Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2371: Why No No-Nos?

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Trent Grisham’s 30-homer season is more or less surprising than Juan Soto’s almost-30-steal season, Colson Montgomery’s dinger spree, why there hasn’t been a no-hitter this season, and the exciting-but-boring AL/NL West races. Then (26:47) they bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Ashton Moss to banter about his baseball […]

Hello, I'm the only show I do, hosted by Ben Lindberg and Meg Riley, I want to hear about show Hale Tony, or Mike Trout with Freemarney. Hello and welcome to episode 2371 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We will be joined in a short while by a Mike Trout tier Patreon supporter. Haven't had one on for a few months, I think.

So we will have a guest soon. But before we do, just a quick bit of intro banter. I was trying to decide which has shocked me more. Juan Soto being on the verge of 30 stolen bases, which we talked about the other day. Or Trent Grisham, who was involved in a trade involving Juan Soto, having 30 home runs. 30. He's not even on the verge. He has hit his 30th home run.

They're in hand. Or out of hand. the case maybe. Yeah, this has completely changed my conception of both of these players. And so I'm trying to figure out which one has not upset me more, but rocked me, shocked me. Because Trent Grisham, you don't think of as a heavy hitter. And he's had some years where he was at least decent. He was pretty good offensively. Obviously known more as a glove guy. But even in the years where he held his own at the plate, he's not a big. power hitter and he had maxed out at 17 home runs in 2022. That was in 152 games. And here he is

in 123 games. Right. And he's at 30. He has combined in 2022 and 2023 full seasons each. He had 17 homers and 13 homers. That's 30 total. And now in less playing time than he had in either one of those seasons, he has 30. I know that it's a different. environment, Yankee Stadium, Petco Park, but that doesn't account for all of it. So that is quite something. And then Juan Soto, we talked about recently. His previous high was 12 stolen bases in a season, which he had done twice. He had seven last year. And now he has 27, just been caught a few times. So I don't know. This is really forced me to reevaluate just tools. I didn't know that these guys had and it's interesting because one of them I knew had power but didn't know

had speed and the other I guess it's sort of the other way around not that Grisham's a big stolen base guy he's not a burner not really but yeah he had 15 stolen bases one year but put them together we're going to get a a 30 30 combined season from Juan Soto and Tricum I mean one Soto will himself have a 30 30 30 season maybe a 40 30 who knows but But yeah, Trent Grisham, 30 bombs, Juan Soto, 30 bags. Who knew? Yeah. And, you know, I think that when the Grisham stuff happened, right, when he joined the Yankees last year, it was like, oh, the appeal of this, well, joined, you know, was displaced to the Yankees.

But it's like part of why this seems like a good idea is that you get back up in an outfield that has like these big lumbering dudes, many of whom are hurt often, right? And so that seemed like the real appeal here is that this was a guy who can, you know, credibly stand out there. And so everything above that was gravy. And he was like a 93 WRC plus hitter last year, right? Like he was a half a win guy, you know. He had a sub 200 batting average. So you were looking to him if he was going to improve at the plate to like hit a little bit more.

But I didn't imagine doing this, you know, I didn't imagine. And that's great. It's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And another power display we talked about a bit lately, but has also surprised me, is the Colson Montgomery Rampage. Just every day, I look at box scores, I look at game summaries. Colson Montgomery has gone deep seemingly every game. It's not even that much of an exaggeration lately. And I was looking, so he hit his first home run of this season on July 22nd, and, you know, he was not up the whole. whole season, obviously. But he'd played, so I think he had... Recalled on the fourth, as it were.

Yeah. Yeah. So he had something like 50 plate appearances before he hit his first, and then he hasn't really looked back. We noted that he has used a torpedo bat for at least a good deal of this stretch. But so July 22nd was his first major league home run, as he is a rookie in his first major league season. And since that date, he is tied for the major league lead in home runs with perhaps one of the most predictable players who could be atop that leaderboard, Kyle Schwerber, who's, you know, this side of maybe Aaron Judge, Shohei Otani, you know, very few players hit home runs as prolifically as Kyle Schwerber. So it's Kyle Schwerber and Colson Montgomery, of course.

And somehow Montgomery's run, which is coincided with the White Sox, not playing bad baseball. He has a 132 WRC Plus over that fan, which is not that great. for a 17 home run outbursts. 17 homers in 36 games. So he really is hitting a home run just about every other game. And that's 150 plate appearances so you can do the math

and extrapolate if you care to. But 17 homers in that short a span and yet only 132 WRC plus. You know he must not be doing that much else. And that is true. He's walked about 5% of the time, struck out 28% of the time, somehow has a 160 babbip.

Granted, I guess he hasn't hit that many balls in play because so many of them have been out of play or he hasn't made contact at all or hasn't put the ball in play. So he's batting 216, 267, 612. That's roughly a 400 isolated power. It's hard to be very valuable when you're running a 267 on base percentage,

But one way to provide positive value while doing that is to slug over 600 nonetheless. So this has pretty much been the definition of all or nothing for much of this run. But there's been so much all that it is pretty on inspiring. Mostly, I'm just happy that a good thing is happening to a guy playing on the White Sox. I'm happy for him, but also for the fans of the team. It's like, well, you can look ahead, right? You want to be able to see past the current circumstance you're in. if the current circumstance you're in is bad.

And I think that, you know, stuff like this lets you do that with greater credibility. So is it perfect? No, like some of the issues that have been identified about him as a prospect still exists. But home runs are fun. People like those. And it's better than the alternative. So there you. Yeah.

I remember bantering a bit about the White Sox earlier this year. It may have even been before Montgomery was up, certainly before this home run outburst of his. Just, hey, things are coming together. a little bit and some young guys are around and they're bad but not terrible, not historically terrible. It's an improvement. There are reasons for optimism. Things are looking up. And then, yeah, now you have Coles Montgomery, who's kind of a consensus-ish, top 40-ish prospect before he came up. And yeah, you can see the strengths and the weaknesses both at play. But the strength is pretty apparent.

So he has had a lot of games where he does not have hits other than home runs. I had not noticed that we have not had a no-hitter in Major League Baseball this year. Yeah. If you had asked me

if we had a no-hitter, I would have been hard-pressed to identify anyone who has thrown one because no one has. But I think I would have thought that there was probably a combined no-no in there somewhere because I just don't pay

that much attention. to those. We were not really that no-hitter hyping a podcast in general. But you're very skeptical of them as an endeavor, actually. Especially the combined. Yeah, your way out on those. But I had not notice that there had not been a no-hitter this year. There hasn't been a no-hitter for a full year, really, because we're recording on September 5th. And I think the last no-hitter in MLB was last September 4th. So it has now been more than a full year

and that was a combined no-no for the Cubs over the Pirates. There has not been a season without a no-hitter for 20 years. 2005 was the last season without a no-hitter.

And in 2005, the league batting average was about 20 points higher, almost 20 points higher than it is now, which is one reason why this is weird. It's still,

offense maybe has bounce back a little bit batting average strikeout rate, et cetera, but it's still at a low ebb, historically speaking. So I don't know. I don't know what this means, if anything. We were puzzling recently over the fact that we've had all these four homer games and we have all these 40, maybe 50 homer hitters. And also we have no hitters.

I don't know that those things are in any way related. But I'm trying to think of some reason why we wouldn't have no hitters this year. Maybe it's just pure randomness and that's all it is. just not a common event as it is. But in this scoring environment, this low average environment, I am surprised that there hasn't been one. There's still time, but still to get to this point. It is pretty surprising that there hasn't just, we were sick of them a couple of years ago. We were lousy with no hitters. And there were a lot of combined no hitters in the offing that year. But we were just like enough with the no hitters already. I was thinking maybe one reason

why I wasn't conscious of this, aside from just generally downplaying no-hitters, is that you do get a lot of starts, no-hit starts, where someone is pulled while they are throwing a no-hitter, and they run into their pitch counter, whatever. Like, just this week, there were two examples of that because Cade Horton of the Cubs and Ryan Pepio of the Reyes were each removed after five no-hit innings, which is not that big a deal.

But still, it generates headlines. I tend to see so-and-so through X no-hit innings and maybe just seeing no-hit as often as I do made me just think, yeah, there's probably an actual no-hitter at some point. But even that is kind of low this year. I just stat-headed just starts outings by a starting pitcher of five or more innings and no-hits allowed. There have been two of those this week, but only nine this season. And that's actually down relative to recent years. Last year, there were 17, and 2021 is the record there were 20. That year, 2022, there were 20, 2023, there were 19.

So we've been hovering around 20 of these a year in recent years. And yet, we haven't even broken into double digits this. So it's not even the aborted, like, partial no-hitter hasn't really happened. So I don't know why that would be the case. Like I was all ready to say, oh, maybe it's bullpens have been bad or something like that. Is it injuries? I can't figure out exactly why this would be the case. But it's not even that we're just getting more and more starters removed from no-hit outings.

There have been fewer of those this year, too. Yeah, I don't really know quite what to make of it. I expect to, I mean, you'd expect we'd have one. We'd at least have one, you know? Maybe pitchers aren't trying very hard. Have we considered that? There's an option that they're just like, look, I'm over it. I'm not trying very hard.

Yeah, they've just all got complacent. Quite quitting all of them, every single one. I didn't consider that explanation. But you mentioned it. Very serious. That's probably not it. But yeah, well, now maybe this will be a classic, effectively wild example of we bring up something notable and then immediately it happens. Who do we think the beneficiary of that would be?

Like, if we were going to, if we were going to pick someone to bestow. the rare good effectively wild curse because so often it goes very badly you know um i mean otani is being forced to start today you know they're yeah o'tani has to start Logan Gilbert what if it was Logan Gilbert that would be nice at the mariner's starting pitcher pitch that would be helpful to me as a person Christopher Sanchez potani did it because he's not supposed to go more than five innings that's uh what They have him on, I guess skiing, this might be more most likely. But he's not starting today.

No, he's not starting today. It's true. He started yesterday. Yeah. And he was good, but not good enough to have thrown a no-hitter. Anyway, something to monitor keep track of. If anyone has any brilliant explanations for why this year is a bit of a downturn for no-hit outings, no-hit outings, no-hitters just in general relative to recent history. We're all years.

And the last thing that I wanted to mention, I know we've talked in the past about, is parity good if everyone is mid, basically? Like, is what makes a race interesting? Is it the quality of the teams or is it just the closeness, the proximity of the teams? And it's probably a little bit of both, as these things usually are. But I was thinking about that because in theory, we've got a couple decent races in the West divisions. We do have your Mariners trailer. the Astros as we record here on Friday afternoon by three and a half games, and then Rangers a couple games back of the Mariners. And then in the NL West, you have the Dodgers

who are just keeping a bit of a buffer between them and the Padres, two games separating them. So these are meaningful races, and I'm sure that at least one of them is consuming a good deal of your mental and emotional energy. But as a neutral observer, these races have been a bit less exciting than you'd think based on the standings, just because none of these teams has been playing very well. Right. Just like they've had little spurts, but on the whole, if we go back to August 1st, so day after the deadline, very few teams have been playing all that well just in general.

