Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2361: The Fleeting Tie

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the bounceback season of Trevor Rogers, the NL Cy Young race, career achievement awards, observations from a Shohei Ohtani start, the NL West race, and the significance of the Pohlads’ decision not to sell the Twins. Then (42:36) they answer listener emails about check-swing appeals, how the changing […]

Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2361 of Effectively Wild a baseball podcast from fan graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraph's A Low Mech. Hello. Well, we kind of cursed Nathan Avaldi by marveling at how low his ERA was the other day.

Not for the first time this season that we have complimented him, to be fair, but nonetheless, he did see his ERA jump up from 1.38 to an unsightly 1.71. The first recent start against the Diamondbacks in which he allowed five runs in four. five innings.

Yeah. It's a nine ERA on the day. So while we're celebrating low ERAs as long as they last, I figured that we could briefly talk about Trevor Rogers, too. Yeah. Because his ERA is down in an Evaldi before we jinxed him range. He is, he's at 1.43. How about that?

How about that? He's had a bunch of good starts in a row, obviously. He's had almost nothing but good starts this season. but he has managed to have four excellent starts in a row, or I guess three at least, in which he has allowed one run in each, and yet his ERA has barely budged because that's just what his ERA is. It's like when you allow one run in eight innings, and then one run in six innings,

and then one run in seven innings, which was his most recent start against your Orioles, unfortunately, for them. Because they did. My Orioles? You mean my? And you're Mariners? Yes, you're Mariners. They're Orioles.

They're Orioles. They're Orioles. You're Mariners who succumbed to Trevor Rogers, four to three. But his ERAs, so he had a, on July 26th, he pitched seven shutout innings against the Rockies in an 18 to nothing blowout. And that dropped his ERA to 1.49. So then he has an excellent start against the Cubs, which lowered it to 1.44. And then an excellent start against the Phillies. which did not move it at all, at least out to the first decimal place.

It was still 1.44. And then he has an excellent start against Seattle, and it dropped all the way to 1.43. My goodness. So when your area is that low at the beginning of the day, it is very difficult to make it go lower. Yeah. It's pretty easy to have it go higher, as Nathan Avaldi found out. But there's just not much margin there to actually lower it because even if you even if you throw up some shutout innings, it's just not going to go down that much at this point in the season.

Isn't that just the cruelest thing? Isn't it just the worst business? Do you think that my sneezing and not being able to mute my mic in time is why you held me responsible for the Orioles, although Mariners aren't playing especially great right now? Maybe. You know, shame can mute your sneezes even if you don't. I know, but I normally try to because it's distracting. And when you don't, your co-host forgets the team that there goes roots for, you know? It's just dastardly in that way. So distracted by the sneeze. I am tickled on his behalf.

And I look, uh, mys, you know, didn't exactly enjoy their experience of Trevor Rogers. But I always like it when a guy, the book on Rogers was sort of that it was never going to get better again,

right? That it wasn't going to, um, that his, his time sort of fulfilling the promise. of that first full season in Miami was done. There's no going back to it, right? We weren't going to see another four-win season from him.

And so for him to be in this position, albeit over like, you know, 69, nice, endings. Very nice. But only 69, right? And a third. And a third. Don't forget the third. Don't forget the third.

But we can look at his 2025 campaign as it is currently constituted and say, okay, like keep going, buddy. and let's see how you trend over the rest of this year and then if you're able to build on that momentum going into 2026, but he was just very much in the ain't no salvaging him kind of territory and then like his first, you know,

run with Baltimore last year was even worse than his initial run with Miami and then, you know, people who were feeling ungenerous toward the Orioles would be like, well, they're really good at between development, they'd be able to help Trevor Rogers get better. And so it felt like his season was, like, freighted with all of this stuff, you know, that wasn't really about him. Especially because Kyle Stowers, meanwhile, was having a fantastic all-sar season for Miami. So it was the one time, yeah, that even I would say so, yes.

Even you would say so, yes. And it was the one time that Michael Ius actually surrendered some prospects, and it looked like he had picked the worst possible time to do that or the worst prospect. to give up on. Right. Even now, Stowers has had a more valuable season than Rogers. But it does help ease the sting of the Stowers breakout that Rogers has returned to form or perhaps improved his form.

Right. And so it's like it had all of this baggage that came with it. And then he, you know, quietly has sort of done better. And it's not going to change the course of the Orioles season, right? Like in a sense, like he is doing precisely what they need. needed which was provide good starting pitching but again only 11 starts see at only 11 no third um and so not enough to fully bolster a rotation that we all knew was going to be vulnerable coming into the season and has proven to be quite vulnerable but it's a good story uh and it's a good story in a part of

the roster where i think um fans of the orioles are just like really um desperate for one so uh it's exciting. It's exciting for him and I'm excited to see how, again, how the rest of the season trends and then how he's able to hopefully sustain these gains going into 2026 because it would be good, you know, it would be good. They have him for, what, one more year, I think. Yeah, he's a free agent entering the 2027 season. So, you know, as you're trying to squint and kind of find your way toward a more competitive Baltimore team next year, you know, this version of Rogers over a fuller compliment of innings. Well, that might

be an important, you know, sort of cornerstone of that effort, which isn't to say that they shouldn't like, please dear God spend some money to really do it and these half measures, no, and you can't count on

this. It could go badly. It's gone badly for him before. But an important potential cornerstone for them next year, nonetheless. Yes, since he made his season debut for Baltimore on May 24th. There are only five pitchers in baseball who have amassed more fan grafts wore than Trevor Rogers, Christopher Sanchez, Terrick Scouble, Garrett Crochet, Paul Skeens, and

of course, Matthew Boyd, of the Cubs, who's really propping up that rotation. And all of those guys have at least 10 more innings pitched over that span, even, than Trevor Rogers. In fact, Rogers is the only guy in the top 16. pitchers who has fewer than 70 innings pitched. So everyone else is pretty much well above him. So he has pitched so well on a rate basis that even though he's made fewer starts over that span, like most of those guys have 13 or 14 or 15 starts since late May.

And Rogers has had 11, and yet he is right up there because his starts have been so excellent. So not about to get his name tattooed on my butt cheek or anything. That is a callback, of course. to the Orioles fan who did. I wish you hadn't said anything. I wish you had just like kind of left up there. And then seeing if we had gotten like an email about it like, Ben, of all the things to do, that's a little extreme. I know.

Well, that guy, hey, he had the right idea, you know. I mean, you could say that he, he picked the right guy. He had an idea. He did. Yes. It didn't backfire immediately. Or maybe it did because he now has Trevor Rogers tattooed on his butt cheek. But in terms of Trevor Rogers' performance, I'm not saying he's butt cheek worthy even now,

but he has, I guess, justified that fan's faith. Sure. I mean, I'll say now what I think I said then, which is, you know, it just is clearly not a canvas that that guy takes particularly seriously. You know, you're not wagering your own butt if you take your butt seriously. You know, that's an unserious hinder that he's working with over there. Can you imagine if Christopher Sanchez were to steal another Cy Young Award away from Zach Wheeler? I mean, probably Paul Skeen's will win it.

I thought you're going to say, can you imagine if Christopher Sanchez got Trevor Rogers' name tattooed on his butt? And I was going to say, no, I cannot imagine a scenario where that would happen. That would be profoundly odd. I can't concoct a scenario like that either. But I assume Paul Skeens will win. and even though he ran into the Brewer's buzz saw the other day. But other than Skeens, Sanchez is at the top of the NL pitching war leaderboard just barely ahead of Zach Wheeler and Logan Webb and another Philly, Jesus Luzardo,

those fillies, pretty good pitchers on that team. But, man, Wheeler, he's just perennially almost the best or even arguably the best. I know. And I want him to win one at this point, not that I'm really. rooting against Skeens or Sanchez or Webb, but Skeens should have time in theory. He should get his, he should get his awards and Wheeler, who knows how many more opportunities he'll have. Yeah, that's precisely my thinking.

Like he, you know, Wheeler has sort of bandied about potential retirement talk at the conclusion of this contract. And we'll see how serious he ends up being about that. But Skeen's is going to get his. I feel confident in that. I don't know how many turns, more turns wheeler is going to have. So now, he has to be healthy the rest of the year for it to even be a conversation worth having. And I guess we'll see.

But yeah, I would like it for him. I just, you know, it's a, it's going to be a weird conversation when his career ends. As we talked about, like, there's the Hall of Fame of it all and like, what do you do with him given his late start? But mostly it's just like, there are guys where their careers conclude and you go, they really never want to say young. Like they, they never managed that, really? And I don't like that conversation because then it ends up being about like slights and did the voters get it wrong and, you know, then it's less about their career. And they deserve it to be about their career. Like that's what Zach Wheeler deserves because he's, you know, had a good, and an interesting one.

given its trajectory. So, yeah. And the performance is what it was, regardless of whether they win the award or not. Sure. But it does sway some people's thinking. And it wouldn't necessarily keep you out of Cooperstown. Certainly there are Nolan Ryan and Mike Messina, et cetera, like players who are in the, oh, he never won one.

