Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2469: Tanks for Nothing

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about vagueposting screenshots of Baseball Savant percentiles, a Ron Darling comment during the Mets’ 12th consecutive loss about why pitchers shouldn’t apologize to batters for throwing inside, team-level changes in pitch usage and results this season, why MLB partly escaped the NBA’s tanking epidemic, why relievers are struggling so far, baseball parallels to track’s quest to produce lighter shoes, and an EW listener meetup tool (password: EW2026), then Stat Blast (1:25:12) about player home run totals that outstripped team win totals, winning streaks built from other teams’ losing streaks, and batting orders with jersey numbers that matched lineup slots, plus (1:39:40) a postscript. Audio intro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Horny)” Audio outro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to vagueposting wiki Link to Buxton/McLean matchup Link to pitch before homer Link to home run pitch Link to Clemens on McLean Link to Clemens on hard in, soft away Link to Ben on the Pirates Link to Sawchik on the Pirates Link to THT on the Pirates Link to Dan S. on the Mets Link to SNY ritual clip Link to MLB.com on SNY ritual Link to Baumann on Lumineers curse Link to Mr. Met/Lumineers post Link to NYT on Mamdani curse Link to Rosenberg Mr. Met story Link to team pitching changes Link to 2025 team FA% Link to 2026 team FA% Link to Senzatela pitch usage Link to pitch-type usage by year Link to 2025 team Stuff+ Link to 2026 team Stuff+ Link to 2025 team contact% Link to 2026 team contact% Link to 2025 team pitching WAR Link to 2026 team pitching WAR Link to Sportico on NBA tanking Link to Gold Plan wiki Link to Gilbert catch Link to MLB.com on Legumina Link to MLBTR on Legumina Link to MLB SP stats Link to MLB RP stats Link to WSJ running shoes article Link to Ben on MLB player improvements Link to Cooper on fastball speed Link to fastball speed joke graphic Link to listener meetup tool (PW: EW2026) Link to meetup tool Reddit post Link to HR>wins spreadsheet Link to losing streaks spreadsheet Link to jersey=lineup slot data Link to Kenny Jackelen Link to listener emails database Link to streak-snapping Mets gamer Link to 1914 Federal League game Link to 1991 Pirates-Cubs game Link to 2011 Dodgers-Diamondbacks game Link to 1952 Dodgers-Braves game Link to 2017 Yankees-Rays game Link to 1928 Cleveland-Detroit game Link to 1923 Dodgers-Cardinals game Link to 1934 Cardinals-Reds game Link to 2004 Rangers-Tigers game Link to 2019 Diamondbacks-Brewers game Link to EW Episode 2405 Link to Nimmo/Semien comparison Link to Murakami homers fun fact Link to Clemens on Murakami Link to Kruk in a suit Link to Farley’s Matt Foley skit Link to Farley’s Kruk skit Link to Weaver post  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

Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take hot and hotter, entwining and a budding, watch them climb a mountain, nothing's about nothing, every stitch wet with sweat, breaking balls back, dormy on effectively while that can you not be horny?

Comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny? Hello and welcome to episode 2469 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. When we do our monthly bonus episodes for Patreon supporters, often we start with some low-stakes rants, just something that's gotten our goat that is usually not baseball-related. I have one that is baseball-related, so I'll be able to.

begin with a bit of a low stakes rant. And it concerns the percentiles at baseball savant, which I like. Everyone likes them. And because we all like them and they're colorful and they give you a decent snapshot of a player's performance, they circulate a lot and people share them a lot, which is good, which is fine. But there's a lot of vague posting that goes on with the savant percentiles where people will just screenshot the percentiles and then they will post them somewhere without identifying the player. And I swear I'm not sub-tweeting or sub-podcasting anyone in particular here. I just see this all the time. And they don't identify the player and the screenshot itself doesn't identify the player. So people will just post the percentiles and just be like,

well, this seems sustainable or something like that. And then I'm always wondering, well, who is that. I cover baseball professionally, but I don't have perfect recall of everyone's savant percentiles. Sometimes I can... Why would you? Yeah. I mean, maybe I could figure it out or from context or something. If it's super extreme, it might be someone recognizable, but there are a lot of players. And it's small samples, and I'm usually not going to know who it is instinctively. And unless it's a quiz, unless the point is to make people guess, which, if it is, fine, if you're just saying guess the player and then it's a little trivia game, okay. But if you're trying to make a point of some sort about that player, then the point doesn't really get me if I don't know who

that player is. And so I don't know if it's intentional engagement bait in some cases. If you post on Twitter or Blue Sky or wherever and you just want people to be like, who is that? What are you trying to convey here? But every time I see it, it's like many of the replies are like, who is this? Or just some of the... you know, memes that people post under some vague post. And I don't get it. Just identify who it is so that I can benefit from the wisdom that you are trying to confer upon me. I agree, especially in the early going of the season, which isn't, you know, isn't to say that you're necessarily going to end up with a percentile distribution that looks all that different from what comes in at the end. But it's just like, it's not a lot of the games or batted ball of

events or whatever, you know. Some players might have a percentile fingerprint, so they kind of look distinctive year and year out, but usually not. Most people aren't spending that much time perusing the percentiles that they're immediately going to recognize someone. So I put the blame partly on savant just in the sense that the percentile itself does not have any identifying information about the player because the way the savant page is laid out, they have the player's name and biographical details and everything on the left.

Right. And then there's the column with the percentile rankings on the right. And so maybe a quick fix would be to put some identifying information also in the percentile ranking section of the site. Maybe I'll even recommend that to someone. Just if you just stuck the name on the top of that part of the site too, underneath 2026 MLB percentile rankings, maybe this will. would spare me a lot of the uncertainty or ignorance of not knowing who that is. Because as it is, you would have to either do a big, unseemly screenshot to get the, and that's, then people are going to rag on you for not cropping correctly.

And then you'll have to say, well, I was just trying to get the name and team in there. And that would be much appreciated. But then it would be a big screenshot and kind of unwieldy. So maybe the blame can go around. maybe if they just stuck the player's last name or something on there, then that would help and would remedy some of the vague posting. So I like the percentiles as much as the next person. I'm not saying don't share the percentiles.

But if you do, then I hope that you exercise proper percentile sharing protocol and you tell me who this is or what I'm supposed to take away from this post. You want there to be an etiquette to the posting. Now, I do think that it. can be kind of fun if everyone knows that it's what you're going for to ask people to guess. Yes, absolutely. Because some of them are quite funny. They can be very interesting, engaging. But you're right, it can be a little flum mixing at times, I think. If the point is to keep us in the dark so that

we can all learn together, then fine. But if the point isn't to do that, and that's just what's happening unintentionally, then they don't do that. Yeah, think about your audience and what they may or may not. No, anyway, that's my little rant, my little percentiles plea to start this podcast. So, we talked a lot about the Mets last time. There's only so much more we can say. We're recording on Wednesday afternoon before Wednesday's game. So for all we know, by the time people are hearing this, the Mets torture will be at an end, at least temporarily. But it is not as of now. And now the streak went to 11 last time. Now it's an even dozen. Things were looking so good for them on Tuesday because they had their best starter on the mound, Nolan McLean, and he was dealing. And Francisco Lindor, who had a slow start to the season after missing much of spring training and having his handmade issue, he hit a three-run dinger. And so they were up and it was the sixth and it was looking like, finally, they might get off the schneide here. And then, no, everything went south and they ended up losing five to three to the twins. and you recommended some sort of ritual, some kind of cleansing, and the Mets, or S&Y, at least, kind of took you up on that.

The Mets broadcast, they didn't sacrifice any mascots exactly, but they did, you know, all the usual. They burned sage, and they did chants, and they hung horseshoes, and they burned candles, and they wore garlic, and all the rest of it, anything they could think of. and it did not help unfortunately. But Wonsoto's back, so that seems better than any good luck charm, just getting your best hitter back if your issue or one of your issues is not being able to hit. So maybe that'll help. But I thought they're up three nothing in the sixth, best starter on the mound, at home. I thought this would be the time.

And as it is, they will have to hope to enter uncharted territory now because no team that suffered a 12-game losing streak has, ever gone on to make the playoffs. And as we said last time, the bar is lower now. There's always a good time to be the first, I guess, and this is the easiest time ever to do that. But they do now have to do something that no team has ever done. We got a good suggestion in the inbox because there was clarity from several folks that, yes, the giraffe, that is the Bronx mascot is meant to be disgusting. Yes, because it never wins. So it's, yeah, it's supposed to. be a slight at the Yankees.

Yeah. And so I think that really we need like a bizarre version of Humpy winning the salmon run during that playoff game. They might need to let the giraffe win. Yeah. Yeah, it could be. What harm could it do to try? What other tools do you have at your disposal? You just failed to win with Nolan McLean on the mound and he's quite good famously.

Yes. So I think you have to, you might just have to take one for the team and hope that it works. I mean, I think you're right that the return of Juan Soto and just like some regression is probably more likely to be. Yeah. And so Steve Gelbs, the S&Y roving reporter, he did mention that they tried to get grimace. They couldn't get grimace. I think maybe he was kidding about not being able to get grimace. But by getting grimace, I don't think he meant ritually sad.

sacrificing grimace, because again, I could imagine that McDonald's might have an issue with that. But yes, there has been airing of the past bits and the Hocua girl, I think, did an interview with WFAN, because that was briefly one of the bits back when all the bits were happening. And there are all kinds of curse possibilities. Like we talked about the Kokomo curse last time. But there's also, as Bauman pointed out on Blue Sky, the Mets are now 36 and 54 since Mr. Met fell off the stage at the Lumineers concert last summer, which is a 65-win pace over a full season, which is just one of the funniest videos that I've ever seen involving a mascot and there's some stiff competition in that category. But that's a possibility. Also, Zoran Mamdani, mayor of New York, met Mr. and Mrs. Met, met, met, that's hard to say.

But I believe the Mets have not won since the mayor met the mascots. They're calling it the Curse of the Mambino. So that's another possible source of the Mets misfortune. There are all kinds of curse candidates here, really. But I don't know. Usually we don't really resort to superstition here. Again, I think getting one Soto back, that's the best thing you could do. Did you see that there's like a, I think he's a radio personality? Oh, yes, Sid Rosenberg.