There's just kind of a lot of mid. But you look at these Western races specifically, and the Dodgers are 15. and 16 over that span. The Padres are 16 and 15, so they're both just sort of playing at par, just, you know, barely holding serve, they're dog paddling. They're kind of staying right around the water line, more or less. And then in the AO West, you have the Mariners who are 15 and 15 over that span. The Rangers are 15 and 16 over that span, and the Astros are 15 and 17 over that span.

And it's kind of your classic just no one wants it sort of situation. Yeah. And I do actually think having observed this, that a race like this, well, obviously it would be more exciting if you didn't have wildcards, but I'm not even saying that. But just if you had two teams, at least two teams that were really both playing well and just really vying for the crown as opposed to just not trying to lose it, just, you know, like who's going to find. fumble less, basically, who's going to play least poorly, as opposed to just playing best. Either that, or maybe one team playing really well and then another team fumbling. And so someone's kind of coming up from behind, and that's exciting because you see, oh, they're closing the gap and making up the distance and, oh, look at this. That's not even happening really either over this span of about five weeks or so that we're talking about here.

They're all just sort of staying clustered together, which on the surface is exciting because you look at the standings and now they're, they're separated by just a few games, in theory, a few more days. And we could have a change in the leader here, except that they're all just basically 500-ish over that span. And that's just a bit boring. Like you want someone to seize the titles. You want to feel the thrill of the wild card hunt, right? You want it to be tense. I mean, I am tense, but that was going to be true regardless. You want there to be a sense that this is like really do or die for both of the squads involved.

And I don't mean to suggest, despite my joking about how pitchers just aren't trying very hard, the guys on the teams don't want to win, don't actually care. That's not what I think. But it does have sort of the flavor of like, no, you go. I don't want people to. know you go into the playoffs. I want people to say, I'm going to salt your fields, you know, we need that energy. And we don't have it right now. And part of it is like, look, do I think that it is within the character and capacity of the Seattle Mariners to blow this and miss out

on the postseason entirely? Ben, I'm alive. I of course think that. I have 39 years of experience. I know what that's like. But it also, both, the, the Rangers and the Royals, like half their team is on the injured list, it would seem, right? Like the two most proximate ones. And so it's like, do you, you shouldn't have to work very hard to assault their fields. They have no one out there to prevent assaulting, you know? Like half their good players are hurt. Yeah.

And might be hurt, even if they manage to squeak in, aren't guaranteed to be like immediately available, right? Like, it's not outside the realm of possibility that, like, if the Rangers were supposed to find their way and they make it's a wild card and then Fall League starts. And it's like, am I going to see, like, Corey Seeger, like, playing Fall League game so that he can get rehab reps? Because, like, the AAA season will be done by then. You can't send him out on an assignment. Is that going to happen, Ben? Is that going to happen?

I don't want that to happen. And I don't think that should happen. I think that should not happen. Even if there were a complete collapse happening now, that would be entertaining. As opposed to the slow collapse that the Mariners are experiencing? Yes, just a slow motion disintegration. No, but if there were some sort of historic class, I'm not wishing this psychic scar upon anyone. I'm not suggesting that I wish any particular team had suffered this fate, but that's at least a storyline.

That's something to monitor. It's like, oh, look how many games this team was ahead this number of days ago, and look how much smaller that margin is it's not even really that so i mean the mariners at one point they were tied with the astros right and and it looked like oh they're just going to sail on by because they're healthier and the astros it's smoke and mirrors now the asters have gotten healthier all of a sudden much to mariners fans dismay because jordan alvarez is is back and hitting and a couple of the injured pitchers have returned javier garcia etc they're back so that bodes ill, I guess, for Seattle.

But, yeah, not a lot to cling onto here. It's just, I'd like a more exciting close race. I guess you could point to the AL East, where the Blue Jays are three games up on the Yankees and then another half game on the Red Sox. And some of those teams at least are playing better over this span than I'm suggesting. I also have a bunch of guys hurt. This is the problem. It's like, it's hurt.

Yeah. Red Sox are 19 and 12 over that span. is 18 and 13, J's 17 and 13. So all three of those teams are playing similarly well over that spin. But yeah, maybe that's a bit better than just, it's not that big a difference. But three teams playing well as opposed to two teams just playing equally mediocrely. It's just a little bit different. Oh, Ben.

I don't know. What am I rooting for, though, really? I mean, like, I'm rooting for them to make the postseason. Don't get me wrong. But it's like, how much am I going to enjoy it? It's so stressful. I am so nervous. I like that you're just pre-disastering yourself.

It's like, well, if they make the playoffs, great. Obviously, I want them to make the playoffs. But if they don't, at least I won't have to be anxious about the actual playoffs. I can be relaxed in October. Right. And, yeah, because October is famously a month where I'm super relaxed. You know, it's just like I metabolize the appropriate amount of stress in that month. I'm doing great, two thumbs away up.

I don't know. I don't know. It really would be better if they won the division. I mean, everybody wants to win their division. And obviously, with the seating stuff, like there can be some real benefit to winning your division. But mostly, just increasingly, really think they want their pitching at home as much as they possibly can have it. And so go on a little run here, friends, you know, going a little run. I remember who this Colson Montgomery season reminds me of rookie Ryan Schimph, which I'm sure no one else has thought. It's a unique thought that I have had. You could have given me a hundred guesses, and I would not have pulled that out.

No, and they're not actually analogous because Ryan Schimp was in his age 28 season when he came up. And I'm not saying that Colson Montgomery is bound for a Ryan Schiff caliber career. But just in the sense that they both came up and they were hitting tons of. homers. Ryan Schimp, he was like an extreme flyball guy, as is Colson Montgomery. He's like top 10 in fly ball rate this year. But Schimp was like super all or nothing flyball like upper cut that first year, 89 games, 20 homers. And he had a similar WRC plus 128 with a low batting average, 217, which was even lower relative to the league in 2016 when this was. He struck out even more than Montgomery, like 32% of the time. Low babip. The difference I guess was,

was that he walked a fair amount, too. He was just, like, extreme three true outcomes, old player skills kind of guy, and it didn't continue. But it reminds me a little of that. That's not an encouraging comp for White Sox fans, nor am I suggesting that it will be a predictive one. It's just the name that my brain conjured for whatever reason. Former Padre, Ryan Schimp. Oh, and speaking of the former Padres, we started this episode by talking about Grishman Soto. I didn't actually say which one I think is more surprising, just which element added to.

these guys' games. I think it's got to be Grisham, just because hitting 30 home runs is really hard. It's just, it's harder to just do that at will than it is to just decide that you're a base dealer now. In both cases, it completely contravenes my perception of these players, which Grisham glove guy can't hit as well. Soto, slow, but yeah, I think you can just be a slow guy who decides to steal bases for a while, and Soto has done that. You can't really decide to just say, yeah, I'm going to crank 30 homers out of nowhere. Or maybe you can. Maybe Trent Christian did just decide to do that.

Maybe. I mean, it was useful to me yesterday for him to be a good hitter. Did you engage with the potential bat controversy in that Astros Yankees game at all? Oh, right. There was a confiscation for an inspection with a discoloration of some sort. But then they just played on. You know, it was so weird. Like, they, they clearly, this, this was in the eighth inning, ninth inning of the Astros, Yankees game, I believe it was Taylor Tremel, right?

Who was up to bat? And the umpires saw something that I didn't like. They thought that maybe the pine tar had gone too far up the. Yeah, I think Aaron Boone asked them to inspect it. And then they did. And they, that might have been true, although they then went to Boone. The sequence made it a little ambiguous to me, whether he. that he was asked. And then they didn't say anything afterwards. So they, they inspect the bat.

They're, like, looking at the sweet spot of it because they thought there was maybe something there. They give the bat to the official authenticator who, like, does authentication stuff. Tremel's just standing there, like, am I getting ejected? Like, what's going on? And then they just left him in. They lifted him in. And they didn't make an announcement. They said they made the initial announcement that they were doing, like, a rules check. But then they didn't come back on the Mike and say, like, it's fine. Yeah. They just took the bat.

I'm like, what is this? What is this? What is this? Boone said, I don't know if it was just natural or if it was sand. The discoloration was on the label. Yeah. And then Tremel said he thought that the Yankees said that his bat was shaved down too much. And he was confused by that.

So unsolved, sports mystery. Maybe we'll get an answer at some point. All right. Let's answer. some listener emails with a listener. All right, well, we are joined now by a Mike Trout here, Patreon supporter, Ashton Moss, who has been waiting patiently to join us, and the day has come. Ashton, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited to be here. It's kind of crazy. I normally listen to you guys on 1.8. Yeah.

Oh, God. Very sorry about that. It's definitely kind of interesting. Do you sound super slow to you? Very, very slow. Very excited to be here and chat with you both. Yeah. Well, you could have been here earlier, except that you had your bachelor party because you are a newlywed, newly married.

So sorry, everyone, he's off the market, but congrats, Ashton, on the recent nuptials. Thank you. Yeah, I was a diva, and I decided to have two bachelor parties. Actually, you know, I think my name has probably been on the podcast twice in history. once was two ones ago about the sounds of golf. So I had a golf and a non-golf bachelor party because I don't know. I think the whole Bachelor, Bachelorette stuff has gotten completely out of control. I'm not going to ask my buddies who don't play golf ever to overdose on golf for a weekend.

But, you know, my buddies who are taking time away from their families who are golfers are like, I kind of want to play some golf. So I was in Michigan for 10 days and did a lake and stickball weekend with my non-golf friends and didn't talk about golf at all. And then weekend, too, we probably played too much golf or exhausted. Yeah, it was fun. That's great. Yeah, I like that idea.

It's just very considerate to your groomsmen, I guess, just not to make them do something that they don't normally do. Or, yeah, destination bachelor party where you also do something that you don't normally do and probably pay a fortune to do it. I like that idea. I mean, it's your day. It's your time, so you can do what you want and force everyone else to adjust. But maybe you'll have a better time also if you kind of tailor it to the interests of the people who are attending.

I mean, this is going to fin some people like, like skiing, no thank you. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, not around snow. I walk like a duck. I just skiing's not for me. And also I have this phobia of like tearing something. You know, I'm approaching my mid-30s. And so, you know, if somebody's like, oh, let's go skiing for the weekend, it's like, well, you're going to go skiing. And I'm going to sit on the bunny slopes and be like, this sucks.

Or you could do some Appra ski. That might be nice. Right. I was like, I'll sit in the hot tub and, you know, make you guys some snacks when you come back. But, yeah, again, I was gone for a long time. But it was how can I craft an experience where people are going to actually enjoy themselves? And they seem to. But like I mentioned y'all before we press record, a lot of my buddies, the weekend, y'all message me were like, oh, we can all just jump on. You know, they're big listeners. And I was like, we're not going to do that. I don't think the Mike Trout tier enables, you know, six of your dump. friends on, you know, a bunch of major highlights to come on. Yeah. If they all want to sign up for the Mike Trot Tier 2, then maybe the more the merrier.

