Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2477: Can Cleveland Framemog the Majors?

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Spencer Jones facing an overclocked Jacob Misiorowski in Jones’s MLB debut, the distance from the mound to home plate when Ryan Waldschmidt is batting, Gage Workman’s middle name, and Tarik Skubal’s loose lima bean, then discuss the surprising Patrick Bailey trade—including takes on Bailey’s bat and framing value in the ABS era, the leadership of Buster Posey and Tony Vitello, Cleveland doubling down on the Austin Hedges catching model, and the virtues of Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson—plus thoughts on the bouncebacks of Bryce Harper and Michael Conforto, the Pirates’ rotation, iron man Matt Olson, a Craig Kimbrel meltdown, and the death of Bobby Cox. Audio intro: Garrett Krohn, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Pedantic)” Link to “POV” meme Link to Jones debut Link to Jones stance tweet Link to Judge/Jones comparison Link to first Jones vs. Miz PA Link to 103 mph+ pitches Link to fastest pitches of 2026 Link to top SP seasons by K% Link to “Ballad of a Thin Man” Link to tallest outfield Link to Ben on big Yankees Link to Waldschmidt quote Link to Workman middle name info 1 Link to Workman middle name info 2 Link to “taters” Gollum clip Link to Boras on the “Skubal scope” Link to Boras/Olney podcast Link to last year’s Boras/Skubal quote Link to FG post on Bailey Link to Dubuque on Bailey Link to Baggarly on Bailey/Posey 1 Link to Baggarly on Bailey/Posey 2 Link to Rosenthal on Posey Link to Bailey’s framing at FG Link to 2026 FG framing leaders Link to 2025 FG framing leaders Link to Savant framing leaders Link to top players since Bailey’s call-up Link to top Giants since Bailey’s call-up Link to top catchers since Bailey’s call-up Link to Giants dugout pitch-calling article 1 Link to Giants dugout pitch-calling article 2 Link to Bailey wRC+ joke Link to story about Hedges the hitter Link to “framemog” at wiktionary Link to framemogging meme Link to NPR on framemogging Link to Vitello quote about effort Link to Vitello pitching change confusion Link to Kapler pitching change confusion Link to La Russa pitching change confusion Link to Nightengale on the trade deadline Link to MLBTR on the Giants’ outlook Link to team run differentials Link to Conforto wRC+ leaderboard Link to top team SP by WAR Link to Pirates SP production Link to FG MLB WAR leaders Link to longest consecutive games streaks Link to Freeman vs. Olson WAR post-2022 Link to worst RP WPAs Link to Kimbrel loss Link to Kimbrel grand slam story Link to Chavez’s Giants origin story Link to “OTP” explainer Link to Cox obit Link to Atlanta championship expectations Link to Cox research 1 Link to Cox research 2 Link to Cox research 3 Link to manager longevity article Link to data on ejection causes Link to CCS ejections posts Link to 2026 manager ejection count Link to 2025 manager ejections count Link to 2024 manager ejections count Link to manager ejections data over time Link to 2016 THT article on Cox DV Link to 1995 THT article on Cox DV Link to Clevinger report 1 Link to Clevinger report 2 Link to Tigers Triple-A manager firing Link to Mixtape wiki Link to “bro explaining” meme Link to Mixtape baseball quote 1 Link to Mixtape baseball quote 2 Link to Ben’s gaming podcast Link to article on foul ball increases Link to 2026 foul ball leaders Link to 1988 foul ball data  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

We're going to crunch those stats. We're going to talk about baseball. Sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all. If you want good takes on baseball and life, just tune in a band and his lovely co-host. Ben and Meg, it's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to you.

to episode 2477 of Effectively Wild, a Baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Here's my attempt at a TikTok style POV meme. You know the POV where you say POV? And then supposedly there's something from that person's POV, except usually they do it backwards and it's just POV, but then they just show someone doing something instead of showing that person's point of view. But POV, you're Spencer Jones, Yankees outfield prospect, and you're called up to make your major league debut replacing the injured Jason Dominguez.

And you want to make a good first impression. And people are concerned about your strikeout rate for good reason, because it's been upwards of 30% in AAA. So maybe you come out swinging, maybe you come out not swinging. You don't want to strike out. Maybe you want to make some contact. You want to have a good first game. So it's Friday, May 8th, and your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is Jacob Mizorowski.

That's whom you have to face as the strikeout prone rookie. You have to face the guy who is basically the best at striking people out in the world, at least for starting pitchers. That seems unfair. So then you come out, you face Mizorowski, and the first pitch that you see from him is 103.6 miles per hour. Yeah. You take it for a called strike.

And then you say, well, maybe I'll offer it one. And then the next one, you know, he dials it back a bit. This is a change of speeds. He takes something off. It's down to 102.3. But he still beats you. You swing through it. then you say, okay, well, you can't beat me twice with that cheddar.

You better not come in there again. He throws you 103.6 again. You manage to get a piece of it. You foul it off. And then down one, two, he throws you an 89 mile per hour curveball. And you strike out in your first major league played appearance. And everyone says, uh, see Spencer Jones contact issues. He's going to strike out too much to succeed.

He did. I think he tipped that last one. It was a foul tip strikeout. But nonetheless, I just, I felt for the guy, you know? Like, you don't want to come up and immediately confirm everyone's worst fears. Oh, yeah, Spencer Jones, he's the strikeout prone rookie. And then you draw the Miz. Yeah. That's just, and not only the Miz who's striking out 40% of batters. If he keeps this up, I think it would be the highest strikeout rate ever for a. a qualified starter, if he even is a qualified starter. Right. But the Miz seemingly leveled up, too, because in this game of all games, maybe he was excited by the prospect of facing Spencer Jones. Who knows? But he throws even harder than he usually does.

He's already the hardest throwing starter. But in this game, he just decides, I'm just going to raise it a little bit. I have another gear here. And he throws in this one start. start the six fastest pitches ever tracked by a starting pitcher. So that just seems unfair. There are 14 tracked pitches in the pitch tracking era, regular season plus postseason, 14 of them that have gone 100, 3 miles per hour or more.

And Jacob Mizorowski is responsible for 11 of them. And one of them was on May 1st and the other 10 were in this game. this game. That's not fair. Come on. I mean, he's just amped to deal with the Yankees. There's something very fitting to my mind about the occasion for Spencer Jones's call up being an injury to Jason Dominguez. And we should take a moment to just be like, ah, poor Jason Dominguez, you know.

Yeah, he was hitting. Yeah, it's been a rough go. He didn't have a spot right away. And then he, you know, he's up and he's hitting. and he runs into a stupid chain link outfield wall. They had to do something about that. I would prefer that those not be there to wreak such havoc. But Spencer Jones is sort of like a light echo of Dominguez,

not in ways that have much to do with them as players. Because obviously Spencer Jones is famously enormous. And, you know, the Martian's like a big guy, but he's not six, seven. Both of them suffer from a inability to just have any sort of normal expectations put upon them by Normies. Because, you know, Jones is fascinating. He's gone through an ebb and flow in his time as a prospect. There was a while where he peaked as a top 100 guy at most publications. The power is just so undeniable.

he's got this huge frame. But then, like, the contact issues last year were profound, you know, profound. And so he hasn't been in our top 100 for a while. He hasn't been in most places top 100s for a while. I don't think that we're, like, unique in having moved off of him. But the thing about him is that he's 6, 7, and he strikes out a lot in the minors. And you know who else did that? Jesus.

No, Aaron Judge. So. Yeah, he is kind of cursed. Unless maybe that helped him somehow because the Yankees could talk themselves into, well, Aaron Judge was huge and had some contact that she was not as extreme. Not as extreme as Jones did. As Jones did. So I feel for Jones. And there was some of this with Dominguez, right, where Dominguez had been famous for so long.

And, you know, Jason Dominguez was a. top 100 guy and sort of maintained his top 100 status, although he fluctuated within the top 100. But, you know, he, he was famous for such a long time. His playing card, like, secondary market was bananas. Yeah. And so these guys come up to the majors, and part of it is that they're Yankees. Part of it is, like, the extremity of the profile in Jones's case lends itself to a particular kind of narrative as it compares to Aaron Judge. And it's just like, What hope do you have, you know, for anyone to be normal? And it's not helped.

You're not helped by the fact that when the news of your call-up breaks, MLB's own network is like, here's Aaron Judge and here's Spencer Jones. I'm like, what are you guys doing? What are you doing? He's not a top 100 prospect at pipeline either. So it's just, anyway, that's sort of secondary to what you're describing, although I think you're right to note that we got like a full, a real look at some of the deficiencies, but also just like,

Like, you can see this guy is enormous. You can see why it played at certain points. But I just, I know people, and it's fine to be excited, but I just want to implore, well, really, MLB network, because I will say that I think most prospect-oriented outlets are actually pretty responsible in the way they talk about Spencer Jones now, which is to say, hold your horses, horsey holder, everybody. But everybody just chill. I'm just inviting everyone to chill.

I'm just saying we could all chill. I just think it's cosmically funny and unfair. Oh, it's so funny. That starting assignment in game one, like the guy who's rivaling Derek Cole's 2019 strikeout rate and then ascends to a higher plane of elbow endangerment in that very day. Just that's, I mean, he did strike out against Ms. in his first play appearance and then he walked against him in the second one. And no one could hit the Ms. on that day. It wasn't just Spencer Jones.

He gave up two hits and two walks and struck out 11 over 6 and didn't allow any runs. So if he could keep sitting 103 or whatever, I mean, he might not ever allow a run again. I don't know how long he can do that. But only Mason Miller has thrown a pitch harder this year. And he's only thrown one pitch harder than Jacob Misraowski through four on this day. And a couple of them were to Spencer Jones in his very first Big League play to appearance, that's rough because usually you might think, you know, a young guy making his debut, you're not going to like reach back for a little extra against that guy, unless it's just that

that guy is so huge that you, Jacob Mizorowski, who are also huge, are threatened by his hugeness and there's a threat response and you dial up your speed or something. Anyway, he's, Jones has struck out in five of his 10 plate appearances thus far. I'm just imagining the Miz now with like porcupine quills. you know, like, ah, I got a little extra. It's like a puffer fish. Yeah, exactly. Well, and it is funny because like how many times does Jacob Mizorowski look down the

mountain and go, oh my God, that guy's as tall as I am. It doesn't happen very often. It is funny too because, you know, they're the same age. They're both 24. We have noted before that Jacob Mizorowski just, and it's not like, you know, Spencer Jones looks like a grandpa out there or anything, but the Ms. just has such a, he's still so baby-faced, you know, he's just like a real, he has a real youthful face. Some of that is that I can't get the image of him reacting to finding a Charzard

out of my head when he was opening packs on stream, but he has such a youthful face. And so even though, you know, compared to Spencer Jones, a seasoned veteran at this point, right? Yeah. Yeah. He just looks like if you were going to, if you were to show those two young men's faces, to someone who had never seen a baseball game before and ask them which of them was making their debut, they absolutely would have picked Mizorowski instead of Jones. So the visual contrast was just funny, but I think that if you are a Milwaukee Brewers pitcher, not that you don't try against every opponent, but I would imagine you would get an extra sense of satisfaction by being able to take it to the Yankees.

