Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2407: Snap Judgements

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Becca Balton to banter about Becca’s baseball background, her origins as a listener, and the Nationals’ new direction, then (17:51) answer emails about a team WAR cap, an extra-innings variant in which the team to score fastest wins, manager close-ups on postseason broadcasts, citing the […]

I'm just a fan who wants. Nothing less than Effectively Wild. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Nothing less than Effectively Wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 2407 of Effectively Wild, a Baseball podcast. from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Usually when I say presented by our Patreon supporters, there isn't one of them in the room right now with us, but today there is, because we are joined by a Patreon supporter slash guest host for today, Becca Bolt, and hello, Becca. Hello. So thrilled to be here. Happy to have you here. It has been too long since our last Patreon person appearance, Patreon person.

I don't know how you feel about being referred to that way. But happy to have you here. We will do emails as usual just to give people something to listen to over the holiday break. If they have a holiday break, lots of holiday travel this time of year. People have holiday breaks, Ben? People entertain the notion of a holiday break. Some people, not people who provide essential services like baseball podcasts. In November, obviously, society would self-destruct if we stopped churning out three episodes a week.

But some people have less essential roles, and so they can take some time off. It must be nice. But, you know, not us. The responsibility is just too great, really. Yeah. Yes, especially mine as a, what do you say, Patreon person? Yes. Is the word for that just patron?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I mean, look, we promise people three a week on the Patreon page. And people like Becca would say, I'm not getting my money's worth if we took one off for Thanksgiving. They'd probably rebel.

They'd cancel, just a mass cancellation. And we have to keep Becca happy because she is one of our high rollers. She is one of our most generous supporters and Mike Trout tier patrons, which earned her the right to be here. We're happy to have her here. And I always ask whenever we have a Patreon person, which we just established is called a patron on the show. I always ask what possibly possessed them to support us at the highest tier. So what possessed you to do such a thing?

So I knew you were going to ask this, and I kind of wrestled with how much of the truth. Well, I'm going to just, it's all going to, okay. Something nefarious. You just came into some illicit windfall or something. Okay, well, you embezzled funds from your workplace. and so you decided to put it toward a podcast. That is one spin. I would say not the accurate one.

Last June, June 2024, I quit my job that I had had for a long, long time, and I kind of gave myself until the end of the calendar year to get another full-time job. And then in the meantime, was kind of doing things here and there. I taught woodworking at an all-boys summer program, which was delightful, actually, in that a lot of them were baseball kiddos,

and I got to watch one of them come to the realization that MLB had integrated before Brown v. Sport of Education. And he was like, oh, did the schools get the idea from watching athletes? Because athletes are our role models. Yeah. And I was like, okay, sure. Yes. Probably not exactly, but. But like, you know, so when I ended up leaving that part-time job and I got a new full-time job that was to start, you know, January 1 of 2025, my last paycheck arrived and I was mistakenly overpaid.

Wow, I was kind of close with the embezzlement, almost, but not exactly. So I was overpaid by no less than $1,200. Oh, wow. Right. So I spent one second being like, should I keep it? And then I was like, no, no, no, no. So I sent, you know, an email and immediately it was like, hey, this is clearly an error, yada, yada. How do I give this back?

Like, I have direct deposit. I don't know, like, take it back. And I didn't hear anything. And I was like, okay, maybe they're on winter break or like getting ready for the holidays or whatnot. I sent a follow-up email. I, like, C-Ced, like the payroll person's, like supervisor person. I called and left a voicemail. Oh, wow.

This is much more persistent than most people would be. Yeah. I really tried. And so after like a month, I was like, okay, well, I think this money is mine, but it does feel a little bit like blood money. So what if I... So you're doing a transfusion of the blood money too effectively wild. Right.

Alchemy or something. Yeah. Also, it's like January 2025. So mind you, like apocalypse is happening. So I was like, I should put this money towards something that is going to help me and other people like retain sanity and joy in the coming times.

And the best possible cause you could come up with. was supporting effectively wild. Yeah, so I, so because the Mike Trout patron tier is 100 a month, and I got overpaid $1,200, it felt like a little bit perfect. Now I have my like new full-time job so I can continue supporting with, you know, clean, I don't know, non-laundered. Money you've actually earned. Right, yeah.

I don't know. So I feel like a little sketchy, but I really did try. Yeah. Oh, your heads are clean, I think. I think most people, well, most people would probably say finders keepers, you know, but even people who wanted at least to make an attempt, I feel like if you send one email and then you're CCing the payroll person, you did your duty. You even called. Yeah. I called. Yeah. I'm a millennial. I don't call anyone. Right. Yeah. No, that's, you crossed that bridge. That's serious effort. So yeah. Okay. Well, this is good because I feel absolved of blame also for people. profiting from this because yeah, yeah, it's on that. I think we're fine.

I'm glad we established that. So how did you discover the podcast and also how did you discover baseball? I know you're a Nats fan so you can take us a little through your origin story as a podcast listener and baseball person. I think it's probably a little bit atypical in both cases. I'm a D.C. native, like actual D.C., not like Bethesda or Fairfax or whatever people say when they Maryland, yeah. Right, yeah. So there were no Nats until I was 13, and I am told that as a baby toddler, we would go to Bowie Bay Sox games, I guess, double A affiliate of the O's and I apparently loved that, and they would like let me sit on the dugout as a baby.

The Nats arrive, I was like aware of it. It becomes huge for my dad and my brother. my mom and I were kind of like, we don't watch sports. We read Pride and Prejudice, and it was a little bit of a, you know, division in the family. Why not both? Yeah. You know, when you have to reread Pride and Prejudice over and over, you don't have a lot of time for, I don't know. I think it was also just like, this was a thing for my dad and my brother and probably. I felt like, oh, I don't fit into this exactly, so I will just, like, take a hard stance against it. And sports are for Neanderthals or whatever. And my mom was, like, on my team. I go off to college.

My brother and dad are, like, you know, watching the game. Every night together, my mom gets home from work usually late, like 10 or 11. And, you know, she would get home. The game would be wrapping up. She would be sitting there being like, I don't care about this. And apparently, I'm told that one night my dad came home and my brother was off somewhere and he found the house quiet and my mom was on the couch watching baseball by herself. And she had been colonized kind of probably how like those memes of like the boyfriend is like sitting on the like arm of the couch while like reality TV is happening and he's getting like slowly more invested. Anyway, then I actually left college in the middle, kind of in a mental health spiral mode.

And I wasn't sure I was going back. And I felt like super lost and sad and was kind of just like grasping for meaning and something to tether all of my emotions to. And I like actually feel like baseball saved my life. I just grabbed onto it and just started to go into games by myself and, you know, learning the players, the history, the rules, the lore. And it's, you know, it's impossible to know exactly where to start. But I just kind of like dove in head first. And I, like, decided to go to spring training. You know, I'm there as, like, a 21-year-old with all the little seven-year-old boys, like, trying to get autographs.

And, yeah, it became something, you know, something external to, yeah, to believe in it. And there's so much, there's so much. It's so constant and, you know, just like infinite characters and narratives. And I just like genuinely grew to love it so much. I did go back to school and graduated. And my love for baseball just like intensified.

This was, so 2013 was when I like, went from zero to 100, which for Nats fandom, I feel like that was a pretty good time. Yeah, that's not a bad stretch. So I was kind of able to experience some, you know, taste of postseason a little bit and get to know, like, some of the guys. And I said in, I think, July of 2019, if the Nats win, the whole thing, I will drink a beer. And I don't drink at all.

So I was like, I will have my first beer. that night I was like fully intending to hold up my end of that and I had like three sips and I was like mom I can't I can't finish this this is not delicious that's how I feel when I have beer usually yeah I know Meg I know you like beer if other people don't like a thing I think they should not be obligated to consume that thing that's a that's a fundamental make belief you know what did you drink for your first beer and maybe last year ever it was it was a blue moon. I don't know if that's a good one.

Is that like a, I don't know. So I'm not a huge fan of Blue Moon. You feel like you're drinking bread, really, is the way that I would characterize drinking a Blue Moon. So it's like, just have a piece of bread, though. Just have a piece of bread. But I know many people do. And if you like Blue Moon, you know what I say, good for you.

That's fine. That's fine, too. I did not. But I did try. And, yeah, went on, got my World Series time. It has like a Nats penant and then it says stay in the fight, which was kind of their stick that season. I walked in and the guy at the tattoo place who knows me and knows I'm a Nats fan was like, please don't get a baby shark. I was going to say, probably better.

Yeah. You could just get a giant Herodopara face or something. Yeah, something. Well, glad you got to have that fandom experience. And did you stumble across us before or after that? During. So probably 28. It was back when 2018, 2019, Meg was like on every other-ish.

Sam was still around kind of that era. Back then, I was not like a every single episode type of listener. It was like a now and then listener, which during the pandemic changed. And now I'm kind of like the refreshing my like podcast feed. Where's my third episode Thanksgiving week? Let's go. Oh, I'm on it. Right.

I know exactly one of this. But I have been going back and listening to episodes. I started like August 1st, 2019, because I kind of wanted to hear y'all, like, experience the, because I wasn't, I don't think I was listening to it closely during that postseason. And I'm up to like the second week of September of 2019 and no one has mentioned the Nats yet. So any day now. Yeah, our bad. Oh, well. They were sort of a surprise team.

They surprised all of us. Yes, I guess so. Okay. And what do you do now in your new job? Sure. With your paychecks that are the right amount, presumably. Yeah. I work in scenic construction. So I run the scene shop at a university in D.C. So like carpentry, painting, metal work, that kind of thing. Yeah. Wow. What sort of scenes is this? Are you outsourcing other people outsource their scenes to you? or you're doing stuff for the school? Yeah, so it's just for the theater department within the school for their main stage shows.

So it's usually six a year. Yeah, we do kind of like medium-scale productions. It's not a huge theater. But yeah, get to build a lot of fun stuff. We're doing the importance of being earnest next and building like a 24-foot diameter round stage on a rake, Is that a thing, people? I was trying to visualize what that would mean, and no, I do not know. A rake is like a tilt.

