Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2377: 25-25 in 2025

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about 2025’s record number of 25-25 players and whether the current power/speed version of the sport is rendered any less impressive by its recent rule-change origins, the historic pre/post-All-Star break splits of Julio Rodríguez and whether the Mariners can help him become less of an extreme slow starter/fast finisher […]

Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically, cross-check can compile, find a new understanding on effectively while there can you not be pedantic. Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Hello and welcome to episode 2377 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGrafts, presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I am bursting with banter topics. Oh, boy. Can't wait to get to him. I guess we could start with this. I saw an opta stat, one of these kind of convoluted ones, but not nearly as convoluted, as

a lot of their work. This one's actually, I say that's not derogatory. That's complimentary. And I always appreciate a convoluted fun fact, even if I will point out its flaws. But this one is actually sort of simple and seems kind of cool on the surface. It's nine different MLB players have notched at least 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases this season. Wow. That's the most such players in a single season in MLB history.

besting the eight players in both 1987 and 2023. So that's good, right? That seems cool. That seems fun. That seems exciting. We like power plus speed. Just generally agreed that that's a good thing, right? That's an exciting combination of traits and skills.

So I think that's true. And I guess you could sort of say mission accomplished that MLB has brought about this power speed blend. that people like and we're already at this record total and we still have a week and a half or so to go and there are a bunch of people who are quite close to breaking into this group Patreon supporter JD in our Discord group noted that Byron Buxton is one stolen base away and Bobby Witt Jr. just needs three homers, Trevor Story, who's been excellent for the socks, has just one home run short and Kyle Tucker for Renato Tatis Jr. They're all quite close. So I would guess that this total will only increase

by the end of the regular season. So that's good. And yet there was part of me that just mentally applies an asterisk, I guess. Part of me just because of the recency of the rules changes that have promoted more stolen bases and really promoted them at the lower end of the stolen base lead report because that's, I would say, a source of slight disappointment for me that we don't actually have any really high stolen base totals this year. Jose Caballero is leading the majors with 48. I know, is that funny. Yeah, that's not a lot.

I had hoped and even expected that someone would push the upper boundaries there because Ellie had 67 last year. And then the year before that, Ronald Ocuna Jr. had 73. I keep waiting for someone to go beyond to, let's see if we can get 80 or something. But that hasn't happened. Instead, we're just getting a whole lot of guys who have 15, 10, 20. Yeah. It's kind of like when the ball was livelier several years ago and just everyone was hitting 20 bombs.

Yeah, did you hear about that that the ball was behaving a little bit differently? Does that ring a bell or a ball? Yeah, I heard it was kind of jumpy. It was like it was nervous, got to get out of here. It's like, oh, I'm keen for an Irish goodbye. And as was discussed on this podcast at the time and written about by Jeff Sullivan and others, the primary effect there was really to kind of make the distribution more democratic. And lots of guys suddenly had some pop.

It wasn't that people were really pushing the upper tier of power. But it was just the fences are within reach of more players with greater regularity now. And the league leaders, well, maybe they were pop. popping those things over the fences anyway. And now they're just going, flying a bit farther. But it doesn't count more if you hit it farther. We've entertained that hypothetical on previous points. But that's what we're seeing sort of with the stolen bases,

where now you do have your Juan Soto's and such who are just kind of deciding that, yeah, this is what we do. Or Josh Naler, right? Some of these surprising steals guys. And that's fun. But I can't help but mentally discreet. count it because of my awareness that this was harder a few years ago, and they made it easier in order to produce this very effect.

Correct. I think you could say this is working. Right. This is the way that they drew it up. And yet, because I'm aware, it just, it seems more artificial to me. It almost seems arbitrary. It's like you moved the slider a little more toward stolen bases, and now they're more stolen bases, which is good. And I think if I had just joined baseball this year, if this were my first year, I'd think, this is great.

Look at all these deals and look at all this power. And I love this mix of skills. But I know too much. And I have this baggage of being aware that this was harder. And it's not necessarily that the guys have gotten better at this thing. It's just that it's gotten easier. It's been sort of artificially made easier. So that tarnishes it for me.

I wish it didn't. How does that specific constellation of totals compare to prior years? Like, is it an outlier number relative to prior seasons even? The number of guys with that combination of home runs and stolen bases? Is it like a lot? I don't know if it's an outlier. It's a record. It's only...

But by how much, you know? Yeah. Well, one. Because, yeah, in 87, which was a... juiced ball year. There were eight, eight such players. And then 2023, that was just a couple of years ago. There were eight.

And so now we're at nine. So it's, yeah, it's not like blowing by the previous record. Although, again, we might get another one or two, but still. Does that let you enjoy it more in a weird way? Because I take your broader point about it feeling, I hesitate to say cheap because, like, you know, you're putting your body on the line every time you try to steal a base. I was very amused when I realized that Jose Caviaro's leading the majors and stolen bases, though. I was like, really? Camby?

That's great. Yeah, it's funny. If you're on the leaderboards, you have to remove the qualified. Qualified, yeah. Because if you don't do that, then you'll think that Jose Ramirez was leading the majors with 39 steals. But no, Chandler Simpson has 42 and Jose Cabierro has 48. But, yeah, I'm not impressed by those totals. Right.

And so, so on the one hand, sure, sure, Ben, sure. But also, you know, it's only by a little bit. So it's like a modest record, you know. And does the modesty of the record make it feel less of an affront to like the sanctity of it, you know? Does that make sense my question? Like it's like, oh, yeah, but only by a little bit. And I take your point that the little bit might grow ever so slightly. But again, probably only when it's all done by a little bit.

Yeah. It's not the sanctity of the sport that I'm concerned with so much. It's not like I think they're making a mockery of the game or something. It's just how impressed am I by this record, by this collection of power speed players. And I think if the previous record had been surpassed by more, that would assuage my concerns because now I'm just thinking, oh, you barely. It's actually worse this way. I think it's worse because, yeah, now maybe if a few more guys join the club by the end of the season, that will make it more impressive to me. But if it's that we just beat it by a hair and we beat it by a hair because of this rule that was changed. Now, obviously, 2023, that was the rule had changed that season two. And then 87 was 80s. So in the 80s, you had more speed. But that was an outlier power year where it seems to have been a juiced rabbit ball. And then that changed.

And so, yeah, to produce a record of any kind, it's usually going to take some confluence of circumstances, some sort of, you know, circumstances, conditions have to be conducive to that. I get that. But I think if, yeah, if they had blown by the previous record, then I could say, well, I'm not going to just chalk it up to the fact that they made the steel is a little easier. This is actually, this is a really particularly impressive collection of players who have perfected the art of base stealing as opposed to, It's easy mode relative to what it was. It's not easy, to be clear, but it's easier. And that does sort of cheapen it for me while also acknowledging that that's just because I've been watching baseball for a long time and I'm aware of those changes.

And that shouldn't have stayed MLP's hand necessarily. I think it's still maybe better because you want to attract new people to the sport. And those new people aren't going to be burdened by, oh, just a few. years ago, they tweaked the setting, and that's why this is different, they'll just say, hey, look at all this power and the speed. And that's good, you know, because like, we all come to baseball at different times and in different ways. And the game that we grew up with is often what we tend to think of as the default consciously or unconsciously. That's like the baseline that we compare everything else, too. So they should make changes with the future fans in mind.

So I'm all for that. It's just holding me back a bit personally. from really celebrating this. And, like, remind me, though, what is the list of players who are eight guys? I'll look that up because opta stats did not mention that in this tweet, but I can quickly stat hits that. Falling down, opta stats, opta stats. I wonder how they arrived on that. I mean, it's obviously like optimized stats, opta stats, opta stats.

Yeah, well, optomole stats. That's opta. I'm trying to. Opta sports. Opta sports. That sounds like. It's a British company that's been around for a while and sort of started in soccer, mostly. Oh, okay.

