Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2375: Presented in 4K

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s reaction to the Mariners moving into first place in the AL West (at least temporarily), Jac Caglianone and the Royals’ woeful corner-outfield offense, whether major leaguers have gotten better at sliding, and an unjust byproduct of the zombie runner. Then (50:43) they bring on baseball researcher and […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats with Ben and Meg from Fangraves. Effectively wild. Effective in life. Hello and welcome to episode 2375 of Effectively Wild Baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Well, like Pete Alonzo, after he hit his walk-off on Sunday, we feel like we're surfing on top of a dragon because it's a new week. We have new baseball to banter about. Robinson Canoe recorded his 4,000th career hit. this past weekend in the Mexican League playoffs, and we will be talking to Adam Duroski of baseball reference about the 4,000 hit club, of which Kanoa is the newest member. But we must begin with your Seattle Mariners,

who start the day and, in fact, will end the day. You know, usually we talk about the standings, and I always hedge because I feel like by the time we publish the podcast, things may have changed, but the Mariners are off on Monday, and they start the day with a one-game league, in the AL West, which means they will also end the day with a lead of some sort in the AL West. How does it feel after nine straight wins for Seattle? I almost don't want to talk about it.

You know, like, I'm having to, like, grapple pretty profoundly with how much actual capacity for superstition I have is, like, a rational person. I feel nervous about that. this has been an unsettling time despite being thrilling several of the games have been very close I wouldn't say that they are have been comfortable a lot of the time they've been uncomfortable it has not been the most comfortable time there have been extra innings wins there have been close races there have been there have been wobbly times but also sometimes dominant performances the dumper has tied Mickey Mantle for the most chum runs by a switch hitter.

So, like, that's just thrilling on its face. I hesitate to even talk about this because I don't want to imbue what is obviously silliness with power. And I want to be specific that I am talking about the Mariners Etsy Witch because there are other Etsy Witches in the news. First of all, can I just say this? I'm not going to talk about the other Etsy Witch. Who knew that there were multiple Etsy witches? You know, like, I didn't know there were any Etsy witches. I had brushed up against the notion of an Etsy witch a while back because a YouTuber I enjoy

had talked about buying spells from an Etsy witch for one of her videos. She didn't think that it was like a real thing to be clear. And so I was like, oh, there's, there's like, there are Etsy witches. But, like, who know that there were so many Etsy witches? I know that there has been some reporting done on this Etsy, which I've largely tried not to engage with it because something should remain a mystery in one's life. But is this like a specialized Etsy witch?

Like does she specialize in sports related spells? I'm saying she, by the way, no idea of the gender of this person, you know? But I'm making an assumption that I don't think is wrong. If I were going to construct in my mind, a portrait of an Etsy witch, that person would be, you know, someone who uses, like, is she her pronouns? So I think I'm right.

Which can be a gender neutral term, I think. But it's often, you might hear, wizard or warlock. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Warlock. That's a dumb word. You know, I'm just going to say that.

I'm not going to offer any super confident takes about my Seattle Mariners in this segment because I feel like we shouldn't even be looking at them that closely because if they know that they're being observed, their behavior might change. And so I want to register, even though you're right to say like they're off today, they can't fall out of first place. They could the Astros play today, yeah?

Yeah, they play. Yeah. So like they could share first place again at the end of the day. It could happen. They can't fall out of it. But I still feel nervous about talking about this at all. I just... I can tell.

But this is a take I feel confident in. Warlock is a stupid word. It just sounds dumb. You know, it sounds like for florp. Like, what is that? What is this made-up word for a made-up thing? Evidently, it originates from the old English word meaning oath breaker. And so it sometimes carried negative connotations.

Well, yeah, Warlock sounds negative. as a wizard. Yeah. Well, I guess the, depending on whether the Astros win, they could be tied in the last column. Right. Well, yeah, they'll still have a half game lead. I guess that's true. So you can enjoy it just for today.

I can tell. I can't. I can tell you can't. Ben? You've really screwed yourself because now you're unhappy whether they win or lose. Whether they make the playoffs, then you're dreading the playoffs. I am. If they don't make the playoffs, then you're sad that they miss the playoffs again.

I guess you could look at it as a win-win because... Because it's lose-lose? Yeah. Well, even if they do lose, if they were to miss the playoffs, then the win would be that you wouldn't have to be subjected to playoff anxiety. And if they win and make the playoffs, well, then the win would be that they're in the playoffs, which is generally considered a good thing.

And there might involve travel. I want them to win. I know that I've talked about how the emotional experience of your favorite team being in the playoffs is actually torture. And I, that's another take I will stand by because it is. But also, I want them to win. You know, it will make so many people happy. It will make all of these guys happy.

And, like, I talked last episode about how the, um, the Phillies dugout vibes seem immaculate. Mariners dugout vibes, pristine. It, beautiful, a thing that I wish we could bottle and sell as a supplement. Like, it's just like such a good feeling. I know people who work for the team. I want them to be happy. I want my family to be happy. Like, I want them to win.

That's not, that's winning, you know. Win, win. They should win. They would be, I want them to win. I'm just so, I'm so nervous because, like, what are the boundaries of an Etsy which is power, right? Like, what are the parameters? What are the rules?

I don't understand the lure of the merit. Edsie Witch. Like what, how, how reliable is this Ben? Can I count on the, the Mariners Etsy Witch? I feel they need to say Mariners Etsy which very specifically. It is an important distinction. But I don't know. As, as curses or reverse curses go, I think this is a pretty fun one. We all understand. It's silly. It's just for fun. But, but what sports curses aren't, right? They all have some ridiculous, preposterous origin story. And this is a full. fun one. I know, but I'm just saying that like we don't even understand our own power in this realm. You expect me to understand some other witch's power. I don't even know my, I'm in the

phase of the Netflix show where the gal is like, you know, accidentally breaking stuff in her own apartment because she has just gotten her powers. That's where I'm at. And like the edges are blurry for reasons you've reported on, and that's given me a migraine, which isn't helping me harness the power, you know, what's worse than a witch who doesn't know her own strength? A witch who doesn't know her own strength who also has a migraine because of the weird blur, you know? That's what I'm saying. So all of that to say, this has been great fun.

Yesterday, we're recording on Monday. Yesterday, the Mariners win decisively. My Seattle Seahawks defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers, which will always be satisfying because I am still mad about it. in that Super Bowl, come at me. I'm all, I'm all, I don't know what to do with my hands. You remember, I feel like Molly Shannon and S&L. Like I'm sticking my fingers in my armpits.

I'm like, what do I do with them otherwise? Anyway, it's a lot. I feel happy. If we're going to take like actual baseball insight away from this, which like, are you coming to me for that on this particular subject? Remains to be seen. But I, I've been heartened. by the performance of some of the pitching.

Now, obviously, some of that is home cooking, but it's home cooking. And if they keep home cooking like this and win the division and then they get some, see, my sites are already, I'm worried I'm over my skis. Because did you hear it? Did you hear how the goalpost moved? You're taking things for granted already.

No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. You're allowing yourself to have hope. let's say that much. I am. I mean, like, some of this is just, like, the reality of having to do a little bit of planning.

