Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2466: Turn Off the Tap?

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Kevin McGonigle’s new contract and whether pre-arbitration extensions are still team-friendly, Tatsuya Imai’s adjustment period, MLB’s average four-seam fastball velo nearing 95 mph, a new frontier in catcher’s interference calls, and whether a new challenge signal should replace the head/helmet tap, then (1:21:02) Stat Blast about a historic scoring day, games in which the score most often matched the inning, homering against all other teams while playing for one team (and the most homers without going deep twice against the same team), opposing pitchers catching pop-ups in the same game, driving in oneself and no one else, and season-starting streaks of games with a lead. Audio intro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to MLBTR on McGonigle Link to Paine on extensions 1 Link to Paine on extensions 2 Link to Ball on extensions Link to Nightengale on extensions Link to Rome on Imai Link to Imai synopsis Link to Rome on interpreters Link to story on Duran incident Link to Statcast velo by year Link to Pitch Info velo by year Link to Pitch Info info Link to righty Statcast velo by year Link to all-pitches velo by year Link to Woodrum on velo Link to Sam on flames Link to EW on flames 1 Link to EW on flames 2 Link to Trueblood on fastball counts Link to EW on CI Link to 2024 CI totals Link to 2025 CI totals Link to Sam on the Meidroth CI Link to Sam on the Cubs CI attempt Link to Sam on swings and the CI Link to Ohtani accidental challenge Link to Chandler accidental challenge Link to Rice accidental challenge Link to 2025 Lee incident Link to challenge rules Link to volleyball challenge rules Link to NHL officials wiki Link to Crawford rehab update Link to April 13 scores Link to April 13 offense Link to MLB batting stats pre-4/13 Link to MLB batting stats post-4/13 Link to Trout-Judge gamer Link to score matching inning info Link to homers vs. teams spreadsheet Link to homers vs. distinct teams data Link to pitcher pop-ups spreadsheet Link to O’Neill’s OD HR streak Link to team leads spreadsheet Link to Sam on win expectancy Link to listener emails database  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Joey Manessus. No. Walk off three-run digger. Stop it. Walk off three-run shot. Oh, my God. Meg, he's the best player in baseball. Effectively Wild. Oh, and welcome to episode 2466 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraffs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. And the extension spree continues. Yeah. We've got another one. Another top prospect early in his big league life signing a long-term deal. Now it is Kevin McGonical who just barely beat Connor Griffin to the big leagues and

Connor Griffin barely beat Kevin McGonigle to an extension. So the Tigers have signed McGonicle to an eight-year, $150 million deal. This is slightly higher than the Griffin deal, which was $140 million. guaranteed and that was nine years, right? So the difference, I guess, with this one, well, there are a few little differences. McDonical is a couple years older than Griffin, and this contract starts next season. So McDonagall is on league minimum salary for 2026, starts next season, runs through 2034. And as in the Griffin deal, there's $10 million in potential escalators. And there's a $14 million signing bonus and there are other additional details about the distribution of the salaries over the

lifetime of the deal. But this fits into the trend that we've been talking about with Cooper Pratt and with Connor Griffin and others, just lots of long-term deals. So Colt Emerson of the Mariners, of course. So what do you make of this one? McGonigle's off to a fantastic start. By the way, he looks completely like he belongs. Just great surface stats.

He's walked more than he's struck out. He appears to be ready fully. Yeah, he's the real deal, I think. I'm trying not to overreact or maybe overreact is the wrong way of characterizing. It's sort of over index on any of these because there still aren't very many of them, you know? Like, I think because we've had this run of either early Bigley career extensions or pre-debue extensions, you know, some like Emerson still. at AAA, that it can feel like all of the best guys are doing this, that this is the approach that every team is taking to their top prospects. And it's still a, you know, a vanishingly small

percentage of guys who are getting money. I remain heartened that none of these deals feel like, oh, boy, your agent's doing a bad job. You're getting ripped off. You know, like that, that doesn't feel quite like what's going on here. I remain curious. Maybe that's a judgment-free way of putting it. I remain curious about what the long-term impact on arbitration is likely to be with all of these pre-debue extensions, which will be difficult to tease out, you know? And gosh, who knows what arbitration will even look like, you know, a year from now. Hopefully settled.

Hopefully a settled matter. a decided matter, because that would imply that we have a CBA. You have background anxiety and it just attaches to different things. And today, that's what mine's working on. I think it'll be hard to disentangle and sort of parse, hey, this guy going through ARB is getting this amount because of the absence of middle infield, high-profile young players who should be, are two, but are in year

three or four of this extension that they signed. But I remain curious and a little nervous about that. And it sort of stands in sharp contrast to, I think, an earlier story that we were interested in this

year where we were part of what we were happy about or what I was happy about. You hated it famously. No, that's not what I would characterize it that way for myself. Part of why I was glad that Terrick Scouble had prevailed in his arbitration dispute with the Tigers was not only that he was setting this new standard, but that he had gone through the process, right?

That he had been willing to risk losing in order to set that new standard. And I do think that there's labor value in these guys participating in that system and sort of establishing high comps because, you know, these deals aren't really. in the purview of those conversations in most cases. So that part of it sort of sits out a distance from this. But, you know, this makes a ton of sense. This is $150 million. That's more money than I'll ever see,

which doesn't mean that we aren't grateful for the patronage of our patrons, but we're realistic. Like, that would be crazy to expect. So, you know, it's a lot of money. I think he's a very good player. I think when you have confidence that you know, not only the caliber of player that a guy is likely to be, but have confidence in sort of his ability to contribute

in a positive way to your franchise on the field, reputationalally. If you can come to a deal that makes sense, that makes a ton of sense. And, you know, if you're Kevin McGonigal, well, hey, you're having like the best month of your life, right? You debut in the majors. It's going great. you look like you've been there your entire life,

and now you know the start next year you're going to make $150 million over the course of your contract. And, you know, he's, so he will turn 22 this August. And so he will be on the upper end of that like, hey, you can really get something in free agency. But it's not like he's going to hit free agency and be an old man unable to get another good contract, assuming the rest of his career unfolds the way that this contract suggests it will. So, like, I think it's good for him. I think it's fine. And I think the way that I want to score it or grade it in terms of what it means for baseball as a labor market remains sort of incomplete in TBD.

But something you're keeping an eye on because, hmm, you know? Yeah, I've wondered about what this will mean for free agency. Right. And you're right. They're going to be so boring. Some of these years, Ben, are going to be so dull. Some of these free agent classes are really going to be just bereft. And so that's kind of, I don't know if that's good or bad.

You could say that that's bad in terms of entertaining people in the offseason. But it might be good in the sense that some of these teams just get to hang on to their guys for longer. But it does mean that maybe more and more of success will derive from developing and signing your own players rather than just spending, which on the whole maybe could depress spending, but just does kind of change team construction and how one actually ends up with a winning team. And then I think also because, as you said, it's not as if Griffin and McConnacle are off the open market for their careers.

They are young enough that they can still become free agents and still be young enough that they could cash in long term. Of course, they could sign subsequent extensions. They might never become free agents. But that path is still. open to them. And it's always been fairly rare. It's fairly rare that you get the young free agent, the guy who hits the open market when he's, you know, 26 or something. It happens. You get your Wonsotos and you get, you know, Otani and people with somewhat unusual circumstances or they

debut super young, Bryce Harper, just guys who are still in their physical primes when they reach free agency. But that's never been the norm, really. So if you're missing out on some guys, And those are the guys who would sign the super long-term mega deals or would have in the past. Again, now sometimes the elite free agents, they sign the high average annual value low years deals. But if they wanted to just have the highest number, then those are the guys who could really run up the price tag. But those guys might not, we might see even fewer of the, say, 26, 27-year-old free agent superstars than we used to. But what really interests me here is, yeah, you mentioned these are not the old style extensions where you would say, is this guy getting good advice? Is anyone looking out for this guy's interest?

Extensions were kind of conditioned to think of the early career extension as almost invariably team friendly. But the more of these are signed, the less that is bound to be true. and there's been a bit of research in writing about this that I've linked to and mentioned in previous episodes. Neil Payne wrote about this last year when Roman Anthony signed his deal. Andrew Ball, the former assistant GM for the Astros, wrote about this recently. The idea that now we've kind of, the pendulum has swung to the other side where we used to talk about, is the player getting ripped off here? Is the team getting a sweet deal?

