Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2379: October Came Early

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the delights of the last week of the regular season, the Dodgers’ bullpen problems, and what kind of compromise the challenge system is, then (43:09) answer listener emails about where the warning track extends, the easiest day at the office for a batter, a player who exclusively hits […]

The show is called Effectively Wild. It's about baseball and stuff. We might be a major leader to break down some plenty of facts. Infectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2379 of Effectively Wild

Baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. What a wonderful night of baseball that was on Tuesday. Just such a good night. It just feels like the playoffs have started already. And I know that that's the case. I feel nervous, so yeah.

Yeah, because we're anxious and because I'm already recognizing that whatever we say will be a bit out of date by the time people hear it, which is our plight every October and now also in late September because, of course, there will have been more exciting and consequential baseball on Wednesday by the time this is posted. But Tuesday, just what a thrill. Just comebacks, close games. Such good stuff. It felt like everyone was watching Tiger's Guardians. I know that wasn't the case. But everyone on baseball social media was watching Tiger's Guardians and reacting to it in real time. And that was just a lot of fun.

It was a lot of fun. And I have to say this is obviously a very specific thread of one's experience of sports. And, you know, I think you should take in games however you want to. I think having a mix of like being in the moment, being really, really focused, putting your phone aside, and also, like, if you were a person who does social media to do that, but it did feel not only like everyone was watching Tiger's Guardians, but like a noticeably larger percentage of my blue sky timeline was watching baseball at all. And that was nice. And I hope that we can keep that going, because that's a thing that

hasn't quite taken hold the way that it used to on Twitter. And I miss it. I think the only thing about the evening that wasn't fun. Now, I say that as someone whose preferred team won was the scare that David Fry had, it seemed like it unsettled a scoble to the point of perhaps contributing to that inning and game unraveling on him and his team. Thankfully, it sounds like Fry's going to be able to avoid surgery, but is going to miss the playoffs entirely if the guardians managed to pull this out so that is a bummer and

one of those scary things it's never good when the pitcher um immediately throws his shit on the ground after hitting someone like obviously a mistake clearly not something scoble intended to do but you have a you have a real clear view what's going on um so that was that was scary but the rest of that game was um fantastic so yeah yeah and fry was leaning into bunt so it wasn't even like it was such a wild pitch. There was a wild pitch that followed that, but it was still a 99-mile-per-hour to recouple fastball in the face that is going to hurt, and it did. Fortunately, sounds like Fry is more or less okay. I mean, okay. He still has facial fractures, but he doesn't have to have surgery, and there will seemingly be no long-term damage, so that's good. But yeah, that somehow

ended up doing damage, I guess, to Detroit, because it did play into that. That inning, which, as many people have pointed out, was just such a quintessentially Cleveland Guardian's inning. Just kind of dinks and dunks, not even dinks and dunks. Because dinks and dunks, I think, implies that you actually propelled a ball into the outfield. Correct. Guardians did not do that in that inning. And nevertheless, they scored three runs, which was all they needed to win that game. Because, of course, their relievers do not ever allow runs anymore.

So, yeah, that was just, you know, there was a bunt single, and then there was a sacrifice attempt that Terek Scoobel got a little too cute, a little too fancy with, perhaps, and tried to chuck it through his legs. And then you end up with a two-based throwing error there. And then there's just another infield tapper that is a single. And then, yeah, Scoobel seemed to be rattled by having hit Fry like that and then did deliver the wild pit. and then balked, and then there was a ground out to score a run. And that was it. So that's three runs for you. And the Guardian scored five on the night without hitting very well, as we would traditionally define it.

But they got the job done. So that was just one of those weird ittings that sort of sums up a whole season, I guess. It was just a microcosm of the Cleveland Guardian's experience. I didn't find it to be kind of endearing. that scoble was so upset by having hit fry because I'm often taken aback by how Blase pitchers seem to be about it and maybe on the inside their guts are roiling, who knows, but there seems to be sort of a culture of don't show any regret or concern or sentiment for an opponent or something. Sometimes you'll see a nod or a gesture like, oh, I didn't mean to,

something like that. But it's fairly rare. Oftentimes, the pitcher will just kind of turn around and ask for a ball or whatever, and that'll be that. And in this case, yeah, Scoopal was thrown by that. And he actually went to visit Fry in the hospital, which is a nice gesture. So, yeah, because I always imagine if I were in that situation, if I somehow possess the power to throw a 99-hour fastball and could hit someone with it in the face, that, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. Totally.

That would unsettle me if I did something like that that could be career-threatening, life-threatening. So, yeah, I don't see how that wouldn't affect you. But sometimes it seems not to. It's a little bit different when you're just, you plunk a guy like on the hand, which isn't to say that like that isn't a problem. I don't mean to make light of it. But I think that when it involves the face, it tends to elicit a stronger reaction because the degree to which that can be dangerous is just like meaning. fully higher than messing with all your little bird bones or what have you. So, but yeah, it is, it is nice when you are reminded of, um, of it being, uh, you know, like there's, there's brotherhood and fellowship and

what have you between these guys and, you know, I do think in a situation like this, there's, there's so a little ambiguity about it being an accident that it also kind of helps the moment sort of move along in a weird way, right? No one, no one thinks Scoobel like meant to hit David Fry in the face. The stakes of the game are so dramatic. The stakes of the series are so dramatic. Scuba has not demonstrated himself to be a serial killer in any capacity that I'm aware of. So I think that helps too when it's just obviously like a bad, a bad bit of luck and misfortune for everyone. So they beat the big guy. They beat Goliath. They beat Scoobel. And, you know, people will often say, oh, if you're the Tigers, you've got to win the scoble games.

And technically you don't need to. I mean, it's good if you do and probably you will. But also. Yeah, right. You should try to make the most of that opportunity. But maybe they lose the game that you expect them to win. And maybe they win the game that you expect them to lose. That happens often too.

But they lined him up so that they could start him twice this week. And I think I referred to that as regular rest. But really, he's starting on four days' rest, which used to be regular rest. That used to be the standard. But now he's usually working on five days' rest, sometimes even more. And that's kind of swept the league. And that's what pitchers do these days. And so four days' rest, which used to be the norm, is now quasi-short rest.

He has pitched quite well when he's gone on four days' rest this season. And he pitched well again on Tuesday. But things just didn't go his way. So that tiger's bullpen is just really rough, as we discussed last time, just once they're losing in the late innings, it feels like it's just going to get worse from there. And it's the opposite with the Guardians where they've gotten this great starting pitching work this month. But the bullpen work is a little less surprising and just so dominant. They have so many guys out there even without Class A and they're just all good. Like if I don't know, like how many Tigers relievers could even.

even make the Guardian's bullpen death chart. Like, maybe Finnegan. I don't know that anyone else would actually crack that bullpen. It's just so much deeper. Yeah, I think that's right. I think Finigan might be the, at least based on how they've pitched, you know, this year. There's been better production out of members of that group in years past. But yeah, it's been pretty rocky.

It's been pretty rocky. So the saving grace for the Tigers was that the Astros also lost. so the Tigers maintained their slim lead in the wildcard race, and of course they have the tiebreaker over Houston, too. And even though that division lead has now fully evaporated, I do think it would somewhat save Detroit from just historic notorious status. If they blow the lead, if they lose the central, but they still win a wild card, then I think they're saved the worst of it, probably,

if they still sneak in. And, of course, who knows, they could have a deeper October run than the Guardians do in that event, too. And then would we even really remember it as a collapse? Because if they get in, you know, that's all that matters, really. I mean, yes, it's nice to get a buy and to win the division. But if they made it out of the wild card round, then I'm not sure that it would really cling to them in the way that some of the other historic collapses did. Because in past historic collapses, if you collapsed, you did not make the playoffs. That was it.

Right. So, and I think that's what sort of separates their situation from the Mets situation and that the Mets have kind of collapsed too. But they never really had a secure path to the top of the NLEs. So it seemed like, well, they were going to win a wild card. And maybe that's just a little less embarrassing to blow a wild card. I don't know. Maybe I'm drawing fine distinctions here that don't really matter. But I think if the Tigers lose the division but make the playoffs, especially if they're able to.

play well in the playoffs, then I think they could save themselves from the worst of the stain associated with having blown this big lead. I think it certainly helps if they are able to still make it through, and particularly if they end up advancing through to the division series. I think it's pretty gnarly, though, you know, and I think in part the reason it might stick to them more than you'd expect is there's, there's like a. narrative neatness with the way that their season this year lines up compared to their season last year, right? And I think we're going to have a hard time resisting the siren song of

like a pat narrative, right? It's like, last year they sold the deadline and then you never believe what happened next. And this year, they're in this dominant position. You know, they seem like they're just going to run the table. And then you'll never believe what happened next. And so I think that puts them on shaky ground just because we love a good narrative. And I think part of it will depend on whether their collapse stands alone or they are joined by some other collapse in the NL. I agree with you that on a single season basis, what they have experienced is worse, quote unquote, than what the Mets have gone through just because of how precipitous the fall has been, but we sure do love making fun of the Mets.

Not you and me, we're sweet as can be. But people, you know, mean people, that might counterbalance things a little bit. I mean, that could be true to the Mets benefit as well, right, that they are not the only team. And who knows? Like, it seems unlikely that the Dodgers will lose the NL West, but those Padres are nip at their heels and they couldn't even defeat the diamond. Backs last night. So what's going on?

Speaking of bad bullpens, good Lord. Dodgers bullpen is an absolute tirefire. I brought this up recently. It's just fascinating to me. This is, I think, one of the most intriguing postseason storylines is that the Dodgers just have the opposite pitching problem as the one they had last year, where they had hardly any healthy starters left, but they had a pretty lights out bullpen, as it turned out, and they rode that all the way to a title.

