Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2363: See More Seymours

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the commissioner’s power to dictate conversations about baseball, realignment possibilities, whether league distinctions still matter, how much they have to banter about, Victor Robles’s bat throw and suspension, the latest Tommy Pham flare-up, a Ketel Marte controversy, the Brewers, the Blue Jays, and what teams’ styles of play […]

Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2363 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. This is our first episode of the week, as you know, and usually that comes on a Tuesday. That's when we record at least. Not always, but that just tends to be our typical first episode of the week for various reasons, just working around other work that we have to do. And I always find that I'm just bursting with banter on a Tuesday because it's the longest time we've had between episodes.

Now, this week, Last week, I guess we're recording three consecutive days because of travel and various other applications. Usually we try to space it out a little bit, which is better for having things to talk about and probably also better for our audience, I guess, not to just cram it into a compressed period. But when we do these Tuesday pods, not having recorded since Friday, obviously more time has elapsed than when we do our subsequent pods in the week. And so more banter has built up. And I just, I always feel like we should brand these episodes as like the podcast catch-up. Like, around the league. Here's what's happening in baseball, just catching up on all this stuff that has happened.

It's just our content cup overfloweth, runneth over. Runeth over. Podcast jamboree. Yeah. podcast. Something will workshop. Mash up. Podcast, jam sash, podcast.

I don't know. I got to workshop it. I got to workshop it. But I just feel like we have so much to talk about. And then we get to Thursday on our third pod in a row. And I'm like, what are we? I don't know. You know, here's the thing.

We can space it out a little bit, probably. Here's what I'll say, though. You always say that. And sometimes you express consternation or at least concern. And before we have started recording, like, oh, what are we going to? And then we talk for like two hours anyway. We make it work. Yeah.

Yeah. We just love talking about baseball with each other, I guess. We find a way. We do. So one thing that people have been talking about sort of unexpectedly is realignment. Yeah. Because Rob Manfred made one comment on a baseball broadcast. It was on Sunday night baseball, right?

And it was, what, 40 seconds, just an aside, essentially. about realignment? And that sort of set the agenda for this week in baseball conversation. How about a window into the future? Expansion, realignment, expanded playoffs. I mean, can you see that down the road? I can. You know, I think that it's, I think the first two topics are related in my mind. I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign. I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. And I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for, you know, entities like ESPN because you'd be playing up out of the east, out of the west, and that 10 o'clock time slot

where we, you know, sometimes get Boston, Anaheim would be two West Coast teams. And that 10 o'clock slot that's a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience. So I think, you know, I think the owners realize that there's demand for Major League Baseball in a lot of great cities, and then we have an opportunity to do something good around that expansion process. Just really reminded me of the power of the pulpit, the bully pulpit of the commissioner. It's a odd thing because people loathe commissioners typically. Yeah. Not just Rob Manfred, but many, most commissioners. I mean, that's just him, but.

No, but perhaps most. of all, well, not necessarily. You should hear hockey fans talk about Gary Batman and it just, it depends on the year of like the commissioner, rancor rankings, essentially. Rank or rankings has a nice musicality to it. That's part of the job description, almost that you're supposed to be the meat shield. You're supposed to just absorb the blows so that the people you work for, the owners cannot.

You went from this lovely bit of phrasing to meat shield. Yeah. Sorry. I could only sustain it so long. But that's part of the problem. You're the punching bag. Yes. And you float these trial balloons. And it's kind of your lot in life and you're well paid for the privilege. And there's lots of other good prestige and perks that come with the position. But you will get booed at many public events. But beyond that, it's a sweet gig in some respects. And as we've discussed and as I've talked about it on Hangup and listen, great job security. because the commissioners tend to stay in those positions for a very long time. But it's kind of incredible that just one comment from a commissioner can just, that dominates the narrative. It's not even like there was some pressing immediate reason to discuss realignment, really.

Nothing is happening now. There's no expansion happening in the short term. I mean, maybe it's overdue. It's certainly been a long time since expansion. It's been the longest time in the expansion era without additional expansion. So, yeah, we'll get two new teams at some point, but we don't know where, we don't know when, we don't know if the realignment would happen immediately. There's so many things to work out before this actually becomes concrete.

And yet, everyone is drawing up their realignment plans and talk about how would realignment work. Right. Just for one stray comment from the commissioner, it just goes to show. know the power of that position for good and for ill just to sort of set the conversation about their sport. I also think, you know, it's August. So that's part of it, too. I do wonder how much gnashing of teeth this would have inspired, you know, early in

the season or as we're rounding into playoff form. But yeah, I mean, like, look, you can't, when you're in a position of authority like that, I'm not the first person to have this thought, but your ability to, like, idly muse is or ought to be perhaps curtailed a bit, right? Because people, like, they're going to sit up and take notice. You've got to have private brainstorming sessions, right? And so I'm not totally surprised. Part of it is, like I said, it's August, and these are the dark days. And writers got to write about something, you know, and when you.

have not settled clearly the fortunes of different divisions can can bop around as we saw this weekend um but uh you know it's not like the most thrilling of playoff races and so what do we worry about whether we should have four divisions and they should be geographic and yeah we should name them wild things and we should put bowden in charge and why you know like you could i i found it hard to get exercised about it. But as soon as he said it, I was like, oh, this is going to be discourse. I can tell. Yeah, I had an editor messaging me.

Do we need to write about this? It's like, nothing happened. I mean, Bradmanfred mentioned something. No, it makes sense to pay attention to what the commissioner says because it signals his priorities and the priorities of the people he works for who are pretty important when it comes to the direction of the sport and what the league's mission is and lots of things that he has said. the past have become concrete, have become real. And gosh, right after he was hired, was it day one that he floated the idea of an infield overshift ban? And it took years and years for that to come to fruition, but it eventually did. Now, sometimes he'll toss something off and then

walk it back or it causes just a whole fur and he has to sort of downplay it, like with the golden at-bat business. Right. Whether he actually intended to float that and have a trial balloon, it popped if that was the idea. And so then he had to sort of say, oh, I was just kind of, I wasn't really serious, right? But everyone talks about it. And here we are talking about the thing that the commissioner talked about. For whatever reason, I just, I don't find realignment scenarios to be that compelling. And it's not like we have any aversion to discussing hypotheticals here on this podcast. That's a big part of what we do. But something about the.

Here's my realignment plan. Well, here's my real life. It's just, yeah, I guess that looks good. I don't know. You know, like, let me know when we actually get the 32 teams and when this actually. Because Bud Seleek was talking about radical realignment in the 90s, and then that didn't really happen the way that he had envisioned it. And I'm generally pro realignment.

It seems like a sound idea. You get up to 32 teams. You can kind of consolidate part of Manfred's calculus as he. said was just making things more palatable to broadcasters and partners who are going to pay owners by just consolidating the games in the same time zone and everything. But for other reasons, too, it makes sense. Less travel. It's better for players. It's better for the environment. It's maybe better for fans. Maybe you end up with geographic rivalries that are kind of compelling. So I'm fine with it in theory. It just, we talk about it so many times.

over so many years and nothing has actually happened that I just, I need it to be more real to actually start jotting down, oh, I think this team should move here and that team should move there and there should be four divisions or no, there should be two divisions or whatever. I find the consternation around it really interesting. Like, I think it's a fun, I think we're missing an opportunity to just view it as like a fun thing because I think the concern around realignment comes from. There are these rivalries, often born of competition within a division, that are meaningful to people, right? Like, it's precious to them that they, as Yankees fans, get to nash their teeth at Red Sox fans, right?

And watch their guys, like, on Sunday night baseball so much of the time. So it's that means something to them, right? Phillies and Mets fans want to be engaged in a simultaneous internal breakdown. And also potential knife fight, you know? Like, there's just, like, ways that we express our regional identities that are meaningful to people. Speaking of knife fights, got to bring up Tommy Pham later, note to self. There's a lot of, you know, like, hey, all you settle down kind of news. Yes, it really is.

This last little bit here. But I think that that is where people kind of generate, like I said, consternation around it. And I guess I would just say that, like, the league has. has a vested interest in maintaining those rivalries. I think that we tend to view them as, like, more permanent than they are. Like, there's an elasticity to rivalry that I think we can kind of fail to appreciate because these things shift over time. It's not like this current configuration of the league is how it's always been, right?

Like, the teams have moved around. They've gone from the National League to the American League. They've gone back and forth, you know? So it's like, this is, you know, there's a, greater pliability to all of this than I think we tend to remember in any given moment. But I think that there's definitely, I hate to use this word because it makes me sound like a boop, boop, boop person. But there's probably optimization to be had here. It would be nice if like the environmental impact were a true motivator. I'm a little skeptical of that because they're still going to fly all

around and guess where their complexes are. So in Arizona, Florida. But I think that there's like room to kind of make things make a bit more sense in terms of travel in terms of like you know fans on the east coast in particular grouse and i think with a good reason about like all these late nights that they have to endure when their team goes west and you know west coast fans complain about missing game action because of games that start while they're still at work when their teams go east. So, like, I think there's probably some massaging of the current configuration that could yield, like, positive results. And it's fun to think about, you know, the thing that's the most fun to think about that I imagine will end up having, like, a boring answer, like,

it'll just be north, southwest, what east is what we should call them. I think that we shouldn't be allowed to realign the divisions or the leagues more generally. Unless we come up with funny names for the conferences, you know, it's like cardinal direction. Cardinal direction. Cardinal direction, right? It's a cardinal direction. Is that right? Cardinal direction? I was like, ordinal direction. No, that's wrong. It's nice to work through cardinal. Right? Yes. Okay. Thank you for supplying an answer. But that is such a boring answer to what are the divisions called. You know, we should have to work harder. And then our reward. at the end can be your favorite team getting on a plane a little less frequently or at least for less far of a distance it is always funny to me

when Mariners fans are like we'll do realignment and then it's like you're still they're still gonna have to get on the charter a bunch like there's just no it's way up in the corner you're not getting around it like there's you could minimize sure but like it's way up there you're they're gonna fly you know they're gonna just have to fly

a lot they're up in the corner yeah it's I think a lot of it boils down to whether you care about preserving the American League and the National League. Right. Stephen Nesbitt at the Athletic. He came up with one plan that did preserve that, and it seems like that ruffles fewer feathers. But I don't know that I care that much because the distinctions between the leagues are just erased. It's just a historical vestige. And there's something to be said for historical vestiges. We like a vestige. Yeah. Sometimes it's okay. Sometimes it's a tradition is important and one of the nice things about baseball sometimes.