Lost what remained of his mind. He was affronted by being snubbed by Mr. Met, accused Mr. Met of being anti-Semitic, I believe. I think that's probably not true if I had to like hazard a guess. We don't even like what are, do we know what, if any, faith tradition Mr. Met adheres to himself? I do not know. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. Probably.

That's supposed to appeal to everyone. So probably, yeah, there's not a denomination. I think Mr. Met is non-denominational. He subscribes to the church of say please and thank you. Yeah. the most neutral of churches. Everyone's welcome. Yeah. Everyone is welcome there. As long as they say, please and thank you. That's just common courtesy. I'm not going to lay the blame for this at the feet of any particular mascot or mayor, but I also, we did get some suggestions that they ritually

sacrifice the Hoc to a girl. You guys are losing the threat. Okay. We're not sacrificing actual people. No. Even if in the case of the Hock to a girl, we find some of the subsequent behavior distasteful. But because of people, that's weird. Don't make it weird. It's supposed to be lighthearted, you know. You invoked Wickerman, in which case there was an actual human sacrifice, but that was a fictional film. But it's a fictional story. Yes.

Right. So there is no actual person. And that was misguided in the movie. The message of Wickerman, I think, was not, you should do this. Right. It's actually, this is a bad idea. Right. Kind of like casting Nicholas Cage in the remake.

It just made it sort of ridiculous. did give us one of our better memes, though. I think that the rules for magic are not well understood, but the way that we will interpret them in the modern context is to say that you are not allowed to sacrifice actual people. The hugging of a mascot insufficient transference of any sort of vibe to result in a 12-game losing streak, I would think. A hug is a joyful activity, I would offer that it seems unlikely

to result in a curse. Unless you're hugging someone really odious, but that wasn't the case here. Maybe the solution is for Mrs. Matt to hug mom donnie. And then when you have the couple having both done it, then it'll seal some sort of breach, maybe. Yeah. I'm not sure if there was a group hug or a mutual hug or who hugged whom. I think they just have to play better baseball. Yes, I think they should play better baseball.

And speaking of playing better baseball and staying within the realm of reality, we have a follow-up to a previous banter topic that is actually Mets related because McLean was cruising in that game and all was well until Byron Buxton hit a two-run homer off of him in the sixth inning that cut the Mets margin to one and ultimately they lost the lead and the game. But this was a crucial blow by Buxton. And as a couple of listeners notified us, Michael and Philip, Ron Darling said something that invoked a comment of his that we discussed two episodes ago. So when Darling was in the booth with Oral Hersheiser and Joe Buck on the ESPN, Metz Dodgers broadcast last Wednesday,

Tobias Myers got hit by a line drive, and he didn't so much as flinch, and he didn't show any sign of pain, and Darling was talking about how you have to have a stiff upper lip as a pitcher. You don't want to let the batter see that you hurt them, and so you have to keep all that pain bottled up, inside in a very masculine macho way so as not to show any sign of weakness. And we played that clip and we talked about this and how would we handle this. And then we had a follow up last time

by Alex Vigderman who told us about the rates at which pitchers show pain when they get hit by batted balls compared to batters getting hit by foul balls or hit by pitches. And we learned that pitchers get checked on much more often for seemingly the same or even a lower severe severity of injury than batterers do when they get impacted by a ball. And I was making the case that they shouldn't fake it, that we all know you're a human being and you feel pain and you get hit by a hardliner. That's going to sting. And why not acknowledge that and why not be open about it? And if anything, it shows more confidence that you're acknowledging that you are human and you have frailties and yet you are soldiering on anyway. So this is sort of the sequel to that conversation.

I guess the same theme from Darling, the theme being just never let them see a flinch at all. So in this case, McLean was pitching to Buxton and he threw a couple pitches inside to him. And after one of the pitches in this plate appearance that was inside, he sort of did a my bad gesture. And on the very next pitch,

Buxton hit the home run. So let's play a little clip of Darling after the fact as they were showing the replays, discussing this. So just a little thing that happened there before Buxton, okay? So the pitch prior almost hit Buxden. A lot of the pitches have been inside the entire game. They were teammates at WBC. McLean said, looked at Buxton. They had met eyes. He said, my bad. You know, my bad, shouldn't do that. You know what happens to a hitter when he hears that? 100 percent, the next pitch is not going to be inside. It's going to be away. He's a smart hitter and he took advantage of it.

I know what McLean's doing. That's being a good citizen. You don't need to do that out there. You lose a little bit of competitive advantage. I get it, though. That's all part of growing and learning. So the pitch is in. My bad.

You never want to do that. Okay. So I thought this was really interesting because when we talked about Darling's comment last week, one of the cases that I brought up was hitting a batter with a pitch. And I said, it sort of disturbs me in a way when pitchers don't check on the batter, if they don't say my bad, or just express some sympathy or look apologetic if they hurt someone, even though it goes with the territory and it's just an institutional occupational hazard and

everyone understands what they're getting into. Still seemed like it would be a nice courtesy to just say, oops, or I didn't. mean to do that or something. And as you noted with the getting hit by a batted ball, maybe pitchers don't want to show any sign of weakness. And it's not broadcasting that to a batter, but it's to their own team and it's to their own manager and coaching staff. And hey, you don't have to pull me here. I'm okay. But in this case, hitting someone, I always think it's very endearing and humanizing when a pitcher just lowers the facade a little bit and and doesn't look like a baseball terminator robot,

but it's just like, oh, I'm expressing some concern for you, a fellow human being. And this is sort of in that vein, but a little bit different. He didn't actually hit Buxton, but the interesting thing is the suggestion that by showing that weakness to Buxton, who, as Darling noted, was a former teammate of McLean's in the WBC, he actually showed an exploitable weakness. because Buxton then concluded,

oh, he's apologizing to me for coming inside. That means he's not going to come inside again. Therefore, I can sit on an outside pitch, and then he did, and he hit it for a two-run hober. So that's kind of a fascinating little window into player psychology. And we'll never know whether that's really the case. I guess if Buxton were asked about it,

it'd be interesting to see what he would say. Yeah. But that's plausible, at least. I would allow that that Darling might have a point here. When I heard this, I was sort of of two minds about it, because on the one hand, Nolan McLean has such a wildly diverse arsenal, and he throws so many different pitches in so many different circumstances to hitters of either-handedness, you know? And, you know, they're patterns, and he's not doing everything everywhere once or anything

like that. But he has a lot of options to keep guys guessing. So on the one hand, that makes me feel skeptical of this as an explanation because it's like, well, surely, maybe that's true in a general sense, but maybe McLean is like a bad example of it. But maybe it's the only possible explanation for you having an instinct to sit on anything that he's throwing, right? Like, it is hard to sit anything with McLean just because of how robust his arsenal is. So I don't know what to make of that. It does seem gamable as an instinct also, right? Like you could, you could lull a almost hit batter into a false sense of security.

Oh, this next guy, he'd never go back in there again and then you would go rammed. And maybe you can only do that, you know, a certain number of times before the book is out. But, you know, you could do it a couple of times. I also think that when you have a pre-existing relationship like McLean and Buxton do, if you're Byron Buxton and one of his pitches is coming way inside and you think it's going to hit you, like you're within your rights to be annoyed by that even if you were chummy with him in the course of the WBC. But also wouldn't your instinct if you have a positive pre-existing dynamic with him to

be to assume he wasn't trying to get me? me. His pitch has just moved so much. That's the other thing. It's like, you know, Ben wrote about McLean for us today. And we have as part of the Fangraphs Lab, our new paired pitches tool, right? Where you can, you can pick a pitch and have it sort of be an anchor pitch for the rest of the arsenal and assume, like, if he was trying to throw his other pitches using that as an anchor and sort of that initial starting point, where would they all land? It's impossible. It's not impossible, but it's very challenging to get two of McLean's pitches in the zone at the same time, just given how much everything is moving relative to everything else,

even compared to guys with very diverse arsenals that have stuff that move a good amount. He is an outlier in a lot of really appreciable ways. And so if I'm Buxton, my first reaction might be like, hey, watch out there. But I wouldn't attribute malice, even if he hadn't said, hey, my back. bad. It is a fascinating little insight. I guess maybe if you do the, hey, I'm sorry, and then you get right back in there, maybe then the guy's like, wow, I thought Nolan McLean was cool, but actually it's kind of going right back in there.

This beta, yeah. Plenty of precedent for guys getting hit in one plane appearance, and then the next time they're up, pitcher just goes right back to that spot because then they're nervous that they're going to get plowing to there again, right? Yeah, it is a fascinating kind of back and forth. It does seem gamable. I will just express a general skepticism that all of these strategic considerations are being brought to bear in any given moment simultaneously, because I think, like, pitching's really hard, and you're probably just, like, worried about that. But maybe, maybe he thought, I'll give him something different to look at

because you just saw one of those. Yeah, because it turned out to be the wrong thing. It was two inside pitches in that plate appearance, the second of which, the one before the Homer, was inside enough and high enough that Buxton had to spin away from it. And I think there had maybe been some inside pitches in previous plate appearances as well,

so it sort of seemed like a pattern. And I don't know what Buxton and McLean's relationship is. I mean, they were briefly teammates. I don't know that they're best buds or anything. And I don't know. know that Buxton was necessarily sitting on the pitch that he got. He put a good swing on it, obviously, but he's a good hitter. So maybe that would have happened anyway. And also, it wasn't a particularly good pitch. In fact, I was going back, I watched the broadcast this part of it.

And when they did the first replay of the pitch, I think it was Darling was saying he couldn't even really identify what it was. He was like, I guess it's a cutter, but it sort of looked like a sweeper, whatever it was. It didn't really do what it was supposed to do. So it just wasn't a good pitch period. And Darling didn't call this either. He said it after the fact, after the Homer. I might have put even more credence in it if he had, because I think he noticed McLean's gesture in the moment and then wanted to go back to it, but he didn't pre-register that this would be bad, maybe. And also, I think the interesting thing about this is that going hard in and then soft away, that's classic pitching. I mean, that's an old adage. In fact, other ben. And other

and blogged about that not too long ago. He did a post about who has done best at going hard in and then soft away. So that's kind of standard pitching. If you come inside, then maybe you want to change the location for the next pitch. And so it's not so much the location that was the mistake, but possibly potentially telegraphing the location. And so you would have to ask McLean, did he intentionally stay away from Buxton because he had come inside and then apologize?

did Buxton conclude that that was going to be the case? I wouldn't rule out that something like that with an experienced smart hitter could happen. And this is also different from what I was saying on the pod last week. I was talking specifically about hitting a guy. So if you hit someone and then apologize, well, the plate appearance is over. Right. Yeah. He's on first base.