And this year, they just cannot figure out who to give the ball to in those high leverage late-inning situations. And meanwhile, they have an excess of starters, if anything. And so then I guess the question becomes well, do they rob Peter to pay Paul or do they pull from their strength to bolster the weakness? And there was some talk about, oh, Clayton Kershaw is available out of the bullpen. Here we go again. Which I guess he may have volunteered for.

That's nothing new, but that's maybe his role for the postseason that they just have too many starters. So maybe Emmett Sheehan, I mean, he's maybe more of a long guy. But, yeah, Shohay was great. Like, he went six for the first time the season, didn't give up a run. He hasn't given up a run this month, I believe. And yet the Dodgers have lost all of his starts because as soon as he's removed from the game, it's just night and day. It's just whoever they bring in instantly blows the lead. So this time it was not Blake Trinon for once.

It was Tanner Scott who took the loss and just it was ugly. It was like he hit a guy and then he walked a guy and oh, here we go again. Here we go again. Yeah. And the diamond backs keep themselves very much in the running with another late inning comeback. And Perdomo gets the walkoff hit. Very exciting. It's like the Dodgers relievers who can be trusted now are more of the middle inning guys

or the guys who were supposed to, like Alex Vescia, Jack Dreyer has been huge for them. But the late inning guys, you just cannot use them anymore. And it does make me wonder, you know, I know they activated Sasaki off the aisle. I wonder how they will deploy him. I wonder if they will contemplate sort of like a piggyback thing with him and Sheehan maybe. I feel nervous for him because they're in such dire straits all of a sudden. And then it's like you're going to throw the guy whose velocity was down and who couldn't adjust on his first try into like the heat of the postseason fire.

I don't know if that's like the right way to do it. But, you know, if he's a healthy arm and they feel good about what he can contribute, then maybe. I don't know. It's it's so odd. But you're right that they have, they seemingly have options. It's just how they want to fit those bullpen pieces together out of their existing starters. And, you know, it's not like it has. to be the same series to series.

In theory, they could, you know, kind of move some guys around, but you got to advance in order for that to be remotely a strategy. And I don't know how advisable it is to continue to monkey with the usage of guys who were used to starting. So I don't know, Ben, seems a mess, but they'll probably win the World Series the end or some shit. I do appreciate, I am not wishing the Dodgers is. as a team. I do not have a particular disdain for them. I do appreciate them not running rough

shot over the entire National League all year. We talked last time about there being archetypes of teams, approaches to team building that we think are good for the game just in the abstract. And we want to see those rewarded with postseason births. And I think that the Dodgers being mid is good for baseball, not because of their midness, but because it might get people to shut the hell up about how they're a super team and you can buy one of those. And it's really about what's good for the game and not about me being right, but me being right is a nice ancillary benefit. I won't lie. I have pride. I like to have my analysis be sharp. You know, I do. No, it would be funny, I think, if they got eliminated early going into the postseason with

You have to take a different word on the off chance that Craig actually listens to this episode because I worry about his well-being and the state of his brain because this feels rough. I'm going to mention Craig again in a minute in a different context. But no, it would be, I think, kind of cosmically appropriate in the playoffs are random and unpredictable sense. If they go into it with just the dregs of a rotation, just guys who are barely healthy and weren't even something. supposed to be here, and they win the World Series, and then this year they come into it with Otani and Yamamoto and Snell and Glass Now and all these guys, and then they just like get swept or something.

That would be, that would be funny in a way. Dodgers fans would not find it funny, but it would be fitting in a sense. And I am looking forward to Otani's first MLB postseason start. That should be exciting. Yeah. And Sasaki, I mean, if he could be a. Tober bullpen weapon, that would be fun. I don't know that I believe that.

He just came off of a AAA rehab assignment where he had a 6ERA and he walked six per nine still. Granted, he was starting for most of that assignment and then they moved him to the pen. And I think he had a couple scoreless outings in relief to close it out. So maybe he'll be a better fit for that usage. But yeah, it's tough. And the Cubs, the back of the Cubs bullpen similarly full of holes too. How about it? And good thing for the Mets because the Mets went down five to one and then Cade Horton had to come out of the game with a back issue.

And then the Mets made it back and had a huge homer from Francisco Alvarez. That was a game that they really needed. So that helped them maintain their lead over the diamondbacks and regain a lead over the Reds who lost. So it's not a lot of breathing room. But for at least one more day, they're back in possession of a playoff spot or as we speak. speak. They are. So there was that comeback. There was the Yankees late comeback. There was the Mariners late comeback. Just so much excellent action that was going on there. And then the Padres win the game to narrow the NL. West lead and the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays to solidify their position

a little bit. And they beat Gossmann as well, a tough assignment for them. So yeah, it was just a lot of fun to follow all of these things in this very granular way. It was a good trial run. This is getting me very much in the mood for the postseason. I felt terrified. I felt nervous. I was heartened if we're doing mega motion watch by like the Astros seemingly losing. I'll admit something though, Ben.

Are you prepared for a dereliction of duty? yeah it well first of technically it wasn't a working day for me we podcasted but podcasting with you that's not work at all that's a pleasant treat and then uh you know it was the last night before i had to not only go back to work but like we got all this stuff to do it's very busy i spent the morning putting credential requests in and the mariners were losing and i was like it's time for us to go to dinner

and so we did and i i had my phone out at the bar to pay attention. But I didn't watch the very end of that game live. I did watch it when I got home, though. I got watched it when I got home. But I was nervous. I felt agita. And so I had to go have a gin cocktail and some chicken wings.

Well, for a few days, you can maybe relax a little bit before you then ramp up the anxiety again because the Mariners are sitting pretty at the moment. Well, I mean, a few days or maybe a whole week, you know, Things break the way that we want to do. That's the other fun thing about this is that because a lot of these teams are clustered so closely together, it's like you can go from missing the playoffs to being the top seed potentially and we're getting a buy just in the matter of days. All these things are still in play potentially here. So the range of outcomes has been very wide. So, yeah.

I forgot to mention Justin Rebleski as another guy who's pitching decently for the Dodgers out of the pen. I don't know what to make at him. Yeah, I think they should just, like, demote Blake Trinen, Tanner Scott, and Kirby Yates, all the guys who were supposed to be the late inning, high leverage, closer, save-getters. Just make them the garbage time mop-up men. Yeah. Put some starters in the pen and then just go with Dreyer and Rebleski and Vescia when you need to nail it down. Just overturn the bullpen pecking order because it's just not working.

it's not working and I don't know I mean they're so smart you know and they got so many smart people working for them and they haven't been able to crack it you know at least not yet like what's going on what's going on with like Trinan you know I mean yeah well so many things I'm sure but on the field nothing good so you never know though like maybe you just I mean it's bullpen performance we're talking about it very small number of outings and innings and maybe you stick with your guys and then you are rewarded for your faith when suddenly the calendar flips and they're good again. So who knows, who can predict anything. But I'm enjoying not being able to predict anything that's happening this week. That's been great. And we'll see if the pirates can continue to play spoiler and they can get a taste of that postseason atmosphere. It's the closest Paul Skeens is going to come to the playoff environment, playing a playoff contender, and perhaps stopping them from making it. Somewhere Paul Skeens is like, I'm just sitting here, but I feel like somewhere in the world,

I'm being weirdly insulted. Yeah, well, it's not his fault. It is far from his fault. Well, we will continue to monitor and discuss and watch along with everyone as this story develops this week. So I was going to invoke Craig Goldstein of baseball prospectus because both he and Joe Sheehan in the Joshian baseball newsletter reacted to the news that the automated strike zone is arriving next season in the form of the challenge system.

Yep. And in some respects, they had identical takes. And in other respects, they had diametrically opposed takes, which amused me. Because I know these guys read each other and respect each other. I've seen their various interactions. And I read both of them and enjoy their work. But here, they could not have disagreed more except in the ways in which they completely, agreed. So they both called this the challenge system a half measure. They both used that exact

term. But they disagreed on whether it's a good half measure or a bad half measure. And I guess when you call something a half measure, usually you are saying something negative. You're saying that it doesn't go far enough and it won't satisfy anyone. And that's what Joe is saying. He wrote, My immediate reaction is that this is a half measure that won't have much effect. It is, in fact, designed to not have much effect, but rather to win the press conference, there will still be thousands of instances in which the home plate umpire reverses the result of the pitcher's action, calling a ball a strike, calling a strike a ball, and influences the course of the game. There simply aren't enough challenges in this rule set to repair every instance of an umpire

flipping 500 points of OPS by being wrong on a 1-1 pitch. MLB can get the calls right and is choosing not to do so. This program is a compromise, and it should serve as a reminder that not all compromise is good. The midpoint between a good idea and a bad idea is often just a different bad idea set against the backdrop of smiles and handshakes. Withering, withering take from Joe. Yeah. And called it a half measure, called it to compromise, and so did Craig, but Craig loves it. Yeah.