And we saw that when MLB consolidated control of the minor leagues and then renamed the minor leagues briefly and then had to re-rename them and return them to their original names because they went with the just very antiseptic, just AAA East and double A south. And no, it was okay. We like having the International League and the Pacific Coast League and the Texas League. Right, I want to be able to call it the Sally League. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah, these monikers go back a very long way in some cases and what's the harm in keeping those names. But if it actually starts to interfere with the alignment because you want to preserve American League teams in the American League and National League teams in the National League, even though some teams have jumped from one league to another in the past. At that point, I don't know, maybe the tradition is getting in the way of the best possible solution.

So, I mean, you mentioned the difference in travel. So baseball savant has a handy little table of the distances traveled by teams in each season. So, like, last year, the Padres were at 51,690 miles traveled. And the Pirates at the bottom were at 25,389 miles traveled. So the Padres traveled twice as much, more than twice as much as the Pirates. that's a pretty big disparity, and that can potentially take the toll. So if you can minimize that toll and minimize the emissions and also maybe set up some more natural matchups and have people who are watching not to spread across time zones, yeah, okay, I'm all for that. But if you want to preserve American League National League, that's going to impose some constraints.

Right. Then you're not going to have, say, the Yankees and the Mets in the same division or whatever it is. And maybe that's good. Who knows? Maybe you can overdose on rivalries. Maybe there's something to be said for making them somewhat scarce, those real rivalry games. We'll explain a lot about Yankees and Red Sox fans. Well, yeah.

Simply been overwhelmed by rivalry. Too much. Perhaps. The brain flooded by rivalry. Yeah, I guess the number of times those two teams have played each other in the intensity of that rivalry, when both teams are actually good, would argue against the idea that there's too much of a good thing, perhaps, and the Padres and the Dodgers playing each other a ton. But I don't know that I care that much.

Now, they could have an Eastern Conference and Western Conference, and they could still call them American League and National League for historical reasons, even if they jumbled up which teams belong to each league. But at this point, there's just no distinction other than the name. There used to be really significant distinctions, different rules and different umpiring crews and different league presidents who actually had power because the leagues weren't just subject to the entity of major league baseball, which didn't really exist prior to, I don't know, a few decades ago or less even.

So at that point, it really made a major difference. And you didn't have interleague play throughout the season, too. So just all those barriers have fallen. And now it's a name. And I know that I would let a name stand in the way of doing what I thought was the best plan. Yeah, I think that, you know, I'm not saying that it'll necessarily be appreciably better. But I don't think that we're in danger of losing very much if we pivot away from the current configuration, in part because, you know, if you want to think about it within the framework of loss, we've already lost so much. But I think we could probably churn out something kind of cool and interesting.

And that would be nice. Yeah. There's something to be said for having different rules in different circuits, but we don't have that anymore. We don't have it anymore. And that wasn't worth it to me to preserve pitcher hitting, for instance. I'm not saying just have a worse sport in one league. Oh, I'm going to anger the old diving the wool and L fans. But I wouldn't artificially do it to create a distinction, which would actually maybe impair the entertainment value of one part of the product.

But if those differences exist, okay, that's sort of a silver lining and that could be a draw. Here's a different brand of baseball. But we have erased that distinction. So if we end up erasing the name, there's part of me that might be sort of sad to see it go. and maybe you can keep it on in some form. But I don't think I would cling to that. If we're doing realignment, might as well just go whole hog. But we're not doing realignment for now.

No. We will at some point. This will happen. Some version of this will happen. But we'll discuss that when we come to it again. Yeah. For now, we're just filling time on a little league broadcast. Yeah.

Well, Meg begs. Yeah. Well, Meg begs the Mariners to stop throwing pitches right down the middle quite so much. You know, just like try it, try a different location if you want it, like, as an exercise. I don't know. I'm just like worth of thinking about. Continuing on with our baseball grab bag episode of Effectively Well, maybe that's it.

I don't know. We'll keep thinking about it. But as people can probably tell, we don't exactly outline these episodes very rigorously. But I do jot down just stray thoughts, observations, things I saw. of things I read, things I thought of, yeah, and then we get to it at some point. So just a few of those in no particular order. So, all right, we were talking about players just get an agro. And there have been a couple examples of that.

So there's Victor Robles. There's Tommy Pham, who's a perennial offender when it comes to players getting excessively angry. And maybe we could also briefly touch on the Cattel Marte controversy. which kind of came out of nowhere, just the idea that Cotel Marte is a problem in the clubhouse, which was not something I was aware of if it is, in fact, a thing. Anyway, okay, maybe we can talk about the most violent of these episodes, which is Victor Robles, who is rehabbing or was rehabbing

from a dislocated shoulder that he suffered in April, and so he's finally coming back, he was playing in a minor league game trying to make it back to the Mariners and there was an inside pitch that he managed to foul off and he was upset about how close it came to him and it came it came very closely i'm not i'm not convinced that that pitch didn't hit him you know maybe yeah there are there are mitigating circumstances here which we can discuss but the reaction was at first the bat fell from his hands and then he picked it up again and then he picked it up again and then he He chucked it at the pitcher for the A's minor league team, Joey Estes. This was in AAA, so Reblis was playing for AAA Tacoma. So he was ejected, obviously, because he threw a bat at the pitcher. And he is probably in for an extended suspension here. I think so, yeah.

Working in his favor, he did issue an apology on social media later in Instagram story, which as these things goes. sounded sincere, was a good apology. I want to take a moment to sincerely apologize for my recent reaction on the field. I let my frustration get the best of me, and I understand how that may have affected not just the game, but the energy and respect we all work so hard to maintain. Coming off a long rehab and being away from the game for most of the season has been physically and mentally challenging.

Adding to that, the recent passing of my mother has been incredibly hard, and I've been doing my best to hold it together. I guess this is a commonality with Cite, perhaps earlier this. this season, also suffering a bit of a breakdown related to the prior death of his mother. That's not an excuse, Robles continued, but some context I feel you deserve to understand where I'm coming from. Then he noted getting hit five times in 15 at bats added to that pressure. Yeah.

I guess I have to mention here that they were played appearances, not at bats, because he got hit by the pitch, but not doing the pedantic thing on leave apology on Instagram. or I guess I am, but that's not the point. And I reacted in a way I'm not proud of. This game means the world to me, and so do the people who play it. I respect every one of you, my teammates, the opposing players, and everyone in this league. I'm committed to being better, not just as a player, but as a teammate and competitor, I appreciate your understanding.

I'm grateful to be back on the field doing what I love. Thank you. I'm sure that this was run through various PR people or whatever, and that's fine. That's what they're there for, but this checked all the boxes. And that's the mitigating factor here, not just, what may be going on in his personal life that's weighing on him, but also that he has been hit by a bunch of pitches. So he'd been hit by a pitch three times in five rehab games for Tacoma,

including twice in that game, I believe, once by Estes. And then there's also history with the A's and Robles and with Estes specifically. So last year, last September, he was plunked twice by the A's, including once by Estes, and then the A's have hit him with a pitch four times since the start of last season. And I think Estes has three times. So there's history with this pitcher specifically

and with that team. And he'd been hit a bunch in a short span of time. And he's trying to work his way back from an injury, and this can cause an injury. So all that is to say I certainly understand why he was upset. But nonetheless, there's, almost nothing that excuses throwing a bat at someone on the field. That just doesn't fly. Yeah, I have sympathy for the buildup of feeling that gets him where he ultimately ended up.

I can imagine frustration. And when that is coupled with sort of the background emotional state of the loss of a family member, it can be a pretty volatile mix for someone to deal with emotionally. And you can't. You can't. You just can't. And, like, it wasn't a, you know, toss it to the side or throw it down in front of him. Like, he wound up and chucked to that thing. Yeah. And then didn't exactly charge the mound, but he ran out there. He had to be intercepted, held back a bit. Yeah.

And so I think that we can understand the context, as he noted, for how he got there. because my sense is that, like, people like Victor Robles, and he seems to be well-liked by his teammates, but you can't chuck a bat at someone. So, you know, it would be appropriate for someone to say to Joey Estes, hey, knock it off. Like, I think that would also be appropriate, but, yeah. Robles himself could express that sentiment directly to Joey Estes in a forceful way. but not forceful physically. Right. And so, you know, I don't know that there's anything particularly complicated about the situation.

Like I said, you have sympathy for how a guy gets there mentally and emotionally. And then you have to say all of that understood, there still have to be repercussions for chucking a bat at someone. Like, it's just the kind of thing where you're going to have to, it's going to draw a suspension every time. Like, it doesn't matter who it is or what the surrounding context is. You just have to be able to regulate better than that. It's got to be frustrating as a hitter because pitchers can throw things at you with relative impunity. Yeah. And that makes sense on some level because it's usually an accident.

Right. And these things are going to happen. But that doesn't make it any less painful or dangerous. Right. And that's okay. And there's a penalty, which is that you get to go to first base. Yeah. That doesn't always ease the literal sting.

And we've talked about whether there should be a harsher penalty for hit by pitches or hit by pitches in certain regions to try to discourage that. But when you're getting plunked that often, it probably, I mean, it's thinking back to the West Wing, you know, the proportional response. What is the virtue of a proportional response? It seems like maybe throwing a bat, I mean, that's dangerous if you get impaled by it. but it's probably less dangerous on the hole because you can see it coming and you have more time to react. Right. You have the opportunity to get out of the way pretty reliably. Yeah. Right. Whereas it's a firing squad here and he's in the line of fire and that's just part of the job. And I can understand how you might start to question is this entirely unintentional if this team seems to be hitting me this disproportionate number of times or this specific pitcher. And I think Estes, has like 14 hit by pitches since the start of last season, so it's not as if he has hit only Victor Robles.

Right. This is maybe just an Estes problem generally, but still you see that same guy out there, and he's leaving all those bruises. 15, actually, since the start of last season, and the majors and minors. But yeah, it's got to be annoying, and at some point you want to fire back,

but you just can't fire back that way. Well, and I'm sympathetic to the, you run into this problem often you see it more at like the lower levels than you do at triple A but like I was having a conversation with a scout the other day and you know it's so hot down here right and you get you get these guys who sometimes the first sort of leg of their rehab back to the majors is on the complex and it's a billion freaking degrees and you know you don't necessarily have guys who are great at throwing strikes anyway. And so you have this, like, sort of incentive isn't the right way to put a mismatch of goals, right? Where it's like, guys who are

rehabbing, sure, they want the tune up. They needed at game speed. They need to get back into the rhythm of playing. But part of what they're also very mindful of is preserving the health that has been so hard won, right? And then you have guys who are maybe there primarily for developmental reasons. you know, Estes has had time in the majors. He had a, you know, he threw like 130 innings in the big leagues last year. So it's not like he's like some, you know, low A, you know, 19 year old or something like that. But clearly he is not the kind of pitcher he and the athletics hope him to be eventually because, you know, well, it was only seven innings, but he has like a 15 ERA this year. And last year, over his 127 endings, he had a five ERA, and his FIP wasn't all that much better.