Well, then I can't, I can't claim to understand the mind of opta stats, really. Like, this is a country that calls it maths, you know? Like, what's that about, Ben? What's the maths about? This is officially our Friday show, even though we're recording on Thursday. So I get to ask these questions. know what's maths about mathematics because it's mathematics is that why it it makes sense to me I don't say it but but but that's you know you grow up with it and that seems normal much like

in baseball you grow up with a certain power speed combo and then that seems normal too so I don't know have I bought enough time for you to do your query no but but you can this is the thing it's it's just like who are these changes for are they For the lifers? Well, we were already on board. Probably not, though they're welcome. Some of them are on board. But no, it's, you know, who is it for?

Is it for the people who are going to be fretting about, oh, well, this changed because they just changed this setting? Or is it for the people who are just getting on board? I think it's largely for them. Now, I think the caveat to that is that if the stolen bases become too easy, then even the new or potential new fans might not enjoy it as much because one reason why it's so fun to see people steal bases is because there's a real element of danger and there's a risk reward and there's a calculus there and everything. So I'm not saying it has become too easy, but it does cheapen each individual steal on some level. It sounds like you're saying it has become too easy.

I just want to like to offer a little feedback. That's kind of how it sounds. Yeah, it's easier. and thus each steal is a little less valuable because people are stealing more bases and there's just less of a threat really. There's less uncertainty when someone goes. Now it's hardly unheard of

to see someone get caught stealing. It still happens with some regularity. But there's just a little less suspense or stakes or it seems a little less impressive when they make it. And I'm not saying it's gone too far. You kind of sound like you think it's gone too far. There's some purport.

proportionate decrease in how thrilling it is to see a combination of power and speed when it's just easier to combine those skills. Sure. I think that that's fair. I guess what I would say is like what you're really asking, Ben, and this is a very deep philosophical question, one that would fill a graduate seminar and certainly a stat cast query is like, when does history begin? You know, like, when are we in an era now, an era of baseball, that is, and will we look

back and say, well, you know, understood within the context or the fullness at the time, pretty typical, normal little year, you know? Like, is that how we will come to understand it? I think for a lot of people, history starts when their awareness of events starts. So everything is unprecedented. Until they realize it's not. Right. That's why it's useful to study history so that you know that's not the case but yeah i i worry that we we aren't reading enough not you and i we read a good bit um i i read this i read this morning yeah but not baseball stuff you know i mean like people should read baseball stuff too you have to situate yourself within a literature right um but just like in general i i i see these stories about people not reading and ben i don't mean to make you

representative of your gender but like specifically about men not reading why are you guys reading. Is it because you're gambling all the time? Is this a, surely I've bought enough time for the freaking stat-hac query to be done by now, right? Yes. Actually, I ended up using the Fed Graf's leaderboards. How about that? Trific. Yeah, so here are our nine members of the 25-25 club so far. Corbyn Carol, Jose Ramirez, Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, Francisco Lindor, Pete Crowe Armstrong, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Zach Netto, and Randy a Rosarina. Okay, so what are you complaining about that's a great list of players there's there's like diverse these are fun players yeah fun players and like all of those guys in much the same way here i'm going to try to offer you another

new perspective on this i think that you should lean into enjoying it actually because i take your broader point right about how maybe we've made it a little too easy maybe there will need to be a course correction maybe i will be afforded another opportunity to go to salt riverfield see a demonstration of a new base stand there take a picture of the guys taking a picture of the base talking about meta right that was so satisfying also um pass and wasn't in a suit it was shocking you know he came yeah i don't know i didn't know he'd ever been out of one i made fun of him for it and then immediately realized that at that juncture and i count jeff as a friend but at that juncture i was not yet a good enough friend to give him the business about it and then i felt self-conscious

about it for like six months but that's neither here nor there um You're right. Maybe we will need additional course correction, or we will just need to think about this as I was sort of jokingly saying, but did mean it as like, this is a particular era of baseball. We have a certain understanding of what offense broadly understood looked like in this era, including stolen bases. But I'll say this. When I think about the big home run years, the juiced ball years, the I got to get out of this party quick ball years, right? That's really the personality of the ball years. in those years like, oh, I feel jumpy, got to go. When someone like Aaron Judge hits a lot of home runs in that year, it doesn't feel like I need to discount his total all that much. Like, sure, maybe he had a couple, you know, or a guy like him, a big slugger. Maybe a big slugger has a couple in a season like that because even big sluggers hit cheapies every now and again, right?

And so maybe they have a couple of cheapies that clear the wall. But really, you're a slugger. You don't need help. You're going to clear the wall with room to spare most of the time anyway when you hit a home run. This isn't like an artifact of the fact that the ball is different. It's mostly a testament to your power as a hitter. This is why, and I will make fun of Yankee Stadium as a Little League Park, and should

the Mariners, who I will know, fell out of first place since we last recorded, and I blame you because I had to go, we don't know that the Etsy witch listened to the end of the episode. We have no idea if they did that. And I'm using they because I'm still not totally convinced that it isn't just Aohenio Suarez. But we don't know that they listen to the end. And so they are sitting there going, look at these confident people. No, Ben, they don't know I'm still nervous. And so they had them lose yesterday, although the Mariners won today.

And it wasn't Suarez's fault. He went four for four with a homer after I noted that he had not been hitting very well. Aohenio, yeah. Look, the vibes are good. They're going to manifest into good production at some point. I feel like that's how manifestation works. I don't know, but that's what I am given to understand. So anyway, all of that nonsense to say, sure, you could look at this and feel like it is cheapened in some way, made too easy, what have you.

But think about the list of players that you just named, right? These are stolen base boys, a lot of them. They are boys who like to zoom zoom. They're boys who like to hit the big home run. This is a good list of guys. And you can just feel good about that good list of guys, perhaps emboldened, right? Perhaps they are now newly emboldened home run and stolen bass boys. But they were stolen base boys the whole time.

You don't have to worry about it. Lean into it. It's so great. Julio, Corbyn Carroll, Corbyn Carroll doesn't need any help to steal a base. That guy. And you can say he's not the only one, but he is the one I see in person the most often just by virtue of living in Arizona. You watch the guy running, you're just like, it is shocking that a human being is that fast. It is fantastic, you know?

And I bring up Carol specifically because he is, to me, the analog to, like, judge in 2019. Yes. Are there a couple maybe stolen bases that we can directly attribute to the change in the rules benefiting a good and fast base runner like Corby and Carol? Sure. But that guy's going to just, if he's healthy and he's on base, he's going to zoom. He's a zoom-zum guy, you know? Yes.

Is he technically a zoomer, moving Carol? Maybe. I don't look at most of these guys and say they don't have speed, they don't have wheels. They couldn't steal more bases if they wanted to, even if the rules were harsher on base stealers. But most of them are not far above 25, which is the threshold for this stat. And so if you made it just slightly harder and decrease the incentive to go, then some of them probably wouldn't quite have gotten there. And so we wouldn't have this fun fact. It's really just at the margins makes a big difference.

And then there's Juan Soto, who is not one of those zoomers and burners. And I'm still delighted by the fact that Juan Soto has stolen 32 bases and counting to go with his 41 home runs. But also, I can't imagine him. having done that in the previous rule set, so that is one case at least where I look at that and say, okay, this maybe is a product of that. But I would kind of discount in a historic accomplishment as we decided last time. I'm not going to hold you to your prior answer. No, I still believe that.

But I would discount it if it's in an outlier season. And one of the reasons I thought Judge's 62 Homer's season was so impressive was that it was post-peak Homer. run rate. Still pretty high, historically speaking. But look, as I said, a lot of records get set in years when it's easier to set records. So there's nothing that unusual about that. But really, I think my takeaway from this is that this is good. This is fine. And this is just a me hangup. And I don't think that this change was made for me. I mean, I'm fine with the change. I mostly approve of it. But I was watching baseball anyway, and I would have been watching baseball anyway. This was to bring back speed to pair it with the power. And that has happened success.