And in some ways, I guess it's just a sign of respect for Spencer Jones. It's like, congratulations, Rook, you're part of the laundry now and you must be dispatched. Yes, it's true. Yeah. Be careful. The Mizz, you were great already throwing 101, 102, whatever. You're all stressed. You're triggering my Jacob de Grum reflects here.

Anyway, yeah, it's true. They are both listed at 6'7, but the Mizz is spindly. He's lanky. Right. Whereas Spencer Jones is. hulking and he is uh i love how he's crouched over you know it's like everyone who has a distinctive batting stance almost all of them and maybe there are fewer of them now than there used to be but but in the instant before the pitch comes in they all kind of look the same it's just the setup

before that because there's you're kind of constrained there's a narrow bound of positions you can be in in order to get the bat to the ball fast enough so usually it's you start in some strange Well, yeah, Spencer Jones might be out of that bound. But, you know, you start in some strange setup and then you get back into the normal. So everyone, almost everyone has a fairly normal batting stance in the snapshot second before the swing. It's more just like what they look like when they set up. And he looks unusual in a really endearing way. But he's, you know, he got his first hit.

He got his first run batted in. But he has struck out in five of his ten plate appearances thus far with. With anyone else, I'd say small sample, but nothing about Jones's small, first of all. And also, that might not be far from his MLB true talent at this point. So, yeah. Yeah. But again, he had to face the Miz a couple of those times. So special circumstances.

Yeah. I mean, like, look, I think that we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that you don't call up the guy striking out almost 37% of the time at triple. if you don't have injuries on your roster elsewhere, that necessitate you, you know, filling in. So I also think that the Yankees, in all likelihood, are quite clear-eyed about the limitations of this young man, right? They didn't, like, put him on the opening day roster and be like, figure it out. They were like, you should go to AAA.

It's probably where you belong. At least he had the platoon advantage against the miss. But even so, I have to correct myself. I apologize. I was obscuring a number. He is, he was striking out. 32.4% of the time at AAA private. Last year was 35 or so.

Yes, excuse me. I'm so sorry, Spencer Jones. I have impugned your honor and I mean no disrespect. Anyway, welcome to the show, Spencer. They don't all throw that hard, but I can just imagine him going back to the bench. Just like, oh, that's what the major leagues are like. Yeah, yeah. It's okay.

I might be in trouble here. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you might be in trouble here, buddy, but it's not going to. be like that every single time. Yeah, because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones? I didn't care for that. Sorry. Okay. We did get a question from Kenneth Patreon supporter who wanted to know if this was. You're just going to move on? You're moving on from that? You're like, there's no redeeming it. I simply must skate away. It's probably best to keep it moving. Yeah. We did get a question. Kenneth Patreon supporter wanted to know if this was the tallest outfield ever because on Saturday they had Cody Bellinger. in left, the shrimp at 6 for 3, and then Jones and Judge in center and right respectively.

And it actually was not the tallest outfield in MLB history. This was looked up a couple of years ago during the illustrious Joey Gallo Yankees era. There was a day when Joey Gallo was in left, and he was the small one. He was the weakest link because Aaron Judge was in center that day. And John Carlson at 6'6 was in right and Gallo at 6'5. So collectively, that is one inch more of height than the Bellinger Jones judge outfields. So close. But yeah, the Yankees, they've been big.

I do like when Yankees are just big. It feels on grand for the bombers just to have gigantic teams, which they have a lot lately. Anyway, speaking of guys with contact issues in New York, hopefully Spencer Jones will be closer to the judge career track than the Gallo career track. but I'm not betting on him. Anyway, talking about other outfield prospects who were just called up, the Diamondbacks called up Ryan Walschmidt. They sure do. And he is a more highly rated prospect.

And there was a lot of buzz about him coming into the year. And he had a nice spring training. And so it was only a matter of time until he came up. And now he has come up. But I saw this quote, which was posted by someone in our Facebook group. And it was from an MLB.com piece that was published on Friday about Walschmidt and whether he could provide the offensive boost the Diamondbacks need. And there's a funny quote here where it quotes Walshmidt and he says,

and it's talking about how he has tried to combat some swing and miss and how he has kept a disciplined approach in the box and how it ties into his stance and everything. And so it says, and this is a quote from Walshmet in March, the reason I set up the way I do is because that allows me to be loaded early enough by the time the pitcher is releasing the ball to really get the full distance to recognize the pitch. I think that also plays into why I walk so much and why I work counts and why I have good strike zone discipline. I'm able to see the ball for the full 90 feet. He may be laboring under a misapprehension here that the distance between the mound and the plate is 90 feet. That is famously cited as. That's famously cited as

the distance between bases, although that's not quite true, but the ball is traveling from the mound to the play. I mean, that's famously 60 feet, six inches. So I don't know if this was, I mean, it's still there days later. I don't know if this was a misquote, a typo, or whether he misspoke, or whether he is actually confused about how far the mound is from home play, because that would actually be a big advantage. If he's able to see the ball for the full. 90 feet somehow, even though it's traveling 60 feet, six inches or a lot less when you take into account that the Miz is releasing it sometimes. And, you know, he's got the wingspan. But that, I assume, maybe just a brain fart or something. Yeah. I guess that would explain his plate

discipline if he gets, he gets like, you know, everyone else has two-thirds the distance of Waldschmidt to appreciate. I mean, I'm all for moving the mound back. I've said. I've said, I think that would help hitters if Spencer Jones had 90 feet, the full 90 to take in the pitch trajectory. Maybe he could, I mean, imagine if the Miz had to throw 90 feet by then, even if it started out at 103.6 or something, it's really going to lose a lot of speed by the time it's at the plate. So maybe he could handle that heat. I think he'd still throw pretty hard. Still pretty hard, yeah. But I might have some control issues and I worry about his arm.

But yeah, this is, I mean, this is made for an effectively wild hypothetical. Yeah, yeah. We've answered, like, what if you had a split second longer? You had like one second of foresight or something? How big an advantage would that be? If one guy has 90 feet and everyone else is stuck with 60 feet, six inches, I think that would be a huge advantage. So no wonder, Ryan Walschman is such a highly rated prospect. It has to just be a, he just has to have misspoken, right?

Probably. Yeah. He has to be aware. that the base pass are longer than that. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it was just a brain fart on his part. Yes, probably. He had a nice debut weekend, you know?

Yeah. So that's something. He almost did a home run in one of those games, but had to settle for a mere RBI double. And another item about a recently promoted, well, not mostly an outfielder, but has played some outfield. Gage Workman, who is, he's up now with the Tigers.

This is not his MLB debut. He was with the Cubs and the White Sox last year. But he's another mid-20s guy who just got called up because of a tiger's injury stack, not a highly rated prospect or anything. But he did hit a home run, his first major league home run. And I learned that his middle name is Tater. Tater? Tater is his middle name.

and not in like a self-aggrandizing. Yeah, Tator is my middle name. Like literally, Tater is his middle name. Tater. Yeah, Gage Tater, workman. T-T-E-R. T-A-T-E-R. Tater.

Tater. Yeah. So this is nominative determinism at work. He has finally hit his first big league tater. And I believe he's the first tater ever in Pro Ball. There have been some guys who had a nickname Tater or Tates or something like that. but no Tater prayer to Gage Workman in Propol. And it turns out that he is nicknamed, well, he's not nicknamed Tater.

It's his actual. No, his name is Tater. Yeah, right. A nickname Tater would not be that extraordinary. No. But it was his grandpa's nickname. And his grandpa, he said, this is a workman explaining it last year. His buddies called him Tater all growing up.

And my dad was like, well, that's a baseball name. We'll go with Tater. And it turned out to be a great baseball. baseball name. Yeah. And he says when I was in Toledo, a lot of guys called me Tater. My wife, my wife calls me Tater. And then he says, it's a normal nickname, which I guess it is probably a pretty normal nickname, but it's not a nickname is the thing for him. I mean, I guess it is if it becomes his given name for baseball purposes. But really, it's his grandfather's nickname. And Gage says that his grandpa did play baseball when he was younger, but he ran track. So Gage doesn't think it was a baseball. baseball nickname for him necessarily. He was just called Tater. And then his dad was like, good baseball name. And yeah, turned out to be a sign of things to come. He has now hit a Tater in the big leagues, Gage Tater Workman. Tater's precious. Taters. What is Taters? Like Taters. Tater. Tater. Yeah. I saw some previous Tater nicknames. If I search a baseball reference,

Brennanomo supposedly nicknamed Tater. And then we had Frank Larry who played in the 50s and 60s, and one of his nicknames was Tater. And then Anthony Santander, one of his listed nicknames, Tony Taters. You never know with the baseball reference nicknames. They're not often in common circulation. And then Matt Bady has a listed nickname of Bader's Taters. Bader's Taters. That sounds dirty.

I don't know. Somehow. Bader's Taters. We have an official tater now, so that's exciting. And one, I hope, final follow-up about Terek Scouple and the loose-body slash loose-body slash mouse-slash-mice. So Scott Boris elaborated on the medical procedure that Terik's scouple underwent here. Because last time we led with the John Hayman report that this was like the best loose body you've ever seen.

It was only one loose body, and it was like the opposite of Carlos Kray's ankle, the one that he didn't just hurt, but the other one, which was like, you know, the worst ankle anyone's ever seen on the medicals. And this was just the best possible outcome for cleaning up loose body is because there was only one loose body in there. And it was relatively small, supposedly. And now we have learned, Boris went on Buster Only's Baseball Tonight podcast at ESPN. And Boris is saying that they invented Dr. Neil El Trash, who's, you know, one of the famous baseball surgeons, sports surgeons in general. This was a new procedure, according to Boris, that it wasn't just that they did the usual thing and it went well. But here's what Boris said that he had. There's new technology where a needle-sized device, he can manipulate it where it doesn't in any way.