And so do we, I think. And I don't disagree that it's a half measure, but I'm happy about it. So Craig says, this is great news. While half measures are usually anathema, this one just might work. And he goes on to say that it will not satisfy the many fans who value the human element of the umpires, nor will it satisfy those who prioritize the correct call Ubrales. But perhaps this is the mythical compromise where neither camp is happy, and it's also for the best. The challenge remains an option for those crucial or egregious situations which can get rectified while preserving in part the discretion of the empire to move things along

and blowouts and catchers who excel at framing to ply their wares. So I think we're more aligned with Craig here, but it amused me that those two guys used the same phrases and evaluated it very similarly and yet reached completely opposed conclusions. Yes. I mean, people know where I stand on the challenge system that I love it and think that it's great fun. I think it introduces strategy in a way that technology

often removes and will give us insight into individual catchers or pitchers and hitters for that matter and their discernment of the zone. I am less bothered by, you know, the notion that there will still be calls that are quote unquote wrong because I think that you have the ability to rectify the ones that are an issue. I don't think that the number of challenges is, you know, irrevocably fixed. And if they find that actually having four would be better than two, and here we should remind listeners that you retain your challenges if you get the challenge right. So in theory, you could have an infinite number of challenges, as long as you keep getting the challenges that you call for, correct, and have those correspond with the action

on the field. You know, I'm sure that, like, there are other attempts at sort of things. fiddling with the rules that they will be open to further fiddling if further fiddling presents itself as necessary. You know, the majority of calls that I think Joe is probably worried about here, and I might be putting words in his mouth. So if he said something different, I haven't had a chance to read his piece yet, you tell me, but I think of the strike zone as a probabilistic endeavor. That's the way it's been called for most of my life. It's been called worse than it's called now for most of my life because umpires keep getting better and better and as long as they can keep their you know draft king's accounts out of the hands of professional gamblers there's no reason

to think they can't keep getting better and being very good at baseball so i think of the zone is probabilistic i think of its edges is probabilistic and i think that they're being those pitches being called in accordance with the execution of the pitcher or his catcher is a cool part of the game. And if you want to be persnickety about it, you're going to have the ability to do that. So I think it's great. I think Joe is wrong. I understand his perspective. I don't agree with it. Craig's point is funny. And I think that the unacknowledged thing that folks who want the full ABS need to grapple with is that what fans want isn't the call to be right, fans want the call to benefit their team, right?

I don't think that there is a large constituency that is advocating for a rulebook zone and its strict enforcement because they like the idea of it being consistent. They think it's going to benefit their dudes. That's why they want it. And that's a perfectly fine position to have. It's not one that I think should be

the governing principle of the rule set that, like, you know, guides the game. but as a fan, that's a perfectly reasonable position to hold. The problem is that you're not going to get it. You're not going to get it whether you have the challenge system or full ABS. And if you go to full ABS, sure, maybe fans can adjust, but you think fans can play now just you freaking wait until they have a full ABS zone, which is going to, by the way, make games longer again.

This is what they found in AAA, that when they called a full automatic zone, it made game times longer. so you're going to be giving back some of your pitch. There will be more walks. More walks. You're going to give back some of your pitch clock gains. You're going to have more walks, which are boring. They're valuable, but boring.

So what I think you end up with is people still pissed because their intuition about the zone and whether things are, you know, a strike or not is going to have to go through a period of adjustment that most people will not bother to do. So they're going to have a bad intuitive sense of the zone and always think the call is wrong. the game's going to be longer and crammed with shit they don't want to watch. So I'm right again. No, but I think that having clarity about the thing that fans are really asking for and really invested in is useful in evaluating this.

Having seen it in practice a bunch and not just in spring training this year, although in spring training this year, people like the challenge system. People have fun with the challenge system. Like people in the crowd who are not accustomed to the challenge. system. First of all, they get it very quickly. The reviews are super fast. They show the little graphic and everybody goes, ah, and it's great. It's great. It enhances the spectator experience. It doesn't take too long. It's not like replay where there's a delay before you figure out whether they're going to challenge and then there's a further delay. No, it's over pretty quickly.

There's a visual component. You can all experience that together. Right. And I do agree with another Joe, Joe Posnanski, who wrote about this and echoed what I've been saying, that I fear that this is a slippery slope. Sure. And Posninski wrote, here's the thing about replay and really the use of any sort of technology in any walk of life. It never stops creeping into the game. Within a few years, the challenge system will become automated balls and strikes. It just will. You know what they say about genies and bottles.

Even tennis, where the challenge system was immensely popular, has now in most tournaments turned to having no line judges and just letting the machinery call the games. he says the big story here is that this is the beginning of the end of the home plate umpire and I guess by that he probably means the home plate umpire Colin pitches because I don't think they're going to do away with the home plate umpire entirely even when there is full a BS if and when there is I do fear that that will happen eventually because as I've said I just I think it could become unsustainable to say this is an improvement because we're getting more of the calls right and then what do you say when someone says hey we could get all the calls right you know why are we just appealing to the computers and the robots on these individual pitches

when we could do it on every pitch by default? And there will inevitably be a few games where a team runs out of challenges, and then there's an egregious call, and you're unable to appeal it, and that'll be frustrating. And, of course, we'll still have replay and we'll still be able to see when it seems to have gotten something wrong. And so I do worry that once we've normalized the use of ABS in any degree, then we will inevitably creep towards using it all the time.

But I do hope that we can maintain this balance, this compromise, this half measure, because, yeah, I like it. It just preserves a lot of the things I like about the game. It gets rid of most of the biggest blown calls, which aren't even necessarily catcher and pitcher skill in many cases. They're just a whiff by the umpires pretty much. Yeah, sometimes it's not attributable to the player's skill. It's just the ump screwed up sometimes. So we get rid of those. And of course, we appreciate the fine art of framing.

And Joe does not. And he, I think, regards it as more of a perversion of justice because, you know, he's reading the rule book and he's saying, well, what the catcher does, how the pitches received should not have any bearing on what the call is. You saw it in that brief excerpt that I wrote there, that the umpire is kind of overturning the outcome that the pitcher. deserved or the batter deserved. And I tend to look at it more as the pitch is not complete until it's called.

I mean, you know, we can quibble over this. And many people do and we'll continue to. But I don't know that I see something as just it's a ball or a strike until the call is made. I guess this is kind of tautological. But like the empire decides whether it was a ball or strike. Obviously, it was physically within the strike zone or not. But even then, with the challenge system, with ABS, you're deciding, well, what does that mean exactly?

And how do you define a strike zone? And are you measuring it? Does it cross the strike zone? Does it touch the strike zone at any point? Or does it just, is it the middle where this challenge system will be set up? And then is it has to be a certain amount of the ball that touches the zone? Or is it just any part of it that nicks it, which is, I guess, what it is. So all of this is kind of malleable and amorphous.

And, yeah, you can't attempt to constrain it and say, here's what the rulebook says it is. But to me, the act of receiving the pitch is part of the pitch itself. It's not something that follows the completed pitch. It's a battery. It's a pitcher and catcher in tandem working together to try to get that call. And the catcher is an important part of it. And granted, maybe it's not entirely fair to the batter because the batter can't see what is happening behind them, though they could perhaps take it into account if they know who's catching and what the tendencies are.

All of this is just nuance that I appreciate, but I also understand why other people find it frustrating. And I don't think they're wrong. It just kind of comes down to personal taste and it's sort of subjective. This is what I like about baseball. But I also like just having more things to analyze and more depth to everything. And the challenge system gives us that because it's not just automated call, automated call, but you have to decide. when you want a challenge and whether it's worth it and what's the leverage in the situation and what's the count and how close was it and how many challenges do we have remaining and who's going to challenge?

And it seems like pitchers consistently are worse when it comes to challenging, which is something that was discovered in the minors, but also held true in spring training last year. So I think pitchers have been discouraged and might be effectively banned by their teams from challenging because catchers just seem to be the best at it. They just have the best view. pitchers, they're just, they're too close to the situation maybe because it affects their stats so personally and also they're in motion and they're sweating out there and their heads jerking around and they're falling all over the place and so they might just not have the

best view of it. So you're going to see that change and do players get better at challenging over time? It's kind of interesting that the success rates are basically a coin flip. It's basically 50-50, even though some of these calls, they're challenging the most egregious ones where you'd think you're very likely to get the challenge, right? But there are other times, let's say it's a make-or-break moment, you know, a call goes one way and the game is over, a call goes the other way, and the game continues, or maybe you benefit. Well, you might challenge there, even though the success rate is probably going to be low, because what the heck?

What do you have to lose? You might lose if you don't challenge. So you're going to have different thresholds for when it makes sense to challenge, and there will be probably some players who have some special capacity to challenge accurately. And does it turn out that Juan Soto actually is some sort of savant when it comes to determining where the strike zone is or cow rally? And we see that players develop reputations for being good at this and what sort of a sample do we need to determine whether they're actually good or whether it's just a bunch of

coin flips coming up heads in a row, all these things I'm looking forward to digging into, which we just wouldn't have if it was ABS. And maybe this is sick-o stuff and most people don't care about this and they just want to see calls right or calls correct or calls going in their favor. But for those of us who like the layers below that, then I think this is fertile territory. There's so many things that I could respond to in that. And one that I will will say is that, yeah, you got to receive the pitch, right? You got to, we got a guy back there. You got to receive the pitch.