Best pitcher never to win one. And you can say the same about the MVP award. But it helps. It does seem like there should be some kind of career achievement award other than just. getting into the Hall of Fame, which obviously is one, but just some sort of, you know, lifetime achievement, like an actor who's been nominated a bunch of times, get some kind of career achievement award. It's like, I don't know, something like a career MVP, a career Cy Young.

It's like if you were the best pitcher over a several year span, but you were never the best or clearly the best or deemed to be the best in any single season. Because Wheeler's been the best pitcher over a several-season span at this point. So that's, in a way, more impressive than just having been the best in one season. It's better to be the best over several seasons. I agree. But that is still sort of held against you by some. Well, and I think, you know, I'm going to betray that I don't have a great sense of this on a relative historical basis.

So I am perhaps wrong in my feeling about it. I think particularly when you have eras, this is maybe more of an issue on the MVP side of things than it is on the Cy Young side, although it's an issue on the pitcher side because pitchers so rarely win MVP awards anymore. But, you know, particularly when you're in an era like this one, where it feels like we've had these like long stretches of MVP sort of hoarding. hoarding implies that the player gets to decide to keep the award but it's like we are we are doling out awards to a very small pool and there are very good players who i imagine in a different era without a mike trout without an otani would maybe have you know popped a season where

they have a an MVP award but we have such concentration and its distribution that it feels like well you can't hold you can't hold it against someone that they're in the same era as Otani. Like, that's not, it doesn't mean that they're not an exemplary baseball player, right? So it does mean quite often they're not the most valuable one. But, again, like, it's, I think it sort of skews our perception of the very, very good Hall of Fame worthy guys a little bit because they're just not, not only are they not winning, but like often the last couple of years, these races have just been done, you know?

And they've been done early. and there's not a lot of like this year there's there's some awards vote contestation but it's in like you know the rookie of the year awards because the fields week you know that's not that's not the same sort of thing so i like the idea of there being some kind of career ending honor i think that that would be satisfying but then who decides and then do we have to vote on another thing is that a bbw a responsibility award stuff is like so controversial. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I'm just, I'm thinking, like, because Tom Cruise won an honorary Academy Award this year. I think he's been nominated for four Oscars, but hasn't won one. And so they

give him an honorary one. And Samuel L. Jackson won one of those a few years ago. It's that kind of, you know, Daniel Jackson doesn't have a regular Academy Award win. That's shocking. Yeah, he was nominated, I believe, for Pulp Fiction. But it's, it's just like, and maybe, Because you just made the distinction between regular and honorary. And honorary, there's a little less cachet to that, although there shouldn't be really. Because it's like a career impact award. Yeah, that's big. That means you're like an icon.

You're synonymous with the cinema. Like you can't tell the story of movies during your career without you, that kind of thing. I mean, I would argue that you can't tell the story of American cinema during Samuel Jackson's tenure Without Samuel L. Jackson? The most cinema, certainly, if not always the best, but also Hey, look, that Deep Blue Sea performance, I will ride for that.

That is a That's the best. I mean, it's not his best work to be clear. That would be wildly insulting Samuel L Jackson, but it is important. Okay, I want us to agree on that. Because, boy, what a good chomp that ends up being. You can get an honorary one

as something, even though. you've gotten an actual one as something else. I don't know if you're ineligible for an honorary one if you've never won one, maybe, but like Clint Eastwood has won one for best director, for instance, and Best Picture even and has been nominated for Best Actor, but he got an academy, an honorary for acting, I believe. Or Mel Brooks, I think, has one, but not as an actor or something. So, yeah, it's kind of like that, but it's in a way more impressive.

because it considers the whole sum of your contributions. Right, the body of pork. Yeah, it's not just one outlier performance because there are plenty of actors who won one, but just didn't have another great role or weren't all that great in other times or maybe they were just in a weak class or something. So one could be kind of a fluke to some extent,

but a career achievement award, that can't be a fluke because that's just a bigger sample. So, I mean, I guess that's what the Hall of Fame is essentially. but that doesn't feel honorary. I mean, it does, it confers an honor, but it's maybe the greatest honor. It's not like a makeup exactly. Yeah, we need like an in-between. Yeah.

We need an intermediate level of honor that allows you to say, like, yeah, this, this player was really superlative in an important way. And to your point, maybe not in a way that guaranteed them an award victory, but in a way that requires acknowledgement nonetheless. And then you don't have to... I think it would also take some of the sting out of some of the Hall of Fame disappointment stuff. Maybe the error committees would have a more hinged approach

to their decisions because it's like, well, we don't have to let... We need a different example than Harold Baines because I just feel so bad about it. But we don't have to let him in. He got this award. So it has been honored, you know? Look at him holding his...

this thing award. They should let the New York chapter of the BBWA vote on the Career Achievement Award, not exclusively, but like everyone in it since you guys never get awards fast. Yeah, that's true. Individually, yeah, it's tough. All right. So, well, speaking of one superlative player, so I was watching Otani pitch and hit, of course, on Wednesday, and it was not his greatest doubting.

It started well. He hit a lead off triple and scored, and he was a, pitching well. And then he seemed to kind of run out of gas. They were trying to push him to five innings for the first time in a start this season. And the wheels kind of came off. Although one reason the wheels came off in that final inning was that Teasca Hernandez has no wheels. That guy, I like Teasker, but as an outfielder, he has negative range. It's rough. It's rough out there. I don't know how that's possible. It's like he gets farther away when he, it's like he cannot close the distance between himself and anything.

Like, just from watching Otani starts, it's like if there is a ball that has hit out in his vicinity and you're thinking, will it fall? The answer is yes if Teasca Hernandez is out there because he is just not going to get there. And I guess since the start of last season, he trails only Nick Castiano's, it looks like, in bad defense,

a stack cast-based negative defense among outfielders. So, yeah, it's rough, not to say O'Tani didn't make mistakes himself, but when I saw that thing fall and realized who was out there, it was like, oh, well, I gave up on that one immediately. And we're like, if Teoscar Hernandez was the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, no one have to worry. They'd just be like, we're just going to outrun this T-Rex. Just out-walked. Just out-walk it has Teoscar Hernandez's head.

Like the rest of the body is a T-Rex, but then it's T-O's head on there, and he's just like, I can't get close. Closer. My little arms aren't even the problem. Yeah. T-Rexes would be terrible fielders, right? In the outfield, especially, they'd never have the arm for it. You couldn't put them in a corner to save their lives. It might save yours, though, depending on if you're running away.

I don't know why I went with this bit, but I sure did lean into it, didn't I? Otani did throw really one nasty splitter to strike out Luis Renhifo. Yeah, that was nice. It was just wild movement, just dark. darting way away. Every now and then he throws one of those. I'm like, oh, right, he throws a splitter. He doesn't even throw it that much anymore. It's weird to use another Dodger starter comp. It's like when Kershaw came up and Vince Gully dubbed his curveball public enemy number one. And so you sort of associated Clayton Kershaw with the curveball. But he hasn't been a curveball pitcher in a really long time.

He's just slider, slider, slider. And Otani, too, is just, you know, it's sweepers and sliders and stuff. He doesn't throw the splitter. He hardly throws it at all. He's thrown at like 4% of the time this season. In his rookie year, he threw it almost a quarter of it at the time. And it was a big weapon for him. It was like his number one go-to out pitch to get whiffs, the splitter. And every now and then he throws it out, pulls it out of his pocket.

It's like, oh, yeah, he had that pitch that was supposedly his out pitch. And now he barely even throws it because he has all these other pitches. I brought this up mainly to mention that he faced Mike Trout for the first time since their WBC matchup. Yeah. Yeah. And he struck him out a couple times. And the first time he struck him out, I think, on a full count sweeper, just like in the WBC. Although this time it was looking, not swinging.

And they had a little moment their Trout. Trout kind of smiled or grimaced. I don't know if he was reminiscing about the WBC, like, you got me again. or if he was thinking, ah, you're going to throw me that on 3-2 or what or just acknowledging how good a pitch it was and then Shohay was smiling too as he was coming off the mound.

I like those little moments between the former teammates, especially a callback to a milestone moment like that. And my last observation from that game is that I'm still upset about the flickering that happens behind the batters and the pitcher. I haven't really ranted about this recently. Yeah. We were complaining about it constantly during the postseason because in October we're all watching the same games if we're watching any games.

And so everyone knew exactly what I was talking about. It's still a problem. They have not addressed this. They have not. It is still just as distracting to me that it was like a booking.com sign digitally superimposed behind home plate. And all the batters were flickering and Shohei's hat was flickering. and the handle of the bat that some of the batters was it was green because the green screen, it's just, they kind of figure this out because we're another October rolling around

and presumably we're going to be subjected to this yet again in these big games on the national stage. And man, I mean, we accept and resign ourselves to a certain amount of advertising. That's just the way that capitalism works. But at least make the advertising. a little less intrusive. I mean, I know the point is sort of to make it noticeable. But this is not noticeable in a good way, although it did just earnbooking.com multiple mentions on this podcast because of the flickering, which I would not have noted otherwise. Yeah, I'm sure there's a great deal of like research and theory on this from an advertising perspective, but it does seem

like it constantly annoying the hell out of your potential consumers would have a negative impact on your ability to sell them a product, although I've been seeing those stupid jingoistic truck commercials for the last six months, and they don't seem like they're inclined to get rid at those. So what do I know about ads other than I find them irritating? But yeah, it's like we've done all these Marvel movies and we can't have better green screen on a baseball barricasse? Like, what's the thing here?