And I just, I don't think that fans who have come on board since that change, this will just be base stealing. This is how hard it is to steal a base. This is what they know. Yeah, this is what pitchers are allowed to do to hold runners on base and how many times they're allowed to throw over there. And there were changes made before I was directly aware of baseball that I don't really think about when I'm thinking, oh, this is easier than it was. Well, sure, maybe the baseball I was watching, things were easier than they were. certainly, right? So we all come to it at different times, and it's just, oh, that's baseball when we learn it, right? And you develop some historical perspective, at least a lot of fans do,

but I think in the interest of attracting new eyeballs and making that interest sticky, then this was good. And others will not be burdened by the same, just, you know, slight thought tickling at the back of my consciousness. Well, yes, this is why this is happening, or this is at least a big part of the reason. But it's not even just on an individual level. These have been the power speediest seasons that we've ever seen in MLB because there is the Bill James stat, the power speed number, which is just the harmonic mean of the two totals. And Shohei Otani last year in his 50-50 season had the highest individual power speed number in history. And we had the same conversation about Otani. I remember saying the same thing then that I was kind of conscious of, wow, this is

really cool, but also he probably wouldn't have done this in the conditions of a few years prior. It just became possible for him to do this. And the power speediest seasons of all time on a full year basis are 2023 and 2024, and 2025 is coming up right behind and we'll end up close to the top too. So not a coincidence. This was what MLB set out to do and did it. Although wouldn't you say, Ben, wouldn't you say, within the specific context, of Otani. I would hazard the following guest, which is that the more relevant context for Otani in his season. And by the way, did you get the push notification about how he's come up with a new 50-50 season? Relax. What are the stats that we're talking about? Home runs and

strikeouts. Okay, come on. Thank you. Wait, pitching strikeouts? Yeah. Oh, I see. So he didn't have 50. homers in his previous 50s. Okay, well, fine. I turn off all push notifications for reasons like this. It feels like you got to want it, put it that way, right? You got to be looking for a, the fact that you are not persuaded by this makes me want to take back any light slander I was doing of your reputation in the episode where you're

like, let's check in on how Otani's doing as a two-way guy, because you just demonstrated a profound amount of conviction principle, you know? Yeah, I've been exposed to so many Otani stats in that genre. Dude, I was just like, relax. Whoever is on the push notifications tonight, please chill. Please chill out. What was I going to say about Otani? Oh, I think the more relevant context for him in that year was, well, sure, like,

there's the stolen base environment operating in the background, certainly. But I would hazard to say that the more relevant context for him in that year was the fact that he was like, I'm not pitching. So, let's run. I'm like, I'm going to run. Yep. I did want to ask you about Julio, who, as we noted last time, has been fantastic. He's been on a heater. He's been one of the best players in baseball for a while now.

Didn't start the season that way. And that is nothing new for Julio. I know. This is just another example of the phenomenon of second half. Julio, and yes, I am going to say half in this case because I'm going to be citing some splits and that's how baseball reference and other sites do it. So this is his fourth season in the majors, and it's his fourth season in which he has had a major split from first half to second half, pre-all-star break to post-all-star break

in terms of his overall offensive production. This is unknown thing about him. This was something people were picking up on, I don't know what, as soon as his second season probably and it was cemented last season and then even more whatever's harder than cement this season and it's striking in its similarity it's not like he has a big overall split but there's some deviations from year to year no it's it's year in and year out so the overall OPS split is what about 180 points that's that's pretty significant first half career 737 OPS second half 909. And if you go year by year, it's the same sort of thing.

2022, his rookie year, 814 and 937, 2023, 721 and 941. Last year, 690 and 818. And this year, so far, 731 and 924. So every year, there's been a pretty significant split there. is this at the point now where you have begun to buy it as some sort of inherent trait of Julio or true talent or would you even begin to consider, is there something that he or the Mariners should do differently to get him started earlier? Obviously, if he ends up being as valuable as he usually ends up being, it's not the worst problem in the world. It all comes out in the wash maybe and say he's you know going to be a five

six win player or something but it just has always felt like the ceiling is even higher there somehow it always feels like the second half hot Julio is the real one and we're just waiting for him to show up and if you could get him to show up

from the start well then you'd have absolute superstar MVP on your hands so is this worth like have we gotten to the point where it's worth trying to do something? I don't know what that something would be. I think, so let's take those questions sort of in reverse order.

I think it's definitely worth trying to do something. The thing that I keep trying to get my arms around, and here I wish that I were a more confident evaluator of hitting mechanics than I am, I don't think that there's like a true talent difference. I feel like, you tell me if I'm, if this is maybe like wish fulfillment on my part even, I feel like we need to see more years of it even than we have to think that that's true. Question mark. I do think that them trying something is worthwhile because Julio is a player who has gone through a couple of different swings in the course of his big league career, right? He has made adjustments. Sometimes they have felt counterproductive for him. I do wonder

kind of what their internal assessment of his swing is at this juncture and whether they feel like they have landed on the answer for him. And I just don't know what the answer to that really is. So I think it's worth them trying some stuff and certainly having conversations. with him about like what is he, where's he at? How does he feel about it? Does it feel comfortable? Does it feel natural? Because I am inclined to chalk up the specific blocks of bad production or at least underwhelming production relative to good production is sort of random. And there's a version of Julio where like they are just sequenced a little differently and he doesn't, he has the exact same kind of season, but it feels more consistent because he's like alternating good and

bad stretches with less time in between. But I don't know quite what the answer is on that. And I feel like he's still a young enough guy that he might be open to additional tinkering. And he's been open to tinkering in the course of his career, both at the plate and then just like as an athlete, right? Like the man gave up chocolate for sake so that he could like play a better center field did he actually need to give a chocolate to do that i couldn't tell you seems like a sort of pat answer but one indicative of like the commitment to play in a really good center field i also hesitate slightly to armchair psychologist someone i don't know but you know i i often think about something that divish said which was that for a long time, the Mariners' plan was for Julio to be perfect.

And, like, I don't mean to imply, like, mental weakness or whatever, but that's a lot of pressure on a young person to carry an entire offense, like, on your own. Even the best hitters can't do that, right? And so I do wonder if they have just, like, a more complete lineup, if they go deeper, if some of this stuff kind of takes care of itself because the pressure on him to be like the best guy isn't quite there. He still needs to be very good. And the version of the Mariners with him playing

at sort of an MVP caliber level over the course of an entire season, like that's a, that's maybe a different thing than we've seen in his tenure with the club in terms of how we think about their offense and how deep we see their lineup going. I have always hesitated to lay blame for the Mariners' fortunes at Julio's feet won because he's a terrific player, even when things aren't going great for him at the plate, he's still a very good center fielder. And so, as we've discussed before, like, his floor is just pretty high as a result of playing a good center field. And then when he's hitting like this, if he played like this over the whole year, we'd be talking about how it's a concern that the Mariners are going to split each other's votes for.

MVP, right? Like him hitting as a plus center fielder with a 160 WRC plus, which is what he's had over the second half, maybe give or take a couple of points over after the last two days of play. Like, that's just an MVP, you know? And you got in the stolen bases

and he's faced the franchise guy. Right. So like, I don't want to discount what the impact of a very good consistent Julio could be for the Mariners. And certainly the fact that he has shown he has capable of this for stretches leaves everyone with the desire to see it over the course of an

entire season. But even if he plays that way, it doesn't guarantee that they have a productive offense, right? And so this is why I've hesitated to like put too much on him as an individual because I want, I want the Mariners as an org to be convinced of the necessity of other good hitters. Like, look how much fun everyone's having, you guys, you know? This is so much better than the alternative. I have, here's what I'll say. As both a media member and a fan of the team, it's really great to care about what

the Mariners are doing on September 18th. That is not always where we're at with this club. And so this is good. Do this more, I would say, you know, if I were offering notes. And I have in the past over some notes but yeah I mean like I will be very curious

how they approach the off season with him and do they feel like he has landed on an approach at the plate both in terms of the mechanics of his swing and just his overall approach where this is something good that he can build on going into 2026 and might not require additional adjustment from him you know I'll be curious how

how they talk about and how he talks about it. Are those things aligned? Like, you know, it's just going to be. And then, like, this is a club that knock on wood, you know, we'll have a thing that you don't have to deal with very often, which is, like, how do you approach an off season where you've played potentially an extra most worth of baseball?