Yeah. It's not actionable information that he could maybe leverage in the following pitch. maybe in a subsequent plate appearance, he might say, oh, he hit me last time and he apologized. Maybe he'll be less likely to buzz me this time or something. But by then, innings have gone by, who knows if there's actual carryover. So this, I am more willing to concede, yeah, you might actually want to stay stoic and keep your poker face if the plate appearance is still going on because it could be gamed in some way. But the actual pitch location is not a bad idea.

in fact, about a decade ago when the pirates were last good, and also when they were applauded for their pitching plan, as opposed to derided for it, back in the race-irage as a coaching genius days. Yeah. The pirates had a philosophy of pitching inside, and I wrote about this a bit, and I know Travis Sautchik wrote about this,

just the idea that if you pitch inside, then you can get more grounders, which was their whole game plan back then, because guys will be wary and they won't be like leaning out over the plate. And so if you change the location, they'll be back on their heels or something. They'll be more likely to get a grounder. I know there were some public attempts to replicate or validate that that didn't really show anything. But that was their idea, at least.

If you just pitch inside, that's a way to kind of corral hitters power because they'll be less likely to hit the ball in the air. And obviously the pirates got a lot of grounders in those days. but that was, they were throwing sinkers. They had ground ball pitchers. I don't know how much of it was the pitching inside. But that was the idea, at least if we pitch inside, then we can go outside with impunity and they won't be as likely to hit Homer. So it's kind of an interesting thing where McLean was kind of following the classic traditional pitching playbook by go inside and then try to catch him with an outside pitch,

except that it wasn't a very good pitch. And also, maybe, possibly there were mine games going on here. So maybe. I will stipulate. Maybe this isn't Darling just being Mr. macho old school. I don't think of him as that kind of guy, really. Yeah, that's not how it read to me.

No. Yeah. If anything, it's sort of a cerebral, obviously, you know, just the way that people always mentioned that Craig Breslow went to Yale, people always mention that so did Ron Darling, which doesn't mean he's brain genius necessarily. But I think he thinks deeply about these things. And I don't mind him in general. And this is the, this is exactly the kind of insight that you want from a former player in the booth, too.

Just like, take me down there. And it's something that Keith Hernandez is good at on Mets broadcast. He's out right now. But the combination of those two guys and Gary Cohen, I mean, it's the best for any number of reasons, partly the comic relief and the tangents. But also because those guys really think about the game and are able to convey what players are thinking even decades after they played. So this is the kind of insight I'm there for with X players in the booth and then we can weigh how much credence to give it. But I kind of buy it to an extent. So I will stipulate that mid-plate appearance, if you don't actually hit a guy, maybe you don't really need to apologize as much.

Because if you didn't hit him, well, it wasn't unavoidable, obviously. So maybe there's a little less to apologize for even if there's repeat pitches inside. Yeah. And I think in the vast majority of circumstances, even when a guy does end up getting plunked, there is not intent behind that, which doesn't mean that if you plunk a guy and he's got an ouchy because of you, that you shouldn't say, hey, my bad, sorry about that, hope you're okay. You know, like, you can do unintentional harm, you know, and applies in any number of contexts, right? But I do think that the vibe of the plate appearance really does impact how you feel about it. I see Nolan McLean pitching in a way that I would describe as intense. And it's definitely aggressive in that he will go right at you.

But he's not like he doesn't seem like a jerk up there. And also my default assumption if I'm the twins is like, this club isn't trying to put guys on base. This club is really trying to avoid that. We're all trying to avoid that when we're on the mound. I mean, not you and I because we're not up there very often. But, you know, you don't want to give up base runners no matter how things have been going for you lately, but particularly when they've been going this bad.

Yes. When things are this grim. It's, I mean, look, we're, it's April 22nd and we're already contemplating ritual sacrifice. So I can only imagine how it feels to be in that clubhouse right now. I feel like it would feel pretty. bad. And especially because you had such high expectations coming in. And the early part of the season went well for the Mets. You know, that first, like, week, they were flying high. They were looking good. You know? They had one Soto. So everything will be better now that he's back. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Not that there has to be intent for you to apologize. We all apologize for unintentional slights or, you know, you bump into someone. You didn't mean to, but you still just just reflexively say, I'm sorry. So you don't have to be headhunting to apologize. You could, one gets away from you and it hit someone. You could still say, oops, you know, my bad. It was your bad because it was a mistake. So something to keep in mind. And maybe the Mets, until morale improves and until their record improves, maybe they can avoid saying, my bad on the mound, because they've just been so bad that it speaks for itself. Yeah. It's been kind of shocking. Candidly.

Speaking of pitching and pitching decisions, I was looking at just some team level changes in pitch type usage and results so far this year. And I feel like you could kind of guess if I, so there are three teams that have dramatically reduced their four seam fastball usage so far this season relative to last season. And I hate putting you on the spot. But it's basically because of a change in regime, I think. Oh, yeah. So, like, you know, if you had to guess a team that might be approaching pitching differently this year.

The Nationals. The Nationals. The Nationals. The Nationals have gone from 40.4% for semer usage last year to 29.4% so far this year. So that's an 11 percentage point decrease. Would you care to hazard a guess about any other teams? that might have mixed things up this season? Is one the Colorado Rockies?

It is, in fact, the Colorado Rockies, who went from 39.5% last year to 28.3. So that's an 11.2 percentage point decrease. So that tracks two of the three biggest decreases. And it's kind of funny that this is how you would identify a more progressive front office philosophy. It's just fewer fastballs, but that's where we are these days. and in large part maybe because of the Rockies and Nets decreases.

Fourseamer usage league-wide is down a couple of percentage points this season, and it's been down year after year for a while now. And we've talked about that even though the four-seemers are getting faster. Teams are throwing fewer of them, and it turns out that the bendy stuff is quite hard to hit also, and they're throwing that harder too. So there are a few more sinkers. The sinkers making a partial comeback. There are a few more change-ups. but the Rockies and the Nats are driving this. The third team that I would not have guessed, and so I won't make you guess it, is the raise.

Oh. Yeah, the raise actually have the biggest drop-off. They've gone from, yeah, 36.3%. So they were a little lower than the Rockies and the Nats to 24.1%. So that's a difference of 12.2 percentage points. They've basically slashed a third off of their four-seamer usage. And pitch type philosophy, it's not entirely driven by here's what our approach to pitching is mandated top down. Obviously, it's going to depend on personnel and who's healthy and what are these guys throw and everything.

But that sort of surprised me just because I usually, my default assumption is that the razor at the vanguard of whatever the new age philosophy of baseball is. And I guess that wasn't so much the case when it came to throwing fewer fastballs. but all of a sudden they've gotten on that train too. So it's the raise and it's the Rockies and the Nationals. So two teams that have completely turned over their front office and have gone from extremely old school to newer school and one team that's just been new school now for a really long time, just continually. So that sort of surprised me.

But also it's kind of interesting that you can just recognize that like the hallmark of a team. they change their regime, they change their front office philosophy, and you can see that reflected on the field really quickly in pitch type rate. And then you have like the gainers in four seamer percentage are actually the Dodgers and the Cardinals, which somewhat surprised me with Time Bloom taken over and kind of a new pitching staff, but maybe that's why. And then the Marlins, who of course have their pitch calling formula in place for the full season now, not just the tail end of last season. But there's a difference here in that the biggest gains in fourseamer rate are on the order of, say, three to five percentage points, whereas the biggest decreases are 11 to 12 percentage

points. And there are a lot teams that have declined more than the uptick teams have increased. So you can see that sort of league-wide movement. But as to whether it's working, I guess that's a good question too. I looked at year over year stuff, just stuff plus differences, and the biggest improvements in stuff plus so far this season, the brewers, who were not bad in that category last year, but have increased further, the white socks, the mariners, the Marlins, and the Blue Jays. And then the biggest decreases have been the Astros, Reds, the Mets, the Padres and the Giants. And then I looked at whiff rate, too, and the biggest improvements in whiff rate, the Marlins, I somewhat regret to say, the Marlins have increased their whiff rate more than any other team. So they've gone from 22.2% of swings to 26.4% of swings being misses. So that's an uptick of 4.2 percentage points.

I don't know if that's entirely attributable to their pitch-calling philosophy. but still noteworthy, and the Rockies are actually fifth when it comes to their increase in that category, too. And then the teams that have gotten worse in that respect, the Cardinals, the White Sox, the Tigers, the Twins, maybe somewhat surprisingly, the Astros. But, yeah, you do see the Marlins and the Rockies in the top five in increases in whiff rate, and the Rockies, at least, close to the top in four-seamer percentage dropping. So that's maybe two different things, kind of the high-level pitch-type philosophy. Here's the type of pitches we want to emphasize versus here's what we want you to throw on this particular pitch, or at least what we recommend that you throw. But based on that, at least you can see real changes.

And maybe if you squint, you can see real improvements potentially, too, with the Marlins and the Rockies. And that wouldn't surprise me because, again, I don't question the efficacy of the pitch calling from the dugout. I just don't care for it. And so, but the fact that it seems to be working will probably only reinforce other team's efforts to get on board with that movement. Yeah. Although, you know, like you said, some of it is like improved strategy. And, but it does come down to execution still, right? Like, you know, I think the Marlins being better has as much to do with, you know, a healthy and fully effective Sandy Alcantra and, you know, a good Yuri Perez as it does.

Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? So you can't disentangle them fully either. So. Yes. And the nationals are still dead last in pitcher war. It's not going well. It's really not.

They're two wins below replacement level. They are just way worse than any other pitching staff. So they can throw fewer fastballs all they want. it doesn't mean that they're actually going to be successful. And the Rockies are 22nd in pitcher war, which is better than being dead last and completely terrible last year, but still not good. So people have cited the example of Antonio Centiella, who had to do something different because he just wasn't very effective. And so he has, and he has changed up his pitch mix, and he's been much more effective in the early going. granted he's pitching exclusively out of the bullpen for the first time so that certainly has

something to do with it he's throwing harder presumably because of that and also he's just like throwing different pitches he's he's added a cutter so he's throwing his cutter more and he's changed some other pitch type percentages too but he is throwing fewer four seam fastballs and so if you're sentatella and you just have been very bad even coarse field adjusted for the past couple seasons then might as well try to do something different. Sure. Kudos to him and or the Rockies for trying to do something different, whether it's his role or his repertoire.