And I'm like, God, like, it's not just the Mariners. Like, I was talking to Martel earlier. I was like, do I need to put it in for a universal BBWA credit for the Diamondbacks? I mean, probably not, but maybe, but maybe, you know? I saw a note in the baseball reference newsletter that Mariners' pitchers struck out 76 bad over their last five games, which is the most in Mariners franchise history over any five games been. Pretty impressive. That was the sort of starting pitching performance that was expected of the Mariners all season. And another note, a stat blast follow-up, such is the power

of the Etsy Witch that the Mariners have now done something that they hadn't done for almost 35 years. So on episode 1723, we did a stat blast about the fact that the Mariners had not had an undefeated, quote-unquote, perfect homestand since April 1991, and we ran a bunch of stats about homestands and road trips, and it turned out that the Mariners had by far the longest perfect homestand drought. This was, I think, defining a homestand as four games minimum. So every team at that point when we did this stat last years ago had had one as recently as at least 2002, and then the Mariners hadn't done it since 1991. And we got multiple emails this weekend, including one from Patreon supporter Shane and one

from listener Stephen, who was actually the original emailer who inspired that stat blast way back when to say that the impossible perfect homestand is finally possible because the Mariners just went 7 and 0 at home against the Cardinals and Angels. So they did it. And look, Cardinals and Angels might, um, uh, something to do with it, sure. Eagle-eared listeners might clue in on that. And here's where I'm going to be honest. It's like, yeah, this was very encouraging. They pitched well. They, they hit well. They had a couple of squeakers because that's apparently the kinds of games they mostly play, but the pitching was equal to the squeak. And, you know, they, they rallied back in each of those Cardinals games. but sure, were they aided by the fact that they were playing a diminished Atlanta Braves,

that they were playing a not very good St. Louis Cardinals so mid that we've barely mentioned them this season, a just like disastrous Angels at that team. Yeah. Ben, it's, you know, I'm out here talking about how the Mariners vibes are good. Angels, I do follow a couple of Angels fans, and I'm always, like, surprised because I clearly mostly see them tweet about other things or post on, blue sky about other things rather rancid just like a real rancid vibe but um this is like this next week very important right because they they play the royals who have they have something to play

for right and if the royals be the mariners like helps their case diminished profoundly though it may be and then the real the big kuhuna three games in houston against the aster i mean like that'll probably side the division, right? It could, yeah. And then they get the Rockies at home. That feels like a little present. Potentially, maybe, maybe. All of those are Mariners value games,

which feels very rude to the Rockies. I'm just realizing that, looking at the schedule right now. Wow, that is, you know, that's not respectful. I feel like that is disrespectful. I get it. But I also think it's a little rude. And then the Dodgers, they get the Dodgers for the final weekend of the season at home.

Dodgers, you know, who could say what their fate will be, where they will be in the standings? I am just, I am, I can't believe it. I mean, like, I want to be clear. I don't think that the Mariners at sea witch is actually responsible for this. But I also think this, that sometimes you've had. you've had a rough go you know you've been on the road you've been you've been swept by the raise that doesn't feel good at this particular juncture you've gotten you've gotten your ass handed to you by various clubs up and down the eastern seaboard you feel diminished you know the

the glow of that initial like post post all-star break series against what they were were playing the they were playing the astros they took two or three they looked for you know it's like this is a long that was a long time ago that was july that was like during the summer during the summer it's almost not it's it's not even it's barely summer here anymore ben i i'm afraid to say this too because i'm just like potentially jinxing every source of happiness in my life right now but i think we're through the hot you know like i i i went I went to a local boutique on Saturday, and I'm chatting with the gal as I'm checking out. And we both were like, we did it.

We made it. We made it through the hot. I've had the windows open all morning. Nice. Well, I'm glad you're cooling down as the Mariners have heated up. And they have really had to work for it because not only do they have the most travel of any team in the majors, miles-wise, as we've covered more than 50,000. But also, I noted this last week, but I didn't have the numbers. they have played the most extra innings of any team.

So Mariners pitchers have compiled 39 innings pitched in extra innings this year. And the next most, the Rangers, have 23. So they've been working overtime these Mariners. And it's working out for them lately. So happy for you, happy you're handling it so well and are not at all flustered by this run of success. And wish you well in the weeks to come. hey look here's the thing here's the thing as we've covered this is earned anxiety okay this is

this is knowing anxiety this is i've been here before this is not my first rodeo anxiety okay that's what this is yeah i swore that's what this is because because sometimes it works out but most of the time in my experience it does not you know yeah and i i will not be lulled into a false sense of security by who an etsy witch no no i and look i'm not trying to insult the mariner's etzy witch i don't know the again i don't know the bounds of her power you know maybe she will smite me can etzy witches smite people don't anger the etzy witch unnecessarily i'm not trying to anger the etsy witch i am demonstrating candidly a shocking amount of respect toward the etzy witch because like is that a real business you know like come on she but plenty of public

So if it wasn't before, then it's probably more viable now. And so, like, here's another question. Is it, like, I'm going to sound mean when I say this. And I'm just trying to actually, like, suss out the boundaries of the Etsy, which is it, like, an emotionally, is it, like, a taxing experience to spellcast? Like, is she still taking orders? Or is she, like, I got to, I got to recharge. All of my efforts are being funneled into these Seattle Marriott? By advertising the Etsy Witch, have we undermined the Etsy Witch's power over the Seattle Mariners?

Are her magical attentions now going to be fractured? Spread too thin. Yeah. Right. Toward other sports franchises. Again, the Mariners Etsy Witch. Mm-hmm. Well, maybe it's the mustaches.

They're all growing and not the Etsy Witch at all. Who knows? Really variable pulling off of that mustache across. Yeah. So if and when the Mariners make the playoffs, we're not taking anything for granted here. We're not taking anything for granted here. We are so nervous. We are sweating.

Sweating. And this is not really a victory, but it's a moral victory, a victory of sorts that this is the latest in a season that the Mariners have held sole possession of first place since 2001, which was a notable year for that franchise. Don't ask me how to end it, though. I can't remember. No, I can't recall. Yeah. But one team that looks like it will be on the outside looking in is the Kansas City Royals, who are now, I believe, six games out of that final wildcard slot.

Their playoff odds down to 0.2%. And I just want to say, since I've been talking about who's had a disappointing season lately, and I mentioned Elida-Cruz because even though he's been the best red, he hasn't been the best Ellie, at least lately. another player who fits into that category of was exciting to see him, had high hopes, and didn't perform well for a potential playoff team. Jack Caglione, who homered on Sunday. But, man, I remember when he came up, he was seen as sort of the savior of their just impotent bats in the outfield.

They just had been really bad in the outfield. And I think we said, look, he has holes, you know, he's probably. He can probably be beaten, but he just has huge power. And he has shown off that power on occasion. He's hit some tape measure bombs. He hit one on Sunday, in fact. But I remember thinking, well, it can't be worse. The bar is pretty low in this Royals outfield.

So even if he doesn't hit the ground running and start slugging like he was in the miners, all he has to do is be an improvement over the bats that the Royals have out there now. And you know what? He hasn't been. And that saddens me. And I hope that he can get it together in future, in future, as our UK friends might say. And maybe next year with a full season under his belt and he'll go do some homework and figure out how pitchers have been getting him out. And maybe he'll close those holes. Who knows?

But to this point, it has been quite rough. And he's now at 197 plate appearances with a 39-WRC plus. So he's batting 151. That is not very good. No, it's not great. And somewhat surprisingly, he hasn't really struck out that much. In fact, he has a below league average, as in better than league average, strikeout rate. But he has a 162 babbip.

That seems bad. It does seem bad. Not that he's a speed demon or anything, but 162 babbip for a guy who hits the ball as hard as he can sometimes. Now, the good news, I guess, is. is that he has underperformed his expected weighted on base average by more than 100 points. Wow. Yeah. That's a big gap.

The biggest gap, in fact, even in 200-ish plate appearances. So the underlying numbers and quality of contact a good deal stronger. But the surface stats bad, and those are the ones that count for wins and losses purposes. And so he's a negative 1.3 war. And if you add up the Royals Corner Outfield production, as a team, all of their corner outfielders put together, it is one of the worst corner outfields performances. It's by far the worst this year. They have a 67 WRC plus. Wow. Yeah. All their left fielder and right fielder put together, 67 WRC plus.

