Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2370: Generation Yay?

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about broadcasters’ anxiety about saying “Cam Schlittler,” whether the Mets’ pitching-prospect trio of Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, and Brandon Sproat will produce more WAR than “Generation K,” a protracted trot by Rafael Devers, whether Framber Valdez intentionally crossed up his catcher, how a lockout looming in late 2026 could […]

More than 2,000 episodes retrospectively filed. And at each new one, we still collectively smile. That's effectively wild. That's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2370 of Effectively Wild. The Fangraphs Baseball podcast brought you by your Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am. joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay, and I'm relieved to read

in the athletic that we are not the only ones who have been apprehensive about saying the name of young Yankees prospect and promising starter, Cam Schlittler, which I just said flawlessly. There is a whole article by Brendan Cuddy who talked to just about all of the Yankees broadcasters about their fears surrounding saying Schlittler. And they're similar. So they have been gingerly saying it much as we have, and they have to say it much more often than we do, which you would think would make them more practiced at saying it,

but also the perils for them are even more pronounced than they are for us. And, like, you know, they're live. We are not. And the FCC can't fine us. Right. Yeah, you can't find me. You can't find me. You don't know who I am. You don't know where I am. You can't bleep Meg, but you can't find her. No, you can't. And I also am mindful of the fact that, like, yeah, you're right. You get practice. Reps are certainly helpful in the correct pronunciation of anyone's name. But also, with more opportunity comes a greater chance of just goofing one. You know, it's like, how many times, how many times? How many times? in the course of this podcast, if we had to say, Cam, Schlittler's name, I got in my own head about it. I've been doing fine, just in casual conversation, because I talk about him so much,

you know, it's just like constantly coming up. Oh, Cam. But they, you know, with reps, just come opportunities for, for messing it up in an embarrassing way. I'd almost rather, I wonder if, you know, going into spring training next year. The move is just get it out of the way, you know, mess up, say shudder on television. Because that's, do you agree that that's the most likely way that it'll get goofed? Or we'll say shittler, that's also likely. Yeah, Ryan Ruko, one of the Yes Network broadcasters, he kind of did that the other day. He sort of stumbled over it.

Here he is Will Roberts in. This game started by Cam Schittler. Bound to happen one time. Didn't go all the way, but came close and kind of caught himself. And then the clip of that made the rounds and went semi-viral. So that was just inevitable, as Ruko himself observed on that clip. But it is dangerous, but he doesn't mind because he's used to it. Because the story also quotes him, and people have unsurprisingly been mispronouncing his name his whole life.

He said, most people miss one of the L's in his last name, which is a German last name, leading to Schler or Schlitter. I guess it's not the worst way you could pronounce a name that ends with Hitler. Oh, geez. Or could be confused with Hitler. Because that is what Schindler. ends with if you omit that first L, then you've gotten yourself into a world of trouble. But he's used to it. He is forgiving.

His friends evidently just don't even try anymore. Everyone just nicknamed him and calls him something shorter and easier. So in the clubhouse, he is Schlitt, which is itself not super easy to say. I also would say you're just, why focus on the last name at all, right? Like make him cam, camy. Exactly. Yeah, like lean into that because that's much safer territory. Matt Blake, the Yankees pitching coach, calls him cam or schlitt dog.

I mean, at a certain point, I have to question the veracity of the claim that you don't want to mess this up, right? At a certain point, I think you're fibbon. I think that you want to say shi-ler. Maybe. I mean, now I'm hearing the potential Hitler problem there, you know, I hadn't heard it before, but now layers to this. Yeah. You have plausible deniability. Everyone misspeaks sometimes if you're on live TV for hours at a time. So it would be forgiven if you let one slip out or even did it on purpose, but pretended that it wasn't. What Michael Kay has done, though, and this is kind of the coward's way out, I must say, is that he will say the, full name on first reference. So if he's starting in a game, he'll say it once. But after that, he just defaults to Cam or the big right-hander.

The big right-hander. That's not specific enough. Yeah, as Kay says, I figure the more times you say Schlitler, the better chance you have of messing it up, which is probably true. Although, I guess the more times you say Schlittler, the better you might get at saying it. I feel like I'm improving at saying it just in this podcast. So perhaps it's like exposure therapy. It's like you have to just force yourself to say Schlittler many times.

And then it will really roll right off the tongue and be second nature. And then if you get in your head and you're staying away from it and you're just saying it once a game, then the stakes are super high and you're overthinking it. And maybe you're more liable to screw it up. But that in itself becomes conspicuous if you're never saying his name for the rest of the game. Right. just referring to him by his first name, which is not typical, or just some generic reference, then it becomes clear that you are actively avoiding it. And then that is in some ways worse, I think, than perhaps stumbling over it a bit. You got to, I think, if you're a teammate or coach, you can call him Cam, Cammy, Cam Guy, Cam Dog.

You know, like... Cam guy. That might have a different connotation. That might have a different... Yeah. Well, look, you know, for far too long, the assumed province only of the girls. Yes, it's true. You know, they're cam guys too.

She is well paid to perform on camera. So he fits the definition. I didn't mean to take it in that direction, but I did. I guess I did it accidentally. But like a coach or a teammate can call him by his first name. You're right that announcers, you know, announcers do occasionally deploy. the first name. I finally, do I

have enough data to make this assertion? I feel like they do that more often with position players. Although I guess mostly there are broadcasters who are just more likely to do it versus guys who don't do it at all or gas, you know.

But there is like a remove that you are meant to maintain which is sort of silly because like there isn't a remove. These folks work for the team, right? They're very often employed. Can't really maintain journalistic objectivity or impartiality if you're on T-boned RSN, essentially. But it does, it does suggest like a lack of comfort with the name.

And I think that this happens more often in the context of folks who have like Hispanic class names, you know, or sometimes you have players from Asia where you can tell that there isn't a degree of comfort on the part of the broadcaster but you got a it's in the job description you know you got to figure out how to say people's names and they give you a little guide right there so i don't know schlittler with the i didn't realize it was german that's rough you know and i don't want to say that people have to change their names so you know it's like it's a part of your family this is part of your heritage i will say that if my last name was slittler and i was at a family really you're union with the other Schlittlers, I would say, so, hey, are any of us, like, sufficiently accomplished that we feel I need to hold on to this one? You know, like, is anybody doing breakthrough cancer

research or, you know, figuring out how to make bar tables not tippy? No, maybe, can we workshop a new option here as the Schlittlers as we sit at the Schlittler family reunion? I also am starting to feel more comfortable with it, although I am worried that I am occasionally saying, shi-ler and not realizing it. The Hitler part is rough. I hadn't even thought of that before we had this conversation. That's not good at all. There's more than one way it could go wrong.

Yeah, like a, and that's like two ways it can go wrong, you know? That's like a combo. That's a really shi combo, candidly. There's many a family with an immigrant background who at some point on the family tree. Hoisted on them. That's different. Yeah. Or just decided to change.

something around for reasons of assimilation or whatever it was. And this would be, I think, a defensible reason. Just, hey, let's prevent mispronunciations here. Let's just headed off at the pass. Your name sounds like excrement. And that's rough. And, you know, I understand that in the Schlittler's native tongue, not the case, right? They might have worried about the back half of it problem more than the front.

half. But you're all here now. I don't know. Maybe you decide as a collective. Again, I wouldn't want to force the question. Many family lost an important part of their heritage when they came over here and some goober couldn't figure out how to spell their name right at Ellis Island and then they had a different name. That's terrible. That's something being taken from you. I'm saying, what if they decided this isn't worth the trouble? We don't even like it that much anyway. And maybe they have a proud sense about it and I'm being a jerk. That's possible. You know, I'll submit the possibility that I'm being a jerk.

I'm just trying to help them out because I don't, if it were me, especially now that I'm here in the back half problem, I wouldn't want any part of that. Because you're like, maybe you get through the front half problem and you're like, oh, I don't care about that so much. But then you get to the back half problem, you're like, that's a big problem. And we're German, you know. If he keeps pitching well. I'm a little German.