Ah, okay. So it's, we're doing half inch over a foot. So for every foot of the circle, you're going up half an inch. So you end up with like a slope. I see. Okay. Yeah, I'm not very handy, as you could probably tell. So I don't construct a lot of scenes unless they're story scenes.

Narratively, yeah, that sort of scene, I guess, maybe. You know, probably similar in terms of needing, like, you know, mathematical and narrative foundations. Yeah. Or something. Different tools, though. Yeah. A little less tangible and physical. Okay.

Well, glad you discovered baseball. Glad it was good for you. Glad you came across the podcast as well. And how are you feeling about the new Nats regime and the youth movement in the dugout in the front office? I think I went through like the five stages of grief with Davy, who I did really, really love, you know, Rizzo maybe a little bit less. So although he did live like two blocks from my parents and I would see him like smoking a cigar like out in his little like eight foot by eight foot postage stamp size yard. And he was always super nice. But I am excited. Honestly, I think like young takes fresh eyes, maybe Congress, could. like, see this example being set, you know, not too far. It's like just a stone's throw from Nats Park. I'm excited about it.

What was, uh, Tobok, to Po, no. What did, yeah, what did we settle on? To Poboni? To Toboni? It's a little, it's not the best. Yeah. When we have depoto and de Codesta, it's, yeah, it's a little more awkward than those. All to bonny.

To Poboni. No, we're trying to do too much there. I think we're trying to do too much. Regardless. Glad to have them. I think DC is a pretty, at least my perception of it, is a pretty friendly fan base to like new folks. I think I have understood it to be a place where, you know, we're all going to, we're all going to be there cheering for them from the start and wanting them to succeed as opposed to like an attitude of like, okay, you have to prove yourself to us. I'm bummed. They're both married.

I was like, oh, young, 30-something. Eligible bachelors, evidently no. Yeah. Alas. Well, you told us in your email that the key lenses for your baseball fandom because of your arts and theater experience and your English major, which I always appreciate, as one myself, you're big on the aesthetics, the world building, the character arcs, the narratives, the stories,

the storytelling of baseball and the ways it can or could be a platform for social change. So that all tracks, I think, with what we've been saying. And perhaps it will come up as we answer some emails, some from your fellow Patreon, people, patrons, and also I have some stat blasts. But let's start with Jacob, who writes in to say, instead of a salary cap, how about a war cap? How about neither, Jacob, but if we have to have one, how about a war cap? Often, the debate about the salary cap pits competitive balance against player compensation. However, what if there were a way to ensure talent were spread out across the league while also not putting limits on salary?

That is what could be accomplished by a war cap rather than a salary cap. What if the rule was that a team could go into a season with players equaling no more than 40 war from the previous season? So the Dodgers, whose players totaled about 50 Fancraft's War last season, would have to jettison about 10 war during the offseason in order to get under the cap. This way, the top teams would be forced to reduce their talent pull, yet players could still get paid as much as owners would offer them, has an idea like this ever been considered what would be the disastrous unintended consequences of it? Yes, I'm sure there would be some.

I think we've considered ideas like this, but I seem to recall maybe we entertained a proposal like this related to projections, like a projected war cap, which is kind of a variation on the same theme. So this is just looking at retrospective performance and saying you were too good. Your guys were too good. So you must divest, you must redistribute the war wealth in some way here. I think this would probably be pretty terrible. It does have some advantages over.

a salary cap, I suppose, from a player perspective. But I think there are all sorts of perverse incentives here. There's just like, well, for one thing, it would discourage anyone from getting too good. Right. Which, yeah, at a certain point, okay, there could be competitive balance concerns if someone gets too good and stays too good, but you still want some incentive for teams to try to be good. And yeah, maybe this is just too low a cap or something. Maybe if you set the cap higher so that it only precluded you from assembling a true super team or something.

But yeah, you wouldn't want – because we already have the expanded playoff format. And that already kind of takes away some of the incentive to be great as long as you could be good enough to get in. And if you're cap and limits, then it's just like teams would – just be wary of getting too good. It might actually backfire from a spending perspective. Right. I was going to say, I don't know that this would function all that differently from a salary cap candidly.

Yeah. Because what incentive do you have to give the big outlay to players if you're going to be doing this kind of war math at the end of the year, presumably with the guys who you have the most incentive to pay, right? like so i i think this would put an additional emphasis on young cheap players because then you have potentially dual fungibility there right like their salaries are less burdensome in the event that you have and like who's taking on those salaries if you're yeah i don't also i don't want this responsibility i don't want a war like i know that i know that the league has joint war right

which is the way that they determine the arbitration bonus pool. And they say it's their own formulation of war. And that's really just an era of war and baseball reference is war. So it's like I don't, this isn't, that's not my job. My job is not to determine who's on a roster in so direct a way. No, thank you. Remove that responsibility, please. So this would be combined war from like going into a new season,

cannot exceed, you know, whatever. Is that of all the players in just the past season or what they've accumulated over their careers? That was the way it was framed just the past season. And you could maybe have it be over multiple seasons or it could be projected, as I said. And then I guess you'd have to, would this apply to players who accrued that war for you only? Right. Like if you acquired someone over the off season who produced? X number of war the past? Would that go towards your cap? Maybe not. Maybe you could exempt that

because you would want to encourage teams to get better and improve. And so maybe you could say only if they did it for you. If they compiled all that for you, then you have to spread that wealth around, but you can acquire someone else's wealth. So maybe that wouldn't be an obstacle there. I guess it would lead to a lot of transactions and hot stove activity because the great teams would have to get worse, I guess it comes down to the same thing as the salary cap conversation often comes down to, which is what's the floor, if any? So is there a war floor? Right. And maybe if we imposed a war floor and you had the worst teams needing to get good, then that might work. How do you penalize someone if they don't meet the war floor, right? Like,

is it a fine? Is it a war tax? Yeah, like how do you, you know, Because guys will underperform their projections, I mean, the most common reason being injury, but for reasons that aren't necessarily the team doing anything wrong with that. I just, I don't care for it at all. I don't. Yeah. I wonder if it hits a point, so if you have folks, like if you have contracts, multi-year contracts, right? And you hit a point where, okay, so you've got this guy, this guy, this guy, and it becomes a little bit of a

logic puzzle of like you're like slotting folks into places and do you have to, it sounds like a lot more math. I'm sure, I'm sure they're all good at math. But it sounds like you might be backing yourself in to kind of like the notion of it being zero sum. Yeah. It also sort of fundamentally disrespects the concept of free agency, right? Unless you're saying that the only players you can jettison and you know guys who are on free agent contracts can get moved or cut or whatever they can get traded but you know if you have a if you have a player who comes in and signs like a five-year deal and your team has exceeded their war cap and there are other guys who you deem as just too essential you can't get rid of those dudes and so you have to jettison the guy who signed a

deal well he he signed a deal with the understanding that he was going to you know perform baseball services for your team. He's holding up his end of the bargain, presumably. But then you're just like, sorry, you got to go. Not because we don't want you here, but because you're too good. And that's like the perverse incentives coming up. Yeah, it's an upside down-ass system. Right. Yeah. Though I guess maybe that might make players less likely to sign with teams that are already really good because they don't want to be on the move again, which might make the bad teams better, but then also, yeah, if you're taking the top bidders historically out of the market, if you're saying, okay, Dodgers, you have to sit out this offseason because you're too good

already. Yeah, you've got too much war on the books. Yeah, what's that going to do to the demands and the prices for players? And yeah, if you, how could you penalize teams? You mentioned that, Meg, and anything that you did to penalize a team that wasn't good enough would just make that team worse, if you just took draft picks away or something because that team was too bad, then they would just be even worse. And the other thing that would probably

happen is some sort of tanking in season. Right. Because and like, what if you have some great young player who's under team control and cost controlled, or you signed some big free agent? You have a star and you realize

that you're bumping up against the 40 war cap. Are you then going to bench them down the stretch because you don't want to lose them. You don't want to have to trade them away. And then what does that do for teams when everyone knows they have to trade someone, then they have no leverage really? But you'd have teams just sitting guys so that they don't have to then lose them after the season. And maybe you could have some protection in there and there'd be grievances if you were obviously benching someone because you didn't want to go over this cap, it would be kind of like when a team maybe obviously benches someone because they

don't want a contract incentive to be triggered or something, but it's hard to police that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I don't like it. And they're always going to be good teams and bad teams. And I get trying to have some sort of guardrails, but how narrow a band do you want of team performance? Do you just, you want no great teams ever? We like great teams sometimes. I love great teams. Yeah. And you could fluke into a great team year, but then you immediately have to tear it down. And that's kind of depressing.

Like, what if you win the World Series and you're happy and you're celebrating because you just had a fantastic season where everything went well for you. But then looming beyond that, you know, oh, well, now we have to get worse actively this offseason. That sort of stinks. Yeah, it just pushes everybody to, like, the 85 win band. And that's not good. This is the sort of thing. I mean, it's pretty devious, candidly. I don't want to, like, you know, impart intent on the questioner.

But it would be a pretty, like, devious form of salary suppression on the part of the league because they would be selling it within the sort of notion of competitive balance and because it's not being done in an explicitly salary-based way. I think people will be like, oh, yeah. That's what a clever solution to this non-existent problem we have. And then it just would end up, I think, largely functioning as another way of suppressing salary. And then what, you know? Yeah, yeah.

And you just have more turnover and less continuity. And the Jersey guys, the franchise players, they'd always be in danger of having to move on somewhere. I was also thinking of ways, what would be the money ball, the market inefficiency for this, I guess would probably be players who produce. zero war in the prior season, but we're projected to produce war in the coming season for whatever reason. Maybe their rookies. Rookies would be even more valuable because they wouldn't count against your cap and players who were just debuting. International players, players who missed the previous season. Yeah. Coming back from Tommy John or something. Oh, it's free war because

they don't count against our cap. Yeah. So, well, Jacob did say what would be the disastrous unintended consequences. I think we covered some of them here, not exhaustively, but yeah, I think we're agreed. It'd be bad. Okay. Mark, Patreon supporter, says, I recently introduced the concept of the zombie runner to a friend who wasn't aware of that rule change. I hope that that friend was as appalled as I am. He came up with an alternative method to end a game. There is only one inning remaining for each team, and each half-inning ends when the batting team scores. The team that uses the fewest plate appearances to score wins. How would this go?