The Pirates are second worst at 81. Never great to be that much worse than the Pirates. offensively. The fan graphs splits leaderboards that make this easy to look up go back to 2002. And if we exclude 2020, then the only worse WRC plus by a team's corner outfielders belongs to the 2004 Royals. Oh, no. Yeah. They had a 62 WRC plus. And then I guess also at 67, the 2016 Phillies. But then you have the 2025 royals who just collectively have a 207, 276, 336, 336 line. Yeah, it's really bad. And a lot of their pitching moves have worked out well this year, last year,

but the hitting moves not as good. And those numbers, even with some solid work from Mike Yostremski. I was just about to say, that's inclusive of a good deadline acquisition. Yeah, 140 WRC Plus, who is traded away from the Giants, who now find themselves one game out of the wild card as we speak, at least. So he has helped bolster those stats somewhat, but it's a lot of Caglione and Hunter Renfro and John Rave and Drew Waters. Actually, Drew Waters has not been among the worst of the right fielders, offensively speaking. But yeah, it's been really bad out there.

And if you look at the left fielders, also really, really terrible. And they have a lot of left-fielders, but that's not the goal to have the most left-fielders. That doesn't help you. In fact, it's probably a bad sign. Their leading left-fielder, playing time-wise, is Drew Waters, who has 98-played appearances as a left-fielder. Now, I know that left-fields, it tends to be kind of a holding pen for a lot of guys this year. It's like almost a second DH slot, not this year only, but just in this era, you know, you get a lot of players just sight. in and out of the left field spot.

It's kind of the place you stash someone who's not great at defense or whatever. But to have your leading left fielder playing time-wise have 31 games and 98-plate appearances, that's still probably pretty bad. I haven't looked at other teams. But my sense is that that's not great because that means that you're constantly looking for some other solution out there and not really finding it. Yeah, it doesn't strike me as particularly good. And, you know, maybe they should thank Kyle Tucker in the off season.

That'd help. Yeah. It would help, you know. It would be a boon. One might even mention it. You can tell how nervous I am about the Mariners because I felt the need with their upcoming series to be like, and they could catapult the Royals as a playoff position. That seems unlikely, but I'm just so nervous.

I guess the good news for the Royals, not this year, but in general, is the, that sometimes when you have glaring holes, it makes writing out your shopping list a little easier, right? Like if you're looking around and you're like, I need everything, well, that's a problem. But what if what you need is underwear, well, then you just go get some underwear, you know? And I think we're always talking about how the outfield

is really the underwear of the baseball team, you know, like foundational. I don't even know what that means. Well, you got to have underwear with the see-through pants. you're showing too much, you know? I'm all over the place. This is only the Monday show. This isn't even a Friday show. It's got Friday show energy so far.

Because I am so nervous. That is coming across. Yeah, but I understand. I will, by the way, return to my Adam Frazier versus Cam Devaney, bold prediction. Oh, yeah, yeah. Spoiler, it's not going great for me thus far. But we'll wait for the dust to settle until we get the final tally here. but yeah, it's not looking good.

Is it because they're both doing so well? Well, I wouldn't say that Adam Fraser has set the world on fire as a royal, but he is doing considerably better than Camdivaney is as a Pittsburgh pirate. I will say that much. Okay. Two more banter topics before we get to former mariner Robinson Canoe. So Zach Kreiser in the bandwagon on Monday was talking about how he believes that players have improved at sliding, that they've gotten better at evading tags.

Okay. And I think I buy this. Sure. And he said he wants to dive deeper into it at some point, and I look forward to that, and it would be a difficult thing to quantify tagging improvements. Maybe the folks at Sports Info Solutions have good tag plays or something tracked, but I don't know how far back that would go. But he highlighted this slide that Mickey Moniac made at Second Vace to avoid. avoid a tag. And it really was pretty impressive. And it was one of these things where somehow

you just sort of stop on a dime and Luis Arise was trying to apply the tag. And Moniac just his legs were jello and one leg is over here and they're akimbo. And he's somehow managing to Deke Arise into putting his glove in one place. And then he just sort of stops and he sticks his foot in his hand here and there. And somehow his momentum didn't carry him past the base. It was pretty impressive and athletic and acrobatic, and Zach wrote, the contortions to avoid tags and rip safe from the jaws of out are now nightly occurrences. I credit this to rules changes around collisions and ever-increasing athleticism, and maybe a little bit to Javier Baez, just being himself. And yeah, it might be all of those things and probably is. But I've got to think that

if this is real, that a big part of it must just be instant. replay, right? And replay review specifically. Because, yeah, okay, so anti-collision stuff, yeah, maybe there's a little more leeway or the fielders aren't blocking the bases as much and you're less afraid for life and limb and everything. And yeah, ever-increasing athleticism, I'm always subscribing to that. But I think there's just greater incentive to do some fancy slide because you'll actually get rewarded for this now if you challenge. And in the past, it was so often about, did the ball beat you or did you beat the ball? And that was basically it because the umpire couldn't take another look at it and might be deep just as the defender was.

And so you didn't really have as much incentive to do this. In fact, you could argue that it slows you down to do one of these fancy slides. Like, you know, maybe you look like you got there faster if you just kind of go in no holds barred and you're not slowing down. to do some fancy footwork or handwork. So I think this rewards those kinds of contortions because you look at it slowed down and you can tell, oh, yeah, how about that? He actually, you know, if you do get thrown out,

you can get that overturned if you're deserving. And so now I think there's really reason to perfect that art. And I guess that also means that there's reason for fielders to be more careful and diligent in applying the tags because just getting it in the general vicinity before the guy reaches the base is not necessarily enough now. But yeah, this is, I think, kind of a classic example of, well, once you can either quantify something or track something or just notice it and be rewarded for it, then people are going to dedicate themselves to that art.

I think that that tracks. And I wonder to your point about sort of how fielders respond to this if we will see it sort of migrate. back in the direction that it used to be as they get more sort of fastidious with their tags. I wonder how the ever-increasing size of the sliding glove will impact this. That's an ongoing theory of mine. They're getting a little longer every year. But, yeah, if I were going to estimate the percentages based on nothing, really, I would probably ascribe the bulk of it to

replay and the role of replay. But I think you have to have to have the skill for the replay to matter, right? This specific play that inspired this observation and now our discussion, he was called out. Moniac was out

on the field and then lying on his back still he did this rapid finger wag as if to say, no, no, no, go check the tape and they did. And the call was overturned and he was safe. So I think that's why he went to all that trouble, really.

And if someday we get the rules change that we have advocated for and others have just sort of some airspace play, airspace rule, so that you are entitled to the base once you are over it, even if you briefly lose contact, not even the sliding past the base, but just the briefly hopped off it or something or wasn't to. actually touching it at all times while the tag was being applied. If that kind of cheap play, that's another thing that I guess replay gives and replay takes away. Because now some of those you would have been safe before and now you're out because you briefly detached, though. Does anything ever really touch?

There's always some weak force that is keeping us from making direct contact with anything on an atomic level. So really, is anyone ever safe? That's what I want to know. But, no, I think that if we somehow legislate that out of existence sometime, that kind of cheap call that no one really likes seemingly except the defender who applied the tag, well, then maybe you have to worry a little bit less about your momentum coming into the base. And I don't know, maybe that allows for even greater freedom in the tagging arts or the tag evasion. arts. But yeah, I will be interested to see if there's like kind of a cat and mouse here where the runners have improved at this and then maybe the fielders can improve too. Because Javi Baez, of course, was celebrated not just as a slider, but as a tagger. That was the thing

that he got so much ink and attention for and rightfully so. I guess when you're receiving a throw, there's like a little less latitude there because often you can't see exactly what's going it's bang bang and you know you're kind of a prisoner of where the throw goes so your primary goal has to be just catching it and so if the throw is a little wide or whatever

then there's only so much you can do as a fielder and then you just have to sort of slap the tag on there so it's probably a little less maneuverability I guess it's like well you're the defender so you're in the reactive stance there. It's like, you know, you're trying to adjust to the runner's movements and trying to anticipate, oh, where's he going to go? Oh, no, he's going over there.