He can put the scope in and has a camera. on the end of it that gives him a 120 degree look at everything, where he can be precise about where the bone chip was, and he could do this in a way that would not interrupt the tissue as a normal arthroscope would. So he's saying that this is some new procedure that the doctor has pioneered and used on scuba here, and that it's even less invasive than arthroscopic surgery,

and that he says, I don't know whether Boris coined this or Dr. Alatrash, but I'm going to guess Boris. has called it the scoobel scope. So they're trying to brand this now as a Terek Scoopal is the Tommy John of the Scooplescope. And thus, Boris is saying that because it's so uninvasive that it will be a much faster return and he'll be able to come back and he won't have to build up his arm because he won't. There's just not as much tissue damage. He likened it to receiving a shot like they just stick a little needle in there and then they just withdraw it. But crucially, you were questioning how small the loose body was because relatively small,

but we didn't really know, well, how big is a loose body generally? So Scott Boris, according to Scott Boris, medical expert, he says that it was a lima bean-sized particle. Okay. Yeah. So he stuck this needle in, just withdrew a lima-been-sized particle, and that it would be this return well less than half. of what's usually expected. So we'll see if that's the case.

But now we know, evidently, a relatively small loose body in the elbow is lima bean-sized. Do you like lima-beams? I do like lima-beens, yeah. I'm not a big lima-been fan. I wonder if it's a preparation issue. So I have a question for you, and I don't want to make too much of this. So don't be mistaken. Don't get confused about how much of a much I'm making about this.

Skulb is a free zing at the end of the season as we have a stab. We have also established that, even though it seems like there are generally wider error bars for your return from loose bodies, that it is acknowledged to be a less invasive, even when you're not getting a scubel scope, a less invasive procedure, certainly less serious than UCL reconstruction, whether it's a traditional Tommy John or internal brace. And so I get that part of it. Would you want to talk about how your guys doing a brand new thing? Well, yeah. I find that a little surprising, candidly. And again, I'm not making a big deal out of this. I'm not saying he's derelict.

I'm just a little surprised that there would be a rush to volunteer that information. Although maybe people in front offices were like, look, we were listening to Effectively Wild, and we think that this was agent nonsense. And so he felt the need to respond. So maybe it's my fault when it comes down to it. But I am a little surprised by that. Also, not to pick a nip. I know I know that our guy likes some wordplay.

He enjoys a wordplay kind of time. Your clients, like the best pitcher in baseball, best handful of guys, certainly the best pitcher in the American League when he's healthy, at least lately, you really want a surgery named after him that's something that you're keen on even if it's just a little needle also

we don't need to talk so much about the little needles I mean look needles are important I'm not a I'm not squeamish about like getting my blood drawn or whatever but it doesn't mean I want to hear about it you know I don't need is it like sucking the end of the

if it's lima bean sized yeah how can it just I am so I'm also confused about some of the how do they withdraw it if it's such a If it's just a little insertion. And look, somewhere out there is a doctor listening to this podcast. And your instinct as a medical professional is going to be to answer my question.

And I want to be clear about my objectives here. And it's not to get an answer. It's not to have an email about it that has a lot of detail because I just, I don't want to know about what's in my joints. You know, that's on my business. Yeah, your joint sack. Using the technical terminology. I don't care for that.

Like, how do you get the lime of being out of there? Is it like a... I guess they just suck it up, but yeah, it's... They just suck it up. Now I have a vision like you're getting venom out of a snake bite or something. That seems like it probably... Dr. Neil L. Trash, he just puts his mouth to your elbow and just goes... Yep.

Yeah. We've had mouth sounds. I don't know about this episode. We're a little off the rails. Yeah. This is not the first time. Because this initially, it made me think of Scoopy snacks when I heard Scoopels know. And I don't know if that was intentional or not.

But of course, people remember from the GM meetings last year when Scott Boris said, the fans in Detroit want the Tigers to build a Terrick Barrack. The Little Caesars are running around town saying, sigh, sigh, it should be Scooby done. Right? If not, I think the fans would certainly think it's a Detroit. Doink. Anyway, so this is not the first time that something Scott Borrza said has made me think of Scooby-Doo in connection with Scoobel and on purpose, no less. But I did think that lima bean, now, even that is somewhat imprecise, because lima beans can be different sizes too. They very, much like loose bodies in the elbow, a lima bean could be a big lima bean or relatively small line bean. But if a small loose body is lima bean sized, that actually makes me think. the loose bodies are bigger than I would have expected. Yeah, how big are loose bodies normally.

Yeah, because if they're usually bigger than lima bean size, and also usually there are a bunch of them, too. And so I'm thinking, they're like a bunch of lima beans just floating around in there. That sounds like a lot. That sounds crunchy. Yeah, we did have one doctor in our Patreon Discord group weigh in, and this was not their specialty. They were not like an elbow surgeon. So, but their understanding was that generally fewer bodies the better because, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I guess it's intuitive just because if there are a bunch of loose bodies, then that suggests that more stuff has broken off, right? Yeah. And that's probably bad if more of it is broken. I guess that's extremely basic, you know, just kind of vibe doctoring, basically.

Yeah, yeah. Bro science. But that does hold up, I guess. Anyway, so we will see whether all the hype about the scuple scope is borne out by an actual quick return. And you're right. I guess you might not want your client associated with a brand new medical procedure. I guess it's not brand new, but maybe it's brand new for a big leaguer. But if you think it's better and safe and you can convince people of that, then I guess you would want it known that, hey, this was not the usual thing that takes longer to come back from and has more side effects.

this is even easier to come back from, but you'd have to get people to buy-in to the idea that the scubel scope is actually preferable, and we'll see. But look, Tommy John, I mean, he weathered the Tommy John surgery and came back and pitched forever after that, so maybe this will be the same.

And you'll be associated with that procedure, but that procedure paid off and gave you another lease on Major League life. So we can hope. All right. So we should probably talk about the big baseball news, relatively big, just like the lima bean was relatively small. We talked about Austin Hedges last week, and we talked about Patrick Bailey last week.

And now we're talking about them again. We somehow anticipated that they would both be back in the news again because now they are teammates, because the San Francisco Giants have traded Patrick Bailey to the Cleveland Guardians for the 29th pick in this year's MLP draft. And yes, you can in some limited circumstance. Trade draft picks in MLB. It's a competitive balance round pick, which is tradable. And left-handed pitching prospect, Matt Wilkinson, better known as tugboat. So we've gone from Tater to tugboat.

Tugboat. Tugboat is not actually Matt Wilkinson's middle name, sadly. But it is a fantastic nickname, and I definitely want to hear your takes on tugboat. I love tugboat. I love tugboat. I love tugboat. But the headliner here is Bailey. and this was a surprise, I think.

I mean, a player of Bailey's caliber over the past few years and it being early in the season still. And also the team that he was traded to where it's like we have Austin Hedges at home. We have the actual Austin Hedges. Why do we need Bailey too? And everyone made the joke now about now that Hedges is an offense first catcher. Right. They had to go get the glove guy in Patrick Bailey. But this was quick and early to make a move like this, a guy who had been quite valuable for the Giants and was a homegrown guy.

And the Giants are off to a really lousy start. And is this a panic move? Does this make some sense? Does it even make sense for the Guardians to stockpile good framers who are not known for their bats? Obviously, Bailey not known for his bat for quite a while, but the bat has been particularly unproductive. this year, as we discussed. And I also saw some people make the joke about how, I think he was assigned number 16 for the Guardians. And that was his WRC plus when he was traded. So they gave him the number that corresponded to his WRC plus. So that's not ideal. But yeah, even by Bailey standards,

he was off to a really rough offensive start, at least based on the surface stats. And the Giants cut bait and the guardians perhaps bought low, but what are they actually acquiring here? So what did you think of this news and this trade? I thought it was weird. Yeah. I thought it was strange. Let me talk about the part that I don't find weird. And I'm, of course, sort of leaning heavily on the analysis being provided by our prospect team when I say this. This is not a bad draft to have additional picks in, right? And the pick acquisition piece and specifically the bonus pool that goes with that pick, I think for a team in San Francisco's circumstance, meaning they're not very good, it makes a good amount of sense to try to infuse your bonus pool with a couple million dollars.

It's not an insignificant amount of money. They now have one of the bigger bonus pools to throw around. which means that in addition to just the pick itself, they have greater flexibility in a draft that has a great amount of depth in it, right? And being able to spread that money around to multiple picks might be appealing, being able to sort of persuade some guys to sign rather than go to school. Like there's real value there that I think makes a ton of sense. They're in a really precarious position at the big league level now as it pertains to their catching group, which isn't to say that they don't have guys, but that they don't have like an

obvious dude, and they certainly don't have a particularly obvious starter. And I don't mean to knock, you know, friend of the pod, Daniel Souzac. And Jesus Rodriguez, who was already on the roster, had been acquired from the Yankees and last year's DeVal trade and who, you know, isn't like a top 100 guy. The projection systems I should know, freaking love Jesus Rodriguez. Zips, Zips views Hazius Rodriguez as like a 55 future value guy. It sees him as like a two, two and a half war player. And he plays a lot of positions. He does play a lot of positions.

But he's not a catching specialist. It's a big fall from Patrick Bailey to anyone defensively, really. But yeah, when Rodriguez was called up just recently, I raised an eyebrow because I was thinking, well, where is he going to play? I know Susak has been hurt, but he's about to be back. and they had Logan Porter hanging around and Eric Haas hanging around, but I was wondering if they're calling up

this catching prospect, even if he's not exclusively a catching prospect, then what does that mean for Bailey? And Bailey had not started a few games too, so they had already sort of sidelined him. So the writing was on the wall. Rodriguez is interesting because he plays a lot of different places. He has like really cool,

multipositional versatility. I think that when, you know, Eric was sourcing stuff on him and sort of doing a fresh coat of paint on Rodriguez. He was impressed to learn that, like, he is a, he has been a very good framer in the past in limited opportunities. He was, like, plus four framing runs last year in the minors, even though he only caught 60 games.

So he's not bad back there. He isn't as good at the other parts of catching, in part because of his size. But, you know, his ball blocking is pretty below average, and his throwing needs polish. So, like, you know, he is procedurally still in progress and certainly relative to someone like Bailey is going to seem kind of undercooked. But, like, he's hitting well so far, although I think the guys are skeptical that that's going to continue because there was some like contact concern and his more granular chase data doesn't look as good. But isn't like so bad that I think Eric said something to the effect of like he doesn't think that he's going to struggle the way like Kiebert Ruiz has. So, you know, be at peace, Giants fans.

It won't be the worst it could be. But they are now in a very, like, unsettled sort of throw a Rule 5 guy and a recently called up dude and, like, the, you know, remains of Eric Haas at the wall kind of a spot as it pertains to their catching. And I just, I wonder, and this is, this is a lot of, like, speculation and tea leaf reading on my part, but I just, I wonder how things. are going over there. Yeah. Like vibes wise within the Oregon, not just, hey, we're, you know, we're kind of bad right now. And we're 16 and 24 and we're eight games out. Yeah.