And now you could almost frame it as, does this make sense for the team to do? Are teams even getting a discount anymore? Not that you have to get a discount to sign a deal. You could just get the certainty of continuing to employ that player and build around that superstar and everything. But just from a pure surplus value standpoint looking at production versus free agent dollars per win or whatever, there's clearly been a change just because players have wised up and their agents have wise up. And so they're not going to just fork over a bunch of possible earnings to teams. to teams. And you also have some mechanisms, you know, bigger bonuses and and maybe just like the pre-arbitration bonus pool and some ways for players to get paid a little bit earlier and

prospect promotion incentive and such. And so maybe there's a little less incentive for some of these guys to sign unless they really do get a good deal. So Andrew Ball was arguing that he thinks, if anything, teams are maybe handing out more extensions that are in their own best interests. And he noted that some teams, like big market teams, the Dodgers, the Yankees, they've never signed players to early career or pre-debue or pre-Rb extensions like this. Right. They allocate that money in free agency. They don't do it pre-free agency. Yes. And so they don't really need to get that kind of cost certainty because although there's cost certainty there's also the risk because, you know, you're getting three free agent years

here of what would have been free agent years for Kevin McGonigal. And if he is as good as he seems to be, well, he would be making a ton of money in those years. And you're going to get him for a little less than he would have signed then. But that's several years down the road. And so there is always risk. And there are prospects who look great and even come out of the gate fast. And yet, they slow down and they slump or they get hurt or whatever it is. It just doesn't pan out. So even with a number one or number two overall prospect in baseball, there's still some uncertainty. And when you're talking about signing someone six years or five years or whatever it is before they would reach free agency,

then you certainly are assuming some risk. So it's possible that we're all kind of anchored to this idea that, oh, the pre-arb extension, that's inherently going to benefit the team. Maybe it doesn't. But I think, and Ball kind of touched on this, I think maybe for some teams at least, okay, the Yankees and the Dodgers, maybe they can afford to wait. Right. Because they can just wait and see which superstars reach free agency. Now, I guess if we do end up at a point where superstars are rarely reaching free agency, then they might be in a bit of hot water unless they continue to develop their own homegrown guys because they won't just be able to pluck the priciest players from other organizations.

but they don't have to kind of lock in a potential discount. They can wait and survey the market and see who's good and see what their needs are and then go get those guys. They can just go sign Kyle Tucker when they need an outfielder, sign Edwin Diaz when they need a closer. But if you are a smaller market team that might not be able to outbid any other club for a free agent, then maybe there continues to be some benefit in just keeping that player off the open market. So maybe that's why we're seeing, okay, the pirates, yeah, they want Connor Griffin. The Brewers, yeah, they want Cooper Pratt. And now, I don't know if you'd call the Tigers small mark.

I mean, you know, I guess on the smaller end. And so sure, they can lock up Kevin McGonicle and the diamondbacks could keep Corbyn Carroll or whoever, right? And so, yeah, I think even though we've seen the Red Sox sign some of these guys too, and Anthony and Campbell, which may or may not work out that well, and Raphaela and others, that maybe we will just see this become kind of a smaller market team tactic to keep their players away

from the Dodgers and Yankees of the world who would be ready to swoop in and sign them away. You know, Boston is a fascinating example of this. Part of it is definitely the broader payroll circumstance at the club, and I think that, you know, if you pull up the Tigers payroll page, on roster resource, you know, after next year, they don't really have very much committed payroll. I mean, they have some, certainly, but it's less than you might expect.

And so some of it, I'm sure, is just, hey, we can afford to be paying Kevin McGonagall, $2 million, $8 million. I know that the A.A.V. hit for tax purposes different. But, like, you know, we can afford to be sort of structuring these deals out, we do have room in it, you know, are they really going to exercise for Ambervaldez's $40 million mutual option? I don't know. He and them might not like each other in 2020. Who knows? But they probably want to be in the Kevin McGonical business. But like, Boston is interesting because they did a number of these deals, but they're all sort of

rational relative to one another in terms of their scale, right? Like Christian Campbell, you're right, that deal might end up not working out very well, but guess what? He got meaningfully less money than Roman Anthony got. And that makes sense because even though, you know, he was a top 100 prospects and people were enthusiastic about him, even the people who were enthusiastic about him recognized, hey, this is kind of a weird swing. Like the fact that this is working for him seems to indicate that it might keep working for him, but there's obvious risk involved in the profile. just look at the way that his approach plays out, right? So I think that teams are pretty good and pretty smart about the way that they think about

these extensions relative to one another. You have a similar example in the Tigers case, right? Cole Keith got a lot less money than Kevin McGonigal did. And that makes sense. Kevin McDonagall is a better player than Cole Keith. And like the fact that I feel comfortable saying that even though Kevin McDonagall has been in the majors for three weeks is probably indicative of the gap, right? I think that they are thinking about it rationally.

I think that for teams that aren't necessarily going to be able to counter in the free agent market, that might have a willingness to spend, you know, Detroit went out and got for Amber Valdez. Part of that was that, you know, he lingered on the market longer than people expected into. But given the opportunity to get a guy who they thought could really help to reinforce their rotation, give him a true number two, a guy who'd be. be a number one for other clubs. They were willing to do that. They didn't know a short deal, right? So I think you're right that there's a, even for teams that are maybe smaller mid-market, but have a understanding of their competitive window as open and that they want to push in chips

where it makes sense. They don't have an endless ability to counter. Like, they might be able to make a competitive offer, but when you have the Dodgers or the Mets hanging around going like, No, but we really want Kyle Tucker, though. Sorry. Like, we're just going to go get us a Kyle Tucker. We're going to do a weird contract so he can hit the market again. We're fine with that. We'll pay him a bunch of money up front.

Then we'll have a Kyle Tucker. It's like, okay, well, what do I do with that? You can sign Kevin McGonagall. Because Kevin McGonagall has way more incentive to sign a deal right now. And you think he's going to be really good. And to your point, you know, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to go counter. You just get to have a Kevin McGonigle.

The other interesting thing, maybe it's not surprising, but it is kind of funny in Andrew Ball's post, which I will link to. He had a link of all of the players who have signed extensions when they had less than half a year of Major League service. And it's 20 guys going back to the trailblazing Evan Longoria extension. And 19 of them are non-pitchers. So there's Matt Moore, who was the second guy on this list, also with the raise back in 2011. Whoops. And that's, yeah, exactly.

And that's it. It's all just position players all the way down, which I guess makes sense because they're just so much more stable, durable, predictable. Not that things can't go wrong with them and have. And this list does include some we have mentioned John Singleton and Scott Kingery and Evan White and others. Eloy Jimenez, who's back in the big leagues now. Congrats to him. I'm regretting. Oh, is he really?

Yeah, he's up with the Blue Jays who need all the help they can get. It's just, yeah, bring in Lenin Sosa from the White Sox, bringing in Eloy Jimenez. I am ruying not drafting him in the minor league for agent draft because he was, I believe, eligible. And I saw the name. It jumped out at me. Hey, Eloy Jimenez. And I decided. A name I know on this giant list.

Yeah. Anyway, 19 guys, it's all hitters. And I will be curious to see now that we see more and more of these, will we see any pitcher ones? Because you could presumably price in the uncertainty. and just have the dollar amount be commensurately low or have it be not as long term or something. So you could. You could account for the fact that you just can't project them with as much confidence. But it seems like no teams have wanted to be in the business of signing young pitchers to long-term extensions.

You'd think the pitchers, though, if they're conscious of the risk and arm injuries and everything, that they might be more motivated to do this. wonder if there might even be, if it turns out that position players are holding out for their fair value now, maybe teams could pivot to pitchers and say, hey, if you want to get yourself some certainty, then we would sign you to an early extension. You'd have to maybe take a discount here. But yeah, maybe it's just there's so much uncertainty in the error bars are so big that no one feels confident enough to project anything. I think that probably what you might, well, what you might find would be that the number where a team feels like they have adequately priced in the risk

puts you at such a discount that pitchers would be like, why would I do this? And maybe there is an argument to be made that especially if it's something in the six to eight year range where what you're buying out is the pre-free agency team control and then a year or two of free agency that you're still in better shape doing it if you're the pitcher just because you could catastrophically injure yourself in a way that just derails your entire career. But I suspect knowing what we do about the mentality of baseball players that it might just be too, it might be too low an offer for it to really resonate with them and their representation. But maybe not. I mean, it makes the, the risk piece of it is profound, but the benefit

of these super long deals and, you know, is six years super long? Long deals, right? These long deals is that you can like absorb a Tommy John in there, you know, if you have a guy signed for eight years and he's quite young and you feel confident that he would be able to bounce back from injury, even if you only end up getting him for six of the eight. Well, you know, you got him for six of the eight years and he was great. And so, and you always need pitching, you know, someone smart I know told me that only guy who's over said it. Yes. Well, some have since copied me, but yeah, it's true. And never with sufficient attribution. Those scoundrels. But, you know, I can, I think I understand that more from the team side, even than the player's side. But I really just don't think you'd be able to meet like a

good equilibrium point between priced in risk on the team's end and it being sufficiently compelling on the player. But I could be wrong. I didn't think that all of these like very highly regarded young guys would necessarily be in this extension business either. But I also didn't expect Kevin McGonigle to get $150 million. So maybe it was a lack of imagination on my part, Ben. Yeah.

Yeah, I do feel like that even when an established big league pitcher signs as a free agent for however many years. I always, I mentally discounted. I kind of think like, oh, he signed for eight years. Well, if you could get, yeah, if you could get five or six out of him, you know, which is maybe how teams are thinking of it, too. I think it is how teams are thinking of it. Yeah.

So, Jesus Made, Leo DeVries, JJ Weatherholtz, you're next. Max Clark, I guess. People are probably reaching out to them if they haven't already to see if they want to be the next to sign these sorts of extensions. You know, one pitcher who signed a free agent deal, we talked about him recently, Tatsuya Imi. He has made some headlines in recent days, not for the best reasons health-wise. He has some arm fatigue at least. He's getting the arm checked out after that one outing he had against the Mariners.

He also has talked pretty frankly about some difficulties that he's had in adjusting, not just to the competition, to the baseball, but culturally. and that's always been an issue, you know, whether it's the size of the baseball, the baseball itself being different, the schedule for starting being a bit different, probably less different than it used to be. In Japan, there's usually a six-man rotation, and you just start once a week, and now that's increasingly common in the majors. So he's making most of his starts now for the Astros when he does start on five days of rest. So that's kind of equivalent. But there are all sorts of differences and potentially difficulties here. Yeah.