What's the optimal strategy? So it's sort of sudden death in a way. So you just play one more half inning. Each team gets to hit once. And then the team that uses the fewest plate appearances to score wins. So fastest to a run, essentially, in their half inning wins. How would this go? What's the optimal strategy?

We get a lot of suggestions that are, here's an alternative to end games quickly that's not the zombie runner. And usually my take is, it's better than the zombie runner, but it still sort of stinks. I'd still just rather have regular baseball, even though that battle seems to be lost. This one, also, I wouldn't want it, but it sounds sort of fun, I would say. This is kind of fun because, yeah, like not just needing to score more runs, but needing to score quickly. What's the optimal strategy? So my initial inclination was just to say everyone would swing for the fences. Yeah, you want a bopper. Yeah, but maybe that's not a good strategy because it's fewer plate appearances to score. And so a home run is still sort of a low probability event. It's

on average going to take a bunch of plate appearances to hit a home run. So if you hit a double in a single, then you could maybe have that happen faster than the solo shot that will win it for you or the home run. So I don't know. Wait, sorry, are there infinite outs? Yes, I think they're infinite outs.

So you just, you hit until you score, essentially, but the faster, the better. Yeah. I'm trying to, I don't, I don't know that there would be that different a strategy because you're always trying to score quickly and often, right?

I mean, it's, you don't have to worry about scoring multiple runs here, only the first one counts, but would that actually change anything? Because you're always trying to optimize your chances to score at all times, right? I mean, I guess like if it came down to if you got a runner on and then would that change the bunting calculus or the productive outs, would you want to get the runner over or would you want to aim for a hit? But I don't know that it actually changes that. much that dramatically. It might just kind of look like regular baseball, except that it ends when you score. I don't know that it would be that different than the, like, existing incentives to have, I mean, there are plenty of incentives to have boppers now, but I don't know that you would need to, like, load up on it in a way that's different than the existing

roster incentives, if that makes sense. Would you have no double plays? Would there be no reason? I just like double plays. But it feels like... Because outs don't matter. Well... Right. I think it was... Yeah.

Would it still erase the base runner, but you just get to keep going, even if you get to three? Right. Yes. That's the thing. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So it's infinite outs, but then... But yeah, how does that affect?

Huh. So do you... But the batters are still forced and... The runners are still forced and tagged out and everything. It's just that the outs... outs that so it's it becomes a game about erasing base runners which is already yeah it's like you want to hold the line and keep them from scoring but getting multiple outs doesn't matter except in the sense that it removes runners from right the bases yeah this would be weird

to watch seeing in some cases many outs recorded it would be especially embarrassing if you're like batting around and just everyone's making it out and you just get to keep hitting but no one even reaches base and it's just everyone's sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Yeah, just like, waiting for you finally to push a run across. It would be sort of a pitiable spectacle. I mean, you would want to score fast because you just be so embarrassed. Yeah. I felt like it would be fun at first as a spectator because that first, that first,

run matters so much and you'd be kind of on the edge of your seat just counting the plate appearances because usually you don't really care exactly how long it takes to score run. There's a limit to how long it can take to score a run if you're not making enough outs to end your inning. But in this case, you could make a ton of outs. And it could lead to some boring half innings where you're just seeing the same team batting over and over and the same team hitting over and over and failing to score. But it would be kind of fun, I guess, in the bottom of the inning. There would be that suspense, though.

Well, there already is, really, because if the visiting team scored in the top half of an extra inning, then you know how many runs you need to score to extend the game. And so there's already that pressure, and the outs provide that pressure. But here it would be almost like a home run derby sort of. It's like, I know. Visiting team scored with.

four-plate appearances. So disorienting. The fourth guy, yeah, in the bottom of the inning. Yeah, it's usually an advantage to know how many outs you have or how many runs you need to score to have a target in mind and be able to shape your strategy around that. And I guess it would be in this case, too, though it would be so imposing to be thinking, oh, they scored in three plate appearances. I got a, I got a hurry here.

We got to get this guy at base. or, well, if it were down to say your third plate appearance of the inning and you know that the visiting team scored in three plate appearances, well, then that guy is going to be swinging for the fences. Actually, in that case, oh, you'd end up with some cases where the pitching team, the defensive team, would be able to make you lose, right, by putting someone on base. Yeah, exactly, right. So I think that would have to be not allowed.

I mean, that part would be kind of. of fun. But how would you stop it? Right. How would you stop it? Right. I mean, you could say you can't put a four. Well, you've already invented a new rule. But you would still be limited in your ability. Like, you know, you

could say you can't intentionally walk them in the way that we understand that now, but you wouldn't be able to prevent them from walking a guy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If the team in the top half of the inning scored in like two plate appearances or three plate appearances, you

You could just walk the bases loaded and you win. Right. So that ruins this. I think that sort of, that sort of spoils this. If there were a way to get them to play it straight and on the level and everything, but yeah, that would be an issue. And they don't even have to actually issue an intentional walk. It could just be, well, if they have to have a home run in this plate appearance to end it or else they lose, then you could just, you know, throw pitches that are basically impossible to hit for home runs. And yeah, I think that might sort of spoil this, unfortunately. So that's, well, the question was, how would this go? What's the optimal strategy?

I guess we just found it probably for the second part of this. For the first part of needing to score quick, it's like speed baseball or something. It's like speed chess, but not exactly. I guess pitch clock is sort of speed baseball. But this is just like, yeah, got to minimize your chances to score the most runs. It's all about scoring the quickest. run but i don't think that would actually be all that different really so i think this falls flat even though initially i was kind of into it i mean i maintain that it would be just like

profoundly disorienting setting all of the like issues with it aside i think it would just be so strange to watch and not have your experience of like the the the leverage intention of a particular played appearance be anchored to the number of outs like we are so that is such an ingrained experience particularly in extras you feel so every i don't even know how many years in my life i lost extra endings baseball this october you know in terms of like the stress it caused you're just everything feels so uh you know tense and then to have you still have the tension of will we win or lose, but to have the concern of the out removed, it would just be, it wouldn't be baseball. You know, we sit here when we're talking about how the zombie runners, like, not baseball.

It's like, no, this is, this isn't baseball, you know, in a profound way. It is a fundamental. Yeah. Yeah, we've talked to the past, we've answered just like, what are the core aspects of the sport that you need to have for it to resemble baseball at least? And maybe it's just someone throwing something at someone else and the other person hits it with something, and maybe on some fundamental level, that's baseball.

But the baseball, we know, the baseball that has developed, yes, this would be just as serious. Yeah. I think it has like zombie outs. Yeah, it is. It keeps repopulating. Yes, that's true. They just keep coming. Yeah.

Well, here's one that might be up Becca's alley, because it's sort of about the aesthetics and the storytelling. This is from David, Patreon supporter. This came in during the playoffs, and it is what is it with Fox TV showing so many shots of the managers during the World Series? They seem especially enamored with Dave Roberts. I know Fox has lots of cameras available, and this is mostly a good thing, but they've been going way overboard with this.

I'd rather see some more close-ups of the pitcher and batter, for instance. I've been keeping an informal count of these shots each game, excluding manager mound visits and managers checking out players hit by pitches or injured on the field, or a manager in a group scene celebrating a home run or an in-game interview with Tom and Ken. In a regular season game for my local team, the Padres, I'm guessing there may be two to three such shots of each manager shown in a game. My unofficial results for Game 6 were 21 to 5 for Dave Roberts over John Schneider. Why does Fox especially like Dave Roberts?

Do you think Roberts plans to retire if the Dodgers win the World Series and replace John Smoltz in the broadcast booth? I suppose that manager shots could be the basis of a new drinking game. If you're looking to try another beer, I guess. Don't try it with shots of Dave Roberts on a Fox World Series broadcast. Yeah, I didn't notice this, but yeah, now that David points this out, I guess I associate Fox with crowd shots of just constantly showing stressed or excited fans between pitches. Like chewing their hair.

Yeah, which was probably more of a thing pre-pitch clock, but Fox was kind of famous or infamous for that. And the idea was, oh, it just builds tension. And you're showing a lot of anxious people all over the place. And maybe fans watching at home see themselves in those fans in the park. So I get it. But that was sort of their house style. Managers, I guess it's, again, just trying to take us into their heads to some extent. I think it is.

It does have something to do with the storytelling and, like, establishing. them as major characters and the focus on, I don't know, like, well, okay, I do think, I do not care for the Dodgers, obviously, but I do think Dave Roberts has, like, a really nice, like, chewing face. Like, it's, it's less gross. Sometimes you watch men chew, and you're like, no, no, no, no. You can just say Terry Francona. Yeah.

And they're, like, spilling out their mouth. Yeah, no, no, no. I wonder if facts would show too. Frank Conner, whether that would be just like this, it would be censored, yeah. I wonder also, though, if, I mean, I like when they show pictures faces, but it's, it's always when the glove is in front of, when they're like, when the glove is in front of their face, you've just got their eyes. And then, and the batter has the helmet and the ear flap and everything. And so the manager is a little more like unobstured, I guess.

Yeah, I used to like that when I was a kid. Andy Petit always had the brim, curved brim, pulled low over his eyes and then he'd have the glove up in front of his face before he'd yeah so all you could see was just his eyes peering out from under the brim and above the glove i thought that was a cool look i feel like my i don't know if this will be controversial i think fox overdoes it with all of the close-ups in a way that can sometimes obscure the action on the field and for a while i thought they were doing it this was in the pre in the pre-pitchcom but post-banging scheme era it felt like they were doing it to show catcher signs less often. Like they would cut to the manager.