So there's clearly still developmental work to be done there. And I think that that is necessarily going to sometimes involve, you know, rashes of poor command or what have you. And so it's a tricky dynamic to navigate. I don't know how you get around those guys having a good game environment to rehab. And if they don't do it at AAA, like that's the closest both remote. competition and game speed perspective, but you do end up in this uncomfortable spot where it's like, hey, I, leave me alone. I'm trying to get back up there. You know, my team needs me. And I can imagine being Robless and feeling very frustrated because it's like you were, you know,

you go out, you miss so much time. It happens on a spectacular play. But then you are unable to play for months and months. Your team's in the middle of a playoff race. You want to get up there you're trying to help out you you know obviously you're dealing with um a really heavy loss in your personal life so again i i get it and i get how it's like a an odd thing to have to figure out how to navigate but the answer can't be and then i threw a bad at a guy even if he saw it coming which he very often does so that's good like i don't want to overstate you know i don't want to overstate the danger that joe s this was in because i'm sure he saw that thing coming but like my goodness he really wound up and chucked it there he sure did now transitioning to

to tommy fam which i feel like almost requires a content warning when we talk about tommy fam because it stresses me out just to think about being him because he just seems to be perpetually enraged about something and yeah he's often aggrieved yeah taking things personally and we've talked about in the past i think the fact that he seems to be fairly popular with teammates or in clubhouses because the intensity that he has, I guess if channeled in a productive

direction, can potentially inspire a team. Then again, he has played for so many teams over the past few years that suggests that... It's like not that popular. Yeah. And maybe just in small doses it's good to get that kind of guy,

but then it wears on you. It's hard to say whether it's the personality or the play, because it's not I was just about to say, like, you know, Tommy Pham has a 95 WRC plus. He had a 91 last year. Like, in 2023, in 129 games, he had, like, his best season in a while with a 109. This isn't a guy who's, like, lighting up the scoreboard every night and also can be kind of mercurial or temperamental or however you want to put it.

So, you know, him being, like, barely replacement level probably has as much to do with his short 10 years at some lease bosses, anything else. Yeah, one would think. But it's not as if many teams seem to be signing up for a second tour of duty with Tommy Fam. It's just a bunch of, it's like, you know, he's been with the pirates all this season. He was with three teams last year. He was with two teams in 2023.

He was with two teams in 2022. He's just quickly racking up a Rich Hill, Octavio Dottel late career, just sort of tally here, I guess. or I don't know whether that has to do with the player or the personality or Edwin Jackson. He's getting up there. If he continues to be a journeyman at this pace, then we'll see. But in this incident, you just kind of have to chalk it up to fam being fam because it seems like a complete nothing burger.

So he drew a walk, a four-pitch walk. He flipped his bat, which, okay. And then he went to first base or he started to go to first base, but then he stopped and he turned around. And he started to yell at the Blue Jays catcher, Tyler Heinemann. And Heinemann was flummoxed and was yelling back, I'm not talking to you, because Heineman had objected to the umpire that one of the pitches seemed like it was not a strike. And for some reason, Tommy Pham took umbrage at this.

I think it was the ball three call that was kind of a borderline. And so this is a very standard thing that catchers do. or that hitters do or, you know, players do. They say, oh, where was that one? You know, just kind of maybe just subtly influence a future call or just get a sense of how the Ump's zone is playing that day. Sure. You know, you're supposed to stand up for your pitcher.

If you're a catcher, when we have ABS, then maybe you just challenge that thing. But now you just bring it up, perhaps politely. Who knows? But for whatever reason, Tommy Pham took objection to this. And then Heidman came out and was just completely confused, basically. He was just, well, what did I do? Why is he mad at me? And just really didn't know what he had done to provoke famine.

And FAMM has, of course, a long history of being involved in this sort of blowup. Maybe most amusingly the fantasy football league dust up and slap involving Jock Peterson. Do you think the creators of that NBC show love Tommy fan? Do you think that he's their favorite player because then people made the slap memes after that happened? You remember that show, The Slap? I think it was too late to really salvage the Slaps fortunes, but maybe if it had happened earlier. So Heidman says, he didn't say a word to me. I didn't say a word to him.

He just looked like he wanted to have a fight. He bat flipped and he looked straight at me. I just put my arms up and he walked toward me. don't really know it was weird man it was weird it was unprovoked and super weird you're probably just as confused as i am yeah and then fam takes to twitter and replies to never a good idea yeah mlb.com beatwriter for the blue jays kegan matheson was reporting heinemann's quotes and fam responded to the writer and said bitching about a ball not being called a strike to the umpire when it's clearly below the zone in a way

is disrespectful not only to the umpire, but the hitter as well. So like I said, when I flip the bat, fuck him. Like, that's, maybe that's a good window into the mentality of Tommy fam because like... Big mad.

Yeah, in what way is that disrespectful to the hitter? Like, suggesting that you didn't deserve that walk or like that, like you're you're deceiving or you're lying about the fact that that was a ball. It's like it's not the hitter who called it that. I don't understand why you would take offense to that, but it just seems like Tommy Fan takes offense to things that most people wouldn't. And we've talked about his background before.

He had a hard upbringing. Like I'm willing to make some allowances. But this is just a repeated pattern of him, just being angry about everything. And then someone else tweeted at him And then he responded to that person Who had an Asin Barger profile picture To say your profile pick is of someone who takes steroids loser Which he subsequently deleted that tweet

I think Barger was suspended for PDs several years ago So maybe that's what that was alluding to But then I think It would be hilarious if it wasn't what that was alluding to by the way If he was just like he was just like you know what I'm going to love one of the worst possible accusations I can, sight unseen. Well, he kind of did, I think, because I think he then suggested, he tweeted, like, maybe if I had a TUE, a therapeutic use exemption, so he's alleging that Archer has a TUE.

And, like, yeah, so just airing all this business, which I don't know if he knows or how he wouldn't know, but just putting it out there for, It's not even like Barger was involved in this altercation as far as I know. He's just catching strays out here because he's on the same team as Tyler Haydman. Yeah, it's just plus Barger was suspended for stimulant use, not steroids, I think. It seems so exhausting to be Tommy Fitt to be just perpetually aggrieved like this. So I guess I get how he could be a guy who if he's on your team, you like him, and if he's your opponent, you hate him. kind of like a A.J. Prasinski sort of thing, but it's not even like he's a standard red ass.

He's just, I don't know, he's just kind of like a loose cannon. And I feel like if I were a teammate, I would find that tiring, too, because then you get embroiled in this whole thing. And maybe it starts something between the two teams. And I don't know, he's one of a kind, I guess. And, I mean, it's entertaining in a way, but it's also just. I don't know. It makes me tired to just think about feeling like that all the time. I can imagine that if you are trying to, like, exist in sort of an amped up state, right, to, like, you know, constant, have sort of like constant bulletin board material of some kind, right? Like, it's going to get you going and help you play better.

we imagine that being often like a focusing kind of thing right like i i have fuel to to yeah motivate me to play a particular way but i think it can get it can kind of get away from guys sometimes right where they are sort of constantly at 11 i think it it can sort of flatten everything right when everything is a potential offense, you lose perspective on the ones that you do have to get kind of worked up over versus the ones that, like, objectively just don't really matter. Like, it would be, I think the part of it that kind of maybe drove this home for me is, like, he did draw a walk, though.

You know, it wasn't like he, I could imagine there being ire on a batter's part if a catcher gripes about an obvious ball and then the next pitch you strike out looking on what you perceive to be ball for and what you worry the catcher has sort of bamboozled the umpire into believing but that didn't happen he drew the walk though right so it's like the justice was was sort of met it out the way that it needed to be in this particular instance so yeah it just seems like it's like hey i don't know man like this might not be the best and it sort of puts your team in this awkward position because to your point like if you are always operating at that register like you don't know if things that ought to be taken

in stride will be appropriately taken in stride or if you're going to have to like walk out there from the freaking bullpens you know like oh god I got to go be a bullpen fighter now um I didn't I hadn't seen the PED um the PED piece of it like I'm sure Addison Berger's like what the fuck is going on I'm just sitting here man um you know Thai France is like I'm to hold people back and yeah yeah I 37 it doesn't seem like he's mellowing with age it's just it's got to be to be constantly redlining like that has to be a distraction at some point I don't think that the mellowing with age happens in your 30s that's not consistent with my experience back pain happens in your 30s.

you're still, you're more tired, but that doesn't mean you're less angry. You're just exhausted by it, except maybe you're not if you're Tommy fam. But he's a professional athlete and I sit all day. So, you know, he's in higher shape than I am. So I can understand us having different experiences. I respect petty people who are just fueled by being haters. Sure. That's kind of an archetype I can get behind or be entertained by.

And look, sometimes haters can be really useful, you know. Sometimes the rest of us need. a nap and the haters there to like keep posting as it were yeah sure yeah yeah but in this case it's just confusing really i'm just puzzled most of all so kettle martay this was also somewhat surprising or puzzling so there were multiple reports one by nick picoro our perennial diamond back season preview guest who's been on that beat forever i believe also bob nightingale chimed in to confirm or second some of what nick had reported and this was sort of of, well, not unsourced, but just not attributed, you know, no direct quotes.

It was kind of just responding to general alleged clubhouse discord, which is often how these things get reported if they get reported because you're not going to get a teammate going on record and putting their name on something typically when talking about a star player inside the same clubhouse. So the fact that there might not be direct quotes or that it might be anonymous sources doesn't necessarily mean that it's baseless. That might just be the way that a reporter can report something in a way that is acceptable to the sources without burning said sources. But it was, you know, a lack of specifics, I suppose, but the general gist was that some people on the diamond backs

are in that clubhouse have been upset by a perceived lack of effort or investment by Cattel Marté, who has been a star-level player for the dive-backs for years now on a bargain contract for that team. And it seems like the perception, among some, at least, is that he's taken too much time off. And he's had injuries, obviously. And so sometimes you end up in a situation where a player who has legitimate injuries and is trying to return from them, someone might say, oh, they're not coming back fast enough, they're not rehabbing hard enough. and I'm always somewhat skeptical of that because you never know exactly

what someone's dealing with. This also pertained specifically to at the end of last season as the Diamondbacks were making their playoff push. Marte evidently asked for a day off when every game and win really mattered. And then the proximate cause of the report was what happened during the All-Star break,

which was extended for Marte because he seemingly just took a vacation, I guess, or he took a little longer break than he was necessarily supposed to have. And Tori Lavello, Diamondbacks manager, didn't know that he wasn't coming back immediately until the day of or very close to it. And then he was made aware that he wasn't going to be available. This coincided with Catelle Marte's house being burgled, which is something that happens to some star athletes because people know that, okay, everyone's away. and seemingly on the rise as a phenomena too. Yes, right.