And it sounds as if he's been a bit out of sorts. And, you know, he or his interpreter was saying the travel's different from the way it is Japan. Sure. There's more travel. There's longer travel, obviously, bigger country. The timing when the players eat. So in Japan, when they get back to the hotel, they eat their dinner. Here the players eat at the stadium before they go back to their hotel, which doesn't sound like that big a deal.

But all of these things, routine can be pretty important to players. And so you change any aspect of that routine. And he seemed to be doing fine in spring training, and he was getting along with everyone on the team. Chandler-Rome just wrote about this for the athletic, and he was pitching okay, though he did mention the difference with the baseballs. The slicker balls, those slick MLB balls compared to the NPB balls. Anyway, it sounds as if this has kind of come to a head now after he has had a couple rough starts. He also had one good start. He did have one good start.

Yeah, that plus the fatigue. And also, Chandler noted that he's gone through three interpreters since the start of spring training, or he's on his third interpreter. I don't know how much of that is his decision versus the team providing different people. It does sort of surprise me that there isn't more turnover. over among interpreters just because... Especially now, you're very nervous. Well, yes. I don't mean to impugn everyone who participates in the profession.

As far as we know, only one fraudster amidst the interpreting crew. And most interpreters are just pure interpreters and not like taking care of your entire life and also possibly defrauding you in the process. But yeah. But it's such a personal thing, like someone who is speaking for you. Yes. And also, as we have relayed at times, interpreters. They differ in their style, of course, and IMI's current latest interpreter was interpreting in a way where he was using third-person pronouns.

He wasn't sort of directly interpreting for I and speaking as I in the first person, but saying he's not able to adjust to the American lifestyle, baseball and outside of baseball. And the interpreter even said that's probably the reason for his arm fatigue, so suggesting that those cultural differences might have imbiased. impacted his on-field performance. But yeah, I've just, I've heard from people who speak Japanese and they watch Will Ierton with the Dodgers or any of these other interpreters. And, you know, sometimes some of them are more verbatim than others. And some of them are just sort of, it's a summary more so than a direct, here's exactly what we said. And some are just more painstaking and literal about it. And weren't you saying back when we were talking about EPA all the time, just like,

they should get the best, you know, like get the UN interpreters or something you'd think, just because it's fairly high stakes. And, you know, maybe it's worthwhile to the player to actually make sure that your message is being conveyed accurately. And I suppose the player might not always be in the best position to assess that. Because if the player doesn't speak English, then they might not know really whether if the interpreter is capturing their meaning or not. So they'd have to almost ask someone else who's bilingual, maybe, hey, is this interpreter doing a good job? Yeah. Yeah.

So it's been a lot of flux and change here. And you can understand how that would be different. It's not new for an NPB player or anyone coming over from any different culture or country. And, you know, it's probably even tougher when you're in the minors and especially back in the day when teams didn't provide as many services and didn't. much of anything to help their players kind of acculturate and, you know, just the basic life skills of, I'm a teenager. How do I do anything? So, yeah, I think that has improved and teams usually have dedicated departments for that sort of thing now, which is good. I think good on a humane level and also good from a development standpoint, probably in a self-serving sort of

cynical way. But yeah, you know, sometimes it doesn't seem to affect the guys and they're just successful from the get-go and others seem to have more trouble with it. I'm fine to be clear with, I think the folks who are doing that work at the U.S., they should stay at the U.N. I am mindful that that's more important than baseball. But like the next tier down, you know, it's like if they have an opening at the UN and they get like 50 applications and they only end up hiring like two people, you know, take the next four candidates and be like, have you ever considered a career in sports? You know, do you want to go help out? It seems like it would be such a personal and close relationship, even when it takes on the more typical form that I think most players with their interpreter. And most, I would say that most teams, it's not like every guy has his own interpreter. Like typically you will have someone on your staff who does that work, and they might have a couple of guys that they speak for,

and they might have a couple they don't, and I'm sure it depends on language and some amount of feel and fit. But if you're like a big star and you're commanding, like, dedicated resources there, if only because you're going to be speaking to the media with some amount of frequency, I would think you would want consistency. Now, it could be that there were, we don't know why there has been some shuffling here,

and it might be that that's what they were searching for, right? A good fit, someone who am I, like, connected with and sort of gelled with. But, yeah, it seems like it would be a very challenging thing to hire for and know was going to go well. I think, I would imagine that spring training is a good sort of proving ground for that. But I don't know. It doesn't seem all that strange to me. I think that we tend to associate that adjustment period, that necessary adjustment period,

with much younger players, right? Like, it's something that you might think of when you're talking about, like an international amateur who signs out of Latin America. Like, this is a kid. You know, of course there's going to be this huge, tremendous adjustment across. You were well, I'll use the term semi-professional just to try to describe the reality of what it is to be an un-yet-signed amateur out of Latin America. But, you know, you're like ostensibly still an amateur and then all of a sudden you're a professional and you're in a different country once you come to the states and who knows what your level of fluency is and you have to figure out like all kinds of stuff that you have more life skills as an adult. But like it's still a tremendous.

tremendous transition going from a place that you've lived and known your entire life where you're fluent in the language and completely comfortable to somewhere where you know you're navigating all of that anew and even with resources like it doesn't shock me that that would require some amount of adjustment period so hopefully like you know this person he's working with now is like a better fit for him and the arm fatigue sort of resolves itself and we had to see am i like do my stuff because we've we've already seen what the good version of that looks like here against big league competition. It's quite impressive, but you can't have him only securing one out. That's a problem. Yes. And I don't know that any of this is on the Astros, but perhaps it's relevant that Imai is the first player they have signed directly from NPB. Right. So maybe being the first is a little bit more challenging than being, you know, the guy who comes along after several previous players have made that leap and your organization has already learned from those experiences. Or just maybe there's a bigger cultural adjustment going to Texas

than there is going to Seattle or somewhere, right? Or, you know, if you're on the West Coast and maybe there's a bigger Japanese community or you're less far from home or whatever it is. So I don't know. It's not as if we've heard exactly the same thing from Okamoto in Toronto or Morikami and Chicago and, you know, the White Sox, I don't think,

had signed an NPP player before either. So I don't know that it's astro-specific, but something that might be worth noting, at least, just in case that comes into play. Because, yeah, you know, if you've done this before and if Japanese players, if you're following in the footsteps of countrymen who've made that leap for decades by this point with some organizations, then maybe that makes it easier. Or maybe they're around the team. Right. The way that Yitro is always around the Mariners with his bat broken or intact in his statue and can just give you some pointers. or you could call someone up, not that you can't do that, and it would still be relevant to hear from someone who went to a different team,

but nonetheless. And, you know, I think what we're really talking about on some level is, like, both human adaptability and human connection. Like, Ichiro is such an interesting example because, like, one of the guys on the current, you know, Mariners team that Ichero is reportedly closest with is Julio, right? So it doesn't have to be necessarily, like to like. But when we, you know, when people are like, why are all the NPB stars going to the Dodgers? And I was like, well, it feels nice to have people around who speak your language fluently, who aren't only the interpreter.

And a number of the Japanese players on the Dodgers have made close friendships with players who speak English, who speak Spanish. Like, I don't mean to suggest a rigidity or what have you that doesn't exist. But, you know, it's got to be nice to be able to just have your work friend who. knows what you're talking about. That seems very relatable to me. And it can take a lot of forms. And you're right. I don't think that it necessarily says anything specific about the Astros. But it might speak to how valuable it is to, you know, just have someone where you can like, when you're exhausted at the end of the day and don't want to do the harder work of like trying to communicate with someone in a language you're not fluent in to be able to just revert to what is

familiar to you. That seems very relatable to me. It's like, you know, like when you, at the end of the day and you're talking to your person and you're like, oh, my God, I was, I was able to only say 15 words. That was so fantastic. I'm just exhausted and I don't understand say anything more. You know what I mean. Yeah. Dinner's in 15. Yep. Well, in my, despite the fatigue, he has averaged 94.8 miles per hour on his foreseamer this year. And that is now average Velo in MLB. Just a little fastball speed check-in here. Yeah.

It's just, it's nuts. It goes up year after year after year. It's like clockwork. I mean, it's the most dependable uptick, really, in baseball and sports and anything. It's going back to 2008, the first year of pitch FX when MLB has been providing these values. It is almost every single year the league-wide average fastball speed has increased for seamer speeds, that is. And there are a couple years there where maybe it went up a lot in one year, and then the next year it went down a tenth of a mile per hour or something. But then the year after that, it resumed its upward rise.

So, yeah, of the 19 seasons that we have pitch tracking, info for here. I think it's gone up 16 or 17 of those times. And the only times when it didn't was immediately following a large leap. So it's up yet again. And I keep thinking, well, maybe this will be the year that it will actually finally stall and plateau. And the rate of increase has slowed somewhat. But nonetheless, it does just keep pushing higher and higher and higher. So in 2019, it was 93.4. In 2021, it was 93.6. In 2022, it was 93.8. In 2020, it was 94.1. In 20204. In 2025, it was 94.4. And this year, thus far, it's 94.5. Now, that's using MLB's classifications, the baseball savant classifications. Okay. And on fan graphs, you can easily look at different classifications and different data

sources. And if you look at the pitch info classifications, so this is, you might be familiar with the website, Brooks Baseball, Dan Brooks, Harry Povlides, who also works at Baseball Perspectus, and they've been doing their own pitch classifications for many years. And in the past, at least, I've regarded them as more reliable than the MLB mostly automated ones. I don't know, I would guess that the gap has closed as the clustering algorithms and everything have probably improved over time. But yeah, if you go by the pitch info settings, then it's even higher, slightly higher than the MLB values, which are at 94.5. And pitch info, I think, has it at 94.7 so far this year. And the other thing to note is that pitch speeds generally do increase over the

course of the season. Right. And guys get warmed up. The weather gets warmed up. It gets warmed up. Yeah. Bradley Woodrum of Baseball Perspectus wrote about this just this week. Evidently, the in-season increase league-wide is smaller than it used to be, which might be because guys are just always throwing max effort all the time, even early in the year.