It'll be incredibly chaotic. It's not a 7-4-1 special, right? Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah, buy one, get six free, not exactly. But we hope that the wedding went off without a hitch. And I don't know if this is your honeymoon for now or whether you had one or whether you will have one, but glad you're celebrating with us here on Effectively Wild. And we've talked about skiing.

We've talked about golf. We probably should talk a little bit about baseball, but I have to start with the traditional question of what could have possibly possessed you to support us at this level. And also, how did you encounter us? I think it's a combination of guilt and embarrassment, which is a, you know, as a potent cocktail. Right. As a sort of, I say a reformed Catholic, that might mean I'm a Catholic again. As somebody who went to Catholic school and has a lot of trauma from that, we'll put it that way. Let's see.

So I think the guilt component is I've been a listener forever. I was going back in time. And I think the first time I consciously remember the podcast was Ben, you and Sam talking about right after the 2014 postseason about the Royals and their prospects for, you know, the 2015 season, which, you know, famously has really good. I guessing we were not high enough on those prospects, but I don't recall. No, yeah. There was a lot going on. I mean, as a Braves fan, that was like, we just got Max Fried. Let's see if he's good.

narrator was good should have resigned him we can talk about that later so i mean i don't know you guys have been just a part of my life forever um and honestly what i do now for comfort food is i just close my eyes and scroll back and you know just go back in time and and listen to pause from 2017 2018 it's sort of like my comfort food so that's one but the embarrassment part was ben i i met you once do not expect you to remember this but this was in a another one ben can't remember I just talked on our Patreon bonus pod about when you meet people and they remember meeting you and you don't remember meeting them and how embarrassing that could be. I'm, yeah, I'm one of those people where it's like, you know, when I play golf, I'm like, what's up, bud? Hey, man, how's it going?

Like, you know, they say their name on the first tee and by, you know, the time we walk off, I'm like, don't know. Yeah, but no, it was at, like, in D.C., like, it was a bunch of people talking a bunch of baseball writers and, you know, like I came up to you. I was kind of nervous and didn't know what to say. And so you would just play an intro song from one of my favorite bands. And I was like, how'd you pick the song? And you were like, you were super nice, but you're like, yeah, man, I just kind of like go in and pick one. Like there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to it. I was like, okay, have a great day.

And then I walked away and I was like, it's kind of like that up, you know, I'm forgetting Sarah Marshall when he's like, I wish I wasn't wearing this shirt. He's like, is that really the question I just asked him? Like, I listen to him all the time. I spend all this, you know, at that point, you're daily. I'm like to spend all this time and I ask him about the song on the intro and, And I've been thinking about that for 10 years. And here I am and I actually get to correct that. Again, you can tell the repressed Catholic in me.

So it was like embarrassment that that was my question. And then also just gratitude for how much time you guys have spent entertaining me and so many people. So, yeah. Well, you're welcome. And thank you for enabling us to do that. And that was a pretty popular question. So don't feel bad a lot of people have asked about the intro songs over the year. So you're not alone.

And I enjoy talking about that, too. So I'm sure I didn't mind. So you're still in the Atlanta area and the Braves fan, you said? No. So actually, I've lived in San Francisco since 2015. Ah, okay. Very cheesy story. We historically grew up going to Florida, like most people.

You know, it was easy. We could drive. And then after a while, my mom was like, we got to take the kids on a more cultured vacation. And her two favorite cities were Seattle and San Francisco, and she kind of picked San Francisco out of the two. came out here and the second day I told my parents I was going to move out here

and just to show you that specific time I remember it was Cici's run with the Brewers so I remember and Cici was actually starting totally random I got Prince Fielder signed ball that day fortunately Ryan Braun ignored me

that ball would mean a little less to me if Ryan Braun that signature was also on there but that was kind of the time period I just I don't really remember why I just think something about the Bay Area really resonated with me and, you know, moved out here after school. But my Braves fandom has

continued. It's really tough being a Braves fan, though. I mean, I think this will, obviously listening to y'all, I think this will resonate with you. It's just, it's really tough because baseball is the only sport I really care about. The Braves are the only team I really care about. But it's really tough where it's like, can we change the name? Can we change the logo? Can we stop doing the tomahawk chop. Can we stop telling Ryan Helsley how to feel? Can we not, you know, wear offensive stuff to the game? I don't know. It's just really tough where, you know, the feeling of, I remember being a kid and hearing the tomahawk chop and getting goosebumps. And now it's just really conflicting. So it's just a very weird fandom for me, especially

because, I mean, you can probably guess living in San Francisco. You can probably guess where I fall in the ideological spectrum. And so I don't know. But I still love the Braves. But my one promise to myself was when we eventually won a World Series that I'd be reasonable. So look, has this been a fun brave season? No.

It hasn't. Was last year a fun season? No. But I kind of told myself, like, I think that like, maybe it's also I went to University of Georgia and watching Alabama fans my whole life be like, you know, oh, my, like right now, it's like, okay, they're going to fire Kael and DeBore after 14 games and pay $70 million. Like, get out of here. So I'm like, look, I don't really know what's going on. It does seem the injury bug, but I love baseball. I love the

Braves. And my dad was at the Sid Slid game. I've got so many positive memories through him of the Braves, but it is really tough where it's like, I wish we were the Atlanta Hammers, you know, shout out Clinton Yates. Yeah. And I just wish the fan base would be a little bit more thoughtful of other people. But, man, it's fun to watch Ronald Dukun you play baseball. I wish Spencer Strider would get back to what he was. But, you know, I was lucky. I grew up on Chipper and Andrew and Galaraga. And, God, I just was looking at the Fangraphs recently.

Do you remember what good Gary Sheffield was for the playing? Holy cow. And those teams, you know, Raphael for Call and Angleton Simmons. And but, you know, for my life, it was just we're going to win 95 games and totally choke in the playoffs. I mean, until, what, 2020? You know, I'm 33 years old. The last time we went a playoff series was when I was 10. And so it's regular season kind of bliss and then postseason heartbreak.

But still love the Braves, you know, 4 o'clock out here throwing the game on. I think Ben Ingram is criminally underrated from a radio broadcast standpoint. So good. I think Godship Kerry's gone. Belted! Yeah, it's like, okay. Yeah, not my cup of tea either. No, no.

But proud to be from Atlanta and love the Braves and just wish we could tweak a couple things. Yeah, don't blame you. What do you do if you care to share? You mentioned that you do some sort of podcasting. Yeah, that's just a passion project. My buddies and I do, we have a podcast called Municipal's. So it's primarily about public golf, but the PALS component is it's really become, it's about the, our tagline is sort of like it's about the golf, but it's not about the golf. So the big thing for us is it's very hard.

We've kind of realized talking to a bunch of people, it's really hard to make. friends as a grown man. And it's really about how golf is a conduit in whatever sports, right? But golf is a real conduit for, you know, grown men being able to, you know, spend four or five hours on the course, become more emotionally vulnerable, actually kind of share how you're doing. So we do a podcast. We've done, you know, one video series. You have a couple golf tournaments. But professionally, I'm a recruiter. I joke. I pull people out of jobs for jobs they'll hopefully like more. I'm actually in between jobs right now. So I'm Monday, I start my new job for an AI company, so I'm turning into kind of a SIF Lord over here.

Like, I sort of am acknowledging it's like, yeah, whoops, like, this is cool, but also like, we'll see. So very kind of San Francisco a meme where it's like, oh, yes, I work for an AI company in the Bay Area. But I love it. Did you yourself get recruited? Yeah, I was going to say, can you recruit yourself out of that job if you decide you don't like it? Yes, I did get recruited. Someone I used to work with tap me on the shoulder and hear. I am. So that's the very Spider-Man meme, right? It's like recruiters are, well, I guess she

wasn't a recruiter, but it's still like recruiters recruiting other recruiters. Say that five times fast. It's not like Kim Schittler. It's a little easier. But yeah, love being here, you know, obviously 300 kind of great days a year. Yeah. Are you the one who suggested to the Oakland bowlers that they use AI to manage a game this Saturday? Was that your idea? I missed that story. I was unaware of that. Is that real? Yeah, I'm not clear. One of my gripes with AI is just the way that we call everything AI now. And so I'm not entirely sure what exactly the ballers are using.

This is the team in Oakland that we did an interview about that was important, is important to the community after the A's departed. And they did something that other teams have done in the past, which was just kind of a community-managed game last year. good fun but this year they're doing an AI driven game and there's been a big backlash to that as there has been just about everything AI but none of the articles that I've read about it thus far has actually explained what they mean by AI because I find that things that we once would have called machine learning or just you know referred to as other kinds of models just get lumped in with the buzzword AI now which either can get people up in arms unnecessarily or maybe can then cause people to invest in them because everyone wants to just be in the AI space unless there's an AI bubble. But I guess you probably have thoughts on that starting in the industry. But the point is, unless it's specified exactly the methods and the models, then I never exactly know if we're agreeing on particular terms.

Because often we're talking about generative AI and largely. language models and that sort of thing. And I have many issues with those, but also I think sometimes we refer to things as AI that I probably wouldn't term as AI exactly. And then, of course, there's the larger question of like, is any of this actually intelligent? It's not general intelligence, right? And maybe we're sort of upselling it to even refer to it as AI when we're talking about just chat GPT or whatever.

So that's a broad umbrella of thoughts. But the point is, I don't know exactly what the baller. are doing because they're, you know, Major League Baseball teams have recommendations about matchups and everything, right? They're not having some script tell the manager what to do necessarily, but the manager is consulting an iPad that will say, here's the most advantageous matchup in the situation or something, and it'll be based on the history of those players and projections and forecasts and all of that. And so is that AI? I probably wouldn't call it that, but probably some people would.

I think that's, even if you're doing that, I think that stuff, it's kind of good to be kept in your back pocket. Like, I know that, like, the sport I kind of care most, as I mentioned, is golf. And I know that, like, this year, the PGA doers talking about next year, setting up whole locations using AI, and it's like, God, I just don't say that. Like, I mean, I don't know. Like, there's a whole, like, set up committee. And I think with golf, there's kind of an important human component.

It's kind of like baseball. I mean, it's one of the reasons I think I love both the sport. sports, right? It's like golf like every, not only is every course different, but you can set it up really differently, where it's like Fenway is different from Truist, which is different from AT&T. There's a variable component that's really beautiful. And again, even if you're using, to your point, Ben, like data and information to set things up or I don't know. I just don't know about like, of course, the PGA tour is like, they sold it to some sponsor, right? It's like, oh, sponsored by blank. It's like, uh, okay. I mean, I guess so. But like, I think I

everybody just preferably kind of rolls their eyes when that happens. So I'm with you. I mean, I know it's sort of a bit. Not that the baseball isn't real, but probably don't need to brand that, I would think. Yeah. And I mean, maybe it's because they're in the Bay Area. Maybe there's less backlash to it locally. I don't know. But I think that sometimes we might talk about things like this on the podcast even. I'm sure we've entered hypotheticals in the past about could a team just trained some sort of model to manage for it? And this would have been years ago before there was all this baggage about AI and the connotations of that term. And it wouldn't have been looked on so much like on a moral level, more of just a practical level.