And so far, that seems to be paying dividends. So I think it's a positive sign that there's a bit of a shakeup happening. Whether that shakeup will actually lead to great results in the short term is somewhat more dubious. But at least it's different. And different is good if you're the Rockies and the Nationals. Yeah. Yeah. Different is, well, maybe more good for some teams than others.

But also, you know, it's a process. Like, this stuff is going to take a while. And you noted that there's like a push and pull between how dogmatic about sort of an upper level strategy approach to pitching teams can be. And the personnel that they have. Yeah. Is your personnel suited to embrace that philosophy? is your personnel effective using different and other means, right? Because that can be true too.

I think that, you know, there's been sort of a pendulum swing around this at various points in the last couple of years where there have been organizations that have been like, hey, you can either do what we tell you or you can get lost. And sometimes that works well for them for a while. And sometimes like they have a guy who could be good. they would just let him do his own thing or do a version of his own thing. So it would push him and pull, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. So sometimes you want to let them be themselves. And then sometimes the way they are when they are themselves is like not very good. So you have to help them be different and better. Yeah. And that ties it back to the mid-2010s pirates who ultimately their downfall or at least the downfall of their reputation was when they were seen as two cookie cutter in one size fits all. they had a plan that seemed to work well, but then they tried to apply that plan to every pitcher.

And that didn't work for some pitchers. And they left a lot on the table with those guys or they ended up trading them and then they blossomed elsewhere in some cases. And so, yeah, you never want to be so dogmatic about it that it's just, this is the way to instruct every pitcher to pitch, even if you think you've developed some sort of inefficiency or competitive edge. But then how long does that last? And conditions change. All right, well, I'll put this spreadsheet online if anyone wants to peruse it and see how their team has changed or not changed. Also, I had a couple of other thoughts about how baseball is different from other sports, and I'm grateful for that difference. And I may have brought this up before, but I think, and I'm grateful for the fact that baseball has been spared the worst of the tanking conversation and complaints, which is now plaguing basketball.

on the NBA specifically. Do you think that's true, or are you just forgetting how bad the Astro stuff was? That was bad, but it was meaningfully different, I think, in a couple ways. So in the NBA, the Tinkin conversation has gotten so toxic because teams are just shameless about it now. And it's so widespread that it's affecting a large percentage of the league. And also, it's very easily detectable, too. There was a good Sportico piece the other day that showed that late in the season now,

there is a significant increase in the rate of blowouts. Okay. And there didn't used to be prior to the current tanking epidemic, there didn't used to be any real difference late in the season relative to early in the season in how lopsided the games were. But now in recent years, games get way more lopsided later in the season because the teams that realize that they're out of context. they can then fully tank and totally embrace the tank. And the upcoming draft class is said to be a strong one. And so teams have even more incentive to tank. And the commissioner Adam Silver has signaled that they will be addressing this in some way,

not for the first time, but hopefully this time it will take. I tend to favor the gold plan or some variation of the gold plan, which has been used in the professional women's hockey league. it was proposed, oh, 15 years or so ago by this guy named Adam Gold. And it's basically just that you, after a team is eliminated from playoff contention, then you earn draft ranking points for wins and overtime losses after that. And so it actually matters how you play after you get eliminated. Because now, if you're eliminated, you're on the path to elimination, you might as well just completely throw in the towel. But in this situation,

you would be incentivized to continue to compete even late in the season, and that would be good. And granted, there were still be some teams that are out of it from the start, and they would just sort of shift their tanking to the beginning of the season. But the really all-out tanking tends to happen later in the season when you're totally out of it, and you know that for sure. Because there are always going to be teams that hope that they will be in it at the start of the season, or if at least have to make a show of competing, and then ultimately they can really just totally toss it in. Right. So, yes, this has been an issue in MLB, absolutely. And for a while there, we were hearing a ton about tanking. But I think it was meaningfully different tanking.

It was a different type of tanking because in MLB, and I don't know that this necessarily makes it better or worse, but there's the type of tanking where you just decide that your team's going to be bad for a while. And hopefully you're doing that in order to engineer. some sort of resurgence afterward. You're just, we're going to tear it down, and we're going to build from the ground up, and we're going to have high draft picks,

and we're going to cut payroll now, and we're going to trade our veteran guys for a bunch of prospects, and we'll stockpile them, and then a few years down the road, we'll be good again. And there were absolutely teams that took that to an extreme and made themselves unwatchable for years. But I would suggest that there were fewer teams at any one time doing that wholeheartedly, and that maybe the success rate because there were

fewer teams doing it was higher because, say, what you will, about the Cubs or the Astros, it kind of worked in their case. I mean, they emerged at the other end of it. They won championships. They got good again. And there were other teams. You could lump the Orioles in there. They at least got good again.

And so it's hard to distinguish between intentional tanking with a purpose and just being bad. accidentally because you're just not good at your your job of running a contending baseball team. But certainly under a previous CBA, when I think there was less disincentive to do it at least, and there were fewer teams considering it, the teams that did wholeheartedly embrace that, they did it and they were terrible and they were unwatchable for years and they're a real cost to that. And I'm not condoning it and saying that that's good. I think there's a case to be made that it's worthwhile if you're good at it and if it's ultimately successful and maybe even a large percentage of your fans would sign up for that.

You never know, of course, if it's going to pan out. But if it does, I think fans might sign up for the bargain. I don't know if it's a Faustian bargain, but the bargain of being truly terrible for a few years and then getting really good again as opposed to just kind of hanging around and being mediocre. nominally competing, but never actually getting good. So there's that type of tanking that's kind of a long-term tanking. But then there's the game level tanking, which is just we're not going to play our good guys. And that's rampant in the NBA. And of course, there's load management and all the rest. But a lot of it is just like, we're not playing our good players because we're

out of it now. And in some cases, there are even disputes between the teams and the players. like Janus has been upset at the bucks because he's like, I can play. They're like, no, you can. They just don't want him to play. And so sometimes even they're at loggerheads, I don't think we had that in MLB, or at least not to any great extent where like seemingly healthy, available players would just be benched so that the team could lose. And I think that might actually be worse and more demoralizing because it's just like if

you have good players and you're not playing them, then you're so obviously transparently shooting yourself in the foot and also kind of like given the middle finger to your fans who are buying tickets and showing up expecting to see some superstar and then they're just on the bench because you just don't want to win. I think that's even more of in a front. And I don't think we had that ever to a great degree in baseball. So I think we were spared at least one type of tanking. I think that's right. I would say though, and I don't know if I know enough about the NBA to say what I'm about to. But I'm going to anyway, because this is a podcast, we're supposed to talk about stuff. I'm sure that the load management piece of it

is related to the desire to tank. It's a convenient excuse to not play your best guys. Yes. But I also think that like some of this is just actual load management, maybe not in Janus's case. And I know that wasn't it the Mavericks that like didn't play guys? Yeah. Or like intentionally tanked. And some teams have been fined for that and it's just really a bad look for the league. Yeah. And quite brazen.

But I think that my sense is that part of what's happening in the NBA context is a combination of of competing and generally potentially distasteful from the fans perspective. Although I think there are arguments for load management, even if it's gone, it seems like it's really. really going a long way in the NBA a lot of the time. But part of it is that it's a more complicated recipe that they're cooking with over there. Whereas I don't think that that part of it, that wasn't part of it in the, in the baseball context. But I think one of the things that is maybe uniquely trying about the baseball approach to tanking such as it is.

And I don't think we've seen, we're much more interested in the step back. That's the fashion now is the step back, the reset. You know, this isn't tanking. This isn't going to, and what they mean by that is this isn't the Astros, right? This isn't going to be the hard tank. We are aiming to win fewer than 100 games if we can manage it, kind of approach to roster construction, to stripping everything down. This is a reset, which suggests that it's temporary.

And I think that that is a more fashionable approach. because the length of the of the MLB season really, it really wears on fans. And I'm not saying we should make it shorter, but when you're a tanking team and you're saying, look, we're trying to build for the future, right? And you throw all these euphemisms at fans. And then you're like, and also we still have to play 162 games, though.

That's a grind, man. Like that is a rough. that's a challenging value proposition to put to your fan base and be like, it'll be worth it, maybe.

I mean, an example of a team that didn't do as dramatic of a tank and rebuild, but certainly was like, you know, engaged in a version of it

and it's no accident considering how much Astros DNA is in the Orioles front office, but is the Orioles. And I don't know, man. Like, I don't know why I'm calling you

man so much. I'm like, talk radio or something. Maybe it's because this is a topic that lends itself to that medium. But I think that if you put it to Orioles fans, was that stretch of mediocrity and sometimes just downright badness, was that worth it for what you have now?

I think you'd get mixed opinions on that. I think that the answers would really span the gamut because, sure, they've gotten back to the postseason for a minute, but then where have they gotten themselves? Not very far. I think the answer would have been different a couple years ago. Sure. And then it is incumbent on you, as we have talked about on teen times in the Orioles case. If you are going to be terrible and not spend any money for several years and put your fans through that, then you have to reward them. Yeah, you got it deliver. And also the players on the other end of that. You have to sign your guys to extensions. You have to spend liberally in the free agent market. They haven't done that. And so they've sort of stalled. So yeah, if we've seen the best

of this Orioles core. And I'm not saying that we have necessarily, but that has at least entered the realm of possibility, whereas it seemed like this is a team that's on the rise and the sky's the limit. And then, yeah, perhaps they have plateaued or stagnated or gone backwards. So I think you have to deliver on the other end of it and not everyone can. And you know, you do need to be mindful of just how long a bad time you're asking them to sit through. Now, that's not to say that the NBA season is short, but the part of it that seems to last the longest is the playoffs. Well, yeah, the NBA season being so long, that's where some of the load management comes in because it's just the nature of the sport. You don't need as many games to tell which teams are good because there are just so many more possessions in every given game.

And so the true talent shows out much more quickly. And that's where a lot of the load management comes. You're just saving guys for the actually important games in the play. And so they've instituted various measures to try to curtail the load management, whether you have to play 65 games to qualify for end-a-season awards or there are just limits on how often you can sit certain guys in the absence of some clear, demonstrable injury. So they have cracked down and to some extent police that, which then comes with its own unintended consequences.