Oh, got to place my glove over there. And you might not have much time or capacity to do that because you're trying to catch the ball and turn and keep track of where the runner is and everything else. So maybe it would be tough to keep up in the tag race there. But I do very much enjoy this. This is one of my favorite. types of baseball play, just that incredible gravity defying, how did he do that, how did he do that and not break his body in three places, kind of, you know, or like the acrobatic leap

over someone, you jump over a fielder entirely, that's always a good one, or just manage to deek the defender. Those are, that's right up there with my favorite type of baseball highlight. I agree. Well, here's one that is not among my favorites. In this specific instance, it involves Blake Trinen. Now, Blake Trinon, I have no affinity for him on a personal level. I was going to say, he probably doesn't care for the Marinersetsy Witch very much.

Yeah, well, who knows, really? No, I think we have heard tell he was referred to, not about the Marinersetsy Witch in particular, but I think that there was coverage at one point that called him a wizard, and he took umbrage to that. He did not care for it. Okay, then. I didn't even remember that bit of Blake Trinon, Lord. I was thinking of other things. But I suspect that he and I would not see eye-to-eye on much.

On a number of things, yeah. But this might be one circumstance where we would agree. And, you know, I have to put personal affinities aside where a greater enemy is concerned. And my number one vow is to do battle with the zombie runner in all cases. And here we have common cause, I think, because both Blake Trinen and. And I have a grudge against the zombie runner. So on Friday, he took the loss in the Dodgers game. And I believe that this was unjust because here's what happened.

So he started the 10th inning of the game. Now, he had pitched the 9th already. And he stayed in for the 10th. And he pitched a pretty good 9th. He didn't pitch the whole 9th. He came in in relief of Jack Dreyer. bottom of the ninth. This was Dodgers Giants. It was tied at the time. And Dreyer had gotten one out, but someone reached on an error and then a single. And so he came in,

bottom of the ninth, I think, first and third, and he got out of it. He intentionally walked Willie Adamas and then he got Wilmer Flores to hit into a double play. Okay, so he gets out of the gym. Top of the 10th, the Dodgers don't score. And bottom of the 10th, he, comes back out there, and there's a zombie runner. Christian Koss starts the inning at second base. Blake Trinen gets Matt Chapman to ground out, and so Koss goes to third, and Blake Trinen is pulled. So he's removed from the game. Okay. And in comes Tanner Scott to try to keep the game tied. And I guess this was for a platoon advantage matchup. Jean-Houli was coming up. So Dave Robert's goes to Tanner Scott, who walks Lee and then intentionally walks Casey Schmidt,

and then gives up a walk-off grand slam to Patrick Bailey, which you may have seen. This was another big hit by Bailey. Exciting. Keeps the Giants in the playoff hunt, big blow against the Dodgers, big hit. The loss goes to Blake Trinen, who did nothing wrong in this inning because he was the pitcher when the zombie runner was put on base. I won't even say reached base, just magically appeared on base.

The good thing, I guess, about the zombie runner is that it goes down as an unearned run, which, of course, it must, because how could you say it was earned? But there still has to be a pitcher of record. And because the winning run was scored by Christian Koss, the zombie runner, Blake Trinan is tagged with the loss here.

God. Even though he did nothing wrong. He came in, he got an out. And he was pulled. And then Tanner Scott is the one who actually did everything wrong. This, and, you know, look, it's pitcher wins and who cares and who cares about reliever wins, especially. But pitchers probably still care to some extent. He clearly does.

Yeah. You know, like, this is unjust, I think. And I guess someone has to be charged with the loss here because that's how the accounting, the baseball bookkeeping works. but I think it should be like a team loss or so. It should be charged to Rob Manfred. Yeah. It's a Manfred man, just L. Manfred. I don't, like this is, it's a rare event.

And I actually asked Michael Mountain, Patreon supporter, and listener to look this up. So sort of a quasi-stap last year. And he used his retro sheet database to look at how many times this has happened entering this season because retro sheet is not out for the car. current season yet, but from 2020 through 2024, as far as Michael could tell, this has happened 10 times that 10 pitchers have been hard luck losers in this very case where they started the final inning. They did not allow a base runner. Then they were pulled and the zombie runner scored and they got stuck with the loss. So 10 times this has happened. It actually

happened five times last season and four times in 2023, but zero times in 2021 or 2022, which is interesting. I don't know if it's just random or something has changed about extra innings in that time. But I guess you could say it happens a couple times on average per season. It's a rare event. And I'm glad that it's rare. But however rare it is, when it happens, I must speak up. Even if the loser in this case is Blake Trinan, I must stick to my principles and say that this is yet another bad manifestation of the zombie runner. I would agree. I think that there surely should be some sort of solution to this.

And also, I must issue a correction on my prior post, which is that Blake Trinan was referred to briefly by pitching ninja as the witch. Uh-huh. And that was what he objected to. I did not, I did not misremember his objection, but I did misremember the nickname. name, which is the witch, which is even more in keeping with the Mariners Etsy witch, if we're being honest. Maybe he would have preferred Warlock.

I don't believe so. Someone asked Pitching Ninja about that, and he rejected the notion out of hand because Trinan has a religious objection to the whole notion, and so I don't think that a sideways shift into Warlock would be satisfactory to him. Got it. So that's the deal with Blake Trinon. and witches. Glad we straightened that out.

But we do agree that this is just justice gone wrong that a pitcher who does nothing wrong. And I've talked before about another thing I hate about the zombie runner. There's a long list. But I particularly... I love how you say I talked before as if there was one time. I can't remember which episode it was. When you raised an objection to the zombie runner as if it is not a running theme of the show. at this point?

Yeah, I've got a little lighter on that this year, I guess, just because I've registered my objection so many times. They haven't changed, to be clear. I'm no less aggrieved, but I don't want to be too repetitive. And fortunately, we're almost at the stage where the zombie runner disappears because we're about to get to the postseason, fortunately. I know. I think we got through all of last year's postseason without an extra inning being played,

as I recall. I felt I felt cheated because I want to see some actual extra innings baseball go on without the zombie runner unsullied by the starting runner on second base. And we did not get that. Yeah. But this is really, I think, unfair because especially, you know, with the three-batter minimum, this can only happen at this point if you were pitching the prior inning already. Right. And probably that means that you pitched decently well in that inning, because if you hadn't, either you would have been pulled or the game would be over or both.

So probably you did some decent work just to get the game to that point. As Trinan did, he got out of a jam and extended the game. And for his trouble, he gets a loss through no fault of his own. What I was going to say is that one of my other objections on a team level to the zombie runner is the kind of game where no one actually does anything wrong because you start the inning with a runner on second. And then it's entirely possible for the pitching team just to get two outs and lose.

You can just have someone hit a ground ball and the runner advances and then there's a sack fly or something and that's that. You lose. That doesn't happen very often either. We ran down exactly how often it happens. But each one wounds me. And this isn't quite that. because in this case, at least the team was at fault.

The team did do something to lose. It was just Scott, not Chinan. Chinan's hands were clean. He was faultless. He was blameless here. He pitched well. He did his job. And then he was replaced.

And yet he's the guy who gets stuck with the loss. So I don't know. If we don't want to charge this to the team or to Rob Manfred or something, I mean, I guess it's easier in this case because Scott allowed multiple runners, including ones that he had put on to score. So in this case, I guess you could almost just skip the zombie runner. Yeah, it was a grand slam. And so, you know, like other runners scored that were Scott's responsibility too.

But there are many times where the zombie runner would score and that would be the game. And so that has to be charged to someone. I just, I don't think it should be. I am with you, you know. And like you, I feel comfortable speculating that this might be one of the few points of commonality that I share with Bleak Trinan. So there you go. You know, it's good to find the things that bring us together, even when they're so small.