Would this actually be an improvement with the recommendations that it spit out actually be better than what a human manager would say and would it take into account this or that? We've definitely talked about that hypothetical before. And of course, indie ball teams are constantly looking for any gimmick because they want coverage and they want attention and they've gotten plenty of coverage for this, which I'm sure was part of the motivation for doing it, that they knew that people would talk about it on podcasts and people would write about it. I don't know how many tickets sold to the ballers game that will translate to, but media attention can be a important commodity even in the Pioneer League or especially in the Pioneer League. So I think a lot of it is just the hype and the buzz, and if we had described it some other way in the past, then it wouldn't have been seen as so problematic as much as just is this efficacious. Like, will there be utility to this? Because could you feed in real-time data? Well, in MLB, you wouldn't be able to do that.

You're not allowed to do that sort of thing. But if you could, then would that help make a decision about should I replace this picture now? Is there something kind of concerning? Is he tiring? Are there indications of fatigue? And so, yeah, you could probably come up with some model that would do an adequate job of a lot of those decisions because they're not that complex. Most of the managerial decisions that a baseball manager is making. It's just, should I pinch it here?

Should I change the pitcher once the game begins? And maybe the, I think the lineup is part of this, too, setting the lineup. But again, those are things that you could do with any sort of standard projection model. So to call it AI, I don't know, it's kind of blurry. It's kind of fuzzy. So maybe we'll talk about it next week. We'll see how that actually goes or additional details about the way that it's working. But we can answer some new emails now.

We've got some pedantic ones. We got some hypotheticals. Here's one that at least mentions the Braves. This is from Philip, who says, In the sixth inning of the September 1st game between the Cubs and Braves, announcer Pat Hughes suggested that the crowd at Wrigley Field was worth a real number of wins, estimating somewhere between four and eight. Eight.

That sounds like a lot. That sounds like a lot. It sure does. And Phillips' next sentences, obviously this is a wild estimate. But it leads me to two questions. One, how many wins do you think the best big league crowd could actually be? worth and two if you can ensure the league wouldn't stop you and no other teams would also do it what would a crowd have to do in order to be worth as much as an all-star level player my first thought

was whiting out the batter's eye for only the visiting team so what's a crowd worth over the course of a season if anything eight wow wow that feels like so many i mean the crowd piece of it has I think we would agree is maybe built in in some way to like the general nurse should have home field advantage, right? So it's not like it's zero, but eight feels like a lot. That feels like, and here's the thing. Even if the answer were eight, we couldn't tell them because like the behavior, the learning that you were in some way responsible for eight, four to eight wins for your team, people

would be monsters like the worst monsters can you imagine empowering a crowd with that information can you imagine what the people behind home plate would do if that was what they were armed with going in the gestures we would see the attempts at distraction it would be you can't change the color of the batters like there are rules about this stuff right like the league is like hey you can't you can't even open the you can't even do weird stuff with the retractable rules roofs. Yeah, if you were to attribute the entirety of home field advantage to the crowd, then eight or four to eight would not be an unreasonable estimate because historically, home field advantage in baseball, home teams have won about 54% of their games. This year, too, it's been about

54%, which is actually a little higher than it's been in some recent seasons. But over the long sweep of history, it's been about that. And so 540 winning percentage over, well, 162 games, Obviously, you only play half that number at home, but that would be like playing at a 87.87.85 win pace as opposed to a 581 win pace. And so that's in that region, right? But there have been so many studies of home field advantage that have tried to pin down the components and what that actually stems from. And I don't know that there's a concrete answer, but it's an amalgamation of things. It's just not having to travel, being able to sleep in your own bed, get a good night's sleep, maybe a little more downtime, R&R, you know the routine, you know your way to the park, there's less stress, etc. You're around your family, maybe there's no jet lag. You haven't had to travel as much. And you know the park. You're familiar with the carums and the bounces and the fence, depths and heights and all of that. And so you know how to to tailor your performance to some extent to the park.

There has also been some suggestion that it has to do with home teams getting more favorable calls. Calls, right. Yeah, and that that could be an artifact of home field advantage in terms of crowd that basically umpires are subconsciously or consciously influenced, swayed, intimidated by people yelling at them or cheering. So maybe if you were to say that a lot. of it was that, but studies have differed on that. So there's this whole super stuff that

seems to have something to do with home field advantage. And probably only a fraction of that actually comes from the crowd making some noise. So eight does sound like a lot. Yeah. I was going to say it's not eight. Let's just let's just start there. Yeah. I've always interpreted it as kind of two things because I kind of think about college football because I was lucky enough, I went to University of Georgia, been to a bunch of SEC stadiums. And I tend to think home field advantage is largely tied to communication. Like when I think about a really loud stadium like in Athens or again, like Tennessee, I can like picture the quarterback, even though they have headset comms. They're like, they're like holding, you know, their hands over both

their ears. They can't hear the play. They don't know what's going on. So one thing I was thinking about was it be curious to see like if this might change in the pitchcom area. right? Because maybe this is me misremembering, but when I think about Acuna's grand slam off of Walker Bueller in Atlanta, I remember like Walker Bueller doing kind of something similar, like obviously

wasn't pitch calm yet, but he seemed like disoriented by the noise in Atlanta and then shortly thereafter gave up the home run. So it feels a little bit of that. And then I do think there's got to be something to the umpire component because

going back to not being super proud of the brave sometimes. I was at the infield fly game. Wow, when we famously threw trash on the field, and it's the reason I hate the St. Louis Cardinals so much. It's a story I can tell you if you would like. But basically just like, yeah, I mean, again, it was being like, this is embarrassing, right? People are throwing like dangerous, like, trash on the field, like, at people. Yeah. And again, that's sort of the worst, the worst of the worst. But you kind of mix those two things together, that kind of feels like, because some stuff even been like, I don't think you're wrong about sleeping your own bed, but sometimes I've heard stories where guys are like,

yo, I sleep better on the road, right? I got three kids at home and they're coming in and like, you know, pulling my face at four in the morning. I can pull blackout curtains and sleep until noon. Yes, or your pet is waking you up at the crack at Don. Yeah, I've had some sound sleep in hotels. It's true. So I think to me it's that comms component. Again, would be curious to know in 10 years if maybe this has been a little bit different with pitchcom. But then, too, yeah, probably some of the hostility. But thank God, people aren't throwing trash on the field regularly. Do you have Jalen Carter thoughts that you need to get off your chest? Just embarrassing. Ben, do you know what I'm talking about? Yes. Okay. Wow, you do

and hang up and listen is like really changed. I'm on top of it. Got my finger on the sports pulse. Yeah. Yeah. Meg, I was going to say actually, Ben, it's funny. You've mentioned hang up and listen a lot over the last year. But I never actually processed that you were like on that podcast because it's jarring because I said part of my comfort food is going back and like I say this lovingly. Go back to like 2016. It's like, you know, have you like any like very normal, you know, oh, LeBron James. You're kind of like, oh, what? It's like. It's like. It's really, really, really, really just baseball. And I've started to listen. And it's like, you know, I'm hearing you talk about, you know, yeah, like other sports. And I'm like, wow. This.

This is very, very different. So I had the same revelation, Megan, the last, like, two weeks as I've started to listen. I'm like, Ben asked thoughts about Nick Saban. Yeah. Wow. Like, that's new to me. I go back in time and you're like, it's very baseball. And now it's like, no, he can tell you about Bill Belichick's girlfriend.

Like, that wasn't on my bingo card. Yeah. Not only have I heard of Ryan Day. I know who he is. I know what color his hair is. I know that some people thought he had a nipple ring, but it was a doctored photo. I know it all. that was a really upsetting half hour though while we weren't sure you know I was just like I don't need to know about that that's not of my business that doesn't feel like Meg's business I just can't believe that like I'm not the first person to have this thought but it was like you got you got Carter on the field you got George Pickens and like Carter is the one who behaved the worst that's shocking you know that's a you beat Pickens to antics I can't believe that that's wow

Yeah, so I think probably the crowds, I don't know, what I'd put as a ceiling on it. I'm sure that it can affect some opposing players sometimes. There might even be times when it hurts you, though, if you're getting on your own players' cases, and then that makes them feel worse. I could see there being a disadvantage to that. But I don't know. I guess I'd say maybe a couple wins or something like that, potentially. But there's nothing you can do to direct.

intervene. We've talked about that. It's not even... I'm also aware of a story concerning the Los Angeles Clippers, but that's not what I'm about to reference. You know, the Clippers have their wall with the fan section that you distract opponents when they're shooting free throws, and that seems to maybe have some effect. And I guess the equivalent of that would be like, yeah, if you could kind of get in the batter's eye and dance around, but you can't do that, really. are there other aspects of things we've talked about just teams getting aggressive reaching into the stands and interfering i mean if you actually interfere then that doesn't necessarily help you but if you're a little more aggressive maybe when it comes to preventing plays that are fair game for you in the stands but a fielder's reaching into your territory and and you are just more diligent about preventing them from doing that there are things you can do on the margins but it would be hard for me to say that one particular fan base is better at that. Maybe certain parks are configured in such a way that fans could have a little bit more of a direct impact. But, yeah, I think it feels like a pretty big effect, but I'm not sure that it is all that large, really. Yeah. We need follow up reporting, though. I want him to explain eight.

I want to hear his answer. I need him to answer that. Yeah. During the pandemic season, when there were no fans, home field advantage was actually quite strong in major league baseball that season so yeah it is it's hard to figure these things out i have a i have a random bone to pick i hate the clippers logo it's terrible what is this disney cruise bullshit that they're trying to run on people you know like i get it it's a is that an accurate depiction of a clipper also like that seems like too big of a boat to be a clipper

aren't clipper supposed to be smaller than that that looks like a cruise ship it looks like it's going to go disrupt the waters of Alaska. What's up with that? Why does it look like that? It's terrible. I hate it. Yeah. I mean, I guess when a clipper was like a tall ship, like a merchant vessel with the big masks and the sails and everything, those were pretty big. But that's, I guess, what it is, but it looks more modern. It looks like a super yacht to me, sort of more so than an old school clipper.

So I'm with you on that. It doesn't look right. It looks, it looks wrong. It looks wrong. It looks like a cruise ship. Issue confronting that organization currently. Yeah, it doesn't even look like it is sales. Why shouldn't a clipper have sales? I guess those are supposed to be sales, but they look more like the levels of a super yacht.

Yeah, it looks like a cruise ship. We know what it is. It might be, it's like, you know how people, they say it look like they're dogs, right? It's like, well, it's like think about Steve Ballmer, right? It's like when you have, think Steve Ballmer either probably has or has access to a super yacht. and slowly the logo is starting to look more like him, right? Yes. Well, maybe Pablo can tackle this story next.