And he was burgled to the tune of 400,000 bucks, I think, in valuables. Initially, I think people thought that maybe he had taken a longer time because he was dealing with that. But it seems like that was not necessarily connected and that he was just taking some time abroad and perhaps not hurrying back the way that players are expected to. subsequently, Geraldo Perdomo came out and said basically, like, leave him alone, and he plays hard and he's good and we have his back, basically. I guess he didn't necessarily deny all of the specifics and say that there was nothing to it, but he basically said, move on and, you know, we like him and he's important to the team or whatever and tried to diffuse the situation and perhaps he did. So this was not something that I was aware of had been floating around Catel Marte if it had. Obviously, I'm not following the Diamondbacks particularly closely. And so I don't know whether it was in the air.

But basically, my impression of Catel Marte was, man, this guy's good. And he's been the most valuable Diamondback for years on an extremely team-friendly contract. And they sure are happy to have him for years to come, probably, you would think. And tons of surplus value there, an exciting player. the rest. So this took me by surprise. And I don't know how much there is to it, really. But you know, sometimes these things sort of seep out of a clubhouse. And yeah, someone must have said something because I tend to believe, I mean, most reporters, solid reporters, they're not out to just have a hit piece. No. You know, there have been hot take calmness out there who do

thrive on that sort of thing. But Nick isn't one of those guys. No. And if, if you're on the beat for years. And, you know, it's reputational. I mean, it's, it's tough. You're putting your neck on the line, right? Because you have to be in that clubhouse if you're someone like that who's on the beat. And so you have to face up to these guys. And it could cost you potentially and people talking to you if this story was fabricated or something or you got bad information. So, you know, you're not going to come out with that just to go viral and torch your reputation with that team in the process. And most writers, I think they want to get the story. right. So I don't know. Maybe it's just one of these little things that happens on a team in a long season when it's hot and it's a disappointing season. And, you know, a lot of this clubhouse discord bruise when your team has been a bit of a letdown and you were expected to be a playoff team and then lots of things go wrong and you have injuries. And then some of this stuff simmers and bubbles and boils over. And there may or may not be something to it long. long term, but it'll probably resurface over the off season if people are attributing a lot

of value to it or ascribing value to it. And oh, is Cattel Martea a trade candidate? And are they trying to ship him out or something? I mean, it's not like you would want to just sully someone's reputation before you trade him, probably. I guess it might make it more palatable to fans if you manage to make this guy sound like someone you wouldn't want around. But you don't want to do that for your potential trade partners, obviously.

prior to the trade. Sometimes this stuff surfaces post-trade or post-departure, and then suddenly you're salting the earth and all these stories are coming out and maybe it's the front office bad-mouthing. Boston is famous for this, rightly or wrongly. So that happens, but I wouldn't imagine that that's what's happening here. So, you know, maybe it's blown out of proportion. Who knows, but I assume there was something there. Yeah, I think that a couple of things can be true simultaneously. I think that you can have a clubhouse where sort of the ambient level of frustration is high because of, as you noted, a disappointing season, not disappointing because of anything that C Tal Marte has done when he's been on the field, right? He has a 160 WRC

plus. He's a four and a half win player, but it has been disappointing. And so the sort of frustrations in the air behavior that if you're 10 games up in the division, might get dealt with internally, leaks its way out to a reporter, especially one who notices things, right? It might be, like, looking around going, like, hey, the vibe in here is weird. You know, the Diamondbacks extended, this is the thing they do every couple of years, right? They extend Catel Marte, and they did so again earlier this spring. And I imagine that the calculus of, are we frustrated versus, is he valuable,

is like a really easy one for them to do? and even if there's behavior that maybe they aren't super thrilled with, that they would work quite hard to address that with him rather than trade him. Like, he's been maybe the best second basement in the National League for the last couple of years. So, like, I don't think that they're in any rush to move on from him. And I can imagine how if you think that you are kind of granting time to someone to deal with something like a burglary, and then you find out that they're actually just on a trip, you might be like, but hey, though, we were making what we thought were accommodations based on one circumstance

and actually what was going on with something different. I think it's notable because he is, you know, such a long tenured player. He's such a good player. You know, he is important to this club being in a better position than they are this year next season. And so, like, understanding how all of that stuff fits together, I think is important. And the fact that, like, Prudomo went on the record after the fact to say, no, we love Cattel. And, you know, I know the Tori tried to downplay it once he was asked about it. Suggest to me that, like, there clearly seems like there's something going on here.

And also, they'll figure it out. Yeah. He's just such a good player. And I don't think the accusation is, like, Ctele Marche's a bad guy or anything like that. I think the sense is, like, he can be kind of, there's this balance between, like, taking care of oneself and maybe. be giving it your all when you ought to and perhaps they they perceive that he hasn't struck that balance quite right you know certainly last year when they were like really in it from a from a playoff perspective and then weren't able to capitalize like so late i can imagine that

rankling um to say that that is because kattelmarte asked for a day off is probably not accurate right when you miss that close like a bunch of little things went wrong like yeah Oh, Henry Oswar is not hitting for half the year and Corwin Carroll being bad and guys getting hurt, right? Like, it's not, you know, to lay that at the feet of one player is probably not accurate in terms of doling out responsibility. But it would also probably be inaccurate to say that he doesn't bear any responsibility. So all of that to say, like, I don't know, people getting along can be hard. Yeah, especially when you have, right, like when you have this background frustration with the way that your year went. And I don't think that that means that like Nick's reporting was bad or anything like that.

And I also think that that is that all of this is probably resolvable or at least like bearable, you know, and certainly not rising to the level of meriting a trade. And, you know, I think Nick would probably agree with that. So I love how you're like, it's hot. And you know what? Half the time you can just attribute the mood down here to the fact that Ben, I mean, and now we're in the time of year. This has no bearing whatsoever on the Catal Marte's story, but I simply must share this. We're in the time of year where two things are happening simultaneously.

The first is we're starting to get the shift in the light. You know how the light looks different in the fall, right? Because like the sun's at a different angle. And so you're starting to get the fall light. It's not there. Oh, breaking. Actually, actually, hold on. I'm going to share the rest of my light thought.

But first I'm going to read from the press release I just got, which is that Victor Robles disciplines, Seattle Mariners outfielder, Victor Robles, who's currently on a Major League rehab assignment with the AAA Tacoma Rainiers at the Pacific Coast League has received a 10-game suspension and an undisclosed fine for his conduct during the top of the third inning in Sunday afternoon's game at Las Vegas, Major League Baseball I know us today. That seems fine. That seems fine. That doesn't seem overly punitive. That doesn't seem too willy-nilly. That's fine. The suspension of Robles was scheduled to be effective on the first day Robles has returned to the major league after roster. However, Robles is elected to file an appeal, thus the discipline will be held in abeyance until that process is complete. And I've endorsed steeper suspensions for pitchers who have possibly had hunted too, so I'd be in favor of that also. I have an update as well, a post on Blue Sky by Keegan Matheson, the Blue Jays reporter, whom FAM had addressed. stopped by the Pirates Clubhouse this afternoon to speak to Tommy Pham. He didn't want to elaborate on his post after last night's game against the Blue Jays,

but made it clear he stands by them and wanted this to be passed along. Quote, let them know I speak in facts, end quote. All right. Oh, boy. Okay. See, the thing that happens is, like, for so many pro athletes, if they were just regular guys, We wouldn't know about this. And maybe you'd find him annoying in your office fantasy football league.

But like part of this is also just like you put a microphone in front of some people and they're going to be like, I got this microphone. Yeah. And not to further delay the resolution of your light thought, but I'll just acknowledge that we're talking about three non-white players here. Totally. Pham and Robles and Marte. And obviously, there are historically stereotypes and players who get tarred with this brush and it's probably unfair and it can be racist. And I guess the Marte complaint is kind of a situation that might fall into that bucket at times or has in the past. I'm not saying that that's the case with Marte or with this reporting.

But there are cases in the past like going back to Ricky Henderson's tenure in New York where he was accused of not rehabbing hard. enough or just wanting to take it easy and, you know, effort level being criticized and players being accused of lolly cagging and that can play into those stereotypes or arise from them. But in this case, we do have a player literally throwing a bat at someone. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, that's pretty cut and dry.

And then also Tommy Fam has a very long history of this sort of thing. So in those cases, well, I think they are what they are more or less. Marte, it's a little squishier, but, you know, just wanted to put that out there because there is that history and that baggage. Yeah, and, like, I think that, like, Kattel is undisputably a great player, and he does have an injury history, and he can be nerve, it can be kind of nervy to watch him sometimes because you're like, oh, God, did he blow the hammy again? And so I can, I can completely understand erring on the side of caution.

when it comes to load management or injury prevention or what have you. And obviously, we don't know the ins and outs of, you know, how he was doing on any particular day that he might have asked off. And I don't know if the folks who spoke to Nick necessarily do either. And I can also, I can also understand, like, being like, oh, we're one game out, though, man. Like, can't you? You know, and that's an understandable instinct, even if, like, you know, if he had, tweaked as hammy and been unavailable for the last two weeks of the season like that would have

been worse it's just so hard to know what the like non-injury counterfactual is um but yeah it's good to be mindful of that and that's why i think like you want to have people who are thoughtful and careful about this stuff reporting these things out because you don't want to imbue your understanding of a situation like that with bias and i think that like you know sometimes you wind up and chuck a bat at a guy and that's just really straightforward um so and 10 games seems that seems like an appropriate let that seems properly calibrated to me you know and like we don't have to we don't have to make too much of these things you know it's like don't do that and i bet he won't again and then it'll be fine you know like sometimes people make mistakes he offered a sincere

apology he'll suffer some sort of consequence for it and then he and the team can move on like these don't have to be things that like dog a person's reputation forever either, you know, and I think it's good to keep that in mind, right? Like, joyous is probably one getting hit by that bat. So, like, again, this is what I was saying about, like, I don't want to overreact to it. But I think it's good to have a reaction because this is, you know, potentially dangerous behavior that it's worthwhile to curtail. Yeah. Speaking of hustle or the lack thereof, I've noticed something happening with the brewers,

which is that, you know, related to the conversation we had recently about fundamentals in baseball and whether they are, in fact, on the decline and how much that matters, and the Yankees were the avatar of this, just the sloppy play. And the brewers are emerging as the corrective to that, as the antidote to that. And there's some truth to it, I guess, because if you're going to talk about fundamentally sound teams or teams that do the little things, right? And as we mentioned in our previous conversation, it's hard to really agree on what those terms mean exactly. But the Brewers seem to fit the definition. They play good defense.

