these years, your father's store has sponsored this team, but you've never come to a game. I suppose if I'd been a boy, he would have brought me, but I'm not. No, you are quite the Lindy.

What a thrill. My goodness. I really just don't know how I miss this. This is one case where I don't think we're super qualified to assess its accuracy. Because this scene, I think we're up to. 1884 now in the Gilded Age. I think that's right. This is not our wheelhouse necessarily, but it is Richard Hirshberger's house, our past

blaster and author of Strike 4, The Evolution of Baseball. This is squarely in his subject of expertise, 19th century, late 19th century baseball. And I put this question to him. I had him watch the scene. It's a very brief scene. There's just like a couple shots of actual baseball action here. But I invited Richard to assess the accuracy of the scene and nitpick it if nitpicks applied. And he writes, the field, home is a round plate.

So in the scene, it's a round plate. He says, this is anachronistic. It had been replaced by a square plate a dozen years earlier. The modern shape will come in at the turn of the century. Were this a scrub game, so just a pure pickup game, sort of a sandlock game, then we could justify they're using outdated equipment. But that is clearly not the case here. So, yeah, this is like, I don't know, semi-pro or something like that.

It's there's a company-sponsored team. There's an apothecary, a pharmacist who sponsors a team. So it's like well-organized amateur ball, at least it appears to be. So Richard says, if this is a scrub game, we could justify they're using outdated equipment. But that is clearly not the case here. Of all the nits to pick, this is the. the most egregious. So home is a round plate.

Huge, huge mistake by HBO. Had they used the modern shape, this would have been merely sloppy. But using an outdated form, but the wrong one is self-conscious quaintness combined with sloppiness. So they knew that they couldn't have the modern shape, but they had the wrong archaic shape. All right. Cardinal said here. The chalk lines, first off, the foul line should extend. and into the outfield, just like today.

Again, we can imagine a scrub game not doing this, but this is not a scrub game. There also should be the batters boxes, very similar to today, a pitcher's box marked out in chalk and coaching boxes, not quite like today's, but serving a similar purpose. What we have instead looks very much like a diagram of the field we might see 20 or 30 years earlier. Wow. Yes, huge mistake, huge mistake. The uniforms, Richard says I'm not the expert here. That would be Craig Brown.

That being said, the jersey is buttoned up. I do not believe this is accurate. We typically see them laced up. I also wonder about half sleeves and an undershirt in 1884, though these did exist a few years later. Equipment, where the field is anachronistically quaint, the equipment runs the other direction. The pitcher is wearing a glove on his left hand. This is completely wrong for 1884. The catcher has a glove on his left hand only.

Catchers were wearing gloves, but on both hands, typically, with the fingers free for throwing the ball. The catcher and umpire are both wearing masks, which are correct for 1884 and chess protectors, which are just barely correct. 1884 was the year chess protectors were first mass marketed. The club would have to be right on the cutting edge of baseball tech. But it's Brooklyn, I think, so let's say that they are.

The umpire gives the modern safe hand signal. This did not come in until much later. Umpire simply announced their calls. Hand signals came in as stadiums grew too large for the umpire to be heard. And finally, the pitcher uses a modern delivery. This is not impossible for 1884. It wouldn't have been illegal, but based on contemporary descriptions, it would not have been typical. Okay.

I actually, I stood up for the Gilded Age here because the pitcher is a side armor. And so I thought maybe they were trying to avoid an overhand delivery, which became legal, I think, that very year. Yeah. And Richard allowed that he supposes that that's possible, but that nothing about this shows that level of nuance. That's withering with a review from Richard. My guess is that this just happened to be the delivery of the guy they recruited. I don't know. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