She says very nervously, just like, barely able to get the words out. Yeah. No, I think he's too talented to have this be the pattern. for his whole career, it's just so tantalizing because at no point really do I ever look at what he does late in seasons and say, oh, he's playing over his head. I'm just saying, yeah, where was this guy? We've been waiting for this good Julio to show up. But this is the real Julio, that's slow starting Julio. That's not the real one. So won't the real Julio just show up a little earlier in the season? And then he might be the best player in baseball. So it doesn't seem like

an insuperable problem. He is young. It's only four years. I doubt he's doomed to repeat this pattern forever. It's not like he's unplayable early in the season either. He's just far short of his potential. And I remember a Neil Payne post about this from last June, where he looked at some historical precedents and tried to find examples of players

who had started their careers with similar patterns and had. and had broken out of them or just to see what they did after that. And he looked at it a more granular way, I think going month by month maybe instead of pre-all-star break, post-all-star break. And as we've discussed, the timing of the all-star break as a percentage of the season, has also changed quite a bit. So I guess that's bad maybe because now there's more first half, proportionally speaking, than there used to be. So you want more second half, Julio, than first half Julio. But he found, if you look at players who started that way, then the rest of their career,

they were pretty, on the whole, indistinguishable from just regular players. And I'd still put my money if I bet on baseball, which I don't, but I'd still, it's just an expression. I'd put my money on Julio correcting this, which doesn't mean that it was purely random. It just might mean that, I mean, maybe this was some actual trait of Julio's. in this portion of his career, but that could change. And there's already been a lot of conversation about this, so I'm sure he has thought about it and talked to the team about it. And in fact, there were some articles from spring training this year

talking about how he was getting more reps and he was wanting to see more pitching because he's been a slow starter and also had some injuries and things in the past that had minimized his exposure to pitching early in the season or preseason. And so that was the idea that I'll just see more live. pitching and that'll prepare me and then I can hit the ground running and then that just didn't happen again. He was running but not the hitting part so much. So I hope it changes because I want to see what he can do just at his best all season long. I mean, you know, no one's at their best all season long. So it is sort of cheating and cherry picking to say like just extrapolate when he's

playing his best and that's the kind of player he will be. Well, yeah, you could play that game with every player who says a slump or a bad month or something. But with Julio, I just, I believe in the talent and the late season production. And I hope that he will eventually translate that and we'll see that guy show up early. And then sky's the limit. So yeah, I hope that he figures that out or regresses to the mean or whatever it takes. Yeah. And that's what I mean when I say that like, you know, some of this is just the sequencing of the production. And when you smooth it out over the course of an entire season, you're not worried about it. But it does sort of stick in the craw when it's such a dramatic contrast, one half to the other.

Yeah. Even if he just took the season he's had and diced it up a little differently. Like the reputation, I think, is dramatically different. And so I don't want to make too much of it. It is a more dramatic sort of split half to half than we often see. But I think that folks generally underestimate the streakiness of even the very best players. So, you know, there's that piece of it, too. Well, while we're talking about defensively skilled center fielder and power speed players,

I have to ask you this. So here are the worst hitters in MLB qualified hitters, that is, which is an important qualification. But there have been 166 qualified for the batting title players starting August 1st through September 17th. The third worst of those 166 players by WRC plus is Ellie de la Cruz. We talked about his slump and possible compromised state recently. But the two hitters with worse WRC pluses than Ellie over that same span, the two worst qualified. hitters in baseball are Pete Crowe Armstrong and Ceylon Raphael. Isn't that wild?

Is that incredible? That's funny. I mean, they probably don't find it funny, but it is funny. No, it's definitely not. But it's amazing how they've paralleled each other this season. And for a while they were soaring and PCA was making a real run at the NLNVP award. And then Raphael was flourishing too and unlocking his power. And they also had speed of.

They were just doing it all in absolutely superlative defense. Of course, Raphael was getting moved around in field, outfield a bit. But when he was in center, hardly anyone better out there, Pete Cromstrung, not included. I mean, they seemed to be already among the most valuable players in baseball. But there was that nagging doubt of, will this approach work, though? because it's not really like they've moderated the strikeouts and walks so much and they still are very free swingers

and is this the high point for them? Can they really improve the plate discipline? And it seemed like maybe Raphaelho was doing that and PCA wasn't really, but he was making it work anyway. So since the start of August, 42 WRC Plus for Sadan and 37 for Pete Crow Armstrong. So it's just, it's kind of,

incredible because we were all delighting in how high they were flying for a while there. And then seemingly simultaneously, the bottom just fell out. So I don't know how to evaluate their seasons now. This is more of a case of are they the good version of themselves or the bad version of themselves where they've actually looked exposed by these flaws that we kind of were aware that they had, but they just seemed to be transcending them somehow. how for a time. I think that guys like this are just going to have fallow periods where the production is really poor because it's a version of what we talked about with Spencer Jones where the carrying tools are so good and the vulnerabilities are so obvious. And you can overcome them for a while, right? Or you get pitching that works in your in your favor or you make an adjustment. And then the league adjusts back and you have to find your way through something

else. I think you just have to be willing to kind of ride along, you know, and be on the roller coaster with them. And appreciate, as we often do, the value that an ability to play a good center field can have to sort of bolstering your value, even in times where you are down bad with the rest. Did I use that expression correctly? I don't think I did. When you are... It's got multiple things.

When it's not going well, when you're not going good. I will say that I wonder, I know there were stretches where Raphael was having to kind of go back to the infield. And I was just like, what if you just let him be? I know this is born of necessity. It's not like the... the Red Sox were like, what if we took this guy who seems like he has his feet under him and messed him about a little bit?

You know, I understand that like sometimes you need to make moves because guys are hurt, what have you. But I would argue 24 games at second basis, maybe too many. Just let him be. Let him play. Yeah, I think that they can find a way to do that. They should. They should.

And they would probably say, yeah, thank you, Meg. That's super productive feedback. We had not considered that. Yeah. The gloves are so good that even though they've been the two worst hitters in baseball, they're still replacement level. I mean, that's not good. It's replacement level. But they're at least not really in negative territory just because they can get to so many balls. But it's amazing. Their stats are just almost identical over this span. Same playing time. Two homers for each of them. Six steals for one, five steals for the other. They're both at about a 5% walk rate. over that span, both at a BABIP of 220, 2.30-ish, which with their speeds, I mean, that's quite low, but they are going to be somewhat subject to the vagaries of BABIP. It's not like the strikeouts have inflated to be way out of control, which is the good news, I guess. So PCA's been at about 26% over the spin. Rafael is at 23.3%. So that's, you know, not much above league

average like yeah they're not spencer jones whiffing or james wood as we talked about last time so the babbit luck will improve gosh it's like exactly the same isolated power 90-ish yeah they've just been in lockstep it's really kind of amazing but yeah they've shown the highs and the lows and i guess if the highs are like one of the very best players in baseball and the low is replacement level and you get more of the high than the low, then you take that. That's a valuable player. But I don't know. I just obviously the answer is always like, are they the best version of themselves or

are the worst version of himself? Well, probably somewhere in the middle. Yeah. It's the obvious answer. It's the common answer because it's usually the right answer. But are they closer to like top five or something player in the league or worst hitter in baseball replacement level? I'd like to think closer to the former than just in the middle. Even in the middle might be an averageish player. But I guess that's the question. Will they just

refine the rough edges and manage to play like they were playing there for a extended stretch without this extended stretch of slumping? And I hope so. And, you know, PCA's still just 23. Rafael is 25. And maybe if they do settle him in center field, then that will help. So I still have high hopes, but, man, it's, it really did just kind of collapse all of a sudden there, which it stinks because, you know, it was fun to talk about PCA as an MVP candidate as improbable as that seemed. Sure. I mean, yeah. And here's the thing. We'll get another chance probably.