That's part of the process. It's like completing the catch, right? It's part of the process of the catch. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be. You could say that if the catcher elated and missed it entirely, if it went through the strike zone, it should be a strike. I mean, technically it should. But I just, I don't mind looking at this other way where it's sort of, you know,

we default to saying it's pitcher versus batter and it's this. one-on-one battle. But it's never been that because there are so many other factors that influence things. And the catcher is the biggest one other than potentially the umpire. And I'm just kind of okay with that. Yeah, I agree. Plus, we get to figure out, well, how do we determine the value of this? If someone is very adept at challenging, does that go on their ledger? Who do we credit that to? Whom do we subtracted from? And we also get the side benefit probably of getting rid of the on-screen K-zone, which is another thing that I think

if you polled mainstream fans, casual fans, I'm not sure that they would be anti-having the box displayed on the screen. I think probably they like that. Certainly the broadcasters think they like that, but we're probably not going to get that anymore for multiple reasons, but especially because MLB doesn't want someone who's watching somewhere nearby to see where it is

and whether it's in the K zone and then signal that somehow and so they will want to do away with that and I think that will be for the best because even if that's entertaining it is engagement bait and I guess

that's good on one level because you want people to care about things and you want people to discuss sports and so you want some controversy I guess but it does seem like the K zone And because it's not quite accurate, and it doesn't really reflect the actual rulebook zone and the batter dimensions and how things are actually judged after the fact or how they would be judged by the challenge system, you can't have that contrast there where the on-screen K zone differs from the challenge system if you have the challenge system set up. So I think the effect of having that box is just to make people mad repeatedly.

and maybe that's good when it comes to driving engagement. I mean, that's what all the social media, big tech titans figure out. It's like if they can inflame our passions, then they can keep us in their apps. And unfortunately, the passions that get inflamed the most are anger and outrage. And so if they can sort of stoke those fires, then they keep us glued to our screens. And so maybe that would be good for baseball. At least we're watching, even though we're shaking. our fists and ranting and cursing the umpires. I don't know. Maybe in a world where everything's

just automated and everyone's used to that and you don't have players and managers arguing with umpires and fans have no one to get upset about anymore. It would all be so smooth and frictionless that in a way we would miss when we used to get upset. I don't think I'm going to miss getting upset about that. I get upset when it's there. I get upset when it's there because it isn't always it's not always adjusted right and then

the broadcaster will be like that was a strike and then you look and you're like it but it was though but the thing is it was and you're you're misinforming your viewership I don't think you're doing it with the intent to misinform but you're just being given a bad little bit of information

and then you're running with it and now everybody's all grumpy and upset and guess what? We got it reason to be grumpy upset. We do not need to manufacture reasons for grumpy upset. We have so many reasons for grumpy upset. So I say, don't let the door hit you on the way out, fake K zone. I agree. That's what I say. Well, I'm glad that we have both agreed that we're right. I just, I'm not always so concerned with being right, but you know, sometimes you get given the business by people and then you need to say, but hey, who was right? though. It was me. The person you gave

the business to. Stop giving me the business. Shohei has a 1.91 FIP, by the way. I know that he doesn't go that deep in the games and thus he has hardly faced opponents the third time through the order. So that helps. But also he's very good. And I think he's a tenth of a win in Fancraft's

War behind Aaron Judge for now the major league lead. That's bonkers. I did you see the Mets DFAed Jose Siri? Yeah. They're low there low They're low-bearing no longer. No, I mean, hopefully not.

The center cannot hold the loads. It has collapsed. The load. The structure could not stand. So, all right. Well, maybe we can answer a few emails here and we'll get to more tomorrow, too. But we have a little bit of a backlog built up here. Now, here's one that comes to us from Dane, who describes himself as a likely future Patreon supporter.

I'll take it. I'll take it. I feel like I really got to pay attention during this question. I like this question. I'm not trying to induce Dane to sign up by giving preference to his email here. I would have answered it regardless. But hopefully he will be a future Patreon supporter. Hopefully, so many of you will.

But the subject line here was official delineation for warning track. So Dane writes, during the broadcast of the September 19th Brewers Cardinals, game, a ball was popped up out of play over the third base side of the infield. As Nolan Aronado made his way under the ball in foul territory, the Cardinals announcer described his positioning as middle of the warning track. Popped him up. Will it stay in play? Aronado gallops over the middle of the warning track. And that takes care of the Brewer's catcher. This was the first time I had ever heard this area described as such, and it seemed really odd, as I'd always felt that warning track described only the dirt placed in front of the

outfield wall. I'd never considered that the term might be used to describe the full ring of dirt that surrounds a baseball field. The outfield wall portion of the track serves a unique purpose as fielders tracking fly balls often never have sight of the wall throughout the play. Their ability to make these catches as well as not get completely destroyed by awkward high-speed impacts fully relies on the dirt alert to warn them of their proximity to the various padding, ivy, chain link, brick, ancient metal scoreboards that serve as outfield walls, whereas plays made in foul territory typically involve positioning that at one point offered a frontal or lateral view of the various walls, nets, dugouts, tarp rolls, and ball people

at the perimeter of the field. The out-of-play dirt zones seem to serve different purposes feature their own unique risk factors and are separated by an infallible line of powder. I find this all to be reason enough to reserve the warning track distinction for only the dirt in play. Where it gets hazy, of course, are the corner portions of the dirt that are both in front of the outfield wall and in foul territory. I suppose I could accept this area as being referred to as the warning track if the fielder is making a play there with his back to the wall, but really I think the chalk helps us draw the line and we should collectively respect its powdery powers.

wondering if we have pedantificated on this topic by now and if not, we'd love to hear your thoughts on how these areas should be referred to. So, yeah, warning track. Is it just in the outfield and is it just in fair territory specifically? Gosh, it's definitely the most, I think it is most commonly referred to

as it pertains to the outfield for the reasons that the email describes right that you want to give a visual cue to a fielder so that he knows that he is approaching the wall and still is able to track the ball in the air as it is as it is hit to him and so people will refer to the warning track most often in reference to the outfield because you're you have those those wall plays and I think you're right that when you are making a play on the dirt in foul territory, it isn't that there aren't obstacles you need to be concerned about because sometimes guys can get really hurt if they're not paying attention

to like where the end of the tarp roll is, if they take a, you know, a corner funny, if they you know, tumble into the dugout or they take a weird tumble into the stands even with the netting there and they can like whack themselves on the chair or what have you. But I don't think it's technically wrong to call the entirety of the dirt track, the warning track. But I do think the most common usage is going to be referring to that dirt in the outfield. And I think the fairfowl distinction isn't really meaningful in that instance. Like, you do need to have a sense of where the corners are because they are often. different park to park not always but like sometimes you you'll get like those weird little

cutouts and it seems like it's always in right field that you have those weird little cutouts why left fielders are often excused from having to worry about any weird little cutouts but all kinds of right fields have weird little you know what i'm talking about don't you agree i don't know why my voice has reached the register that it has but that's where we're at today i guess we're we're at that register so all of that to say that if we are interested in in it purely as a question of pedantry, that referring to the entirety of that as the warning track is not wrong. But I do agree that it is most often a term that announcers,

fielders, fans will use it as it pertains to the outfield. What about what do you think? I agree on that also. And I don't think I'm comfortable using it based on the orientation of the fielder. Yeah. Because that was something Dane mentioned that maybe. If the fielder's going back on the ball in foul territory, then it could count as warning track. But if not, then it's not warning track.

I don't know that it could be that context dependent. Yeah. I think I would probably also raise an eyebrow if I heard a broadcaster, call it the warning track. Yeah. In the infield. Yeah. It just, it does sound odd. It makes some sense, though.

Yes. Because, you know, even if, yes, you might have a better view. of the wall when you're going laterally. But you're not always going laterally. Sometimes you're going back more than you're going to the side when you're trying to catch a ball in foul territory there. And also, you might not really even have time to look up and see where you're going.

So the dirt is still serving a similar purpose. It's still a warning system there. So it's kind of defensible. I guess to be the guy who quotes the dictionary definition, I'll go to Dixon's baseball dictionary and see what it says. An ungrassed area, I like that, ungrassed. An ungrassed area about 10 to 15 feet wide, made of dirt, cinders, or rubber,

encircling the field just inside the wall that alerts a fielder that he is approaching the wall. Its purpose is to protect the fielder from crashing into the wall as he backs up to catch a ball. With his eyes fixed on the ball, the fielder knows he is nearing the wall as he senses the granular texture of the warning track with his feet. So that's interesting because it does say it's supposed to protect the fielder as he backs up. But it also, it doesn't specify outfield wall. It specifies that it started in the outfield.

But it does say it's inside the wall, but where? Which wall? Maybe it's any wall. So technically, I guess I wouldn't say it's incorrect, but just by convention. I'd probably keep it to the outfield. I think I'm okay using it infowl territory in the outfield. I think I still would. I think it's more of an outfield infield distinction to me than it is a fair foul one.

I agree. I agree. I hope we were impressive. I hope we did okay. Dane, did we get you to sign up? Was that good enough? Yeah. Podcasting for cash here.

I feel like we're busking out. We're in the subway or something with a violin case open in front of us. and we're just trying to see if someone tosses a fat wad of cash in their second consecutive pod in which I've used that term. Busking is, that's delightful. We don't use busking enough. Well, we do in New York, I think. There's a lot of buskers here, probably more buskers than you get in Arizona because, you know, not a lot of foot traffic. I mean, there's foot traffic depending on the time of year or not a pedestrian-friendly area.

That's true. Does one have to be on the street to busk? Can you busk on the subway? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can bus. I think as long as it's, yeah, in a public place. Public place. It could be subterranean.

Yeah. Because, like, there were many buskers on the, as that would, that's a polite way of describing the mariachi pants. I mean, they're very talented, but it's like John Mullaney said, just so loud. It's like a very small space and it's a very loud sound. Did you see Mullaney on the Cubs broadcast yesterday? I did that. No.