Worst run differential in the majors. Yeah. Like some of it is just going to, it's not going to be going great over there because things aren't going great over there. But, you know, we had heard in the spring that Tony Vitello was open to the notion of calling pitches from the dugout and obviously like Bailey among others objected to that idea in a way that

made a ton of sense and also made us kind of raise our eyebrows because it's like well if you're removing one of the aspects of this guy being able to add value even if it's the one that we can't quantify as well like what is your understanding of this player

also it seems like a not great like thinking out loud kind of an exercise to sort of tacitly impugn the value of catcher defense when that's what that guy does because he's clearly not going to hit a lick. So I just, and they backtracked on that and now they're sort of mixed messaging about how serious they are about that as a as a potential organizational philosophy going forward. But all of that to say, like Tony seems like he's in over his head a little bit.

And most of that has nothing to do with the Patrick Bailey trade, to be clear. you don't have to have the best defensive catcher in baseball on your roster to like know that you need to signal which handedness you want out of the bullpen when you come in to make a pitching change. That was weird for anyone who hasn't seen just this past weekend. Yeah, Vitello just like didn't specify which reliever he wants. Yeah. From the bullpen like who do you want? Because they had they had a lefty and a righty up as. Yeah, and maybe he thought it should have been obvious or something based on the matchup, but it was weird because he was just sort of, and Willie Adamas had to signal.

And Mattel was just like standing there stone-faced. It was, yeah, one of many strange incidents involving that team this year. And so, look, we had a suspicion that there would be a learning curve in an adjustment period. but it's like this is an eyebrow-raising blend of incidents where it's like on the one hand you're demonstrating like a little bit of maybe interpersonal clumsiness in some of your messaging around say Patrick Bailey and game calling from the dugout and then there's like actual seeming procedural deficiency anyway that's not again that's not specific to the Bailey trade but I do wonder how is he kind of reliant?

relating interpersonally to his players, was there just like, you know, were they not kind of viping in a way that maybe in conjunction with the extreme underperformance at the plate was like, let's just move on from this guy and see what we can recoup in terms of draft value. It is interesting to me that a guy who is such a proficient defensive catcher is seemingly not someone who Buster Posey views as like one of his guys. And I think that, you know, as Posey has sort of settled in, like, he does seem to want his dudes and, you know, Bailey, not his dude seemingly. Well, and certainly not anymore. Yeah, they have also had some cases this year where there was a suspect pitch calling and people questioning the pitch calling because, you know, many of the same pitch type thrown over and over again and then who was making that call and who should have. But for Bailey to be traded, first of all, since the day he came up, so May 19th, 2023 was his major league debut.

Since that day, Fangraph's war, he ranks 41st in the majors and number one in the Giants. He's been the Giants most valuable player over that span. And among catchers, really only Cow Raleigh and William Contreras have been more valuable. So if you just look purely at war, he has been a very productive player. not this sort of guy you should be cutting bait on because he had a slow start. Now, it wasn't an extremely slow start, even by his standards, but he has been quite unlucky, seemingly. And I know baseball prospectus's deserved runs created plus stat had him at 94, I think, at the time of the trade, where 100 is average, which is quite high for Bailey. I mean, close to league average. And between that and his

expected weighted on base being higher than last year's, and last year's was a little. whoa, don't get me wrong, it was bad. But even with a 70 WRC plus last year, he was still a fairly valuable, certainly playable player. And so if the underlying offensive metrics are sort of the same, then maybe it's smacks of impatience or impulsiveness a little bit. I know it's hard to watch a guy not hit at all the way that he has not been hitting. But also, it doesn't seem like at least based on the underlying numbers and quality of contact that he's really any worse than he was before.

And so if you could put up with it before and even be happy to have him before, then why now, I guess, decide to cut him loose. So maybe that's part of it. So, and Buster Pobo, he's made some pretty, I don't know if it's impulsive, but at least like headline grabbing moves and he's clearly willing to do kind of dramatic stuff. He's not A.J. Prellor exactly, maybe. But, you know, he's going to.

he's going to pull the trigger on some stuff. And I saw a quote in Andrew Baggerly's piece about this for The Athletic, where Matt Chapman was quoted on Posey saying, he acts like a player. He's like all of us. We're impatient. We want to get it done and we want to win now. And then he goes on to say,

I'm not saying that he acts on a whim or anything like that. I just think that he really wants to win and he's going to make whatever move he thinks he can to make this team better and I trust buster, blah, blah, blah. So he acts like a player. I'm sure Chapman meant that as a compliment, kind of. Like he wants to win. He's not going to just let us be bad. He's going to do stuff.

But also sometimes you don't want your pobo to act like a player. You want to have kind of a longer view on things. And a player is always going to say, yeah, let's go make a move. As long as it doesn't affect me personally, let's go bring someone in. Sure. But a pobo has to look at things that a player is not always considering. And given that pobo is coming from being a player and then, you know, came into this job with very little front office experience and baseball operations experience, he's like the Tony Vitello equivalent for a front office executive sort of, except that obviously Buster has been in the big leagues and with this organization and everything. but in the sense that Vitello lacked major league experience of any kind,

Pobo lacked baseball operations experience, really, before he got this top job, which also seemed like a bit of a rush, whatever his excellent qualities and leadership skills, that you still want some seasoning. You still want a little bit of an apprenticeship there to learn the ropes because it's a different job. So he has made some bold moves, whether it's the Devers trade or Chapman or the,

I guess, you know, the Adonis signing and then and then hiring Vitello in the first place and then also this trade. So you might think, you know, things are going bad. Why pull the rip cord on Patrick Bailey or get rid of him? Is he really the problem? And maybe you're sort of selling low on a guy who's been pretty valuable for you. That would be at least the case against the Giants making this move. And maybe you can't even quantify whatever value Bailey's bringing in. terms of pitch calling and some of the stuff that's a little more intangible to this point.

So that's why it was surprising to me. And then as for the Guardians, well, they do a good job with player development typically, so a draft pick is pretty important for them. But I guess I get why obviously they have a type. They like the Austin Hedges profile. So if they can get a younger Austin Hedges and someone who historically has hit better than Hedges, which is not saying much. I understand that Hedges has hit well by his standards this year and even late last

year, but let's pump the brakes a bit. Maybe I don't think he's a good hitter. Maybe he's not a historically terrible hitter, who knows? But if you can get another Hedges and a younger guy who's under team control for a little bit and maybe has a little more upside, then I guess I understand it. So it's just kind of doubling down on the profile of the type of defense-first goal-glove type catcher that they already like. So maybe it seems like overkill.

Like why do you need Bailey if you have hedges? But I guess I understand why you would want even more like that if you like what you have had in hedges. Well, and I think that it also has a lot to say over about where things stand with Bow Nailer, right? Because if they were getting any kind of production out of him, I have to think that this trade doesn't get made, but he's hitting a buck 43 with a 23 WRC plus. and he's nowhere near the defensive player that Bailey is.

So his ability to sort of overshoot that number from a war perspective is limited because he's not the same caliber of defensive player. Now, I know that there's like, we don't want to be like too fine with sort of parsing out the framing and the war and the whatnot because, you know, depending on how you're dealing with ABS challenges, like those numbers might look really different. Like BP's numbers look really different than savants from a framing perspective because of the way that they're trading. Challenge stuff seemingly,

if I'm understanding the ABS documentation right over at Savant. So, like, you know, I doubt that they're saying, oh, well, there was a particular threshold that Bone Nailer couldn't clear and thus, you know, in 90 plate appearances we're confident here. But he, like, hasn't been the guy he was in limited run in 2023 since, well, 2023. So their other options outside of Hogg were a little limited.

I do have some amount of surprise that a team like Cleveland would be willing to move on from the draft capital piece of it. I love tugboat. I think tugboat's a good prospect. Yeah, tell me about tugboat. Man, his nickname is tugboat. And if you'll allow me to brag on our on the site a little bit, apparently the origin of tugboat as a nickname is Matt Wilkinson is a very slow. runner. He's 6-1-250, like, he's a big boy. And one of his teammates noted that he was like a tugboat, uh, trucking around the basis at one point. And I thought to myself, well, sure, that's the origin

of the nickname, but that's easy, you know. And so we, we talked about how his, his fastball, despite its low velo is like a tugboat pulling his profile. I think that's a better writing, Ben. I think that's a better, better writing. If I could go back in time and offer notes to his teammate, it's like, hey, tugboat, nickname, beautiful. Let's tweak the origin story here a little bit. He will probably be familiar to some of our listeners who watched WBC action because he played for Team Canada. He is from Vancouver. He's great.

Like, he throws 90, what a contrast to them is. But that fastball plays like an elite pitch. It has a crazy misrate. They have been quite conservative in how they. promoted him. So, you know, they're telling you what they think of tugboat long term, probably both in terms of their promotion pace and the fact that they were willing to trade him. But he's like got like a lot of deceptive elements to his fastball. And I think he's the sort of player where when people are trying to understand that like athleticism as a concept can manifest

in a lot of different forms of physicality, like tugboats a great example of one of the archetypes that, you know, might surprise people based on what they think athleticism looks like. Because like he's a he's a big guy but he's like very mobile and flexible and he moves really well on the mound so he's just he's he's a lot of fun he's a lot of fun you know he's not a he's not a top 100 guy he's a 45 but he's gonna you know he's performing well this year and it's a cool combination of like traits and fastball and his nickname is tugboat yeah and now ben And now if everything goes to plan, he'll be playing in that ballpark. I'm sure they use tugboats in the bay.

I'm sure they use tugboats in the bay. Ben, in the bay, tugboat. Kismit. I love it. I also wanted to bring up the framing in Bailey's situation too, because his framing has still been good, but I think he has lost a little, probably because of ABS. Patrick Dubuque just wrote about this at BP. and even though he's at or near the top of the league in framing,

it's still a lower ceiling, I think. And I've referenced how I chose my top 10 catchers going into the start of the season at MLB Network. And I agonized over whom to include. And one of the tough cuts was Bailey. Because Bailey last year, I had sort of stuffed him and I had him high on my list. And he was a top 10 catcher by war last year, even with a 70 WRC plus because he was that good on defense. but I figured, A, he doesn't hit very well, and B, if he even loses just a little because of the challenge system, well, then the thing that's propelling him onto the top of this list, it's not going to be catapulting him to the top anymore. And that has sort of been borne out thus far.