Or because maybe people are coming in conditioned and doing a better job being fully ramped up when the season starts or other reasons. But however you slice it, and he did a Delta method to control for survivor bias, and you're looking, comparing individual pitchers against each other, not just like the whole pitcher pool, because obviously some guys get called up, some guys get hurt. Anyway, it looks like the difference now, you know, in May, guys tend to add about a tenth of a mile per hour. In June, they add another tenth of a mile per hour. So it used to be about half a mile per hour, the rest of the season that you would add. add, and now maybe it's about half that, maybe it's two-tenths or three-tenths of a mile-per-hour or something. But even if it's that latter smaller number, that suggests if we are potentially at

94.7 or something now, at least depending on one data source, then by the end of the year, we might really be at a point where the average four-seeing fastball in MLB is 95 miles per hour, and that maybe even the full-season average could get there as soon as next year. If you look at right-handers only, it's already there. Right-handers are already, even in this early young season, sitting 95 for the first time. So it just keeps climbing. It just keeps going up and up and up. And even if you look at all pitches, one thing I was kind of interested in, even though fastballs are getting faster, there are fewer of them being thrown on the whole because, you know, there's no such thing almost as a fastball count.

anymore. I guess there still is in a relative sense, but it's much less an ironclad rule than it used to be. And generally, it's just it's harder to hit the bendy stuff. And so pitchers teams tend to be less fastball forward than they used to be. So I was wondering, okay, so the average fastball speed is going up, but pitchers tend to throw more of what we at least would have called secondary stuff, though for some guys now, it's basically primary stuff. So would those kind of counteract each other and And would the overall pitch speed that hitters are facing, would that maybe be down? Because even though the fastball speed is climbing, the fastball rate is decreasing. And it turns out that even though there are fewer fastballs, the fastballs are faster enough.

And all the other pitch types are generally faster, too. It's not like, yeah, it's not like there has been, you know, steady state with everything else. And then you just have a steady climb of fastball. You know, everything is getting thrown harder. Yes. Yes. So in 2008, all pitches put together, the average pitch speed was 87.5. And this year, thus far, it's 89.4.

So even that is up a couple ticks. And that is tied for the highest on record with last year, which was also 89.4. And if we project that the speeds will increase a bit over the course of the season, then it looks like, yes, this will be another new high just for average pitch speed and average fastball speed. So how high can it go? I don't know. There's got to be some natural limit or maybe there will be changes to roster rules or pitcher usage or who knows. And maybe that will bring this down a bit. But it seems like it's just going to keep climbing indefinitely.

And it is incredible to put it into perspective. We've talked about the pitch flames on the broadcast and how a lot of the broadcasts have raised the threshold for flames to 97, 98. You know, we've talked about what it should be because it used to be 95. And now that's just, that's table stakes. That's just your garden variety heat. It's not even heat. It's, it's room temperature in the majors now is 95. It's nuts.

Yeah, it's at a temperature where you could like a water a plant with it and not worry about it. It suggests that for, well, it suggests a number of things, but the one that I always find the most striking is that for all the consternation we have as an industry. And I use, I'm using like the royal we here, because it's something that writers worry about. It's obviously something that team people are concerned about. It's something the players are grappling with. For all our concern about pitcher injuries and the prevalence of pitcher injuries and the number of guys you need to get through a season, it is, it does not seem to be meaningfully impacting the way that they are training for the big league campaign in any given year, right?

You would think that we would at least be seeing like a real plateauing and that it would have started sooner. But no, I think they're still mostly training for Velo. That's not the only thing that guys are doing. And I think that, you know, there's variation within the population depending on like what they throw and whether they've been injured previously and all kinds of stuff. So I don't want to say that it's one size fits all. But I do think that for all of.

our, oh, we got to keep them healthy. And for all the panels and committees that the league might assemble, like, they're still really trying to throw very hard. And hitters have adapted to that heat to some extent. But yeah, it's tough. Velocity is still kind of king. And one trend that I had not noticed actually has plateaued is the catcher's interference. But there is a.

notable development. So we've we've talked about this multiple times. It's funny. This has been a beat that Jeff Sullivan sort of started, I think. He kind of originated the catcher's interference beat and wrote about it many times. And we talked about it here on effectively wild and episode 2162. We charted the increase over time and talked about the reasons for it. And Sam has kind of picked up the torch from Jeff, and he writes about catchers interference all the time at his newsletter, pebble hunting. And what I had not noticed is that the seemingly inexorable rise of the catchers interference has been halted. There were fewer catchers interference calls last year than there had been the season before, which has not been the case for quite a while,

I believe. I'd be just looking back, just kind of picking a season. Like 2010, there were, 28 instances of catchers interference. By 2022, there were 74. And then in 2023, there were 96. And in 2024, when we did our check-in, there were 100, so more than the previous season, but barely. And then last year, it was actually down. It went down from 100 to 88. So even though that rise has been halted at least temporarily, there has been kind of a catcher's interference creep in terms of what is being called catchers interference, and this is what Sam has exhaustively documented.

And there have been many cases of no swing catchers interference. Right. So, and you might think, well, how could it even be catchers interference if there's no swing? But umpires have seemingly decided and teams are testing this now that you can call it that way. But now we have the ultimate, and Sam was tickled, I think,

because he had forecasted that this could be a possibility. There had been some close calls. Now we've just got catchers playing footsie with hitters, and that alone, the foot-based contact can cause a catcher's interference call. So the reason why we've seen so much catcher's interference in recent seasons, the primary reason is that catchers have shifted up in the box because, well, it's better for framing seemingly to be able to present that pitch closer to the plate before it has a chance to drop and be further out of the strike zone. And then also now the running game is more of a priority. And so every extra inch closer to second base can help.

And maybe there are also batters who have taken my advice and have shifted back a bit in the box, thanks to. that increased pitch speed that we were just talking about. And so there's just much more proximity between the catcher and the hitter now. And so sometimes we've seen catcher's interference called when there's like a check swing and the bat makes contact with the outstretched catcher's glove and it just kind of glances off the glove. And sometimes you could even get it on a non-swing when you're really just trying to get out of the way of the pitch, but your bat happens to make contact with the glove.

And it's really just incidental. And Sam has expressed the thought that that feels wrong, really, to him, that it's being overapplied. Because the thing about this, it's almost like the check swing rules where there's no real rule about what constitutes a swing. And so there's not much specificity when it comes to catcher's interference. The rulebook says the batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base without liability to be put out when the catcher or any fielder interferes with him. And that's it. So what qualifies as interference is really left up to you. So you could interpret that to say if it actually gets physically in the way of the swing or you could just say it's if it gets in the way of the batter's intent to swing or to

do whatever. And, you know, Sam looked this up in the dictionary. He just looked up interfering in his dictionary. And it said to interpose in a way that hinders or impedes. So there's a lot of leeway there for what hinders or impedes. And that's what we've seen now. So we had a call. And I don't know if this is the first ever, but I'm confident that Sam would have documented it if it had happened recently. Chase Midroth was hitting for the White Sox, and he took a pitch, and he didn't even go around. He didn't even start to swing or anything, but he just took a pitch, and it looks like a totally normal pitch. You would not notice anything amiss if you were just to watch the video. But if you watch very closely, you see that the catcher,

The tip of the catcher's toe was touching the tip of Midroth's foot. So he's facing the rays. It's rays versus White Sox. And the catcher here. And it's funny because you can see there's like an eagle-eyed. In this case, it's White Sox field coordinator, Chris DeNorphia, former big leaker. And he's looking. Yeah.

Who, as Sam noted, never drew a catcher's interference. So it's unlikely. It's because he was too busy yelling North. Maybe so. But Nick Fortez was catching for the raise. And he had shifted far enough forward that his toe was actually resting on the foot of Midroth as the pitch was being delivered. Like after the pitcher had, you know, Shane McClanhan had gone into his delivery and everything. Yeah.

And Midroth didn't seem to be bothered by this as far as we can tell. You're not wanting to notice that it's there, candidly. No. He didn't protest. He didn't say anything. He didn't turn around and jot the catcher. He took this pitch. It was more or less down the middle, a little bit inside on the inside corner. And Midroth just stepped back and kind of nodded and okay, called strike. Seems to be business as usual. But it wasn't because D'Norphia was watching. And he got all excited because he saw this is it. This is the time we've been waiting for. We can actually challenge this.

And there was a previous instance last season that Sam wrote about in December where Justin Turner was hitting for the Cubs and Austin Wells was catching. And the Cubs tried to have this happened. But it was not upheld the challenge. And it was ruled that it was not a catcher's interference because Wells's foot had made only fleeting contact seemingly. I mean, Sam was inferring. We don't exactly know why the ruling was what it was. But Wells, his foot had not really rested on Turner's foot. It kind of made contact.