They'd cut to the pitcher close. And it felt almost intentional like they were trying to provide one less look at signs as they were going down. And then, you know, that sort of lost its explanatory power once we got pitchcom. And I don't know that that's what they were doing. But that was sort of, it felt like it escalated after banging scheme stuff. so it made me wonder if they were trying to do a little subterfuge of their own, I would be fine with a little more time spent in, like, the wide angle. Because I just, I want to have the narrative pull of individual players,

but I feel like they're manufacturing it a little bit. You know, they're pulling in tight on guys at moments when they don't necessarily need to. And they do, they do do it, I think, with the manager a lot in the postseason in a way that it's like, He's still, guess what? He's still chomping on that gum, you know? He's still chomping on it over there. I like it better when they do the dugout shot where you can see more of the guys. Because then it feels like you're getting a sense of the team and how they interact with each other.

Sometimes you notice like, oh, those two guys who I didn't know where buds seem like their friends, they're always on the dugout rail together. Or like Roki, like keeping his glove on between innings. Like in the dugout, that's adorable. Relax, guy. Yeah, it's very little league. It's kind of cute. Yeah. I think that.

Yeah, but getting to see that, yeah. Yeah. I wonder what, I wonder how year two will go for Roki. I wonder if he'll be able to like settle down a little bit, like relax into himself. He just seems so wound, you know. Yeah. Yeah, but anyway, I just, I let it, let the, let the action on the field breathe. And maybe if the broadcast did that, it would invite the booth to do that.

Maybe, you know, like as an idea. Yeah. I guess the idea is I don't know when exactly these close-ups on the manager's happened, but I assume a lot of them is when some decision is looming and someone's warming in the bullpen. And so you figure that the manager is pondering something. So you show them pondering something. Or maybe the broadcasters are even referring to a decision that the manager needs to make. And so you show the manager, that's obvious, I suppose.

And maybe you show them sometimes when something good or bad happens to their team. And the Roberts Schneider mismatch, I'm surprised that it's quite that imbalance, but not surprised that it's in that direction because Roberts is just, he's just better known. He's just, he's been a manager a lot longer. His teams have been more successful. He's a future Hall of Famer. Yeah, he's a postseason staple. He's been on that particular stage many times.

He's just a recurring character on postseason broadcasts and World Series broadcasts. And there's so much history and we're all remembering every time, oh, remember that time he brought in Max Scherzer, that time he brought in Clayton Kershaw, that time he did that, and you're waiting for Dave to do some dramatic thing. So, and maybe it's just, I don't know if it's just that the Dodgers had more decisions like that to make that were kind of intriguing because of their terrible bullpen and just bringing in starters all the time and everything. But he's just, he's more recognizable to most viewers. He's more of a baseball celebrity. So it makes sense to me that they would show him more often. I don't know if he's more, more

expressive. I guess Schneider tends to look pretty stoic over there. But yeah. I think Dave's pretty stoic. It does feel like there are times where the boot, not the, like the production crew is in dialogue with the manager. Like, aren't you going to go get him? You should. Yeah. Right. I'm looking at you. Because I think you should go get him. Why aren't you? You're still sitting there tromping. I feel like you should go get him. Or like during this postseason, there were times where I felt like they wanted to like prove they were like, can you see Blake trying to? if you can't see him in a dog out that means. Yeah, maybe it's not a good thing to get that much screen time as a manager because maybe it means that people are puzzled by what you're doing. Yeah. But, okay, here's a question from David, Patreon supporter, perhaps the same David? I'm not actually sure.

I just wrote down David Patreon supporter, but I'm sure we have more than one of those. This David, perhaps the same David, says this was also during the playoffs. Last night during game one of the World Series, Joe Davis said that, opponents had been five for 42 against Trey Yassavage's splitter with 24 strikeouts, which sounds really impressive, except what does that mean? A splitter is just one pitch. Batters are five for 42 in any at bat when Yassavage throws a splitter. That can't be it. Five for 42 when they swing at the pitch, when they put it in play. The latter could make sense if he meant something like batters are five for 42 when they put the splitter in play plus 24 strikeouts, only how do they

count swings and misses for the first or second strike? How do they count takes? I'm so confused. So this does prompt confusion. I've seen people be confused about this before. And I also agree that it's kind of confusing and weird. It's a strange construction, though I think I understand why they do it. And generally what it means is it refers to the at-bat ending pitch. Right. I think I'm safe saying at bat and not plate appearance because it doesn't even, yeah, if it's a walk, it's just not even factored into this. Yeah, so it's sort of selective and potentially misleading because, yeah, you're throwing splitters that are not the last pitch at bats and don't lead to an outcome like that or you're just ignoring the balls that lead to walks. And so it sounds good, five for 42 at 24 strikeouts.

That's it sounds dominant. And I guess I get why they do it because probably the better way to do it would be to say. And I did just look this up that Trey Savage's Splitter was worth 1.198 runs per 100 pitches above average. Like that's not great, right? You know, you're trying to say that on a broadcast. Yeah, Trey Savage's Splitter. where 1.2 runs above average, better than average, per 100 pitches thrown, is, yeah. So I get why they say it.

It's just... A little clunky. Yeah. And I guess it's directionally right, probably. Because if it's 542 at 24 strikeouts, it's probably been pretty effective. That is true of Traja Savage's splitter, which was a good pitch for him. So there's a better way to put it, but if your goal is to convey that this is a good pitch, then maybe the less accurate way of framing that is actually more comprehensible. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think you're always going to pick the numbers that tell the story that you're wanting to tell about this guy and this pitch of his. And I'm not sure that everyone, was it David, David or anyone, you know, is going to think like as hard about it or, you know, any effective podcast listener. I've confirmed different Davids, by the way. Yeah. Both Patreon supporters, but two different Davids. Yeah, I agree. Most people would probably say, oh, sounds good, sounds effective and they won't think about it deeper than that. Like if I were watching another sport and I heard someone be like, oh, such and such.

is 5 for 42 against whoever's defense. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like they're, uh-huh, it's going how they wanted to go, you know? Right, yeah. Yeah, and I guess it did cause some confusion. I said it's the less confusing way to frame it. Clearly, in David's case, it did cause some confusion, but I think probably most people would just go with it.

And I guess the only note is that I might sort of specify what I mean when I say 5 for 42 is 24. I might say, like, at bat ending pitches. Like when the splitter ended the bad, that's what happened. Because otherwise, it is kind of confusing and also not quite right. Do you, would you lead into it with saying, like, the splitter is his putaway pitch? Yeah, maybe. And then give the stat, because then you're contextualizing it within the, like, where in the, at bad it falls probably.

Right. Like, he wrote, you know, this is his, there's a real putaway pitch for him. is the one he leans up bra this is his uh shame can i do a swear this is this fuck you pitch i don't know right although i think that um and Shane here all do um the same swear um you know i think that you can have a fuck you pitch that isn't an at bat ending right it's like um yeah yeah and and sometimes you're at bad ending pitch doesn't end up being You pitch sounds like either big velocity or big movement to me. Like that's the way I think of the – I associate it with a – well, I associate it with, like, closers and big velocity, which is maybe narrow-minded of me, really.

I think I'm thinking of it as a swinging – swinging third strike pitch. Right, yeah. Regardless – like, I don't know. Is it like a challenge pitch? Yeah, but, like, you can, like, freeze a guy – just blow it by someone? Like, it frees the guy. Take strike three looking. Take strike three looking.

That's a fucking pitch. You're like, oh. I think, didn't Sam just write about this in his substack about app that ending free app? All right. Whatever. Go read it. It was good. Yes, blanket recommendation.

And Sam writes something. Go read it. And yes, Patreon perk, potential podcast appearances. And also, you get a bleep. You get to say a swear and have Shane bleep. We should add that as an extra special perk. Okay, and here is a question from not a David, but a Kyle, Patreon supporter. I'm listening to episode 2382's discussion of Mason Miller and the quote-unquote best pitch ever,

and I have a new idea for an All-Star Games skills competition. Pick a number of the game's best hitters, wheel a trajectory machine out onto the field, and let them face the first half of the season's 25 nastiest pitches, as defined by one of the stuff metrics. They lose points for taking a strike or whiffing and get points for taking a ball or successfully putting the ball in play with the points gained tied to hit probability

of the batted ball. I think this game would serve two purposes first. It would be fun. Additionally, however, once it's over, we'd also have a sample of outcomes to use to determine which pitch was the best. So when do you think of that? We always get suggestions for skills competition.

This is removing the human element in a way, or having a pitching machine mimic a human delivered, excellent pitch, and then seeing whether guys could hit it. You'd have to randomize them for the different guys, I guess. Yeah, I guess you'd have to not tell them what's coming or else that would sap some of the effectiveness. Oh, right, if it's the same selection of pitches for each of the hitters. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't want them to be able to learn from that. then there'd be like a times through the order effect sort of thing happening here. So, yeah, I guess it would have to be a surprise.

And then you just see whether they can hit it. And you just judge based on the expected outcome of the batted ball quality of contact. Maybe I don't know enough about Traject. But are these 25 nastiest pitches could be coming from a lefty or a righty? Yep. Yeah, you can mimic. Aside from some very extreme deliveries, you can mimic the characteristics of the pitch and where it's released

from not perfectly obviously because you don't actually have a human throwing the pitch and that is a meaningful difference however closely you simulate it but yeah in in theory the pitch should move like the actual genuine article. That's like an additional challenge

then if you're essentially doing BP and or yeah I mean if you're facing a series of pitches and they're like switching I guess you wouldn't have to experience that in-game. Yeah.

I guess you do get this sort of when we watch the actual All-Star game. Isn't that why we have an All-Star game so that we can see the best pitchers facing the best hitters. So you almost don't need to simulate the best hitters facing the best pitches because in theory, that's why you hold the game in the first place. But I guess I get the idea of just isolating those really excellent stand-out pitchers. like the, not the all-star pitchers, but the all-star pitches of the pre-all-star break period, and then you have them pit those batters against the best of the best individual pitches, and you don't have to worry about injuries or anything for those pitchers,

although slippery slope probably when we start saying, why don't we just have robots do the playing? That no one needs to get hurt. We could just replace all the players at all times. but I guess I kind of am into it only for the spectacle of being able to it would be like educational it'd be interesting to see

I don't know how obvious it would be if there's not an actual human pitcher delivering it but just to say like here's the best pitch of the season so far by whatever stuff metric and then you get to see some nasty movement or something and then seeing the batter react to that might be kind of fun this might be a case.

where I would support micing up the batter just so you can kind of get their like whistling, just like, whoa, that's nasty, can't hit that, getting their real-time reaction to the pitch movement, that'd be kind of fun. And maybe they get to hit a pitch from a guy on their own team, which is fun. Yeah, that's true. You don't often get to face your teammates. And they're like, that's got to be Mason Miller. Oh, that would be, oh, I like, oh, that's, okay, that makes me think of a much more fun wrinkle.