But let's answer this question from Joseph, who says to tie a couple of recent podcast topics together, do you think that minor leaguers try to avoid strikeouts to the detriment of their overall offensive production akin to Luis a rise? How do teams ensure that their prospect strikeout rates are authentic and not being artificially tamped down because prospects know that teams care about strikeout rate more? in the minors than they do in the majors, or are teams so focused on getting players to hit for power that prospects don't really feel much pressure to avoid strikeouts, even if teams are quietly valuing a low K rate in their prospects. It seems like this could be avoided if minor leaders really cared about whether their team wins. They'd try to do whatever they could

to maximize their team's chances to win, regardless of whether it maximized their real or perceived future value as a prospect, in this case, taking some strikeouts in favor of better overall offensive production, but I'm not really sure how much they do care about that. So this is referring to when we talked about Louisa Rice recently and whether he is now prioritizing making contact as opposed to that just being sort of ancillary incidental outgrowth of his skill set. And we also talked about whether the fact that low strikeout rate prospects tend to have better long-term forecasts and whether that's contributing to the lowering of the strikeout rate in the majors these days. So Joseph's suggesting that if prospects are aware that teams

generally consider it a good thing for prospects to make contact, then will they start focusing on that and might that hurt them overall? I think the thing to keep in mind is that like the level of information that they are getting feedback on is so much more precise than that. I'm sure that there are guys who overcompensate in one direction or the other. But I feel like the information at team's disposal to help them intervene on that is is pretty profound right so they're not just looking at like a binary did you make contact or not did you strike out or not like they're looking at you know the quality of that contact they're looking at you know they're making a distinction between a hitter who is discerning um in the zone and one who is passive right so

not just are they taking pitches but are they are they good take right? And they will break down, you know, where are those takes coming from? How are you swinging when you're getting a pitch that you ought to hit in a way that helps, you know, when you're on the prospect evaluation side, it helps you to discern like, is this like a premeditated take or is this the batter actually making a decision in response to the pitch that he's being thrown? So I'm sure that there are guys who are like, I want to, I want to make contact. But I have confidence that they're being given enough information that the question is a more complicated one than that, right? And the way they're being assessed is more complicated than just like contact or no, strike out

or no, take or no, right? Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I doubt there are teams that are saying, just make contact. That's all. That's all you should think about. Yeah. And if anything, prospects like that who are just super contact outliers but don't do a whole lot else, they don't really get rated all that highly. A rise himself was not really a top prospect. I did, yeah, and talked about why he was sort of underrated by scouts. Not that he's necessarily a superstar value-wise, but obviously he's exceeded expectations for someone who wasn't even a top 100 guy.

And that's because he was so singular that there just wasn't much of a precedent for him, a recent precedent for him. And yeah, when a guy is just all in on contact, then you start thinking, well, will this even translate at the upper levels or will the bat just get knocked out of his hands if he doesn't have power also and maybe a rise has an 80 hit tool and contact tool, but it's hard to forecast whether that will translate when you start getting to higher levels, even though strikeout rate does tend to be pretty sticky in small samples for prospects even at lower levels. So, yeah, I think if a prospect were hyper fixating on just avoiding strikeouts, that would be detrimental. to their long-term fortunes, but I doubt that is happening. If anything, it's probably the opposite and strikeouts aren't that big a deal, though maybe that's changing a little bit.

If we're aware of this for Luis Arise, I think that would come very clear and, you know, XYZ minor league guy for the Cubs. I do think that this is an area where on the public prospect evaluation side, the error bars are maybe the highest. I think that, like, everyone has gotten better at evaluating these. guys than they were when they were evaluating a rise. And we can see that in some of the guys who are on list. But I do think that some of the bigger misses in either direction tend to be like the really contact, heavy contact forward guys, which isn't to say that they are never ranked well

or that no one ever gets them right or anything like that. But it does strike me as an area where there still is just like a big error bar on the public side because sometimes they can sustain. and it makes for a much better hitter and a more valuable one than you're anticipating. But, you know, like they're not all Stephen Kwan, right? So it can be an area where I think that there's still a little bit of wobbliness from time to time in terms of how those guys get graded. Okay. Marvin, Patreon supporter, says there is discussion on episode 2368 about accounting for player intention during war.

And the conversation concluded that there was no real need because war correctly measures things. and there were players who already knew what was valuable. And also, we just concluded that it wasn't really possible to do that. But since I'm always concerned about believing we know too much, let me change the conversation to be about starting pitcher war. Starting pitchers accumulate less and less war every year because they're asked to throw fewer and fewer innings. Does that mean that all the best starting pitchers were in the past?

If not, what is wrong with the concept of era-adjusting hitter war, based on accepted usage patterns of the time since we mentally do it for starting pitchers now. Yes, I am an older contrarian who likes war but believes we put a bit too much credence in it. So I guess my response to this would be that I wouldn't conflate talent and value because I do think that the best pitchers are pitching today

on a per batter per inning basis, but they just pitch a lot less And partly they're more effective because they're not facing the same hitters a bunch of times in the same game, but also they are wizards, as we always say. And they just throw hard and have super optimized repertoires and pitch designed filthy offerings, et cetera. So I wouldn't say that the best starting pitchers pitched in the past, but the most valuable starting pitchers, I wouldn't have a problem with saying that they pitched in the past, just the most value to their, teams because they pitched more. So that sounds reasonable to me. You can adjust.

There are ways one can adjust. Jay Jaffe has developed a method for doing this. He has an adjusted jaws method, which he calls S. Jaws, to put some pitchers on the same scale across areas. And not just to help the more modern recent pitchers, but also because you're comparing 19th century pitchers and early 20th century. pitchers who were pitching just preposterous numbers of innings. And so at least by some war models, they have very, very high totals that no one could ever equal now. So he does have

this adjustment, which could be used to put starters on a more level playing field and just make it kind of relative to the pitcher usage standards of the day. So yeah, you could do that. I think there's less need to do it for hitters than there is for pitchers. But there are ways one could do that. But I still think that it's sort of a second layer thing that you have war and then maybe you can make additional adjustments to war if you want to look at it that way. But what war is measuring? I don't really have a problem with what it says, which is that an individual starting pitcher or starting pitchers collectively, yeah, maybe a little less valuable than they used to be. I also feel like on the position player side, sometimes like people overstate the pre-moneyball

post money ball distinction there's like this notion that we didn't have a proper appreciation of the value of getting on base and i think some people then assume that like the best hitters of the past like we're not high on base guys but you go back and you look and you're like no they they were getting on base a lot like that was a high they were walking a lot still like they're because everyone was like intentional walks are so smart but you know it's like we can kind of overstate the case historically and it's like no i mean like go back and look at like the best Twitter you can think of in that guy's career on base percentage is probably pretty, pretty high.

Like, those guys were really good. And so I think on that end of things, it's like, it's not that our understanding has an advanced or that the lens through which teams are trying to tie talent and value together haven't changed. But that doesn't mean that, like, the guys in prior eras weren't talented and weren't exhibiting skills that we would still understand to be valuable with a. analytical lens applied. Question from Sarah.

I'm writing with a question sort of in regard to Jonah Tong, my favorite prospect on the auspicious day of his debut. I'm especially excited to watch him because I was a sicko during Tim Linzicum's five-year reign as the best pitcher

in baseball and my personal favorite to ever do it, and I cannot wait to watch another pitcher with a similar motion. While ranting to my brother about the glory days of Lincikum, I said offhand, and I don't know if it's his delivery

that made it possible, or if I'm misremembering, but I just don't feel like there was ever really a times-through-the-order penalty for the guy. Turns out I was right, or so my brother says, and he really didn't have much of a statistical difference in performance his third-time-facing batters. So my question is basically, does a funky delivery that hitters take longer to figure out correlate with a lower penalty for a pitcher going through the order a third time, generally speaking? Is this the solution to pitchers who can't go more than four-and-two-thirds innings? just a really weird delivery. So I guess I'd quibble with the premise slightly in that it's not as if Linscom was immune to a times through the order penalty. If we just go with the baseball reference formulation of that, it's true that he did not get worse his third time through relative to his second time through.

But he was easily at his best the first time through. So pretty big second time through the order penalty and then was still worse his third time through than he was the first time through, but it wasn't really a neat linear progression. So there was some penalty there. As for whether the funkiness could help minimize the times through the order penalty, I could see it going the other way, if anything, because maybe if your delivery is super funky, then that helps you especially. the first time through, and then you catch up to that quickly the next time you see it or the subsequent times. Like it doesn't necessarily follow for me that the difference would be different, if that that makes any sense.

Like the penalty each time through wouldn't necessarily be slighter because maybe most of the value of that is the element of surprise the first time you see it. But maybe it's true. I can't refute it. Do you guys think it's a fair assessment? This is totally just off the cuff. But I feel like the more memorable deliveries come from relievers than starters, anecdotally, right? You think about those.

I don't know. I feel like there's more variance in relievers, and I may be misremembering. But it feels to me, I think about, we talked about how the research that shows that, you know, the more you see a reliever in the playoffs, right? Like the third day in a row, like you're much more likely to get a hit. off them after seeing them a few times. I feel like that almost refutes this a little bit.

Because I even remember, you know, I stopped playing baseball before high school. But I anecdotally do you remember there was a couple kids who had just like wild motions and it was like oh, I feel like I could like, oh, the ball's going to come out of that spot. Granted, we sucked. We were 11, right? So the ball tends to come out of the same spot. But I feel

like once you kind of saw it, it was like, whoa. And then once you kind of figured it out, it was a lot more distinctive than just someone who was a little bit more vanilla. But again, That's an 11-year-old perspective, but I feel like the reliever, the reliever playoff component sort of refutes that a little bit to me. I guess that's true. Initially, I was thinking, well, relievers historically, they will pitch from the stretch

most of the time, and then starters maybe will pitch from the wind-up, the full delivery more often, and so maybe there would be more potential for variation, but also starters these days, they often just pitch from the stretch. any way as a default. And I think you're right because if you're a reliever and you don't have to be in there that long, it does allow for, say, submariners and sidearmers in a way that is difficult when you're a starter because just the situational guys, especially in the Lugie era. But even now, you can kind of be used more selectively.

And typically, if you have some extreme release point, then there's going to be a bigger platoon split associated with that, and that could be more problematic for a starter, because you can just stack your lineup with hitters of the opposing handedness, and you can't just choose to bring in a reliever at a particular point in the order. So I think that probably, yeah, because you don't have to stay in for as long and see as many batters, and you don't have to see them multiple times in one game, typically, then it probably does permit more variation. Hmm. Yeah. As far as I know, though, the only factor that we've really identified that can minimize the times through the order effect is just throwing more pitches.

A lot of pitches, yeah. Yeah. And so now we have entertained the hypothetical, or it's not entirely a hypothetical, but pitchers who vary their delivery and vary their release point. And so if you do that, then I could buy that maybe you could minimize the times through the order effect. because you're sort of seeing a new guy each time through. So if you have that sort of funkiness where you have someone who drops down, gives you different looks each time through, then I could see that having an impact.