I'm allowed to acknowledge it as a problem. Yeah. Yeah, because they're the only ones who'd be like, yeah, that's a problem, yeah. I'm hearing it. If he keeps pitching well, then perhaps he'll be a household name, and everyone will know how it sounds. It's a lot of pressure. I'll just say Cam Schlittler without giving in a second thought.

You sounded much more confident that time. I think this has been like a good, productive little segment for us. I feel much better about this going forward than I did entering this episode, Schlitler. Schlitler. It's an apprehension, yeah. I didn't mess one of those up. I got all of them, right?

No, we got it down. Okay, yeah, can't go wrong. Famous last words. I mean, look. We had some fun with that, but I wanted to ask you about some young pitchers on the other side of town in another borough. Because the Mets just seemed to be debuting an impressive prospect every day at this point. Yeah, and we talked about Nolan McLean, formerly known as. Cowboy Otani, and we talked about Jonah Tong, currently known as the Canadian canon, but

now there's a new one. It would be funny if he was now currently known as Cowboy Otani. They just traded. Yeah. But now there's a new guy already. Those guys, McLean, Tong, old news, because Brandon Sprote is on the way up. And we'll reportedly be making his debut on Sunday in Cincinnati. And Kodaisanga has had a rough time of it lately, and there were some reports about whether he might even be asked for his consent to be optioned to the minors, because he's been just roughed up in recent starts.

But Sprote is arriving. The cavalry is coming. And inevitably, this summons memories at least for fans of a certain age in the tri-state area of a previous trio of met starting pitcher prospects. commonly known as Generation K. So I was coming of age at the time that Generation K was coming of age. This was the trio of Mets starters who were coming up in the mid-90s, Bill Pulsifer, Jason Isringhausen, and Paul Wilson. And you might remember one of those, perhaps, if you're not a Mets fan.

Yeah. And Werner Prospect Hound in the 90s, which kind of tells you how Generation K worked out or didn't really. All three of those guys got hurt in short order. None of them really lived up to expectations. Izringhausen went on to a long and pretty productive career as a reliever and sometime closer. So, you know, he had himself a nice career, whereas Wilson and Pulsifer hung around for a few years, but never amounted to that much.

I mean, Wilson was better and pitched more than Pulsifer, but no one really fulfilled. filled the sky-high hopes for Generation K. So the career war for the three pictures of Generation K combined, according to fan graphs, 21.2. Okay. What would you put the probability of this new trio of Mets prospects exceeding the career war of Generation K at? I'm summoning all sorts of demons and traumatic memories for Mets fans.

who are my age or older here and I apologize for that but you know you'd like to think that it will be better the second time but 20 plus war that's nothing to sneeze at I guess I mean it was far from what was hoped and obviously

most of the war that they amassed wasn't even for the Mets so they really didn't reap whatever meeker rewards there were and I have hope I am optimistic I like to be glass half full, I'd like to think that the trio of McLean and Tongue and Sprote will far surpass the trio of Pulsifer and Wilson and Izringhausen. But I wonder, because it's not as if pitchers

have gotten any less prone to entry than they were 30 years ago and their workloads are lighter than they were then. So I don't know. I'm trying to figure out where to set the over-under or how to assess the probability that these three will be better than those three. And the number to beat is 20? 21.2. 21.2. Well, okay, so here's a really simplistic way of looking at it, which is that the two guys who are already up in the majors, namely, as we discussed, Tong and McLean, have already amassed

a win between them. All right. A little bit more than that, at least by R. 20 to go. R reckoning. Did you say the ages of the generation K sounds terrible? Like, that's a, I don't care for that. I don't know what it, I don't know what it reminds me of.

I don't know what it makes me think of, but it makes me think of like, I don't know. Like, you say Generation K and I'm like, oh, are they in bad parts of the internet? Like, what is that? I understand, because the K is a strikeout. I understand, I understand the role of the. the letter K in game baseball. Gen X was prominent at the time, so it was a play on both of those things. Okay, don't tell Gen X that. They're very confused about their own prominence. They were never prominent. I know that's a point of pride or grievance for generation.

I'm not inciting intergenerational war here. I'm not interested in that. I'm just simply saying. Yeah. When those three guys came up, so Pulsifer and Isringhausen debuted in 95 and Wilson made it up in 96, and they were all. quite young. So Pulsifer was age 21 season. Isringhausen was age 22 season. And Wilson, when he arrived, was age 23 season. So those guys were quite young. McLean and Sprote are a little older than that. Jonah Tong's only 22. But Sprote and McLean, I think, are both 24. Yeah. Look at me remembering things. Oh my gosh. And Sprote's almost 25. That's right. So why would I know the answer to this. Why would I have, why would I, why would I, why would I, why would I? Why would I? Why would I? Why would I have, why would I? Because I'm going to put it at, you're forced to create content by me live on like, 52%. 52%.

Okay. I'm going to be, and, and I want the Mets fans listening who were like, uh, she went to college in Philly. She's a Philly's operative to, well, I went to, technically I went to college on the main line. Burnmore is it in Philly, like, kind of famously. And now it's like, well, I don't want to pretend I went to school in Philly when I went to school on the mainline. Philly's wonderful. We are sticklers for accuracy here.

I am. And so are the fine folks at Brinmore. So you're sitting there and you're like, that is so pessimistic. I view that as an optimistic number. I view that as, I view that as optimistic, not pessimistic. Because, you know, for one thing, Spurt hasn't even debuted in the majors. And, you know, this year has been challenging for him. He has, you know, a 4-2-4 ERA and a similar fit in AAA.

There's concerns about the fastball shape. You know, like, there's stuff about that guy that, you know, we're like, what do we do with this guy? You know, I know that when Eric was writing the Mets list, like, what to do with Sproit was like a big question for him. where he's like, I don't know what to do with Sprout. So, where he was like trying to work through it, right? And so Sprout's like a big unknown. And I don't want to say that we can fully say we know what we're getting with Jonah Tong and Nolan McLean either. Because like it's been, it's been not very many.

It's been not very many turns through. I mean, McLean has four starts under his belt, Tong just the one so far. But also, I think that they're good. I feel like the Mets have made some. some meaningful improvements from a pitching dev perspective and uh really it's just a question of how hurt when do they get hurt and how hurt do they get you know and that sounds pessimistic but they're pitchers what do you want from me i didn't create the the arm you know i didn't invent the motion that wasn't me you take your grievance to somebody else i don't blame me for that

so yeah does i feel too pessimistic too optimistic i have no idea of what a good guess is at Yeah, it's hard to say. It's hard to say. Get the long-term war projections from zips or something and see what that says as a baseline. But I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that even though that was sort of seen, it wasn't the worst-case scenario for Generation K. I don't know what percentile outcome that was if 50th percentile outcome is just kind of the median what you would get from three prospects of that caliber if you sort of simulated it over and over. over and over again. Yeah.

That was below a 50th percentile outcome, I would say probably. But then there are so many prospects who flamed out even faster than those guys did, who didn't even make it to the majors or didn't make it beyond a single season. And so those guys, they hung on for a while, Izringhausen was converted and was a serviceable arm more than that for years. So it wasn't the worst case scenario. far from the best case scenario, but I'm saying Mets fans, it could be worse. He was the NL saves leader in 2004.

I don't, yeah, sure. I know I don't need to tell Mets fans that it could be worse because they will supply those scenarios in their own minds, but it could be worse. It could also be a lot better, and I certainly hope that it will be. And maybe it'll be cathartic, and maybe if you were disappointed by Generation K and sort of soured on pitching prospects forever. Perhaps these three, I don't know if these three have a nickname. If they don't, they should, or maybe they shouldn't.

Maybe you just want to avoid just labeling them anything given how Generation K turned out. It might just ramp up the expectations too high, perhaps. But for anyone who's still dealing with unresolved issues stemming from Generation K, perhaps this trio will actually restore your faith in pitching prospects. pitching development who knows i hope so okay so i have a a nickname related thought okay did you watch jonah tong's debut did you watch the the tongster that's terrible don't call him that okay but here's you're like wow what could be worse than that i'm i'm loath to yuck anyone's yum we're in an anti-yucking people's yum era you know we were opposed to that culturally i think that there are times

when we could yuck people's yam a little bit and it'd be fine and everyone would survive, but we've decided not to do that. And I think most of the time that's generous, right? Let people enjoy things. I understand the argument here. Having said that, did you notice the people at Jonah Tong's debut who brought literal tongs to the ballpark? Okay.