They're the best base running team. And they tend to do things right seemingly from a scouting player development perspective, but also actually on the field. And Ken Rosenthal wrote a column about this for the athletic and wrote, there's a lesson here if anyone in baseball cares to heat it. The lesson is in every ball the brewers put in play, and every runner they advance, every cutoff man they hit, and every extra base they take. The brewers are not perfect. He cites a couple examples of their imperfections, but they at least try to play the game properly at a time when most teams place too little emphasis on fundamentals and too much on the next big analytical thing. So the brewers are kind of... Wait, I'm sorry.

That is such a funny thing to say about literally the Milwaukee Brewers or a hyper-analytical organization. It's full of X-ray as executives. Yeah, like. That's, yeah, that's, that's always the thing because there aren't really any teams that are not into analytics. Right. And so, anytime anyone tries to make a team, just the face of old school, it just never really fits because they're all into this stuff to varying degrees and the brewers are extremely into this stuff. So, yeah, I mean, I know what Ken means. And his next sentence starts with, this is not to bash analytics.

So anyway, he goes on to provide that caveat. But it does seem like the Brewers are emerging as kind of like, ah, this is the model of how to play the game the right way. Right. And it helps when you just reeled off 14 wins in a row or 15 out of 16. And there's some truth to that. So, I mean, we've talked about how the Brewers have done, what they've done. And I do think that, sure, there's a little bit of good fortune there and a good record in one-run games.

And they're hitting clutchly. And pitching clutchly again, though, as I've talked about before and staff blasted, they had a track record of doing that. They're doing it yet again. So if any team has figured out clutch, has cracked the clutch code, maybe it's the Brewers. I'm not sure I believe that. But that leads to things like winning 14 in a row instead of dropping a couple during that span, which they easily could have, if not for incredible comebacks. So they are really good. They do do all these things that lead to them being underrated and to people saying, who are they?

these guys because a lot of these guys, you know, you have your Bryce Terrain and you have your Sal Freelick, like first rounders who've made good and have gotten better. But then you also have Andrew Vaughn and Quinn Priester and you have people you've picked up, you know, Isaac Collins's minor league rule five draftee from the Rockies a few years ago, as these guys who kind of come out of nowhere. So they now have, if you look at RA9-based war at Fangrass, so just runs a runs a loud base, which kind of gives the pitchers a little more credit for the run of prevention. They now have 20 players who have one war or more, according to Fangraphs. And that's a lot.

I just, I ran the numbers for Hang Up and Listen on Monday when they were at 19, and they had two more such players than any other team. The median was 12. The Nationals had four, which was even fewer than the Rockies at five. So, yeah, they're kind of lap in the league and just depth and competent players and not super flashy and not super famous in most cases, but just good. And thus, you don't have to devote a lot of playing time to bad players, which can be quite costly. And I continue to be struck by the commonalities between the Brewers and the Blue Jays. I think of the Blue Jays as like the AL Brewers in some respects, even though they have maybe some more famous players and had higher expectations, perhaps. But they are similar in that they were the team with the next most one-plus war players.

They had 17 as of Monday. And they're also a good defensive team. You know, just like the top tier players on the roster can't compare to most other teams. Like most other teams have a better best player than the Brewers and the Blue Jays war-wise. But they just run really deep anyway. Sort of a sidetrack, but I just keep being struck by the fact that aside from the fact that the Blue Jays have a top five payroll. And the Brewers are, I think, the only team in playoff position now that's in the bottom half in payroll. So that's a notable difference.

But beyond that and the small market NIST, I think there are some similarities among the rosters. But this idea that the Brewers are kind of like taking advantage of the rest of the league's lack of fundamentals or hustle or that they're sort of showing what is possible. And there is some objective grounding and basis to this Sam in his pebble hunting substack just wrote. about this, that the brewers have had much better results than expected on ground balls to infielders, which on the whole, it's bad to hit a ground ball to an infielder. That's usually going to result in and out. And it's not like it's a good thing for the brewers, but it's been a less bad thing than it has for every other team, and that that seemingly accounts for the difference between the brewers being just a merely good team and the brewers being maybe the best team in

baseball. And he attributes this, you know, partly to luck, but also partly to just being fast and also to hustle. And he did have a single sentence in his piece that was just about like maybe, maybe this is, you know, in increasingly no hustle league, there might be room for a team to stand out simply by running hard most of the time. So you have to have the personnel, you have to have the wheels. But then also perhaps if you have the hustle, then that helps. I'm kind of conflicted because I do think that on the whole, if it's probably an almost automatic out, then maybe it's good in the long run. Like, tying back to our discussion about lack of hustle, this was something Robinson Canoe during his Yankees days and maybe his Mariners days, too, people would complain about how he didn't know as hustle. There was a guy who could actually hit on the team.

I don't think the people were like, oh, he's loaf and they're like, look at what that guy can do. That's so cool. We should get a couple more robbies. Yeah, but he was durable for many years and then there were a couple times where he really did bust it out of the box and he hurt himself and it was kind of like a, see, this is why maybe it's better not to run all out at all times. Anyway, I think that's an interesting idea. I mean, whenever a team like surprises people and becomes kind of the new model of how to build a baseball team, then you do have people coming out of the woodwork to say, aha, this is the solution. It's like a mid-2010s sort of thing. It's like, oh, the analytics don't support.

And yet they play so hard and they're so scrappy and they do all the things that the numbers say you're not supposed to do. And I love those teams, but was also sort of frustrated at times by the narrative surrounding those teams as entertaining as they were. So we always seem to have to seize on these teams when it comes to kind of the culture wars of baseball. And it's like, oh, they're the epitome of the brand of baseball that I like. And thus they're doing it right and other people are doing it less right. And they do have the best record in baseball. So they're certainly doing a lot of things right. But I wonder how much of it is the hustle or whether other teams should try to play like the Brewers or whether it's more about being built like the Brewers, which is very difficult to do.

Because it's just about evaluating players better than other teams who are also pretty good at evaluating players. And then having a good message and player development philosophy and installing that in your players and getting them to make changes. And seemingly that's working. really well for Milwaukee now. And we mentioned that they have ascended into the ranks of, oh, this is just the best run baseball team right now. And is that recency bias maybe a bit, but also it's not a new thing that the brewers are good and unexpectedly in contention.

Yeah, I think that, you know, it's a credit to them maximizing the guys that they have. I do think there's a little something to the notion of like zinging where other teams Zag, if what it's doing is like informing your player acquisition strategy, right, if you see there being value in a particular profile of guy and you think that that guy is, I'm not like breaking new ground here or anything, but like you think that guy is more freely available than he ought to be because other teams aren't prioritizing that skill set. Like, okay, fine. But that, that's like born of careful evaluation and knowing that you can maximize that guy from a player dev perspective and like i i think that we can kind of overstate the case a little bit and you know

it's not surprising to me that a team that say is like we've we have noted for a long time we're hardly alone in doing this the obvious pitching devacumen that they have and i don't know if this andrew vaughn situation is going to continue forever but like that seems to be going well so like it's probably a combination of good development and canny analysis and some guys playing maybe a over their heads, but it's working very well. And, yeah, I just like, I don't know, I'm not trying to knock Ken or anything, but it's like to be like, is this old school team? I'm like, have you, that's not how the brewers understand themselves, right?

That's just not the way that I think that club would characterize its own, its own approach. Yeah. We don't need to brand every baseball team as, like, the avatars of the representatives of some philosophical approach to the sport that supports your predetermined preferences for how the baseball teams play. I guess that's what I'm objecting to. The Brewers are great and fun and really interesting to talk about, but I just wonder whether it's graduating to that next level of this is the Brewers Moneyball.

They run hard, you know, they do, but they have guys who are good runners. I think it's true that people will sometimes suggest, okay, maybe a team could pivot to just having a bunch of soft tossers with great command because everyone is so hyper-fixated on how hard you throw. And maybe there's more to pitching, and maybe also those guys break more easily. And you could have a staff of durable, soft tossers with pinpoint command, and you could flourish. And maybe there's something to the idea that there are certain pitchers who are slipping through the cracks because they don't quite fit the mold of what teams are looking for. Maybe there's something to that with the Brewers, too, in that they don't hit the ball super hard and they don't pull a lot of balls in the,

air, which is kind of just the default approach to offense and hitting for power now, what they do is they don't chase and they make good swing decisions and they take walks and they get on base and those things are valuable too. So maybe there's a little bit of that where everyone is just trying to gravitate toward a particular potent approach to offense. And maybe there are a bunch of guys like the ones that the brewers have who can be good and valuable and maybe not MVP candidates, but just solid contributors who are kind of flying under the radar because they don't fit that philosophy. There's something to that probably. Sure.