I hope so. I mean, even when he was at his peak this season, there were people saying, this might be a career year. Like, this might be the best, you know. And if you're an MVP in your career year, well, that's, that's. pretty good. That's most people's career years are not MVP caliber, but yeah, he hasn't quite put together the full season of MVP caliber play. But maybe you will.

Maybe he will. Let's hope. Well, they are early in their careers, and we have had it confirmed today, Thursday, as we're about to record, that Clayton Kershaw is approaching the end, that he is officially in the twilight. Perhaps it's past twilight, he will be retiring. at the end of the season, barring some abrupt change of heart, I guess, which is not out of the question. But, you know, he's been pitching quite well of late, too. We talked about Kershaw,

Scherzer, Verlander, when they were at their low. And then we noted that they've actually been quite a bit better of late. And Kershaw's been part of that, too. I think you had speculated that maybe he had made this clear because he was the, commissioner's honorary All-Star this year, right? And we were puzzling out why Kershaw and not Ferlander and Scherzer?

And maybe it was because he had signaled that this would be the end to someone or that people were picking up on that potentially. So, you know, I have more mixed feelings, I guess post-pride night message. I'm a little less

unreserved in my enjoyment or appreciation of him on a purely personal level but I have enjoyed the heck out of his career you know he's like a little harder to root for as a personality perhaps in the wake of that but as a pitcher as a player he's been just a ton of fun to watch and to cover and it's it's certainly kind of a end of an era sort of situation and you know I'm glad that he's going out actually pitching pretty effectively and you know we'll get another crack at conquering his postseason demons.

So I guess we'll see if you can go out on top where those things are concerned. But yeah, it's definitely a changing of the guard happening with the top pitchers. And, you know, maybe Verlander and Scherzer will hang on. And Verlander has really righted the ship lately. Yeah. And yeah, I'm glad that they're not all just like completely running on a few, as we approach the end of this season. And I guess that makes it less likely

that this will be the end for all three of them and that will get an incredible Cooperstown class of the era's defining aces. That seems a little less likely. But then again, at least one of them now, we've got confirmation that this is what they're intending to do. I have two thoughts about this. One is very straightforward,

and the other is going to require me to thread a little needle. Okay? So we're going to, we're going to do a straightforward one. And then we're going to try the second and you tell me, you know? Yeah. The first thought I had is really a question, which is I wonder if the success that he is having lately actually maybe made the decision to retire clearer for him. I think a lot about the, you know, he didn't have an opportunity to be fetid at every stop the way that David Ortiz did. I think about David Ortiz's final season a lot and what a, what a, I don't know if he thinks about it this way, but if I were him, what a gift I would view that season to be, right? Because not only do you get to have this opportunity to like get, you know, cowboy boots and ballpark seats and all of the other sort of tokens of appreciation that were brought his way, but to go out having played a season that feels like one of your, one of your years.

right like a a recognizably david ortees season is just a rare thing you know the game makes the decision for guys more often than not and even when they make a decision it's often you know in diminished form like there are a lot more orchestrated Miguel cabrera final years than david orte's final years just to put it in sort of recent terms and so i wonder if the potential to feel not only that you've had a good year, but because you've had a good year to have resolve, you know, I got to say goodbye to the game

when I was recognizably myself within its context. It feels like a great gift, you know, and one that I think most guys don't get, they don't have the opportunity to sort of make that choice for themselves. So just in recognition of the career, he said, I'm glad that he gets to have that.

I saw the announcement. I haven't had time to, to fully think this thought through. So forgive me if I issue a correction later, or at least a revision. But I felt a gratitude for the phenomena of the sports retirement when I saw that he was going to hang it up after this year, in part because, let's see what rain drops I dance through. Clayton Kirschild is still alive, right? This is the end of a career, the passing of a torch to your point from one generation of pitcher to the next, certainly a meaningful shift in the landscape of baseball, not just Dodger baseball, but baseball more generally. But I think that what the last couple of years, we've had some very recent examples of this, obviously, but just in general, we don't have an easy time culturally grappling with the fullness of a person when they pass.

And there can be for public figures, you know, when your grandma dies, you get to make it out what you will. Nobody cares, right? You care. But that's a private matter, right? That's family business. When public figures leave us, it can be kind of a fraught thing, regardless of the manner of their passing, but particularly when the passing itself is fraught.

And I appreciate the ways in which it's uncomfortable and legacy. tend to not be uncontested and they don't tend to be interpreted just one way, depending on who's engaging with them. But I think that we really benefit culturally from doing our level best to engage with people as they are in their totality. And we lose something when we can't do that. And that isn't to say that it's always comfortable and that isn't to say that everyone is always like as gracious or appropriate or whatever as they ought to be but um for public figures i think it's important we do that and like get a sense of where we are and doing it early is sometimes painful but i think important to like the preservation of history because if there's squishiness around it if there's

equivocation it tends to set pretty quickly you know it's like when you move out of an apartment and you put that putty up to like paper over where your your art was And then you're like, that's just that wall now, you know, that wall is is what it is again, you know, it looks like that. And so I think that when we have retirements like this, we are afforded in a way that takes some of the potential tension and fretting out of it, an opportunity to like grapple with the fullness of a person, an important person to our game, a person who, is, you know, a human being away from the field and sometimes that manifests in, I think, profound and very sincere charity, and sometimes manifests in profound and on my part very sincere disappointment. And trying to get your arms around the totality of it

and tell an honest story and give an honest accounting is, I think, meaningful and perhaps these specific bowings out from not to say that he's necessarily done with public life i don't know what clayton kershaw's next phase will be he is literally such a young human being right like this is the other part of it that's so wild is like 37 years old right there is there is a part of like trying to to lay out the story of clayton kershaw that is just like patently absurd because he's 37 you know he's younger than I am.

Yeah. Again. When I had Ross Stripling, former teammate of Kersha on not long ago to talk about his quote-unquote retirement, we talked about how weird that is to be still sort of a young man and everyone's talking about you retiring and your career is over and you hope you find something that still animates you. It doesn't have to be work, of course. It could be family.

It could be charity stuff. Who knows. But, yeah, it is an odd way to. to talk about people as if their life is over when it is hopefully not nearly over. Right. And still in many ways, just beginning, you know, like an entirely new phase. And who knows? Maybe Clayton Kershaw will retire and then he'll decide he wants to coach.

Maybe we'll get another congressional campaign announcement. Who knows? We don't know. He might just retire into private life and spend time with his family. I don't know. I doubt he knows, right? Retiring at 37 is... I have a couple of friends who have had the opportunity to retire very young because of, like, successful business ventures.

And it has seemed, at least in the beginning, profoundly destabilizing because you have to, you have to find a whole new path. You have to, you know, knit together an old understanding of yourself with an entirely new one that you don't know yet. And especially if you're an athlete, you can't escape the shadow of your former success and fame. so he was drafted out of high school like when was the last day that this man did not think about the game of baseball i would venture to say there probably hasn't been one since he before he can remember you know not high level baseball necessarily but like so it is a it is like a weird thing that we like mark this somber day um and you want to you want to fat people You want to acknowledge the role that they've played in the progression of the game.