Try harder, you guys. I just, this is my thing. I understand as like a first pancake that that's a, you know, that's a, I won't say a good one. It's the first pancake idea, Jonah Tong. Oh, it's Jonah Tongue. His last name is Tong. Oh, Tongs. No.

Do better. Think harder. And I think that there's like a, I don't know what it suggests about people. I don't know what it says about people that they felt the need to, like, come in with a gimmick for this young man's first start. It says they're excited, which is kids, right? But like, here's the thing. Why not? Have hope.

Even if it gets dashed. No, no, have hope. Have hope. Have excitement. I under, Jonah Thomas is like a delight to watch. So fun, right? And it's like they're cutting to his family and his family is so emotional and they're so proud of their boy.

And no one's worried about how to say his last name and no one's worried that they're going to say shit accidentally. It's great. Things, you know, everybody's kind of cruising. But the thing about it is like, did you feel Tong? people, not his family. Don't be mistaken. When I say tongue people, I do not mean members of the Tong family.

I mean the people who brought literal tongs to the ballpark. Also, like, I have to bring a freaking clear bag and they get to bring tongs to the ballpark. What is that bullf? As long as you're not using the tongs to eat any concealed food, then you're okay. You're in the clear. Is it not a ballpark where you can bring your own food in? I, you know, I never really remember the guidelines. because, well, A, usually I'm just covering a game,

so I'm going through the press entrance. You know, the normal rules just don't apply to people like us. Yeah, they probably would let you bring tongs in, even if Jonah Tong wasn't starting that night. They'd be like, yeah, sure, whatever. And also, I just, I try to eat before I go to the game, even if I'm sitting among the crowds as a man of the people. I just, I don't get up and go to the concession stands all that often.

Right, we've had this conversation. Yeah, I never did. really, because I just, I didn't want to miss the game and I didn't really want to wait in line. And now with the pitch clock, you're liable to miss more, right? And also, you're just going to pay through the nose for anything that you get there. So, yeah, I try to attend to my dietary needs before I go to the ballpark, if it all possible. We're getting sidetracked. But anyway, they bring in the tongs.

And, like, some of them put tongs on posters. They, like, had them hanging from posters, which just seems unwieldy. some of them were like holding the tongs and I'm like, are you doing like, tongue, tongue, tong, tong. That's the sound of tongs. Yeah. Because I can't make metal sound convincingly.

I'd be a really portfolio artist in that regard. But it's like, are they clacking the tongs? Is there a concern that they will not be able to say, well, I was the first one with the tongs? But like the whole point of like a ballpark thing for a particular starters is that everybody starts doing it. I don't know that there's like a tremendous amount of pride in origin. there. Also, you shouldn't have

pride in origination even if you were the first person with Tong Tongue Tongs because like that's, again, it's such a boring first pancake. I'm just saying like let it, let it come to you you know, like let it wash over you. Let get to know, get to know Jonah Tong's game. Get to

have an, he's such a weird It's so weird. Yeah, get to know him as more than a surname. Right. And like also like his last name I know Tong and Tong but like it's not like he's named after the the grabby implement, you know, that's not the origin of that name and his, I'm just, it felt lazy. It's a creative city, you know, it's full of creative people. You can do better, is my point.

Like, it's a backhanded compliment, but it's a compliment nonetheless. You all can do better than just clack, clack, clack, clad, da, don't. Yeah, there is the idea of first thought, best thought, just go with your gut. But you know what? Sometimes first thought, not best thought. Sometimes. Sometimes. subsequent thought is superior. Why would first thought be best thoughts? That's absurd. A lot of our first thoughts are not good thoughts. You're like oh, trust my gut. A lot of your guts are

bad. Your instincts are terrible. And I can be guilty. What do you know? You could do better than ton, ton, ton, ton. And so, and then there were the people who weren't, who weren't even clacking the tongs. They were just holding it. And I was like, put it in your clear bat. Again,

like, they're able to bring tongs in, but I have to. People can take their shoes off. Don't have to take their shoes off at TSA anymore. And not just pre-check. We've already talked about this. But if I'm saying it again in case someone in power listens to this pod and it's like she raises a good point. If folks don't have to take their shoes off in the TSA line anymore, I should be able to bring a normal freaking purse to the ballpark again. What is going on? And it doesn't, and you still rummage through it. And then there's that invariably that one guy who's like, oh my God, you brought tampons. And I'm like, I am a lady and I have, you wouldn't

know if you didn't have a route through it absurd well now that we've settled that i guess i'll take the over on your 52% probability that they'll exceed generation k but not by much and just because i'm feeling generous and i have no idea that's a good answer i really don't know yeah yeah no it's hard to say but there's so much that can go wrong but as we said also so much that can go right i guess i'll say 60%. I'm feeling lucky, or at least I'm feeling like they'll be lucky. All right. I enjoy saying Isring. Isringhausen. That was a fun one. And less fronds because you could screw it up. Apparently, I'm having a much harder time though. Yeah. Isringhausen. I used to be able to just like lickety split, especially when he was on the A's or just like Izringhausen. See, you just got a muscle atrophies, but it's not gone. You just have to work it again. Yeah, riding a bike, saying Izring hasn't.

It comes right back to you. So we've been having some fun here, and perhaps the people waving their tongues were also having fun. But there have been people who have not had fun lately at the ballpark. And I'm speaking specifically of some players who have been embroiled in brouhaha and just have really been mired in bad blood and bitterness. and I speak, well, specifically, I suppose, of perhaps the longest home run trot, certainly on record. This was Raphael Devers hit his 30th home run of the season. It is important to point out that this was not his 30th home run as a giant. Right.

Because, of course, there is the extended drought of no San Francisco giant having hit 30 home runs in a season since Barry Bonds. Rafi has hit half of his 30 with the Giants. It doesn't count. He has to hit 30 with the Giants. He's been hitting really well lately. Who knows? Maybe he can have a fantastic 15 homer final month and clear that bar. But Kyle Freeland of the Rockies, former effectively wild guest, took exception to Devers' admiration for his own home run the other day.

And he was jawing at Devers. And then Matt Chapman came to Devers' defense. He's excellent at defense. That's his thing. And Willie Adamas, also an excellent defender, ran right out and made a beeline for Freeland, almost in the way that you would see a teammate just rise to the defense of someone who got plunked, perhaps, or buzzed at least. And this was just words, and words are wind, as Georgia R. Martin tells us. And yet here, they were treated as physical six and sones here. This caused the benches to clear.

It didn't quite graduate to brawl. level, but there was definitely some milling about and there was some holding me back and there was some aggressive behavior. And there were some suspensions and fines. Nothing super long term. No bats were thrown here. But still, you know, this was bad blood. And of the kind that we, I almost felt like was a bit behind us. This almost felt like a bit of a throwback to just, it's just a guy looking at his home run for a while. And I don't know if it's just the cumulative effect of all of the home runs that Kyle Freeland and the Rockies collectively have allowed this season.

And it just boiled over. And they allowed a bunch in that game alone, I believe. And so maybe that just kind of caught up to them. Perhaps there was history. Perhaps there were other things going on there. But this led to, I believe, an eight-minute home run trot, technically, as tracked by statcast. It's the slowest home run trot on record, because it is an awkward position. I don't think this was an unprecedented situation, but it's a rare one to see a trot interrupted by a brawl, at least at that point in the trot, because he had rounded first base, but that's basically it.

There were incidents in the past, you know, when you had red-ass Brian McCann kind of blocking home plate or something where the trot wasn't quite completed. but for it to be paused or interrupted that early in the trot? And then what do you do as Devers in that situation? Because you know you have to complete your circuit of the bases for that to count. And so you probably feel bad because everyone else is running out to defend you. And you can't really leave the baseline, I guess, or you can't really come to your own defense. You can't really run out there with everyone else because you're still mid-home run trot,

technically, and you don't want to spoil that for yourself or for your team, because you never, you know, you might need that run. So that is sort of an awkward situation to be in. And I don't know that he was the instigator here. I think he got fined, but he didn't seem to do much other than just shout back, which, you know, is pretty standard. He didn't seem to escalate the situation. It was Freeland and others who took it up a notch, really.