Yes. And, you know, people use these edge cases to chip away at the zombie runner. And I think the entire idea is just so fundamentally flawed that we don't even need to speak to specific instances that show how absurd it is. But this is something like when the rule came in, we talked about and others talked about, you know, you could have a perfect game now and lose because of the zombie runner. Right. And that hasn't happened. It could happen. Even the fact that it's theoretically possible is bad, I think. But this is a case of something that actually happens, if not often, at least semi-regularly. And I think it shouldn't. You know, I would object, I think, a little less to the zombie runner. A little less, to be clear. I would still object, but a little less often a little less vociferously. If the runner started at first base, because, you know, that wouldn't do as good a job of achieving the goal, of shortening the game by increasing scoring and extra innings. But if you put the runner at first instead of second, then at least the defending team would have to do something wrong for that runner to score. Because as it is, as I just noted, like you can just get outs and that runner can come around and score anyway.

If the runner started at first, then they could not score just by advancing. on two outs. And so you would have to allow a hit or make an error or a wild pitch or a passball. Like there'd have to be some sort of miscue on the defensive part in order for that runner to score. And that would be a little less objectionable to me. People also say, you know, people say, well, what if we just waited a couple innings to start this if it weren't in the 10th, but it were the 11th or the 12th or something?

Yeah, that'd be better. Almost anything would be better. or people will suggest other ways of ending a game and most of the time I'll concede, yeah, that's better. It's still worse than just ending it in a tie as far as I'm concerned or doing what we used to do

and just actually playing the game to completion, either of those would be fine with me. But yeah, if we were to just ameliorate the harm of the zombie runner without doing away with it entirely, we could either delay, just postpone the start of this practice or make it first base instead of,

second base, though. I guess the second base method, you know, they're both fundamentally breaking baseball, just a thing that really is kind of core to the game that you can't just be on base without having done anything to get there. And so once you break the seal on that, maybe it's okay to start at second because at least then it'll achieve the goal more or less of getting the game over more quickly, whereas if you started at first, then you'd still have that. slap in the face of the sport, but also the games would go on longer anyway and you wouldn't

even have achieved as much. But I'm still in the camp that knows that we're never going to do away with this probably, but at least as long as we draw the line at the postseason and we keep the game lengths in check with the pitch clock and everything else that I do still feel like if we had put the pitch clock in place prior to the zombie runner. I agree. And if it hadn't been kind of shoehorned in as a pandemic measure at first, then I think we could have escaped its use in the majors entirely, because if we hadn't had kind of the fig leaf of, oh, it's for safety and, you know, not wanting to have super long games in the shortened season and everything and not wanting to strain the pitching staffs even more in the 60 game season, between that

and also it being pre-pitch clock so that there was more incentive to keep the games shorter, then I'm not sure that there would have been the will. to make this happen, even though most of the direct stakeholders, the players, the broadcasters, the media members, at least many of them, the team owners, et cetera, are probably for this. I think that the biggest issue that you have, and there's no getting around it, but you can't get around it, is that the people who most like the zombie runner are the players. Yes, it is a sticking point. They want to get out of there, man.

They're tired. It's not that they don't want to pitch. it's like it's how long you want me to go already you know this is the sort of rationale that they bring and so i think you're just going to always be swimming sort of upstream because of that um not much doing unfortunately and you know i i i don't agree with it we you and i are aligned on this and many other things unlike the two of us in blake trine and where again the the universe is quite small. But I think that it's always going to be a problem that you don't have play your buy-in for traditional extra innings. And I think that the place where you're really

going to find defeat, and this is something where we have to maybe make some tough decisions about our priorities, we, you and I and many others are of the opinion that part of how we can push back against the imbalance that has emerged between offense and pitching is to limit the size of pitching staffs. Never going to achieve that goal with traditional extra endings. I'm sorry. You're just not. Now, is that right?

Clearly, I have an opinion that it is not right. But is it, I think, the reality, I do think it is the reality. So what do you do with that, you know? Well, we keep up the fight. We don't go gently into that good night. We continue to rant about it periodically. for those who care. Okay.

All right, let's take a quick break, and we will be joined by baseball researcher and baseball reference design expert Adam Durowski, who has researched players who have 4,000 professional hits, asterisk, and at the bottom of the asterisk, in certain leagues and competitive contexts, which Adam will explain in just a second. But Robinson Kano is the latest member of that august group

I know it's not August. I said August, it's September, but he has 4,001 hits, and we will talk to Adam in just a second about how significant that is. Diggins that are six shirdos and three directs. And here in three and two, out of the line that goes to HART, Hardin Central.

Sincill for Cano. And this not only represents his hit number, 50 in post-temporada with Diablos, is the hit 4,000 of your career, taking in account all the levels of baseball in where he has played

and in a way indistinct be a playoff or role regular. On Saturday night, a 42-year-old Robinson Canoe still wearing his familiar number 22 became member number 22 of the 4,000 hits club. And on Sunday,

he upped his tally to 4,001 as his Diablos Rojas repeated as champions of the Mexican League. During the regular season, Kano batted 372 with a 99 OPS, which was actually down from his 431 batting average and 1114 OPS last season. Granted the Mexican League as a whole

batted 295 with an 844 OPS this year, so if you want to remember what high batting averages look like, look south. But even with his measly sub-400 average, Canoe added 137 regular season hits to his career total this year, which combined with his postseason production, gained him entry to an exclusive group, which we know about, thanks in part, to Adam Dorowski.

Adam is the executive director of design at Sports Reference, parent company of baseball reference, and he is one of the leading research minds behind the 4K club, which he presented on at the Sabre conference this past summer, in collaboration with Scott Simkus and von Spalding. He's also our guest today. Adam, welcome. Hey, guys.

How you doing? It's very nice to see, well, to hear from Ben and Meg today. And, yeah, this is great. I almost feel like congratulating you on Kno's milestone hit here, because you were so invested in it and you did so much to bring attention to it. You would not be the only one to do that. And now I kind of have let, like, oh, what am I going to do with my life now? I'm going to find something else to take that time.

I didn't expect myself to get so wrapped up in it. But there I was, watching every pitch. and hanging on to every at-bat and found myself rooting for the Diablous Rojas. It was a lot of fun. Well, you got to dig deep into the data and find number 23, because we know he's out there somewhere.

We'll get into that. So tell us about the origins of the 4,000 hit club as a concept as something other than the sole province of Pete Rose and Tai Cobb. How did this idea originate and how did you join the effort? Yeah, this idea kind of originated back in 2013, actually. him. Guess who you mentioned before, he's part of the Seamhead's Negro Leagues data team. And he wrote an article when Ichero passed 4,000 hits when you combine his major league

totals and Japan totals. And I remember finding that article at that time. He wrote it on saver.org, and he noted that Ichero was one of nine known players to do it. And this was across all leagues, including postseason. And, you know, the list included Rose and Cobb and Henry Aaron, stay unusual, a couple others you'd expect, but also had some of my favorites like Manny Minioso and Julio Franco, who were a couple that I was particularly drawn to. So it was great to see them on that list.

And, you know, over the years, I dove head first into Negro League's research. That was probably like the last thing we talked about. Just, you know, digging into not only these Negro League players' stats in the Negro leagues, but outside of the Negro League as well. And that's when I started the concept of, like, combining these stats across different leagues and pulling them from, you know, books and newspapers and whatever I could find. And, you know, I found myself, you know, not only constructing even more hits for Minioso and Franco,

but also, like, finding, you know, players from Venezuela who had 3,000 plus hits and, you know, a bunch of home runs and things like that from that era. But then I realized that, you know, this isn't a thing that stopped when, you know, then major leagues became integrated. You know, there are players that have been doing this for years and years. You know, I only found out recently that Jose Cruz had like almost another thousand hits in Puerto Rico. And I was like, wait a second. So that puts him out, you know, how much?

And, you know, then I found out that Von Spalding, an independent researcher, was kind of doing more of this stuff too on the side as well. So we joined forces. And Vaughn had actually doubled the group. He found nine more players. Well, I guess we both kind of stumbled upon one of them, and then he found a whole bunch of others that I didn't even know about. So Scott joined with us, and he wrote another updated article with the now 18 members of the 4,000 hits club. And even since then, we've found three more.