If it's just funky but the same sort of funkiness, then I don't know that that would necessarily correlate to a smaller times through the order penalty. But yeah, if you have a number of pitch type so that you can hold something in reserve because it does seem that the majority of this effect is the familiarity effect and you will be less familiar if you can get through that first plate appearance

and not show a hitter something that you have in your back pocket for the next time you face them well then you retain some of the element of surprise. I do miss Tim Linscombe though. Who doesn't?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we can all agree on that much. Okay, here's a question from Michael Patreon supporter who says that this arose from a discussion in a diamond-mind baseball league that he runs, double switches.

What is the extent of what that term covers? The classic example is the relief pitcher who enters the game at the same time as another defensive replacement and the two swap places in the batting order. That's basically extinct now due to the universal DH, aside from the very rare case where a team loses the DH during the game and then a double switch occurs after that. Anyway, surely the term double switch applies to the same situation involving two positions, players, as opposed to one position player and one pitcher as well, are there other valid examples of double switches? What about this scenario? It's the catchers turn to bat and he

gets pinch hit for. Two batters later, the center fielder comes up and he also gets pinch hit for. When the team takes the field in the next half inning, the guy who replaced the catcher in the batting order is in center field, and the guy who replaced the center fielder is catching. Is that a double switch? So, yeah, what is this? the definition of a double switch, what is covered by that? Because Wikipedia says in baseball, the double switch is a type of player substitution, usually performed by a team while playing defense. The double switch is typically used to make a pitching substitution while simultaneously

placing the incoming pitcher in a more favorable spot in the batting order, then was occupied by the outgoing pitcher. With the National League, having utilized the DH since 2022, pitchers no longer take a spot in the batting order, rendering the double switch virtually unneeded. So that would suggest that the double switch is itself defunct, extinct, all but extinct, at least. But is there a broader definition for the double switch? So the Dixon Baseball Dictionary third edition definition for double switch says, entering two players in the lineup as defensive replacements and not replacing each one in the batting order with a player who plays the same position. The lineup shuffle is usually done in the late innings of a close game to get a good hitter into the pitcher's place in the batting order while bringing in a relief pitcher in the national league or at any other level of the game where there is no designated hitter, knowing that the pitcher's turn in the batting order is coming up in the next offensive inning, the manager brings in the reliever as well as a second new defensive player.

The new player who is not the pitcher and presumably is a good hitter is inserted into the pitcher's spot and the new pitcher is put in the spot from which the original player has been removed. So it mostly does define it as that traditional definition. But entering two players in the lineup as defensive replacements and not replacing each one in the batting order with a player who plays the same position, that does not dictate that one be a position player and one be a pitcher. So if you're swapping in and out two players at multiple defensive positions, then maybe that still qualifies as a defensive switch. Would you two call that a defensive switch? This one has me in a bit of a pretzel. Yeah. I got to say, growing up as an AL fan primarily,

the double switch was for a while a bit of a mystery to me. It was like this arcane tactic. Yeah, maybe in interling play, I would be exposed to the double switch. And I'd say, what wondrous tactic is this? But, you know, I do understand what a double switch is. But I don't know if I'm comfortable calling a scenario where you just replace a couple players, but not at the same position. I don't know if I would call that. Like, technically, I guess that does satisfy the definition of a double switch, but I don't know that I would call it that.

I don't think that that would fall under like the understood usage of the term, right? Or it's not the most common usage. Maybe it's in there, but it's like a secondary definition. Yeah, because we're not far enough removed from the D.H era that that wouldn't cause some confusion among people. It would cause confusion. Yes, because if you came up and got to know the game, especially National League Baseball in the D.H, pre-DH, pre-Universal D.H era, we're not far enough removed from pitcher hitting is what I mean to not cause some confusion. Because if I heard someone refer to something as a double switch, I'd probably do a double take. So maybe if enough time elapses that all knowledge and memory of the pre-Universal D.H. era is lost.

Maybe the meaning will shift and will just, it'll be redefined as this more modern definition. But for now, I think I would be wary of using it because I feel like I'd have to clarify what exactly I meant by that. And instead, I'd probably just say a double defensive substitution or something like that. Yeah. I think that that's more exact. Yeah, I think as a growing up as a National League kid, to your point, it's like, I think it's like technically, I guess the person writing it is correct, but it's like, yeah, it's like I can only ever picture the situation growing up with picture hitting.

I don't know, call it something else. Call it like a switch squared or something, right? Just like something that's a bit different. That's hard to say, switch squared. Yeah. I feel like I've got to slow down when I'm saying that. Switch squared. Damn Schlitler.

I was going to say. Rolling off the tongue these days. Cam Schlittler. Schlittler. Schlittler. Got it right every time. Another pedantic question related to another kind of double-related term. This is from Jake, who says I was listening to episode 2368, and Ben was recounting the Yankees' inning in which the Nationals threw 77 pitches.

He read that Dominguez hit a ground rule double. I was probably just reading the play log from baseball reference, so that may have been what it's said, but not sure if it has been brought up on the pod before, I think it has at some point, but being a Cubs fan and a player of MLB the show, I often listen to Boog Shambi, the great boog, he's been on the show. We went to the same high school, love Boog, who pedantically always calls it an automatic double. Automatic double. Yeah.

My understanding is that if it bounces over the wall, it is an automatic double and not a ground rule double because it is a rule that is uniform across the league and not a rule specific to that field or ground. I wanted to know where you stood on this as the leaders in the field on pedantry. Wow, you flatter us, Jake. Thank you so much. Invite us to all of your house parties. We are the best guests.

Not annoying at all. Yeah, it does. Yeah, Boog is really carrying the torch for this one, I think. This is a pet issue for him. And it's something that I kind of came to later in life because, like a lot of baseball fans, I didn't really understand this distinction. And so I personally feel a little less strongly about it just because for years, I would say ground rule double. Maybe I still do when a ball bounces over the wall.

It's true, though, that that is probably more accurately called an automatic double because that is a double everywhere. And so it's not specific to the ground rules of that park in particular. So I think it's probably the better term, but also it's a lot less common. Now maybe if Boug gets his way and he makes this change happen, then we'll all be familiar with automatic double. But I think a lot of fans don't know that term. And so if you said automatic double and they're not used to listening to you every day, you might have to explain what you meant by that. Right. Because they'd say, what, automatic double?

Why are they calling it automatic double? I think it makes, in addition to being like technically correct, it makes a good bit of sense for someone whose job is literally to broadcast, you know, have a lot. games from Wrigley to make a fine distinction, right? Because Riggily has specific ground rules that are, you know, Ivy related, right? Yes. And so I can, I can appreciate the desire to make a distinction there. Yeah, like, you know, is it, is it like a square rectangle situation, though? Like, are all, are all, no, that's not right, though, they're not all.

quite right i guess yeah but all of all automatic doubles are not ground rule doubles i mean aren't they though it's just the same ground rule applied everywhere it's true it's a universal ground rule right yeah so maybe maybe yeah you could defend it on that basis and say yeah it's not specific it's not specific to that park but it's still a ground i don't feel impassioned to defend it one way or the other i'll be honest with you i'm like whatever people want to do on that one right i think in most parks, I mean, the vast majority of plays where this even comes into play are going to be the automatic double. It just bounces over the wall. And so it doesn't happen all that often that you get a ground rule double that is not an automatic double. And so for most

people, it suffices to just say ground rule double and they know what you mean or they probably you're on the same page about that, which is often where we come down on these pedantic questions like, yeah, you're probably right, but also everyone knows what you mean. But, no, this is a distinction worth making, I guess. But yeah. Yeah. It's just for years, I've said, many people have said, Grand Rule double, when we mean automatic double.

And so people understand it. It doesn't bother me that much. But I support Boog's campaign here. I'm not going to lie. I fall into the cat. One, didn't know, had never heard the turn automatic double until right now. Yeah, there you go. One, that's me.

Yeah. Two, ground rule double feels distinctly baseball, right? Like kind of stupid and old school, but in a way that we like, where automatic doubles, like, it feels like AI, right? It's like, oh, I just put a runner on second, and then let's run the outcomes. Even, I don't know, a ground rule double feels old school. Yeah. You find yourself in conflict with yourself?

Are you experiencing turmoil? Yes. Inherently full of shit over here. I mean, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, like, it. You are plagued by guilty. and embarrassment, as we established earlier. Amen, I say to you.

No, but the last thing, and this is for a very specific group of people, but I also grew up playing King Griffey Jr. baseball, and every single time you hit, regardless of field, the little umpire, he was a little blob. It's like from 2000. He would go, ground rule, double, like regardless of, he was not saying automatic double. And so I think it's more of a nostalgia thing of like, you know,

I just picture this. this little guy going, groan, same voice. You know, I don't know why they did that. But I was like eight years old and that stuck with me forever. But I did not know automatic baseball was not automatic baseball. Oh, my God. Automatic baseball. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem quainter. It is kind of more charming. The ground rule double. It's more evocative. And we do have other automatic terms. We have the automatic runner, which is, I guess, a technical term for the zombie. runner and then but we hate that we do hate that we do by any name it has but we should we can call it

its name yeah and then there's well automatic strike i guess could mean a couple of things right right could mean kind of colloquially just when you just throw one down the middle on three oh but it could also be if we have a BS next year then maybe that's a automated ball strike system so maybe that's an automatic strike. I don't know. Probably not if there's a challenge. Would you refer to timer violations on the picture as automatic strikes? Maybe.

I don't know that I would. I'm introducing a term and then have no conviction behind it. Yeah. I'm just saying, yeah, there are other things that we use automatic for. I don't know whether that's a point in the favor of automatic double or against because maybe if we're just sort of standardizing the usage of automatic, then it will be more familiar. But then also there could be Confucian, automatic double, automatic. automatic runner is an automatic runner

or someone who got on base because the ball bounced over the wall so yeah I don't know I don't feel super strongly about this but I do I'm pro boog and whatever boog wants to do I'm generally on board with all right here's another pedantic one

from Matt who says I have to question the term missing bats I concede that it's a term that is used mainly if not exclusively in baseball writing and we say it sometimes on the podcast and that it does not engender confusion, and it has a nice active sound to it, but it suggests that the bats are stationary

and that the pitcher manages to throw a pitch that doesn't hit a bat or bats. But of course, the missing will be done by the batter, and the pitcher is trying to induce the batter to miss rather than missing anything on his own. More accurate would be to say avoiding bats or eluding bats. If the extra syllable as compared to missing bats is too much, one could say,

getting whiffs what do you think what do you think? What? Yeah. I think that the origin of it is to say that like a pitch has like that missing

movement or act. I don't think it implies that the bad is stationary, right? I think part of what makes it impressive is that the bat is in motion and so is the ball, but the pitch still manages to miss the bat i think it's fine i guess is what i would say and i'll i'll give a i don't think

it's confusing in terms of what it's it's describing but here's another reason which you may or may not find compelling we just need a lot more ways to talk about stuff when we're writing about it and so what how dare you try to take something away from me like what's wrong with you no we need we need so many different words because you will get bored reading the same ones and so to spice it up. Lots of strikeout synonyms because there are lots of strikeouts. And so we have whiffs and fans,

but that's more for a swing and miss than a strikeout, though sometimes you will see people apply it to a strike out also. But, yeah, I don't have a problem with this. I think if you knew nothing about baseball, you might think that they're missing stationary bats, but we know how baseball works, so we know you're swinging the bat. I also think it's an exception to something we've talked about before

and that Russell Carlton has written about where we tend to default to the point of view of the offense and the batter. And so this is really giving agency to the pitcher because, yeah, it's almost removing the personhood of the hitter here. It's like anthropomorphizing the bat almost. You're missing the bat as if the bat just has a mind of its own and it's just swinging willy-nilly. Obviously, you're missing the swing. you're missing the bat that is directed by the batter, but we're just kind of using the bat to stand in for the batter and the swing in this case.