But I think the difference or a few differences, there are some structural differences that lend themselves to that type of tanking in the NBA that MLB is sort of inoculated against. One, if you get a top draftee in the NBA, then they're going to be a superstar for you soon. Right. Immediately. I snapped like that. Yes. And so you are motivated to tank because you might get a franchise cornerstone who's not going to be several years away and riding the bus in the miners.

And I know players in MLB are promoted more quickly than they used to be. but still you're waiting a while and the hit rate isn't going to be as high. And in the NBA, if you're using a top draft pick on someone who's just starring in college, then you're pretty confident that they're going to be playing on your roster as soon as next season and they're going to be good.

And also, there aren't as many players on the floor at any one time. So it actually makes a big difference if you get that superstar. You can get a superstar in MLB and it won't necessarily change your franchise's fortunes that much. You need several of those guys.

to pan out to get good. And that really has a multiplicative effect because that enters into the tanking too, where in the NBA, if you decide to sit your superstar, that's going to materially affect your odds in that game and also the entertainment value for your fans. Whereas in MLB, if you sit one guy, unless it's the starting pitcher and even that these days, because there's certainly load management going on in MLB, particularly with pitchers too, It's just not going to change your fortunes that much or even the entertainment value that much. Because if it's just a starting hitter, okay, you're not going to see them in the field. Maybe you're not going to see their four plate appearances or whatever.

But the majority of the game, they're not out there anyway or they're not doing anything actively. They're not hitting the ball is not being directed to them. They're just bystanders. You know, don't even bother showing up. Very funny for you to make that argument after we just talked about the potential saving grace that is one. Soto, but yes, you're right. That's true. Yeah. I mean, yeah, even that, if you're, if you're hoping that your one superstar coming back is going to solve all your problems, that's probably not true in MLB either, because yeah, one superstar can only do so much.

The Mets will take Juan Soto, but I don't think even he is a panacea necessarily. Obviously, they're going to have to have other guys play better too. So I think because of that, if you really want to tank, you can tank quite effectively in the NBA because you sit one guy that can really dramatically lower your odds of winning in that game. Whereas an MLB, you said any one guy, it's usually not even going to hurt you that much. So it's not even worth doing, I guess, or as perceptible if you do it. And then the other difference, I think, is that in the NBA, because it is so determinative, if you're good enough to get into the playoffs, you're probably still just not good enough

to win a championship, because only a small number of teams really, in any given season are good enough to truly have championship aspirations. And so if you're stuck in that middle where it's like, well, maybe we could have a winning record and we could sneak into the playoffs and we can get in the playing games. And in MLB, that's good enough. And that might have some downsides of its own, as we have discussed, because with the expanded playoff field, now you just kind of have to be good enough to get in. the Mets hope that they're good enough to get in.

And so there's a little less incentive to be great and to build some sort of super team. And so either you end up in the previous super team era or now it's just like everyone's kind of okay and mediocre because you just want to get to October and then hope that you have a hot month or something. In the NBA, that's not that feasible, though. And so you kind of know, well, if we're stuck in that range

where we're okay, but we're never going to be better than okay, then maybe that pushes you over into. to, well, we're doing the tear down because we actually have to have a championship caliber core and we don't currently. Whereas an MLB, if you're good enough to get into the playoff field, which isn't that hard these days, then you're good enough to win a championship in theory. And we see wild card teams advance deep into the playoffs all the time. So you can't actually tell yourself, well, am I that far from 84, 85 wins or whatever?

And usually not more than a few teams are out of range of at least dreaming about ending up with that same sort of season. So it doesn't usually make sense to just write off the next several years. Right. Because you might be okay at some point soon. And it's better to be okay and hope that you have a great run than to tear it down and take that possibility away for who knows how long. I also wonder if the appetite for the hard.

I mean, there's like the efficacy question, which I think when everyone was tanking, for top draft picks. It's like, well, are you going to... Is the juice really worth the squeeze at that point? So there's like a question of how good a strategy it was, and then obviously additional complications, like the ones you've raised. But I also wonder if we're entering an era where...

Not that it's the only way teams can make money, certainly. And it's not the same for every club. But given some of the RSN considerations, that exist now and the bubble there having popped or at least, you know, started to deflate and gate being maybe more important than it's been in a while. Yeah. If the appetite for a hard rebuild is just not there for a lot of clubs because you got to get butts in seats, man. Like, you need people to want to go to your games and, you know, I think there are ballparks that are a little more, rebuild proof than others.

That makes it sound like a rebuild as like an earthquake and that there are some ballparks that are more seismically sound than others, which, you know, that's probably true too. But, you know, there are ballparks where the experience in the ballpark is just a nice time. This is like the only way that the Rockies have, you know, managed to survive as a franchise. Although I should be kind. I should be respectful. I should acknowledge that these Rockies are, well, they're 9 and 15. So, you know, they're still not good, but it's better than it has been lately.

So there are some ballpark experiences where, like, the views are pretty and the beer selection is good. And, like, the food is yummy? And so, hey, is the team you're watching a good team? I mean, almost certainly not. But, like, you can still have a nice day at the park and maybe you make a point to go when, like, like other clubs that are good are coming through. But that's not true for every team. And so I think that as much as the expansion of the playoff field takes the pressure off,

the need to build like a really knockdown, drag out great club, I also think that like the tolerance for the real seller dwellers is going to maybe, maybe be lower because you just, you got to entice people to come to the, ballpark. I also think I'm of the opinion. You know, we talked a lot last year about how mid things felt. I think that a lot of teams might just be bad this year. And that might even be true of teams that have a good record. There are not any standouts. It's true. And it's just, we can't ever be happy because when there are some great teams. I'm happy a lot. Yeah, I mean, I'm generally a happy person. But as it pertains to competitive balance or whatever you want to call it,

when there was more stratification than we bemoaned that. and there's some super teams and there's so much better than everyone else. And then when you don't have super teams and we all sound like Joe Morgan in the fire Joe Morgan days where he would constantly complain that there weren't any great teams anymore because none of them measured up to the big red machine in his mind or whatever, then we all talk about how everything's mid. So I don't know. Maybe there's a happy medium where we could all be happy.

But it seems like either we complain about teams being too good or we complain about some teams not being good enough or no teams being good enough. Yeah, I just think that we mistake the way that fans are reacting to the particulars of their own club with like how they feel about the broader state of the game. And I, you know, I know a lot of people who like know their own minds about this. So it's not like I'm saying like, oh, fans are a bunch of dummies and they are confusing frustration with the local club versus what's going on in the meta. No, a lot of them understand that, but they're still met.

Ben, Mariner's blue sky has been roiled for the last couple of days because of Casey Lagamina, who is no longer on the Maris. The Bean Man laid a big old fart is what he did, because beans make you fart. Yes. And so did his pitching appearances lately, Dan Wilson not beating the allegations that he's about a bullpen management. Anyway, if you were to go to a fan of an individual club, like their experience of baseball, it's not big picture a lot of the time. It's very narrow, you know.

They're locked in on their guys. They have detailed opinions about the, like, seventh guy in the bullpen. You're not convincing them of anything by saying, well, you know, generally. Yeah. the state of competitive balance is good and the game's in a healthy place. Like, they might be aware of that from an intellectual perspective. It might inform, like, how they feel about renewing MLBTV. Maybe they point to the Dodgers as either, like, a paragon, a virtue, or a boogeyman.

But, like, really, it's about what's right in front of them because that's what they're watching for, you know, probably not all 162, but, like, for the majority of the, the summer and sort of bring it all the way back to like why do they why do they care about tanking why does that prove distasteful even if like you do end up with a butterclub on the back end of it well because like that's a long time to sit and shit you know it just is and so you got to watch out for that and you don't want people to feel like they're sitting in shit all summer that's yeah yeah and there's certainly a problem in baseball which we've talked about plenty of not spending or not trying as hard as they can to compete, which I think is different from tanking, but maybe that's, maybe that's semantics.

You know, ultimately it's, it's anti-competitive either way. So in baseball, we don't talk about tanking so much anymore, but we certainly talk about the Dodgers and spending. And then we talk about and bemoaned owners that don't spend and then just pocket the revenue sharing money and are content not to compete. And as you said, maybe that behavior will be a little less widespread. if teams are dependent on actually attracting fans to the park and providing a good product for people to subscribe to or whatever. But that has been a pervasive issue.

And maybe that's just baseball's crossed a bear and it's a little bit different from the NBA one. But ultimately, I guess both are about not trying to win at all times just in different ways. Yeah, I do think that if you are genuinely employing a strategy of look, we have a lot of spots on the roster that we need to upgrade. We need to strip down the big league roster to the studs in in an effort to get guys who we think will be part of the next competitive core. We're going to do that hard rebuild. And then on the back end of it, we're going to have good team controllable talent.

And then we will spend money beyond those guys to make the club better. Is that a fun fan experience in the intervening years? It's not. And I think that like some of the best. teams in the league find ways to strike the balance between long-term sustainability and short-term performance. But I do think that that is a fundamentally different compact you're making with your fan base than, well, you have enough money to try to win 86 games. And that's how much you have and not a dollar more. That's a different contract that you're entering into with your

fan base. And then maybe you have a smart and capable front office and they're really good at developing guys and they draft well and they pull dudes out of unexpected places in trade and like, wow, you have a roster that can compete. But like you as the owner, when you say you have enough payroll for 86, anything above and beyond that is like the grit and acumen and determination of your staff. You're telling your fans, you're telling your fans, that you expect different from yourself and they are allowed to expect differently from you. And I think that's a different bargain,

which isn't to say that either of them are good, but they are, I do think, importantly, different from one another. I cannot speak to the bargains they make in the MBA. I am under the understanding that sometimes you circumvent the cap with no-show sponsorship deals and then I get to listen to really compelling podcast material

about it for, like, year. That's one thing I know about the NBA. It is funny that in that conversation about the Clippers and Kauai, we never ask, well, should they be a captive league to begin with? We don't ask that question. We should ask that question more, Pablo. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder whether MLB owners are grateful that Pablo has not turned his attention to them quite as often as he has to other sports and other weeks. I guess we should be grateful for that. Or maybe not. Maybe there's a wrongdoing that we wish he would expose. Who knows? I mean, if he wants to take a look at the international free agent market on the afternoon night, I say go forth and do, Pablo. Yeah, that might be too obviously

corrupt for him to tackle because we don't even need him to find out. We all know already, but no one seems to do anything about it. Anyway, Regis High School's own Pablo Torre. I know. Always welcome on the podcast. So not to praise Dan Wilson's bullpen management, because I would never. But since you brought it. up. That made me think of one other thing. For one thing, you pay much closer attention to Dan Wilson's bullpen management than I do. Won't good argue too much. That specific game that everyone was mad at him because he used Legamina. Yeah. And it was Monday. They lost six to four. And Legamina gave up three runs in the eighth. And it was a high leverage role, which he's not normally in. But there's a

perception that Wilson likes him. Right. And so some people said, oh, the Mariners took his toy away, basically by DFAing him after that. And that's, I mean, since time immemorial managers have fallen in love with guys in frustrating fashion that is just really hard for anyone outside the team to figure out. But in his slight defense, in this case, they had used a lot of guys, right? And so his options were somewhat limited. They were more limited. Yeah, because Gabe Spire had pitched in a couple of consecutive days.