And it made contact, I think, prior to the pitcher going into his delivery. So you could argue that it couldn't have really hindered or impeded Turner because this was prior to the pitch actually being delivered. Got it. And Wells, you know, some catchers now, I mean, you have the one knee down is so prevalent. And some guys are like one leg out. Yeah. And so that leg also is splayed out forward. They're all splayed back there.

So that one, that was a close call. And Sam sort of expected that we would get this. And now that we have, this, in this case, it does appear to be pretty incontrovertible. When you watch it from the side angle, Fortez's toe, it is just like. It's resting. It is. It's just fully making contact at least. And is maybe even like a little bit on top of the tip of my droth's foot here.

And so Midroth, you know, he took his base and he was happy to have it. But he did not like gesture to the bench and say, oh, this is the time. But he didn't appear to be confused about what was happening because I guess he like he confidently took his base because I guess he was aware that the toe had been touching his foot. He must have felt it. Right. My theory is that he was probably coached by Norf. Yeah. Nourf.

Didn't we call him North? Didn't we call him like Norf dog? I don't know. I feel like people dead. I feel like people did. Was it mean? I don't think so. I think it was other people.

Baseball reference does have Norf as a nickname for him. There you go. All right. Well, it's always nice to know that, well, I was going to say that you're not crazy, but it's more that this is an evidence of that. We'll leave the other diagnosis to the professionals. But I imagine. that what Christian Orphe had told his guys in that moment was to not move too much because there's a possibility that, you know, Chase Middra feels the foot there. And he's like, if I wiggle, like, if I draw

attention to it, he might move his foot and he might do it in a way that escapes the notice of the empire. So you've got to be a little crafty. You got to trust your dugout. It's like, I've got eyes on this. don't worry. You just stand there and try to concentrate on hitting. Take your mind to the ball, not the base. And I will notice that you are being, you know, lightly played footsie with. And then you'll get to move on down. So I'm sure he, I'm not sure. I would suspect that he felt it. He knew it was there. And he's like, I just got to be patient. I got to be patient. And Norf has me. Norf's got me covered. Much like this part of my foot with. his foot. Yeah, Sam speculates that maybe he had not been coached just because he didn't,

like he seemed sort of surprised that the challenge was being issued, but then when the challenge was issued, he did just. He knew what it was. Yeah, he knew. And I think he was. Well, that sort of undermines my theory. Well, yeah, I mean, the other thing is that you probably wouldn't want to kind of coach the batter to do it. Like, you might coach them to be aware of it or, hey, let us know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, but you wouldn't want it because you could, the hypothetical, is, well, could the batter then just back up a bit and intentionally make contact and then induce the catcher's interference call? But maybe if it's transparent that that's what you're trying to do. They won't do it.

They won't make the call. Yeah. Then it wouldn't actually work. So if you keep Midroth in the dark, then he's kind of blameless maybe. And I'm torn on this because I doubt that he would have swung at this otherwise, that he would have gotten a hit otherwise. can you really say that it hindered or impeded him if he didn't appear to have any desire to swing at this ball? But then again, we can't know what's in the hitter's head. And maybe on some level, maybe even subconsciously, he would have been less likely to swing because the catcher's toe is on his foot.

And maybe that could actually obstruct him somehow. So I'm torn between thinking this is kind of ticky tack. and thinking, well, I guess by the spirit of the rule, maybe it's not against the letter of the rule, I guess, because the letter of the law here is left so open to interpretation. But I don't know. And I guess I'm also sort of sympathetic just because, hey, catchers, you have your box and the batter has his box. And as long as the batter is in his box, then you've got to stay in your lane, you know? You've got to stay back there, right? Stay back there.

And it's probably for your own safety, you should stay back because you don't want to get hit by a back swing or something. Right. But we'll see whether teams are now more aggressive about challenging when this happens or could conceivably have happened. Or whether catchers are told, hey, shift back an inch at least. Like, don't make – it's almost tender when you watch it in slow motion. It's like if there were a heated rivalry for MLB, I mean, there's plenty of fiction out there. I was going to say, it just hasn't been made into a TV show. Right.

Like, yeah, and there was a play. If there's a big screen heated rivalry equivalent for MLB, then you could imagine, you know, it's like Ilya and Shane, the baseball equivalents of them. You know, they're facing each other, but they can't openly, you can't have a public display of affection. Right. But maybe one of them is catching and one of them is in the batters box and they just, you know, just inch that foot forward. Just make a little tender toe touch. It's very. I like that interpretation more than the one I was going to go with.

This maybe speaks to our respective life experiences because I was like, this recharacterizes the batter-catcher interaction to me as one of like simmering sibling rivalry where you're like, not touching, can't get man, how close can I get to you before you have to yell at mom and then you smack me? And I'm like, why? I never did that. I never worked to get my sister in trouble. That would be psychotic. I would be a monster. We're best friends now. It's fine.

Anyway, something to watch. So I will link to Sam's piece. It's worth, well, it's worth subscribing in general, but also just worth checking out this specific edition for the videos here. But, yeah, this was a big day for Sam because obviously he's been tracking this very closely. So we'll see. I think probably they should all just stay in their areas and not actually make contact. unless they want to, but no, even if they want to, maybe it's against the rules and they shouldn't in this case.

So, yeah, everyone spread out a bit, you know, stop invading each other's personal space. But also, I don't know. I wonder whether MLB should issue some sort of clarification here for this rule, like what actually has to happen for someone to have been interfered with. It does this count as interference. But I guess I'm open to the interpretation that it did. Yeah. Yeah. Another interesting little wrinkle here that I think we should discuss.

This comes to us from Raymond Chen, who was our guest on our most recent Patreon bonus pod because he is a Patreon supporter and also is the primary caretaker of the effectively wild wiki. But he wrote in in regular listener capacity here to ask, should we change the ABS challenge signal? And Raymond notes that in the past week, there have been. in three accidental challenges seemingly. Misinterpretations. So on April 8th, bottom of the first, after his first pitch to George Springer, and I was watching this one live, Shohei Otani adjusted his cap, which catcher Will Smith seemed to mistake as Otani wanting to issue a challenge.

And so Will Smith echoed this gesture for the umpire. And this was a weird one because it was like the first pitch that Otani threw. and it wasn't a really egregious call or anything, and it obviously was like super low leverage and everything, so I was thinking, why challenge here? I think there was a weird one like that the other day. Maybe Jack Netto was involved in. So sometimes it's just players kind of jump in the gun on issuing a challenge at an in an opportune time.

But sometimes it might actually be an accident. So Otani adjust his cap. Will Smith thought, oh, Shohay is trying to call for a challenge. I will call for a challenge here. And there was a challenge. And it was wasted. On April 12th, bottom of the first, after his second pitch to Moises Bayesteros, Bubba Chandler adjusted his cap, which the umpire interpreted as a challenge.

And April 12th, same day, top of the fourth, Ben Rice of the Yankees takes a called third strike, tosses his bat and touches the brim of his helmet, which the umpire interprets as an ABS challenge. And it clearly wasn't one. It was an okay call, and Rice, I think, had accepted it. he seemed taken aback. I watched both of these. Like Bubba Chandler was confused. He was like, I didn't, I didn't mean to.

And Ben Rice, same thing. So Raymond says, given that adjusting one's cap or helmet is common and touching one's head is often an unconscious gesture, do you think the signal for an ABS challenge should be changed? And if so, to what? And maybe this actually makes sense because this has happened a few times lately. And this made me recall. it actually did happen last year, too, with Zhonghu Lee of the Giants.

And I was aware of this because I had made the preseason prediction that someone would... Right, you were very invested. Yeah. And so I was tracking this in Chris Handel and the E.W. Stats team, they were tracking this. And this seemed like, and ultimately it was a false alarm, but it was mid-April. It seemed like maybe Zhonghu Lee had, you know, the challenge system was not actually in play, but it had been in effect in spring training. And so I predicted that someone would gesture for a challenge to mock the umpire, to question the umpire's call.

And ultimately that did happen. Taylor Wals did it. And my prediction paid off. But with Junghul-Lee, it was just a miscommunication. And he said, through an interpreter, everybody who watches Giants games probably knows that every pitch, I go, I adjust my helmet. It's every pitch. And the umpire, Phil Kuzzi, misinterpreted this and thought that he was being shown up. and he said something to Lee, and then they talked about it after the game, and Lee had to clarify, no, I wasn't trying to show you up. That's just the motion that I make all the time. And so Cousie then said, I think he told Lee that he shouldn't tap his helmet because you're not allowed to do that. That was at the time interpreted as basically arguing balls and strikes. And so he said, you can't do that. So there's a bit of a bit of

of a language barrier and a miscommunication. So this does keep happening, and given that the challenge system is now in effect, should they consider switching things up? I would be open to it. I have a sort of dastardly proposal that I think should, I don't know what it should be, what the gesture should be for hitters and catchers. But I think that if you're a pitcher and you're trying to challenge, which doesn't happen very often, obviously.

And there is sort of an interesting subplot that I think our friend Jake Mintz explored on his podcast of like, why did Will Smith feel like he needed to challenge on Show Hay's behalf, right? Like he was interpreting that as, oh, I should challenge, show he thinks there's something to challenge. I'm going to do the thing. I was like, well, show he not only, I don't challenge as a picture. But then Will Smith thought, oh, I got to do it because my guy says that there's something wrong here. So like that's a little bit. just kind of making sure just, you know, you're in a good battery mate,

like making sure the Empire register the challenge. Maybe. Maybe. But you know what the signal for challenging should be for pitchers. What? Digging into the belt. Oh. What?