People complain about how the Marvel movies look to, but still. Yes, but this seems more straightforward. It does. It seems simple. Yes. Yeah, you're not trying to unite multiple, you know, timelines to be snapped out of exactly. I don't know what's happening in those movies anymore. And I don't care.

I don't care to know. It's a problem. But yeah, but this, the green screen, we got to figure this out. We got to figure it out. Sometimes soon. I'm sure it doesn't bother other people as much as it bothers me. But people must be noticing that this is happening. I bet it bothers people.

We've got plenty of emails about it from people, but it's a. self-selecting group of people who listen to pedantic complaints about baseball. I think the thing about it is that people love to be bothered by stuff. And I don't mean to doubt the sincerity of your irritation here because, you know, I believe you. But I imagine that on any given potential grievance, you've got some company because, boy, do we like to be annoyed by stuff? It's satisfying in a way. Dodgers lost that game, by the way. Got swept by the angels, the indignity.

and as we speak, on a Thursday off day, heading into a showdown over the weekend with the Padres, they are in second place looking up at San Diego for the first time this late in a season since 2010, I think. I'm going to try something, and you can tell me that I can't get away with saying this, okay? Not that I can't, not like it's problematic, but like I can't pull it off. There's a new daddy in the end of one. I don't even have the sincerity. I don't have the sincerity. complete it.

Conviction on that. It's hard because now I'm picturing the Padre's mascot, which is like an intentionally goofy-looking friar, you know, like they make, because they don't want him to be scary, you know, they want him to be goofy. So, because like people, mascots, that can get, that can get tricky, you know?

You can go in a bad direction on that one. But now I'm just imagining it's like when people were calling, what's his name on Gilded Age Train Daddy. I prefer Railroad Daddy. Railroad Daddy? They don't just call him Train Daddy?

Why don't they just call him train daddy? Railroad Daddy is more satisfying to say. Railroad Daddy? No, that takes too much. That's too much. That's too many syllables. You should say train daddy.

This is the character played by Morgan Spector, to be clear. George Russell, the robber baron. George Russell. But one of the better robber barons. Right. Yeah, he didn't shoot the protesters that were upset about that.

mine so like it's fine um i i am uncomfortable with how attractive i find that character because he is in fact a robber baron how far away from the finale of this season do we have to be before i can talk about it without being rude about spoilers are we there yet no but maybe we can get to it on a patreon bonus post okay because i thought one thing was going to happen and then it didn't and because i was so stressed about it happening i was totally blindsided by the thing that did happen. And so is the Gilded Age good remains to be seen. Totally unclear. Do I love it tremendously? Oh, boy, yeah, I do. In fact, I was like, I have to watch it on Sunday night. Normally, I'm like, I can, nothing that happens in this show matters remotely. I mean, that's not totally true, but it's

close. So normally I'm like, if I end up watching it on Wednesday, it doesn't matter. But I had to know the fate of, I'm not calling him Railroad Daddy. They don't just call him Train Daddy. They should call them Train Daddy. I have notes for Reddit. Yeah. Stay tuned for additional Gilded Age takes. You can pay for the privilege of hearing those if you're so inclined. That's right.

That's how good they are. We can't give those away for free. So we'll save further Gilded Age takes for now. But we do have to talk about the twins, at least briefly. Apologies to Twins fans. But boy, just when it seemed like the franchise might be on the verge of deliverance. that a sale could be completed soon. In fact, they have pulled back from that brink

and will not be selling. So Rob Manfred, you were in the room at the All-Star Game. He was talking to the BBWA, and he said, I know some things that you don't know. I can tell you with a lot of confidence that there will be a transaction there. This is in reference to the twin sale, and it will be consistent with the kind of pricing

that has taken place. There will be a transaction. We just need to be patient while they rework. Technically not wrong, I suppose. There will be a transaction, but not the transaction that he was clearly suggesting would happen. I'm not consistent with prior market values for teams. Yeah. So the poll ads have decided that actually, just kidding, faked you out, psych, we will be holding on to the Minnesota Twins.

And twins fans are beside themselves because the one silver lining of what just happened to them at the deadline, other than as we said, okay, they traded like a lot of relievers, but they were mostly relievers and they got some stars back and they've got some other guys and they've got a great farm system and maybe things can come together more quickly than you'd assume. But a big reason for optimism seemed to be that they were going to sell the franchise and that someone would buy it who would actually spend on. this team or at least spend more than the poll ads. So more than nothing, essentially. That didn't seem like too high a bar to clear. But no, the poll ads have concluded. Joe said, we feel we're the right people to lead this organization to own this franchise. I don't know that any twins fans feel that way. So instead of selling the franchise, they are selling minority shares. There are a couple as yet undisclosed minority owners who are coming in. here one local and one east coast and there is no path to a controlling stake, which is

unusual often in these cases when an owner brings in someone to take a sizable share, which it sounds like something in the vicinity of 20% of the franchise will be sold. Usually when you get a minority investor like that, there's some pathway to eventually taking over the team, as there is with Justin Ishbia and the White Sox after he pulled out of pursuing the twins and then pivoted to the White Sox. And eventually there's a path for him to take over that franchise from Jerry Reinsdorf. But in this case, no, there's no deliverance on the horizon from the poll ads. This seems to be just about getting them out from under the debt that they are laboring under,

supposedly. They're hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. And I don't know if that is what scotch a potential sale here or what happened exactly or whether the offers that they were seeking weren't actually out there. But this is the third time that this has happened in recent years, which rule of three, it seems like, is this a pattern? Is this a trend? Does this mean something? We saw the Orioles sale go through and not at a disappointing price particularly. It was the third highest sale price for an MLB team after the Mets and the Dodgers who were two, you know, big city, big value franchises.

But we've seen the nationals, the angels, and now the twins do this fake out exploring a sale for a year or more maybe. And then the end result being that the current ownership remains. Yeah, it's a weird thing because you don't. want to overreact to what it means for sort of the desirability of teams as a like an asset class like if you just allow me to express this and then gross this like beep boop boop kind of terminology I can sure um because there do seem to be a factor specific to the twins that have stalled their ability to like move the team which is the the debt that the team itself seems to have been encumbered with but like if i'm rob manfred i feel uh not awesome about this development so there's

that piece of it but then yeah for twins fans it's like you can bear a lot if you think that there is really a new dawn that might a new dawn a new day that might dawn days dawns are just that's like what they are they're dons um but it's it's a lot harder when you're you know you're seemingly trying to reinforce the viability of the business, but not like you're kind of half-assing it, right? And if you're taking on new minority partners and they're looking at the kinds of percentages that we think they are, well, that's not nothing. But I don't know that that's altering from a payroll perspective, at least not fundamentally. So it does put them in a very strange position. And I do wonder, like, if you're the league, it's like, well, are you really, are you really in a place of

viability with this club if this is where things stand. I don't know the I don't know the answer to that. You got to be able to maintain some kind of reasonable payroll and I'm I'm skeptical of their ability to do that based on what we've seen here. So it doesn't seem great. It really doesn't know. Yeah. And MLB seemingly reportedly pressured the raise into selling. Right. So they could in theory do something similar here. Do something similar. They certainly didn't with John Fisher and the A It is striking how many sell the team chance you hear how many teams now that's invoked. I think there's an article about that recently where it starts sort of as a A's fan rallying cry, perhaps. Right.

Now you hear sell the team all over the place. You're twins fans, pirates fans, sell the team, and yeah, they all have a point. So I guess you hope as a twins fan that this injection of cash from the minority owners and investors is enough to get this team spending again, but there's a 40-year track record of poll ads being pretty cheap. So it's hard to imagine that they're going to really change their stripes now. I mean, maybe if the worst of this debt load, if this was actually the most pressing impediment that was preventing the twins from doing something recently, then you get out from under that. Maybe there's a little more wiggle room, breathing room, one would hope. But

But it paints the deadline in a new light because what a lot of people assumed was, okay, they're just kind of clearing the decks here to smooth out this sale. And you don't want a bunch of payroll and contracts on the books. And so, okay, we'll just do a mini mid-season fire sale here. And then the new owner can construct the roster as they see fit. But if that was not actually the impetus for that, then what was it? I mean, you know, they talked a big game about. it being good for the team long term and maybe it will be. And I think the poll ads even say they didn't mandate that or, but, you know, I don't really buy that there wasn't some ownership

involvement in a dramatic remodeling of the roster of that nature. Particularly within the context of what we at the time understood to be a team that was looking to sell itself, right? And so if you are trying to execute that transaction, the notion that you're going to just say to your front office yeah whatever you think is best doesn't ring true now they i imagine at the deadline had this is me speculating to be clear had some understanding that like a buyer was not um going to materialize but you you still want to have some sort of management over that process as you as you're trying to get something done so i don't i don't find that particularly persuasive as a a statement from them but yeah yeah so maybe

each of these cases is an individual situation that doesn't tell us anything about the others, and Artie Moreno is just very unpredictable, and maybe he just did decide that he did not want to divest himself. And then the learners at the time had

the Masson dispute, and maybe that was an issue, and Moreno had like various legal disputes with the city and everything, and he's kind of mercurial as it is. And so, you know, there are only so many teams, and it does bring some cachet to you, even if you just inherited this team from previous poll ads.