He did the, I didn't. He was in booth for a little bit, apparently, and I missed that part. But he did the day, he held the note for a long time at the end. I was like, this is great, you know. Put Malini in a musical. I want to see it. Okay. Here is a question from Casey, who says,

I just saw an Instagram post about John Carlos Stanton's very short appearance in Sunday's game. He came in as a pinch hitter in the seventh, was intentionally walked, and then left the game for a pinch runner. It feels like a thing that probably doesn't happen super often And I'm curious about it now Is that the shortest amount of time Presuming a no-pitch walk That a batter could spend in a game

So she wants to know like if this was the easiest day at the office For a batter basically He pinch hits He gets an intentional walk with no actual pitch is thrown Then he's pulled for a pinch runner And that's that back to the bench It's pretty efficient It's pretty quick

Is that the easiest day at the office? I think there's one easier way. I think there's, well, I guess it depends on whether this counts as being a batter. But it is possible to pinch hit and then be pinch hit for immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Sam Miller wrote about this years ago at Baseball Perspectus, and he called it the no P-A-P-H, the no-plate appearance pinch hitter.

So I think if we count that You're in the box score You're in it counts as a game played And technically were you a batter Though if you're announced as a pinch hitter Which is a batting role But you don't actually come to the plate You don't get a plate appearance

I think maybe you weren't technically a batter But you know you were in the game You played in the game And you were deployed in a batting capacity and then immediately removed. It doesn't get much faster than that. Okay, well, here's a clarifying question that maybe would help us to sort out

whether it counts or not. So let's imagine that you... Now, all right, before I pose this hypothetical, I want to acknowledge that my understanding is that most of these things are done on a PA or innings pitched basis, generally. Like when you have a... Like, when you get playing time incentives

in your contract, let's say, they tend to be denoted in like played appearance increments or in its pitched increments. But I think that there are some that are games played, maybe. Yeah. Imagine you had a games played incentive

in your contract. And this happened. You're announced as a pinch hitter and then you're immediately pinch hit for. It would count as a game played toward an incentive, right? I would say so, yeah. Then I think that's, I think that's, I think that's the easiest stay at the office possible, you know,

because you don't even have to, you know, if you, if you're Stanton in this game, you go up there, you pinch hit, you're intentionally walked. He, you know, he made his way down to first base, and then he was lifted for a pinch runner. Yeah, John Cross, and he could get hurt loping down to first base. That's not an entirely risk-free situation for him. Well, it's not even about risk because I wasn't going to be so gocious, just to mention his injury history.

But I was going to say, like, he had to walk the 90 feet, right? And if you're a pinch hit, pinch hit four. If you're a pinch hit or pinch hit for, that's hard to say. You just turn around and go back to the dugout. You know, maybe you don't have to. Right. So I think that is definitely easier. It just comes down to whether it counts as being a batter

if you don't actually stand at the plate and record a plate appearance. So, yeah, this no-PA pinch-hitting phenomenon it doesn't happen that often anymore, I think mostly because of the three-batter minimum. There are just fewer mid-inning pitching changes and you're not necessarily going to burn a pitcher when a pinch hitter is announced because maybe you can't. So this declined pretty steeply. I think 2020 was the first season with the three-batter minimum.

So if we look at like 2018, this happened 65 times, 2019, it happened 50 times. 2021, first full season, with the three-batter minimum in place, 33 times, then 21 times, 19 times, 20 times. This season, it has happened only 12 times. So this might be an all-time low. It's not extinct, but it's endangered. Well, not all-time, obviously, there were seasons with a lot fewer games and teams. But it's a low for a lot of years. It looks like a post-World War II post-integration low, at least.

It did just happen on Tuesday in that very Diamondbacks Dodgers game we were talking about. I believe Jordan Lawler was a no-PA pinch hitter in that game. But, yeah, like there are a lot of ways, you know, there's the pitcher equivalent to where you could get an ounce as a pitcher and you might not even throw a pitch. You suffer an injury or something like the Larry Yount situation or, you know, you could come in as a pinch runner and that's all you do. don't bat, maybe you just stand there for one pitch or something. You know, that's not a whole lot of work. And there's, you know, defensive replacement who doesn't get a chance in the outfield or just stands there for a while. So there are a lot of ways you can get a game played without breaking a sweat. But if we're talking about batting specifically, then it's either, I think, this stint situation

or what we're talking about. Yeah, I think that's right. Good question. Casey. Okay. All right. here's a question that I actually outsourced to other Ben because I thought he would have a good answer. We could weigh in as well, but this seemed like sort of a specialty question for him because this is some hardcore numbers nerd stuff. Because this is from Patreon supporter Robert, not future Patreon supporter, actual present Patreon supporter Robert, who wrote in to say, I noticed today a post on a statistics blog that the Marlins are seeking an analyst. and the requirements listed in the ad are quite Bayesian. That is, one of the listed skill requirements is experience with probabilistic programming language, which is preferred. You may know that statistics broadly lives in two main philosophical camps,

frequentist and Bayesian, which impact both how you think about probability and what you actually do when analyzing data. Skimming through the analytics-focused job postings on the Fangrass blog, it seems like some teams specifically seek Bayesian skills, and others don't. Frequentist skills are extremely common, so I wouldn't expect to see that specified, whereas not every relevant university degree would have Bayesian content. And so Robert classifies several listings as Bayesian, a Guardian's listing, Marlins, Red Sox, Rockies,

and then perhaps not Bayesian, Angels, Mets. And he writes, it's a bit tricky to do a good comparison because the jobs themselves are quite diverse, and I expect I'm likely overall analyzing these job posts. So my question is whether you think that, say, some team's analytics departments are frequentist shops and others are Bayesian shops, or is it just a mishmash? It makes sense to me that if the models a team uses apply a specific set of technologies, then they may want to recruit people with that skill set, or alternatively, they might want to diversify within the same team. Does fan graphs or effectively Wild have an editorial position on statistical philosophy. I don't know that we do. But I thought

that Ben would have a good take on this because he was writing about Bayes in one of his recent blog posts. And, you know, this is, it's sort of like Bayes versus Frequentists. It's like, you know, the Bayesian approach is you can calculate the probability that a hypothesis is true. and you can take into account all the things that you know going in that affect those probabilities, which may or may not be visible in that data. But it's like, hey, how likely is this to happen based on everything that we know about this situation and how can we model that? So other Ben, Ben Clemens, thought this was a really interesting question, as did I.

And he wrote, my guess is that every team is doing both to some extent. and that the reason the job postings look different is that they're for different roles within a team. Some of the analysis that baseball teams do needs to be frequentist. The data sets are enormous. The signal takes forever to tease out and existing statistical techniques

do a fairly good job capturing what's happening. Defensive positioning is one that comes to mind here. The best way to do this is almost certainly to start with an enormous history of batted balls and pitcher matchups and go from there. The flip side of this would be something like trying to figure out when your prospects are ready for promotion. Here, a big data set might not be that interesting to you,

and the difference between what you expected and what transpired becomes relatively more important. Just like plenty of parts of baseball lend themselves to frequentist techniques, I see lots of parts of the game and think, ooh, sounds like a Bayesian problem. I think that a team that didn't have anyone at all thinking about the world in a generally Bayesian way would probably really struggle in many facets of the game. I also don't think there are any of these teams,

even if they're not calling it Bayesian inference and even if they're not doing it in a rigorous way, someone is updating priors as more information becomes available and using that to refine your predictions. I do think that some teams aren't doing with the amount of mathematical rigor that I'd hope for,

but baseball teams are hardly the only institutions in the world that I wish would put more science into their lives. There's one other option worth considering, and that's that even the Bayesian teams don't always advertise how Bayesian they are. At various technically minded places where I've hired people in the past, I preferred for some of my entry-level hires to not have the specific technical skills they'd need for the job. That's because I didn't trust that the person who taught it to them would teach it to them the same way I would.

If you've ever taken up a sport as an adult and had the teacher tell you, great, now you won't have to unlearn any bad habits. This is a corollary. I don't really feel qualified to opine on how likely that is here because I'm not sure, A, what point. team-specific uses, the probabilistic programming languages have, and B, how varied instruction in them is. But it's at least a consideration. Yeah. Smart guy that Ben Clemens.

Yeah. So it seemed like a question from Rob that other Ben was well positioned to answer. But it is interesting to see what can we infer from a job posting? Or are we extrapolating too much? Is the language in there? Are the qualifications that they're looking for? Representative of the way that team operates? or is it just obscured because they don't want to give away exactly how they operate,

or is it just one position among many? But, yeah, you would think that a team that's doing it the best way probably would be looking at things in more than one way and wouldn't have just a set statistical philosophy, but would use whatever tool is most applicable to the specific situation, I would guess. I think that that's right. Thanks, other Ben. Appreciate it. Just tag him in. Just read an answer. That's easier than having to think for ourselves for once. Okay. Matt, Patreon supporter, says, I feel like you must have answered some variation of this question at some point, but that won't stop me from asking, if there was a player who got exactly one single. And never more, nevertheless, no walks, in every single game he played, would he make the Hall of Fame? Call it something like 1,500. to 2,000 games, and the slash line ends up somewhere around 225, 225, 225, 225 with a 2,000 game hit streak.