So, you know, it's sort of old half. I felt like, oh, haven't we moved beyond this as a sport? Just your run-of-the-mill standing at the plate for a little long. It seems like mostly guys let that go at this point. But also, I was wondering, as I was watching this, well, what will Devers do? Will he abandon the trot and the run and the run batted in and everything in order to take part in this basis clearing? Or will he just sort of stand there and eventually complete the trot? And eventually, eight minutes later, he did.

Yeah, that's kind of remarkable. I, like, admire the commitment, right? It does speak to a lack of distractibility, a single-mindedness. Yeah. Did you see Freeland's quote after the game? I didn't know about this until Ben Clemens sent it to me because he was like, he didn't have a place to work it into an article, but he was like, I need someone else to have seen this. I was slightly surprised to be ejected, Freeland said.

I understand that I was the one who instigated. So that right there is grounds for rejection. I understand that. Slightly surprised, but also not, because I understand the rules. What? What is that quote? That's an absurd quote. It's fantastic.

I love it so much. But yeah, anyway, I just thought that was goofy, and I was delighted when it was shared with me. And so I thought I'd pass along. Yeah, thanks for paying it forward. It does raise the question of whether you could bait, a batter runner into interrupting their own trot just to like get them so riled up that they abandon the home run mid-trot but what this example suggests is that probably no you cannot because devers was was pretty persistent in rounding the bases yeah at least not not devors

yeah you know we can't speak to the the unflappability of of other base runners they might be more flappable. Mm-hmm. The other home-run-related controversy concerned a player against his own teammate. Yeah. So that initial example, that was okay. We're used to opponents jawing at each other. But this one kind of captured everyone's attention and imagination because it was astro-unastro

crime, perhaps. Or an accident, they would have you believe. I mean. reading the tea leaves. So Framber Valdez was pitching for the Astros. There was a grand slam. Now, what preceded the Grand Slam was his catcher, the Astros' backup catcher, Cesar Salazar.

He sort of motions for Valdez to step off seemingly, and Valdez didn't, and he delivered the pitch, and there was a grand slam. And perhaps there was some. ill-feeling about this that Trent Grisham had gone deep into the Crawford boxes. Evidently, Salazar called

a curveball, but Valdez wanted to throw a sinker, and so Salazar wanted Valdez to step off because they were going through the signs again. I mean, we're in the pitchcom era, which has some bearing on this whole saka, obviously, but

there was some disagreement over which pitch to throw, and perhaps Valdez blamed Salazar for distracting him or not calling the right pitch or not acquiescing to his preferred pitch, I don't know, right? So two pitches, I believe, after that, there was a cross-up. And we don't see many cross-ups these days because pitchcom has all but eradicated them, which is one of the reasons, but not the only reason why we see fewer pass balls and wild pitches these days because pitchers and catchers are typically on the same page. because they're in each other's ears, right? They're hearing the same thing.

The catcher's pressing the buttons. One of them's pressing the buttons. The other is hearing the result of that, and they know what pitch has been called. But in this case, that didn't happen. There was a cross-up, and Salazar got drilled by a pitch. So Salazar said that he pressed the wrong button and was expecting another pitch.

so he set up low and away, and then Valdez, so this was... So he's saying he crossed himself up, basically. Yeah, and Valdez says he calls for a curve ball, but I already had in mind that I was going to throw a sinker, so that's what I threw, that's what happened. And then he throws this sinker roughly 93 miles per hour, and Salazar wasn't expecting it, and couldn't get the glove up.

And the ball just banged off his chest protector, and he was okay. He was unhurt, seemingly. But, you know, that's sort of a dangerous situation when the catcher doesn't know what's coming. And by the way, I think an instructive one, because it does tell you how much expectations matter. Because this was not a particularly difficult pitch to catch in theory. I mean, it was a 93 mile per hour sinker, more or less down the middle. And yet, because he was expecting a curve, he was not at all prepared for this.

And that's interesting because obviously that's a big part of pitching and why hitting is so hard because you don't know which pitch is coming. Even if you're a catcher and all you have to do in this situation is catch, you really have to know which pitch is coming. Or even if it's right down the middle, more or less, you just will not be able to get a glove on it. So, I mean, that just tells you how much major league pitches move and how much that warning and the ability to, anticipate the pitch that's coming matters because, you know, that can make the difference between receiving it smoothly and just completely making no contact with it whatsoever until it hits you in the chest protector. Right. So, so that's one takeaway that I had from this. But then the other, the reactions, that is what everyone was picking up on watching this,

because Valdez showed no remorse, no concern. There was no indication that he, He felt bad about this or was, oh, no, are you okay and my bad? There was nothing like that. No mea culpa gesture of any kind. He just kind of turned his back on Salazar and walked away. And Salazar, meanwhile, stood up and took off his mask and just sort of stared toward Framber. And didn't necessarily evince anger, but it was expressionless, perhaps, in a sort of studied expressionlessness. It was, you know, trying to kind of keep a poker face here, but not happy, clearly.

Right. So both of these guys denied that there was intention to this. They both maintained and continued to maintain, I believe, that this was all an accident and a misunderstanding. And Valdez did apologize post-game, I think, after a meeting maybe with the team or the manager he did apologize. I guess he could have just been apologizing. for an accidental cross-up, but I think most people are picking up on maybe there's more to this story. So, okay, I don't know either of these men. Maybe this is all very above board.

I think that the frustrating thing about it is we're never going to know, right? Because a catcher getting hit as a result of a cross-up, Like, it's not like the league is going to suspend him for that, even if it, you know, it might look fishy, but you can't guarantee that this was intentional. And so it's not like Valdez is going to face repercussions from Major League Baseball. So, as far as unlikely to at least publicly make hay about this because he's in a disadvantageous position, right? Like, he's played in 11 games this year. He's an 89 WRC plus. He's only up because of injuries, right?

And so it's not like he's going to make a stink about this. He wants to stay on the team, right? Framber is the best pitcher on the team or the most valuable pitcher on the team this year. Right. And the Astros aren't going to suspend, proactively suspend from Braldez because of the reasons you just noted. And also because despite the fact that they have opened up a four-game lead on the Mariners for the, you know, for first place in the AOS, like, they are vulnerable as a team right this is an injured club even though they've gotten some of their guys back they are officially the like i don't know how they're doing a team of 2025 to my mind and some of that is the um part of my mind that is contemplating that question is also going about seattle so like i'll admit to that particular part of the bias but like they need they need valdez they need a healthy for umber valdez they need a productive for umber valdez so

The team seems unlikely to me, given the stakes of the race, to, like, suspend him if they, even if they don't believe that this happened. But, like, if he intentionally crossed off his own catcher, that's bonkers behavior. That's, like, that I would, I would say that that's behavior that merits some kind of disciplinary action, right? Like, that's a bonkers thing to do to your own guy. You wouldn't think kindly of it if he threw intentionally at an opposing player. Right? And I think the same sort of moral logic applies here. Now, we're never going to know. They're not going to say anything more than they've already said about this. They're saying what they need to publicly to maintain some amount of plausible deniability. And for all we know, there will be some private, you know, behind closed doors, something or other that gives a consequence for this. Again, assuming that it was intentional, which I don't know them. So I don't know for sure, but it sure looked into it. It looked like he crossed up his own guy and like beamed him in the chest.

Like, that is how it looked. That is exactly what it looked like. It could be an accident. It could have been, it could have been an accident. It could have been. Yeah, because so Framber doesn't use a pitchcom himself. I mean, he has the headset, the receiver, but he doesn't. Right, but he doesn't have a.

Yeah. Saying it's not a transmitter is probably not technically accurate, but you know what I mean? He can't, like, volley back is the point. Yeah, he doesn't call his own pitches. And so he was asked how he could call anything in that situation because he said I called for a sinker and that's the pitch I wanted. And he said, it wasn't necessarily what I called for. That was just the pitch that I had in mind. Yeah.