You challenging? What other reason do you have to go in there? Yeah. I'm sure they'd like that. That would help them get away with much more. They're still digging into their belts all the time, Ben. You know, what's in there? They really need tuck in their shirts that much?

No. No, they're still, they're still loading. They're still loading up. Yeah. So this is a two birds, one stone sort of a situation because they're not really the ones who are challenging. And we've talked about the reasons why. And so folks on teams.

But if the signal to challenge is that and your pitcher will, you just have to find a new spot behind your gunk, I guess. Yeah. But I think it, it's a tricky thing because in a world where no one is trying to manipulate. In a world. In a world where no one is trying to manipulate the challenge system. You could just say, oh, I didn't mean to challenge.

And the umpire could say, cool, no sweat. But in the world we live in, you could conceive of a situation where a guy did mean to challenge and then receive some sort of signal from the dugout. That would never happen. I'm sure that they're not going to find a way to indicate to their guys that they should challenge. No. And, and then they realized, oh, that was a bad chance. I shouldn't do it.

And you take it, you do a take-back cease. So I think you can't, you know, you can't employ the reasonable solution to this problem, which is just to have the guy say, oh, I'm sorry, that was a mistake we didn't mean to challenge because they're all lying liars who we can't believe and trust. I mean, not all of them, but maybe, you know. Like, Will Smith has that youthful face. Yeah. You don't think that, you don't think that a guy with a youthful face could be a liar. Have you ever seen little rascals? Yeah.

You know? Yeah. So I think if this keeps happening, I think it's worth considering. Now, the players are encouraged to verbalize their challenge. That's what, there's an MLB.com explainer. How is a challenge issued? The player taps his cap or helmet to alert the umpire to his desire to challenge the call. players are also encouraged to verbalize their challenge to leave nothing to doubt, but the cap slash helmet tap represents the official challenge.

So you could say that you have to mandate the verbal challenge, but then, well, if you're a pitcher, and granted, maybe if you're a pitcher, you're not doing it or not supposed to do it that often anyway, but it might be hard to hear for the umpire if it's loud. And there's a lot of crowd noise or something. So maybe you do need some sort of signal. And I'm thinking of, well, what could a different, you know, of course, some silly ones could occur to you. I mean, you could too. Well, it is, it is challenging because, I didn't mean to do that. It's challenging because, you know, they're sending each other signals all the time. And so you need something that really is distinct and specific to, hey, I'm trying to challenge here.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. So you could just flip the bird to the umpires to screw you. I'm challenging. I mean, Jaron Duran just did that to a fan the other day. Not the best. But also, that was maybe not unprovoked. Maybe said something nasty. Can I say something about this? Because look, I get it's not the best. And we have had issues with Jaron Duran in the past based on fan interactions, but more because of what he said than what he did. But I'm here to tell you this. If you, shout what that fan shouted to him. If you shout it to anyone, but particularly someone who has been open and vulnerable about their own mental health struggles, including incidents of attempted self-harm, you're lucky he didn't go into the stands and be you senseless. I'm sorry.

Like, don't do that. It's a bad example. There are children present. But honestly, I think he was pretty restrained for what that fan said. Shame on you, fan. Ridiculous. Be a human being. My God.

That is bad. And it's bad that there. in and subsequently said that he wishes that he had never divulged that because the worst fans maybe are using that as ammunition against him. And so that's bad because then it discourages people from being frank and open about these things, which can help other people who have gone through the same thing. Yes. And I think there's value in professional athletes, particularly male professional athletes,

speaking about this stuff because I do think that they serve as role models to demographics of young men who are very interior and could benefit from being able to talk about these things and ask for help. So I was very esteemed. Hardly the only one to be clear, but my goodness, have, like, be a person. Jesus Louise. So flipping the bird at blue is probably out. Yeah, don't flip the bird at blue. What could you do? It would be so wild if the league's like, no, that's our preferred signal. That's our preferred sign is for you to stand up. there and go, and I'm doing it, which everyone can see in this visual medium that is biogasting. The hat adjustment, that is kind of problematic because...

What if you have to lift your batting helmet, clean off your head? You know, what if you have to go like, like, who, mm? Okay. Well, yeah, that's a terrible solution. It would take a little more time, but it's less open to misinterpretation. Because sometimes you have to adjust your batting helmet because sometimes it's loose and you got to tamp it down. or whatever. And sometimes it's just a habitual move that you make.

And maybe you could condition yourself not to do that now. But yeah, sometimes you do want to just kind of tug on your cap or something. So like some kind of macarena move or something. What if you mimic throwing a flag like it's football? Yeah. Well, that would, I was thinking that. Like what if each player just had a flag and they could just toss a little flag? That would be very funny.

They should each have little flags, Ben. It would be very funny. It would be delightful. If they each had a little flag. It would take more time. Yeah. Then they'd have to stoop down and pick up the flag, which also would be kind of funny. But there's time for that, I guess.

There's a challenge going on. Yeah. They can pick up their litter while the challenge is challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Or you could. Now I'm anti-scouting report card, but I guess you could have some kind of challenge card that you brandished maybe. Yeah.

I think they had something like that in volleyball, I read. And also in volleyball, then, like, coaches can make a C shape with their hands instead of presenting the card to indicate a review. And that might be okay because it wouldn't be misinterpreted as anything else, I suppose. So if you just formed a C with your- It's kind of corny looking though, right? Yeah, I guess it is. So something that looks okay and is not potentially offensive, but all. also could not be misinterpreted as anything else, you know, just kind of do some little shimmy,

just like a little hippie, hippie shake. I don't know. Just some sort of dance move would be kind of funny. A little hop. All these things could happen in the course of normal events. Yeah. I think a challenge flag is the way to go because, you know, if it's like a card, like you're pulling, like you're a soccer, are they refs?

Are they umpires? What are they in soccer? What is the term for an official? Yeah, refs, I think. Refs? Is it refs? Okay. Or just official.

What is it in hockey? Are they refs also? Yeah. Okay. So it's really just baseball that's hanging out with umpires. Yeah. Back judges. It doesn't matter.

So anyway, when they do their little thing, like sometimes they have to fumble around for it, you know, it can get kind of stuck in stuff. It could get stuck in your pocket. A flag could just be hanging out the back, like you could just have it hanging out of your back pocket but then you know is there danger and you sliding on it but you have your gloves back there you know like if you and you slide on those is it really worse because like an NFL challenge flag like that a coach would throw you know there's there's like a little like a little pocket of of heavy i think it's probably sand so that when you throw it out it like flurals and then

it falls to the ground so maybe that's a half a half a half a half a half a half a half of a half a half of the head. So maybe that's a hazard. But I think that it would be the best solution maybe. It might add too much time, but I don't think it would add that much time. And it would be funny. Yeah, I guess. So is the tapping, is that sort of like a skewomorph motion to suggest like the headset kind of? No, because you would do like, you do the two on the side of your head for the headset.

Yeah. But sometimes you're holding a bad or you got a glove. or you've got a, so maybe you just use one hand. Like, is there significance? Is it because? Oh, you could do side. You could do side head. Side head.

You could do like, you know, a manager asking for a replay review will often do the, like, you know, cans. Yes. It's gesture on the sides of their heads. Right. So a player calling for a challenge could do like a one-handed guy and go da-da-da. Yeah. Or you could do. a distinct action as opposed to just like jostling your cap or what or what have you.

Yeah. Or you could do like a phone call motion because it's sponsored by T-Mobile. T-Mobile would like that, I'm sure. Yeah, that makes me not like it. I would otherwise be into it because I like the idea of them doing like the handset like, hey. But then there's like, you know, integration with a sponsor and now I'm back out. Yeah. Or what if you did, like, because it's the Hawkeye system, what if you, you, like, put your arm out as if you were doing some falconry or something, like you were going to have, maybe that doesn't work.

Or you make some sort of hawk call or, I don't know, but there's got to be something. Wait, I'm sorry. You want baseball players to be up there going, kaka, kaka, kaka. Yes, that is what I want, yeah. Why wouldn't they just say challenge then? If it's a vote, if it's a conversation, why wouldn't they just go challenge? Yeah. Well, maybe the caca would be louder.

So it would break through the. You think that you could caca louder than you could yell challenge? I think so. Yeah, it's more of a piercing, just a different frequency. I think that it would be for some people, but some people aren't going to reach that register. I would, I would even venture to say most wouldn't. So I think that the batter should have to turn all the way around. And show his back to the pitcher, and that's the sign.

And the catcher can lay down. And then the pitchers, as we've established, have to dig into their belts. What else did they be doing that for it? Nothing. Yeah. Innocent angels, everyone. Instead of the flag that you throw, you throw a glove or you slap someone with a glove, you know, like you're challenging them to a duel or something or throwing the gauntlet. I don't think that would be great for, like, bad or catcher umpire relations.

And then again, what does the pitcher do? Because you can't have the pitcher. I love the idea of like to indicate a challenge in a system, part of part of the appeal of which is that it happens so quickly, the pitcher has to walk to home plate and smack me. And then a challenge has been issued. And I'm sure that the zone after that will be pristine, no bias, no issue. Yes. I do wonder, I think you're right. probably Will Smith just to return to the baby face liar known as Will Smith.