We know that there's one more that we just haven't confirmed yet. And then, of course, Kano just joined as well. So what is being included here, and what, if anything, are you guys excluding in terms of your account? Yeah, that's kind of like the one of the one. of the biggest questions that I get, like, how are you defining this? And, you know, it's very important for us to be as consistent as we could be. But also, when we publish our work, we're really trying hard to show where all of the stats came from, because, you know, maybe somebody doesn't agree with, including the World Baseball Classic or something like that. And that way, they can make

their own list of 4,000 hit players. So we're choosing competitive professional leagues, so anything from the majors and minors or independent or the foreign leagues in Latin America or in Asia. We even got some hits in Italy for one guy. And any of the post seasons from those leagues as well, you know, in the U.S., we don't typically combine postseason stats with regular season stats. But, you know, that's a very American concept. In other leagues, the postseason is a much longer affair. There's much greater focus on that during the season.

And we also, you know, just look, you know, I'm heavily inspired by soccer, so kind of using like the club and country concept to also include international tournaments. So that's like the Caribbean series or World Baseball Classic or there was one called the Inter-American Series back in the 60s. And, you know, just combining those and what are we not including? You know, we're not including spring training, which I guess Canoe had probably like another 250 hits or so in spring training. So we would have gotten there a while ago. thinking of those more as like developmental games and not really like competitive games and for that reason we didn't include

instructional leagues as well but we also didn't include exhibitions which we extended to include all-star games which maybe you could see all-star games as counting in these but we didn't end up counting them just to be consistent plus all-star game data is really really hard to find for the other countries so that allowed us to be a little bit more consistent

among all the leagues And to be clear, in tracking all of these hits produced in different levels, different leagues, you're not trying to equate them. I think we'd all like to argue that each row is the real hit king and combine his MLB and NPB hit totals and say more than Pete Rose, aha. But we know that all hits are not created equal and these are created in different contexts and leagues and difficulty levels. But you are trying to recognize that baseball is broader than just MLB or just MLB or. just AL and NL. So is that the purpose here to have a more expansive definition or appreciation, at least, of professional baseball? Certainly, yeah, this is not a list of the 22 greatest hit-getters or whatever you want to say it of all time. This is a different type of list.

It's a group of players who, in some cases, just played a really, really long time. In some cases, they played in many, many different places, just compiling a few hits, a few hits there. And before you knew it and added up to 4,000. It's really just a different way of looking at it. We're not trying to rank players. We're just trying to identify players who did a cool thing. And sort of to that end, I mean, obviously there are, we've already named some of them, names on this list that will be very familiar to our listeners, but who are some of the folks who you view this as an opportunity to sort of highlight a career and maybe a life in baseball that the average fan wouldn't be aware of.

Yeah, the title of the Sabre talk was Julio, Mnioso, Ichiro, and Carrillo, with a question mark, because Matthias Carrillo, who was a original Florida Marlin, was a name that jumped out to me because I'd literally never heard of him. He played a couple seasons with the Marlins. I don't know. Some listeners might remember this guy. He played three games with Milwaukee a couple years before joining the Marlins, but never made an at-bat. And I was shocked to find he had over 4,500 hits.

He had over 500 home runs and over 600 steals. And, you know, he's the only guy other than Barry Bonds that we know of to have 3,000 professional hits, 500 professional steals and 500 professional home runs. Like him and Bonds, that's it. So it's like, and Mattius Creed, it's like, who knew? Like, that was so exciting to find this out about this player who did not play all that long ago. And, you know, he did this, and we didn't, you know, I'm sure there are plenty of people who know about it, and especially in Mexico, and he's celebrated there. He's a Hall of Famer there. But I just wanted to, you know, bring some of those names to the U.S. as well. Yeah, you have four members of this club, I believe, who never played in the U.S. majors. You have Hector or Hector Espino, who I want to ask you about in a second, and Jesus Summers, Teolindo Acosta, Nelson Barrera.

But I think my favorite, even more so than those guys, were the few who played in the American majors, in the AL or NL in many cases, but played so briefly or in such an undistinguished way there that you would never know. And you mentioned one of them, or Robert Perez, for example, who played for, you know, parts of several seasons in the 90s, mostly for the Blue Jays and some other teams. But you probably wouldn't remember him, and you look at his MLB hits total, and it's low. But then that turns out to have just been the tip of the iceberg. And there's just so many, many hits below the water line there

that you have discovered or unearthed here. Though I suppose some of those players who might be sort of obscure for fans of MLB probably would not have been in their countries or whatever league they did excel at. Right. That's the really interesting group. You can almost understand, like, oh, of course I don't know Hazu Somers because he never came to the U.S. at all.

But then you see a name like Vic Davileo, and you're like, wait a second, he had 4,000 hits. That's like the journeyman, you know, professional hitter guy. And you dig in, it's like, holy cow. He played 30 seasons in Venice. and, you know, played in Mexico and played, you know, extensively in the minors as well as his thousand or so hits in the majors. And it's so fun to put those together. Another interesting one was Cesar Tovar, who a lot of people know for, you know, playing nine positions in a game.

But he also had like a thousand plus hits in like not only Venezuela, but the U.S. and then a bunch in the miners, a bunch of Mexico, and all added up. So the top names on the list are mostly well known. Lots of legends here. But I do want to ask you about number two, who I just mentioned a second ago, Hector Espino, who is one of those guys who never played in the U.S. majors, but has the second most hits of all time as you are accounting for them here. So tell us about his career and his total of 4770. hits. So he's 86 behind Rose. We think he's 86 behind Rose. What's interesting about Espino is we were missing all of his hits from the Mexican League postseason, which only started in 1970. So it didn't include his whole career. We have only tracked down one season where he had 24 hits in that one postseason. He also had three more home runs, which pushed him to 792. So there's actually a chance that Hector Espino, if we find all of his data,

could be number one in both hits and home runs, which is just remarkable. So he's the Babe Ruth of Mexico. You could hear about him, probably heard about him a little bit when looking at minor league records. For a while, the Mexican League was considered a part of minor league baseball, and because of that, he is technically the minor league home run king,

with 453 in the Mexican Summer League, and then like another three in the U.S. But that doesn't include his Mexican Winter League stats where he had another 299 home runs. So he just has so many home runs, like 792 that we have in the ledger so far. So he played, you know, 25 plus years in both the summer and the winter. Mexican League is a relatively long season, the Summer League as what, and not longer than the American National League, but it also has a long winter league season as well. which is fairly unique.

So players are able to compile quite a few hits when they spend a lot of time in both of those leagues that helped with Matias Curio, helps for Hector Espino, helps for Hesu Sommers as well. So, you know, not only does he have the volume, though, he hit 333 and slugged 554 across all of these leagues as well. So he's just, I don't know if he's the, if he should be seen as like the Babe Ruth of Mexico. is very similar vibes to Henry Aaron, though, I get in terms of like the longevity, just producing year after year, never those wild 60 home run seasons or anything like that, but just home runs after home runs after home runs and did it for so long. Obviously, some of these leagues, depending on how far back you're going,

which players you're talking about, might not be in existence anymore. So forgive me if this is an obvious question. But I'm curious if for those leagues that have been running for a lot, long time outside of the U.S. If there's been any shift in the concentration of non-major league baseball, non-affiliated baseball hit and home run tunnels, basically, can we use this to sort of back into an understanding of the leagues themselves and how their offensive environments have changed over time?

You know, that might be something that we could do if data was a little bit more readily available on like a league-wide aspect. And right now, that's been really tricky. Like one of the questions I get, too, is like, why aren't? all of these hits for these players on baseball reference, for example. You know, that's my day job. You're just too busy with this to add them in. Like, where would you find the tie?

I mean, you know, on the register portion of baseball reference, which is what we call like the non-major stats area, you know, usually we're pulling in entire league's worth of data, which I just don't have these in a readily available format right now. There's some seasons from these leagues. That's where it's able to get a lot of Robert Perez's stuff, like even his games in Italy. But going back further, that data can be a little bit more sparse and it takes a little bit more investigation to find, like, the specific stats for, like, a Hector Espino, or there's another guy that we're still trying to track down his 4,000th hit. He's played in the very first season of the Mexican Winter League, and we know that he led the league in at-bats, but apparently no other records survive. So we're trying to track down.