You know, Salazar's not a mind reader. That's what you have pitchcom for. Right. And then he said he called for the curveball. and then Valdez claimed not to hear that because of the noise. And then when he realized he didn't want a curveball, it was too late. He was already in his throwing motion. Yeah.

And you can't stop your motion once it starts. Then you're liable to have a Dick Windbiggler situation, I guess. So it was just past the point of no return. And he did acknowledge fault. And he said he apologized not only after the game in the clubhouse, but also in the dugout. out he said i called for that pitch i threw it and we got crossed up solazar said he to the moment got to us etc etc so yeah he to the moment got to us yeah that's an interesting thing to say

in response to all of this i just i don't know it just looks it doesn't look good and i can completely understand why they're and maybe he did cross him maybe he crossed himself up right like maybe Salazar really did call for the wrong thing, like literally pushed the wrong button on the pitchcom. And so he set up in a place that he was it supposed to be and then da-da-da-da and then Bing-Bing, boom, you have like this like weird little, but it just, the look was, it was not a good. It wasn't good.

It didn't look good. Yeah. And like I, I think that we can get ourselves into trouble when we're like trying to interpret expression in a tense moment and be like, well, that's a. I would look if I had just beamed my own catcher, I would look concerned. I would have, I would be, you know, I would be remorseful in an obvious way. And like, I don't know, again, I don't know him. So maybe that's just not the way he is expressive.

I don't know, right? And so I think you can get into some like junk science is wrong. But it's like, you know, when an expert witness is like, ah, the bite mark. And you're like, do you actually know what the hell you're talking about? Body language is not always reliable as an indicator. Right. And a lot of people are different in a lot of different ways. And so, again, I think that we can be, we are well served to admit when we are not certain in instances like this. And also, having said all of that, I sure look like you crossed up his own guy. Like, that is how it looks. So we can say that too. And I guess there's some amount of history with Framber, not with this specific kind of thing. But I'll just quote from the athletic piece by Chandler Rome here. Valdez invited more questions about his disposition during difficult times.

The ones interested teams will expect him to excel in if they signed him this winter. Valdez already questioned his team's defensive positioning once this season, prompting another closed-door conversation with Espada. The 31-year-old Southpaw is also prone to visceral reactions toward plays that aren't made behind him. Tuesday offered another test of Valdez's emotions, something the Astros have worked tirelessly to help him have more control of. And he's been working with a sports psychologist who works for the team on that issue specifically. So, yeah, I don't know whether that makes it more credible that this was intentional or less.

But that just informs perhaps at least Astros fans who are aware of their reaction to this. And I guess one thing that might help with the defense is that this is supposedly. according to this piece, one tactic that that sports psychologist has taught Valdez to calm himself down to turn his back and walk down the mound. That's like one of the in-game coping mechanisms evidently that they have given Valdez. So, you know, maybe that changes your understanding of things. Yeah, I mean, I think it would kind of, I mean, I don't know that it would have to. It is interesting context to add. And we do appreciate. the putting in of the work, as it were, maybe it's all above board and it's just a bad

look, you know, and it doesn't. Or maybe he had a momentary sort of lapse in his emotional regulation as we know he sometimes does and didn't have the wherewithal in that particular moment to intervene on himself effectively, but he does experience in the aftermath of that genuine regret. Maybe, you know, there's, there's any number of, I forgot about the free agent part of this, which is another reason he would be keen to downplay it. Right. Exactly. And his agent was kind of making the rounds trying to, trying to douse the speculation about this and doing so in no uncertain terms, perhaps even protesting too much. But you can understand why. Now, I wonder how much this would actually affect his market. I guess if it were demonstrated,

beyond all doubt that, yes, he actually threw at his own player, which is not only are you endangering someone's safety, but also you are affecting the team in that case. It is bonkers behavior, to be clear. Yeah, if you did that, that would be, that would be very bad. I think we want to have, like, nuance in the conversation. We want to allow for the possibility that we don't know the definitive answer to this. We want to give him credit for whatever work he's done or sort of emotional regulation stuff, but it does, it does need to be said that if in fact he

threw it his own dude, it is bonkers behavior. Like, I enjoy the word bonkers. Yeah, it's fun to say. You know what else? You know what other word I've been enjoying lately? Budhead. We should call more people buttheads. There's something really satisfying about that. You know, like, we shouldn't call them that if they're not being a butthead, to be clear. But when someone is being a butthead, we should call them buttheads. Like, it's very, Throwback. Yeah. It's sort of a schoolyard insult, but in a way that it feels fresh when you use it as an adult. It's a little crude, obviously, but it's not too crude. Like, Shane's not going to beep, bleep out butthead. There's no need to bleep out butthead, although I'm sure there might be some parents listening with their kids that were like, thanks for introducing that word to my kids' vocabular.

Snickering right now as they're listening, but that's all. So, yeah, I kind of like that. It's sort of sophomoric, but in a. But in a fun way, but in a fun way. Yeah. So, like, here's what I'll say. If he threw out his own guy, not only is that bonkers behavior, he was being a real butthead. Yeah. I wonder how much that would affect his market or even the suspicion surrounding this incident. Because Frumber is one of the very best free agents who will be available, one of the very best starters.

He's been one of the best starters in baseball. And, you know, there's been a bit of volatility and some ups and some downs and some downs. But on the whole, if you look at the full season stats over the past several seasons, one of the most valuable and frankly consistent starters in baseball. I mean, he's been a four-war guy fancrafts-wise every season dating back to 2022. He's going to give you durability by today's standards. He's just consistently going to take the ball. He has not missed many starts. He goes fairly deep into games.

So, yeah, what's not to like? I mean, obviously he's not a super strikeout pitcher by today's standards, but he's not a complete pitch-to-contact guy. And also, when he gets contact, it's almost always on the ground or on the ground, the clear majority of the time. Right. And he's got good control for the most part. You know, good home run suppression. He can kind of do it all. So you'd think he's going to cash in.

And whatever emotional regulation issues he may have had or may still have hasn't prevented him from taking his time. turn in the rotation and turning in solid outing after solid outing for teams that have pitched into the playoffs year after year. So you might just say that that's baked in. Maybe you're going to get that with him, but also you're going to get everything else that comes with that. So I don't know, unless this were proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be him actually attempting to injure or at least really risking an injury to a teammate in a fit of peak, then all this other stuff. about maybe letting his emotions get the better of him from time to time, well, he's not the only pitcher to have that happen. And he is one of the best pitchers, period. So if it is preventing

him sometimes from being his best self, it's not precluding him from being one of the best pitchers regardless. I have to imagine that, like, this is, you know, this is clearly a known issue. Some version of something is a known issue, right? I'm not saying that like him throwing at his own players is like a known issue but this being a question around him something that the team clearly feels merits intervention right like whatever whatever is going on with romberville does is sufficiently impactful i'm trying to like use neutral words here sufficiently impactful that the astros were like let's try to nip this in the bud right let's let's try to give you some tools to have a you know an easy

your time of this to be more productive, to not get sort of stymied and waylaid and in your own way, right? So I imagine, given that reality, that there will be a conversation with every team that might want to sign him about, like, well, what is, what's the deal here, you know? Is this still an issue for you? Have you found useful coping mechanisms and means of self-intervention, stuff like that? But he's very, very talented. And so I imagine that. And so I imagine that. that as long as he is able to answer those questions in a satisfactory manner that they will say it's fine, you know, and still sign him because here's the thing about big league teams. They accommodate a lot of buttheads, you know, and sometimes those buttheads are like really big buttheads. And I don't know that he is a really big butthead.

I don't know that he's a butthead at all. He might have been a butthead in this instance. Would you like me to stop saying butthead? I'm really enjoying it. Butthead. No, not necessarily. Did the first person go, ah, yeah. Yeah, butthead, that's the stuff, you know?

Was that the conversation? Yeah, maybe it was like the first person to bring the tongs to Jonah Tongs started. No, it's not like that because first thought, best thought. That's, yeah, that is a good thought. It works. The other reason I think this was intriguing, well, A, it's always intriguing when somebody's drama gets aired in public, potentially, and things get messy. because how many stories have we heard of Clubhouse Discord, but only fairly rarely does it really break out into public view.