But all of that to say, I just, I've been thinking a lot lately about how we mark time in the moment and the importance of doing that, honestly, even when it's uncomfortable, and the seeming allergy we have to it in culture right now. And so I just, you know, when I saw the news that he was going to be done after this year, those are just some of the thoughts that I had. that it does strike me as a sort of unique little fissure in our understanding of these conversations that because it isn't marked by someone's passing affords a latitude, perhaps, for a more honest reckoning. And, you know, I don't want to say that everything that Clayton Kirsch has done in his life is bad. That's not true. You know, I have a tremendous amount of respect. for him as a player, I think that there has been philanthropy that he and his wife have engaged

in that has been genuinely good. And my understanding of him as a person has been fundamentally altered by the last couple of years, where I saw him as sort of a patsy and now as probably someone who isn't one, which might be worse. And so, you know, we have to get our arms around all of that. I think we owe it to our understanding of him as a person, but also the game as it is currently constituted. So those are the thoughts I had and God

only knows if any of that made sense or if I thread it. What is the difference between threading a needle and dancing between rain drops? Are they getting at the same? They're getting kind of the same idea, right? So hopefully I have threaded some needles and stayed

out of the rain, but that's kind of where I'm at on Kershaw. Yeah. Because of when he came around, I feel like his, well, his career overlaps with my career in baseball, which on a personal subjective level is sort of significant to me because he debuted in the majors in 2008, which was the year that I started working for baseball perspectives just as a research assistant at first. And 2008 was also the first year of pitch tracking. And so we have a pitch FX record at least of just about every pitch in. Clayton Kershaw's career, which is kind of a cool thing that we have that comprehensive record. So, yeah, for multiple reasons, it does sort of seem like the end of an era to me. And as great as Verlander and Scherzer have been, I think Kershaw had the superior peak, probably. And so he does sort of stand out to me even more in terms of excellence than those guys. I don't know if that's entirely

fair on a career level. I think absolutely a debate and a conversation and comparable, but Kershah at his peak. It wasn't quite peak Pedro, but it was the next best thing, at least in recent times. And the thing that always stands out to me is that even when he was post-peak Kershaw, and clearly post-peak Kershah, and often on and off the injured list and not throwing nearly as hard and just sort of spamming sliders and trying to make the best of it, still really good. You know? And with the exception of his partial season last year, he's really been comfortably above average. I mean, just about every year.

And you look at his 2021 through present period. And that's like after he stopped getting Cy Young votes, let alone Cy Young awards. So this is like, you know, Clayton Kirshah is washed now. This is like old man, Clayton Kirshah. And he has a 3.01 ERA over that span with a 139 ERA plus. Like, he's still, on the whole, diminished volume and workload. But he's still been surprisingly good, even though he's not nearly the stuff that he used to have. He had while he had craftiness and he still had command and a slider.

And that was enough. So, yeah, we'll have other opportunities to reflect on his. career, I'm sure. And, you know, that is a nice thing about someone actually calling it a career as opposed to just sort of fading out, disappearing, because there are the players who don't really say this is it. And then we're not sure their career is just sort of in this nether realm where we think it's probably over, but not necessarily. And maybe they keep coming back forever, like Rich Hill or Dallas Keikle or someone. Or maybe like a Zach Granky, for instance, they just sort of fade away. And you. think is Zach Gricky retired? Yeah, I guess so at this point. But, you know, sometimes you don't get the official retirement announcement until it's been like several years. And by that point, we're thinking, yeah, we were aware that you were retired even though you didn't say so officially. Like Anthony Rizzo. Yeah, right. Yeah. Like Anthony Rizzo officially retired. And we had not gotten official confirmation of that prior to last week. But I was like, well, yeah, right? I mean, surely. I mean, he played as recently his last

season so it was possible of course but yeah there's there's some guys who announced their retirement like many years after they last played it's like yeah we knew we've many years since the last time even that you thought of that guy sometimes where you're like oh yeah you're like ben canobi like i haven't done that guy and yeah i think my guy my favorite bernie williams that he was one of those guys where he kind of you know tiptoed around am i retired am i not retired. But you kind of get a sense that it's over at some point. And this podcast will be over at a point immediately after this last topic that I wanted to ask you about. So Jeff Passon reported something. I guess it's been reported elsewhere by now also. But there is this blackout

period, essentially, over the off season, a moratorium on scouting of amateur players by MLB personnel. And the idea here is to try to make pitching less of a year-round strain and to try to prohibit teams from actively scouting and seeking and obtaining information about amateur players so as to discourage those players from pitching year-round and from throwing hard year-round, just give themselves a bit of a break. And this is coming on the heels of that MLB study or maybe study is even inflating a bit. There's, you know, research, fact-finding, trying to figure out why pitchers get hurt so often, and is it just VLO or is it something else, and what can we do about it, if anything. And so this is officially termed the amateur recovery period policy. And basically, you know, you're just prohibited from having any interaction with players. You just can't scout them in any active way, which seems like a good thing, right? I guess it extends.

So it covers high school juniors and seniors from October 15th to January 15th and college players from November 15th to January 15th. So they're letting them get in for fall workouts for the college guys is basically what that difference means, yeah. Yeah, yeah, because like stuff is still happening now. Like there's the perfect game of WWBA World Championship. That's a high school event. That's a big one. So this is like two days after that, basically, this moratorium will start. And to be clear, players are not prohibited from participating in events.

So you can keep pitching if you want. But team personnel prohibited from engaging beyond meeting a player at home with his family. So teams can't solicit video or data. They can't send scouts to see these players. So in principle, it seems like a good thing, I guess. It's, you know, I'm on board with the idea of this year-round high effort training. It's probably contributing. And, you know, it's one of the factors that is leading to more and more injuries and elbow injuries specifically.

So I guess the question then is, will it work? And, well, will it be sufficient? I don't know that anyone would even argue that, oh, yeah, this will solve the problem. this policy will just be a panacea. Really, it shouldn't even be judged by that standard. It should just be, does this improve affairs? Is this progress? And I guess it meets that standard for me.

Like, it seems like the motivation is correct, the heart's in the right place for this. But do you think this will have an effect? Will it actually prohibit teams from doing this stuff that they're now not supposed to do, I guess, is one question. And then even if it does. Will that have any tangible effect on pitchers' long-term outlook? I don't know if it'll have an effect on their long-term outlook. I don't know if Major League Baseball knows that. I do think that getting young players off the treadmill of high-intensity training year-round

is a worthy endeavor. And part of the incentive for participation in these showcases is to be seen by scouts. And so if you remove that piece, and I think removing the video and data component of it, and I'll be curious to see, like, practically how that works because it's still going to be collected.

Yes. And so is the team's understanding that they will not be able to look at that data ever or that it will be sort of held in abeyance until after the deadline, right? Yes. So there are some practical things to work out. I also, you know,

hope that they are mindful of like when they scheduled their own breakout series, for instance, which is a really good scouting event that they have every year around MLK Day, that is aimed at bringing particularly players of color, players from economically disadvantaged backgrounds together in Arizona, free to the player to be scouted. Like, we want to maintain that as a scouting event. I think that's an important event on MLB's calendar for increasing equity within the game. I'm sure that there will be a carve-out for their own event. But, you know, there's some practical pieces of this that need to be sorted out.

And I am mindful of the fact that, you know, if the perception of these guys is that they are, particularly for the high schoolers, less prepared for the draft as a result of playing less, that it might shunt them into college, which isn't going to be a very school. for everyone. And so I am curious about some of the unintended or potentially intended consequences on the amateur market as it pertains to that. But particularly for the high school kids, I think that trying to get them away from playing one sport, particularly for the pitchers, all year at high intensity, is worthwhile. Not only for them, hopefully maintain better arm health as they progress in their careers, but like to play a different sport,

to do school, to see their families, to be young people, right? Because the fact of the matter is that, you know, if you go to a perfect game event, they're fielding a lot more rosters than there are going to be guys drafted into major league baseball, let alone guys who make the majors. And so, you know, people can do what they want recreationally, but I think having rules in place to, like, guard you against the most competitive version of yourself is worthwhile. I do, you know, I wonder what this will mean for scouting. I always am conscious of the fact that, like, if you compress scouting windows, that you are potentially making a case for smaller staffs.

And so I don't want to say that it's, like, unambiguously good in every respect. But I do think that, like, guarding young people against, themselves is a necessary endeavor. And so in that respect, I think it's good. I do think that like, I read the piece. I immediately had a bunch of questions about like the particularities around the data component of it. And I was like, you give teams rules. And those teams are going to be like, we're the little cracks in these rules. Where are the little, we're the little crevices that I can sneak a scout into. So, you know, we haven't heard the last of this. I would, I would, I It has you to say.