He must have had plenty of hits in that season, but I haven't been able to get them yet. But I've been developing more and more contacts in Mexico, you know, in some of these other places as well to try to track down a little bit more. That's how I got that one season of postseason data from Hector Espino. So hopefully there's more. Would you say that the key to becoming a member of the 4,000 hit club, obviously in some of these cases, it's to be a great Cooperstown caliber player. But would you say anyone qualifies as kind of a compiler? Can you compile your way to 4,000 hits? or do you have to have been a star somewhere at some point to get into that rarefied territory?

I mean, you do have to be a star, but I guess if there's one guy, I kind of hate to do this, but, you know, Hesu Somers is the one guy who never played in the U.S. at all. And he also happens to be the only 3,000 hitman in the Mexican Summer League's history. But if you look at his career totals, I mean, he did have 4,330 hits and 323 home runs. but like on a batting average and slugging percentage basis, we're looking at 274, 392, that type of thing. So he's not, you know, you look at a guy like, you know, even Julio Franco, people don't see him as a Hall of Famer.

I have, during this process, I've evolved my stance to actually see him that way. But, you know, over his entire career, we're looking at like 308 and 438. You know, Julio Franco, 334 home runs, 597 steals. Like, you add all this up and you get these incredible numbers here. So I guess I would point to maybe the weaker link being Hesu Somers, but you also have, you know, there's a good number of players who didn't actually play in the major leagues here. But I think that they were very, very strong players in their league.

So it's a good question of like, you know, league quality and, you know, how does 4,000 hits here translate to 2,500 here or something like that? That's not really work that we've done. We've just mostly been focusing on the raw totals just to kind of see the cool things these guys have done. on Franco or Franco, I never know quite how to pronounce it. I always used to say Franco. Now I question that.

But are you reevaluating that just based on his holistic career or his actual MLB record? For him, it's actually the MLB record more than anything. I think the key turning point for me was when I realized, well, it's not like just to take Miniminoos. Minimiozo was done in the majors at 40 and then played, you know, in the Mexican League. And, you know, he played winter ball beyond that as well. he was done with his major league career major league teams were not trying to sign him not to turn this into uh hulio franco for the hall of fame but like he left the major leagues several times

you know not necessarily by choice maybe during the strike was by choice but every time he was so good that they just had to have him back and he ended his career with seven sustained years in the major league so the way i look at it is like if he had never left the major leagues during that time. He's a clear, you know, 31, 3,200 hitman. And that's just the way I choose to view him now as as that 3,000 hitman. You mentioned developing contacts in Mexico, and there are these gaps that sort of make it hard to talk about the leagues as a whole. Are there particular gaps that you are still looking to fill? Like, what is your data white whale right now? Mexican League postseason is a big one right now, particularly before, like, I forget exactly

what year Vaughn has for us. But the more recent years, it's easier to find in box scores online and things like that. But for Hesu Summers, his entire, we don't have any postseason data for his entire career. So he could have hundreds more hits, but we just don't have it. Nelson Barrera is another one as well. Nelson Barrera is probably the opposite of Hesie Summers for me, where he's the guy that I think, I'm kind of shocked he didn't have a major league career because he's, if Hector

Respino is Babe Ruth and Nelson Barrera is Lou Gehrig. He was right behind him and everything and just incredible stats, like well over 600 home runs and he's got a much more robust averages as well. So, you know, missing all of the postseason for his entire career, we don't have anything there. And it makes me wonder, you know, if there's any players on the outside that we could possibly move over the line if we found their Mexican League hits as well. Yeah, I noticed that Itro is the only Asian player in the club currently. Is that a product of the structure of the sport over there, just shorter NPP seasons, for instance, or is that a data issue as well? That is not a data issue.

I mean, baseball reference has complete NPB data since it started, so that has been easy to get. But I think it has a lot to do with the shorter seasons. And I guess most of the players did not play Winterball. There might be some players here and there that did that I need to track down. Also looked in KBO where I forget the name of the player who is the all-time hit leader. He's at like $2,700 there, but didn't have enough outside of the league to be on our radar for this type of work. So, yeah, I think there just may be more of a culture of playing year-round in Latin America that we don't see elsewhere. But I'd have to dig further into that as well.

Yeah, and aside from Vinicio Chico Garcia, the Mexican second baseman, you're trying to validate and make an official member, if you did have perfect data in all the leagues and levels of competition that you are counting here, would you hazard a guess as to how many more members are out there to be found? Look, I also have a dashboard of the guys at 3,500 plus, and I think, you know, looking at the Mexican League, postseason gap, a couple that popped to mind, Juan Navarette, who I believe is still a coach in the athletics system, has 3,922. He has almost 2,000 of them in Mexico, but again, we don't have any Mexican postseason. So that's a guy who, if we found the Mexican League postseason data, could certainly pass 4,000. Beyond that, Alonzo Tellez is a little bit over 100 away. It's certainly possible that he could be there as well. I think the non-Mexican league players, we have a pretty good grasp on.

Tris Speaker is one. He's 13 hits shy, but I don't think those 13 hits are out there. Like, I think we pretty much know where Tris Speaker played. Similarly, Jose Cruz, Senior is, what's that about, what, 62 hits away or something like that. But I think we've pretty much, we've even got his Puerto Rican league postseason. We've got his senior league. I don't know if you're familiar with the senior league that was around in like 89 to 91 about then. He played in that league as well and picked up 77 hits there.

So, I mean, senior professional league, professionals right in the title, so we opted to include it. But again, yeah, we're listing where all of these hits come from, if anybody wants to say, let's not include senior league. Among the guys who are actually active, who's your next Robbie? Like, who are you gearing up to watch? I know that a lot of these guys are still pretty far off, but if people want to start obsessively watching, if they want to get in on the ground floor, right, you know, on the early EP, as it were.

Yeah, that's a tough one because people aren't doing this as much anymore. And, you know, a quick aside, I was surprised to see Bobby Abraeu, actually, in the 4,000 hit club for a couple reasons. Number one being he walked so damn much. Yeah. And number two being, he's like the guy in the group who played in era and was a big star where like he wasn't doing this for money like he he was he had more than

enough money and he just played kept playing in the winters for the love of the game and and ended up getting 4,000 hits and I think that might be one of the reasons why we don't see it as much as like these guys are superstars and they're making this money maybe they just you know don't have to play year-round anymore like they used to so the player who is not quite on uh on on on the radar to watch on a daily basis yet. But it's going to be Jose Altuve. If he gets to the point where he's approaching 3,000 hits in major leagues, then we'll know that the 4,000 hit club might be a possibility for him. So still a ways off, but it's certainly possible. Don't know of any more active players that are getting close. But now that Robinson Cano has done it, I've got to find

someone else to fall on, so I'll let you know. Yeah, really, the low batting averages aren't helping. That's why I guess we need everyone to end their careers in the Mexican League, maybe prop up those hit totals. Do you happen to know offhand who had the shortest career of anyone who's in the club? Because most of these guys obviously are playing well upwards of 20 years just to get to these totals. And of course, it's possible to do that if you're not playing at the very highest, most elite level, you can perhaps last a little bit longer, as Canoe has and and still flourished. Of course, Kanoe, his MLB career, didn't necessarily end for purely performance-related reasons.

Or there were other reasons as well. But, yeah, who did this most efficiently, do you think? Yeah, well, I guess in terms of doing it by number of at-bats, it would be, I think, Cobb and Musial are the only ones below 13,000 at-bats. Okay. Although, Venacio Garcia is, but he was also. still currently under 4,000 hits. So, you know, depending on the ratio there, that's actually pretty good there.