Sometimes you catch something in the dugout or Jonathan Papelbaum chokes Bryce Harper, but so often this stuff will leak out, and it's just not caught on camera, and the players have the sense to keep it behind closed doors. And so when your dirty laundry is just in HD for everyone to see, if that is, in fact, what that is, then of course, we're all going to rubberneck at that the way we would at any

kind of interpersonal drama that we happen to oversee or overhear. But I also felt like it's been a while since we've had a team. There it is. That one without getting along, because I like that archetype of a team where they hate each other, but they're just good anyway. Just the, that classic kind of 86 Mets, the bad guys won, you know, like everyone is always at each other's throats figuratively or literally or they're coming to blows or they don't get along and it's, you know, 25 different cars home from the clubhouse or whatever it is, right? But, but they just win anyway because so often there's the question of what comes first, chicken or the egg, good clubhouse chemistry or a win.

record, but regardless of which comes first, they usually go hand in hand, and maybe the good chemistry helps you win, or as is often the case, you win, and so everyone gets along because you're happy at work, because things are going well for you. But I like the kind of Bronx Zoo team that's just like a bunch of different personalities constantly clashing, but when the game gets going, they're just good enough to make it work and pull together. And it's just, you know, sometimes it boils over. And it's good tabloid fodder, but it's also a good team. There's just a lot of harmony. And obviously, the Astros, I don't know whether the fact that the Astros were involved in this made it more viral than it would have been otherwise. But with the Astros, it was them

against the world. It wasn't so much them against them unless you were A.J. Hinch very impotently trying to prevent people from stealing signs and then immediately just being run roughshed over and not knowing what to do. But, you know, there were some conscience as objectors to the banging scheme, but no one really made a big stink about it internally based on what we know. So it's been them against everyone else, not so much a civil war inside that clubhouse. And so this is a sign of something boiling over internal conflict potentially. Or maybe we're all just messy and we love drama and we're finding it where it doesn't exist. I think that it would have garnered attention regardless of the team involved.

I mean, I think the fact that he has sort of a reputation among, certainly among Astros fans of being like kind of surly probably made it travel a bit further. but like crossing up your own dudes like kind of again it's wild to do that's like a wild thing to do and so i i do think that we um should acknowledge a willingness to perhaps see the villain in astro's players and see villain re and astro's related stories given some of the franchises history but like i don't know i suspect that if it had been i don't know what's the most neutral option for this to a of the most neutral team for this to have transpired on. I think it would have gotten attention regardless because it's just like a very odd thing to do. It's not good, you know, assuming that that's what happened. Yes, yes. Which we don't know.

We do kind of say. I'm just saying it did look that way. Wouldn't it be something if the Astros, despite being as short-handed as they are, as injured as they are, as depleted as they are, also were at each other's throats and still we're managing to maintain their grasp of the ALS. Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't that just thrill you, Meg Mariners fan?

I'm sure that that would be in no end of joy. Ben? You're being a butthead. Yeah. My bad. I kid. But usually a situation like that, it's like, you know, nobody believes in us. Everyone says we're going to blow it.

Everyone's hurt. And that. adversity brings us together and we're all rowing in the same direction and we're all getting along super well because, you know, we feel besieged by the world and thus we have to just circle the wagons and have each other's backs. And this would be the opposite of that, which would make it even more improbable and wondrous if the Astros actually can continue this run that they're on. Mariners have been helping them out a bit lately. Anyway, don't want to get into that too deep right now. We'll have other opportunities.

I did want to say just because we were talking about Framber and Free Agency that Jeff Passon published a free agency or offseason preview, because he's always getting ahead of the game. We're still very much in the season here, though I guess we're at the point of the regular season where many fan bases' attention is turning to the off season because it's over for them, whether mathematically or realistically. So I can understand why some fans might be looking for, hey, who could help us this offseason? But of course, as Jeff started his piece, every Major League Baseball offseason comes with its own unique brand of intrigue. And this year, it is concerned that the fear of a lockout and potentially prolonged labor stoppage in 20s, 26 to 27, could bleed into the free agent market a year early. Yeah. It goes on to note that in the winter of 2020 to 21, which was. was the last off-season that preceded a CBA's expiration, free agent spending plunged precipitously.

Yeah. And that was different, though, because, well, A, it wasn't a great free agent class, but also COVID, of course. And so it's hard to say how much that was the CBA expiring and how much it was the fact that 2020 was dramatically decreased revenue and shortened season and no fans and then uncertainty about how much attendance there would. be in 2021 and all of that. So that probably was a bigger damper than the potential for a work stoppage. And that hopefully isn't looming over us this time. And the three agent class is a bit more robust as of now. You've got the Kyle's Tucker and Schwerber. You've got probably Alex Bregman if he opts out. You have some Japanese superstars coming over. You have Frommber, etc. Right? You have Dillon C.

They're guys. So do you think that that will be a big suppressor on spending? Or do you think that we will see a lot of teams just trying to work out one-year deals or even players, perhaps? On the one hand, I hate to fret about that before we even have to. But we're not far from the point where that will. start to have an impact on the actual contracts that get signed or don't. So I do wonder just how the near certainty seemingly of a lockout and then the real possibility of a short and season canceled games. So it's got to play into teams thinking.

I wonder if the place that we will see it manifest most is actually in contract duration. Like, if you assume that the season after is going to be shorter, does it change, like, how long you want guys under contract? Do you want them around longer in a weird way? Because, like, you may as well get productive time out of them. I can't believe you're making me contemplate this question. It's really quite rude. I mean, it seems unlikely to me that, like, it won't matter at all. Of course, it'll matter some.

it seems like it would have to, because you don't plan as a team, you don't just plan payroll like one year ahead. You're planning payroll multiple years ahead. And so you have to be mindful of both the amount of sort of how long are you trying to fit that player into your long-term plans and what do you anticipate revenue being both in terms of whatever changes the CBA itself might yield. And then, you know, the fact that you will have, in theory, lost game revenue. and gait as a result of a protracted labor stoppage of some stripe.

So I think you have to think about it. It has to be on there to some degree, right? Yeah. And obviously for anyone who's wondering, salaries, paychecks stop during a work stoppage. So it's not as if teams are going to be wary of this because the money is guaranteed and you're going to get paid even if there's no season. If there's no season, you're not going to get paid. But there's also going to be less revenue if there's no season or if there's a shortened season and that affects your financial projections. And also if there's a possibility that you might just lose a season, which I hate to raise the specter of.

But if you're factoring that into your calculations, well, that's a big part of signing a free agent is your short to medium term future because it's pretty tough to project where your team will be. let alone where that player will be beyond that. I vaguely recall a Russell Carlton study from years ago where he kind of looked at, as I recall, it was like three years out from the current season. Your current record basically had no bearing on what your record will be, like three years hence. It's just, you know, if you're a bad team now

or a good team now, it's like three years from now, you know nothing, essentially. Now, you know, maybe if there were projections and if you knew about the farm system and all of that, maybe there would actually be some ability to project there. But you can't really tell more than a few years out anything about how a team will be faring down the road based on how it's faring now.

So there's going to be that uncertainty. If you're signing a big free agent, then you're probably doing it because you expect to contend in the near term. You probably think you're in your window where you want to win and you'll be there this year and you'll be there the next year. And if there's some possibility that there will be no next season, or season after next, well, that's probably going to make you a bit more likely to sit on your hands

or at least lower your offer. Then again, the players might be incentivized to accept less if they think that, oh, I'm going to have to stretch this money further because I'm not going to have revenue coming in. If there's a long strike, obviously there will be a strike fund and everything, but, you know, there will be less money coming in for the players in that eventuality. So it could affect both sides' decisions.

And I hope that that's not looming over this whole offseason because it's going to loom over the following offseason. We know that for sure. Yeah, that we know for sure. So it'd be nice to think that we could delay it until then, but we can't, something that seismic potentially is obviously going to color teams thinking before the lockout is actually declared.