And then Bizarro was warming. but then he would have been in three of four games and Munoz wasn't available, right? So it's like- Yeah, because he had gone back to back also. So yes, there were absolutely some mitigating circumstances. I think Logan Gilbert just caught a baseball in his shirt. This is the, I'm sorry, breaking, X-Try, X-Try. I hope you're okay. That looked uncomfortable.

I have to send this to you. This is the coolest, dumb. thing I've ever seen. Yeah, why limit yourself to a glove when you can use all of your clothing? How did the fabric allow for that to happen? And hey, he's defying Ron Darling because it looks like this hurt a little bit. He's like rubbing. It sure did look like it hurt a little bit. He's going, oof. Yeah, he's showing visible signs of pain. So we will see if he suffers for that. But yeah, nice, nice catch, whether it was intentional. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, just. Use the whole body. Use your jersey. Why not? Anyway.

And they're already down two runs. Okay. The larger global point that I wanted to make about that was just that teams are often kind of handcuffing managers in this situation. And maybe managers are doing it to themselves, too, just because of the way that they use or don't use pitchers now. And it used to be that even when you had seven or eight guys or however many guys in your bullpen, you still might use them, say, three games in a row and no one would bat an eye. and now even that is almost off limits unless it's the playoffs or something. And so if you only have so many good relievers and you're asking those relievers to throw more innings because the starters aren't pitching as much, and then you're also imposing limitations on how often those relievers can pitch, even if they're one inning at a time, guys. Well, then you end up in a situation where you don't always have your desirable relievers available. So not saying Wilson does a great job within those constraints. I'm just saying there are more and more of those constraints.

And sometimes it leaves you without a wealth of enviable options. I want to make clear that my default position on managers and reliever usage is that managers are in possession of much more information about the availability of any given guy on his staff. then we are, and you're right, we don't know what confines he's being asked to work in, and both of the higher leverage guys had worked back to back days. And Munoz has been very shaky in the early going. Seems like he's starting to ride the ship, but he has had really, really Garbo command, especially of his slider. So, is it fair to be like,

Like, yeah, how dare you use the bean man? I wanted the bean man to be good because I was ready to do a lot of bean-based humor and embrace the challenge of it not being about farting, you know? Like I was, I saw that as like a good writing challenge for me. I'm like, look, what other bean jokes do you got? Because it can't be about the toots, you know? The toots, that's too obvious. And then the toots were obvious. You know, in a way.

So I think you're right that we should be cognizant of the current constraints that modern managers find themselves in. You know, they're tied up with a ball of string. But then, like, but then, Ben, what happens is Dan Wilson sometimes takes that ball of string that he signed up with and, like, tries a bunch of knots in it. And you're like, well, are you helping yourself there, Dan, you know? Did you get yourself out of your fix or did you make your fix worse? That's sort of the question that we have to ask sometimes with Dan Wilson. Relievers writ large have still been worse than starters on the whole this season, which is weird. I don't think that'll continue all season because it never does.

But even for it to have persisted to this point as unusual, relievers have a higher ERA, FIPP, XFIP, whatever, than starters. And even a lower velocity, average four-seamer velocity than starters, which maybe is just a reflection of the fact that starters are being asked to do less and they're just max effort all the time. And of course, they're position player pitchers and openers mixed into all of this, but still, league-wide relievers have been struggling. And maybe it's because even though it seems like there's just a bottomless well of fastball slider guys you can call up who will throw 100, maybe that's true. But still, not all of them will be good. And eventually the underbelly of your bullpen will be exposed. Hopefully not in high levered spots, but sometimes. The other point that I wanted to make about

parallel with other sports. I think this is maybe an area where baseball is more comparable, but still meaningfully different. I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal headlined the obsessive race to make a four-ounce running shoe. And it's all about how the edges now in track are often equipment-related. And so, for example, there was a study that showed that elite runners wearing shoes 3.5 ounces lighter than normal could run a marathon about 57 seconds faster. Wow. And that's a big margin when you're elite and super competitive. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bigger difference than I would have thought. Yeah. And yeah, it's a small percentage difference, but it's still, it could be a differentiator when you're at that level of things. Yeah.

And so there is this arms race or foot race. Well, foot race, something else, but whatever. There's an equipment race. And this has been going on for a while. Obviously, the times keep coming down in all sorts of track and field and swimming and all of these sports where it's kind of head to head and you can measure everything precisely. And so records get broken over and over except, I guess, in some cases where like PED-Aided, probably records stand for a long time after you maybe root out some of those substances from your sport. But a lot of it is, not to question that the athletes themselves are getting better and faster and stronger, because of course they are too. But also a lot of the day,

difference is just like who has a lighter shoe and the condition of the track itself and is the track more conducive to running fast and the same when it comes to skiing or swimming or whatever, right? Like the suit you wear, the equipment, the, you know, is there friction, is there wind resistance, all that stuff. And that often makes the difference or a difference. And we're sort of spared that to an extent in MLB. The nice thing about it, is that in those sports you can often clearly track and document, yeah, people are better now than they used to be. And so it's harder to do the back in my day kind of thing when you have strict times that show differences and records keep breaking and falling. And so in baseball, I'd like to think that most people accept that the players are better.

But you still, even when it's something like fastball speed, which we have tracked and has obviously increased, people will still say, yeah, but back in the day, the radar guns and they measured at different spots and everything, which is true, but not true enough to make up for the overall uptick in speeds and everything. I don't even want to wade into that whole conversation. Because it's so dumb. Yeah, I really, either side of it. I don't, I'm not really that motivated to like drum into everyone's heads that people used to throw less hard on the whole than they do now. Yes, Nolan Ryan threw hard, Walter Johnson threw hard. They were outliers, but on the whole, I think you can extrapolate from what we've seen over the past 15 years or so. Anyway, yeah, there's a lot of misinformation going on or just ill-informed folks or

motivated reasoning happening there. But in baseball equipment obviously matters, but there's, I guess, less variation among players maybe. Now, obviously, as we saw with the whole torpedo bat uproar last year when there is any suggestion that perhaps some equipment change did get certain players in edge that becomes an enormous story but maybe it became a big story in baseball because that's fairly rare we don't talk that much obviously everyone's using the same baseball and you know gloves vary and bats vary but there are specifications everyone kind of has to be within and there's not that wider range obviously when the baseball it's itself was behaving differently and changing, as it still does to some extent.

That was a huge story. But that usually at least wasn't so much about any particular player or team getting an edge. It was just about how this was disrupting the league as a whole. And granted, maybe some players and teams were benefiting disproportionately from that. All I'm saying is players are absolutely improving and they're improving in all kinds of technology-driven ways. So baseball is very analogous in that sense. You have all your pitching labs and your cameras and your cameras.

and your tracking tech and all of that. And it's being fine-tuned. But it's not so much because someone's using a different shoe or something like that, which almost makes it seem kind of artificial. It's like, well, if you just broke a record because you had a different suit or shoe or something, well, then it's not coming down to the athletes being better so much as it is the equipment manufacturers or what is actually allowed or not. So I guess I'm glad that there's a little less of that in baseball.

but there's not none of it. And certainly you could look at gloves being bigger than they were a long time ago, certainly playing a part in fielders being better now. And Richard Hirschberger, our past blaster extraordinaire, 19th century baseball expert, he has seriously recommended that if you want to get the babips down and make fielders a little worse, than you could make the gloves smaller like they used to be. So there's definitely some of that going on. but it seems like

and you know there's safety stuff like equipment catchers helmets maybe being improved and we're all for that of course but it just seems like the performance

differences the margins it's not so much because someone is using different personalized equipment even though there's a little of that with the bats obviously being shaped depending on your proclivities

as a hitter and your traits and all that so yeah baseball's not immune to that but it seems like there's a little less emphasis or attention or the perception that, hey, maybe someone won that race or won that game because they were using slightly more optimized precision machined equipment or something. I guess I just hope that that doesn't become even more prevalent in baseball because I do kind of ultimately want it to come down to the players and the athletes.

I'm sort of consistent on that point as opposed to the instruction or the equipment. I think you're right on the equipment score, in part because the things that would most obviously impact performance are often banned, right? Like you can't cork the bat, right? Yeah. Or like sticky stuff. That was a big story. And then there was a crackdown. And maybe some players or teams were benefiting from that more than others and using different kinds of sticky stuff that was even more not allowed. So yeah. Right. But also, I think you might be underrated. the degree to which the notion that we are over-optimized to the point of potential exhaustion is a thing in baseball compared to other sports, right? Oh, yeah, that's true.

So I think that you're right that the idea that, you know, like a special kind of cleat is going to make the difference in a guy being fast versus not. Like, that isn't really part of the sport. but I do think that there is a long tradition of goofing with equipment, although there are consequences for doing that when you're caught. So, you know, there's push and pull there. And I don't think that, like, the torpedo bat thing didn't really have legs as it turned out. A lot of it was just, like, the Brewers were bad at pitching for a series and then everyone kind of calmed down.