Guess who? Guess who? Yeah, they have to guess. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty fun. Yeah. I think you've worked us into a better alternative.

Yeah. And you could have catchers. Catchers would be fun or hitters. And it's just, yeah, name that pitcher. And you just give them one pitch. That would be really fun. I'd watch that. Have you played Guess Who lately?

Oh, yes, I have. The game Guess Who? Does your daughter like Guess Who, Ben? Yep. She's not 100% reliable when it comes to, actually, like, abiding by the rules of the game. And so when I play her and I say, does your person have brown hair or whatever? She puts down a couple flaps and I'm like, was that enough flaps?

Are you sure that there weren't more brown-haired people or whatever it is? But yeah, we have fun with that. I played guess who? And I was like, what's that recommended age range on this game? Because it feels like it falls into a very weird, narrow range. Because you have the problem you're describing, right? you have like unreliable toddler narrator potentially. Yeah.

But also once they are consistently able to render an accurate description of the little people, it's like, is this fun? You know, this game? Is this a fun game? Also, it can get kind of awkward. Anyway, I don't know if I used to really like guess who was a little kid and then I played it with my nieces and I was like, I think this game kind of sucks. I don't know if I like this game.

Awkward as in you start insulting people's personal. personal appearance or something? Yeah, you're like, sure. Yeah, you're like, does this person have a big nose or something? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I thought, like, the only time I've played it recently with other, like, adults was we, we basically eliminated any, like, objective traits from being used.

And it had to be, like, does this guy look like, would you let this guy give you a ride? Oh, I. Introduced totally subjective. Oh, see, that. Interesting. Okay. See, I'm back in on guess who now. Yeah. Yeah, yet again, you have made a game better by coming up with an alternative way to play it. So, yeah, Kyle, I don't mind your way of this. I think this could be fun. We could see the best pitches highlighted and isolated. The second part where he suggested that once it's over, we'd have a sample of outcomes to use to determine which pitch was the best. I don't think the sample would really be sufficient to prove that if you just had.

10 hitters or whatever, and can they hack it against this pitch? I don't know that I would necessarily extrapolate from that and say, yes, this actually was the hardest because it's just not enough trials, really. But the version that we backed into, where it's just, can you figure out who threw the pitch that had this characteristics? And you could have, yeah, teammate versions. And then if you had like a catcher who catches a pitcher and doesn't recognize their stuff or confuses them with someone else,

that'd be kind of awkward in a fun way and there'd be teasing about that. But I bet players would be surprisingly good at it. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if they were good at it. Because I'm always impressed by their recall when they remember pitch sequences. And granted, they're not always 100% accurate when they remember those things.

But when I always enjoy hearing when a catcher is asked, who had the best stuff of anyone you ever caught or something like that. And they'll talk about how someone really had a unique arm angle or release point or movement or whatever it is. And this would put this to the test and see, can you actually identify one pitch? Is that enough? And I guess in a way, it would only work with outlier pitchers is the problem. Right.

Because if you kind of just throw a pitch that looks like a lot of other pitchers pitches, then there's no way to really know that it's that particular person's pitch without seeing them throw it. because there are a lot of people who could possibly do that. So then it would need to come down to where you're releasing it or like someone who gets just ridiculous movement that basically no one else has. Like it'd have to be a real outlier. Yeah. And maybe that makes it. Yeah.

And maybe that makes it too easy. I don't know. But I'd still watch that. That still sounds fun to me. Yeah. Tragest who? Truggett. Chagest too.

I don't know. For just two Keep working on it Yeah No I think that's great Yeah And it'd be fun for fans Maybe it'd be too hard for fans

Because fans aren't even used to seeing pitches From that ankle I mean you're used to seeing them from the center field camera And it's hard to tell the difference Between this number of inches of movement And that number of inches of movement But it would be fun to be able to see that From that batter's perspective

Or catcher's perspective And see if you could identify that okay that's fun and in fact someone should make a version of that like a geogessor style for a single pitch but just somehow block out the pitcher throwing it i guess the super nerd version of that would be just showing the pitch plot and just like you know and probably people who listen to this podcast might enjoy that already yeah but if you could just isolate the movement of the pitch and the release but not have the person's everything that you have and guess who get rid of that and just keep the hand or something releasing the pitch and then the movement that might be fun to play if

someone works that up okay last one before i leave you with a couple staplast this is from sydney who says lately i've been thinking about the phrase the corner of the zone and how it is used on broadcasts corner is of course a geometric term and what i would consider a corner changes quite drastically when you're referring to something two-dimensional, such as the K-zone on the broadcast or the zone that will be enforced by the ABS system, versus something three-dimensional, such as the concept of the strike zone as the 3D area of space over the plate and between the batter's knees and belt shoulder midpoint. Anecdotally, I feel like commentators will use the phrase, the corner of the zone,

to mean any point on the inner or outer edge of the zone, regardless of its actual height in the zone. So sort of like saying on the black or something, it's kind of in the corner. This to me suggests that commentators generally conceptualize the zone as a 3D area. So if you picture the 3D rulebook strike zone, then if a pitch were on the edge of the plate, then it could kind of be a corner of that three-dimensional space, essentially. But if it's a two-dimensional zone, then it would have to actually be like, in the bottom corner or top corner to be a corner, technically.

So Sydney continues, my issue is that the ABS system seems to flippantly deny the three-dimensional nature of the zone. And that's true. I mean, that's basically going to be codified, right? They have tested versions of ABS where they had a 3D zone, but the one that they will actually be using for the challenge system will just be a two-dimensional plane, right, like in the middle of the plate or something. A section.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a cross-section. Yeah, ABS is enforced as a rectangular 2D area centered on the midpoint of home plate. I should have read one more sentence. ABS will not call a strike for a ball that passes over the midpoint of the plate above the zone, but falls in and clips the zone at the back of home plate. The K zone on a broadcast is one thing.

It has no actual bearing on how the game is called, but ABS is very consequential. At one point, I considered ABS a bastardization of the strike zone and that implementing it as this canonical source of truth was a disrespect to our three-dimensional roots, but current umpires already do a great job at bastardizing that strike zone anyway. Wow. Shots at umpires.

Yeah. As such, my biggest problem with the zone and ABS has shifted to the phrase, the corner of the zone. If we are to consider the true or at least enforced zone to be two-dimensional, surely we must consider the corner of the zone to mean only the four small areas, both vertically and horizontally, at the edge of the zone. Do you think commentators will shift their language to accommodate the 2D zone or will the 3D nature of the zone live on if only in the phrasing used? Then it could be kind of a skewomorph, which we talk about kind of a phrase that's left over from the former form of a thing.

So I wonder, first of all, do you think, do you agree that corner is used for any horizontal edge indiscriminate of whether it's, at the bottom or top corner? Do you think, like, well, people, if it's, you know, waist high or something, but it's out on the edge of the plate? I'm sure that there are broadcasters who get a little loosey-goosey with their use of corner, but I think most, I think most broadcasters really do limit their use of corner to the corners. And part of that is that I think that there's so much time spent with.

some visualization of the zone on screen that it like weird I don't love having the zone on the screen myself but I do think that on this score it kind of keeps them honest a little bit yeah I think that they're they're normally pretty rigorous about it I don't even know if rigor is the right word there but you know what I'm trying to say yeah I feel like I've heard edge of the zone edge of the zone yeah they say edge of the zone edge of the zone yeah Yeah, I think you're right, because, yeah, you already have that 2D representation of the zone on the screen most of the time, and the broadcasters are conscious of that. So, yeah, I guess we quibble with the premise a little that people already say edge or corner, that is, regularly to refer to just any place on the edge, if it's just in the middle of the zone. I think that happens.

I think I've heard that, and I'm not sure I would really raise an eyebrow if. I heard it, but I think if we could come up with, if we could plot the locations of every pitch that caused a broadcaster to say, to say corner, I think there'd be sort of a spray pattern and it would be a bit of a blob, but I do think it would be concentrated at the actual corners that Sydney is talking about. I think you're definitely more likely to hear a corner if it is actually on the edge and low or high. Have you seen the movie The Blob? I think so Yes, I think I did

Yeah I bring it up Because the I've seen the song I've seen the original Right the original The blog Yeah

Yeah okay yeah Beware of the blob It could send it It has like this great song And then there's like You know an hour and a half of horror It's great Right

The blop The blop Beware of the blot Beware of the blot Was this really To the Because he said blop No, blob. He just said the word blob, and that was enough. That was enough for my brain to be like, hey, remember that? You're so right. Yeah. But the strike zone is more of a blob than it is actually a rectangle as called. It's an ellipse. It's sort of, yeah. It oscillates and the wind. Right. It's, yeah, it's a shape other than the one that it is in. It's an oval kind of, more or less. So it's a blob. It's a blob. Yeah. Beware of the blub. Okay. Well, we'll wrap up here.

Yeah. Roll with it. Sometimes it's better to just indulge me. Yes, and, yes, and. Exactly. Or yes and segue to stat blasts. Yep. They'll take a data set sorted by something like a minus or OBS plus.

And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it at length and analyze it for us in a amazing way. Here's two days Stapblast. Okay, this stat blast question comes to us from Alex, who says acknowledging this is pretty low stakes even by the standards of baseball awards discussion. This year's ALCS offered an interesting philosophical question of how to decide series MVP awards.