Taylor Acosta was pretty efficient. That was a name that you brought up before. He's just over 13,000, but he has one of, like, the top batting averages are the guys that you'd expect or, you know, might, you know, start to expect with Hector Espino, but it's like guys like Ichero and Ty Cobb. But then, like, I think it's fifth on the list is Taylor into Acosta at a 320 batting average. So he was pretty efficient as well across multiple leagues. I think he's the one that had a thousand in the minors in Mexico and in Venezuela where he is from.

I don't know whether any living members of the 4K club have found out after the fact that they are members of the 4K club through this research. But Robinson Canoe is certainly aware. So tell us about the part you played in bringing that to the attention of the team. and evidently Canoe himself because he posted about it on Instagram, right? And he saved the ball. So that'll be somewhere on his mantle, presumably, and that might be because of you. Yeah, that was super cool because, I mean, it all started like the day of the presentation itself, our mutual friend, I'm sure Mark Simon was in the crowd.

And he was texting Eduardo Perez because Tony Perez is in the list. And, you know, one of the questions that I get right away is like, does Robinson Canoe? know how close he is. And Mark said he was going to have Eduardo pass that along to Robinson Canoe. I don't know if that connection was ever made, but as more time went on, I actually ended up reaching out to Cano's team, the Diablos Rojos, and letting them know what I was doing and that he was getting close in case they wanted some information and wanted to celebrate it for him. And they actually responded extremely positively. I've been in contact with them literally daily, their social media director and I have been texting back and forth

when, you know, just he wants to get the framing right, you know, how do I describe, like, what's covered and, you know, what's the best way to present this? And, you know, just daily updates. Oh, he's seven away. Oh, he's six away. And, you know, nice to have a new friend down there that way. And it was really, really cool to be watching the game, because I still at that point did not know if Robinson Canoe knew, and then the 4,000th hit happened. It was a nice solid hit to right field, and as soon as he gets to first base, you know, he's waving to the crowd, he's doff in his helmet, and, you know, they're collecting the ball, and I could see that it really, really meant something to him, which was very, very nice to see,

because, you know, I can't, you know, I don't want to take, like, too much credit here, but nobody was counting this up to this point, so you didn't even know. Like, I think that, you know, these guys know, you know, I've played in a lot of places, had a ton of hits, but nobody's really just been combining them. It's a fairly simple concept, but, you know, not something that people have really done. So it was cool to see his positive reaction to it. And he's been sharing a lot of things out about it, too, which is just very fulfilling. Yeah, I wonder how Kano feels about that, because his career in MLB ended kind of in disgrace. And he could have been a Hall of Fame player.

I assume he won't be now because of the PED. stuff, but Hall of Fame Calber player, certainly war-wise, jaws-wise, he's deserving, basically, and that's even with the fact that he missed all of 2021, and there was the suspension, and then, and who knows, you could, of course, argue that he wouldn't have been as good as he was without the PEDs. We'll never really know, but he seemed at one time like he could be a lock for the 3,000 hit club, at least the famous one in MLB, and then he ends his career in the Mexican League where he's a star. And I've always thought it must be nice. Like maybe the lights aren't quite as bright

and the money's not quite as good and all the rest of it. But it's got to be good after you age out of the highest level league, if you just drop down a level or two, you can still be an absolute superstar there regardless of the circumstances. And, you know, I've always thought that that would be a nice second or third or fourth act or whatever it is. Just your way to bow out of baseball is to kind of you know, you climb the ladder on the way up, and then most guys, they get off the ladder and they retire because they've made their money and everything else. But some guys, they kind of descend the ladder too. And maybe that was more common back in the old days when it was a little more amorphous, the majors, the minors, the distinctions weren't as clear, plus the money wasn't as good. So you might have needed to just continue to make a living and you might just play long after your major league career was over. So I don't know. I was always a fan of Canoe because he came. up when I was a Yankees fan, and then he played for Meg's team as well later. And, yeah, so, you know, we had our- Actually hit, you know? It was great. Yeah, so we were both Robbins and Canoe appreciators, and I'm sort of sad about the way that

his career wound down. So I don't know what this means to him, whether this is like redemption or not, but it was clearly a nice moment that he valued, so I'm happy about that. Yeah, just to hear how revered the guy is there, you know, they love him. and it was nice to be a part of it and help them celebrate this for, you know, something that's pretty unique. And it just so happened that, you know, I was doing this research and didn't know at the time that Kanoa was even closing in, but it was a nice way to get a few extra months out of that research that I did. Yeah, I saw some story about how there was a surge in prices of his baseball cards or something because of this maybe. I don't know how real that was. You could have

bought up the whole supply before you did your tallying here. made a fortune, who knows. But it's good that you happen to be tracking this because I don't know what his plans are. Obviously, he could continue to play if he wanted to based on his stats this year, but don't know if he will. So if only Tris Beaker had known he was 13 hits away from the 4,000 hits club. If you had been there to do the counting, then maybe he would have stuck around a little longer just to get there. Yeah. Speaking of Tris Beaker, Canoe does have another record within reach, and that's the most professional doubles.

So if he wanted to keep going, he's at 8.54, number one is actually David Ortiz at 899 among players that we know about. Trist Speaker is somewhere in the middle. We're actually missing one of his minor league seasons. So he has like at least 855, but again, there's a whole season missing where he was a pretty good player. But yeah, maybe I'll have to pass along. And he was originally actually scheduled to play in the Baseball United League that's happening over in the Middle East for. or one of the teams based out of Dubai, but it looks like he backed out of that maybe because he's not on the roster anymore.

So the former Yankee has an opportunity to take down the former Red Sock? I feel like that might be actual motivation for someone somewhere. Yeah, that could be a story. All right, anything that we haven't covered that you care to highlight about any of the players in the club or any past or future research?

I mean, you know, up next, I've already started looking into 400 wins, so that's a whole other thing to take a look at as well. Maybe that'll be something that I'll present at Sabre next year or something. Well, we look forward to it. Thank you for the research, Adam, and for coming on to talk to us about it. Yeah, always a pleasure. Thanks for both of you. All right.

Relevant to our recent conversation about extremely soft tossing position player pitchers, I was reading an article in the athletic about the underarm serve in tennis and how it's morphed from occasional trick shot to legitimate tactic. And as tennis players are serving faster, serving harder, the returning players are standing farther back. And they're now more vulnerable to a soft little serve that bounces a couple times before a player can return it. And of course, this leads to some unwritten rules flare-ups

because players resent being made to look sort of silly in that situation. And so they try to discourage their opponents from using that tactic by trying to portray it as bad form. Well, perhaps the same applies to. the baseball. We don't see the authentic Ephus pitch anymore. Not often anyway, but you'd think that the faster typical pitches get, maybe the more

it would confuse hitters to slow things down with a little lob. Maybe that doesn't work so well when you're throwing all your pitches 30-something miles per hour. But if you can vary the speeds by 50, 60 miles per hour, well, maybe you'll be on to something. I do wish we saw more real Ephes pitches. Not just

the slow position player pitcher toss, but the real arcing, curving, floating lob. Not just a standard slow curve either, but the real high-arcing pitch that just drops in there. Those historically haven't been underhand pitches, though some might call them underhanded. But hey, you could throw underhand, not just a submarine pitcher, but softball style. That's how baseball pitching started. They weren't even allowed to throw overhand. That would really confuse them. And people would probably make fun of it, just like they made fun of Rick Berry's underhand free throw. But hey, it worked for him. And if what we do works for you, then we hope

hope you'll support it by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners who've already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Jeff Roberts, Drew, Patrick Richardson, our fine fellow podcasters at Batting Around, and Ben and Leah Meanwhile, who don't just mean well. They do well by helping us keep making the show and by getting themselves access to some perks, including monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams starting next month, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts memberships, potential podcast appearances, and 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, intro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, YouTube, music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com 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.

We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you later this week. Does it come from the heart? Should we use defensive runs saved? Or follow the OAA way? Who's gone away with their quips and opinions? It's effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild.

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