But it's probably tough to actually pull the trigger and part with something that's been a part of your family. And it's kind of like your day-to-day and what makes anyone care about you, basically. But you don't embark lightly on that process of selling either. So people could conclude, like, is this bad for baseball as a business? Does this say something about what people think about broadcast rights and the broadcast bubble bursting? And I'm sure that owners would be quick to say, oh, it's because we don't have the cost certainty of a salary cap. And that makes it less attractive as an investment vehicle. But then you look at the whole history of franchise ownership and how stable and remunerative it has been for decades.

And it's hard to believe that that's really going to burn. You know, like maybe, will the returns be slightly less than they have been, perhaps? But I don't think it's, there are just so few franchises at that level that there are always people who want to buy in. But, you know, and if you thought that this was a depreciating asset and let's get out while the getting was good, then you'd probably be more motivated to sell. Even if you couldn't get top dollar, it might still be a more. than you'd get in the future if you thought that this wasn't going to continue to appreciate. I think that we would be naive not to entertain the possibility that in the future, absent some of the stability and frankly subsidy that was carriage fees over cable, that there won't be

less money coming into the sport. That seems possible. But there's a big difference between less money and no money, right? And I think that there's this sort of catastrophizing that goes on where we say, well, it's not going to be as good a business, but that doesn't mean it'll be a bad business, right? And we don't know, you know, we don't know what it'll look like from a rights perspective. You know, you see some of the rights deals that are going on in other sports, even with uncertainty around some part of the broadcast stuff for them, although obviously like a sport like the NFL is different because it's all national anyway. But it's not like other sports teams aren't. selling and selling well. And I think that, you know, what we have heard is that even though there is uncertainty around exactly what broadcast will look like, like the inventory of games that you have available to you and the viewership that those games garner suggests that it is still a worthwhile product from an advertising perspective. So I think that the sport will be fine and better

than fine. It'll be doing well. And the franchise values will continue to appreciate. There might be some slowing of that appreciation. There might be some dip in profit relative to what we've seen in the past. But that doesn't mean that it's suddenly going to be an unprofitable sport. And my, like, I don't know if it's terribly convincing argument because he also is just like, you know, hat and quarter zip guy now. So maybe he just doesn't give a shit and he has so much money. It doesn't matter to him. So like, I will acknowledge the potential limitations of this argument. but I will just continue to refer to Steve Cohen being like, I want to buy the Mets, you know? And like, are the Mets a more attractive value proposition than the Minnesota Twins?

Sure. They absolutely are. It's a bigger media market. It's a franchise that people are more excited about. Fine. But, like, baseball is attracting people who are famously ruthless in their financial acumen to the point of alleged criminality. And so I just don't find it persuasive that it's not a good business to be in. I do think it's really interesting, like, where the commissioner feels comfortable applying pressure and not.

And I don't even know that I, with the exception of Fisher, necessarily disagree with him, but it is interesting where just some of the language that he deploys publicly for some teams versus others at similar sort of checkpoints in a potential sale process. it's interesting and I wonder if some of that rhetoric might change as it pertains to the twins going forward because if I were him I'd be big annoyed with them yeah and maybe we'll see a few years from now I mean these next few years could be pretty pivotal in terms of work stoppage which you could imagine could maybe give some aspiring owners cold feed and then is Manfred able to bundle together broadcast rights and sell new national rights and what does that look like.

So the next few years could be determinative in one way or another. But we will see. Let's answer some emails, including this one from Matt, subject line check swing appeal, gusto. So I've always wondered, to what extent does the gusto with which the home plate umpire signals the first or third base umpire on a check swing impact the base umpire's ruling? When the home plate umpire does it casually, it always seems as if the base umpire responds with a nonchalant, he didn't swing, of course, safe signal. But when the home plate umpire jumps out from behind the plate and sweeps his arm toward the base umpire, as if this is the single most important thing in the universe at the moment, I can't help but expect the call to be a firm punch. He definitely swung and he deserves the wrath of my fist for his lack of control.

What are your thoughts on this? Oh, what a great question. I have not made a study of this. And so I have no idea if what I'm about to say is accurate or not. But I agree with the general perception put forth in the email that when it's like, hey, what did you see kind of appeal? The umpire is almost always no swing. And when it's a, did you see that? The umpires are like, no, no, no, it was a swag.

And my theory is that it's because whether or not they're actually checking out mentally that base umpires are worried they're checking out mentally and they are taking the signal of the force of the signal from the home plate umpire as an indication that clearly it had to be swinging had to be swinging and i didn't see it i didn't see it i thought i was paying attention but i wasn't paying attention and it was swing yeah i think that that's at play for like 10 to 15 percent of them and it only applies to the home plate umpire when the catcher makes an appeal i think that the default position of the base umpires to be like hey slow down buster we'll ask ourselves if we need need help. So it's really only a home plate umpire thing. But yeah, it does seem like there's

an emphatic. This is an area where it's just like we, I am fine. We have to refine the tech and we need to clearly define one of the swing is because some of the ways we want to do it are wonky. But like this is an area where I'm fine with the robots having their say. Like, come on, come on. Come on. Yeah. And I think, I think the KBO is. about to implement a check swing challenge system. Actually, this month, I think, in a matter of days, I believe I read, so we'll see how

that goes. How timely an email. Yes. Yeah, this does ring true to me. It feels like cooking the books a little, putting your thumb on the scale, trying to tell your crewmate's what you think, almost in a way where you think, why don't they just make the call themselves

if they're so certain about that, but I guess if they're asked to appeal, then I guess they're supposed to appeal. But but they're editorializing a little on the request to appeal. The thing about this is, though, I think maybe they are supposed to do it this way because I remembered something Sam wrote in his pebble hunting substack last year where he did a close reading of the umpire manual, the MLB umpire manual, and he went through and picked out various interesting items in there.

And one of them was about how you gesticulate. So I'll read his quote from the Empire Manual. MLB umpires are expected to increase the assertiveness of their call, signal and voice, as the play becomes closer or more exciting. A casual laid-back mechanic is not appropriate in a crucial close play, nor are over-elaborate excessive signals in acceptable technique, which I think Sam was surprised by, and I was as well, because we're all familiar with, oh, it's a close play, and you make the just like, oh, vehement safe sign, right? Yes. the base path distance and it's like, oh, safe. That would be a weird overreaction. Yeah, but also if it were completely casual and laconic when it's a super close play,

it's like the empires are supposed to be entertainers out there in a way. They're supposed to signal that this is exciting or close or something. So I guess maybe the ump is abiding by the rules in this case by gesticulating, appealing more forcefully, probably. That's maybe how it's actually supposed to work. I think that there's some wisdom here because you want to, you do want to match tone, you know? It's like if you go to dinner and one person at the table is yelling, you're like, why are you? And they're not yelling, but like their volumes way up and you're like, okay, well, what are we doing here? This is like, yeah, yeah.

And so I think that you want to kind of match the moment. It's like you're yes-anding the moment almost, right? You want to do that because we find tonal shift that is inexplicable based on circumstance to be discordant and uncomfortable. And an umpire has a lot of facets to their job. They have all these little tasks that they have to do. But their overarching project is to instill confidence, right? Your job as an umpire, when you really boil it down,

is to make both the teams on the field and the folks in the stands feel like there is a steady hand at work. Yes, exactly. And I think that when you, if you're like way up or way down relative to the register of the moment, people are like, wait a minute, what's going on? Because it suggests you're not paying attention, right? You're not present to the vibe, you know? And we are ever increasingly like kind of vibes based and we're like, why aren't you? You're not picking up when I'm putting down. So I think that it's not so much that, you know, the umpires are meant to be Shakespearean or anything like that.

It's that they are meant to blend into the emotional register of the moment to suggest, like, I got you. Don't worry about it. You know? Yes. I think that's true. Yeah. And Sam noted in that piece, yeah, not only does it suggest that on some level the umpires are performers that, okay, they're signaling not just safer out, but also signaling excitement, but also projecting confidence, as you just said, because the umpire's manual also includes a few just exhortations to be confident and decisive.

You're supposed to just always appear confident and decisive. And so on these close plays, when they should actually be less confident, then they have to project confidence even more, because otherwise it would undercut your faith in the proceedings. Because it would seem like, you know, if they're just holding up their hand, they're like, eh, you know, shrug, flip a coin, you know, I don't know. What do you think? Right. So they have to. Like, you know, to you? Yeah, they have to seem even bolder.

And this gets us into trouble because, you know, leaders of human beings often project confidence. And often they don't know what they're talking about. But people find confidence and bluster to be reassuring in many cases. And so umpires sort of have to do the same thing to maintain the partial fiction that they are just completely correct arbiters. So that is why they're so emphatic in that situation, which I guess would suggest, though, that when an umpire, if this applies to the appeal signal, then that would suggest that if they're. emphatically appealing than they think it's closer and they're less confident, which would go against what we were. You kind of like horseshoe theory your way all the way around to like, my insistence that you tell me what you saw suggests I have no idea. Right.

But I do feel like it's the opposite, though. I think when it's when it's check swings, I do get the sense that they really believe it as opposed to I'm so unconfident that I'm actually going to pretend that I'm more confident. But I don't know, maybe it could go either way. Maybe it could go either way. It's sort of a real conundrum when you think about it, you know. I think that the nice thing about both asking for help and for replay is that you do give yourself enough room to correct the mistake. Now, not so much with check swings, right? Like you do insofar as you're assuming that the base umpire is paying attention.

want to be clear. I'm, I'm, I'm goofing that they're not paying attention. I think they're generally paying very close attention. But we've all had a panicked moment, you know. But I think that like you can ask for help, but you don't have the same mechanisms of replay, at least right now, um, for a check swing that you would for, you know, for an actual replay review. Is he on the bag or not to do oversight, et cetera? So I think it's good that they ask for help, but you are still relying on having a good sense of things yourself. because otherwise you could end up in a real fix. Mm-hmm.

All right, Jay, Patreon supporter says, I was listening to your discussion on your respective experiences of fandom and how that affects the way you enjoy the sport. That got me thinking about the changing media landscape in baseball with cable and RSNs in their death rows and the end of regional blackouts probably on the horizon. Do you anticipate any changes in how people think about baseball and fandom?

If MLBTV eventually offers no blackout. or say $20 a month for just your team and another $10 for every team, do you think that will impact the regional nature of the sport? If the barriers to entry are removed, are fans more likely to just watch their home team or to become more team agnostic? Okay, so I think that my primary way of answering this is maybe to reference the NFL and say that I think there will be more, well, but you do have to pay extra

to really see everything for the NFL. Like you have to get Sunday ticket. You can take in a good bit of it on Red Zone, but, you know, it's not like you're unblacked out, but you do have more exposure beyond your home market on any given Sunday than you do on. any given day of the week trying to watch the MLB slate. Yeah.

And so it's an imperfect comp, but I'll stick with it, I think, and just say that I think you would have, you would definitely have more, not agnostic, but, you know, folks who are interested in a broader swath of teams than they necessarily have access to right this minute. But I still think there's a lot of really devoted fandom maybe the number of games dilutes that slightly. So, like, part of it, you're watching a bunch of, I mean, not everyone does this, of course,

but, like, a lot of NFL fans, like, they sit down and they watch Sunday football. You know, they're watching their team, hopefully, but they're watching a full suite of games. They're watching the Sunday night game. They're watching the Monday night game, despite every, you know, rational part of their bodies telling them that there is so little satisfaction to be found on Thursdays. They're watching the Thursday night game, Ben. They're watching.

And I can't distance myself from these gibronies. I'm one of these gibronies, right? I'm watching those Thursday games. I watch preseason football. Okay. Wow. It's not totally hinged over here. So, but you have, you do a fewer games and it's over a compressed time period.

So maybe there would be a little more, I was about to say seepage, which is just the grossest possible way to destroy. that, isn't it? Maybe there would be more broadening of your perspective on the game. But I think that the primary benefit that people would see from lack of blackouts is being able to access their favorite team with much greater consistency. I think that because baseball has been so regional for so long, and that is so entrenched in our understanding of fandom, It would, it might be a little while before the model, quote, unquote, of phantom shifts for most people. And it's so many games that it's hard, you know, I have to, and it's the same for you.

Like, we have to have our arms around the whole league for work. And I often feel like I'm falling down on that job. But sometimes I have to watch Gilded Age, you know? Like, I can't only watch baseball because then I couldn't watch. It should be trained at it. Railroad Daddy is too long, unless you're trying to make a railroad joke, which, like, respect. She does railroad people pretty often, but it's... Not in the way that people mean it when they use the term daddy.

At least... That kind of daddy. Not yet. Spoilers. Yeah, well, his daughter did get railroaded in a certain mail, though. He was not the instigator. Not in the... Not that.

I mean, what's... Wow. I'm just saying... baseball scene on the Gilded Age, as we discussed. So you can combine both of those interests, ideally. Okay, there you go. But I was going to say the same thing. There's just so much inventory in baseball, which is a good thing, I guess, if you're

trying to sell that inventory to a broadcaster. But, boy, there's just too much to take in. I could see people dabbling more, yes. But how can you keep up with everything that's going on? Because in the NFL, even though the NFL has gone to stay. 17 games and we'll go to 18 inevitably at some point and is attempting to colonize every day of the week and has established a foothold on most days of the week, at least. It's still more contained and there are so many fewer games and Sunday historically has

been just an event that you could devote to football and it was the only day when you had much football action on and baseball is just not like that. You can get your fill just watching your team. most people you know you've got 162 games even if you're not watching other teams except when they play yours and they're playing almost every day for several months and so you just don't really need to go outside of that to get your fix of baseball which is a good thing for the most part i mean in a lot of ways at least it's a good thing it definitely does decrease interest in any individual game and in other teams games and and even the NBA i think

there's more of a national perspective, certainly than in baseball among fans. But again, there are half as many games there, even. And the NBA regular season is just overdetermined, and it could be even shorter because there's just so much less randomness in basketball than in baseball and so many possessions and talent shows out more quickly. But there's also just so much like league-wide drama going on. and there aren't as many players to keep track of because each roster doesn't have as many

and, you know, I just think that it would help a little bit but probably that ship has sailed for baseball to be embraced the way that football is now on a national level where you're kind of aware of the entire league a lot of the time. But, you know, it could help. Every little bit helps. Yeah, and again, like it helps, you know, What are we aiming for?

Like, helps to do what? Like, what level of interest do we? And this is a big question, so I don't mean to say that we have to answer it today. But I do think it's like helps to do what, to ensure it's longevity, to ensure some sort of cultural footprint, to guarantee, like, sports supremacy, you know? Higher franchise values. That's what it's all about. We want sales prices to skyrocket. Look, I mean, it's not like the – it's not like it's not important, you know, you do want there to be – you want the – you want the folks who aren't serious about it to have incentive to leave.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So there's that. So there's that. So there's that. So there's that. from Dan, who says,

as I finished my streak extension on Duolingo today, I thought about how irrationally impressed some folks might be at my 1600-day streak of completing language exercises. After all, the app permits you a certain number of streak freezes that allow you to miss a day once in a while without losing your active streak. I'd guess I probably miss about one day a month on average, and that my true active streak is only about six weeks or so.

This led me to ponder, what if we allowed streak freezes in baseball? If any kind of streak were allowed to be extended by one iteration without the action being completed, how might that alter the leaderboards? Would anyone challenge Joe DiMaggio's hit streak? Cal Ripkin's consecutive games played streak? Use Mero Petit's consecutive batters retired. Or are some records out of reach even given multiple attempts? So that could probably be stat blasted.

I guess we could figure out if we were to a while. allow one mulligan, just how much would that actually matter? I mean, when DiMaggio's streak was broken, he then immediately embarked on another streak, as I recall, that was somewhat lengthy. So I don't know if you were allowed to string together streaks separated by a day, how much that would change the leaderboard. But I think I reject the concept of a streak freeze. This just defeats the purpose of a streak. Does it not? The whole purpose of of a streak is that you don't get a day off, you don't get to miss one. That's what makes it so impressive. And if it's just a language app, I guess the stakes are pretty low, so fine. But I don't

know that I'd recognize this 1,600 day streak if Dan is missing a day a month. I know people get very worked up about their wordal streaks or crossword streaks or whatever. And probably we should care about those things less than people do because it becomes like work. It becomes an obligation, becomes an imposition. Like, oh, I just feel so much pressure to do this thing that once was fun for me to do. Right. So I don't know that we should give it that kind of gravity. But I think if you're going to define a streak, like it has to actually be continuous.

I agree. And I think that part of the instinct, let's set aside. the like you know dualingo of it all for a second or is it dulyd lingo that's a learned league joke i can't believe that still you know you know who would say learned league bertha bertha vessel um just want to talk about gilded age i can sense that i is really love gilded age um so anyway i i think that part of the instinct to like give people and out on streaks in sports is that there is a, I think, correct perception that, like, sometimes the maintenance of a streak was done to the detriment of the player, right?

Where it's like, it would have been good for you to take a day off, though. You might have been better at baseball for part of this if you had been willing to take a day off. And I think that there's still a lot of pride, like players still have a lot of pride in playing often. and depending on, you know, the way that their contract is structured, they might have intense financial incentive to play as much as they possibly can. But I also think that we are, and certainly the industry is smarter, more aware, I'm not quite sure, like, how I want to season that sentence from a value judgment perspective, but is certainly more aware of the benefit of planned rest.

And that isn't to say that, like, if you had a guy in the middle of a really intense streak that you might not have sentimentality override your better judgment to say, like, hey, don't you want to take a day off, though? But in general, I think we really prioritize or increasingly prioritize sort of the health and maintenance of the player over streakiness. And having said that, I think that, like, it's not a streak if you take a day off. Right. If you want to deemphasize streaks, that's one thing.