And Patrick noted, at least according to BP's framing stats, like 70% worse or so through the same point or the same number of innings. Like last year, fan graphs framing, he was 21 runs better than average. And that was about what he had been the season before. And that was a thousand plus innings. And, you know, now he's like a quarter of the way to that point. We're exactly a quarter of the way through the season. And he's at 1.7 framing runs. So even if it's still good, it appears that the top end of the leaderboard, it has been compressed a bit, which I think makes sense.

because if you're the guy who was getting the most favorable calls and able to get a lot of, not that framing is all about getting strikes on balls, it's also sometimes about getting strikes on strikes and not losing strike calls. But a lot of it was that he could make the zone behave bigger than it was for other catchers. And now he's getting challenged sometimes. And as we noted, he has not been an elite challenger himself. And as we talked about, if you're a good framer, probably fewer easy challenge opportunities for you out there. And so there's a reverse correlation between framing and challenging. So if he's not making it up there and his true talent framing skill has like a little has been lopped off the top, even though he's still good relative to other catchers, that I think does appreciably change his value.

You don't even have to forecast, okay, there could be full ABS and no framing value at some point during his career, which is possible. but I don't think it's so imminent that you have to worry about it necessarily while he's under team control, say. But even in the short term, if he's relatively elite at that, but elite framing is only worth, I don't know, 10 runs instead of 20 or something like that or even less, it depends on the source. But then suddenly that really eats into his value a lot because he's not given you anything offensively. So that would be the case for Posey kind of accurately appraising him and realizing that he's actually less valuable in this era, which is possible. Part of it, according to the reporting, seems that Posey just, he didn't really like watching Bailey because even though he understands that framing matters, he likes blocking and catching the ball cleanly and that he's had some past balls and things because he was like trying to frame. And so, you know, like the ball would tick off his glove or something and that Posey just kind of got frustrated watching him. So if it's that, which is weird because Posey himself was a great framer, you know, that'll help him sail into the Hall of Fame, I think.

So if he was frustrated that Bailey was over-emphasizing framing, then maybe Posey was over-indexing on his preferences, his aesthetic preferences for a catcher. So that's sort of suspect too. But also maybe he's right and maybe relatively speaking, framing is a little less valuable than it was pre-challenged system. So there are a lot of wrinkles and angles here. It's what makes it so interesting to talk about. And again, we'll note that like the way that that they are doing it on the savant side is a little bit different. And the amount of drop-off has been muted relative to, say, our F-R-R-R-R-R. or M metric or BP's metric.

So there's the circuit courts aren't an alignment on this one. But it stands to reason that there would be some muting of the effect. I don't know that I buy that it's quite this dramatic just because of the percentage of pitches that actually get challenged. But as we have seen and as we noted in our conversation with other Ben, like the mere existence of the ABS zone is altering the way the pitches are called. even in instances where there isn't a challenge. So you can imagine other non-challenge effects

that do have a root in, you know, some combination of the ABS zone and the changes in how things are being sort of evaluated on the umpire side that would be kind of squeezing the best framers. Yeah. And these metrics, if they're kind of context neutral, wouldn't account for the fact that

even if there is some framing, and it still has an impact, some of the most important, most valuable frames would have been high leverage once. Or you're more likely to see them challenged. Exactly. And so, yeah, just the straight sort of framing numbers, if you're not taking into account the context,

then you might overrate framing because it might be that the really high leverage frames, you're less likely to get those calls now. So that sort of subtracts your value. Anyway, it's all fascinating. I think I kind of prefer the guard. side of things just because I do feel like the Giants really sold low on Bailey and that maybe part of this was also kind of personalities clashing a little bit and that overriding the straight

value appraisal. But I don't know. It's possible that Bailey is just a little less valuable player now regardless of the bat and maybe the guardians are just in love with the idea of Bailey that they had before. and not the current Bailey. So we will watch that and we'll also watch, yeah, the pitches from the dugout. There was a line in Baggerly's piece. He said that Posey said that this was not prompted or that they haven't talked about pitches being called from the dugout after this trade.

Posey said there's been no discussion of calling pitches from the dugout now that the giants are lighter unexperienced behind the plate. But I wonder just because there was a lot of smoke surrounding that and it was kind of the first. fire was put out by Bailey and Logan Webb and other guys who are like, no thanks, not for us. But now, if Vitello was leaning this way and suddenly he has all these unaccomplished and rookie catchers, I mean, this would be the perfect time for him to implement this, much like the Marlins did. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least more pitch suggestion going on for better or worse. And I will be curious to see if the Giants keep struggling this way.

I'm not going to say that my bold preseason prediction that one of the newly hired managers will be fired this season. I still think the odds are against it, if only because it would reflect very poorly on Buster Pobo if he were to give up on Betelho. But man, the stream of consciousness, just weird quotes and like the rah-rah stuff and then the like questioning his player's effort and all this. just very, very college-coded, very, and weirdly, like, foot in his mouth a lot of the time, too, in a way that it's not like he never talked to the media before. So some of it, I get, it's inexperience and it's, hey, Tony, no one cares about, like, your college grudges that you keep dredging up. But also, sometimes he just has the most meandering way of answering questions and saying things

in the most, like, attention-getting kind of way and not in a good way that you'd almost think he wasn't media trained, which I'm sure there's more media spotlight on him now than there was before, but it's not like there was none. So that has surprised me. I want to make sure that I'm not impugning the good reporters of the SEC and the folks who cover college baseball. Michael Bowman covered him. Right. They're definitely journalists doing good work down there, some of whom are professionals and some of whom are student journalists, right? But I don't want to lend the impression that it's like a bunch of college kids covering Tony. Like they have professional reporters.

And again, like a lot of student journalists doing really good work in all kinds of contexts. So I don't want to make too much of it. But I do think that it is probably not wildly out of line to suggest that it is a more skeptical media environment that he has been thrust into than he is used to. Which isn't to say that it's like unfairly antagonistic. or whatever, but it's like, hey, you're the manager of the San Francisco Giants. Like, we don't. This is an SEC country, right?

Yeah. And you're off to a rough start, which I don't think is his fault, mostly, but it has increased the scrutiny. You got to do the, you got to do a little tap, tap, tap on your forearm, Tony. And which one is going to bring in a different guy? Yeah. Like, come on, man. He's not the first manager to brain fart during a pitching change.

Okay? No. Like, he's not the first. wanted to do it. Gabe Kapler's been there. Former Giants manager, though that was with the Phillies, mostly, I guess. Seeing a trend. But, you know, I, I just think that the growing pains are obvious. We're seeing the seams. Do I think that he is going to be like, let go? No, it's May 11th. I'm sure that there was some amount of on-the-job growing pain, you know, anticipated when they decided to make this higher. And you're right to say that this was a big swing from Posey. And so he is going to be mindful of the way that it reflects on him however long he decides to stick with Vitello. But also, as we noted, it's not like it's the typical pobo relationship either because he's a part owner in the team. So like is he going to, is he in any jeopardy? You know? I think you should,

I had so much fun watching Buster Posey's career. He is an important player. He is an important player. in the establishment of my baseball lore. He was such a joy to watch frame. Having said that, I think that it might be important for there to be the possibility of jeopardy when it comes to that, the person occupying that seat. And that doesn't mean that they have to live in fear. That doesn't mean that ownership needs to make them feel as if their chair is wobbly for no reason. But I do think that having the consequence of maybe not having a job you really like is an important part of it, maybe.

Yeah. Well, it has made the Giants more interesting. I don't know that anyone thought they were going to be good. And if anything, they had a very boring off season. They've just been so consistently 500. I expected them to have another lackluster year. And we thought, well, Tony Betelah might be the most interesting thing about them this year. And he kind of has been.

Not in a great way, but yeah, anyway, we will see whether they're able to write the ship with Tubboat here. So a few other observations. One, just wanted to mention that Bryce Harper, he has bounced back. You know, he's having a nice year. And the Phillies are 10 and 3 now in the Don Mattingly managerial era. So a little lost in the slow start for the team and then the quick recovery under Mattingly is that Bryce Harper has his best W. URC Plus and highest expected waited on base since 2021 when he won his last MVP award. Now, the defense has graded out poorly, and that has suppressed his war somewhat.

But the bat has been back. So whether that is because Dave Dombrowski challenged him, suggested he was not elite anymore or not, I don't know. But he did sort of seem like the type. I mean, obviously he took that personally and used it as motivation. Yeah. And yeah, he has looked more like the old or younger Bryce at the plate. So that has been fun. It's been quite the turnaround, really.

And I think, look, he's hitting like a man who drinks pasteurized milk. One more could he ask for? Yeah. I mean, he's not hitting like Michael Conforto, but he's hitting pretty well. Do you think that Michael Conforto hitting well is like a sign from the baseball gods to Craig specifically? Of what I don't quite know. But I do feel like he is being tortured. Yes.

Yes. Poor Craig Goldstein. But it's 55 plate appearances, but he is leading the majors in WRC Plus, minimum 50, with a 215 WRC plus. I'm sure that will continue. But he has actually been just like hitting the ball hard. There was a time when Michael Conforto was quite good when Michael Bowman was comparing Conforto and Aaron Judge as to who would have the better career long term. That has been answered.

but Conforto, who knew? Still some signs of life there for the Cubs to spite the Dodgers. Also, talked about the Harper bounce back elsewhere in the NLE East. Just wanted to shout out Matt Olson, who is also having a fine year at first base and is in fact leading the National League in FanGraphs War. But this past weekend, he took over the 10th spot in most consecutive games played ever. So he now has the 10th longest streak of consecutive games played. He passed the immortal and not actually immortal, but Gus Sir, who had a 822 game streak in the 30s. Madelson now is up to 823. Wow.

And he, in a week or so, if he keeps playing, will catch up with and pass Eddie Yost, the walking man, whom we talked about just last week. everything we talked about last week is coming up and becoming relevant again. But this is really Matt Olson, 10th all time in terms of longest streak, but especially in this era, he's really an era-adjusted Iron Man, because this is an era where there's a little load management, even on the position player side. Yeah. I think I've talked or staplasted about this before. It's not nearly the sort of precipitous drop-off we've seen with qualified pitchers, where

there are barely any anymore. But there are generally fewer qualified hitters on a per team basis than there used to be because guys get days off now because it's generally seen as maybe not the best thing in the world to play every single day. And a lot of these Iron Man streaks behind Cal, it's Lou Gehrig, it's Everett Scott. It's, well, Steve Garvey was a little more recent. And Miguel Tehada, Billy Williams, Joe Sewell, Stan Musial, Eddie Yost. I mean, it's a lot of earlier eras. And for Matt Olson to get to this number in this era, whether that's been a good thing or not, I don't know. But the Braves came in for some criticism a couple years ago.

I mean, when no one took a day off and that lineup slumped and everyone got hurt, people started connecting the dots and thinking, huh, is it because they don't get any rest that they keep getting hurt? I don't know whether it was or not. But Matt Olson, he just keeps showing up to work day in and day out. And this year, at least, he's been raking and he just hit his 300th Homer. So it's pretty special. I don't know that I'm, like, rooting for him to keep going, whether it's in his best interest or in the brave's best interest or not.