Vladimir Guerrera Jr. had a 1330 OPS with a negative 0.03 win probability added and negative 2% championship win probability added, whereas George Springer had a 1,053 OPS significantly lower, but a positive 0.69 nice win probability added and 24% championship win probability added. Vlad had the better series in a context-neutral sense, especially considering he plays defense and Springer doesn't, but Springer was far, far more valuable when accounting for leverage. I personally would have voted for Springer, but the voters landed on Vlad, which approach makes more sense to you, and then the part of this that is stat-blasty,

as a side note, I'd be curious how often an LCS or World Series MVP has had negative WPA and or CWPA for that series. series. So first of all, the philosophical question about whether a series MVP, yes, should be context neutral or context sensitive. It's interesting because for regular season MVP, I typically adhere to context neutral, more or less. I'm not really considering championship win properly added or what your teammates did or how good your team was or where you were in the playoff race. It might be a tiebreaker or something, but it's not foremost in my mind. Whereas With a postseason series MVP, I think I'm much more inclined to go the other direction.

Are you? Does that make sense? I guess that's inconsistent, but it's maybe it's because it's such a small sample anyway that it's not as if you're really trying to assess the true talent of someone in that series. You know, if it's best of five or best of seven or whatever, you're not really trying to figure out who is the best in some context neutral way. you're trying to figure out who helps the team win that series more. That's the whole goal. So I'm more inclined to say, if you had a huge hit, then I might give that to you, even if someone else had more hits and better stats. Is that the way that you two think of it or no? I think I do think that way because, I mean, you spend the whole regular season in the

mindset that, like, okay, sure, any game stats are teeny, teeny, tiny, and we're all going to form a mosaic of game experiences, that up to 162, and, like, five games is nothing, right? I mean, it's, of course, it's something, but it's, it's nothing. And it's, I guess, to me, it's, like, not even that interesting of, like, who's better than who in a five-game stretch. Like, it just doesn't feel, like, statistically significant. So I think it has to be, like, a little bit more vibes-based if that's what, if that's how we're defining context.

Right. Yeah, it's, it's reminding me of the. at-bat-ending pitches from before with like, if you look on baseball savant, they have pitch value leveraged and pitch value not leveraged or context neutral. And if you care only about the put-away pitch or, oh, this is a pitch someone throws on two strikes a lot. So what happens then? Then maybe you care about that particular context and you don't care about the other times if someone throws one early in the count. So I don't know, Meg, what do you think? I'm always torn on on, on postseason series MVP's because if I had to pick like a mode that they generally fall into,

I find them to be too context sensitive, right? So it's like if you're the guy who has the game winning series clinching home run, like very often that guy wins MVP, even if the concentration of like umph and value is in that one game. Now, that's a hell of a game to win if it's the game that sends you to the World Series. so like it's not a completely ridiculous thing championship win probability was right yeah that would be a big for you yeah but my biggest takeaway from the entire postseason was man what an october flattie is having right like he just played like a man possessed he wanted to win the world series so stinking bad and i felt so terrible for him when they lost because he just had what a what a stretch and so having the award acknowledge like the the performance over a series truly being the series MVP even if context sensitive stats might tell you that you know springer was more valuable or whatever it just it aligns more with it feels even though it's not context sensitive it feels less fluky right

because it's like this guy was so good over the entirety of that series and the entire the postseason but but also like in the world like in the maybe in the world series you wanted to be more context dependent where it's like you were like who did it for them though and and in that in that respect i felt like yamamoto was like this perfect blend right because he was so instrumental to them winning that game but also was so good over the course of the whole series and really much of the postseason so i don't know i wanted i was glad flattie wanted to And I felt like that was an appropriate recognition of, like, the sum total of his contributions. And to your point, like, he was impactful on defense in a way that is surprising both for a first basement and for him, where it's like that's not his strongest tool.

So I was in on it, I think, is a rambling way of saying that I was glad that he won. But I'm willing to bob and weave a little bit on what matters in any given year series because sometimes, and sometimes. Sometimes you get both, you know? Yeah, yeah. I always forget that there is an award, which is handed out, I believe, by the New York chapter of the BBWAA that rewards the best postseason performance just across all of the postseason. There is? Yeah, the Babe Ruth Award.

Yeah, and it's existed since 1949. They have handed this thing out. Yeah, that's a good award. It's not. Is it just one or now do we have one for each? It's just one per postseason. When does it get announced? I don't think it has yet this year.

Mookie Betts won last year, Adelis Garcia, the year before that. Jeremy Pena, the year before that. Does it have to be a guy on the morning? Does it have to be from, yeah. I don't. Because my hottest take maybe about all of these is I think we should have more losing team series MVP. Winner. Yeah, I'm with you.

That should happen. Sometimes, at least, I guess it happens very rarely, and it shouldn't happen usually, but sometimes it probably does make sense. Yeah, sometimes. Like, for instance, Blanny. Yeah. Okay. All right. And the stat-blasty component of that was just, is this weird?

Is it unusual? Or how often does an LCS or World Series MVP have negative WPA and or CWPA for that series? and Michael Mountain, Patreon supporter, Stapblast correspondent, he helped out with this one and the rest on this episode. Michael says, this is vanishingly rare. 169 World Series or LCS MVPs

have been given out, including ties. Vlad is only the seventh recipient to have negative championship when probably added or negative WPA in the series and only the fourth to be negative in both when measuring his primary function. See Levan Hernandez, caveat below. So Bobby Richardson, 1960 World Series, and this is the only time it's been given to a player

on the losing team, as you were just saying, Meg. Levan Hernandez, 1997 World Series, he had positive value as a pitcher, but just barely negative when you add his batting line. Paul Canerco, 2005 ALCS, negative WPA, but positive CWPA. Matt Holliday, 2007 NLCS, negative CWPA, but positive WPA. Perez, 2015 World Series, Corey Seeger, 2020, NLCS, and Vlad in the 2025 ALCS. So it makes sense that it wouldn't happen often because it is hard to hit as well as Vlad did in that series to have a 1330 OPS and have negative WPA or CWPA.

And it's just, it's all about timing, obviously. But yeah, it's hard to have negative value by any metric, really, when you're raking like that so it makes sense that it wouldn't happen all that often okay and also i guess you know when when springer like the guy with the worst stat still has a thousand plus ops yeah it's it's not like you're taking some light hitter because he made a good play in the field or something while flat was putting up a 1330 ops you're still you're still putting up a guy who had great stats like mvp caliber stats over a full season just in that series and there just happened to be someone even better than that.

Okay, question from Sam. I had a stop last question that I attempted to answer myself but found no good way to do with public tools. Red Sox fans online enjoy discussing the all-time members of the franchise One Save Club, which is just what it sounds like, a list of players who have recorded exactly one save for the Red Sox and no more.

Is this like a common thing, Red Sox fans? Yeah. Red Sox fans? I've not seen this meme or whatever. aren't there better things to talk about than the one save club of maybe Red Sox fans I guess that just means more than one Red Sox fan. But yeah, I don't know if this is like a particular Red Sox fandom thing. I was thinking about one of my favorite members of the club, Corey Kluber. His entry is particularly amusing to me because his save is also the only save of his 13-year MLB career and came in his last ever big league appearance. His save also happened to. to be my favorite kind, the three-inning mop-up variety. He allowed four earned runs over three innings amid a 10 to four Red Sox victory over the twins before going on the IL and never returning quite an unceremonious end for a two-time Cy Young winner. My question is, how many players

have recorded their first and only big league save in their last big league appearance? And also, does Cory Kluber have the most service time of anyone to do this? I imagine it must be quite rare because even with teams prioritizing optionality for relievers, barring catastrophic injury, a pitcher who performs well enough to earn a save is likely to earn at least one more big league appearance. Kluber's situation of an aging veteran starter being shunted off to the pen to see what he has and showing little before calling it a career seems like the most reasonable combination of factors to produce this outcome.

Sorry if this is a nightmare to query. Well, it wasn't for me because I just forwarded it to Michael Mountain. I'm guessing it wasn't too tough for him either with his sequel skills and retrosheet database. So Michael says, Kluber is the most recent member of this club. If you exclude Ethan Small, who is still listed under the active player filter on baseball reference, but last appeared in the majors in 2023. About 17, and we have an asterisk here, about 17 asterisk, play-by-play data is incomplete before 1962.

I've checked all 17 names on my list, but it's possible there are others who didn't show up in my query because I couldn't say definitively that their one and only save was their final appearance, okay? About 17 other players recorded their first big league save in their final big league appearance, but many of them were fringe players who appeared in a handful of games before the save was recorded as an official statistic. So they didn't even know that they had recorded a save in the moment. Save wasn't a thing, and none had anywhere near as much playing time as Klupor. The only other starting pitchers I found were less straker. Sounds like some sort of 80s action hero character. Less straker. 40, yeah, maybe.

40 games started for the 1987 to 88 twins, also a three-inning save. And Steve Engel, eight games started for the 1985 Cubs, also a three-inning save. The five relievers who accomplished this during the save era, 1969 to present are Skip Gwyn, 35 appearances for Atlanta in Houston last played 1971 September. Greg Gore, 66 appearances for the Tigers and Angels, last played September 1996. Francisco Rosario, 40 appearances for the Blue Jays and Phillies, last played September 2007. Daniel Corsino, seven appearances for the Reds and Dodgers, last played June of 2018. And Ricky Carcher, one appearance for the Reds on June of 2023.

And that's it during the save era. So, yeah, it's fairly rare, and no one nearly as accomplished as Kluber has accomplished this. So that's kind of fun. Kluber. All right. It sounds like someone who would be, like, trying to keep Snake Pliskin in New York. It's like, you get out of here, snake. Yes.

Like that. Yeah. Okay. Penultimate stat-ass question comes to us from. Matt, who says Matthew Stafford. It's a question from Matt about a Matthew. Yeah, Matthew Stafford, the football quarterback for anyone who wasn't aware. The football quarterback.

I sound like someone who speaks about the NFL professionally. You sound like the old version of you. You sound like old Ben. Matthew Stafford, the quarterback, the NFL quarterback. Finally getting above 500 at 116, 115, and 1. So his career quarterback win-loss record, he's having himself a fine season, which I am well aware of as a NFL expert. Football Now, yeah. Made me wonder, who is MLB's Matthew Stafford, who's the oldest pitcher to cross into an above-500 record for the first time?