And this kind of rang a bell to me, too, and I thought maybe we had answered something like this. I went and looked at the email database and found some somewhat similar question we answered way back in the Sam and Jeff eras on episode 596 and episode 1295, because those were they were about extreme compilers basically but didn't have this hitting streak component to it they were just kind of like what if you played for 40 years or something extreme like that whereas this is not that extreme a career length but it's extreme consistency and you would blow away the all time record for longest hit streak by many many multiples so now it would definitely get you into the hollow of fame in the sense that you'd be in the museum yeah you'd be in the museum for sure yes so if that's the question then yes but that's probably not the question the question is probably would you be enshrined would you have a plaque would you be inducted i don't know that you would

i think you would be you'd be present for some big moments you might be the the cause of some big moments for your team right if you're getting a single well sometimes a single is really useful sometimes the single is all you need to win the game but you're not you're hitting for no power you're not anything for any power at all you're an extreme compiler in so far as you have this wild hitting streak but you're not even like a super contact guy really right because you're you're only hitting the one single no one single every day again it's not that it's not useful but I don't know if you would I don't what do you think I don't know how a team would allow you to play for this long, for one thing,

because you'd be a bad player or a bad hitter, at least. Because if you're hitting 225, 225, 225, 225, 225, not only you're not hitting for any power, you're not getting on base. I mean, unless, you know, if you steal second and third every time you get that single or. We have no evidence that there's any rooming going on. No, that is not in evidence here. And so unless you're, now if you're at just top of the scale defender and base runner, could you maybe be playable worth playing, perhaps?

But if we assume that you're average in every other respect, except that you have this incredible capacity to hit one single in every game you played. Yeah. Now, it's interesting because obviously we're in the realm of the supernatural here. Sure. As we so often stray into in these hypotheticals. Lately, especially. Yeah. And so if you get exactly one single per game, does that apply regardless of how many

plate appearances you get? So if you are a pinch hitter. Right. Can you be deployed strategically? Yeah. Yeah. If you're an automatic singling pinch hitter, maybe that might be useful because, you know, if like getting a single in a plate appearance, That is valuable. That's looking at the Fangraph's gutt page this year, a single, the Wobah equivalent of a single, is 883. Yeah. That's great. The problem is that if you're going one for four or one for five, well, then you have a lot of outs dragging that down. But if you're an automatic single hitter and you could be deployed in high leverage like that and still get the automatic single, then I think we might be, we might be top.

you know and uh yeah if you brought some other value in the clubhouse uh on defense whatever it on the bases i think you'd have a role there now if you were deployed in that role if you were just pinch hitter extraordinary just the best pinch hitter ever like a lenny harris or john vendor wall type except like automatic singler and you're able to do that for years and years and years, it's still not going to get you in the hall. Like, you'd have the best rate stats ever. Right. You know, you would have the best batting average.

I don't know. You'd be an incredible curiosity. I don't even know if you would be a big draw beyond a certain point because I think the thrill would wear off. For a while, this would be a sensation. Oh, this guy's got the hitting streak going. He's getting a signal every time he comes up. Is he a wizard or something?

But after hundreds, thousands of games, are you actually tuning in to see up? I wonder at what point you would start to accept that, yeah, this is just an inherent trait of this guy that he gets a single every time. Would you ever just believe that this streak was going to be broken? And would you tune in to see if this was the day finally? I don't know. I feel like I might just stop paying attention. as ho-hum, another game, another single. Yeah, I don't know that it would make for like the best viewing.

And also, you know, we know the potential for magic or what have you in these hypotheticals because we're used to operating in this realm. But like, are you really going to be given to your earlier point? Are you going to be given the opportunity to play this much? If it isn't, if you just have to like play the whole game. and you can't strategically deploy the guy when you need to pinch hit? I don't know. And if you, let's say you did.

Let's say that you could be strategically deployed to pinch it and you just, you, you bat a thousand in those circumstances, right? You're always getting a single. It's so great. What are the odds that your manager is like, well, pinch hitting only for you? You wouldn't even be a freak. They would be tempted to try you as a regular. and then they'd be like, oh, he's not very good, you know?

Yeah, at some point, well, yeah, you'd probably start as a starter. Well, it depends. I don't know how this guy's making the majors. Did he hit in the minors? Is he getting promoted even though he's just going one for four every day? Yeah, I don't know how his career progresses. Because I don't think you're going to get a big league roster spot just because you're magic, unless you're also just so much fun for fans that,

You're selling tons of tickets, and then there's extra incentive to do that. But I think we've even seen that when someone has a hitting streak going, but it's not actually a hot streak, because sometimes you get those weird hitting streaks where someone basically is doing this over a stretch of 15, 20 games or whatever it is. And their numbers aren't even that great during that streak. So you can't even say they're hitting that well, even though they are consistently getting a hit. So this guy's going to need some help even to get to the big leagues, I think. And look, let's imagine for a moment that the magic is such that he does. He gets to the, he gets to the, there's a very good chance that this guy is going to be involved in some moments that are deeply meaningful to fans of his club, right? But I still don't think that's enough to get into the Hall of Fame.

I think you might get into your team's Hall of Fame depending on when those singles. full, but otherwise, I don't know. I don't know about that. Yeah, you could be a fan favorite if you're deployed in this particular role, because we like, I don't, you can't even call it clutch, really, because clearly there's something happening with this person that is not entirely under their control, or it's not purely a result of skill, and they can't bottle it and repeat it. And so I don't know if you would even attribute it to their makeup or character.

right but but if you're coming up in these high leveraged spots yeah you're you're certain there aren't really many dedicated pinch hitters these days what with the expansion of bullpens but i think this player would merit a spot and then inevitably you would get a number of big hits but but what did it at a certain point would that even become kind of a letdown because yeah it's just a gimme it's just okay we can just pencil in this guy's single like do you even go through the motions of letting him get his hit? You just, well, that's the other thing. Maybe you just put him on, right?

Because if you accept it at some point that a single is inevitable, because I guess you'd never know for sure that it's his only played appearance in the game. Like, what if he's coming up with a chance to, well, I guess if it's a situation where the game would end if he doesn't get a single? then you could bank on him getting the signal because it's just an inviolable law of the universe. So in that spot, do you just say, why waste pitches here? Just put him on.

And then he just ends up being an intentional walk guy. And then he doesn't even get the hitting streak, right? Maybe the hitting streak gets broken because he just ends up being walked. You wouldn't walk him if he's a starter because you still have a better than even, I guess, unless he's... You're down to his last plate appearance in the game and he hasn't gotten his hit yet so that you know he's going to get it in this plate appearance that you might put him on.

But usually you can't count on that happening in any plate appearance. And so then, yeah, the streak. But then if you put him on and this rule is unbreakable that he has to get a hit, huh. Do you then, this is like the immovable objects meeting the unstoppable. Like, can you even? Once again, we are less. asking whether we know the bounds of magic.

Do we understand its contours, you know? And I don't... These always become sort of existential epistemic theological debates, basically. Because, yeah, if he's bound to get the hit and so anticipating that you walk him, well, then you've broken the rule that he has to get one hit a game. I guess maybe the rule is that he's capable of getting one hit a game. but if you deprive him of the opportunity, then you can't somehow force, you know, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I can't like, this was far-fixed. Yeah, I can't, like, force extra innings so that there are more potential moments for him to hit or anything like that. Right, right. If they still threw the intentional balls, then, of course, he could reach out and slap one somewhere and get the hit that way.

Yeah, but they don't. They don't. Yeah, although maybe he'd be single-handedly responsible for the rule change going back. Here's the problem. This creature of a man would be so powerful that in our current environment, I worry he'd be burned at the stake. You know, I'm just, I don't.

Yeah, that's always the concern with these questions that come up. Yeah, and, you know, one that we dismissed out of hand in the past, and now I worry we have to travel with it. Yeah. All right, question from Amos, another Patreon supporter, as I try to think about something about baseball other than the Mariners. I noticed that I was caught off guard when the Cubs clinched. My question is, was the narrative about the relative league strengths this year wrong?

It might not have been universal, but it certainly seemed like the consensus for much of the year was that the NL was similar in strength to last year while the AL took a decided step back. And yet here we are, and the Cubs, this was several days ago, are already the third NL team to clinch a playoff spot with just 88 wins and nine games left, No AL team has clinched, despite the Blue Jays having 89 wins. Of course, they subsequently have clinched, and other teams have clinched a playoff spot, too. Like who else? Including.

Do you mean like the Seattle Mariners? Meg's Mariners and Amos's Mariners as well. And Amos is Mariners. Amos, what a time we're having, buddy. I am very nervous, but I am having fun. I was going to look this up, but Amos saved me the trouble by noting that the AL is up in the interleague standings, 358 to 334. That was going to be my next question.

Yeah, that may have changed slightly since this email was sent, but probably not enough to change that balance of power. So I guess slight, that's not a huge lead. It's just a slight one. The narrative was understandably driven in large part by the relative off-seasons of teams in the leagues with, among others, the Dodgers and Mets, continuing to try to meaningfully improve and the Phillies still looking good, while the Yankees and Red Sox, among many others, seemingly not, and the Astros apparently stepping back, and I think as narrative, it was not

or even is not necessarily wrong. And certainly the results are driven in part by the shocking seasons of the Braves and Rockies, among other things. But it also seems fair to say that the NL has not been noticeably the better league this year despite expectations. So my question is, has the AL exceeded your expectations, or has the NL simply disappointed? I think they've... I'm going to pick a third option. which is that I think they have both disappointed. Well, here's what I mean by that. I think the top end of the league in general

has disappointed this year relative to expectation because I agree that the consensus entering the year and it was a consensus that I did not feel a need to be contrarian about was that the NL had a much stronger had a much stronger field than the AL did. And I think that that was borne out

by like the preseason World Series odds, that sort of thing, which isn't to say that there weren't any teams that is that were viewed favorably on the AL side, but they were hyper concentrated in the East. And so I just feel like the East has definitely kind of let us down. It's gotten more contentioned. Both of the East have been kind of down relative to expectation, right? Because I thought that the AL East would yield lower win totals per team, but that would be because everybody was really beaten up on each other and everything. And then, you know, we have one team in that division, granted with more games to play yet, but we have one team in that division at 90 wins. So I think that