But it does stand out as an outlier in this era of spelling guys, giving guys a day. And sometimes it's a partial day off. It's, we'll just dh you today. And Russell Carlton did some research that showed that that wasn't actually as restful as you might think. like it's not even really restful at all. You're still even if you're on your legs a little less, I guess psychologically speaking, you know, you're still kind of in the game. But really, it's extraordinary in this era in particular for him always to be a staple in that lineup.

It's pretty remarkable. I don't want us to take away from his success this season. Well, who needs a day? Put it this way. I don't think that Matt Olson would be. performing any worse on like a rate basis if he had two days off so far this year. You know what I mean? Like I think I think it would be okay. I think that the rest component certainly matters, but that guys performance fluctuates for all kinds of reasons. I do think the Braz are a prime example of like,

hey, give your guys some time off sometimes because good, golly. But one of the ways you expect that to maybe show up is that the year after they've been continuing. their Ironman business, they'll be worse. And sometimes that's true, like Cal. And sometimes you're Oziawis and you're bouncing back and playing great. So who could understand the human body? What a mystery. It's an interesting race. The Freeman versus Olson race since Freeman went from Atlanta to L.A. and Olson went to Atlanta. The tale of the tape now is 652 games for Freeman, 689 for Olson. Freeman still has the war lead,

according to Fangraphs, 23 to 19.4. But Olson, of course, is years younger and still has time to catch up and is having the more productive year in 2026. So that is not settled yet. I know it's not all just war. Obviously, it's Freddie Freeman and when he met to the fans and the emotional. Obviously, that was quite wrenching for him at the time. for fans as well. But as a purely baseball decision, it was it was defensible given the ages and

respective salaries and everything. And Freeman has held up quite well, obviously, but Olson holding his own. So it's been pretty close. And I guess you would have expected it to be pretty close. But yeah, there isn't a clear answer as to what was the right call there necessarily. I also just noticed the Pirates. So another of my bold preseason prediction, was that they would have the most production from their starters in more than half a century by guys who had been only with that team because they had really an all-homegrown rotation, pitchers who had never started, pitched for another organization. And so the team to beat, I noted, was the 2018 Mets who had 18 war all from guys who had never started

or pitched for another organization. And the pirates are leading the National League in starting pitcher war, and they are on pace for 17.8, just off that pace of 18.0 that they needed to top that Mets team or tie it, at least. So they have been as advertised, as hoped their starters, it's been really fun because just every day they have had a guy going who's homegrown and good. or at least fun to watch. And I am heartened by that.

And somewhat surprisingly, they've also got good production from their position players and their hitters, too, which is why they're a winning team and very much competitive. So, yeah, that was one of the top things I was looking forward to this season. And it has lived up to the billing, not just skeins, but Braxton Ashcraft has been really good. and Mitch Keller has continued to be solid. And Carmen Maginsky, who I always have to remind myself how to pronounce his name because, like, there's no G in there. There's an L. It's like all over the place.

But he has been good fit wise, not ERA wise. The only guy who's really struggled looking at the underlying stats is Baba Chandler, somewhat surprisingly. But maybe he'll be better. Mason Montgomery has gotten a couple opener, quote unquote, starts too. But yeah, I was really excited for them because it's just every day you've got a homegrown, promising pitcher taking the mount. And they have largely lived up to the hope so far. So that's great. And if they can be a little less lopsided than projected in terms of pitching production and position player production, they might just find themselves in the playoffs.

You never know. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. It's the sort of thing where you feel silly saying it because they've just been so god-awful in recent. memory. And then you think about, well, how many starts could you get out of skeins in a postseason series? Yeah. And then you go, oh boy. Oh, boy. Because Ben, it was quite something to see you in person. I know. And that's when you hope that the fact that the pirates frustrated you by pulling him after 97 pitches. I was so mad. Maybe they're saving those bullets. That's not exactly how it works. But maybe they can

make it up to you later if he's if he's an iron man in October and and they say ah it's because we we gave him a spell earlier in the season. I guess I had seen Skeen's Pitchin person from the box but this was the first time I went on tickets when this this most recent time. So it's a different experience when you're back there and you're like oh that's what that looks like. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Also Craig Kimbril. I was the Paul Revere of Craig Kimbril. I was riding through the streets. I was sounding the alarm. Kimbril's coming. Kimbril's coming. And he had started quite well with the Mets. But this is how he gets you. You know, he lulls you into a false sense of security. And you think, Craig Kimbril, I can trust him in a high leveraged spot. And that's when he springs the surprise. And this is what happened last Thursday when Kimbril talked. the loss and a pretty ugly loss in a Mets game against the Rockies. And he came in in the eighth, and it was tied at two, and he goes single, single, walk,

Grand Slam. Like the Craig Kimbril special. Granted, it was a disputed home run directly over the foul pole, but the call stood. And then he recovered and got a strikeout at a strikeout and a fly ball. But it was a little too late by then, and the Mets lost six to six to six to six to. two, and he has since pitched another scoreless inning. But this is how he gets team after team. They see that setup and him perched on the mound and they think, oh, Craig Kimball, and look at the resume and what he used to be. And then, boom, he will give up the granny and load the bases.

And it's just, I would not trust the man. I don't have like a personal vendetta against Craig Kimbril. I don't dislike him on a personal level, but I just, I see team. after team after team. And trust Craig Kimball, not with low leverage mop-up innings, but high leverage must have innings for teams that are struggling and are trying to contend and trying to turn their seasons around. And that is just pouring fuel on the fire. I don't get it.

So I was looking at Craig Kimbril's WPA, his win probability added. But he's been bouncing around as team after team installs him as a back of the bullpen arm and then thinks better of it too late. But since the start of 2019, which was sort of when the phase of him just wearing out his welcome successive destination started, he has the seventh worst WPA

by any reliever in baseball. And you know that I'm intellectually honest and unbiased because I look this up to see where Craig Kimbril was and figured he would be somewhere toward the top or bottom of that leaderboard depending on how you sort. Unfortunately, number two is John Brebia,

and yet I'm still airing this on the podcast. I'm still going to link to it, and I'm still sharing this stat, even though it forces me to also report a dismaying John Brebeah stat. But yeah, only Jose Ruiz has a worse WPA than John Prebria over that span. But then it's Ryan Stanick, Trevor Richards, Miguel Castro, Tyler Alexander,

and Craig Kimbril. And then Jesse Chavez. is after him. Another former brave who now is a Giants coach and was the guy who was trying to figure out which pitcher Tony Betelow wanted. It feels like Jesse Chavez should be on the Braves. I mean, after all the love affair, on and off again, are they together or are they not, will they or won't they?

And they always would. And now he's with the Giants. The Braves are his OTP, his one true pairing. So that's strange. But Craig Kimbril, seventh worst WPA since 2019. among, I guess, guys with at least 250 innings. There are 96 of them over that span. So just saying, can't say you weren't warned, Mets, can't say you weren't warned.

I know that a lot can change and they are still reeling from the effects of their losing streak. But do you think that they are just sitting there thinking we have so many other problems that we can't even concentrate on Craig Kimbrough right now? because do you know who's the worst record? I mean, you know. Yeah, is it not the Giants? It's not. I mean, to be clear, squeaker. Yeah.

Squeaker, but 15 and 25. You know who is a better record than them? Well, everyone, because of how I just put it, but just to remind everyone, even within their division, the Miami Marlins, the Washington Nationals, the Colorado Rock. And the bullpen has not been the biggest issue for them. They have the number five bullpen by war, at least, despite Craig Kimbril's efforts.

In fact, he's probably contributed to that somewhat because WPA, you know, war is not taking into account whether he blew that game in that particular time. Though obviously it's going to hurt you when you load the bases and then give up a grand slam. Yeah. War doesn't like that. No. But he is, he's not in negative territory. He is replacement level. thus far this year. Okay. Well, that's the Craig Kimbril watch. And lastly, another topic,

another name that came up last week, and then we anticipated the headlines, Bobby Cox died over the weekend. So we talked about Ted Turner passing last week, who was Bobby Cox's boss with the Braves, and now Bobby Cox has followed him. And he was a few years younger, but he had been in ill health for a few years. And a few things I wanted to note about Bobby Cox, because I think a lot about Bobby Cox's Hall of Fame career just sort of shows how different things are now than the way they were during his tenure with Atlanta.

So obviously, legendary manager and an incredible tenure and what, like, fourth all time in wins or something and, you know, had the streak of playoff appearances with the Braves. and maybe they underachieved somewhat in the postseason, but they had quite a streak of making the postseason. And, okay, so a few things about Cox. One we mentioned last week,

which was that he was a GM and a manager, not, I guess, at the same time, but still. So he gets a lot of credit for managing those Braves teams to a ton of division championships. But he also had a hand in building that team, which is not the typical case for a manager. He drafted Chipper Jones. He traded for John Smoltz.

He was, to some extent, the architect of those Braves teams, too, whether by acquiring players, Javier was signed during his tenure, or by developing them overseeing their development. So he should maybe get even extra credit for that. And we don't see that anymore. There's such a stark divide, not always between the front office in the field. We see some guys, you know, AJ Hinch or guys like that who have some front office position and are also managers before or after both. But GM and manager, I don't know that we will see that anymore because it's just different backgrounds, different skill sets typically. So that's something that stands out.

How long he's spent with that team. And of course he got fired. We talked about how Turner fired him sort of reluctantly and then rehired him later. But we are seeing more managerial turnover these days, at least relative to recent years. Not that you can't. If you have some success, stick it out for a while. You could maybe be Dave Roberts or Kevin Cash or someone. And obviously Cox's many years with the Braves weren't all continuous or weren't all as manager.

But still, he was there for a very long time. And I wonder whether that would be the case now. If you had just the one championship in 95 and then you're sort of seen as underline, underachieving in the playoffs now that the playoffs are kind of everything and there's not as much of a rings culture as there is in the NBA, but still, I think, I don't know, you don't typically see guys getting fired after they like manage their team to a division title and then just come up short in the playoffs. But I think there might be a bit more pressure on you now if you consistently fail to break through, even if you're somewhat successful in the regular season,

just because there is such an emphasis on the postseason these days. days. Also kind of striking that he managed to get along well with John Sherholz for years, even though Cox had been the GM for a while. You'd think that might lead to some friction, maybe, because it's like, well, you're my boss now, but I had the job before you. And I, like, if anything, this is my team. And I could sit in your seat and do what you do because I already did it. You'd think, I guess they had a good working relationship, but you'd think that might lead to a little tension if you've done both of those jobs and suddenly you're, I guess it was more collaborative, but if you're, you're taking orders to some extent from someone who was doing

the job that you previously did with that same team and did a decent job of it, you think you might kind of, I don't know, bridle at being told to do stuff sometimes maybe. So also, ejections. Famously, he was the most ejected manager ever. and he managed a ton of games, but still had a very high ejection rate. So we were wondering whether ejections would be down this year with the challenge system, and they are, in fact. And I think there was good reason to think that they would be,

not that they'd go away entirely, but most ejections were balls and strikes arguing. And so if you have to argue a little less often now, it would stand to reason that there might be fewer ejections. So I was looking this up. According to close call sports, there have been 13 ejections of managers this year. Last year, the whole season, there were 91. And again, we're 25% of the way through the season.