I don't have any reason to think that Will Smith is a dishonest person. I just want to make clear. But he is very youthful in his face. He looks like a comic whose name I can never remember. Anyway, I like the idea that I was talking about this with somebody that, like, you know, a catcher, it was suggested to me that there might be an easier time for, for the pitching team, not only in terms of the accuracy of the challenge, but in terms of sort of smoothing the way with the umpire to have the catcher do it because, you know, the catcher's

there all the time and can have chatter with the umpire and can make it obvious like, hey, you're calling a great zone. He just happened to miss one, buddy. Like, this is a, you weren't getting a long, smoothen the way, easy time between us, whereas, like, there's something more fundamentally aggressive about the pitcher calling for a challenge. And so I like the idea of there being some sort of pitcher to catch a relay system. The flaw of that being that like the pitchers probably shouldn't challenge much at all. But yeah. Okay.

Well, okay. Right in. If you have if you have. We're going to get a lot of emails. Well, and I look, you know, I look forward to them because I think it's, I think Raymond, you know, hit on something real, which is. Yeah. Now, I don't think that this is a, it doesn't seem like it's a big problem, right?

Like, we are able to readily identify some examples, which suggests there's room for improvement. But it doesn't seem like there's like a rash of unintentional challenges going on, but maybe room to improve nonetheless. Yeah. Yeah, maybe like a spinning finger sign, not with the finger kind of not the home run sign that's, the Empire does. This is part of the problem. I know. There's so many signals for everything.

Everything could be interpreted. But kind of like a tape loop spinning sort of like rewind. Let's see the replay there. Maybe another sort of skemorph. Though maybe if you're doing that, holding it up to your head, that might be kind of like a cuckoo. Oh, like you're trying to say that they're bonkers in some way. That might be. That wouldn't be good.

Yeah. That doesn't seem like it would lend itself to good relations with them. Well, give us a solution. people write in podcast of Fangraphs.com, something that would be clear and not misinterpreted, but also easy to signal because you've got to do it quickly. And yeah, it's got to satisfy all these criteria. Or if you want to suggest a silly one, you can do that too. Also, in hockey, there are referees, but probably people usually say officials because some of the officials are referees and some of them are linesmen. Right, right. Yeah. And also, I mentioned,

the Astros earlier when we were talking about in my to be clear they have had other Japanese players Noriyoki and and Yusayakuchi and Kazmatsui etc it's just that they've never signed someone directly Yeah so they've never sort of had to help someone get accustomed to their yeah exactly yeah okay Okay okay and also update on cutter Crawford whom we talked about last time because the mystery was revealed the entry that he suffered last year he has now his rehab has been derailed unfortunately he was on a rehab assignment and now at least it's on hold for the time being but as far as we know not because he had a relapse when it comes to gardening and cranking and yanking his hose but just because he hurt his forearm and i i think it's just the usual sort of pitcher having a forearm injury which is quite demoralizing for cover proffered but as far as we know no unusual circumstances no gardening related miscarry How hurt does he have to be before he is allowed to just garden again? You know? Well, as he said, I've got a guy now.

So he's not taking any chances. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Ben, can I tell you something very exciting? Okay. It's gardening related. So it's relevant to our baseball podcast.

Yeah, totally. You made it relevant. So I have a little mobile, like elevated garden bed to do herbs because we got tired of buying herbs. You know, you buy herbs to cook with. And then you end up tossing half of them, particularly if they're very delicate herbs. And it feels like a waste. And they're so expensive. And there's all this single-use plastic involved a lot of the time.

So we were like, oh, we'll get the little garden bed and we'll have some herbs. And it can be challenging to garden here in Arizona because it's so stinking hot so much of the time. And so I was just sort of like, okay, this round of herbs is a getting to know you exercise. And I'm sure that some of them will die. The English time is not doing well. The rest of them, though, thriving, I have two little peppers. I have two little hot peppers on one of my pepper plants. Oh, well, well done.

Yeah, too. They're not ripe yet. They're green. Green peppers, but yeah. Green peppers, but they will ripen, oh, boy, to little red hot peppers. I'm so excited. Nice. Playing pepper.

Brought it back to baseball. There we go. Playing pepper. Okay. I will close with a little stat blasting. They'll take a deed to sit. It's sorted by something like the R-A-9 or OBS Plus. And then the T's out some interesting,

Tid but discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways to taste the past. Okay, so last time we talked about the offensive stats to start this season and how they looked a little bit different and walks were up and home runs were down even relative to previous April's and everything. That was on Monday when we had that discussion. And Monday was an absolute offensive outburst. That was a hugely high-scoring day. The league as a whole hit 293, 367, 498. That's a 146 WRC Plus 384 Woba with 37 dingers on that day alone.

And because it's still fairly early in the season, that big day, that changed the league-wide offensive stats to an appreciable degree. So the league-wide batting average went up from 235 to 237, OBP went up from 318 to 320, slug went up five points from 375 to 380. Yeah. So Wobo went up three points, and that's exciting. but this was actually sort of historic. And there was a question about this in our Patreon Discord group.

And it came from someone who went by the username Ila de Monte Cristo and said, Today's games average 14.4 runs per game. That's a lot. I mean, that's both teams combined. I'll just read you the scores from that day because there were 10 games. and so there were a couple low-scoring ones, but it was 4-0-0-6-2, 9-7, 16-5, 13-7, 11-10-10-4, 13-6, 9-3, 8-1. There's some crooked numbers in there.

So this supporter asked whether this was a lot, historically speaking, 14.4 runs per game. What is the highest average runs per game for a single day of baseball, maybe specifying a day where at least half the teams in the league, played if it was a day with very few games skewing this. So Michael Mountain, Frequent Staplast correspondent, newly upgraded to Frequent, is making good on that, answered this one. And this was, it turns out, an integration era record for the highest average run

scoring on a day with at least 10 MLB games. There were 10 games on July 1st, 1936, a lot of offensive records set in the 1930s, rabbit ball. So on July 1st, 1936, there was an average of 15.3 runs per game, and there were 10 games, despite the AL and NL only amounting to 16 active teams. The Cubs and Reds were idle, three teams hosted doubleheaders. So this is an integration era record. It's the most in 90 years. So well-spotted. And I don't know what that means, if anything. Maybe it was a blip. Maybe it was an outlier. but I'm sort of surprised that a high-scoring record high-scoring game came in mid-April, because you would expect later in the year when it's hotter and the balls flying farther and

everything. But no, this was notable. So we're certainly at the point of the season where one big day can completely change a player's stats, but a day that big that can even have an impact on a league-wide level. So good one, good eagle eye there. And a few more. here is a question from Jacob who says as I write

the Angels Yankees game is 8 to 8 in the 8th inning and Jacob then had a footnote that said before I finished writing this Mike Trout hit a two run homer to give the Angels a 10 to 8 lead he still got it that was a wild game Judge hit a couple homers and then what happened

yeah Trout hit two judge hit two and that was part of that Monday offensive outburst so Jacob says this inspired a thought because it was 8 to 8 in the 8th. What is the record for most consecutive innings where the score matched the inning? That is, has a game ever been one to one in the first, two to two in the second, three to three in the third, et cetera? Then to similar questions, how many consecutive innings has the combined score matched the inning count? So one to nothing, two to nothing, two to one, three to one,

three to two, et cetera. For both methods, what's the highest inning for which this has been true? Has a game ever been 14, 14, 14th, has the total score ever been? Has the total score ever been 18 and the 18th. I feel like all these should be relatively searchable for someone with better tools slash sequel knowledge than me. And that is, in fact, Michael, who says, most consecutive innings where the score matched the inning at some point during the inning is four. That has happened eight times on record.

Most recently, in a Rangers Angels' games on July 9th, 2025. It was briefly three to three in the bottom of the third, briefly four to four in the top of the fourth, five to five. through the top of the fifth and six to six through the bottom of the sixth. If you require the streak to start in the first inning, there's one four-inning streak on record, where it was one to one in the first, two to two in the second, three to three in the third, and four to four in the fourth, Milwaukee at Minnesota, May 13th, 1990. The latest in a game that the tied score has equaled the inning number happened in Cleveland

on July 10th, 1932. The Philadelphia A has scored two runs in the top of the ninth to take the lead, and Cleveland got one back in the bottom of the ninth to send the game to extras tied 15 to 15. And the game made it to the 15th inning still tied 1515, and neither team scored in the 15th. Philly got two in the 16th to take a 17 to 15 lead, but Cleveland answered right back to send the game to the 17th inning, tied 17 all. And that's the record. The A's won the game 18 to 17 in 18 innings. I miss 18 inning games.

Those were fun sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Same questions, but looking at combined score instead of each team's run total individually equaling the inning number. There's a clear standout here. Rockies at Reds, June 7th, 2018. It was one to nothing in the first, one all in the second, two to one in the third, three to one in the fourth, three to two in the fifth, briefly four to two in the top of the sixth, five to two in the seventh, briefly five to three in the bottom of the eighth, five to four in the ninth, and five to two. to five in the 10th, and the Reds went on to win seven to five in 13 innings. The Brewers and Royals did play a game in 1998 where the combined score added up to the inning number in 11 different innings, but they weren't consecutive. That was a 15 inning game. Finally, the latest inning on record in which the combined score added up to the inning number is the 18th inning.