I mean, here's the thing. I am, on the one hand, uninterested in having, like, resurgence of old school discourse. And we're going to have so much of it because they're a good team. They're, you know, positioned for a deep playoff run. I am happy to, like, see really good defense and to praise really good defense. because really good defense is fun, you know? It's like fun to watch. And as Yankees fans will tell you justifiably right now,

sloppy defense makes you want to eat your own hair. And, you know, that's not where your hair is supposed to go. It's not supposed to go in your mouth. Can I finish my light thought so that you don't get emails about how I haven't done? Okay, so like, you know how you start to get the fall light, right? And like, it's a nice, it's nice. It's pretty. It's also like how your body sinks up.

up to the season a little bit, you're like, okay, we're starting to transition into the fall. I'm about to be inundated with pumpkin flavored and shaped things. But here's the thing. You start to have this subtle shift in the light. And then you step outside and it's 110 degrees. And you're like, you feel like you're losing your mind. You know, it's very just, it's totally disorienting. And then you go to the store, they have the beginning of Halloween candy and you're like what's this business and we're not quite there yet that tends to be like a Labor Day phenomenon but like we're we're getting close and then and then you drive because you got to get your car wash and you go by what used to be a Walgreens and it's got

coming soon Spirit Halloween and you're like it's time for this now with the with 110 degrees you know and you're like the light surely that's not enough to be I'm supposed to get excited about the haunted mansion? No, no, can't be what? No. So it does make you feel unbalanced and and sort of internally disoriented. And so I think that when people come to Arizona and they're like, what's with the vibe here sometimes? I'm like, it's just very hot. I mean, that's not all of it. There's other stuff. But like that is contributing, I think, a disproportionate amount. The other day it was, I mean, my mom came and it was like 117 degrees. Ben. And I was just like, Arizona, you're not, it was like Arizona was being like a bad boyfriend, not putting its best foot forward for me. Now, she did come here in August. So she, she understood. She was like, okay, I get what I'm signing up for. But there's like knowing it intellectually and then they're stepping off the plane at Sky Harbor and it going, you know, like takes your breath away. So anyway, that's. I would not survive. So kudos to you. You might do better than you expect because, and I'm going to sound like I'm giving you.

the business and I'm not. You are so at home as a person. You are such an at home person that you might do fine actually. Yeah, I'd be even more of a homebody probably, although might have to learn to drive. So that might be a problem. Oh, you would, you would unfortunately very definitely have to learn to drive because we have done. Not very walkable down there. No. And just like very poor job from a public transit perspective. Again, it's not just the heat, but that is a big contributing factor, and it tends to exacerbate other problems. A few other things. This Saturday, something happened that I think was unprecedented, and it seemed underreported

to me, although some of our listeners reported it to us immediately. But there was a two-pitch inning in a major league game, and I mean a full, complete two-pitch inning, which is something that is made possible or made easier by the zombie runner, but I believe had not happened to this point. So this was in the Orioles Astros game, and it was in the 11th inning, I believe, and Enel de Los Santos came in with the Orioles batting, pitching for the Astros.

And, of course, there was the zombie runner on second. It was Luis Vasquez running for Adley Ruchman. And then Ryan Mountcastle flew out on his first pitch. I never knew whether to say flew out or fly down. Flew out. What do I say fly? I think I say he flyed out. Okay, I'm going to think about it and be distracted the rest of the time you're telling me the story. So that was one pitch, one out. And then next pitch, Dylan Beaver's, Tee, he lined out to second and Vasquez was doubled off of third where he had advanced on that flyout. So two pitches, two outs. And I don't think that this had happened before it. It had happened in a minor league game. But I don't think it. it happened in a big league game. And, of course, theoretically, you could have a one pitch inning.

You could even have a zero pitch inning. I mean, now we have pitch clock violations. We have intentional walks without actually throwing pitches. You could have someone go on base and then pick off everyone and that's the whole inning and you never actually threw a pitch. But that's fairly far-fetched. But two pitches, this doesn't delight me necessarily. It's an artifact of the zombie runner, which I loathe.

and this, I guess, just reinforces how unnatural it is, but it does seem notable, and it just didn't seem to be all that widely reported. So this was, I think, one reason why we had objected to the SAM concept of the minimum inning, not just because it gets stuck in your head, but also because technically at least it's not a minimum inning, no longer at least. But we've lowered the bar for what has happened in a big league game. So two-pitch inning, Aniel de Los Santos, as far as I know, the first big leaguer to do it. And really, he had help, I guess, from the Orioles because that seems like, I don't know, you can't blame beavers for swinging at that pitch because he didn't know that he would line it directly. Right, yeah. Sometimes it's like, take a pitch so that they don't have a three-pitch inning.

And that would maybe go triple or double for a two-pitch inning. But he didn't know. He didn't know that it was going to be a two-pitch inning because he didn't know that it would be line directly at someone and that Vasquez would be picked off. But nonetheless, that happened. So just noting that that happened in other Orioles-related news, Samuel Bessayo is up. One of the top prospects in baseball, catcher who has been raking at AAA, despite being 20 years old, he is now up and I'm pretty excited because he just, he doesn't really seem to have holes offensively. given his youth.

I mean, he had a... Offensively, that is true. He had a 150 WRC plus in more than 300 plate appearances in, I guess it was his second chance at the level, but he was promoted late last season, I think. So his first full crack at it, and he totally handled it despite being a lot younger than the typical player. He walked a lot. He struck out, but not too much. And he hit for plenty of power coming from a 20. 20-year-old catcher, the sky is the limit offensively.

So I guess you are suggesting that perhaps behind the plate there's some work to be done? Sure. I think, but like in a way that seemed, he's 20. Right. It would be weird if they weren't. Work to be done. It seems fine. You know, I don't, I don't want to make too much of it.

I think it's exciting. It's exciting to see at his, you know, they're, they're, I overuse the word project, but it is the appropriate one for this for this thought you know like their project as a team is different now than it was at the beginning of the season like at the beginning of the season their project was making the postseason and that's not going to happen for them so now their project is assessing their younger guys and seeing what they have in them and we could quibble with the timing of his promotion if we were so inclined to quibble with them doing it such that he can retain rookie eligibility for next year but yeah it was right after that that deadline passed yep

Yeah, but their goal now needs to be assessment of their own guys. And I think that as it pertains to his bat, like, this is the next test for him. So them getting a sense of where he's at against Bigley competition seems both exciting for their fans and totally appropriate given where he is in his development. And I think it's great. I'm very excited. I don't know. Like it'll be interesting to see how they fit all of their.

various pieces together and how much they prioritize getting a good, like, current against Big League competition Eval on the bat versus trying to bring his defense along at the major league level. So I'm, I'm also fascinated to see, like, how they deploy him. But, yeah, it's, like, super cool. And it is shocking, like, how young he is particularly given the position. And you don't necessarily see that with catchers. We do seem to have a couple of them right now, like very well-regarded, very young

catchers, even when they have sometimes struggled lately, like, you know, Salas for the Padres, for example. But yeah, it's just like a cool, it's a cool time to be a fan of that position. And I'm excited. And sometimes the risk is because catchers do tend to develop a little more slowly or later. You don't want to see Nino him. Yeah, right. And sometimes if the bat is that advanced, then there's a temptation to want to promote that player so that you can take advantage of the offense. And then what do you do? You don't really want them learning on the job at the big league level behind the plate. But you also don't want to stagnate the bat, but you also also don't want to lose the incredible value that comes from having a big bat at that position. And it's complicated further by the fact that the Orioles have. Adley Rutchman and complicated even further than that by the fact that Adley Ruchman is just a really confounding player now.

And it's just totally confounding. Yeah, you're evaluating the young guys, but you're also trying to evaluate Adley to figure out what he is. Yeah. Who is he now? Yeah. He goes from being your superstar, your foundation, to now it's like, is he blocking beside him?

Right. Like, do you move him? Like, do you consider trading him? I mean, that sounds extreme, but it's not like they're extending him. And so, yeah, and then you don't want to hamstring Basayo's development behind the plate by having him just DH a lot or, you know, move to a different position or play for a space or something. Like, if you can develop him as a catcher, then that's immensely valuable. And then you don't want to cost him playing time because you don't want him just like being a backup at the big league level. instead of getting regular reps behind the plate.

So it is kind of a complicated situation. So I have some sympathy when it comes to when do we promote this guy and how do we put him in the best position to succeed. And the Orioles have been burned with some other prospects they promoted Jackson Holiday, right? People were upset about him not coming up sooner. And then he came up and whoa, he wasn't ready at least at first. So I don't know. It's kind of intriguing because he is such a talent.

And yet it's hard to see how he will fit in. Exactly. So I'm very interested in that storyline. It'll be fascinating to see how they piece it all together. Yeah. Got an email from Dan related to that who pointed out. One of the bright spots of this Oriole season has been Alex Jackson, 140 OPS Plus. With Bessayo called up and Adley Healthy, Jackson's playing time will decrease the rest of the way. As of right now, he has 10 hits as an Orioles that have all gone for extra bases. No player.

I haven't checked this, but I assume that Dan did the stathead search. No player ever has had a season of more than five hits with zero singles. Doubling that mark is pretty neat. So, yeah, I don't know if that would continue. But I guess if his playing time is severely curtailed, he could end up with a historic small sample-ish season. That would be weird and kind of fun. I'm sure he would rather just continue to play and get some singles.

That'd probably be his preferred outcome. I think you're probably right about that. Yeah. Seven doubles and three homers. That's great. So he's batting 227, but slugging 591. Oh, gosh. So 140 OPS plus.

That's too funny. That'll play. All right. And injury related news, just to acknowledge Zach Wheeler's unavailability for who knows how long. I mean, he is out potentially for a while. He had a blood clot, which is one of those. scary situations because that can be career-threatening, life-threatening, you never know. And we talked last week, I guess it was, about, man, wouldn't it be just a raw deal for Wheeler

if Christopher Sanchez won a Cy Young instead of him, even though Skeens is far likelyer, but he's in the running again and yet might not end up being the winner. Well, now he's definitely not going to be because I assume that, well, they aren't saying, what the timeline is. So he had this thrombolysis procedure to remove this clot in his right upper extremity, as it was termed. And they just, they aren't saying he's on the 15-day I.L. They aren't saying if he's going to come back this season, whether this could affect his

career. They've just said they don't know. And maybe they don't know. So we don't know either. I bet they don't really know, at least not yet. Yeah, it's terrifying. candidly like i mean obviously from a baseball perspective you're worried about the impact that it has on them not only as they you know try to sew up the division but also as they look ahead to the

postseason he's been such an effective postseason pitcher for them and like i think has started the first game of some absurd number of series of theirs going back and um has pitched tremendously well but yeah like clots can like clots can kill people um They can kill young people. They have, like, a new baby at home. I, you know, I just, it's one of those things where you kind of feel like you brushed up against a ghost, like how fortunate that they were able to identify this, not only for what it hopefully means for his ability to bounce back in his career, but also just like him being a healthy guy walking around. So, yeah, yish, amish. It is striking for the Phillies.

This is the first time in several years, really, that they've been without Wheeler and ineffective Erin Nola at the same time. Oh, gosh, like you look so bad. I know. Either one of them, really. Like, Nola just returned from an extended injury absence. He had a sprained ankle, and then there was a stress fracture in his rib. And so he just came back this past weekend, and he pitched poorly, which he's just, he's been bad. He's been very bad.

this year. It's been bad. Yeah. And you can hope, okay, he just missed months and maybe there's some rust or something. And if he's healthy, maybe he'll be better. But the Phillies have had this blessing, really, in this era of baseball, to have two aces, essentially, just under team control, just for several seasons. I mean, since 2020, when Wheeler joined them, they have had that double-barreled action at the top of that rotation. and Wheeler and NOAA, just the kind of durability and consistency that teams can't count on anymore. And suddenly they can't count on either of them because Wheeler might be out for a while and NOAA just might not be good. So the Phillies just have such a wealth of pitching and starting pitching specifically, any other team, if you were to lose two pitchers of this caliber, it would be a huge blow.