So we're on pace for 52 managerial objections this year, down from 91 last year and 93 the year before. So unless there's like a time of season effect, I don't know whether the weather gets hot and tempers are short. and guys get it or, you know, the games are higher stakes or something. So it's possible that managers' ejections aren't distributed evenly in the full season. I don't know. I didn't look that up. But we're on pace, at least, for a pretty significant decrease in managerial objections this year. So perhaps we will not see the likes of Bobby Cox again in that category.

I don't know if you've noticed that, that there's been a good feeling, a bon of me among managers and umpires this year or anything. It's because of the challenge system. Yeah. I mean, it's probably not entirely that, but I think being able to have the pressure release valve of the challenge system rather than having things to probably has helped. I think so. I do think some of the ejections that might have gone to managers in the past now go to other coaches because coaching staffs are so big. So four non-manager coaches have been ejected this year, 28 last year, 32 in 2024. for maybe we've just shifted some manager ejections and they've become coach ejections.

But there is a long-term historical trend toward fewer ejections. Also, one thing I mentioned last week is that we all discuss and debate and disagree, do managers matter? And how can you quantify that? And of course, it's very difficult, too. And I think a lot of people have defaulted to most managers don't really matter, don't really make that much of an impact these days. And maybe that is more true than it used to be, given that front offices just have more say over, you know, lineup level decisions or roster construction or whatever than people used to. But I did mention that Bobby Cox was sort of singular or at least an outlier in that all of the attempts to quantify how much a manager helps, they do seem to single out him.

like Max Markey, when he wrote for baseball prospectus years ago about the managers who most helped their pitchers and catchers, and he did a retro sheet based with or without you analysis and just looked at like how these guys did when they were with this manager versus how they did with that manager. And Bobby Cox showed up as the number one guy who most helped pitchers and catchers and helped run prevention. I'll link to that. But that was not a singular result either in the box. book evaluating baseball's managers by Chris Jaffe, which came out, I don't know, 15 years or so ago now, but he had Bobby Cox as the number two guy all time behind Joe McCarthy in pitchers, just doing well, again, with or without, and this was based on like a Phil Burnbaum database,

and it's hard to say why exactly. And the theory was that maybe Bobby Cox, because he was getting ejected and he was just giving umpires a tough time that they would just default to giving him more favorable calls. That could be. And also Neil Payne did an analysis on that and just found that, again, Bobby Cox showed up as someone who consistently made his teams a few games better a season, which that adds up over the course of Cox's career. And maybe he didn't have the same knack with position players. And maybe he wasn't the best at pitcher usage. And maybe he treated the regular season like the playoffs and he kind of rode the pitchers hard and maybe that's perhaps has something to do with the fact that they underachieved in the postseason. But yeah, he he does show

up consistently as one of the few managers who really did seem to have a big impact on his player's performance. And then finally, and last but not least, I think the other thing that was really kind of driven home for me and like, huh, things have changed relative to Bobby. Cox's era is that, of course, as some people, but not all people mentioned in the wake of his death, he did have a domestic violence incident on his record. And, you know, it was kind of an ugly one, but was not treated as such, given that it was in that time. And I'm not saying that MLB is perfect at investigating or punishing such incidents today. I know Bradford William Davis has been writing and reporting a lot about how MLB investigated or didn't Mike Clevenger.

But in 1995, Bobby Cox was arrested on assault charges against his wife, and she called the cops and said that he punched her in the face. I guess, you know, content warning on all of this. But he punched her in the face, pulled her hair. The police report said her face was red. and then everyone sort of swept it under the rug right after that. And according to the police report, again, she said this was not the first time that this has happened repeatedly and that she had never reported it before because of media attention and, you know, the effect on their children or whatever, right? So this was the only incident that became public. And they stayed married, you know, until the day that.

He died and like nothing else has ever come to light. But this was a pretty ugly incident. And they had a press conference and she sat by him and, you know, they tried to minimize it and say, oh, it was just kind of an argument that got out of hand. And, you know, Cox was trying to say that he was, like, grabbing her forehead and her hair to, like, keep her away from him. And that, you know, like, she had been aggressive before two. and, you know, she didn't press charges. And ultimately, that was that. And I think he had to go to some training, that sort of thing.

But can you imagine? And this happened like in season, in 95, no suspension, no time off, no nothing. If that happened today of the equivalent, I'd certainly like to think that it would not be treated like that, you know, that like a team would take it. more seriously. And regardless of whether charges were pressed, like it would be investigated, you would be suspended, like you'd be on leave for a while. It would not be like, let's hold a press conference and say everything is fine and we'll just get right back to business. Yeah, I think that, you know, at the very least he would be put on leave while the league investigated. You know, there's a program and a process around this stuff. Now, the

collectively bargained domestic violence agreement is between the Players Association and the league. Yeah. But we've seen the league take administrative action against non-field person, well, I mean, when you're a manager, you are field personnel, but non-player personnel. When there have been allegations raised, and I'm sure that, you know, for someone as high profile as the manager, there's very little chance that something like this wouldn't at least result in him being put on some sort of leave while the league.

league and the team did some kind of investigation. And I imagine they would apply the same sort of standard that they do to players, which, as we'll remind everyone, is that you don't have to have a criminal conviction to be subject to suspension from the league. So I would think that, you know, the leader of the team would inspire sort of a similar approach. And yeah, I mean, his his wife asked that charges not be filed, they denied that there was a physical altercation after the fact. It seems like it would have been handled very differently today than it was at the time. And I don't know what the state of their marriage was and what kind of counseling he may have received subsequent to that, the exact particulars of the incident. But, yeah, I think that particularly for non-players, this is just sort of a strange era because there's enough media coverage that, like, we knew about this.

And folks knew about it contemporaneously. He had to have a press conference about it, right? Yeah. But the conversation around intimate partner violence was just really different culturally at the time, the sort of stickiness of this stuff to someone's reputation. and it was different. And, you know, I think part of the results of that is that we don't have much in the way of follow-up reporting around this, right? So we are in this spot where it is difficult to know what the going forward story of their relationship was. Like, we just don't know. And I don't want to assume that it was the worst it could be.

But we also just, we don't know because there wasn't work done around it subsequent to that. And, you know, wasn't like something that Bobby Cox was keen to talk about in public. Right. Which, like, you know, that's, I guess, an understandable instinct. But, yeah, I think that it would color our understanding of him differently, in part because I doubt that that one, you know, if you Google around on that incident, you're mostly getting the same set of, like, AP reports. And so I think part of why our impression and understanding of where that moment sits in sort of our broader understanding of his character and his personhood, part of why it would be different is that we'd have more on this in all likelihood. Yeah. Either as a result of details coming out around the league's investigation to him or from subsequent reporting.

So. Yeah, right. And I guess as a contrast, look at the Tigers' AAA manager. who was fired last week after sending one text to a female employee, which as of now, the content of that text has not been reported. But obviously, it was bad. So I don't know what that consisted of, but the fact that that's how it should work and how you hope it'll work, obviously the Tigers' organization. And they've had a lot of issues, right, with the AGM who was sending lewd texts and just others, like in front office, roles with the, you know, larger business, not just the Tigers.

And so it's good, I guess, that the recipient of that text felt like she could report it and that there was no tolerance for him in that case. But whatever that text consisted of, you know, it's a text. And it was one text and the fact that he was dismissed and that this became a big story. Hopefully that tells you how things have changed in 30 years, not that. that there are not cases where these things absolutely go unreported or unpunished. I did find one contemporary piece when I was just Googling was published in the Oklahoma in May of 1995, and it was contrasting how the Bobby Cox case was handled relative to the football coach Gary Mueller's case. And it was criticizing that Mueller lost his coaching job after getting drunk in public and assaulting a cop.

Now, maybe that's why, right? Because if Bobby Cox had done that, perhaps he'd have a harder time than something that happened, intimate partner violence behind closed doors. Maybe that just goes to show what society has historically published or not. But this piece was kind of taking Cox and the Braves to task even then for this being insensitive and insufficient. So, you know, we say different time and everything and it was. But also, even then, people were saying, this is, this is, this. This is not okay. This is not sufficient for him to be back. And yeah, it is, it's tough to parse a case like this because in the police report, Pamela Cox said that Cox had done this repeatedly, that he had blackened her eyes, broke her hand. And then the next day at the press conference denied ever telling police that. Right. And so it's not as if police never make anything up in a police report, but would they do that to Bobby Cox? I don't know, you know. take the side of a potential domestic violence victim, I mean.

Again, like, yeah, you, you, we must allow for the possibility that there was something that was miscommunicated or misunderstood. But this is always my instinct, which isn't to say that we shouldn't be responsive to additional information when it comes out. And I, you know, I want to make clear that, like, I do think it's important that we, when these sorts of incidents occur, if there is contrition, if there is genuine work done on the part of the individual to improve their behavior, to be safe, to be around, to do those things. Like, there should be a path back for those people. It's not really up to me to decide that stuff. And I think part of what is frustrating about all of this as sports fans is that,

and we talked about this in the context of other DV cases, like, that work of repair between abuser and victim is something that I wouldn't imagine benefits from like public scrutiny, right? Like that isn't on some level my business. It is made to be our business as sports fans by virtue of the policies that the league has in place now, which I think are generally good. But there is an uncomfortable tension there because what happens between, say, intimate partners in a therapy session is none of my business.

And that's where the work gets done, right? Like that's where the demonstration of choosing a different way. and being a different kind of person. That's where that work happens. So it's a hard thing to gauge from the outside. All we're left with often are statements, and those are generally, like, massaged and what have you. But when we are confronted with, you know,

sort of accusations that the league is heavy-handed with this stuff, I'm always skeptical of that as the first instinct, because it's like when has, the league hasn't really demonstrated that, like, they err on the side of being overly punitive when it comes to punishing abusers in our midst. Like, that's just not been their posture. Even in an era where they have a policy that I think has generally been to the betterment and benefit of the league and is sort of concerned with balancing, you know, there being consequences with protecting victims. Like, you know, it's a complicated dance that we have to do here.