That's fine. You can't then redefine what it is. Right. To say that it's still a streak. Come on. Yeah. And I also would say, now circling back to dual lingo and other, like, kind of things like that, I understand the instinct on some level.

But I think that, like, it's putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, as it were, because what you want to incentivize is consistency. And consistency doesn't necessitate consecutive days, right? you can be consistent and take a day off. It's fine. So free yourself from your burdens, you know. And I think, and here I might be overstepping slightly, but like the purpose of something like a dual lingo or a learned league

or any of these things is like the pursuit of knowledge and the thing, right? It's not about the shiny badge. Now, dual lingo gets you because that little, do they still have a little owl? Is the owl dual lingo? People get like, my understanding, is that that owl's a little asshole. Like, that owl's not chill.

And it, you know, they want you on the app as much as they can. So this is the other thing. It's like, your incentive is, is to learn. Your incentive is to gain fluency in a foreign language or to, you know, exercise your mind or whatever. Their incentive is to keep you on the app as much as they can, right? Like, that's their incentive. So just, I just invite people to, to remember what their real incentive is.

and then what the evil app owl's incentive is and, like, pick the one that makes better sense, which is you and yours rather than that little owl. It like bought, like Hector's people, right? Yes, I'm learning from the NPR website. This owl evidently died earlier this year, but then was resurrected, and it turned out that the owl mascot faked his own death. So they played. Wait a minute. Sorry, I'm going to do a big swore.

What the fuck? The duolingo owl, which, to be clear, is not real. It's not a real owl. It exists in the app. Faked its own death? Why? That was the in-universe story. I have lore like this.

Like, what are we doing? Get out of here. We discuss mascot lore at length, and this is now app mascot, corporate mascot lore. No, absolutely not. playing on the idea that people are fed up with the owl because the owl does hector them. Yeah. But evidently, the owl appeared to have been fatally run over by a cyber truck. And, man.

Gosh, this sure is a Friday episode on a Thursday, isn't it? Duo Lingo Canon was so complex. But was it, so wait, it was like identifiably a cyber truck? It seems like it, but I don't know if that was itself sponsored or I don't know that I want to know more about this, but on the one hand, it would be so weird for Tesla to be like, look, what we would like to do is sponsor the murder of your fake owl, but also wouldn't that be very on brand for them too? You know, wouldn't that fit right in? The mascot's okay. If anyone was worried, it seems like. God or wow. Again, I feel comfortable saying your app shouldn't have lore. Like, it's an app.

It's there to teach people to speak Spanish so they're less annoying on vacation. Like, what are we doing? Question from Eli, Patreon supporter. Regarding your recent discussion of Yankees and Red Sox fandom discontent, could you weigh in on a dispute my spouse and I have? We are a mixed marriage, Yankees, me, and Red Sox her. And we've been arguing. Which is worse, the Red Sox's trades of Mookie and Rafi, or the Yankees continuing with the infuriating Erin Boone era.

Ilana's argument is that trading generational stars that you love, even though in pure surplus value terms may be worthwhile, is the biggest betrayal of fans. I've argued that what the Sox did was at least part of a plan and certainly less infuriating to watch than the Boone Yankees being mediated. yoker to awful while hearing it's just right in front of us for the umpteenth time thoughts is it worse to die a death of a thousand errors and base running gaffes and baffling lineup and pitching decisions or the cuts from losing a generational superstar like mookie okay so i i feel like when we get questions like this it's a test like i'm not someone who believes particularly in the existence of an afterlife. But if there is one, I feel like my decision to be generous and take this question kindly is going to be like a bona-jumbo-tron. And the decision to tell people to

please calm the hell down will not be taken kindly. And so, and so, and so I am going to answer this question with the dual goals of not only answering it, but also preserving my immortal soul, and say, I don't know if I can do it. Well, first I want to reassure both sides of this couple that you're going to be fine. It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay. We're going to be. We're dressed into the role of relationship counselor here.

It's a lot of pressure to put on us. I don't even mean, like, within the confines of your relationship, although I have no reason to believe that that won't be okay. I'm sure that that will be fine. You sound like nice married people. No, what I mean is that, like, in the context of your fandom, you'll be okay. If I had to pick a thing, if I had to pick a thing, I would probably pick trading mooky as a worse. It's absolutely treating moogie.

It's definitely there's no competition. Sorry, Eli. Yeah, sorry, Eli. That seems kind of obvious. I feel like if I do have any doubts about how well you two are getting along. I do feel like you were set up a little bit to, like, submit this question to us with your wife understanding that actually they're going to tell you that it is very obvious that trading mooky is the worst thing. And that's should have registered, you know, just like, it sounds like you just listen to her because she's right. It's definitely trading mooky.

Trading mooky is the worst thing. Trading mooky is the worst thing. Because, look, managers come and go. Franchise icons much. Yankees fans wish that this one would go, he has not gone. But still. Managers come and go. But franchise icons much harder to replace.

And the decision to trade him, I think, spoke to a deeper sickness, a rot, as it were, at the center of the model of the team. And I'm not even trying to. And that wasn't part of a plan, really. I mean, maybe Devers deal was part of a plan, perhaps. But trading Mookie, the plan was, let's save money, basically. I mean, there wasn't really a subsequent, well, I guess there was the investment endeavors subsequently. But really, yeah, that wasn't like, oh, we will move Mookie and therefore our team will profit. Perhaps the Fenway Sports Group will profit.

But great things did not come of that deal. No, no, they didn't. And so I think trading Mookie is worse. I would also just like, again, I know that things are not going well for the Yankees right now. And I don't want to discount anyone's feelings because that is a bummer. You know, it does suck when your favorite team is losing. I will remind Yankees when you were in the World Series literally last year, like really just right last year. And I know that going and not winning is like staying on the franchise when you're the Yankees.

Yes. But. We all remember how that series ended. But nonetheless. But nonetheless, you were there. You were there. And I do think that having, you know, an appreciation for where you've been very recently is useful. I don't know if I've succeeded in being particularly kind.

And so I will apologize for that. But also the answer to this question is obvious. And the broader point of this question is obvious, which is that you are both going to be fine. Yes. During Aaron Boone's tenure, the Yankees have the third most wins in baseball. They won a pennant last year. They missed the playoffs once, I believe. They missed the playoffs in 2023, right? And they have made the playoffs in every other year with Aaron Boone at the helm. Granted, they have not gone all the way, but come on. Come on, please. Come on. I feel, I feel heartened that your response is also, come on, because I don't want to sound better about my less successful franchise, which now I have to count the Orioles. So that's really something. Sorry, I settled you with the Orioles in this season of all seasons.

Now I'm mad at myself for my own playoff odds. Like, this is such a conflict that has taken root. but it's fine. I think you're going to be fine. And isn't that great news? Isn't that great news that you're going to be fine? That's really a kind thing, actually, to remind you that you're going to be fine because it's so good to actually be fine, you know, and you're going to be fine. That's great news.

Great news. Glad tidings. Okay. James. Tadings. Patreon supporter says, I was listening to episode 2358 while driving to work and all the stat blasts about scoring in tie games.

made me ask myself a how can you not be pedantic about baseball question. How often do we check if a game is tied? Or rather, what's the frame rate on score checking in a baseball game? Let's imagine a game where the fielding team is winning 3 to 2, and the batting team has the basis loaded. From here, there are several ways the scores can change. The batting team can get a sack fly and score a single run, for instance. Now that the score is 3 to 3,

probably most people agree the game is tied. Yes, I would say so. But let's say there's a basis clearing double. The score is now three to five. The game isn't tied after the play is over, surely, but was there a period between the first and second runners crossing the plate where the game was considered tied? If the batting team hits a grand slam,

was the game also tied for a few seconds, or does the deadball nature of the home run mean the score jumps discontinuously from three to to three to six. Or even worse, the sacrifice fly situation, but after the play is over and time has been called, it's determined that some interference like infraction occurred during the play, and the runner who started the play on second is awarded home plate. Would the game have been tied in the moments between the end of the actual play and the assessment of the infraction, is scoring in baseball a continuous or discrete event, or sometimes one and sometimes the other

depending on context. So is there an intermediate score, essentially, or is the score only officially updated when a play is complete? I would say that the score is updated when the play is complete. So you would not. Oh. Oh. Disagreement?

Maybe. Maybe. I think, okay, so let's start with the ones where we will, I'm sure, not disagree. Grand Slam is the score. at any point tied in the midst of the the runs scoring then i mean what if the runners missed the base or something it's not it's not automatic right like what if the runners run in front of each other it's not like right but but but that would but that having happened would would wait no no you're definitely wrong so no

Now, I am not saying that there couldn't be circumstances that emerge during replay, for instance, that would alter the score and thus put you back to a tight state, right? But that would be the result of review after the fact that then changes the score again, not you may. Yes, and you could call that a separate play, I suppose. Maybe the review itself is a discreet action. It's a discrete event within the flow of the game. Now, I think that if you say have runners on first and second and you hit a single and there's ambiguity about how many runs are going to score, okay, maybe you can make an argument. I would still say that like the conclusion of. the play is when you take stock

of the score and determine you've gone ahead you're tied now announcers wild out on this all the time and they say they're calling it as they see it and the guys are doing and out of the game aside but in terms of like

the actual mechanics of the thing like for instance I think there's probably variation here this isn't this is a weak argument I'm about but like I think, okay, you have a ballpark that has a mechanical scoreboard, right? Imagine.