And unfortunately, that starts soon. if it hasn't already. Yeah. Oh, boy. Bummer, I know. So I did want to mention Mason Miller in the Immaculate inning that he threw on Wednesday. And we don't usually make a big fuss over immaculate innings because they're kind of common these days. And we're impressed by pitchers generally what with their wizardry and stuff. But the immaculate inning itself doesn't really rise to the level of effective.

wild banter typically. But in this case, I think it does. So Mason Miller has been more or less immaculate for the Padres since they acquired him at the deadline. And they paid a pretty penny in prospects. So they're getting what they wanted from him thus far, as opposed to some other teams who have traded for late-inning relievers who have self-destructed since the deadline. Ryan Helsley has not fared quite as well. Yes, it's been bad. But Mason Miller, he blew away three Orioles in this inning. It was in a losing effort, and he entered in the eighth, and he faced the Orioles two, three, four batters, which sounds impressive.

Hey, that's the heart of the order. But it was Jeremiah Jackson, Ryan Mountcastle, and Emmanuel Rivera, which I guess tells you something about the Orioles lineup these days. But he blew him away. And why this was notable, well, it was for two reasons, I guess. This was the third time on record. So in the pitch tracking era, Sarah Lang's had this stat. There have been 63 immaculate innings in the pitch tracking era that's dating back to 2008. And this was the third time that a pitcher had recorded an immaculate inning throwing one pitch type exclusively.

So there was, I think it was 2022. Phil Maiton did it with four-seam fastballs only. 2019. Josh Hayter did it with sinkers exclusively. But here, Mason Miller did it with sliders exclusively. So this was just the third on record that was one pitch type only, and the first time that that was a non-fastball type. This was the only time, I believe, that anyone has recorded an Immaculate inning on record

with no fastballs of any kind thrown. Just the all off-speed or all-breaking stuff immaculate inning. Oops, all sliders. And that is pretty impressive to me, more so than the standard immaculate inning. I think I was talking about this on the tipping pitches Patreon pod immediately after it happened, and I was trying to puzzle out whether this was more impressive or less impressive. I think it's more impressive. A, it's more impressive

just to throw the same pitch over and over again because you're not really given anyone a different look within those plate appearances and that pitch has to be so effective that you can throw it nine times and get nine strikes and that's that

but to do it on a slider as opposed to a fastball this is what I was really trying to reckon with because on the one hand sliders are wiffier pitches typically than a four seamer or a sinker You're going to get more swings and misses on average on a slider than on a fastball. But you're also going to really rely on chases because you're not usually going to throw all those sliders in the zone.

With a fastball, with a sinker, you can sneak one in there and maybe Anthony Volpe will take it while your catcher gets crossed up when Framber Valdez throws a sinker right down the middle. So you can get a cult strike on those pitches. But in this outing, only one of maybe. and Miller's sliders was actually in the strike zone. He got one called strike of the nine. I don't think he threw one pitch in the strike zone. He got one called strike, and it was just eight chases and eight swings and misses. So that seems both more impressive because you can't just steal a called strike there if you're

not even throwing one in the zone, but less impressive because it's a little easier to get swings and misses with a slider than with a fastball. So I don't know. What do you think? Does this impress you much more so than the standard immaculate inning? I think so for the reasons that you – I don't tend to get too worked up about it because, like, you could conceive of a sequence like this, you know, with one or two bad pitches thrown in that make you – like that disrupt the immaculateness of it, right?

And still be like, wow, that was a really great inning, right? the results are the thing that are ultimately the most impressive, I think. But, like, doing it this way, it does seem very cool to me. Because it's like, this is a hard thing. It doesn't happen often. What if I cranked up the degree of difficulty for myself a little bit? Like, and then he did it anyway. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. And it's not just the familiarity of showing these guys the same pitch over and over, but also, once you're working on the Immaculate Inn, And often someone will take a pitch, perhaps, just to spoil it maybe. Yeah. I mean, especially if you're heading for a three-pitch inning, potentially, then maybe someone will take a pitch just to make you work a little. But if you're on the verge of an immaculate inning, and the thing is, he's relying on chases here, and that means that the slider was so unhittable and so irresistible that none of these guys could hold up.

Even 02, you figure, okay, he's got me down 02. he's thrown me a couple sliders already. Maybe he'll waste one here. And he kind of did. I mean, he threw some sliders outside of the zone here. He threw almost all of them outside of the zone. And yet still, no one could stop themselves from going around or even just saying, okay, he's one strike away from an immaculate inning. And I'm down 02 here.

And I've got to narrow my zone a little bit. I mean, you have to protect, of course, and maybe you're a little more likely to chase. But you'd also think, I've seen what he did to the past. previous two guys and he got them to expand their zones and chase not going to let it happen to me right but it won't happen to me yeah no but but it happened to them it happened to all three of them and none of them could could even find it in themselves to take a single ball which probably would have been called a ball and thus would have spoiled the immaculate inning and we would not be talking about this and yet they couldn't and that just inexorability inevitability

of it, I think, just mowing them down with the same pitch, not even throwing strikes and still getting strikes. I think that to me makes it much more impressive. I agree. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay. Well done. Mason Miller. I saw a stat, by the way, which sort of surprised me. I think this was something Craig Calcutera might have mentioned in his newsletter, Cup of Coffee. But do you know which team you probably won't know i didn't know but but oh now i really want to get it right see now i've taken the pressure off you because i acknowledge that i wouldn't have gotten i'm putting pressure on myself it's just gravy if you get it but which team has held its opponent scoreless the most times this season so the entire season not just like recently

The whole season, but yeah, just scoreless pitching appearances, collectively, not single pitcher shutouts, but team pitching shutouts. That's me drumming my fingers on the desk. Can you hear it? I'm drumming. I'm going, oh, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, think, now I'm drumming my fingers on my head. And I'm going, think, thing, think, thing, thing, think when you're poo, think. Did that work? Yes. It'd be really cool to be a folio artist. I feel like that would be a really satisfying job.

Foley, I believe. Foley? Foley, I think. Oh, man. Well, you said you weren't qualified to be one, so I guess that tracks. Yeah, there you go. That's right. The team, the team.

Is it the Phillies? It's not the Phillies, but you'd figure it would be the Phillies. Yeah, that's why I guessed it. Yeah, like you'd probably just. guess the best pitching team right and that's not that though oh it's it's the pittsburgh pirates no way yeah the pittsburgh pirates have pitched 17 scoreless games this season how many how many of them were started by paul skeins i also wondered that and i just quickly looked i believe only six oh that poor guy i don't know if that is only i say only but i mean that's that's that's

more than a third. He's not throwing a third of the games. So that it's disproportionately schemes. Yeah. But as we know, he's had many an outing perhaps when he pitched some scoreless innings, but whoever followed him did not. Famously. But yeah, six of

these were skein starts. But even if you strip out the skein starts, they have done it as many times as the Phillies have, because the Phillies have done it 11 times this season. And, And the Pirates, Sons Skeens have done it as many times as the Phillies have. So it's not just Skeens doing it, which is pretty impressive, I would say.

And it's not like the Pirates are bad at pitching. They're pretty good at pitching. I mean, we don't think of them as being good at anything other than employing Paul Skeens, but partly based on the strength of Skeens, but not exclusively, they are eighth in fan-graphs war in a more or less tie with the Mets and all of their new generation K guys, they're, they're, I get a different name for that. Yeah, there may already be one, be one. I may just be ignorant of the label that the Mets fans have applied.

But again, maybe they've just been burned before and don't want to go down that road again. But, yeah, the pirates are eighth overall. They're also eighth starting pitchers only. So, I mean, that, I guess was seen as their strength coming into. this season and that was before Jones was lost for the year and skeins alone gets you well on your way to it being a strength but it is not solely skeins but i guess it is largely well not random but but certainly dictated by some randomness just because you know you might have a great outing but it's the difference between zero runs and one run that might not actually

be all that indicative of your strength as a staff it's just certain things have happen to go right on a certain number of days. And so you look at the top teams. It's the Pirates who have 17 such games, the Tigers at 15, the Padres at 15, and then the Cubs 13, the Rangers, 13, the Brewers, 12, the Cardinals, 12, the Guardians, the Astros, and the Phillies all have 11. And then the other teams with double digits are the Royals, the Yankees, and the race. So aside from the pirates, these are all teams that are either bound for the the playoffs or made a real run at it were in serious contention at some stage of the season. So the pirates are an outlier in that respect.