This has happened seven times, most recently, and with the biggest score differential on August 24th, 2013, when the Diamondback scored five runs against the Phillies in the top of the 18th to briefly make the score 11 to 7. They won 12 to 7. Well, that was good, and kudos to Michael for looking not just the end of inning results, but also the mid-inning results, particularly impressive going above and beyond. Okay, here's another one. This one came in on Sunday from Tom, Patreon supporter, who says, Jose Ramirez homered against

his 29th team last night, April 11th, against Atlanta. How many players have homered against all? other teams while playing for only one team. I assume this has happened only during the interleague era. And slightly less related, Tom says I was wondering what the most homers a player has had in a career were all homers came against different teams. So not having two homers against the same team, not necessarily full career numbers, but up to a specific point is fine to.

So, Michael says, as of the end of the 2025 season, only five players had homered against 29 other teams while representing a single club. Aaron Judge, Rafael Devers with Boston, Austin Riley, Pete Alonzo with the Mets, and Shohei Otani with the Dodgers. So, wow, Shohei did that quickly. He hasn't been a Dodger that long. Attached as a spreadsheet showing the active players with at least one career home run in which teams they have still not homered against.

The question asked about that being all with a single franchise, I listed each player only once connected with the franchise for whom they had homered against the most opponents, which is not necessarily their current team. I'll link to that spreadsheet. For the second question, one player in MLB history hit 16 total career home runs against 16 distinct clubs. This is good trivia question, territory. I mean, no one would ever get it. How would you ever possibly get it?

But Ryan Christensen, outfielder for the 1998 to 2001 A's, never hit more than five home in the season and never repeated against any opposing team. No other player in the Retro-Sheet era has hit as many home runs to start a career all against different opponents, regardless of how many they went on to hit. That's amazing, Michael editorializes. But you know what? He's right. That the one guy who did that, 16 homers against 16 different clubs, that's also the most

even to start a career by anyone who went on to hit plenty of other homers against other teams. I mean, that seems somewhat surprising, though. I guess if you're someone who maybe has more staying power than Ryan Christensen proved to have, then you wouldn't even get to the point of having 16 homers against 16 teams because you would have doubled up at some point. But still, that's, I mean, that almost makes me want to get Ryan Christensen on the pod and be like, were you aware of this? Like, is this weird?

Could your career have been sustained if you had played more opponents and different unique opponents? Because you could have kept hitting homers against them? was it that like the book on Ryan Christensen was such that once you saw him one time, he was a solved science, like, you know, but like the first time you faced him, he was automatically going to homer or something. I mean, I guess he didn't homer in every game. But still, it probably means nothing. But it's so weird that it almost makes me wonder whether there was something about Ryan Christensen

that made it possible for teams to like figure him out after they had faced him one time. Probably not. Do you think Ryan Christensen is aware that he's? he hit his 16 homers against 16 different teams? Do you think he would care if he knew? I don't know if he would care, but I bet he was made aware at a certain point, but it probably came later in that run than you would necessarily expect. Yeah, or even after his career. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised if that was breaking news to him, though. Okay. Maybe. Andrew, Patreon supporter, says, when is the last time pitchers from each team caught a pop-up in the same game?

Tanner Bibi and Michael Waka have done so in the first four innings of the April 6th, Kansas City Cleveland game. And that does seem like it would be kind of rare, right? Because, you know, pitchers are always pushed out and every other infielder is rushing out to save the pitcher, the challenge of actually trying to catch a pop-up, which I think would be a bit, I don't know, not emasculating, almost insulting. Like, you don't think I can catch this pop-up. I'm a professional athlete, sir. but they don't often get the opportunity to, and I guess probably most pop-ups are not in the pitcher's range, right? Probably a lot of pop-ups are in someone else's area. Anyway, Michael says, looks like this happens once or twice a year on average, though it's slightly rarer recently.

I might have guessed even a little rarer than that. The last time this happened was in Colorado on July 18, 2025. Kyle Freeland caught a pop-up in the top of the first, and Chris Paddock caught a pop-up in the bottom of the second. We hadn't seen it before that since 2022, when it happened twice. There are games where pitchers have combined for three or even four pop-ups caught, but never where both teams had a pitcher catch multiple pop-ups. So, okay.

So, yeah, maybe we've already gotten this year's instance of the both pitchers in a game catching pop-ups game out of the way. Maybe we've already seen the 2026 edition of that. Maybe. I guess it would be getting a little rarer over time just because fewer batted balls, fewer balls in play. And I don't know, maybe pitchers are just even more than they used to be getting kind of pushed out of the way and other defenders are taking precedence there. That could be, I don't know. Okay.

Yeah. And Scott says Matt Walner, who in 2025 drove himself in 22 times but drove in everyone else. else just 18 times, started 2026 with three solo homers for his only RBI of the year. And Scott says, I was at the game where he broke this streak and drove in a teammate. And as of this email, which was five days ago, he's up to two teammates driven in. What is the latest in a year that a player has gone before he drove in a teammate? That is, what is the highest number of solo homers to start a season before getting some other kind of RBI or a multi-run, home run. Okay.

All right. The record is six. Simple answer. The record is six set by Tyler O'Neill in 2024. And of course, Tyler O'Neill famous for his now snapped streak of opening day dingers. So I guess that tracks that he'd get that opening, not that they have to be solo. But the record is six set by Tyler O'Neill in 2024. He hit six solo home runs in the first 11 games for the Red Sox that year before driving in Jaron on April 10th for his seventh RBI. season. All right. And Scott's second question is, the Tampa Bay Rays aren't off to a great start, but they had a lead at some point in each of their first 10 games, even though they were five and five in those games. What is the latest a team has gone in which they had a lead in every game? The obvious candidates are teams that won a lot of games at the beginning of the season, the 2023 raise, the 1984 Tigers, or maybe it's a team that had one of the best regular seasons ever, the 2001 Mariners. But maybe there's a more. surprising team that is also on this list, or maybe the question can be tweaked to ask,

what's the latest that a team with a 500 record or worse, had a lead in every game to start a season. So, Michael says, before we get into the gory details, it's probably good to note up top that about 40% of games have a lead change. Also, if you win a ball game by definition, you had a lead at some point. Winning by walkoff counts as having a lead during the game for the purposes of this analysis. Pedantry be damned. and I'm going to ignore the rare edge cases where a team was trailing from start to finish and then was awarded a victory by forfeit.

This also, this reminds me of a recent Sam newsletter where he looked at just like what's the typical highest win probability in a game that a losing team has, like on average, how close to winning is a team that goes on to lose at its height. And it's surprisingly high. Like, you know, most teams that lose like a high percentage, at least were favored by win probability to win at some point then. Okay. Since virtually every game, Michael says, is a loss for one of the participating teams. It's more informative to say that 40% of all losses involve blowing a lead. What makes the raise start interesting is not that they led in each of their first 10 games, but that they led in each of their first five losses. If we use this metric, we're implicitly dealing with the problem of some teams.

being better than others because we're considering only the games in which a team lost. By pure luck, having a lead in each of your first five losses has about a 1% chance of occurring. However, there have been more than 2,500 team seasons on record in the Retrocheed era 1912 to present, so a 1% event happening at least once in that dataset would be expected. Indeed, it would be orders of magnitude more surprising if this hadn't happened before, and of course it has with even longer streaks. There's a lot of baseball. That's often the moral of the story.

In our stat blast, there's been a lot of baseball. I'm going to refer to games with no lead changes as decisive, i.e. a decisive win or a decisive loss, and games with a lead change as competitive. We can answer the original question, both in terms of most games played or most losses accumulated, before a decisive loss, but they turn out to be the same answer.

The team that started the season with the longest streak of games that were either decisive wins or competitive games, so they led in every game to start the season, is the 2005 Chicago White Sox. And hey, they went on to win a World Series. Through May 14th, they had played 37 games, 127, and their 10 losses were all competitive. There had been a lead change. That mark of 10 consecutive losses, all being competitive, is also the most to start a season.

Returning to the figure cited earlier that about 40% of all losses are competitive, a 10-game streak of competitive losses to start the season is about a 1 in 8,000. event. So pretty close to being in line with the number of team seasons on record. The team with the second longest streak of games played before a decisive loss is the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, another champion who made it only 25 games into the season before suffering their first decisive loss, but their record coming into the decisive loss was 22 and 3. And that concludes today's staplast, and I suppose also today's episode. Good stop blasting. I like when listeners notice seemingly anomalous things, and then they flag them for us.

And then Michael or someone else finds out that, yeah, actually kind of unusual, which is not always the case. Sometimes if baseball were different, how different would it be? Not that different. Sometimes these things are not that unusual. But even then, it's nice to know. It's nice to get a baseline of something like what percentage of games feature a lead change. We learn a lot in the course of our stat blasting and podcasting.

So thanks to everyone for keeping the questions coming. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening and special thanks for supporting financially, which you can do 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 well as this week's full Friday episode. The following five listeners have already signed up, AJ Taylor, Matt McPhillips, Scott Molling, Nathan Winder, or Winder, and Nick Tarpley. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include a fully Unlocked weekly, regular episode of the podcast, a monthly bonus episode. Our Patreon Discord group, exclusive live streams, personalized messages, prioritized email answers. Shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships, and more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email.

Send your questions, comments, intro, intro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts. Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted

fan graphs or Patreon if you're a supporter or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats recited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Just a couple of baseball nerd.

Speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, banter and bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling idly, equalling, idly, equalling effectively wild.