Pick a ballpark that has a mechanical scoreboard. Fenway. Fenway, okay. Yeah. When did they change the score on the mechanical scoreboard? I was just thinking that myself, they don't do every intermediate score. They don't. They go from what it was to what it becomes.

Yeah, and same on the broadcast, right? Right. They won't tick up by one. They'll do it all in one lump sum, I think. Right. Right. Right. Right. Now, this doesn't matter. So if you are delighted by the notion that it is temporarily for an instant tied.

That's just for convenience's sake, because why would you go to the trouble of let's replace this number and then this other number and then that other number when you know in the vast majority of cases what you're going to end up with? When are you taking stock of the score? You're taking stock of the score when the play has concluded and the runners have all either crossed home if they have occasion to do so. If the batter runner has reached his base or is retreating to the dugout in the case of a sacrifice in some way, the scores a run. Yeah. Well, so there's the provision in the rules where if you want to challenge or appeal. certain type of plays, you have to ask to do that before there's another play, because once another play starts, then you can't appeal that anymore, which would suggest that until you actually

appeal, it's all part of the same play. Right. So I think it's when you challenge, when you appeal, that's a separate play, okay. And so that, if you reverse a score, you can do that, but that doesn't change what I think the core question is here, which, in my mind, you score when you touch home plate. I think that is when your score technically increases. Sure, but we're talking about how you talk about that. Well, yeah, sure.

Okay. So, well, I don't, I think given that this is a pedantic question that is explicitly asking about, like, technically, when is it tied? I think it's tied when that person, when the runner crosses home plate. If you do have a basis-loaded possible basis-clearing situation and runners are coming around and you're trailing by one run, when the lead runner scores, the game is tied in the middle of that play, right? And you don't know which way it's going to go. You could end up being ahead at the end of that play if the next guy scores, you could be up by two potentially. Yeah, but at that moment, it's a tie game. And if that guy is thrown out, it will remain a tie game.

and if he's not thrown out, then it won't be a tie game. But for a moment there, you're in this, this liminal phase. It is a tie game. Zoomer over here. I think that if the question is like the refresh rate, like how quickly does the image update, essentially, the frame rate that I think it happens when that player crosses home plate. Now, typically that's either happening quickly enough

that you don't really have time to talk about it as being a tie game because it's about to be untied or if it's a home run sort of situation, then you don't even really consider the possibility that it won't be tied because something really wacky would have to happen for it not to be tied. It's almost automatic that if a certain number of runners are on base and the ball goes over the wall, then all of those guys and the guy who hit it are going to score. And so you can project what the score will be at the conclusion of the play with certainty. And so you wouldn't bother to say, oh, it's tied.

Oh, we're up by one. Oh, we're up by two. But I think technically that is true, unless there's a rule that governs this that I'm not aware of, which is possible. I think it would be defensible to say the game was briefly tied for a second there. I think it's defensible. It's just doofy. Yes, I would agree that it's duffy. Think about how it would be written and like if you're just looking at the box score and how it's,

it is written in the play-by-play on MLB.com, right? You would say, like, I'm thinking about this because he just got to, if you had, Nathaniel Lowe hit a grand slam. He had his first grand slam as a national, and now his last grand slam as a national. He hits his grand slam. In the MLB.com accounting of that game, it says, Nathaniel Lowe hits a grand slam to right field, James Wood scores, Louise Garcia Jr. scores, Josh Bell scores. It is like a clump of score, and then they have the updated score.

at the end of it because yes yes and for the purposes of certain splits like if you were to look up performance in tie games let's say then right that would be concluded plays it wouldn't be like part of the performance in a tie game was that split second to where it was tied before another runner across the plate it is a moral failing I just don't think that it's like consistent with how we tend to think about how games proceed in sequence, which is that you do your accounting when the play has concluded. And then, if it turns out the accounting was wrong because actually the guy was interfered with or he didn't touch the bag.

And so the run doesn't, then you adjust your accounting and you adjust the score, but you're doing those as discrete events in sequence. So that's the way I think about it. If you want to think about it differently, I don't think there's any harm in that. I just think that people are going to be like, well, sure, but what's the score right now? Because that's generally what they care about. Yeah. No, I think it's like when you're sent to jail in Monopoly and you don't pass go and you don't collect 200.

I think in baseball, when you're sent home, you have to pass the intermediate bases. And someone to get to a certain score, you do have to actually have the intermediate scores for a second. I think, that's how, that's my belief system about baseball, at least. I think for all intents and purposes, practically speaking, we don't disagree. And I also don't disagree that this is doofy. But I do think, I don't think you can get to five runs without having scored four runs or three runs. I think you do have to have each incremental score at some point to get to your ultimate score. It's just that it happens so quickly that we don't bother making a distinction there.

We make more convenient just intervals, which I think is smart and as it should be. But since the question was really asking about the nature of scoring on this pedantic level, I think I'm with this question, the scenario that, yeah, there are brief fleeting transitory ties that we just do not acknowledge. I think that that's technically true. Okay. Technically correct, the best kind. But that's what we're going for here. But meaningfully goofy.

Meaningfully. Do you think that the Monopoly man was driving the cyber truck that killed the dueling go out? Maybe it's just more brand activation. Just more synergy. Sounds great. Mary, Patreon supporter, says, not sure if this has been covered on the podcast already. Neither am I, though it doesn't ring a bell.

Do we have a baseball definition for Scattered? I was looking at a box score. and noticed that the starting pitcher gave up only two earn runs despite allowing 10 hits. And I initially said to myself that he had scattered those hits. But upon reflection, I wonder if we can say the hits have been scattered only if they don't result in any runs. I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah, you can scatter and still have allowed some runs, just fewer runs than you would expect based on the hit total, right?

Yes, I think that that's right. I think that I would let the hit total be my like North Star on on that. Yeah. There's probably some sort of equation that we could have here for what qualifies as scattered. You know, the mental arithmetic people do when they're deciding how egregious an age gap in a romantic relationship is. Maybe there's something like that for scattered where it's like, you know, hits divided by runs or something. Like, I don't know what the typical correlation is, like, how many runs are there per hit in a game? So if you were to do some sort of regression analysis and say, okay, if you have 10 hits, then the most likely run total for you is X without knowing anything else, what those hits were, were they home runs, whatever, right?

Now, if you have 10 hits and they're all singles or something, then it's obviously easier to scatter them than it is if they're even so. solo home runs. But I think you could do some sort of division there where you just find out like your run allowed total is a lot lower than one would expect given the hit total. And sometimes that's because all the hits were singles. But usually I think the platonic ideal of scattered is that you're just getting into and out of jams. And so there's like a lot of traffic on the bases in every inning even, but you keep just getting out of it somehow, right? Like you put someone on, a couple guys get hits, but then you strand those runners and you just

you don't cluster that. It's like scattering is the opposite of clustering, essentially. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's right. I think that that's right, the opposite of clustering. Okay, but it doesn't have to be a shutout. I don't think so, no. You can scatter a couple of runs over a few innings, and I would. If anyone wants to do the math and come up with a scattered equation, please let us know.

We'll report back. Michael, Patreon, supporter, had a term to suggest. Lifelong Orioles fan, just like you, Meg. Right, yeah, famously. Yeah. Today's Sunday, August 10th, loss to the athletics was disappointing, but it did give me a new word to share. It was a walkaway win for the visiting athletics. They scored the go-ahead and winning run in the top of the ninth, following a recent.

podcast, where y'all had mentioned that the O's were the only team in 2025 to not record a walk-off win, or I guess that it would have been very unusual for a team to go a whole season without a walk-off win. And actually, the Orioles just had one updates to that stat blast. They had their first walk-off of the season on Wednesday, I believe. Was that also against your Mariners? Was that the same game that we were talking about before? Trevor Rogers. Yeah. Yeah, they rallied to tie it in the bottom of the ninth and then the Orioles walked it off.

Yeah. In the top of the night. Did I say the bottom of the ninth? Yes, I don't remember what I said. But yeah, they scored in the part of the ending that they're allowed to score in, but then the URLs were like, we're not done. Right. So Michael's suggesting that what happened with the A's 3 to 2 victory was a walkaway win, right? They were the away team and won in their last at bat or the last at bat.

What do you think? I love when you cogitate on making new terms in baseball for various specific situations. So the walk-away win, where they scored the go-ahead and winning run in the top of the ninth. You can't have a walk-off in this situation if you're not the home team. So this is like the equivalent for the visiting team, I guess, a walk-away win. I'm open to that. I don't know that I needed a term for this. And I do worry that it would engender some confusion because it is close enough to walk off.

that people might be like, wait, what kind of one are we talking about? So that's my hesitation. And you're not really walking away just yet, are you? You know? You got to go back out there to like try to hold your lead. So maybe that's the larger issue, actually. Okay. Dave in Hamilton, Ontario, appropriately enough, has a question about an Ontario team.