But no, I think it's okay. I think it's perfectly fine. Well, now the problem mentally I'm viewing, like, pick any hitter, right? I picture them, like, looking for their bat. Yeah, right. It's like the bat's ricketing through the bat rack. They can't find it. They have to use someone else.

Like Michael Harris, like, you know, like looking out in the horizon and being like, where is my bat? But no, weirdly, I like miss. Bats. It feels very like, to use your word from earlier, it feels very evocative. I don't know. I like it. I like it, too. Okay. David, Patreon supporter, says, related to last week's discussion on the act of rounding bases, something I've always wondered about Macmore in Ryan Lewis's Dave Nehouse tribute, my oh my. In the lyrics, they set up Edgar Martinez's famous double from the 1995 ALDS against the Yankees. Edgar's up to bat, bottom of the 11th inning,

got the whole town listening, swung on and belted, the words distorted, Joey Cora rounds third. Something always felt a little off to me about it because Joey Cora was already on third at the start of Edgar's plate appearance, advancing from first base on Ken Griffey Jr.'s single in the prior at bat. I've always considered rounding a base to mean reaching that base and advancing at least a little toward the next base or home plate to go around that corner of the diamond. Can the act of rounding a base be spread over multiple plate appearances? Have I perhaps mischaracterized what rounding a base entails? Not relevant to the question, but I should note there are differing interpretations of whether the lyrics are the words distorted or the words that started.

The words distorted made more sense to me, consistent with the earlier mention of listening to Niehaus on the radio. During the call, Niehaus himself never says Joey Corr rounds third. And so the words that started doesn't seem to fit as well, but I wouldn't be bothered if anyone went against me here. Yeah, I don't think you can round a, I don't think you can reach a base in one event and then round that base in the next event.

I think it has to be, yeah, it has to be continuous. You can't start the play. He could be at second and then he'd be around third. Yeah, you can't start the play at that base and round it. You can, because you're not really rounding it at that point. Like rounding it is something that happens as you're running around it on your way from another base. Yeah, and toward another base. So if you're starting, you could be leading off that base.

You could be dancing off that base, standing on the base. But you're probably not really rounding it, right? I think that that's right. I can't believe I'm being forced to contemplate McElmore on a Friday. But Dave, mehouse also. And Edgar. I know, Dave. Man, what a special.

voice that was to listen to for so long. I think it's fine. You know, I agree with you definitionally it's wrong, but I also think that like sometimes you need a little artistic license. Yeah. And of all the lyrical crimes of McElmore, this has to be very low on the list, you know, if we're rating them, if we're ranking them. I think I'd like the song still if I hadn't heard it so many times. It's wild to me how many other stadiums in places that aren't Seattle play the ceiling can't hold us song. I'm like, why are you guys doing this? You are free you are free from this you could make other choices you know we are tied to this stone but you are not you have no such millstone millstone is that the phrase millstone you have no such millstone round

your neck your neck is millstone free yeah i think you we could chalk this up to creative license or yeah or maybe a little lack of familiarity with baseball or something but this comes up You, I want you to send this segment. You have to find Macklemore and then you have to send this to him and also the Mariners. And maybe they'll go, oh my God, you're right. And then he'll be in the ballpark class, you know? Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah.

He'll be banned because of this rounding base usage. I did see him in a thrift store one time, like out in the wild. He was not doing anything except looking for, and he was playing an accordion. It was surreal. I was like, I think I took, yeah. These are things that happen in Seattle sometimes. It was 99 cents. You're there.

Your friends are in from out of town. You go to brunch. And then there's a thrift shop next door. And you're like, let's pop in and see if they have anything cool. And then you look up and there's Macklemore playing a freaking accordion. And you're like, am I having a stroke? Like, did we do edibles and I forgot? No, there he was.

That's awesome. Wow. Yeah. I had that with Waka Flocka in Atlanta. That's so much cooler than my story. I don't know. Him playing an accordion's awesome. But no, the Waka Flockone is awesome.

I was in the Whole Foods. I don't remember. It was like middle of the day. And I was getting like, I had my AirPods in, probably listening to a Factorily Wild. And I was like getting food at the hot bar. And I look over and it's like walkfaka. He's like six, seven. He's like, you know, he's a huge dude.

And he's very distinctive. And he walks over and he goes, hey man, man, have you hit any of this fucking shrimp? I go, no. He goes, it's bad. hanging. You got to get some. It just walks away. That's fantastic. And I went and got some shrimp and it was very good. But if you have a picture, I'm like, no, that was so much cooler the fact that it was so

enthusiastic about this shrimp. Plus, you got to play it cool, right? You have to, you can't be like, can I get a picture? You have to be like, no. Yeah. Oh, it's never good when there's a legal issue section of the Wikipedia. That tends to be bad. We just need less of McElmore in sports because, like, again, go back to golf.

He's got this clothing line, bogey boys, which, again... Bogey Boys? Meg, it's terrible. It's awful. Maclemore is a golf line? Oh, Meg. I'm sorry, you're going to... We want to get on this rabbit hole.

Yeah. And also, it's called, like, bogey boys, and obviously, that's bad. It's terrible. It's, and, like, he's always, like, the Pebble Beach Pro Am, and he's like, yeah. And, like, it's actually very successful, which pisses me off. We just need less... It's, like, just create mediocre music. I think that his...

Early stuff, like, on addiction was very compelling and, like, was, you know, the truest to him. And so you can tell, like, the music has an authenticity that I think a lot of the rest of it lacks. Yeah, it's like Noah Kahn. It's like, the joke is like, what happens when he gets happy, right? Like, all, like, he's so angsty and like, okay, but like, you got to think making, like, you know, I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, not necessarily, but. Why would you name it bogey boys? I don't know anything about golf.

but I know that's bad you don't want a bogey right isn't that one over par yes is it relatable is it like self-facing like you know we're not very good at golf this is $90 so I don't think so I was going to say it's just for regular guys who hit bogeys well it is golf after all so

you can be bad at golf and still be able to afford expensive golf apparently some of the graphic design of this is not half bad but also like I think that's a ridiculous name bogey boys i know and to your point usually there is a direct correlation like i can tell you on the first tea the way someone is dressed look at their bag i can tell you if they suck like usually the guys who are to kick your ass are the guys who like have irons from 10 years ago and you know a certain kind of bad at the guys who show up and like you know malbin and all this stuff it's like okay

yeah like you want to play a match like okay let's do that wow i don't know what any of that sentence meant, but I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. Okay. Sometimes you do hear creative license in song lyrics sometimes and you're not sure whether it stems from ignorance or just trying to fit the meter or something because they're example. Well, in the much maligned center field, there's an okay usage of rounding, which is just like a round and third and headed for home. It's a brown-eyed handsome man. But then in Brownad Hands of Man, the song by Chuck Berry, of course, there's the notorious two, three, the count with nobody on, which is backwards.

I mean, I know that in some places they do do it that way first with just the balls and then the strikes. Yeah, or speedball in glory days, right? And some of these, okay, it's just a little license or maybe it's a archaic term that was. used and it's not just unprecedented, but it rings wrong, but it's not completely indefensible. They're just famous examples of some of these things, but I don't know what to attribute this to. We did get a bunch of feedback to the rounding basis discussion, and we did get an email from Patreon supporter Bob, who says, I've had an image in my head the last few days following

your conversation about rounding home, an image of players actually rounding home, but I couldn't quite pin it down. Then it came to be in a moment of, aha, since rounding a base seems to happen only when the runner is headed toward the next base, even if they slam on the brakes in the end, why would anyone round home their final destination? I know I'd seen it happen, and here was the answer. On a walk-off single, when the runner from third crosses the plate, then takes that rounded path on his sprint out to first base to congratulate the hitter. I think that could be considered rounding home, if anything could at all. I guess that's true. The game is over by that point, so you still can't really round home in a game, but it's true.

You do round home. And I said, you can kind of round home just on your way back to the dugout or something, sort of. But, again, you're not really part of the play at that point, probably anymore. So, okay. Last question comes from Wandering Winder, who is also a Patreon supporter, and says, hypothetical, baseball variant, cooperative pitcher. baseball. Or offensive pitcher baseball, name could use some workshopping. Basically, it's baseball, except that the pitcher is on the batting team's side. So they're trying to throw easy-to-hit pitches, a la batting practice or probably like the home run derby. But unlike a home run

derby, you still have a full fielding team doing their thing. Obviously, this would have some adjustments. Steels would need to be curtailed. Don't let runners leave base while the pitcher is touching the ball. The pitcher can't participate in fielding if they touch the ball while it's in play. The lead runner is out and dead ball, but then also other fielders can intentionally peg the pitcher to get an out. Probably, you probably need to do something about balls and strikes. Let's say every pitch is a strike and any strike leads to an out with the possible exception of foul balls. My impression is that this is more like the old or original formulation of baseball, where it was all about the hitter and the defense, but not so much the pitcher. And the pitcher was

just necessary to get a reasonable chance for that hitter to have a go. Would or could this be fun? much would offense go up? Would teams go all in on homers? Would they try to have signals or communication between hitters and pitchers to adapt to what the defense is giving? How would the defense position themselves? Would pitching for high offense become a big and valuable skill? So, yeah, kind of harkening back to the early days of baseball where the hitter could choose where they wanted it and specify high or low. And it was more about the pitcher was just kind of getting the proceedings started. And then it was more about hitting, running the bases, the other fielders getting to the ball, and the pitcher could field, of course,

but was more just the inciting incident for the play, was the pitcher throwing. So how would this change things would we want to go back to this original intent? Yeah, okay, so I think this would be cool with a caveat. So my friends and I play, I know we didn't invent stickball, but when I was a kid, my dad invented like our own version of stickball. And I'm happy to kind of tell you the whole rule. So one of the big caveats is if you hit it out of the tennis court in any way, shape, or form foul ball or home run,

it's actually an out. And so I think what could be cool is if you apply that principle here. Because I think if people are kind of opining for a, but something's very focused on kind of balls and play, that could be really fun, right? So the idea is like, no, like you can get wherever you want. But if you foul it straight back, if you hit it out of play, if you had a home runs and out,

and that really focuses the incentive on base running and fielding. I think that that's super not fun. I think it's going to turn into home run derby, if otherwise. But I think if you're looking for an alternate version of baseball, that's very focused on balls and play and kind of the excitement there, especially I think it'd be cool if you play it in like alternative ballparks, right? Like I think about like the growing up, like playing like backyard baseball, right, where all these weird dimensions or polo grounds, like you play this game where,

out of the park in any way, shape, or form isn't out at the polo grounds, I'd watch that. That sounds really, really fun, actually. Yeah, this could be good for more of a pickup type game. And, well, you'd solve the pitcher injury problem, but you would solve it by basically eradicating pitchers, as we understand it, which is what the injuries are doing as it is. So I'm not sure that that would be the solution that's better than the problem, really. Because we do like pitching. I think there is a happy medium that's somewhere in between this and what we've had lately where, yeah, we want more action and we want more balls in play and everything.