We've seen on the international market with amateurs that having rules has not precluded any kind of rule-breaking behavior. Yeah. And these aren't even like little nooks and crannies and crevice. It seems to me, yes, it's a worthwhile goal. Maybe even just if it's eyewash, even if it's just sending a signal that, hey, this is important and this is something we want to do. Because it's tough.

Like it's a difficult problem. it's a thorny one. I do think that continuing to lower the cap on the number of pitchers you could have on the active roster would eventually trickle down and have an effect where you'd have to condition pitchers to go more for length and durability than max effort all the time. And I do think eventually that would have an effect. But yeah, there's nothing you can do to just flip a switch and have players just take fewer risks because throwing hard helps in the short term until you break, until you're sproying. And it's definitely true that a lot of that damage is done before you get to the majors,

before you even get to the pro ranks. And Passon's piece noted that there was a study published this summer in the American Journal of Sports Medicine that said that more than 80% of pitchers who participated in MLB's Combine a couple years ago, quote, had some abnormality within their ulnar collateral ligament, and three quarters exhibited tearing within their share. shoulder, which is what people always say if you just like MRI'd pitchers in a preventative way, they would all look like they were hurt.

Right. This is why none of the draft guys submit to medical beforehand. Yeah, right. There's always going to be something. Yeah. And so if you can curb that early on, then that's great. But yes, there are those two questions that I have. The first one, the big one that you just mentioned is just, it seems like they will just be

able to look at this data a little later and look at this video a little later. Like, I don't, I don't think they're saying you can never access any production during that period. It seems like it's more of a blackout during those months. You can't look at anything. You can't look at video. You can't scout in person. You can't get data. Any activities, it says, prohibits team employees from seeing games, showcases, training sessions, and any other activities related to throwing, hitting, catching, or fielding. So not even just like a private workout or something. And this covers video, ball tracking, bat tracking, biomechanical data, everything.

So that sounds great. But yeah, this is like the dead of winter, which is, you know, a slow period, relatively speaking, for scouting as it is. And, yeah, there's still certainly scouting going on there and showcases and warm weather states and everything. It's so nice here that time of year, Ben, but just like some. nice here. Yeah. So if it leads to fewer events, well, that'd be good, I guess, on multiple levels, fewer expenses too, which might price fewer players out of competition. But if it's

just that, okay, we can't look at this stuff until January, would that actually discourage anyone from doing it? Because, you know, the draft isn't until months after that. So it's not like you're signing these guys during this period, really? Like, you're just evaluating them and then you're just going to follow them anyway. So, like, what would be the – and it says, you know, Passon's piece said that this had broad support from scouting directors, medical experts, college coaches, and others. And that's good. I'm glad.

But I do wonder if maybe it had such broad support because ultimately it's toothless or, you know. Yeah. Yeah, because if it's just like, well, it's January 16th, now we can just look at all the stuff you just did over the past couple months. then, yeah, why would that really even discourage anyone from doing what they would have done anyway? I do think that there is something to the idea of just having stretches where, because, you know, the data in video is meaningful and the size of amateur staffs are, you know, they're smaller than they used to be, although they're non-zero, but it is a part of the scouting world where the in-person look I think still has a relative primacy. at least compared to pro scouting. And so it's not nothing, but to your point, maybe it's not quite as much. I think an interesting data point in terms of how we should interpret how seriously to take this will be once we get,

and maybe they've issued statements and I just haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to be fascinated to see, like, what does perfect game say about this? Because if this works the way that the league is saying they envision it, this is like a direct, you know, assault on their business model, which, like, I have notes about it. So, you know, having fewer events on the calendar might be okay. But I'll be curious to see sort of how much upset we can detect in their response, because if they seem pretty mellow about the whole thing, then that's, it's not the only data point, but it might be a meaningful one through which to view this whole thing.

It doesn't seem like you could keep this performance secret forever. And then, you know, even if people aren't looking at your stats, then aren't you thinking, well, this is still, it's hyper competitive. And some of the people I'm competing against, they're still going to be playing in these showcases. And then, oh, I better show up, right? Because even if we're not being scouted, I've got to keep pace. I got to keep up with these other guys who are going to be my competition in the draft. The other thing that this story mentions that makes me think, huh, what will the actual effect? of this be. So teams cannot solicit information from players, but it says if players send an

organization unsolicited video or data during the down period, the team is required to notify MLB within 24 hours. But I assume that they're still allowed to, I don't know. It could be, yeah, that is not clear to me, but that could be clarified to like, do they just have to notify and say, oh, they said there's this data, what can we do? Or, you know, will MLB come in and say, oh, we're confiscating this data or something? That's, yeah, because, you know, if it's the former, if it's like, well, we can't ask, but if they send us stuff, well, that's okay, then, you know, if that could very easily turn into, it's just, you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, just, you know, send us your stuff and we'll still look at it. I don't know the answer to that part. I am fascinated by that question.

And you'll also notice that there's no restriction on the behavior of agents. Yes. And you know who loves to get on the phone, a baseball agent? Exactly. They love to chat to jet. So, yeah, it'll be interesting. And that's, you know, I guess I wouldn't want to prohibit young players from finding representation. But I think it's good that they have someone who knows what they're doing to to advocate for them.

But also, yeah, like players are auditioning not just for teams, but. for agents because they want that's competitive too right so that's another reason why players will still have some incentive to be pitching and and putting an effort in even if teams aren't looking at them someone else that they're trying to impress will be yeah it'll be fascinating to see sort of how this plays out in practice and what um revisions the policy uh goes through as time goes on. Plus, like, high school players, presumably are also auditioning for colleges, right? I mean, they're trying to get scholarships and everything. So, yeah, this is why ultimately I feel like this is maybe more for show. But, you know, maybe there's some utility to the show. And there's

only so much MLB can do. I mean, you know, MLB doesn't have the power to just unilaterally declare you must stop pitching now. So, like, you know, it's not, you could even, say like it's not their responsibility. It's beyond their purview. Obviously, it impacts major league baseball, but this is baseball is much bigger than major league baseball. So I'm not saying that they should just be able to snap their fingers and dictate how players are used everywhere at all levels. So I, you know, I hope it just, at least sends a signal that this is important and we should figure out other things that we can do. And even if it doesn't do that much, if it does anything, then it's worthwhile.

I don't see a downside, really. I could see a lack of upside, potentially, but I don't see any harm in doing this, so might as well give it a shot. Well, and I think that, you know, you're right that they don't get to control or dictate the course of the game in its entirety, but I am glad to see an acknowledgement

of the incentives that the pro game places on the amateur game, right? And they can't restrict anyone from from throwing. They can't restrict anyone from playing, but they can try to shift the incentives that their game creates. And I think that that's worthwhile. Whether it will be successful, how sincere that effort is, I think time will tell. But I do think that that is a worthwhile acknowledgement where it's like, no, they're doing this so that you will draft them, right? That's why they're doing it. That might not be the only reason, but it is a big one for a lot of these guys.

I guess the cynical interpretation might be that this is just, we can say we did something and we won't actually have to do anything more significant, which, again, like, they can't just affect anything, but there are some rules changes they could do, including the one that I just mentioned, where they did put a cap on pitchers, but they haven't lowered it because teams don't want them to, really. Like they don't want to have their hands tied. So this could be just a way to say, hey, we're trying and not do the actual hard thing that maybe would be more likely to pay dividends. So maybe this is just PR. This is a press release. This is Jeff Hassan will put out a story and podcasts will talk about it and it'll sound like we're being responsible. And then we can just say, well, it's out of our hands. We did what we could and not actually have to change rules or have teams change their.

behavior, the actual tough stuff to do. Maybe they did this because, well, you know, maybe it's low-hanging fruit and might as well. But also maybe they did this because there was broad consensus that, yeah, sure, whatever, I guess, you know, it won't actually affect us that much. And so we'll let you get your PR win. So that is, that's not out of the question either. So it's fascinating, you know, I guess on the whole, I think good, but a very qualified good, I guess. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. So we had our separating the art from the artist conversation in reference to Kershaw.