After hearing your discussion on the Blue Jays demolishing the Rockies, I wondered how much that one series might change. the perception of the Blue Jays season. They've had a great record for a few weeks now, but their run differential has not aligned with that record. After a plus 41 run differential series, the differential is still only plus 55, good for the ninth best in the majors,

and they're plus four on their Pythagorean record and base runs record. If my math is right, they had a plus 14 differential entering that series, which would be 16th in the league. Right now, we recognize how much that one series positively affected their run differential, but will we remember that in a few?

weeks. I would love your thoughts on just how much that will change the narrative about how they've overperformed this season. So yeah, that is a good question because we did make a big deal of that then, but then it all blends together. And so will you remember that at the end of the season there at plus 45 now? So there has been some effort, as I recall, to sort of strip out blowouts from run differential calculations, and I don't really recall how much that helps, if at all, whether that makes things more predictive because... How do you feel about that, like, philosophically, though? Yeah, I'm conflicted about that because sometimes a blowout is a reflection of being a good team

and the other team being bad. Right. Now, as we've discussed, I guess maybe there is more of a tendency to pour fuel on the fire, now gasoline on the fire, because you might put in Austin Nola. to pitch and he is not as good a pitcher as his brother and I believe he's no longer in the majors even after he fell on his sword in that game so maybe there's an argument for it in the position player pitching era where it could get kind of skewed and distorted but but on the whole I don't I wouldn't want to just wipe away anytime you blew out another team because right that could that could

be skills could say something yeah yeah could say something meaningful about you as a team. Yeah. That's true. I think, I mean, seeing that run differential just does make me feel better about the Bouges than I did before that series, even though I know that a lot of that run differential came from that series, and I know how that the Rockies are and everything. But then, yeah, everyone gets to play the Rockies, though, you know.

And other teams haven't beaten up on the Rockies quite as much as the Bouges did in that series so you got to give give it up for that a little bit yeah but i don't know here's here's my sort of broader theory about how we metabolize these things i think that fans um of other teams forget this stuff if they ever knew it at all right they're not tracking the ins and outs of the run differential they they will notice extremes um you know when you have like a very when you have clearly outscored your opponents by a lot. Fans will notice if you have like a wildly negative

run differential opposing fans will notice but generally I don't think opposing fans are really paying much attention to that and I don't think that if a blowout or two in either direction is really skewing the number that they're much aware of that. I do think that fans of that team

have a sense of it and the degree to which that sense is front and center in their minds is directly correlated to how anxious they are about the quality of their club. Yeah. Because if you have a team,

if your favorite team has won a couple of blowouts and that is skewing your numbers, you're thinking about it a lot. It's sitting right there. You're like, we're not very good. Actually, we're not, this is that one game.

It's that one couple of games. It's really, but actually, this is a paper tiger. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. I think that that's true. I think that that is true.

I mean, I don't know that they're a paper tiger. I think the Blue Jays are a good club. I don't think they are paper. Yeah, we underrate them maybe because they have a little bit of the Brewers thing going on where they have a lot of depth in their favor and less extreme star power. And then also good gloves, great defensive team. And that's another thing that can cause a team to be underrated. Plus, some of their off-season additions haven't really been all that responsible for their success.

But, yeah, no, it's not a mirage that they've done. well lately. Anthony Santander. Yeah. Hoffman. San Tand Ware, really. That's not fair. He's hurt.

Yeah. Sam, Patreon supporter, says, I think about Adam Dunn all the time. Who doesn't? I'm Sam and I think about Adam Dunn all the time. It probably has to do with the flurry of if Stanton or Schwerber hit 500 home runs, book them to the Hall of Fame discussions I've seen this season.

Stanton is in a different class, so I really want to get into Dunn v. I don't really recall there ever being that type of dialogue used at any point in Dunn's career, though just because I don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. He was pretty close to 500. Yeah, he got up to, what, 462 career home runs. Pretty close. That's one good Adam Dunn season away.

I took a look, and their rate stats are extremely similar. If anything, you'd expect Schwabers to start taking a dip in the coming years once he gets into his mid-30s. As far as Fangraph's were, Dunn has a slight lead, but I think the argument could be made. His Fangraph's War takes a hit by playing so much time in the field pre-Universal DH. I mean, you could also say that about Schwerber, too, even though it's not pre-universal DH anymore. Here are my questions. Do the numbers support the statement? Kyle Schwerber, is the modern-day Adam Dunn?

And second, if so, why are or were they perceived so differently? Is it due to Dunn existing in a pre-sabermetric era? Did Dunn's overall reputation take a hit because of how terrible his defense was? our fans just burnt out on seeing so many Hall of Fame ballots where the home run guys have PD implications and they just want to see a masher get in. I'm assuming it's a combination of things curious to get your two cents. So, yeah, I mean, I think if anything, well, Dunn was one of those guys who early in the Sabermetric appreciation era, I think was sort of embraced because he was a slow hulking patient slugger, high strikeout slugger, low average. And he was a guy who I think his reputation was burnished in Sabermetric circles, which were not as mainstream as they are today. But he was kind of embraced for, hey, this guy's actually pretty valuable, even though he's striking out almost 30% of the time and adding 240 or whatever, which was lower than relative to the league than it is now.

And there was a lot of attention paid to how many home runs he hit. I mean, I remember that streak of 40 home run seasons when he hit 40 exactly. on the dot for consecutive seasons, that was a pretty big deal. And then he bookended that with a 46 and 2.38s. I mean, that guy could hit home runs. And I think, yeah, I would quibble with the election a little, because I think that Dunn was one of those guys who got mentioned as like,

uh-oh, what if he gets to 500? That'll really be a dilemma. And then, you know, there were enough guys who got to 500 and didn't get in because of PED stuff, that maybe that became a little less of an issue. although there's still really no one who's, you know, seen as clean and 500 plus who's not in. So I think he was on that list, absolutely, of people. And I wrote something when he retired for Grantland about war being so useful because it could help us compare, say, Adam Dunn and Juan Pierre, who were like diametrically opposite players, but at least at the time had identical wars.

And, okay, this is why it's useful to have a stat like this. that can put these players on the same scale, even though their contributions came in vastly different ways. So is it just that like Schwerber's been on better and more notable teams and has had bigger moments because of that? And, you know, 2016 Cubs and now he's on these Phillies teams and Dunn was on some stinkers. And maybe that has to do with it.

Or maybe he just came along too soon? I don't know. Soon. Too soon. Too soon and stinky teams, you know? Yeah. Stinky is too strong stinker. But yeah, I think that has a lot to do with it. The combination of those things kind of clouded his legacy in our collective imagination, I believe. Yeah. I believe he never played a postseason game. So it's very different from Shoreborough. I think that's a big part of it. He was also, he was big. I mean, Big Donkey was the nickname, right? So he was 6-6, almost 300. On the Pazcast, Mike Schur and Joe Posnansky did this classification thing recently where they, like, sorted players based on sluggers, especially, based on their size. And so, like, baseball monsters were huge. And then they had an intermediate category, which was the Oaf, the baseball Oaf, which was said fondly, right? But Oof suggests a lack of coordination that I don't know is there. But it was like, you know, Jim Tomey was the baseball, kind of like a friendly giant, but like.

Okay. Not a baseball monster, which would be like, you know, Elie de la Cruz or Shohei Otani or someone. That should be known as the Andre for Andre the Giant because he seemed like a sweetheart. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Could work. And then they had a separate category for like Schwabes, which were like just mini, mini-ofs, basically. Because like, Schwerber is 511 listed.

And yet you'd think that he'd be bigger. He's like in that Matt Stairs. He's bigger than Matt Stairs. but he's in that kind of like slugger-shaped, barrel-chested home-run hitter, but smaller of stature than one might expect, whereas Adam Dunn just dwarfed everyone and looked the part more than Schwerber, I guess. But, no, I think they're fairly comparable, and I think it has a lot to do with the stage on which Schwerber has had his heroics,

which is partly in his control and partly not. Oof is going to bother me, though. I wonder, there's not a way to do this, and that's a bummer, but in addition to the, like, an end of career, you were awesome award, like a career Cy Young or whatever, we should take all the guys who didn't get to play in the postseason and, like, give them a playoff, but then they won't be themselves, you know, they'll be diminished, they'll be, you can't do it after they've ended their career, because then it's like, do you really want to see a team? No, you don't.

You want to see them when they're young, bright guys, you know, when they're, oh, isn't quite right. I do have a note on that, you know. I get what they're going for, but I don't, I think that there's a tweak. Then he's a little tweak. He's a tweak. Well, I'm sure they're open to tweaking it and may potentially tweak it themselves. But, okay, we can do a few more next time, perhaps I have a few leftovers. All right, that sounds good.

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for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. When I'm riding the bars, we're going for a wall.

One strap on my head with them listen to people talk. I want to hear about baseball with new ones that puffian stats. Yeah, yeah! Don't want to hear about pitcher wins or about gambling odds. All they want to hear about might try to have platicles. And the texture of the hair on the arm going out of one's head. Gross, gross!

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