But Richard concluded putting it all together, the showrunner clearly did not invest in hiring an expert consultant or at least didn't listen to them. This looks to me, rather that the set designer did some cursory research into old-timey baseball stuff, taking 1860 and 1890 to be essentially the same and picking up. odds and ends, then the stuff like the Empire using a hand signal was something that never occurred to anyone should be different. And you can imagine that that would be frustrating for a scholar of 19th century baseball because, you know, I'm lumping in many decades there, 19th century baseball. That's a long period. It's a long time. Yeah, if you were to do that with 20th century baseball or 21st century baseball, if you were to compare the 2020s to the 1990s or something, well, that's a big difference in a lot of ways that would matter to us. So if you understand those

distinctions, then of course that's going to stand out to you. But Richard says, does this bother me? Not really. If only because I have made peace with low expectations. Given that this is a brief scene in a show not primarily about baseball and written by a Brit, no less,

I would have been surprised had they put more effort into getting it right. The exception would be if the show was marketed as super authentic. So far as I know, this isn't the case here, but if I'm wrong, then we all should be entitled to point and laugh. I guess it's authentic on some points, but when it comes to depictions of athletic competition, I wouldn't say

that that's necessarily the Gilded Ages emphasis. I want to be clear. I love this show. Yeah, I do. I enjoy a lot of this show. I'm given to understand, particularly from those who concern themselves with the authenticity of, say, the wardrobe, that there is profound frustration and that some of the frustration the show has responded to by saying, like, look, we get that, you know, the way that we're doing buttons or zippers or whatever the hell on the back of these dresses isn't period appropriate, but there are just so many of them that we have to make some concessions. And I think they would probably say, if we're not taking the time to do all the who's and what sits with wardrobe, we're not getting the baseball entirely right either. I think this is an instance where for them it was maybe more important that it be recognizably and discernibly baseball for a modern audience than it be an accurate depiction of baseball at the time. Yes. But yes, I would imagine that there are errors a plenty and that they were like, but people will understand that this is baseball.

And I do think the point is well taken that, like, the creator of this show is not American and probably does not have a ton of exposure to baseball. There's an American co-writer and co-show runner. That's true. Nonetheless, yeah. So I was just happy to see baseball show up in a show that they like for non-baseball reasons. And, you know, usually we say hire us as consultants and we will save you from these flubs. In this case, I would say if you have a 19th century depiction of baseball, hire Richard Hershberg.

Oh, totally. Yes, we would not be the appropriate consultants for this. I'm just happy that Peggy has a good storyline this season because sometimes Peggy's gotten a rough goal of it. So I'm mostly focused on that, I think. Well, the Yankees triumphed over the Texas Rangers, three to two, staving off a disastrous loss of sole possession of a playoff spot for another. day, or I guess at least another couple days. I'm sure that really reassured all the Yankees fans. Meanwhile, Shohei Otani

started a game for the Dodgers, struck out eight Cardinals over four innings, no walks, one run, hit a 440-foot home run for his thousandth career hit in MLB. Ho-hum, as my pal, Zach Kram, pointed out to me after that start. Otani is now tied with Terik's

Goebel for the best fit by a starting pitcher minimum 10 innings pitch this season, 1.95. Small sample, but never mind that. and Chohei Otani, they're essentially the same, except Otani hits tanks too. And you know who else hits tanks. Andrew Vaughn. He hit another one on Wednesday after we recorded. And hey, if you are a listener of recent vintage and you are daunted by the size of the Effectively Wild back catalog, but you're also intrigued by the possibility of sampling

some excellent Evergreen episodes from the past, or if you're a longtime listener and you're just interested in revisiting some old episodes, Effectively Wild Wikikeeper Raymond Chen has set up a page on the Effectively Wild wiki for notable episodes as adjudged by the Effectively Wild community. So I will link to that on the show page so you can find some stuff to listen to or even add to the page if you have a favorite episode that isn't yet represented. And of course, like Raymond, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. As have the following five listeners who have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free. get themselves access to some perks. Logan, Rohan Nair, Paul O'Donohue, Cody, and Bob Schultz.

Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, add free fan grass memberships, discounts on merch, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email.

your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and YouTube music and elsewhere. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the aforementioned show page at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode very soon. We're backloaded this week, so we will talk to you then. Tracking all these stat lines, but it's here I found my kind.

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