But we do have to worry about the, like, optimized to the point of being less entertaining thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, baseball is born in the brinkering. of that, if anything, baseball has had that, which I think is one reason why the rules changes in MLB have been aggressive and fairly effective of late. And that's why I sometimes hear NBA fans saying, if only our league could be more like Major League Baseball, which is still just strange to hear, but the idea that, yeah, some things were optimized, they became less spectator-friendly, and then the league decides

that it has to step in to correct some of those things. But yeah, you're right. Baseball has not been spared that at all. If anything, it was at the forefront of let's optimize the heck out of the game in ways that might make you better at baseball, but might not be as fun for fans. Yeah. Also, just wanted to share a PSA from a listener, John Joyce,

who has created a tool to enable effectively wild listeners to meet up, to meet up in meet space, which Meg hates when I say. I don't like meet space. Yeah, to meet up. Not IRL, because we're in real life right now too, but in person, in the ballpark, in the flesh. And I'm always heartened when effectively wild listeners meet up at a ballpark and go to a game and send us pictures or whatever and have a grand old time together and combat various loneliness epidemics. So if you're into that, John has created a website where you can register and signal your willingness and interest in a meetup. and you can just enter your info and you can just say where you live and a little bit of information,

not too much information, but whatever you're comfortable, just like first name, last initial, you could even make that up if you want. And you just say where you are in the U.S. or Canada and how far you're willing to travel. And then John will collate the responses and he has it so that he can see what teams are in the area, not just MLB, but indie ball, minor leagues, etc. And people could maybe meet up and go to a game. So it's just a tool to help people meet up with each other at a game in their area if they care to. So I will share a link to that on the show page.

And it'll prompt you for a password when you go to this site just to keep the riffraff out, just to keep people from wandering in off the internet. But the password is just EW 2026. and I will put that on the show page as well. And if you're interested in finding like-minded listeners who are more or less neighbors of yours and just go into a game at some point, then you can do that.

And John says that you will delete all the information at the end of this season. And hopefully something good will come of that. If so, please let us know if you're able to find other listeners in your area to go to a game and have fun. In Meetspace, In Meetspace, exactly.

Now, we'll end with a couple stat blasts. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA minus or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting to take it, discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways to-day. All right, here's one from David because we had another game, another day, another Munitaka Morikami home run. He hit a home run in his fourth straight game on Tuesday. And David says Morikami hit his ninth home run on Tuesday, which coincided with the White Sox's ninth win of the season.

I'm told this puts him on pace for 66 homers for the season. And if so, I'm curious, a player can't possibly have hit more home runs than their team won in a single season, right? If they have, wow. Yes, indeed. That would be wowworthy. If not, can we find out how late into the season a player has accomplished this? If Murakami gets his 10th homer before the White Sox win their 10th game, how remarkable would that be historically? And Michael Mountain frequented has answered that one for us. It has never happened in a full season. No. So, yeah, that would be worth a wow. But 37 players in the RetroSheet era, in 1910 to present have hit their 10th homer of the season before their team's 10th win.

The closest to doing it in a full season was Sammy Sosa in 1999. He hit his 61st home run of the year on September 19th, which was the Cubs 149th game and their 60th win. So he almost made it. Nobody else has even made it to July on this pace. So the only other guys who have made it past May, Adam Dunn, hit 17 homers before the Nationals had 17 wins in 2009. Manny Machado in 2018 had 18 homers before the Orioles had 17 wins. That was June 2nd, June 6th for Dunn.

Kent Herbeck in 1982, June 10th. He had 15 homers before the twins had 14 wins. 2001, Barry Bonds. June 15th, 2001, he had 36 dingers before the Giants had 36 wins. and Ken Griffey Jr. in 1994, June 24th, he had 32 homers before the Mariners had 32 wins. So yeah, no one has even made it half a full season doing this. And Sammy Sosa, well, maybe there were some special circumstances there. So the last player to do this, though, to have gotten even 10 games in was Mike Trout in 2020,

which was September because it was 2020. but he hit his 13th homer before the Angels had their 13th win. They were 37 games into their season. So, yeah, tough to do. Good luck, Murakami. And also we got a question from Isaac, Patreon supporter, who said the Cubs are currently on a seven-game winning streak. This was sent to us on Wednesday,

which has included wins over the Mets and Phillies. Those wins extended the Mets and Phillies own losing streaks, which currently stand at 12 and 7 games respectively. Obviously, any winning streak is going to cause another team to have a losing streak during the series, but is playing two teams with losing streaks equal to or longer than your winning streak unusual? What's the longest winning streak while playing multiple teams mired in long losing streaks? So Michael says, in all the analysis that follows, Thai games will not be considered to break either a winning streak or a losing streak.

This matches how streaks are described on baseball reference. So there's a couple different ways of looking at this. Isaac's question is posed retroactively. The Phillies didn't have a seven-game losing streak when they played the Cubs, but the losing streak that started during the Cubs series has since expanded to become lengthy. Upon initially reading this message, I was more curious about the contemporary situation where two teams that are already in the middle of long streaks begin a series against each other and both streaks continue.

I found the 1978 Boston Red Sox, who were on a five-game winning streak with the Oakland A's coming to town themselves on a six-game losing streak. The Red Sox won both games to extend their streak to seven of winning, and then hosted the Mariners, who entered that series on a eight-game losing streak. Boston won the first two games against Seattle, becoming the only team since 1914 to accumulate a win-streek of seven or longer that involved winning against at least two other teams who were both in a longer losing streak at the time those games were played. to return to Isaac's question as originally posed, where we label a winning or losing streak based on how long it ends up being. A streak of seven games winning or longer while playing against

multiple other teams mired in losing streaks at least that long is unusual, but not unprecedented. It has happened fewer than a hundred times in recorded Major League history. Most recently by the 2022 Red Sox, they racked up a seven-game winning streak that included beating the A's and Angels in early June, while those teams were in the middle of what turned out to be 10 and 14-game losing Streaks, respectively. The longest such streak is an 11-game winning streak accomplished three times the 1884 Washington Nationals of the Union Association from August 27th to September 12th. That streak included wins over the Baltimore Monumentals, who had had a monumental losing streak of 11 games, and the Kansas City Cowboys who had lost 15 in a row. Love those Union Association

team names. Also, the 1914 Brooklyn Dodgers from September 8,000.5.5.5. 18th to September 26th. Their streak included wins over the Reds who had lost 19 in a row, and the pirates who lost 12 in a row, and the 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates from September 9th to September 17th, that streak included wins over the Phillies, who had a 14-game losing streak, and the Braves who had a 15-game losing streak. The other point that Isaac didn't explicitly mention, but I think is noteworthy, is that the current Cub streak is exclusively the result of beating the Mets and Phillies. Ah, yeah, that is a little different. So if your streak comes entirely from extending the streaks of other teams, yeah.

So this will only be true if the streak ends in their next three games, but at least for now, that does make it significantly more unusual. The seven-game winning streak or longer exclusively made up of wins against teams that are in the middle of what turned out to be longer losing streaks has happened only 21 times in Major League history, only five times in the integration era, and only twice in quote-unquote modern baseball by the Sam Miller definition of 19. 1988 to present. The 1992 Mets had a seven-game winning streak from August 24th to August 30th, because the Mets, they did at one time have winning streaks also against the Giants who had a nine-game losing streak and the Reds who had a seven-game losing streak and the 2000 Cardinals who had a seven-game winning streak from September 11th to September 17th against the Pirates, who had a nine-game losing streak and the Cubs who had an eight-gamer. And Michael has attached a spreadsheet of those 21 occurrences.

prior to this season. The longest ever streak of this type is nine games, which is a record the Cubs can tie this year if they finish the sweep against Philly and then lose their series opener to L.A. Of course, they could surpass this record if their winning streak continues, but that would require them to sweep the Dodgers to kick off a long Dodgers losing streak. And the Mets and Phillies would also need to extend their active losing streaks as well, which seems unlikely despite the Mets and Phillies best efforts of late. And Michael clarifies that the Phillies did, of course, have to be able to.

have a seven-game losing streak after their game against the Cubs on Tuesday, April 21st. He meant that they didn't have a lengthy losing streak when the Cubs streak began during the matchup between those two teams the prior week. Okay. Good luck to everyone who's trying to end snap a losing streak. Yeah. And the last one I'll give you is from Alan, Patreon supporter, who says, I was recently attending the April 19th game in Seattle between the Rangers and Mariners, and noticed that

the number six hitter for the visiting Rangers. Josh Young wears jersey number, number six. The eighth hitter in the lineup, Josh Smith, wears number eight. Finally, the nine-hole hitter that day was catcher Danny Jansen who wears number nine. It got me thinking, what is the one game that had the most individual uniform numbers of one team's lineup that matched their slot in the batting order that day? Three out of nine batters fitting this criteria on a given day doesn't seem all that extraordinary, but considering the fact that most players wear a jersey number that is higher than nine, one that's. third of the lineup, equaling their spot in the batting order definitely stuck out to me. So I directed this one to the great Kenny Jacqueline at baseball reference, because baseball

reference has uniform number data. And I will have one blanket disclaimer here, which is that baseball reference has uniform number data not on a game by game basis, but on a seasonal basis, which is usually fine for these purposes. But if, say, a player changed their jersey number mid-season or something, which has happened, then maybe this wouldn't completely pick up on that. But most guys have the same jersey number, at least within a single season. So Kenny did the best he could here.

And this is interesting. He says, we've seen eight matches, but never nine. So it has happened that eight hitters in the lineup, their batting order spot matched their uniform number. But never nine. And he says, really tough when all the games where there were eight matches were so long ago that it would rely on a pitcher wearing nine, which was very uncommon in that era. So there were several teams that did this a bunch of times, games with eight matches.

The Washington Senators in 1932 did it 16 times. The Yankees in 1929 did it seven times. The Yankees in 1930 did it four times. And the New York Giants in 1932 did it three times. And so Kenny includes an example with many famous names from one of the, those prolific matching teams, the 1929 Yankees. So, for example, lead-off batter in some games was Earl Coombs, who wore number one and was batting number one. And then Mark Koenig was batting two and wore two. Babe Ruth famously, batting third, wearing number three. Lou Gehrig, batting fourth,

wearing four. Bob Muzel was batting fifth and wearing five. Tony Lazeri was batting six and wearing six. Leo DeRosher was batting seventh and wearing seven. Johnny Grabowski. was batting eighth and wearing number eight. And then the guy who ruined it was George Pipgrass, who was pitching and batting ninth, but was wearing uniform number 14. The thing is that this has gotten a lot less common over time. And I guess you would expect that based on that Yankees example, because a lot of the players I just mentioned, Hall of Famers and guys who have their numbers in Monument Park and the Yankees have retired the number of everyone who's ever played for them. So this can't happen anymore because no one's wearing three and four and one and six or whatever for the Yankees anymore.