the East has been kind of down relative to expectation. I didn't have super high hopes for the Orioles coming into the year, but I had much higher hopes than what they have been able to put together right so i think they've been down obviously like the braves have been a huge disappointment although in a way that feels very like injury dependent and sort of fluky man the marlins are really ahead of them in the standings that's wild i love that the marlins aren't technically dead in the playoffs the marlins have not been eliminated yeah the marlins the cardinals hanging in there yeah maybe not by the time people are listening to this but yeah yeah so um and then i think you know the just but just in general like the top end teams have been down relative to expectation

your Phillies your Mets your Yankees your Red Sox you're Dodgers you're Pandres I mean the the team that has most dramatically outperformed my expectations is absolutely the Brewers have 95 wins as we're recording here Ben you notice how they have 95 wins for the Brewers to be the team closest to 100 wins would not have been on my bingo card entering the season. So I think that a lot of this is sort of underperformance, but I think it's just sort of a general midness, which we have discussed before. And I think a lot of that is attributable to the top end in both leagues being kind of down relative to expectation, which is that the worst thing? I mean, down. So one thing that we have, with the exception of the Rockies,

and I guess the White Sox. We haven't had as pronounced a stratification of the league as we have in some recent seasons where you had like a couple of hundred win teams and then you had like a bunch of teams or really bad. And I think that, you know, do I like this better? I don't know. I'm still like I still wish the pirates had like messed in their roster at all. You know, it's a bummer that the Nats, which I think for some folks, the Nats were like a

like a trendy dark horse wildcard pick right like they're going to put it all together and then for a minute it looked like maybe that was possible like mackenzie gore they have 65 wins so it didn't really happen but it's sort of a down year at the high end and that has resulted in a lot more clustering of overall records as those wins has sort of trickled down to more mid-tier teams but yeah we're what we have five left including today five to play and we're And we only have three teams as we enter the day's play that have 90 wins or more. And that feels down. And that Brewer's loss on Tuesday, I think clinched nobody winning 100 for the second season in a row.

Yeah, we can't have a hundred win team. I think that's right. I think that's right. So it's, yeah, and as we've discussed, that makes the postseason even more up for grabs and random than usual. Just not really big distinctions between the favorites and the underdogs this year in particular. So I hadn't really thought about this. I guess I tend to think less about the leagues as separate entities now, or at least obviously they're separate for the purpose of making the playoffs. But I tend to think less about their respective strengths than I used to when there was more of a distinction between the leagues.

There was a DH. There was a rules-based distinction. And for a while there, there were long stretches where one league was clearly superior to. to the other. I do think that just measuring based on head-to-head play is probably the best way to do it, and it seems like they're even-ish this year. I guess I don't remember really what I thought coming into the season or whether I thought about it all that much, just whether one league was way better. I think that I thought that the top end of the National League was better, and as you said, some of those teams have disappointed to a great degree or a minor degree.

And so, yeah, you don't look, you would have expected coming into the season that the World Series favorites would be in the National League. And now it's not really clear who the World Series favorite is. Different methods are producing different favorites and it's not clear and convincing. Ben, can I alarm you? Can I alarm myself? Yeah. It's still the Mariners. Oh, sure.

At FanGrafts, it's the Mariners. Yeah. I think there are other sources that have different. top teams. Oh, sure, sure. But I think... Listen to them instead. No, no.

I will do no such thing. I mean, I could. I've thought about it. But I will not. I would prefer to not because I am, as we have established, a nervous person. Yeah, 21%. I had a friend from home text me and was like, you have to do something about these odds. And this was a couple days ago.

I was like, that is so high. This is not an email. And you don't have to have an answer right. now, but you should think about it. What do you think is the stat? I guess, like, I, I guess I would lumb our playoff odds in as a stat. It's not really a stat in the way that we normally use that word. But, like, what is the, what is the stat that you think is the most? And I, I think my friend was joking around, to be clear, but he has a handle on this stuff. But do you, what do you think is the stat that people have the worst intuitive feel for in terms of, like, whether

a player, a team, what have you, is in like a good or a bad range. Because I think World Series probability is pretty high on that list. Yeah, it is. Yeah, because the number is always going to be lower than most people think. It's always going to be lower than people think. Yeah, yeah. And people are like, oh, my God, I can't believe that the, I can't believe the Phillies only have 9% World Series odds. I'm like, that's not so bad.

You know, that's like pretty. They're 12 teams in the playoffs. Yeah. It's, right, that you always take the field and it's not. close so i think yeah that's a good one i'll have to think about that i think about that yeah i think a lot of advanced stats most people have never heard of the stat and would not even begin to be able to conceive of what what the range would be so so maybe it's better to restrict it to stats that people would actually be familiar with or you can assume like what is your what is the answer for

average like fan graphs reader right like assuming a fluency because with these advanced stats If you've heard of them, then you probably have some sense of what good is. And if you don't know what good is, then maybe you just never even heard of the stat. It's just zero awareness of it whatsoever. Because people probably know something like, oh, Wobah is like on the OBP scale. And maybe they have some sense of what the OBP scale is if they know what Wobah is and everything. But, yeah, for like a good stat where it's good. to know maybe like strikeout minus walk rate.

Oh, that's a good answer. Yeah, because even I might have a tough time with that because individually, I guess I have, I mean, I know what a good strikeout rate is. And then because I guess a lot of us, even if we know that maybe looking at it as a percentage of batter's faced is better, we probably came up thinking of it as strikeouts per nine, walks per nine. Right. And then converting that into percentage, perhaps that's one step that not everyone does.

And then when you're subtracting one from the other, you might not know off the cuff what a good range for that is. Because maybe you're thinking of like walk rate in terms of walks per nine. So that stands out to me as like a very good and telling stat that people who are aware of it would recognize the utility of. and yet might not be able to just go by gut and say, oh, yeah, that's good without thinking about it a bit. Yeah, that's a good answer. I like that answer. But, yeah, I've just been thinking about that because I was like, oh, no, that's like, hi. It's one of those things where when the playoff odds, I mean, the playoff odds for the Mariners Spoiler alert, they're at 100% now because they've clinched.

But I will often, I'm like, oh, people are going to think I'm putting my thumb on the scale when there's good playoff odd stuff as it pertains to the Mariners. And they don't know how nervous I am. That's the thing about them. They don't understand my nerves. They do if they've listened to effectively wild lately or if they do in the next month. I'm talking about it too much? What's too much? Yeah.

Yeah. How often do you get to talk about the Mariners at this time of year, you know, make up for a lost time? Wow. Out of the clear, lunar, where I got whacked with that. That is amazing. I was not prepared. I was ill prepared for that. Amazing.

What reason that was cited for the AL? superiority in the past, there was a stretch where the AL seemed to be better than the NL, and people would argue about, oh, is it just because you have a dedicated DH? And so in the interleague games, maybe you have an advantage because the NL, they just have to convert some bench bat into starting duty. They don't have a dedicated guy signed for that purpose. But also, I think it was often attributed to, well, the Yankees are in the AL and the Red Sox are in the AL. And so there's sort of this arms race and everyone has to keep up with the Yankees or attempt to. and because they were the big spenders at the time

they were kind of dragging everyone else up and so maybe in the NL there's a similar dynamic these days where you have the Dodgers and the Mets and they're the biggest spenders and people are trying to keep pace with them and so you know the Padre is really spending for a while and the Phillies and you know so I guess that might be a reason why but I was trying to figure out

whether the fact that teams had clinched sooner is that reflective of the league as a whole being stronger, or is that reflective of just greater stratification, as you were saying? Because, yeah, if you have the Rockies and the NL, there's going to be a big range there. But maybe if you're clinching later, it means there's less of a separation among the teams. Maybe it's just, it's more competitive.

Maybe it's a stronger field on the whole. So I don't know if that's really reflective. It did seem like there was a lot of late clinching happening this year, I guess, because there's so much midness and because there's competition would be the positive charitable interpretation of that. But yeah, I don't know. I guess I would just default to the interleague record, the head-to-head, and say if that's pretty close, then it's probably pretty close. But I don't care all that much anymore, I guess, whether one league. league has the upper hand. Maybe I don't care because it's not clear that either does.

And it was just more interesting to try to figure out during those sustained stretches of league dominance. Why is this happening? And now we don't really have to puzzle that out because there isn't that clear an answer. Okay. And last one, this is just a bit of feedback from Simon, who responded to something that we talked about recently, the potential for some sort of airspace play so that you have Fewer of the kind of ticky-tack tags where someone just comes off the base a bit.

Simon says the subject line in response to episode 2375, I love airspace outs. On episode 2375, you revisited the topic of the airspace rule for tag attempts. And Ben suggested that no one really likes it when a runner is called out after briefly losing contact with the base while remaining over it while a tag is still applied. I love it. I'm genuinely surprised to hear how you feel about these. kinds of plays, and that you would support legislating them away, especially when the rest of the conversation celebrated the art of precision sliding. That's true. That is what prompted

that we were talking about how players seem to be better at avoiding tags, maybe with all kinds of creative ways to reach the base now, because there's replay, and thus just beating the ball is not the be-all and end-all. And if you actually avoid the tag, then you can get credit for that. Simon says, if we're going to applaud, man, Simons must be sick of hearing that. Oh, yeah. If we're going to applaud runners for a great swim move or sneaking a toe in past the defender's glove, shouldn't we keep an even playing field and say, if you slip up, you're out, so long as they're not pushed off by the fielder.