Most games spend under 500 before getting over the hump, most career games with a record that never gets over 500. pitcher wins and losses versus team record and games the pitcher appears in lots of possible questions here. Yes. So Michael answered at least some of them. So here's what he sent me. Dodger starter, Claude Osteen, reached a win-loss record of 148 and 147 on May 13, 1972, his 367th start. That's the record for most starts and most decisions before crossing the Stafford line. The only other pitcher who came close on either count was George Mogridge, 107 and 106 on June 23, 1924, after just 220 starts, many fewer relief decisions in that era. Osteen also holds the record for most MLB seasons pitched before crossing the Stafford line. He got above 500 in his 15th year. Technically, Jimmy Fox

crossed the Stafford line in his 20th MLB season, but he had pitched in only one previous season for a single inning. The record for most pitching appearances needed to cross the Stafford line is 597 by Armando Benitez. He picked up the win in relief for the Marlins on June 17th, 2004, giving him a career record of 32 and 31. Other relievers who needed 500 or more appearances to get there are Trevor Miller, his 533rd game, May 14th, 2009. Luke Gregerson, his 532nd game, June 27th, 2016, and Tug McGraw, his 5003rd game, August 20th, 1977. The oldest pitcher to cross the Stafford line for the first time was Diomedes Olivo. Diomedes? Diomedes. Diomedes? Diomedes? Great name. His first win.

See, he sounds like he would help Snake Pliskin get out of me. His first win, which was in relief, was on April 16th, 1962 at the age of 43 years, two months, and 25 days. It's never too late. to go above 500 for the first time. Olivo's debut in 1960 at age 41 makes them the oldest MLB rookie on record after the reclassification of Negro League statistics as Major League, thus removing Satchel Page from consideration for this achievement. Keep an eye on Edwin Diaz, who is 28 and 36 with 520 games pitched. Nine net wins is a lot to pick up for a reliever, especially a closer.

The biggest win-loss differential for a player with at least 15 saves in 2020. was Josh Hader, who went six and two. But if Diaz stays productive in a bullpen for three or four more seasons, he could surpass Armando Benitez's 597 and then claw his way above 500. Finally, the longest career for a pitcher who never crossed the Stafford line is LaTroix Hockins, with 142 games pitched. And among starters, it's Mike Moore with 440 starts. That's fun.

That was pretty comprehensive. I think he may have answered all of those questions, in fact. So I wonder whether those guys noticed that they had crossed the Stafford line. Do you think they finally – I don't know whether relievers pay close attention to their career win-loss record or even starters for that matter. I think they – it's under 500. Maybe, yeah. I wonder whether they noticed, ah, finally, this is the first time ever. Right. I did it.

Yeah. Clayton Kershaw recently did an intro for a Rams game because I don't know if you know this, noted football. Oh, yes. I do. I knew this before I knew anything about football just from watching Clayton Kershaw games So in his intro where he's talking about Like how great a player Matthew Stafford is and how blah blah

At one point Kershah like toward the end of this little intro Does this was for this Sunday night game versus the books that they just had He says that now he's going to have More time To watch his old buddy play And like, okay, so here's the thing.

In this year, that's not true. He has exactly the same amount of time that he's always had to watch his old buddy play, right? Because this isn't, I understand now he's not doing like arm care. But guess what? Guess what, Clayton? If you want to watch your buddy play, you just don't do your arm care then. You just don't do your arm care then. Yeah.

So you could work out some other time. You're lying. I understand you're hinting at how you just. retired. And so, like, in the grand scheme of your life, sure. I mean, maybe because you, now you're not playing on Sundays and you got more time and, but maybe you don't care to watch him play, you know, because you're from Texas. So you're not a Rams fan. You're probably a Cowboys fan. Yeah. He's a Matthew Stafford fan, though. For anyone who has avoided this bit of lore somehow all this time, they, they were lifelong friends. They were high school teammates. They went to the same

school. They played football and baseball together. Yeah. Came up and lots of Clayton Khrusha starts. But news to you, Becca. So you're one of today's 10,000 who heard about something for the first time. Well, and I have so many questions about this. So Matthew Stafford, quarterback for football. Football quarterback, yes. 1-16, 115, and 1. Is this a tie? Yeah, you can understand. In regular season football, you can tie. And is this, does the quarterback always get the win?

Is this like a starting pitcher is awarded the, what am I understand here? What a wonderful question that we don't have time to answer? Yeah. Because there is a notion of quarterback wins, meaning that you're the guy who's the starting quarterback on the day that you're, but you are getting to, particularly with your comparison into pitcher wins where you can appreciate the ways in which that might be a flawed statistic or one that is not you were taking what is truly a team notion and you are boiling it down to one guy and there are times when it's like oh the quarterback won or lost that game for them

and that's an accurate depiction of the game as it was played but sometimes it's not the best way to think about it you know right you know now Matthew stafford did get a win in that game on Sunday, which as a Seahawks fan, I was upset by because I have views about the Rams that I can't share publicly or people would think I was unreasonable that they think that I'm a bad person, you know, they would think that. Maybe they'd be right. There is a symmetry there because people will often compare quarterbacks and starting pitchers. They throw things, and they're kind of the person who's sort of, well, I guess technically in football, they don't start the play. I feel like the catcher is the quarterback.

I don't know. I've only ever seen Friday night lights. I don't know what we're talking about. Yeah, it's like the snapper is the starting pitcher of baseball or something. It's like they start the play. But, okay, so first of all, that doesn't work. It's not the snapper. You're describing the center. Right. But they, right. There is a long snapper on a kick. Yeah. On a kick. Yeah. Right. You're, you're, you're, you're bringing like 2018 Ben to the pod today. Yeah. It's the center.

The center. Right. Yeah. But it's because you still talk about snap counts, though, when you're talking about playing time in football. Right. It's like how many plays were you involved in? So there's a snap. But I'm just going to let you go for a little while.

I should stop. You should stop. I should quit while in the head, knowing who Matthew Stafford was. Yeah, you were like, you know, football quarterback, Patreon person. We've had some beautiful symmetry in our episode, I think. Yeah, but you're kind of like there's the symmetry of, you know, you're the protagonist. You're like the most impactful person while you're in the game, at least. And so, and you're the only person who is awarded a winner loss in either sport as the quarterback.

And, well, in baseball, it could not be the starting pitcher. Whereas in football with quarterback wins and losses, it's just the starting quarterback, right? Like if the starting quarterback gets knocked out and the backup comes in, can the backup quarterback get a win or are they ineligible? I don't even know because who cares about quarterback wins really. But what I was wondering is, is it more telling than starting pitcher wins have been historically? I would assume that it probably is because the quarterback just has more bearing on the outcome of a game. Because the quarterback impacts whether or not the team scores, right? Right, quarterback's on offense, but pitcher is on defense, which is very...

Yes. We're all doing really well. We're all doing it. Look, yes, that's right. Why can't the center be a snapper? The center snaps. Can't we call him a snapper? We could, but that's not what he's called.

He's the center. Shane's going to take all this out, right? But the log snapper is a log snapper, so there's already, it makes it sound as if there should be a regular snapper. I don't want to, I don't want to be the person that's like, if there's no snapper. Yeah, but, oh my God, Ben. But they're called the center because they're in the center

of the offensive line. I'm just saying, sometimes you need fresh eyes to come into something and understand the way it should be done. Of all the things to change about football, renaming the center position, not high on the list.

Also, you would make it more confusing to then have doubled up, like, positional names. What are you, you calling them, like, the short snapper? Just the snapper. He's just the regular. No, he's the center.

He has a name. I mean, he has a human name, but also he has a job title and it's center. Well, now it is, but it's always been that. What? We'll see. I might change it. Okay. You can't, you are, look, I love Hang Up and Listen.

I think it's a great show and you seem to have a robust listening audience, but I don't think you have the pull to rename the center. You're probably right. I think I'm right. Anyway, what I would like to see his story is. is a comparison of quarterback win-loss record and starting pitcher win-loss record and which maps more closely onto war or whatever equivalent statistic. I would guess that it's the quarterback version,

although back in the day when starting pitchers actually went the distance often, it was certainly more reflective of their skill than it is today, for instance. But, yeah, quarterbacks are just so important that it's a little less silly to award them wins and losses because they are so much more important than anyone else on the field, but it is still ultimately silly to map a team stat onto an individual. Okay, unless anyone has any more questions or comments about football, I will answer the last question here, which comes to us from one of our listeners in France, Sebastian, who says, as one does, after yet another frustrating postseason exit, I was thinking about the Yankees' recent individual player awards and how judge, heal,

and Cole won all the main ones in just a few seasons, with Judge winning the 2025 batting title to go with his home run in RBI crowns in 2022. I started looking for the pitching side. Max Freed led the AL in wins in 2025. Look at that. Two questions in a row we're talking about pitcher wins on effectively wild.

And Garrett Cole had the strikeout lead in 2022, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out since he has been often Homer prone in his Yankees tenure. He also won the ERA title in his Sayyung 2020 campaign, which I had probably mixed up in my mind with the 22 season and the mind-boggling game in which he and Judge broke the Yankees strikeout and home run records. There, they made it in four seasons, ranging from 2022 to 2025. One of the Yankees players, Cole, Freed, Heel, Judge won MVP, Cy Young, rookie of the year, and or each of the Triple Crown stats. I didn't add Caballero's 2025 stolen base crown to the mix, since he mostly did it with the raise, and I'd rather stick with one-team players.