Whereas the Phillies, it's like, okay, we have Chris. Christopher Sanchez, another Sayon contender, and then Jesus Lazzardo, who's been almost as good, and then Ranger Suarez, and, you know, Taiwan Walker's still around, and even Andrew Painters hanging out, you know, it's just so much depth and yet less depth than there was. And, of course, they traded Mick Abel as well, who was pitching for them earlier this season. So, I don't know, it's just, it's kind of gone against everything in baseball in this era that they've had these two just pillars of the rotation, whom they've been able to count on so consistently, barely missing a start, two of the best, most viable pitchers in baseball year in and year out. It was like approaching historic tenure for two players like that to be as durable as they had been.

And so now they're, you know, it's like sitting in playoff position. They're going to be there, but when October rolls around, they might very well be without either of those guys in a playoff rotation. And that's, it's going to be a new and different look for them. Yeah, I, gosh, they have to be so happy that not only did they not ship Walker out, but that he has been pitching better. I mean, not amazing, but like pitching better this year than last year, which wouldn't be harder. As Bowman noted, he was like the worst pitcher in baseball last season.

But yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to envision them without those guys. And I guess, you know, we'll say again, we don't know what the timeline for Wheeler return is, I suppose it's possible that he could be available to them come, come October. But, yeah, it's tricky because, like, they have alternatives, and several of those alternatives are very good, but some of them are less good or they're unproven and struggling lately, you know, like, painter hasn't been lighting the world on fire of late. Yeah. I'm still incredibly talented. I don't mean to say, like, he's a bust or anything like that, But the notion that he's going to just like breeze into Citizens Bank Park and like be a playoff caliber starter, I think is probably mistaken too.

So just like they are in flux. You know, no one's like, no one's really terrifying this year. That's the thing I keep coming away from these conversations with where it's like everybody's vulnerable. And I can't decide how I feel about it. On the one hand, it's like maybe exciting because if everyone's vulnerable, then means that you don't know how the playoffs are going to shake out. Who's it going to be? Yeah.

Usually the playoffs are so predictable. It'll be nice to have. Yeah. Though I'm sure everyone will be sensible and reasonable because there won't be any huge upsets in October either because there won't be heavy favorites. And so we can all just accept when one team beats another in a short series, then that's okay. Yeah.

We'll all be just perfectly mellow and even keeled about that. Yeah. I mean, everyone has shown that they are. are really consistent intellectually about what they want you know like super teams or or upsets we always land on the same side of that coin no we don't we don't ben but guess what you know we can strive we can strive to put a a brave face on it and say like look there's everybody's got a couple of flaws some of the teams are better than others you know they're less obviously flawed enjoy that Philly's Mariners game. I'll tell you what. I did enjoy Kruk, though. I enjoyed listening

to Kruk during that game. Boy, what a treat. I don't mean to knock the Mariners broadcast booth, but I will admit that I got excited to be able to listen to the Phillies booth call that game. Listen to John Kruk delight in the nickname the Big Dumper. The way he said it, he was like, he was having phone with that. And I was like, okay, Kruk. Yeah, Kruk also used. Yes, how did the first person to build a clock know what time it was? Yeah. To be fair, on our Patreon bonus pods, we mused about how people woke up prior to alarm clocks. Right.

And we learned about the institution of the knocker-upper, the people who were employed to go around and wake people up at an appointed time. Love the knocker-upper. Yes. But, of course, people were able to tell what time it was. prior to the invention of clocks. Or we just had more primitive clocks to be able to tell what time it was. But yes, I did enjoy that curiosity.

I'm always there for inquisitiveness. Speaking of the Mariners and pitching consistency, shout out to Brian Wu, who now has had 24 consecutive starts to start the season with six innings pitched and two or fewer walks, so six plus innings pitch, that is. Usually I'm skeptical when it comes

to start a season streaks. But in this case, it's almost a full season. So it's getting to the point where we... Middle August. Yeah, we won't even necessarily need that caveat, maybe. But he's also going ahead of some pretty impressive company. I think that Juan Marischal in the year of the pitcher, 1968, had 23 straight. So he has surpassed him.

And now his streak to start a season is the second longest since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893. I mean, they didn't have a mound yet, but the pitching distance behind Say Young's 30 in 1905. So if you're doing something that hasn't been done since Say Young, that's probably pretty impressive. And granted Say Young in his first 24 starts of 1905, he threw over 200 innings. So he was not going six all that often in those starts. He was typically going deeper into games. But even so, I mean, And, you know, I kind of mused about how those pitcher consecutive stats are less impressive now when you're comparing to pitchers of earlier eras who were going deeper into games. And so it's easier to, I guess, have a streak of six plus when you're usually not going eight or nine or whatever.

But this comes into play with peripherals, even more. However, maybe it's more impressive because pitchers don't go that deep into games these days. to have a streak of six plus innings, unbroken this deep into a season, that goes against the grain even more. To be fair, I guess there are a few pitchers who've made as many starts this year and have pitched more innings per start on average, but they are the best pitchers in baseball. They're Garrett Crochet, Terrick Scouble, and Tramber Valdez. So that's a pretty good company to be in. Yeah. I mean, we, we, woo, we woo, woo, we woo for woo.

And I guess it helps you go deeper into games when you are not walking people because it keeps the pitch counts down. So those things do kind of go hand in hand. But nonetheless, pretty impressive. He's been the stalwart, the staple in that Seattle rotation. And did it despite not having high expectations for him as of a few years ago. Just a couple less things. Okay, Kyle Tucker has had a really rough stretch of late. It's been bad.

In fact, he's having a bit of a Say a Suzuki breather benching. He's getting a couple. Yeah, getting a couple days off. Not a minor league reset, but a reset nonetheless. Yeah, he's just hitting everything on the ground. He just has not been productive lately. His full season, WRC Plus, is still a relatively robust 131, which is not that much lower than his career rate of 137.

or his prior to 2024 couple seasons. But he was so good last year before he got hurt and then also so good to start this season that even if the overall number is not bad, it's still just, you know, it's the sequencing effect. It's if you're okay all along, then you're probably not going to get benched. But if you are super hot and then super cold, then that's somewhat more concerning and probably more concerning. and probably more concerning to him because he is about to be a free agent so he's going to make his money he's walked more than he's struck out

he's been good but if he had kept playing at the pace that he was on last season and to start this season really would have broken the bank and this well we'll see we'll see if he rebounds from this if this little mental breather

helps him it has to help some players and And the Cubs could use a peak Kyle Tucker performance. So they need that back back. Yeah, they need it back. I think that like as it pertains to his free agent case, will it matter some, sure, but also he's just like so easily the best bad available this offseason

and has demonstrated over a much longer stretch, like how good he can be. So I imagine he'll do fine. But yeah, not going well lately for him or the team. they can't set the whole team down because they got to keep playing baseball games trying to win so it hasn't been good I think he'll be fine

it's just will he be fine in time for it to make the difference in their season and for his free agent case and that we will have to win and see it would feel weird to be re you're like you know because you get the reset right and the reset can be like useful

but also it's happening like it's happening right there you know you're like yeah watching it and you have to be mindful of like what your face is doing you know i would hate that i have such an expressive face i would be like but you can't not i don't i didn't get to watch either of their games today because we were recording the podcast ben you know whose fault is it yours so i don't know what his face was doing today was he at the rail you know did the camera keep cutting to him um i don't know i don't I don't answer that. But I would imagine he's at the rail at least some of the time because you've got

to be at the rail at least some of the time. If you're not at the rail some of the time, people are going to think that you're like saying something or you're pouting. Conspicuous absence from the rail. Precisely. And so you got to, but then you got to be doing a performance. It was like today when I was waiting to go on MLB network and I'm like just smiling like a maniac because I'm like, when exactly are they going to cut to me?

I don't know. I don't want to be like making a face. I guess he's not known for being among the most expressive players. Nonetheless, since the start of July, he is a 72 WRC plus. So this has been going on for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure he'll be fine unless there's some underlying injury or something.

But it is odd how someone who's on the short list of the best players in baseball can just get in an extended funk like that. Yeah. And you don't know exactly how that has happened. But, yeah, they've got to get him straightened out. And I would imagine that they will or he will straighten himself out. But it's been notably bad for some time and now they are taking some steps.

Okay, Sedan Rafaela. This was mentioned in David Laurel's Sunday Notes at Fangraphs that he has hit much better as a center fielder this year than as a second baseman. And they've kind of been forcing him into the second base box. And it's, you know, they have this positional logjam

and they just have too many players for too many positions. And they're just, I don't know, that Masatake Yoshida just fits there. He just doesn't really. And they're trying to make that work, and yet it's causing them to play Rafael out of position. He can do it, but he's not great on the dirt. He is better on the grass. He's an elite centerfielder, and he can play second base. He can play shortstop, but you don't want him to. You want him to play up the middle in the outfield. And so David was suggesting that maybe this is affecting his offensive output.

And Alex Cora had downplayed that possibility. Yeah. The numbers are extreme. The splits are pretty extreme in small samples this season. So I don't know how much to make of it. But this year, he has a 794 OPS as a center fielder and a 325 OPS as a second baseman. The second baseman, it's 19 games. It's 69 plate appearances.

Not nice. So it's a very small sample. And looking back at last year, I noted that he actually hit better as a shortstop than he did as a center fielder. He had a 749 OPS as a shortstop and a 622 OPS as a center fielder. Now maybe he came into this season, seeing himself as a center fielder, and now it's been a distraction. Sure. I wouldn't imagine that this is true talent. Like he can't hit it all as a second basement and he can hit a ton as a center fielder.

But it is sometimes jarring. for a player to go back and forth. And, you know, it's interesting because sometimes playing players out of position is something that bad teams are said to do, and it's bad for player development. But also playing players at several positions is something that a lot of teams do, that good teams do. Like being versatile is really a plus, but also sometimes you do want to just let someone play one position, especially if they're really good at it like Raphael is.

it's kind of a fine line between like cultivating that multipositional capacity and then also just like wanting to let a guy just focus on the position where he can be great and then you know maybe that's less of a distraction in the batters box where he had really been making major strides until recently yeah i think that when you have i mean obviously it totally depends on the guy and and sometimes teams have to do stuff like this right like they're In an ideal world, they just let, you know, him play where he is best, but they need a guy there because you got to have, you just want a guy at every spot, Ben. You know, it's better if you have a guy at every spot than if you leave one spot on guide. Like, what do you do?