They're the only team with double digit number of these games that is just a bad team that was really never in it. So they do stand out in that respect. That's amazing. I pick the right state. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, that's something. It is true.

Yeah, it's close. Where do you think the Pittsburgh Pirates play if not the state of Pennsylvania? Yep, I've been there. I can confirm that that's true. To the state? And to the city. And to the ballpark even. I've never been to Pittsburgh. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. That's not me going to school in Philly either, you know, famously a different side of the state.

So I don't know if this goes to show just the disproportionate impact that an ace can have because the tigers being second is somewhat suggestive. I did not check to see how many of those 15. Tigers games were started by Terrick Scoople, but I'd guess a good number of them. So maybe just having one of those guys gets you a real leg up here. I mean, obviously, it does because a good pitcher is going to make it more likely that you have games where you don't allow any runs. But also, if that guy is going deep into games, as very good pitchers generally do. And then maybe you're keeping it close because that starter was good.

and then you're more likely to deploy your better bullpen arms. And then that makes it more likely that you maintain that shutout performance even after the ace exits. So I could see it being sort of self-reinforcing, I guess. And often in the Pirates case and in Skeenza's case, I mean, he hasn't always gotten the strongest run support because the Pirates also have an issue scoring runs, unfortunately, for them, which is why they have been a bad baseball team despite some pitching skill. And in fact, if I run the other stathead query to look up the number of games in a season in which a team has been shut out, not the shutter outer, but the shutted out, the, the shutout, the, the shutout, that's not quite right. No, you, you were doing so well, you know. You were like, I know how to say Cam Schlittler's name.

Schlittler, Schlittler, and then you shut you out. And then you did a sh** out. Come on. Yeah, I was trying to conjugate unsuccessfully. But they are tied with the guardians for the most times being shut out. So the pirates have dispensed the shutout 17 times, but they have been the victim of the shutout. They've been on the receiving end 15 times. So I guess they barely come out ahead in that equation, but they're tied with the Guardians for 15, and that is number one.

And so this leaderboard, other than the Guardians, I guess, you get a lot of really lousy teams toward the top there, pirates, Orioles, Rockies, et cetera, the usual suspects. Yeah. So it's probably somewhat frustrating. I guess if you like pitchers' duels and you're agnostic to which end of the pitcher's duel, you're on, then probably pretty happy as a Pirates fan, which I really sense from Pirates fans these days, just deep satisfaction and contentment and sense of well-being. That's what I'm picking up from Pirates fans. But if you like a close game, then you're really likely to get it from the Pirates because

you can't score, but also sometimes your opponent can't score either. You probably just want to avoid the shit out end. Yeah, you probably do. All right, a few follow-ups for you, including an update on the Mets Pitching Trio versus Generation K comparison. I'll get to that in just a second. On this week's episode of Hang Up and Listen, Slate's sports podcast, I talked about all the unwritten rules flare-ups in the ongoing U.S. Open tennis tournament. Just a whole bunch of Nothing Burger controversies, alleged violations of tennis etiquette.

And after I laid out this litany of disagreements, I asked my co-hosts whether tennis was making a bid for the title of unwritten rulesiest sport. Both of my co-host agreed that, no, baseball has that title sewn up in perpetuity. Fair enough, this week's incidents with Raphael Devers, et cetera, not helping make the case that baseball has put that behind it. But there is one way in which tennis is, I believe,

unwritten rulesier than baseball, as I noted on the show, which is that in tennis, when you have a ball that just scrapes off the top of the net and plunks on the other side, and you win that point somewhat flukely, Convention dictates that you're supposed to apologize for that. You put a hand up. You make a gesture.

One player's alleged failure to do that at the U.S. Open was one source of some bitterness. And that's not really a thing in baseball. When a bad hop goes your way or when a ball touches the top of the fence and goes into the stands for a home run, you're not expected to say sorry for that. It just happens. It's not your fault. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes it goes your opponent's way.

That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the way the ball bounces. If anything, in baseball, there's a bias against being apologetic, against fraternizing, interacting with your opponent. So maybe that macho impulse overrides the impetus to apologize. Also, meant to say, when we were talking about Mason Miller's extra special immaculate inning, I am in search of a term for that, for a one-pitch type immaculate inning. I was trying to come up with some play on words involving Mason Miller's name and a maculet inning. No, doesn't work.

But I'd like to hear your suggestions. So if you've got a good one, please. write-in, if it's specific to a non-fastball-based immaculate inning, maybe even better. Finally, I come bearing data about the past and present trios of METs starting pitching prospects. I consulted Zips proprietor Dan Simborski after we finished recording, and he gave me some numbers, and it turns out that based on Zips, my 60% estimate of the likelihood that this current trio of prospects will surpass the war amassed by Generation K, not bad. I'm in the ballpark. So first, I asked Dan what Zips forecasts for the career war of Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong,

and Brandon Sproote? And he said, Tong's full career war projection, 19 war, Sproats 12, and McLean's 11.8, though he noted that obviously anywhere between zero and a whole lot more is reasonable, pitchers being pitchers. So again, Generation K totaled 21.2 war. This forecast calls for 42.8 war, a little more than double the amount. So, okay, that's a good sign, reason for optimism. As Dan said, in regard to Generation K, a lot went wrong, more than average. Then he offered to run retrospective Zips projections for Isringhausen, Wilson, and Pulsifer

entering the 1996 season. So what would Zips have said, or what would the current version of Zips have said about those three 30 years ago? And that compares the expectations for the two trios of prospects, rather than the expectations for the current trio versus things going awry. for the past trio. So, entering 1996, Zip's word of forecast, 21.1 war for Pulsifer, the best of the bunch, 17.2 for Izringhausen, and 14 for Wilson. So that's 52.3 war. That's about 10 more war projected for them back then than is currently projected for the three Met starting pitching

prospects. So I guess that's sort of a reason for pessimism. It suggests that Generation K, those guys were better prospects than these three, which means that, yeah, it conceivably could go really wrong. Dan said that if the three prospects of Generation K were in the Zips top 100 this February, their projections would have made them the number two, number five, and number seven pitching prospects. He also found that Generation K at the time would have been projected to finish at their actual 21.2 combined war or below in 19% of simulations. So their actual outcome was worse than a 20th percentile out. for them based on those projections.

And here's the kicker. Zip says that the current trio would surpass Generation K's 21.2 war 68% of the time. So that's the probability that Zips gives Tong, Sprote, and McLean for being better than Generation K when it's all said and done, 68%. Not so different from the 60% that I said. Now, that probability sort of surprised me because 42.8 were is the current trio's combined projection, that's sort of the 50th percentile expectation for them. So I thought, huh, the 50th percentile projection is that they'll be about twice as good as Generation K were, and yet Zips thinks

that there's still a 32 percent chance that they won't be better. So I said to Dan, if that's the baseline, that 42.8 war, I was sort of surprised that they don't have a greater than 68% chance of getting half of that, which is Generation K's total. But as Dan noted, it's not a normal distribution. Young pitchers with good projections tend to have a rather muted middle compared to a bell curve. And it can be rather extreme with interesting projects with bad control. Tanner Scott and Michael Kopeck had notably bimodal distributions. So yeah, you could suffer a career-ending injury and end up with zero. A lot can go wrong is the moral of this story and also the story of Generation K. But odds are that these met starting pitcher prospects will be better than those met starting

picture projects. So we'll just have to revisit this in a decade or two. And for all I know, Effectively Wild, we'll still be going. At that time provided, we continue to receive generous support from our Patreon supporters. And if you haven't already, you can become one 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, as have the following five listeners. Jeremy, a second Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, Davidson, Galen, Evan H, and Will Kruasi, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only,

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You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes of Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Can you effectively sort through All of these stats and players in your head

Isn't it while to repeat them To all of your indifferent family and friends They'll keep you company They'll keep you sane A long bike ride or a slow work day Making bin waxing about a playoff race I'll lose bats hide It's effectively wild