But to each his own, my question is this, has a team won all nine of those individual awards in fewer seasons or with fewer players than the Yankees four and four? So just kind of running the table with the individual awards in a fairly short span of time. And Michael tackled this one too, and he went with the same definition, the only counting league leaders if they spent the entire season with a single team, and found that this is really hard to do. The 2011 and 2012 Tigers checked eight of the nine boxes, just with Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander, both having Triple Crown seasons. But they didn't have a rookie of the year winner between 2006 Verlander and 2016. Michael Fulmer, that's the closest to any team, has come to speed running these categories faster than the Yankees. The only other four-year span I could find was the 2002-2005 Red Sox, who led all six

Triple Crown categories but received none of the awards. So, yeah, good eye. This was, in fact, a record, it seems somewhat arbitrary, I guess, this collection of accomplishments and awards, but still, impressive. nonetheless, and maybe it sort of sums up the Yankees' construction and success in that period, where at least some of those years, it was sort of a Stars and Scrubs team. And it was, you know, Judge and Cole kind of carrying everyone. All right.

Well, we've done it. We've learned a lot about football and other topics. So thank you so much for joining us, Becca, and for putting some of your ill-gotten gains towards the Patreon podcast fund. Not really got it, just accidentally gotten, accidentally gotten. She didn't steal anything. No, she tried her hardest to give it back. I know.

Anything you'd care to plug before we bid you goodbye. Okay, this is lame, but I would like to plug the Patreon pod for anyone who... I swear we don't put people up to this. Wait. I feel like if you listen only to the main feed, you might get the impression that that Meg is like a little bit more like impassioned or like cleany or like spicier takes. And then you go and you listen to the Patreon pod. And then says the most horrifying, like unhinged, like deeply grotesque and destabilizing takes on food.

Yes. I did not put her up to this, but I support you, Becca. You are right. You're saying I'm putting some of my best material or maybe my worst material behind the paywall. Well, it just completely changes the way that I listen to the regular pod. And I think it's important to know that like there are smart, rational people in the world who just like are also like troubled. Has this made you question my thoughts about baseball? Because you wonder if someone could possibly possess that opinion, that can I trust anything that they think?

Yeah. So it's a good question because I did after the 2016 election, I stopped reading like any online reviews because I was like, I don't need to listen to the public. Like they clearly don't understand what is good and bad about stuff. But, you know. What happened to the wisdom of crowds? What did happen to the wisdom of crowds? They got a lot doepier, it seems. Yeah, I guess the other thing I'd like to plug is just like empathy,

like the concept and practice of basic human empathy, which, you know, always, always good. Even for Dodgers fan. Well, I think that was a great plug for the Patreon personally, even though it was about how bad my opinions about some things are, I think. Yeah. Just to say, you haven't heard Ben until you've heard his spicy unhinged takes just sign up for the Patreon.

That was a great tease as far as I'm concerned. So it seems like a high percentage of our Patreon people, when prompted to plug something and to be self-serving, end up giving us a plug and promoting us on the podcast that we have had them on, which is appreciated. Not necessary, but appreciated. But appreciated. I just remembered that Ricky Carcher was a meet a major league. Laker. It just came to me. Why do I remember Ricky Carcher, who just came up in one of those Stap Blast responses? Because he had a save in his, yeah, he was a meter major leaker on episode 2021, actually. This was on June 16th, 2023. And I guess we probably were even talking about him

because of that appearance, which was in June of 2023. And that's probably why we selected him as a meet a major leaker candidate. Anyway, that just came to me. Why do I remember Ricky Carcher? That's impressive. I cannot pull memories like that from... Because we met him. That's the virtue of the Meet a Major League or segment. And we have also met Becca Balton today.

That was a pleasure. It's wonderful to meet you both. Thank you so so much. Likewise. Okay, just been here now, and as is often the case, I have a few closing notes for you. First, producer Shane hipped me to the existence of a YouTube series that he was reminded of while listening to us talk about the name that pitcher alternative to the All-Star Skills Competition suggestion. It's done by the YouTuber Jesser, who's sort of a sports or basketball, Mr. Beast.

It's called Guess That Secret NBA Player. I guess he's done it for more than one sport, but mostly basketball. He often has an actual athlete on, and then they watch a bunch of masked people play the sport, shoot free throws or whatever, and then they have to guess which one of them is secretly an NBA player. I guess it's essentially the masked singer, but for sports. So it's a little like what we were saying, except that they don't have to play the way that they normally do. They can camouflage themselves further by trying to obscure their regular shot,

et cetera, whatever might make them recognizable. So it's not exactly what we were talking about, but it is pretty popular. So it's further evidence that this concept has legs. I hope that you two, like Becca, receive more money in your paycheck than you're supposed to, regardless of whether you send some of it our way. And speaking of people whose pay perhaps exceeded how much their performance merited, Anthony Rendon is discussing a buyout of the final year and 38 million remaining on his deal with

the Angels, according to Alden Gonzalez of ESPN. So maybe that's something for Angels fans to be thankful for, or the Angels themselves, or even Rendon, who, though I have defended him, has seemed somewhat more ready for retirement than most players of late, or perhaps will not have as hard a time adjusting to a post-playing life, because he's been an active player in name only for a while now. He's gotten a good preview of what post-playing life is like. Now, I hope that Rendon's seven-year $200 million-plus deal doesn't scare you too much because, a little more late-breaking news for you.

We've got a new seven-year, $200-plus million deal. This one, going to Dylan Sees, who has agreed to join the Toronto Blue Jays for $210 million. That is, U.S. dollars, not Canadian. There's some draft pick compensation attached to because Cece rejected a qualifying offer. This news broke too late for us to discuss it on this episode of the podcast, but early enough, crucially, for Meg to get Michael Bauman's blog post up pre- Thanksgiving.

And yes, many have made the joke that Canada already had its Thanksgiving, which freed up the Blue Jays to make this deal this week. Of course, CIS is not Canadian, but he has a lot of reasons to give thanks now, because that's a big number, 210. A bigger number than I had anticipated, and in fact I took the under on MLB trade rumors, estimate of 189, so not great for me in the free agent contracts over underdraft, though I will note that there are deferrals in this deal, which bring its present day value down to about 182 million, which is under 189. So I was sort of right, but also wrong, at least for the purposes of that

competition. Because we count the raw dollar figure, not the present day value, perhaps we will revisit that at some point, tough to predict which deals will have deferrals and which won't. But even 182 is more than many sources we're anticipating. The Fangraph's crowd, which does have some wisdom, had him around $130 million. Ben Clemens had him at $155. And that was not a knock on Cease's skills because he was the number one ranked Fangraph's free agent pitcher. So good for him for making bank, good for the Blue Jays, for getting their top target and arguably the top target on the free agent pitching market. You know, I speculated when the Blue Jays won the pennant came so close to winning the World Series that this might improve their stock.

with free agents, make them more appealing as a potential landing spot, and maybe this is an indication of that. Of course, they did pay a pretty penny, so that probably helped too, but they were willing to pay pretty pennies for past free agents who passed them by. Cease is a really good picture. Not as good as you would think based on how durable he's been, how many starts he's made, and how many strikeouts he gets, because he's not efficient. He's pretty walk-prone. He's sort of Snell-like stylistically, but he does really improve that Toronto rotation. 4-55-ERA this year. that we needed another indication that teams aren't really paying that close attention to ERA when

it comes to valuing pitchers. But imagine a guy getting a deal like that with an ERA like that in an earlier era. Like Sunny Gray, and even more so than Sunny Gray, he was a big ERA minus FIP gap guy, which I hope to have some research on sometime soon, so stay tuned for that. As with Snell, you can put up with the style when you get good results. And the Blue Jays hope to. They'll hope cease will hold up. He's about to turn 30, and Jays fans are going to get an extended taste of the cease experience. We'll discuss this signing in greater depth next week. Speaking of taste, I hope that your turkey has been brining, or, you know, whatever you do, or whatever your family's designated turkey preparer does for the feast. If you were intrigued

by Becca's pitch for our Patreon-only monthly bonus episodes, check out the most recent one for October, because some of the food take she was referencing appeared there, and we did talk turkey at length. Oh, and one more money-related note, and really, another note about incorrect accounting, We talked last time about Hal Steinbrenner's comments, about the Yankees finances and whether they made money or lost money, and the, shall we say, aspirational accounting tricks that teams and big businesses employ to make themselves appear less profitable than they actually are. I should have mentioned a note I saw earlier this month in a Bob Nightingale column at USA Today. This was during the GM meetings. It was about how baseball executives, they keep their cards close to the vest. Nightingale included this quote from one veteran GM who said,

everyone lies at these things. That's what we do. You never know what to believe. Everyone says they don't have money when they do. The truth comes out in spring training and you find out who lied the least. That's a fun framing of the hot stove season. Who will lie the least? And Nightingale continued, MLB has privately told owners that teams lost $1.8 billion last year, led by the New York Mets with about $350 million in losses. What I was saying last time is that this seems to work less well than it used to. The public. and the media are less gullible, less credulous. And this did not work on Bob Nightingale, to his credit, he said, but of course, that's paper money. It doesn't reveal the financial growth in franchise value, record revenues, or that the Mets owner is worth $21 billion. But what Hal Steinbrenner was saying, MLB may make similar claims times 30, and we will surely hear a lot of that between now and the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement.

But let's not fret about that. Now, let's give thanks for the baseball that we have had and the baseball that we will have, the baseball podcasts, which we could not keep making without the support of our listeners, which we are very grateful for. Whether you eat turkey or not, whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving this week or not, we are grateful for you for our listeners, for our stat plasters, for our correspondence, and our respondents, and especially our Patreon supporters. And if you are not, like Becca already one of those, you can become one by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast.

going, help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Jordan Yeager, Tom Ring, Justin Meeks, Adil Wally, and Dan Morley, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include the aforementioned monthly bonus episodes, potential podcast appearances, as you just heard, access to the effectively wild Discord group for patrons only, personalized messages, autographed books, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch, and ad-free fan graphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com. 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. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. That's another non-financial way in which you can support our efforts. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast.

podcast posted fan graphs or in the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today, as well as a link to sign up for Effectively Wild Secret Santa between now and December 10th. A heartfelt thanks, as always, to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Effectively wild, been in makeup on the life, know it's gonna be a good time. I want to learn about statistics, don't want to hear about none of them RBI's, yeah,

tell me about some prospect I should know about Effect, Effect, Effectively wild, Effectively wild, Effectively wild A fair, a fair, a fair to be wild. A fair, a fair to be wild.