But also, pitching is pretty fun. I mean, pitching is fun to watch, right? It's just it's more fun to watch someone who is pitching tactically and strategically and has all types of interesting movement and everything. Then it is to just see someone who's throwing old school traditional batting practice. That's just not all that interesting, let alone lobbing it in their position player pitcher style. So pitching is a big part of the entertainment value of baseball. Perhaps it's taken it a bit too far with the pitcher batter balance, where we want to nerf pitchers just a little bit,

but I don't think that we want to do it to this extent. But, yeah, it would just be kind of, I mean, you could almost hit off a T. I mean, it'd be almost the same sort of thing. Like, as we talked about the other day, the pitcher does supply some of the force in the exit speed, and so it'd be a bit harder to hit the ball a long way, but also easier because the pitches would be a lot easier. And I'm not sure you'd even, yeah, you might not get that many more balls in play because everyone would just be swinging for the fences because it would be easy to, right? So, yeah, you would have to do other things. You'd have to, like, do away with outfield fences or make them much deeper.

And then what does that do to the spectator experience? We've considered that hypothetical in the distant podcast past. So I could see it also if you don't have a good pitcher handy. I mean, you know, it's kind of like why we have coach pitch, I guess, or T-ball. It's just if you don't have someone who can pitch very effectively, then you focus on the things that the players can actually do. So there are versions of this where I think it makes sense. But at the highest level, or would I find the highest level of this as entertaining as I do,

the current version of major league baseball probably not ashton it's been a pleasure yeah thank you for coming on and thank you for supporting us of course and we wish you well with the new marriage and we wish you well i think with the new job just promise you'll unplug the machines if it comes to it that's all we're asking like b you are the last line of defense yeah it feels weird for that to come down to what sounds like is an hr role but who's going to stand up for the humans, if not human resources. You know what I mean? You know, as we covered, AI company could mean any number of things, and I'm not going to

ask you to specify because I don't necessarily want to know, but maybe it's one of the more benign or benevolent applications of what we might call AI. Who knows? Let's go with that, and let's assume that it is not Skynet or despoiling the environment. But we wish you well or putting us all out of job. I guess would also probably be bad unless we just all get to enjoy our leisure time. And you probably don't want to put yourself out of a job either because you just got this one. No, I definitely did my homework.

I'm like, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say, you know, it's for good, right? No, it's for profit. But yes, like definitely factoring those things in. And no, I thought I robot was a cool movie as a kid. It kind of freaks me the freak out now. So don't worry. If I need to take them out, I'm 5, 10, and not very. athletic. But I'll try my best.

Okay. That's what we ask. Okay. And we will link to the Munisipal's golf podcast. Anything else you care to plug before we let you go? No, that's it. I do the podcast every two weeks. We have kind of two tournaments a year, one in Southern California, one in Oregon. And if anybody wants to come and play, we'd love to kind of meet new people. So, no, just really appreciate y'all's time. Again, you've kind of kept me company through the last, you know, 10 years and especially grateful in a year like this where it's like, am I, do I want to consume a bunch of like Braves content? No, I don't. And y'all have been kind of a, you know, kind of a warm comfort blanket where it's like,

cool, let's talk about other things. So really appreciate all that y'all do. And just a, I don't know, I was telling my wife, there you go, wife. Takes a while to get used to saying that, I know. Seriously. I was like, yeah, they've done 2400 episodes. She's like, what? I'm like, yeah, I know. Yeah, it's a lot. So just want to say we like very much appreciate y'all and can't wait to keep listening. Well, Juan Soto stole another base in the first inning on Friday. You can't stop Soto. You can only hope to contain him. Oh, and I'm seeing many reports that Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez has been consistently saying Schittler during Friday's broadcast. Though maybe that was a commentary on how Cam Schlittler was

pitching. George Springer faced Schittler in Toronto and the most pitches that Schindler has thrown this year, 97 pitches he did that against the Astros. Barger had two hits against Schindler the time he faced him in Toronto. He hit a cutter

for a base hit and hit a curveball as well. So that's why Schindler is using his fastball. And there's the cutter. A little late break in on him at the last moment and Schlittler strikes out Barger. Yeah, don't be surprised that the pitching coach comes out right now to give Schindler a little bit of a break.

And Schindler's got his good fastball early in this game. It was another good pitch by Schindler right inside with that hard fastball. It was 99. And now, Schindler's up to 33 pitches. Also, immediately after we stopped recording, Ashton apologized for invoking golf so much. But he said there are just a lot of analogs, a lot of similarities across sports. And I actually had that thought myself shortly before we recorded because I was reading an interview on Neil Payne's substack, which is called Neil's substack.

He talked to Matt Corshane, one of the founders and operators of the golf analysis website, Data Golf. And here's something Corshane said, see if it reminds you of anything that people say about baseball. One recent popular narrative is that professional golf is less skillful than it used to be, that it has become a bomb and gouge game. The idea is that advances in technology, particularly more forgiving drivers and lower spin golf balls, have decreased the penalty. for a mishit and encouraged players to swing as hard as possible off the tee.

This has led to a narrowing of the skill distribution and given driving distance an outsized role in determining success in pro-golf. This makes sense as a theory, but the data doesn't really support it. For one, it's hard to argue that the best golfers can't separate anymore when Scotty Schaeffler's posting historically dominant numbers, driven primarily by his ball striking. And then he explains that the categories of strokes gained, which is a popular, useful golf stat,

tells you where you pick up strokes, what aspects of your game. And evidently an analysis of these categories shows a remarkable consistency in where players gain strokes over time. If the pro game had fundamentally changed, these numbers should reflect it. In particular, if it has become more bomb and gouge, we should probably see off the T's contribution to scoring separation increasing and approach plays contribution declining. And that hasn't happened. So bomb and gouge, it's just, hey, hit it as far as you can.

Just get the maximum yardage. And then if you're off the fairway, if you're in the rough somewhere, well, just muscle the ball to the green. So if we're all about bomb and gouge, then just how hard and far you hit it should be more important than whether you're aiming it accurately. And he says our past analysis of driving distance accuracy and performance up to 2019 did show a recent uptick in distances importance while accuracy declined. But over the last five years, accuracy's correlation has rebounded and distance has dropped. So bomb and gouge, this reminds me of all or nothing in baseball, the idea that everyone's someone is just swinging for the fences. There's no nuance in the approach. There's no adjustment based on the count. And it also reminds me of the common refrain that we have throwers,

but not pitchers, that everyone's just trying to throw it as hard as possible and not caring where the ball goes or not capable of placing it accurately. I find that those things are somewhat exaggerated as well. There's some truth, at least to the first one. Maybe both. Corshane also says that one reason for the fact that the importance of accuracy in golf has rebounded. Maybe the lack of true Bombers' paradises on the PGA tour, it's interesting to go through the 2025 schedule and note how many courses clearly

favor bombers. There aren't that many anymore. So perhaps the sport has adjusted and the courses have adjusted. And okay, if the golfers are just bombing it, then you reconfigure the courses or you move to courses where that's less advantageous. Sometimes you can tweak the game in such a way that that ascended

strategy doesn't work so well anymore. So I think that's interesting. I think there are elements of truth to it, but that also, if you look back the beginning of baseball. You could see players bemoaning the decline of so-called scientific baseball, place hitting, small ball in favor of home run hitting. I think it's often hard to argue for a previous generation of athletes that they're bigger, stronger, or faster than the current generation, though some of them do certainly still make that case. But it's easier when presented with those facts in front of your face. Oh, these guys are strong and large to say yes,

But there's no nuance. They're just blundering about. We played the game the right way. We had a better command of the finer points. We weren't just brute forcing our way through. Perhaps it's pretty to think so. Or perhaps when you get bigger and stronger, it just makes more sense to leverage that size and strength.

Also, thought I'd read these two emails. Just put them out there for the audience. This one is from Patreon supporter Guy or Guy, and it's about batted ball sounds on broadcasts. We've talked about the crack of the bat lately. and this emailer says, I have been thinking about writing in on this topic since I first started noticing it in the postseason two or three years ago. I was hoping it would come up in the recent discussion of ballpark sounds. I'm an auditory forward person, and the sounds

of the game have always been one of the draws for me, particularly the iconic crack of the bat. However, in recent years, some TV broadcast seem to be using too many field mics or something, and they are not synced up perfectly, resulting in every batted ball sounding anemic, like a broken bat or a foul tip, even if it is crushed 450 feet. I find this to be an abomination. I tried to start a list of acceptable and unacceptable bat sounds on all of the various broadcasts, but I consume a lot of baseball via the MLB app's recap rundown, an underrated feature, by the way, which pulls audio from all four TV and radio broadcasts, so it is

really hard to be sure which I'm hearing. I can say definitively that the worst defenders are Apple TV, SNY, despite otherwise being by far the best, TBS and Fox. It does seem like most of the local broadcasts still have a nice crisp crack sound, thankfully. Curious, if anyone else has noticed this, for me, it is the worst thing about the postseason, aside from the fact that my pirates never have a chance to make it. I have noticed this, I think, on TBS. I do like a real crack of the bat.

When it's too muted, it does zap some of the excitement. I hadn't really thought of it as a postseason-specific thing. But yeah, maybe there's something to this. There are times, though, when the bat crack sounds almost too pronounced, and here's a relevant email from another listener, Chris. Subject line, Confessions of a Bat Sound Sweetener. I wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes story from my time producing radio broadcasts for a Major League team over three seasons. Part of my role involved saving highlights, editing them, and distributing those clips to various media outlets. Here's my confession. I almost always sweetened the crack of the bat, just a touch,

actually a lot, to make the clips a little more ear-catching. It added some extra excitement to the highlights, though I sincerely hope no scouts ever based signing decisions on those enhanced bat sounds. If they did and the signings didn't pan out, I suppose I owe them an apology. Did not know. Is there a bat sound conspiracy? If so, here's your whistleblower. See, I have noticed sometimes that the crack of the bat sounds almost too loud. It's like a rifle or it sounds almost unrealistic or heightened, artificial, and maybe there's something to that. Maybe that is happening here. So we want some bat crack, but we want it to be genuine as well. And we also want listeners to support us on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild

and signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Robert Holmes, Michael McAvoy, Julia W, Cody Dunlap, and Samuel Beyer, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include, well, potential podcast appearances, as you just heard, Monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams coming up next month, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch, and ad-free fancrafts memberships, and so much more.

Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at fangrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. 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 at 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. Thanks to you for listening. That will do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Effectively wild

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