For me, that doesn't register as tic-tack or even particularly sneaky. It's just a fundamental conceit of baseball. If you're not in contact with a base, you're not safe. I understand this line of thinking. The reason it rankles is because it introduces delay into the game because these like airspace outs, if that's what we want to call them, where the fielder is coming off the bag microscopically for an instant are almost always determined on replay review. And we've told teams there might be an out hiding in there, better look. And I do think the teams are more discerning about replay. I don't know if I have actual evidence to suggest that,

but my instinct is that we see fewer bad, like legitimately bad replay review requests than we used to. Not that we never get them, but I feel like we get fewer of them than we used to. But I think that the fact that, you know, a cool swim move, and granted, sometimes cool swim moves are only confirmed because of replay reviews. So it's not like that never happens in the thing I find cool. But you, you know, you're almost always like, like, I've put a little thing on and then, like, you got to. And we shouldn't have told teams that there's an out hiding in there.

You know, we shouldn't have done it because now they're going to look for it. You know, you've told them there's an out, so they're going to go find it. And so I think it kind of bogs down the proceeding and is very rarely, when an umpire misses that, it's very rarely something that I think a reasonable person would have expected them to have gotten right on the first attempt. Whereas, like, I don't know that the same can be said of swim move stuff, but maybe. So that's part of my thinking. It's like you're bogging it down because now we've got to go to the fucking replay.

If this is the price we have to pay for some of those more exciting slides that are revealed on replay. Then maybe it's a good trade. Yeah, maybe it's worth it. But we could have the good without the bad if we think that the other is bad potentially. And Simon conceded he sent a link to there was a George Springer play this season where it was in an A's J's game and Springer pulled into third base and he was just, you know, he got there and he was like bouncing up and down a little bit on his heels on the base. He wasn't still in motion or anything. Like he was fully there. He had stopped.

He wasn't trying to advance. And then he was just like hopping up and up and down a little bit. And the fielder just applied the tag to his butt while he was like, you know, a millimeter off the back or whatever as he was hopping. And he was tagged out. And Simon called that a little rules lawyery. And I guess that's what I mean because it – Yeah. On the one hand, like, you can't let your guard down.

You do have to be in contact with the base, and that's a brain fart. That's a mental mistake on his part, I guess. He shouldn't have been so careless. He should have been conscious of the fact that a tag could have been applied, and he didn't have to hop. So I kind of separate this from the play where, like, your momentum carries you just an inch past the base and you lose contact very briefly. That is different, I think, because you're, like, still in the act of sliding. and I'm not sure if that's better or worse because you could say

well that's not like a careless mental mistake that was your sliding technique was off but that wouldn't even be this airspace play that we're talking about this is like when you're on the base still you're over the base then you'd just kind of be safe there even if someone tagged you

and you were suspended above the base briefly I don't think that would extend to if you kept going and you slid past the base well then you should have slowed down. I mean, that's more of a physical mistake. Your sliding technique, whereas what Springer did there was just a careless mental mistake. And so I don't know whether one is worth punishing more than the other. But those are a little bit different, even though they're still

subject to the same. Oh, look at that. He lost contact just by a teeny tiny bit there. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess I kind of feel, and, you know, you could call time and just the play ball will be dead and then you can hop on the base if you want. So I do kind of fault Springer for that one. Maybe it's almost like the one where you you pop off in the process of sliding. But then again, I'm sympathetic to the opposing view on this too. Because maybe it's just something you should factor in. You should make sure that you can slide in such a way that you don't pull yourself off the bag. And if you do, then you're at fault for that. But it's somehow unsatisfying when Some of those happen.

Yeah, I agree. Well, t'was another night of great excitement. The Guardians won again to take the lead in the AL Central. Fortunately for the Tigers, the Astros lost again, too. So Detroit clings to a flimsy lead in the fight for the third wild card. They do still have one more game against Cleveland. Elsewhere in the American League, the Yankees won while the Blue Jays lost to Garrick Crochet and the Red Sox. So we have a tie atop the Aal East.

Aaron Judge hit two home runs. And not to be outdone, the big dumpers. hit two dingers too. Cow Raleigh's 59th and 60th on the season, maintaining his home run lead over Judge and his measly 51, which also helped propel the Mariners to a win. In the National League, the Mets got beaten up by the Cubs, and fortunately for them, the Reds got beaten up by Paul Skeens.

So the Mets retained their lead over the Reds, and also the Diamondbacks, who dropped one to the Dodgers. The Dodgers survived yet another bullpen blow up. The Padres lost two, which helps the Dodgers in the N.O. West race. Another topsy-turvy. night, folks. Doesn't get much better than this during the regular season in the era of the 12-team playoff field. Speaking of the Dodgers, it came to my attention that at the end of a game that they won two to one against the Giants on September 18th. That was a game closed out by Alex Vescia.

Joe Davis invoked the phrase effectively wild. Now, let me be clear. We do not need to be notified every time a broadcaster says effectively wild. Some of you let us know when that happens. And I'm here to tell you, it happens a lot. It's a pretty common phrase. We named the podcast after it. we don't need to know every instance. But every now and then, there's a novel usage or an actual reference to the podcast or to a player who is near and dear to the podcast. So in certain rare instances, it's fun to hear the phrase. And this was one of them.

Take it away, Joe. Ripped off center field, call is there. That's the game. The most effectively wild game in a half century. It's the first time in 48 years that a team issues 10.1. walks, but gives up just one hit. The most effectively wild game, you heard Davis's rationale for that claim. Makes sense.

You could come up with any number of definitions, but that's not a bad one. But can it really have been the most effectively wild game if Shohei Otani didn't even pitch in it? It's now making me wonder what would be the most effectively wild game as it pertains to the podcast. Is it a game where some strange hypothetical comes true or a game in which a number of our player favorites from over the years appeared? if you have a nomination for the most effectively wild game based on the podcast connection, let us know. And finally, you know I can't resist an illuminating allusion to another sport.

And listener Grace writes in with a good one. I will let her explain, I was just listening to episode 2378 and was enjoying your slightly outraged discussion of pitch calling from the dugout. I share your opinion, Ben, and wanted to draw a potential comparison to the dynamic between race engineers and drivers

in Formula One auto racing. In F1, the driver manages the car basically a $100 million supercomputer during the race with the help of hundreds of live strategists, analysts, and engineers whose advice is all funneled through the mouthpiece of the race engineer. The race engineer performs the function of the catcher and dugout combined, relaying high-level strategy about pit stops, engine modes, tire wear, etc., while also alerting drivers to smaller-level things like proximity of other drivers and hazards on track.

Like a catcher, the race engineer is also a personal psychologist at times, calming the driver during dangerous situations or controlling their aggression during tense moments. The best ones know when their drivers need silence to focus and when they need feedback. However, there are rules about what a race engineer can and can't help with, which have evolved over time. In 2014, the International Motorsport governing body, the FIA, issued a new regulation that race engineers could not convey performance data to drivers during a race, expressing that drivers should drive the car alone and unaided. They wanted to encourage drivers to develop their own race craft and technical performance management skills in race, rather than letting them rely on a team of engineers to feed them curated data.

This strikes me as similar to Ben's desire for no mound visits, no dugout play calling, no team interference between the catcher, pitcher, battery relationship and game. It's the let them play approach. This regulation was overruled about a year later, after a few racing incidents and as the cars continue to get more complex, through improvements in hybrid engines and DRS, not that DRS. drag reduction system. Engineers play a more active role than ever in shaping the way the driver runs their race now, but there are still social norms that limit how much an engineer can help a driver. McLaren driver Lando Norris was widely criticized this year for how actively his engineer,

Will Joseph, helped him navigate racecraft and overtaking strategy during a number of critical race situations, things a driver is expected to do on their own, and things that traditionally distinguish superior drivers from capable ones. There's no regulation preventing Joseph from advising him on the best way to overtake or maintain position, but it's bad form. Other drivers, like Williams Racing's Carlos Sines Jr., are often praised for how well they manage strategy independent of the advice of their engineers. How they navigate that relationship and how much assistance they accept plays a big role in how drivers are evaluated against one another.

Meg's point about game-calling skill being a part of how catchers are evaluated on the free agent market also applies here. Obviously, there are huge contextual differences here, but I think the way that F1 navigates data transmission between team and driver. in race offers an interest in comparison to the way that MLB teams do. MLB teams are a lot more hands-off despite the role of the base coach, etc., though potentially the Marlin's new pitch calling dynamic pushes them ever closer to the pit wall model of engagement. For the record, I share your outrage. I understand that it's difficult, but it's their job to learn and it's

the job of the coaches to educate them so that they may perform successfully on their own. That pitch or catcher relationship is so pivotal to the game that it feels like a cheap diminishment to remove it or severely mediate it. Thank you, Grace. Fascinating. I do have some sympathy for taking some responsibility off the plate of drivers who are operating heavy machinery at high speeds in very dangerous circumstances. And I suppose catching is quite dangerous by baseball standards. But I'm still against feeding them that info in real time, coaches pulling player strings. And it's good to know that navigating that dynamic has given people pause in F1 as well. We hope you won't pause before supporting the podcast on Patreon,

which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly 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, Sam S, Joshua Lampkin, Brian Dobbins, Juan Padre, and Peter Teller. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, coming up soon, sign up now, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash EffectivelyWild. 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 fangraphs.com. Thanks to Sean P. for today's new theme, which will enter the theme rotation, henceforth. You can rate review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group, such Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes of 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. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon.

Don't want to hear about none of them RBI's, yeah. Tell me about some prospect I should know about. Effect, a fake, a fake, a big, dizzy wild. A fake, a fake, a fake, dilly wild. A fake, a fake, a fake, give me wild. A fake, a fair, a bad for anyone.