You know, and you're playing sports baseball. So sometimes it's not the, you know, a decision born of anything but necessity. But I do think that when you have a young player and one who is clearly actively working, to get his feet under him at the plate and is having success at that, to the extent that you can offer consistency to that guy, the better. Because he is, you know, Raphaelah's,

we talked about this at the break, like, had really seemed to turn a corner, even if his underlying metrics suggested that there might be some regression from the high, high highs he was experiencing, like clearly was a different hitter than he had been. So exciting for them, such a skilled defender, you know, so for them to get,

that guy and have him be one of their sort of core players from this group seemed like an obvious win. And so, yeah, I just wonder, there's what they're doing right now. And then, you know, I will be very curious to see what they do in the offseason because you have to think that they're going to make some moves to try to send some of this logjam out of town and use those players and the trades of them to address other positions of need. because, you know, if push is coming to shove on some of those guys, like, is a push, you push them out, but you also shove them out. When push comes to shove, it's like, you're just locked in battle. Yeah. Like, it's not, but it's. Pushers and shoves aren't really that different, are they?

Right. And, like, the whole point is that it's, you know, you have to make a, you're making a decision because you don't want it to be intractable. Mm-hmm. I'm distracted this episode. I'll admit that, you know. I'll admit it. It's because of the weird light. It's because of the weird lights got me on.

Maybe so. Yeah. It's like Sadan playing second base. Right. But all of that to say, whatever it is that I said, I think that finding a permanent home for Raphaela and really letting him flourish as a priority. Because when things are going right for him, he is a special player. He does great stuff for that team. And I have to imagine that he is going to be a bigger priority than somebody.

say Yoshita would be. So, agreed. Yeah. And Russell Carlton has shown there can be a penalty for players when they're switching up positions and they're trying to learn a new position. Often defensively, there can be one. But it's maybe like a little like the DH penalty where if you're a full-time DH, then you really acclimate to that job.

Yeah, you can flourish. Yeah, but if you're just dehing sometimes, then it's just you don't have the routine down cold and you are cold and then there is more of a penalty. So these things do matter. And maybe it matters how you end up splitting time if that was the plan all along and you prepared for it. And you've done it before. You've got all the gloves that you need. Great.

But if you're pressed into service because of some underperforming or absent player, then you're not mentally prepared for it. It feels like an imposition. So, yeah, Red Sox, all sorts of positional drama this season. Yeah. Hopefully they figure that out. Briefly, salute to the Seymours. There are three Seymours in the major. leagues and they all played in the same game on Friday because Bob Seymour minor league slugger

was called up by the race and he played with his teammate Ian on the raise and they were playing the Giants and Carson Seymour came in to play against the race. So we had three Seymores, maximum seymours, in the same game. And this is notable because there hadn't been a Seymour for a really long time since Cy Seymour, I believe, in 1913. So we had had an extended Seymour drought. I want to say this is all a tribute to the late Seymour Weiner, Nets folk legend. But suddenly we've gone from having no Seymours for more than a century to three Seymors in the same season, all making their debut. Not to mention a Bob, we've got a Bob back in the big leagues, which is big for John Boyce and the Bob emergency.

So just to have a Bob back at the highest level of professional sports is huge. But three Seymours, no relation, all coinciding in the same game. Yeah. It's really, really something. It's, I don't know, suddenly Seymour. Yeah. Well, and definitional, we're about to see less. I guess, I guess maybe so.

Right, because they won't all be, at the very least, they won't all be playing in the same game, you know? True. Because they don't just play the Giants forever. that would be that would be a weird realignment wow remember when we started this episode by talking about realignment that feels like a long time ago yeah i think jake seymour in 1882 was maybe the most recent pitcher it'd been a long time without seymours and suddenly just a cornucopia of seymour's excess seymours if anything bob seymour i don't mean this as an insult to the young man so sorry bob but bob seymour just sounds like an old man's name you know yeah

It's hard to imagine a young Bob Seymour. I mean, it shouldn't be. We have his roster photo available to us. And yet, it feels like, it feels like an older, maybe an older man. It's not an old man. Although, I mean, at some point, he hopes it's an old man's name because that means he'll have lived a good long life, you know. Right. Yes.

Yes. But it does, yeah, maybe it's because of the extended Seymour drought that we think that. It's just all old-timey Seymour's maybe. The Phillies have the second best projected starting rotation now, even with the absence of Wheeler and Nolan. Yeah. They're stacked. But, yeah, they'd still be better with Wheeler. Last observation.

Have you seen what Cody Ponce has been doing in Korea in the KBO this evening? I have not. He's been the best pitcher over there. He's basically leading the league in everything. He is a 1.61 ERA in 145 plus. innings, tons of strikeouts, everything you want, a sub two FIP. And I always think when you have a player like this,

so he came up with the Pirates in the majors and was, you know, not great. And then he went over to Japan for a few seasons. And he was pretty good over there. At least the FIPs were solid consistently in the three is low three-ish range. And now he's gone to the KBO and he's just like, a superstar for the Hanwa Eagles.

And I always think this sort of progression, I think I would want to do this maybe. Like, let's say that he could have stayed here. And I don't know that he's exactly the same guy. And the only difference is just the level and the competition. It's very possible that he has made additions and changes to his repertoire. And who knows, maybe he'll be one of these guys who pitches in Asia for a while and comes back to the big leagues and is better than ever. But part of it is just the level of competition is a little lower and different.

And I think about this when players extend their careers, they go to the Mexican League. You know, Robinson Cano is still raking there. It's just like this would be nice, I think. And I'm not sure which kind of career I would choose. If I could be Paul Skeens, okay, great. But if I'm Cody Ponce for the pirates, is it better to keep being Cody Ponce and stay in the big leagues and be sort of a fringy guy, maybe? Yeah.

Or do you want to go overseas? And there are some sacrifices, and maybe you have to uproot yourself and your family, and there's a language barrier, and you have to acclimate to a new culture. Those could be pluses, not just minuses, but, you know, there's certainly some hassle that goes along with that. And maybe you're making less money, though not necessarily. There are certainly guys who go to Japan or Korea because they're making more money because they're stuck in the minors, they're blocked by someone, and that's actually a standard.

steadier paycheck. And, you know, you're less visible to your country people to your, maybe you're seeing your friends and family a little less and you're not as well known in your home country in the States. Then again, you can become kind of an icon over there. And that can be rewarding in its own way. So it's not like just any fringy pitcher from the majors can go to Korea and be the best pitcher of the league. I'm not suggesting that. But I kind of. I think I might prefer this phase of his career to just be a superstar in a lower level but still major league than to just kind of keep piecing together a career in the highest caliber baseball league, but to be sort of an afterthought, be a bubble guy in that environment.

I think it would be, I mean, obviously, to your point, it really depends where you are in your life and how much you view the opportunity to live abroad and experience. a new place as exciting and adventurous rather than maybe uncomfortable or distant to your point from family. I mean, just by definition, it seems like you'd be seeing at least some parts of your family less frequently. Oh, for some people, maybe that's a good thing. But I think it would be so cool to get to go and experience, not only are you experiencing

like a different culture more generally living there, but you're also experiencing. a different baseball culture. I think that there would be a lot to recommend it. And, you know, I think at this point, how it would wash over you in terms of the potential opportunity to return to affiliated ball in the U.S. and have like a rejuvenated or, you know,

second phase of your career, there's enough precedent for that that I think a lot of guys probably feel like that's a more likely, possibility than in prior years, right? Like, especially if you're a pitcher, you look around, they're all these guys who've come back and had extended runs where they've been meaningful contributors on big league teams,

on playoff teams, on World Series teams, right? So I think that it would feel, it would be easier for it to feel like a really cool opportunity than maybe in prior years where you might be nervous about your ability. to come back or what have you. I think it would be really, I don't know. I think it would be really cool, but it would be, you know, you're at a remove. And I'm sure that there are parts of, even if you come into it with a spirit of like,

oh, I get to try this new place and I get to live in a cool place and experience something new. I'm sure that there are difficulties associated with that that I'm failing to appreciate. But I think in general, it would be neat. And like if your kids are little, like, and aren't in school yet, like, eh, take them with you. You know, you get to, then they get to see a cool new place and experience a thing. I don't know. I, I've been very, I haven't gotten to travel a whole lot in my life.

And I think that if your job afforded you that opportunity and you, you know, sort of met it with like a generous spirit. And particularly if you're with someone else, you're partnered with someone who kind of looks at it in the same way. I think it would be really cool. Yeah. Peak Seymour, at least since 1900 in the U.S. was 1924. Thoughts. Yeah. I guess Seymour Weiner, I believe, was born in 1926, so not far from Peak, from Peak Seymour.

But that's Seymour the first name, and we're talking about Seymour. The last name. Yeah. Which probably hasn't seen its fortunes flag so much because the first name has not been in the top 1,000, most popular for boy. babies since 1947. Here's a question for you. And I don't want to ask this in a rude way.

You know, we're not trying to disrespect the man's memory or anything. But like, do we know, did he, was he more like aware of it being funny? You know? Like,

yes. Okay. He was. He was a good sport about it. Okay. Well, then that's nice to know because I don't want to like, you know,

that man had a family. Yep. Served his country. You know, I don't want to keep an important stuff in the world. I don't want to be disrespectful, but also, that name's funny a shit, man. Like, that is, that's some, that's some funny stuff over there. Seymour Wiener, I mean, good gravy. RIP.

RIP. Okay, we got almost to the bottom of the baseball grab bag, the sports potpoury. More to come next time. Two quick follow-ups. Last time we talked about whether it's okay to say that you drove in a run with a walk. I was fine with it. Meg had some slight discomfort. We were trying to think of alternative terms or verbs.

Robert, Patreon supporter, says, would an alternative be plated a run? It can be used for any method of scoring a runner and also relates to plate appearance versus at bat. Yeah, I like it. Sounds a little more writerly. It's something that you might write but not say, but maybe we should start saying it. Plated or plating a run. The question also asked about the RBI aspect of it. Can we say that a run was batted in if it was plated without a swing?

Adam suggests that instead of RBI, we use RBBIB, substituting the BB for Bays on Balls for the Badid. He says he's found this useful over his years watching Max Muncie. It's kind of cute in written form, but if you were to say it, run base on ballsed in? Eh, I don't know. What I do know is that we are deeply appreciative of people who support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks,

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