So they're out, basically. So there's a handy table here, which I will include. But basically, if you look at it kind of all time and then in more recent years, so, nine matches has never happened. Eight matches has happened 30 times, but it has not happened at all post-94, wildcard era, or even post-a-old. post-61 expansion era. Seven matches has happened 171 times, but that has never happened even in the expansion era. Six matches has happened 277 times, but that has never happened in the expansion era.

So you have to go back. Five matches has happened 744 times, and that happened one time in the expansion era, but not at all in the wildcard era. Four matches has happened 1647 times, and that's happened 99 times. in the expansion era, but only 20 times in the wildcard era. And then you can keep going three matches, which is the case that prompted the question. That has happened 5,423 times, but 1168 times in the expansion era, and only 338 in the wildcard era. So even that is getting less frequent and bigger numbers for the two matches and one matches and zero matches, obviously, but I will leave that

to the listener to look up. I will link to this on the show page. The last team to achieve four matches was the 2024 Angels, and they had three different combinations involving six different players. So Taylor Ward, not Tyler Wade, he was wearing number three and was batting third. Joe Adele was wearing seven and batting seventh. And then Tucker was batting eighth and wearing eight. And Netto was batting ninth and wearing nine. And that happened a couple times. And then there were a couple times with Renhifo. And then, a couple times with Cole Calhoun involved or one time. So it hasn't happened since 2024.

I don't know whether that'll turn out to be the last time ever. It's still, I guess, theoretically possible, but quite uncommon. And in 2026, the questioner Allen kind of downplayed how remarkable he even thought this was. But three matches is actually quite unusual even now. And so the nationals have done that seven times this season with Luis Garcia Jr., batting second and wearing two. Dalin Lyle batting fourth and wearing four, CJ Abrams batting fifth and wearing five. The Cubs have done it twice

with Bregman, Pete Crowe Armstrong, and Dansby Swanson, three, four, and seven. The Padres have done it twice with Xander Bogart's wearing two, Jackson Merrill wearing three, and Ramon Luriano wearing five. And then the Rangers have done it the one time that Alan noticed.

And that's it. Only four teams have had even three matches. So this is almost like some sort of score. kind of thing where it's happening less and less. It's just there are too many numbers retired. And also there are players who are just exploring the studio space a little more when it comes to Jersey numbers and just wearing high numbers and everything. And so yeah, we're not seeing this so much anymore. It seems like three is the most we've seen this season. Even four might be out of

reach. So excellent answer from Kenny and well-noticed Alan that even three matches is quite unusual these days. So we're not Jersey number people for the most part, but no. This one, this caught my interest. Yeah. This was, uh, this was cool enough to Stap Blast. Cool. Well, I come to you now from the slightly less distant past to bring

glad tidings to New York. Mets win! Mets win! It was not the most convincing victory. It was a one run game, three to two over the twins despite another Byron Bucksden Dinger. But they'll take it. They're back in the win column, and now they're just another struggling NLE's team. They have the same record

is the Phillies. And the Phillies have a long losing street going. Not quite as long as the Mets one was, but it's still active. And with a worse run differential. So who cares about curses? I don't know that we can say that Juan Soto delivered this victory. He did reach base a couple of times, but didn't directly factor in the scoring. Nonetheless, when Soto's in the lineup, the Mets are a winning team this season. And now Mets fans hope the climb to contention begins. I was reminded while watching the last few innings of that game, which felt kind of like a playoff game. The Mets wanted that win. Marcus Semyon has contributed to this slow start with a slow start of his own. And last year when we talked about the Brandon Nimmo Marcus Semyon trade, that was episode 2405.

Meg and I, I believe, differed somewhat on that trade. I was higher on Nimmo. She was higher on Semen. We didn't make a formal bet or prediction or anything. So far, so good for my end of things. Brandon Nimmo has a 142 WRC plus and 0.8 war. Semian 74 WRC plus. Point one war.

A lot of season left to go. That could change. But some ex-Mets doing well while their replacements have struggled has only added insult to the injury of the losing streak. Granted, Edwin Diaz suffered an actual injury. And now he's out for months. Not that Devin Williams has looked so hot either. I also had a bold preseason prediction that hinged on Devin Williams pitching better for the Mets than he had for the Yankees or having a higher war. So far not so good.

Also, on Wednesday after we recorded, Murakami homered again, his 10th. But the White Sox lost, so they're still stuck at nine wins, which means a, state the stat blast already, Murakami becomes the latest player to hit his 10th home run of the season before his team's 10th win. I'll end here with a smattering of mini blasts. Stap blasts aftershocks, some of which are in the vein of recent stat blasts, lots of half-inning related questions, because I believe we've got a good guest lined up for next time. So let's clear out the blasting backlog. One from Raymond Chen in our Patreon Discord group. I wonder what's the most run scored in the top half of an extra inning that was exactly matched or maybe exceeded

in the bottom half. Like, ha ha, we put it out of reach, and then, oops. Well, Patreon supporter Avery answered this one. In any major league, it's the Brooklyn tip-tops and the St. Louis Terriers of the Federal League in 1914, June 16th. Seven runs were scored in the top of the 12th, eight in the bottom of the 12th. And the terriers triumphed over the tip-tops, who were not tip-top that day. In the AL or NL, there are two different instances of five runs in the top of an extra inning and six runs in the bottom. The Cubs at the Pirates, April 21st, 1991. and the Dodgers at the Diamondback, September 27th, 2011. That's almost zombie runner-esque extra innings scoring for the Terriers and the tip-tops.

Sucks to score seven in the top half of the 12th and still lose. Anything you can do, I can do better. This made Michael Mountain curious. If you remove the extra innings requirement, the most runs scored in an inning by a team that was outscored in said inning is eight. By the Tigers, May 8, 2004 in Arlington. They scored eight runs in the top of the fifth, and the Rangers responded with 10 runs in the bottom of the inning.

Relatedly, Mountain was wondering what's the highest number of innings won in a game by the losing team? That is, innings in which the losing team scored more runs than the eventual winning team. And the answer is six innings won by a losing team. And this has happened six times on record according to RetroSheet, but only twice in a nine-inning game. And both were at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, first accomplished by the 1923 Brooklyn Robbins against the Cardinals on August 1st, then by the 1934 Cardinals against the Reds on July 6th. more innings slash scoring-related question. This came from Patreon user Small E, prompted by an observation in the Discord group by Skelly, who noticed that the twins and reds had scored in alternating half-innings for the fifth consecutive inning. Small E wondered, how many five-to-four nine-inning games have there been with that checkerboard scoring pattern? And Mountain determined, it's never happened. There's only one game in his retrosheet database that fulfills the checkerboard scoring pattern when you color based on run-scored equals zero versus run-scored greater than zero. So there's no requirement that the run scoring be identical across all run scoring half innings.

And it was called early due to rain. June 2nd, 1954, Dodgers versus Milwaukee Braves. Dodgers scored one to the Brave Zero in the first. The Braves scored one to the Dodger zero in the second. The Dodgers scored one to the Brave Zero in the third. The Braves scored five to the Dodger zero in the fourth. And the Dodgers scored five to the Brave Zero in the fifth. Dodgers win seven to six.

The deepest into a game that we've seen the one-run checkerboard pattern continue, Mountain says is through the top of the sixth. That's happened twice, most recently at Yankee Stadium on July 29th, 2017 against the raise. And if you allow any non-zero amount of scoring in each colored checkerboard square, the deepest into a game that we've seen the pattern continue is through the top of the eighth. That's happened once, 1928, Cleveland versus Detroit. April 17th, the innings went one to nothing, Cleveland, two to nothing, Detroit, one to nothing, Cleveland, one to nothing, Detroit, one to nothing Cleveland, one to nothing, Cleveland, one to nothing, Cleveland, and then zero-zero in the eighth, and one-to-nothing Cleveland in the ninth for a six-to-four

victory. And lastly, Patreon supporter DCC underscore Demap asks, how many times have teams hit for the cycle in order? That is, how many times have four consecutive players in a batting order hit a single, double, triple, and home run in that order? And Michael Mountain says, 12 times on record, according to RetroSheet. Most recently by the Diamondbacks on July 19, 2019, Gerard Dyson, Citell Marte, Eduardo Escobar, and Christian Walker off of Yolice Chasin.

in the third inning. I would have taken the over on 12 times. I'm sort of surprised that it hasn't happened more often than that. Oh, and you know last time when Meg mentioned the besuited John Kruk, I said he looked kind of like Chris Farley in the Matt Foley van down by the river SNL skit. Well, what I didn't remember, and I was reminded of by Patreon supporter Mulder Batflip, is that Chris Farley actually played John Kroc on Saturday Night Live. Briefly, but I'll play you a clip. This was during a weekend update with Kevin Neillan at the desk, and this was, I believe, the night of game six of the 1993 World Series when the Blue Jays beat Krux's Phillies with Kruk in the lineup, to be clear.

I will compress this already short skit. During the World Series, the Philadelphia Phillies have been accused of being unshaven, overweight, long-haired, dumb slabs. You're not to answer those charges as Phillies' first baseman, John Kruk. John? Hey, Kevin. I'm glad I'm finally getting a chance to talk about this. John, before you get started, I just have to ask you one more thing.

What's up, Chief? What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in Toronto tonight? I knew there was something to do. How'd we do? Toronto 1, 86. I should have been there. Ladies and gentlemen, John Crutch.

I don't feel too bad about forgetting this, because evidently Kruck did too. Levi Weaver of the Athletic posted this on Blue Sky during that Kruk broadcast on Sunday. John Kruk in the booth just said he hadn't ever watched Saturday Night Live. Jason Benetti asked, weren't you in a skid at some point? Cruck said he didn't think so, not as far as he knew. And Levi said, imagine Chris Farley played you in an S&L skid and you never even knew it. Pretty on brand, I guess. One more reminder to sign up for the Effectively Wild 2026 meetup site. If you're interested, password EW 2026, linked on the show page. Find Follow Effectively Wild listeners in your area.

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Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a patron, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast post of Fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast ad for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance.

We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then.