By the way, we're not naive. We understand what most ballplayers' politics tend to be. I'm sure that plenty of them are closely aligned with Clayton Kershaw. And maybe the more we knew, the less we would want to know. But his views have been more vocal and visible at times, partly because he's such a prominent player, but also because he has called attention to them publicly. Whereas plenty of players would keep the same opinions to themselves. And once you do broadcast those thoughts, A, they have a greater potential impact, and B, I think

you make them part of your public legacy, not your whole legacy, far from your whole legacy. We have many thoughts, many complimentary thoughts about Clayton Kershaw, the player. But people wrestle with how to think about celebrities based on their beliefs and actions, but also their output in all walks of life. Sports is not unique. I do have a few updates for you on topics we talked about. Well, first, most importantly, the Mariners won on Thursday to pull back in the a tie with the Astros heading into their weekend showdown.

They enter play on Friday with identical 84 and 69 records. And you know, the team that's currently in possession of a playoff spot that according to the fancraft's playoff odds is the most vulnerable, it's now not the Mets who won on Thursday, but the Red Sox because those Cleveland Guardians are charging hard, even making the Tigers sweat. And those two teams do still have a head-to-head series remaining. An additional detail on one Mariner, Julio, who's before and after the All-Star break splits, we discussed. I wanted to give you some context about the size of his split, but I had a stathead

hiccup, so I had to go to Kenny Jacqueline at Baseball Reference, who helped me out. Julio has the third largest second-half dominant OPS of all time. By that I mean his quote-unquote second-half OPS of 909 through Wednesday's games. Divided by his overall career OPS of 801 is the third highest mark among all players with at least 900 played appearances post-all-star break in their career. Julio had 949 entering Thursday. So his second half OPS is 113.5% of his overall OPS. And among players who clear that playing time mark, only Jorge Saler and Chris Coglin have had heavier late-season leans. Rounding out the top 10, Michael Harris II, Ender Inciarte, Benny Tate, Stan Rojack, Dave McKay,

Ike Davis, and Kyle Farmer. Most of those guys don't clear the playing time minimum by much. With the exception of Ensiarte and the number one guy, Jorge Saler, who has 1443 second half-plate appearances with a 900 OPS compared to his 786 overall mark. So, Julio, the third most second half-heavy player of all time to date, but there's plenty of time for that to change. And I imagine he will fall down that list. Finally, we had some questions about the new amateur recovery. period policy. Well, I now have answers to some of those questions, which I have relayed to Meg as well, and I'm amending my tone from mildly in favor to, I'd say strongly in favor. Some of my

doubts have been assuaged. So I read the story about this at Baseball America, which was written by J.J. Cooper, the editor-in-chief of Baseball America, and this story went into greater detail, perhaps reflecting the fact that it's written for a prospect hound audience and not the more mainstream audience of ESPN. So one thing I did not know, given my ignorance about college baseball, is that there is an NCAA quiet period for off-campus recruiting of baseball players, which stretches from October 13th to February 28th. So that will overlap with this MLB blackout period, and during that time, these players won't be evaluated by MLB scouts or college recruiters. More importantly, though, we wondered whether there would be

obvious loopholes here, and it turns out, doesn't seem like it. J.J. writes, teams are not allowed to input bat and ball tracking data or biomechanical data gathered during the dead period, nor can they contract with third-party vendors to access any data created from baseball activities during the dead period. And I actually reached out to JJ to confirm that that means that this ban applies in perpetuity. So not only can teams not do anything with that data during the dead period, they can't do anything with that dead period data after the dead period. And JJ said, correct, the intent is to ensure that no player feels an incentive to throw at full intent during that time period. The idea is there is no logic in doing a full

intent session or a showcase during that time because literally no one will see it. And JJ says that applies even after the fact. And another question we had, JJ writes, if a club receives unsolicited data slash video or anything else related to baseball activities from the prohibited time frame, they are to report the receipt immediately to MLB. And I asked JJ, so does that mean that in addition to reporting it, they also can't keep it, which would render moot any well, we didn't solicit the information. They just sent it to us of their own accord, excuse. And JJ said, that's correct as I understand it. So even if someone sends you some data out of the blue, you still can't use it during that dead period or any time after. So those actually

do seem like pretty robust guardrails, I've got to say. Initially, I thought this seemed well-intentioned, but perhaps too easy to skirt. But now it sounds like, nope, they thought of those things. Now we didn't talk about the penalties. JJ's story says violations could result in fine suspensions and placement on the MLB ineligible list, as well as potential draft or international bonus pool system penalties. And in a message to me, he said, the penalties listed for violations range up to banishment and draft pick penalties. The upside of this data, or being in person, is so modest as to not be worth such a risk. John Coppellella, formerly of the Braves, got banned for trying to rig entire international classes and signing draft picks,

this would be getting banned for getting a two-month head start with eight months till the draft. And the player you got extra info on may get picked before your pick. So yeah, does this mean that there won't be any shady dealings? I wouldn't be completely confident in that. But it does seem like the strong incentive isn't there. And some strong disincentives are there. So will this produce tangible improvements in pitcher health down the road? I don't know.

But will it at least in the short term, produce an actual recovery period? Yeah, it sounds like it might. Or if it doesn't, it won't be because of MLB teams. Obviously, players will always have some incentive to train and to perfect their craft. And there's nothing stopping someone from looking at stats, for instance. Not video or biomechanics or tracking info, but just box scores, results, surface stuff. And just having played in those tournaments, I suppose, could give a player a leg up or an arm up in this case.

It's added experience to weigh against the potentially added injury risk. But yeah, conceptually, this seems more solid than we initially feared. A couple other things JJ's piece mentioned, one potential side effect of the new rules that could affect some scouts and coaches who do instructional work in the offseason is that club personnel will not be allowed to provide lessons, training, or baseball instruction to draft eligible players during the dead period. So could be bad for baseball folks who are trying to pick up some side gigs over the offseason, though you can coach younger players. And one more provision, this is something some of you may have wondered about, because, of course, people in baseball often have kids who play baseball. Quoting JJ here, MLB club personnel can watch their own child participate in baseball activities during the dead period. That would be pretty heavy-handed. Sorry, junior, your parent can't come to your game. It's the amateur recovery period. However,

there is an additional stipulation. They can watch their own child participate in baseball activities, but they can only do so in a non-professional capacity, meaning no data or official evaluations from those games can be entered into a club's player database. And don't worry if you want to watch a baseball prospect, play basketball or football. That is allowed. One last caveat here, though, JJ wrote, policing the new dead period parameters will largely depend on teams certifying that they are following the policy, although violations can also be reported to MLB. So it sounds like teams are on the honor system here. And teams are not always honorable. But if they aren't and other teams find out about it, they can turn each other in, rat each other out. Fascinating. If you found anything we talked about today or any day fascinating, you can support the podcast on Patreon 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, Mark Pascal, Tracy, Zishan Lakani, Grant Bergman, and Chris Jones. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include

access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, 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 fancrafts.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 sub-edit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes at fan graphs 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. That'll do it for today and for this week. We thank you as always for listening.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Take me to the diamond. lead me through the turnstile shower me with data that I never thought to compile now in freely now per scorecard with a cracker jacket of smile Ventepewile

excuse me started it just in time to catch that so sorry i didn't even that wasn't even open mouth that was like an internal sound yeah oh sorry god i need to get back to work vacation meg is maybe too relaxed arguably good grief are you drinking today or not yet i am actually I have a bloody mary But it's just a little baby one You know It's like drinking salad Without dressing of course

It's all it's all dressing Arguably it's like drinking salad dressing Really if we're being precise Leave this all in I think What show is this? Who are we? What episode? Who could say?

Doesn't matter drink your salad Maybe we can keep it at the end I'll do an actual intro Here we go