But it's like, yeah. Yeah. Is it your experience that cops tend to be like, let's make sure all the bad guys go to jail who abuse women because that doesn't tend to be how that goes. It's like, I understand arguments can get heated at times even in good, good loving relationships. Sure. It's hard for me to understand how it could escalate to this point. And, you know, could it have been a one-time thing? I guess it often isn't.

But it's just like, yeah, that can't be an accident, you know? Right. Right. Right. You can't just, oops, you know, it's just, it's hard for me to imagine that happening if you are, you know, not abusive or violent. I mean, everyone has lapses, of course, but that's an awfully large lapse if it actually did progress to that point, even if it was a one-time thing. And really, it just gets, I think, when someone dies and has something like this on their record, what happens is everyone rushes to eulogize them or to kind of define their life. legacy. And so you have people who were saying this was the greatest guy and one of the great guys of baseball and they always do the like better man than he was a manager or whatever, even though he's like one of the best managers of all time. Was he really one of the best men of all time? Best people of all time. But you know, you have those kind of lionizing

remembrances where it's just like, oh, what a great guy. And then I think as kind of a counter to that, you then have people who reduce that person solely to that one black mark on their record. and we'll just kind of post, you know, like, how dare you write something positive about this guy who is an abuser or, you know, like we'll just post that one incident or something. And I don't know. I guess I think the latter is often a response to the former where I did see some obits that I think were appropriately just saying great manager, but also this, which was kind of how we talked about him on this episode. You know, he was a great manager, but also this. I'm not making any claims about what a wonderful person he was. I didn't know him, obviously.

And I don't know whether, like, the temper that was expressed in his yelling at umpires doesn't necessarily have to have any outlet in his personal life, you know. It doesn't mean that he has some rage problem all the time. But I think it should be mentioned if you are at least making the case for him not just as a great manager, but also as a great person or figure of the game or something, then I think it's incumbent upon you. You know, if you want to just make claims about his baseball performance, okay. But when it crosses over into like talking up what a wonderful character he was, then yeah, maybe mention it. But also, I think, acknowledging that he's going to be remembered for many other things as well and accomplished a lot in the game.

So it is kind of complicated, but sometimes it gets reduced to like either or or very sort of stark, you know, best guy ever, history's greatest monster. and maybe it's somewhere in between. Anyway, that's Bobby Cox. So I will just note in parting here, we started by talking about the Giants. I will note that Bob Nightingale, so okay, consider the source. But he did a piece on like the trade deadline. First of all, it's too early for trade deadline watches. It's not even halfway through May.

I mean, I know this is the convention, but we make too much of the trade deadline. It's not actually that impactful that we need to start previewing it months in advance. I beg of you to relax with that statement because you're about to publish a trade deadline premium. No, we're definitely not about to publish a trade deadline thing, but like it is impactful to my sleep. Yes, absolutely. But yeah, I'm just saying, you know, like each every like a week of games or whatever has more of an impact on playoff odds than the trade deadline. And so we're talking, there's so much baseball between now and then, but whatever, I guess it's harmless. You know, if people enjoy reading those things, then people will write them.

But Bob Nightingale wrote one and he talked about the Giants and he said they'd love to unload Junghu Lee, Willie Adamus, Raphael Devers, and Matt Chapman and start over. They just don't have that luxury. Instead, they may have no choice but to shop their biggest trade chip in starter, Robbie Ray. Some executives insist they would also listen to offers for Ace Logan Webb. Yeah. So, you know, this is coming from boob, but I don't know whether this is accurate or not. But it did seem like they were shopping Bailey around a bit.

It wasn't just like one team wowed them or something. So I wonder whether this is a prelude to a larger sell-off, but I'm not at all convinced of that. But that was a report or a rumor at least. I have a proposal for you as it pertains to this. Okay. I don't think that anyone should be able to publish trade deadline analysis before June 16th of any given season. So specific. Yeah.

And my specific date is born of Giants transactions passed because June 16th, 2025 was the day that the Giants traded for Raphael Devers. And I think at the time, part of this was understood as like, well, we're getting. going on their shopping list. So that's the earliest that you're allowed to do trade deadline stuff, June 16th. Now, if someone on my staff wants to write about a trade deadline thing before then, I might say yes anyway. So, you know. Yeah, you might break your own rule.

I might break my own rule. But I think that that's my rule, at least that I propose now. It has not been passed. It has not been enacted. We need to get votes from the various other. editors, but I think that's where I'm at. It will be broken by others, if not by you. That's for sure.

And in fact, it already has been by Bob. Yes. Also, shout out to Tony Larusa for sometimes making confusing calls to the bullpen or not also, because, you know, he was a great manager, too. Oh, sure. And he also had some notable, you know, bullpen phone confusion. So happens to the best of him in Tony Vitello's defense. But it was weird that he was just sitting there silently, like just,

Just to help them out. It's so strange. All right, before I go, I just have to let you know about a new baseball video game. Not an actual baseball video game, but a baseball video game by the effectively wild definition. Baseball is mentioned. Softball too. The game is called mixtape. It came out last week.

It is a coming-of-age game. It's an adventure game. Sort of an interactive narrative. It's developed by a studio called Beethoven and Dinosaurs, published by Annapurna Interactive, which is sort of a storied publisher of indie games. It's available on all platforms. Switch 2, PS5, Windows, Xbox. It's kind of a mashup of a John Hughes 80s movie, but also sort of conflated with the 90s,

with a compact walking simulator style experience along the lines of what remains of Edith Finch. Kind of a classic high school kids story. It's the last day of high school. There's a big party. Everyone's going their separate ways. And you play as Stacey Rockford, who is extremely into music. And she's made a mixtape for this final night that she and her friends are together before where they leave the northern California suburbs and venture off into the uncertainty of the adult world.

And her mixtape sort of soundtracks the game and you play a bunch of vignettes, lightly interactive, some flashbacks. And you learn about her and her friend group. It's, I think, a very good game. It got great reviews. And then those reviews sparked a backlash. And there's a whole conversation going on about mixtape. And if you want to hear that conversation, well, you can listen to my video game podcast. It's called ButtonMash.

It's on the ring reverse feed. We'll be discussing mixtape soon. I recommend it, though. The game's about three hours long, maybe, and you don't have to be a big gamer to play it. It's more like a playable movie. So check it out. It's only 20 bucks. But for effectively wild purposes, the relevant thing is that this is a baseball game and a softball game because one of Stacey's friends, Cassandra, she's a softball player.

And in fact, there is a sequence in the game where you're taking swings at some pitches. You're trying to hit home runs. That is a must-play portion of the game. But there is some optional content that's baseball related. So in an early scene, you're in Stacey's bedroom, her friends Van and Cassandra are there. And this is optional dialogue that you can trigger or not, depending on when and how you interact with these friends. But here's something Cassandra said in my playthrough. Little language warning here before I play a couple clips.

If you see Dave Bowler corner me at this thing tonight, you must save me. Sure? Yeah, I'll kick his dick off. Is he trying to burn you? Not even. I said I like baseball just to be nice, and now he won't shut up about it. He sees me from across the room and his eyes light up and it's fucking baseball time. Uh, I actually don't think that's a dick kickable offense.

I'll save you, though. Well, I felt personally attacked by this. Not all of us baseball knowers are so boring when we talk about baseball. We don't buttonhole you. We don't corner you. But okay, Dave, evidently not a great conversationalist. So, hours later, in another scene, there's a party. It's an outdoor party.

And you're playing as Stacy's friend Van and you're filming the whole thing. so you're seeing the whole thing through a video screen. And as you're walking around, you're overhearing a bunch of conversations. And if you get up close to Cassandra, this is, again, optional, something you could focus on or could entirely ignore. But it's a great callback to the Dave Bowler reference from earlier in the game because there's poor Cassandra. And evidently, Dave has found her at this party. And it's a little like the bro explaining meme, you know, where the guys leaning over and holding the neck of the woman at a baseball game from 2011. And there are different versions of that.

There's the John Silver explaining to Anna J meme. And then there's the gender reversed version, the girl explaining meme. Anyway, poor Cassandra is expressionless, staring ahead with a blank expression in her eyes, as this guy who must be Dave leans right over into her ear and says the following. So this guy out of North Carolina, Danny Palislema, see, that's what I'm talking about. Nobody remembers the guy. But in 84, he had the highest foul ball to hit ratio in the league.

312 fouls in one season kept exclusively to foul territory and the thing about Palermo was he only swung with his bottom hand ripping the bat like the top hand was just kind of resting there like a little bird drove pitchers insane and you know he never actually slid into base wow not once in his career said it felt undignified he's the reason the league has actually considered banning personalized stirrups for a season because he had these ones with a little embroidered lions on them. Oh, real chrome thread. No blind infielders. Oh, and ever be traded mid-Georgia stop.

That's amazing. And he was the first major leader to wear two different brands and pleats at the same time. Because each foot has its own personality. Oh, crazy. So this guy out of North Carolina, Danny Palermo. See, that's what I'm talking about. Nobody remembers the guy.

And then that audio sample just loops from there. It starts all over again. So Dave here is remembering some guys or a guy. And he's right. No one does talk about Danny Palermo. And that's because there wasn't actually a big leaguer named Danny Palermo. But he sounds like a really interesting fella. And Dave is basically stab blasting at this party.

He's spitting foul ball facts. Of course I had to fact check this. That is not enough foul balls to lead the league. Last year, the aforementioned Matt Olson led the majors with 606 foul balls. And okay, in the 80s, there weren't quite as many foul balls. But even so, the first year we have pitch by pitch data, 1988. Joe Carter led the majors with 546 or 47 foul balls. So again, hundreds more than Danny supposedly led the majors with in 84.

And here I am stablasting the staplast. I have become Dave Bowler. But I want to hear more about this Palermo cat with his no sliding and his non-matching shoes and his unusual bat grip. Dave Buller, if you're out there, come on effectively wild. We'll talk to you about Danny Palermo, to your heart's content. Sounds like there's more to this story. Dave can corner me at the party and leave Cassandra alone. So chill, Dave, you're giving us baseball sickos a bad name. Of course, mixtape is set in a time before podcasts. So now we just save it for the show and we bend your ear about Danny Palermo, only if you choose to listen and subscribe.

As many of you have, which we are grateful for. And if you haven't yet, well, you can go to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, John Goad, Joshua Murray, Connor Techouts, Robert Sassau, and Matthew Foley. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, as well as unfettered, unabridged weekly episodes, exclusive live streams, fan graphs memberships, shoutouts at the end of episodes, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, and more,

check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us to 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 posted Fangraphs or Patreon

or the episode. description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you a little later this week. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be?

On the case with light ripping, all analytically, cross-check and compile, find a new understanding. Not effectively while that can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic?