Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2533: You Win Some, You Lose 40 in a Row

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, Ben here. As mentioned last time, we are hiring a new editor-slash-producer to succeed longtime producer Shane McKeon. Ideally, this would be someone with professional podcast production experience, primarily audio, though video doesn't hurt, as well as familiarity with baseball and effectively wild, and the availability and flexibility to work on three episodes a week. Usually later in the day or evening on weekdays, if that sounds appealing and you consider yourself diligent and conscientious and detail-oriented, we want to hear first. you, please send a self-authored cover letter and resume to wanted at fangraphs.com, subject line, podcast editor, 2026. We will keep the inbox open over the weekend and into next week. Hello and welcome to episode of Furn Hello and welcome to episode 2533 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

Starting point is 00:01:30 I am Ben Lindberg of the ringer, not joined today by Meg Rally of Fangraphs, but she will be back next time. This is our last Meglis episode, and then her vacation will be complete, and she will return to us next week. And, you know, until today, at least, I feel like I had kind of kept it in check when it comes to how long the episodes are, because I'm sort of notorious for when Meg is away, then Ben will play when it comes to talking to a lot of people and doing a lot of segments. And I think maybe I have lost control a little bit on this last one where I have an interview set up for later on the episode that went a little longer than I thought. But you know what? Sometimes that happens. So bear with me. It'll all be worthwhile. And of course, before I get to that interview, I have another couple of guests who will join me in conversation.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Keri Oler of Fangraphs is here. Someone has to represent Fangraphs proper. Hello, Keri. Welcome back. Hello, hello. It's lovely to be here. Lovely to have you back. And also lovely to have our other guest back. Bradley Woodrum is here from baseball prospectus. Hello, Bradley. Hello, and thank you for having me back. Happy to have you as well. You, of course, were with us early last year, episode 2269, when you talked about your experience as a Marlins baseball ops analyst. But today, you and Keri both are here to talk primarily about the women's pro baseball league, the WPPL. Keri, you've been on a couple of times to set up the season. And now, well, it's not quite over. But we are recording on Thursday night when we are maybe as little as one game away. away from the end of the inaugural WPBL season. We just watched the Queens emerge victorious against the San Francisco Firebells, L.A. over San Francisco, of course, the famous rivalry in sports when it comes to baseball.

Starting point is 00:03:25 And the queens have taken the first two games of a best of five championship. And so the next game is Saturday. And that could end things, although it could last as long as next Tuesday. So we're going to get into all things WPBL and we'll talk about how this first season has gone and what we've enjoyed and what could be improved and what the prospects are for the future of the league and women's baseball. Another league that will be definitely wrapping up this season is the Pioneer Baseball League. That's Indy Ball. That's an MLB partner league, one of the lower level ones. And I will be talking to two representatives of that league.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Demetri Young, yes, Demet Hook himself, former major leaguer, as well as Al Malding, who was the co-GM of the team that Dimitri managed this year, the Red Pocket Mobiles. Al is also an official with the Pioneer League. The Red Pocket Mobiles, you may have heard of them because they achieved some notoriety of their own. They set a record that teams typically don't aspire to set. they lost 39 games in a row this year. And that was apparently a professional baseball record. And so they have been making the rounds to talk about that a bit. And this is very much up my alley. Some of you, long-time listeners may recall back in 2017 in the Jeff Sullivan era of the show, Jeff and I were talking a lot about the Salina Stockade. That was a traveling team in the American Association.

Starting point is 00:04:59 and I ended up traveling to that traveling team and writing a big feature about them for the ringer. And the deal with the traveling team is they have no home games. They are just constantly on the roads. They are away. They are visiting wherever they are. And that's obviously a tough assignment. So the Salinas dockade that year went 18 and 82 and the Red Pocket mobiles this year. Very similar record, 14 and 82.

Starting point is 00:05:24 But they lost a lot of games in a row and set some history, made some history. made some history in the process. And so we will talk about that and what that team went through. It's a quintessentially indie ball story. We'll also get into Dimitri's post-playing life. Also, some of the mistakes he made during his player and career and how he is attempted to atone for them and help other young athletes avoid making the same sort of mistakes. It's an interesting conversation. But we have a lot to get to. I have a little bit of MLB banter that I want to run by U2 before we get into WPBL matters. So the Miz has been on my mind, as has Pete Kroar Armstrong. I know that's highly unusual that I would be thinking about those two players in particular.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Is it fair of me to say that this season, this MLP season, they are the standout guys. They are the ones who sort of you can't tell the story of this season without Jacob Mizrowski and Pete Korn Armstrong in the way that last year, was the season of Cowrally, whether or not he was actually the most valuable player, he was the player, he was the standout player we were all excited about. He was also sort of a story of this season, but for different and less fortunate reasons. Now, there's not much controversy about whether the Ms. and PCA have been valuable. They are more or less running away with the NL Tsayung Award and the NL MVP award, respectively. But anyone want to speak up for any other players or can we

Starting point is 00:06:58 safely say that they are the players of the season, the pitcher and hitter of 2026, respectively. Well, I will happily jump in there. I will say that I come from a position of perhaps entrenched bias in the form of when you live in the Midwest, Cubs Brewers, that is a pretty big matchup. And so the fact that, you know, both those players are in the same division, they are both having exceptional years. Their names are hot among the lips of the people of Chicago. I can assure you that much. And so it definitely is hard to imagine another storyline overtaking. There was a time where we thought maybe this was going to be the JJ Weatherholt season or even the Munitake Morakami season and, you know, given context, I think those guys are doing great. But the reality is, yeah,

Starting point is 00:07:44 these two players are really stepping out beyond the expectations that were already pretty lofty for them both. And so I know it's been because the rivalry between the Cubs and the Brewers has been so heated lately too. It's especially interesting when there's a matchup between those two players. And so you end up with definitely a lot of hype around that. But they're just so fun. They're both incredible, like, top tier. It is a little jarring to think that we had that combo in one player this time last year. And so, like, not to make it. You're talking about Kelsey Whitmore, of course. A hundred percent, exactly. But, yeah, no, in Shohei, we had both elements of

Starting point is 00:08:26 of speed, power, as well as pitching and velocity that is just wowing. And so obviously this year hasn't been the same as last year, but it really has been exciting to watch either one of those two play on any given day. Yeah. So that's resolved. So stipulated the MIS and PCA having great seasons. I know this is the kind of analysis that you come to effectively wild for. Why would I say something so controversial yet so brave?

Starting point is 00:08:52 Even if they weren't leading all pitchers and hitters, respectively, in war, they still would be sort of the story of the season just because of how sensational and spectacular they've been and how they have done it, of course. But what stands up to me, what I've been reflecting on, I think that their excellence says something about the nature of position players and pitchers or pitchers and non-pitchers, if you prefer, because they're both extreme standouts. They've both been in the headlines constantly. And yet PCA war-wise isn't a different stratosphere, right? I mean, he is way more valuable than Jacobus Resky to the tune of four war more, right? As we record here on Thursday night, PCA is sitting at 10.4 war. The Miz is at 6.3. This is a leaps and bounds difference.

Starting point is 00:09:43 And I think this speaks to something about the gap between the ceiling. for a position player in modern baseball and for a pitcher because it's hard to imagine a pitcher being much better on a rate basis than the Ms. has been. But when we talk about pitcher excellence, we really do focus on the rate basis, right? That's the conversation. Whereas the fun thing about PCA is that we're talking about counting stats with him. And of course, we're talking about 4040, which he is closing in on. He has the homers. He's nearing the stolen base total. But also war-wise, he's climbing the all-time war leaderboard. And being at 10.4 on pace for 11 even, he is in rarefied air here that we haven't seen anyone in the past 50 years reach with the exception of Barry Bonds and Aaron Judge multiple times apiece.

Starting point is 00:10:37 And before that, you have to go way back to find anyone who has done that. So we can put him up against the all-time best, most valuable hitter seasons from any eight. era and he's comparable. He stacks up to those legends, whereas the MIS gets completely lost if you just search by war. Obviously, he's having a fine season by war, but it just can't compare to the all-time top seasons. And so with the MIS, we focus on the rate basis and we have to sort different leaderboards and we have to set innings minimums. And we can say that, okay, he has the second highest strikeout rate ever among starters with at least 160 innings pitched behind Garrett Cole. Or he has the third best strikeout minus walk rate behind Garrett Cole and Pete Pedro

Starting point is 00:11:30 in 99. He does have the lowest batting average allowed, but low average error. Or we can say we get into more esoteric stuff. He has the 12th best park-adjusted ERA. Actually, is it that good? Maybe it's even quite that. No, it's 17th best. Sorry, I gave him too much credit. But park adjusted FIP, maybe by Park Adjusted FIP, he fares a little bit. Yeah, he's 12th than that. Or as far as we can go back with X-FIP, he's the second best ex-FIP behind 2002 Kurt Schilling. Like, these are the games we have to play with Mizz. Or, of course, we can talk about velocity, which is the ultimate, just small sample rate stat. We can just say that he throws harder than any starter ever has or has been tracked to, but I don't know that we even need that qualifier, right? So it's a very different

Starting point is 00:12:18 kind of conversation. So I don't know whether you have thought about this at all, Keri, but I've had a ton of fun following both of them. But I like that with position players, we don't have to set minimums. We don't have to have qualifiers. We don't have to have caveats. We can just say, yeah, this is one of the most valuable seasons of all time. Whereas with the Ms., you have to say, on a batter per batter basis or on an inning per inning basis or certain years or innings minimums, right? And that's just the nature of pitching today because, I mean, he will qualify for the ERA title, which precious few pitchers do these days. It's not like he's a hot house flower. He's going to end up pitching 170 or so innings or more, which is not bad by modern

Starting point is 00:13:05 standards. But you do have to look at it through a different lens than with PCA, right? Yeah, one thing that I was thinking about as you were talking and kind of scrolling through the leaderboard myself was it's sort of impressive that he has as much war as he has, considering that his innings total is relatively low. But again, that's sort of converting it to a rate stat like you're saying is, you know, sort of prorating it on a per inning basis. What I will say as someone who has been more entrenched in WPBL land and not following MLB quite as closely as I usually do, I'm still mostly keeping up. all of the fun stats and fun facts that I'm seeing come across my timeline are all about

Starting point is 00:13:48 Jacob Moserowski. So by that metric, he's a very, he's a very fun factable player. Oh, extremely. Yeah. And PCA, the ultimate fun fact, if he ends up leading the majors, not only his league, in both fielding value, defensive value, and offensive value. That's never been done before, at least according to Fancraft's accounting. So that in itself is an incredible two-way season by a different definition of two-way player than we've employed with Otani. I was doing some, this is dubious math, so I will warn you ahead of time. But I was kind of trying to compare them. So first of all, Mizraowski, he's 24th in innings pitch as we speak. So again, he's up there. I mean, it speaks to just how low the ceiling is for innings pitched these days, really. I was trying to

Starting point is 00:14:39 compare, though, because with the MIS, like, if we compare their batters faced and plate appearances, that's not that different, right? Those are in the same realm, really. And the MIS has faced 636 batters. And PCA has come to the plate a little more often than that, but not much, right? He has 687 plate appearances. However, PCA plays defense. Now, they both play defense, obviously, but PCA really plays defense and plays much more defense and better defense and is a much more active participant on defense. So if we were to lump together, his played appearances and defensive chances, and this is, I'm fudging things here, I understand. This is a cludge and this is worse than OPS being OBP plus slugging and different denominators and all the rest of it. But he's had 389 chances in center field.

Starting point is 00:15:41 And so if we say 389, his chances plus 687, his plate appearances, that's a thousand seventy-six, I guess, outcomes of plate appearances that he has been directly involved in, or at least has had an opportunity to be directly involved in. And so if you put it that way, which maybe this is a stretch, but But they have sort of a similar war output on a rate basis by that metric because 636, that's the misses batters faced. That's a little more than 59% of the,00076, the total of PCA's plate appearances plus chances. So 59%.

Starting point is 00:16:28 And 6.3 war, that's just over 60% of PCA's war, right? So if you put it that way, and you know, you were a baseball ops analyst, maybe you are cringing Bradley at the math that I'm trying to do here. But, you know, if you count that as playing time, then you could say that they have both kind of produced at a similar rate in plays they've been directly involved in, right? Because it's like, you know, 59% of the playing time impact and 60 or 61% of the war. So are you with me on that one? Am I making any sense? I love the effort level. I think that's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:17:12 For myself, though, I think this is just emblematic of the nature of the sport changing. Yes, it is. We have long held pitching and hitting superstars kind of on similar planes because their value was pretty similar for a long time. But I was just looking at a leaderboard of the top ERA minuses of all time, top fifth minuses of all time. and you just divide their game starts by their inning pitched, and you see that Mizorowski's, he's 5.9 innings per start. That's well below the peers, even just looking at like Jacob de Grom in 2018,

Starting point is 00:17:46 as recently as that he's averaging 6.8 innings per outing, and Ms. is at 5.9. And so I think what it comes down to is the nature of the sport has changed so meaningfully that, you know, everybody's moving towards reliever, essentially. And I'm reminded of in World War II there was a obsession of the general generals to capture ports. And military analysts... Why would you not be reminded of it?

Starting point is 00:18:07 I'm reminded of it because analysts after the fact realized like, hey, this obsession of capturing ports is kind of moot in an era where there are now airplanes. And we need to capture airfields. And that ended up being the downfall of a lot of plans, ultimately that you are focused so much on the historical role this thing has played. And the new role is different. And the reality is Ms. is absolutely exceptional, but he is exceptional in the window that he's playing in. And I think that is a meaningful difference because he's not facing the third time to the order, fourth time to the order that Randy Johnson was in 95 or even Corbyn Burns might have been doing in the 2020s.

Starting point is 00:18:49 But it's just the reality of the sport is changing. And PCA is expected to face lefties. He's expected to play every day. The defense keeps him out there. The performance against lefties is sufficient. he is still playing the older form of the game for his position. And so I think that on a per rate basis, you might be able to absolutely make sense of it,

Starting point is 00:19:09 but that was always the rationale against why certain relievers shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame because they were on a per rate basis. Great, yes, but they weren't racking up the actual impact on field that these others. So I'm less persuaded, I think, by the tortured mathematics that go into trying to make it more of an apples to apples comparison. But that doesn't take away the absolute excellence. he's had in his role in the same way that a modern NFL running back should not have their performance diminished by the fact that, yeah, you are actually spelled by another running back

Starting point is 00:19:38 every third play. You're not actually doing any blocking plays. You're not doing as much receiving as you might have previously done, but you're also not carrying those balls much. So like the sport changed around it, that doesn't mean that that position is no longer useful, that contribution isn't real. You've been optimized into maybe a less critical role, though, unfortunately. Yeah, I think it is sort of apples to apples. It's just that one side has more apples. Yeah, well, precisely. Yeah. Yes. And yeah. And by the way, it's funny. You mentioned PCA batting against lefties. There was a hue and cry that maybe he should be a platoon bat after he was struggling late last year. Turns out, no, I think he's playable against lefties. He has merely a

Starting point is 00:20:15 903 OPS against them this year. But yeah, you can pencil him in against the South Paws. But, yeah, I mean, it's the same number of war as there has been before split among hitters and pitchers league-wide, according to Fangraves, it's a thousand war. And I think 57% of that has gone to hitters because hitters do play more defense, more valuable defense. But the distribution is different because its pitchers are collectively accruing the same total of war, but they're splitting it up among many more pitchers, right? And so the ceiling is lower. And if you look at the greatest all-time war seasons by pitchers, there aren't as many double-digit, 10, and and 11 war seasons. But again, you have to go back to, I guess, I mean, Steve Carlton in 1972,

Starting point is 00:21:04 11.1, Peak Pedro, 1999, 11.6, all-time top fan graphs war total for pitchers. 2001, Randy Johnson, 10.4. But Randy Johnson threw 249, almost 250 innings that year, right? That's, again, that's a little bit different. And guys don't do that anymore. So all I'm saying is that I can, I guess, appreciate the position player, the hitter excellence more so just because we don't have to caveat and we don't have to talk about changes in usage. And we don't have to say, well, maybe Ms. Ravsky would be worth more if he were throwing 250 innings. But then, of course, he would not be as excellent on an inning basis. And so I'm not really trying to take anything away. it's just that the game itself has evolved to take something away.

Starting point is 00:21:54 And whereas it used to be that the top pitchers and position players in any given season would be pretty equivalent in value, now that's normally not the case. And you'd rather have the best hitter than the best pitcher. And this has been a season of excellent pitching performances. I'm not trying to shortchange Cam Schlettler or Christopher Sanchez or Chris Sale or Dillan Seas or any of these other excellent arms. It's just that they're all kind of clustered in that six-ish war room. range. And on the position player side, we've been talking about how it's kind of a lackluster AL MVP race mirroring the lackluster AL playoff race. I mean, those guys have more war than the Miz does, right? Some of those AL war leaders on the position player side. So that's just

Starting point is 00:22:38 the nature of these things. And even hitters, there's a little more load management than there used to be. And unless you're Matt Olson, you're probably not in the lineup every single day. So that has taken away from the top end slightly. But it's just entirely different. And I guess I enjoy not needing to caveat. The other thing is that with position players, we really appreciate their speed and their strength and their power and we marvel at all of that. Whereas with pitchers, there is always the nagging fear in the back of your mind every time you watch the mispitch and say, This seems inhuman and given enough reps, inevitably he will break much as we don't want him to. And so that sense of foreboding is not really present with hitters either, even if, okay, maybe there's a little more risk of some strains or oblique issues or whatever because guys are swinging hard and that can take a toll too.

Starting point is 00:23:33 But it's not that sort of looking through my spayed fingers hoping nothing bad happens. It's just let's appreciate the incredible excellence of how hard they're hitting the ball and how fast they're running and all the rest of it. So these have been my musings on pitchers versus hitters. And maybe we've learned a little something or nothing at all. You know, what I'm hearing here is an argument for restricting the number of pitchers on the roster. So that each individual one has to carry more value and hopefully not get injured. Preaching to the choir. Preaching to the choir.

Starting point is 00:24:06 By the way, if you're wondering about the misses fielding kind, contributions. Fangraph's war currently doesn't include pitcher defense because it uses stat cast's building run value, which isn't calculated for pitchers. But he has about the same baseball reference war, so it wouldn't make much difference. The Miz has all of seven defensive chances this season, which is, I guess, what happens when you strike everyone out, though somehow he has negative three defensive run saved. Anyway, workload-wise, the outlier, the exception, is someone that you're probably quite familiar with Bradley. Alcantra, Sandy Alcantra,

Starting point is 00:24:40 is the only remaining innings eater. Yes. I think who really still deserves that title. I mean, you know, we're going to get a few guys crossing the 200 innings pitch threshold. But Alcantra already has. He's in 206 as we speak. Sanchez has a couple starts left.

Starting point is 00:24:57 He'll probably get there. Michael Waka has a chance. Kim Schlitler could. But that's about it. And Alcantra is just, I mean, he's, you know, 13 innings clear of anyone else. And he has transitioned maybe post-surgery into more of the innings-eater mold of not the Cy Young stuff necessarily, not that he is bad stuff, but on an inning-per-ning basis,

Starting point is 00:25:21 he's not quite as spectacular as he was at his peak. But he is still just, you know, he's the modern model of an-in-nings-eater. He's the closest to anyone comes. Yeah, I think it was actually interesting we, on Wednesday, had dueling Sandy El Alcantra eats innings articles on fan graphs and baseball prospectus. And, well, I think it also just is like, that is an article that 10 years ago, somebody crossing 200 innings pitched would have been just unthinkable. Like, that's just, okay, yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:48 So he did that. That's a very common feat. But now it is truly remarkable to see somebody who not only can go and cover that many innings, but they can stay healthy and convince their coaching staff to let them take one more time to that lineup. I know that was always like a major concern we had in the, Marlins dugout. We had projections for what he's going to look like third time to the order. And Sandy's projections always looks better than just about anybody else on the squad.

Starting point is 00:26:15 And granted, that was during some of his peak years. But it was a major concern. I remember one of the first conversations I had with Kim Eng when she was our general manager was, she asked me, how are we going to cover all these innings this year. She was looking at the bullpen. She was seeing a lot of one-inning guys. She was seeing a rotation that was outside of Sandy, not covering five. innings per start on average. And it was a serious concern of how do we fit that many

Starting point is 00:26:39 innings onto our 40-man roster without exposing guys you don't want to lose? And it's a really serious, tough, complex problem that front offices have to try to solve. And they're doing a really good job of working that constraint that they have. They're working that 40-man roster as well as they can. And they're optimizing these guys so that they can get massive performance out of them two times to the order and still find enough guys to shuttle back and forth between AAA. And so So yeah, I think shortening and shrinking that pitching staff in the major leagues may very well lead to some solutions. It may also just cause us to blow out guys' arms at a faster rate, which is scary to think about too. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:27:17 I always have concerns. I mean, I knew so many guys in the minors who, you know, they wanted to pitch well. And so they pitched harder. And they pitched harder until their arm fell off, basically. And so it's always the guys who are throwing hard that are performing well that are going to get the first call. And so you may put yourself in a position of greater danger by trying to be that guy to cover multiple endings and throw 100. And then suddenly, you know, your career is done. You might have made some money out of it, which is great.

Starting point is 00:27:42 And not a lot of people make money out of baseball. So I guess you've got to take the bitter with the sweet. Yeah. It was an incredible Ironman effort this Wednesday. So he made the start on Monday. He threw 1001 pitches. And then on Wednesday, he comes out of the pen in relief for the first time since his rookie season. And he recorded the first save of his career.

Starting point is 00:28:03 I mean, this is stuff that sometimes we see in the playoffs, but not in the regular season, even with a team that's still kind of clinging to contention and is really trying to avoid any losses here. That was special. And Matt Truebloods wrote about this for BP, as you alluded to. And he was trying to come up with comps for this. And it's really hard to find them. He found that Alcounter is the first pitcher to record a save in the same season in which he threw at least 205. since Chinming Wang in 2006. And that was in June and he was coming off a start when he was knocked out early and Mariana Rivera was unavailable. He was hurt. And so this was sort of an emergency. Before that, you have to go, I mean, that's already 20 years. You have to go back another decade to Andy Benis, who was filling in for Dennis Eckersley with the 1996 Cardinals. So this does not happen. And and even that wasn't quite comparable to. what Alcantra did here and True Blood kept digging and he found that the last time a starter

Starting point is 00:29:04 like Alcantra actually swung out to the bullpen to save a game near the end of the season for purely baseball slash optimization reasons. It was Don Sutton in 1979. And even that was slightly different, but still, I mean, this does not happen. So, and obviously he volunteered to do it and he probably got a little lucky to get out of that situation and nail down the game. But he also said, I've been here since 2018. I've seen everything this organization has gone through. I want to die out there for my team. Which sounds a little extreme. You don't need to do that, Sandy. But who expected him still to be a member of the Marlins after all this time? And if he hadn't gotten hurt and lost a little effectiveness, maybe he wouldn't be. I guess his 22 sying season

Starting point is 00:29:47 kind of was like the Ms. scenario we were talking about where what if he threw more innings, but wasn't quite as dominant on an inning per inning basis. Worked out to just about the same fancraft's war. Anyway, this inning, he did it and I loved it. So that was not something you see every day or every 20 years, apparently. Well, we call that nowadays, we call that doing an Ayamistato. Yeah, exactly. Right. Or a Yamamoto, I guess, if you want an MLP comp. But again, that's the playoffs, right? So that's the championship. That's a little bit different stakes for both of those players. Okay, the last couple things I wanted to mention, just a couple quick follow-ups. Are you aware of how poorly Ernie Clement has hit since the All-Star game?

Starting point is 00:30:32 Because it's been rough. Remember Ernie Clement in how he was dominating All-Star voting? And it was like him and Shohei, you know? And it was like he's lapping the rest of the league and it became this whole thing. And he had been good and productive to that point. And obviously he was great in the playoffs last year. Since then, though, since the All-Star. break, he has hit 218, 253, 272. That is a 46 WRC plus, which is third worst in baseball among qualified hitters, negative.6 war. So perhaps some regression was predictable because he was, after all, Ernie Clement, which is what added an element of absurdity to the support that he received. I mean, it became fun at a certain point, but also it was like a him, you know, like the arrested development hurt.

Starting point is 00:31:23 meme, but for a big leaker. And yeah, he has not particularly played like an All-Star down the stretch, sadly. But he'll always have the pre-All-Star break period. So we will remember that. But later generations will look back and see that he was an All-Star, even if they don't see that he was a leading vote getter and wonder how exactly that happened. So, you know, one of those things. I think it's good to leave little historic mysteries for people to solve. Yeah. Yeah. People should have to dig. into the splits, I think, in order to understand the past. Okay. And then the other thing I wanted to mention to you, so I feel like the monkeys paw curled a little bit here because I was regaling Meg not too long ago. This was episode 2516 in mid-August about how baseball movies are back, not just baseball references in other movies, but wide release, major motion pictures appearing in lots of theaters because we're getting The Catch, which is a romantic comedy with Emma Stone and Tim Robbins and Sissy Spaceic. This is in the works. We have Glenn Powell and Richard Linklater

Starting point is 00:32:33 reuniting for a Lou Gehrig biopic. We have Tom Hanks is going to be in a baseball movie, The Comebacker coming next year. And, you know, this is relevant to our WPBL topic because, of course, women's pro baseball makes people think of a league of their own, which makes people think of the golden age for baseball movies in the late 80s, early 90s, when they were just cranking those things out. And so I was taking this as a sign that, you know what, baseball has some buzz. Baseball's got some juice again. Hollywood is interested and doesn't think that you can't sell baseball movies to the public at large. And I think I was right.

Starting point is 00:33:09 However, I now almost wish I was wrong because of a couple of other baseball movies that I have learned about recently that are also in the works. Now, the less bad of them maybe is a Robert De Niro vehicle. He is playing Tommy Lassorta. Oh. We're going to get a Tommy Lassorta biopic, evidently, called Tommy and Me. So this is, it's not nailed down, but De Niro is in talks to play Tommy Lazzorta. Is the me the Philly fanatic? Let's hope.

Starting point is 00:33:43 That's the only way this would be acceptable. It's a great question. I don't know who the me is. I'm guessing it is not Tommy Lassorta's son who was gay and died of AIDS, which Tommy Lazzorta denied homophobically and insisted that it wasn't AIDS and that he hadn't been gay. I'm guessing that that probably won't play a part in the biopic. Maybe it'll be a bit of a whitewashing.

Starting point is 00:34:08 Not that Lassardo was not a larger-than-life baseball figure and celebrity in an era when someone And in that position, a manager could be a national celebrity. So I'm not saying there couldn't be a worthwhile movie here. But, you know, late career De Niro's track record, I'm just, I'm not sure how much to expect out of this one. But add it to the pile, I suppose. Now, this is the one where I thought, uh-oh, actually, we've gone too far. And maybe it would be better if they didn't make any more baseball movies. Here's the headline Cincinnati Inquirer this week.

Starting point is 00:34:44 Mark Wahlberg shares new details about Pete Rose movie. Oh, come on. Speaking of baseball figures with checkered pass, but even more so in this case. And you know, I didn't want to prejudge. And I was thinking, you know, maybe Marky Mark will take a look at the man in tire, you know. We'll consider his baseball career. We'll also consider all the other off the field issues. And we will really have the true Pete Rose story.

Starting point is 00:35:14 and maybe there could be some value in that. You never know. I don't think it's going to be that kind of movie. So here's what we heard. Walberg said the movie will focus on the last part of Rose's career as player and manager, his pursuit of Thai Cobb's MLB hit record, and Rose's life after baseball. So, okay, that's obviously some seedy, unsavory territory. And again, could be ripe for, you know, exposing the man behind the myth and the darkness and all the rest.

Starting point is 00:35:44 of it until I read this part, as Walberg spoke, someone in the audience yelled, put him in the Hall of Fame. And then the next paragraph is, we got to put him in the Hall of Fame. Yes, Walberg responded. So I'm guessing that this is not really going to be the reappraisal and revisiting of Pete Rose. I mean, not that they're shying away, obviously, from the betting and everything, because that seems like it's going to be a big part of the story. But some of the stuff that's maybe even worse than. And that's argument, will that be covered? Will this be some sort of we're lionizing or we're redeeming him or we're saying despite his foibles, you know, if Wahlberg's opinion is that he should be in the hall, which I mean, look, there are plenty of people who holds that opinion and perhaps could even hold that opinion while acknowledging the entirety of Pete Rose's life and career. But if he's out there cheerleading for the Hall of Fame case of Pete Rose, then I am somewhat worried about what this movie could look like.

Starting point is 00:36:45 That feels to me tantamount to saying, allow me to pitch to Hollywood, what about a Jackie Robinson movie where he is the villain? Stick with me. You know, Jackie's a bad guy now. That's almost what they've done here. Making Pete Rose the good guy

Starting point is 00:37:01 is already missing the point of the horrible story that is Pete Rose's life. And I hate to say that. It's a really grim way to say that. But the truth is, he was unrepentant and had some horrible, horrible things on the rap sheet. It's just not worth lionizing. And I love Mark Wahlberg and the other guys.

Starting point is 00:37:21 I loved it so much. I brought it up to my former boss, Derek Jeter. I told him it was my wife and I's co-favorit movie, and I made him tell me stories about how he's friends with Will Ferrell, etc. All that said, I'm not going to probably be seeing the Pete Rose movie in the theaters. Yeah, it's slightly concerning. I mean, not that he won't be the bad guy. I don't know that he could be the good guy of a movie that focuses on the latter part of his career and the life after baseball. But will he be a bad enough guy, I guess, is the question or what's the ultimate moral of this story. So Wellberg's hoping to put this thing into production sometime next year. So we will wait and see how many baseball movies get made.

Starting point is 00:38:05 And, you know, you have to take the good with the bad. Because when they were making many baseball movies, many of them were bad. So maybe it is a further. sign of baseball's comeback in the popular spotlight that, you know, they start to make bad movies about baseball, too, right? That's a sign that baseball has completed the comeback. All right. So one last thing, Jeffrey Yan, whom we all discussed and celebrated when the Mets called him up and he debuted his ebullient, his gravity-defying strikeout celebration. It has become more muted, I'm sorry to say recently.

Starting point is 00:38:43 He was optioned. He was recalled. He's back in the big leagues now. And this sort of circulated and went semi-viral because of his first appearance after he was brought back up to the big leagues because he pitched three scoreless and he had a few K's. And he was not doing the full leap into the air after each strikeout. And I actually went back and watched all 20 of his strikeouts in the majors this year. And he actually has not been doing the first. full leap celebration for some time. So it's not actually new. I believe the last time he did it

Starting point is 00:39:17 in the big leagues. I was not dedicated enough to go back and watch all the AAA video. But the last time I think he did it in the big leagues was on August 15th when he struck out Nassim Nunez swinging and he did the full thing. After that, he introduced variations and he's now going with this sort of Michael Jacksonian slide step, sort of semi-moonwalk kind of move. So he's still celebrating. It's a little inconsistent from K to K. But he is usually still doing this. Honestly, it's kind of a cool move. I might actually prefer it to the original. But when I saw this at first, I was thinking, look how they massacred my boy. And he has nerfed his strikeout Selly and I still don't know why or how exactly this happened. I don't know if someone talked to him about

Starting point is 00:40:07 this or whether he took it upon himself to tone it down a bit. It almost looks like a more pronounced Juan Soto shuffle. It's something along those lines these days. I think he actually did have an Instagram comment weeks ago where he said something to the effect of there's no point in jumping the gun in losing or at least that's the Google translation. I'm not sure if he was referring to the fact that the Mets were losing a lot when he was doing this, or sometimes he did jump the gun a little bit and celebrate prematurely when it was not actually a strikeout resulting from that pitch. But either way, he has moderated, but not entirely. I just, I don't want anyone to take the light out of his life and hours, you know, because he persisted in the celebration

Starting point is 00:40:51 for so long that it would be sad if peer pressure restrained him. So I love Jeffrey Young. When I was working with the Marlins, a scout in one of the meetings said, we found this guy who's pitching in a men's league, and he's been out of baseball for a year or two. He is trying to get a modeling career off the ground, and he is throwing like 90 in a men's league on weekends. And we signed him, and his name is Jeffrey Young. And I remember thinking, this is my new favorite player. This guy is amazing. And in his time in the minors, my memory could be betraying me here.

Starting point is 00:41:27 I watched a lot of Jeffreyon strikeout. including strikeouts where Nasim Nunez was his shortstop. I think they were teammates in AA. But Jeffrey Yon, I believe, tested out a lot of different moves. It was not always the high flyer. So I think I've seen the Michael Jackson smooth criminal move before. I'm fairly certain he has used it and deployed it on occasion whenever the mood strikes him. And I do recall he did a lot of different stuff in the minors.

Starting point is 00:41:55 So yeah, he has variations. I'm going to say that if the high flyer, is gone, it's probably not gone for good. He does like to break it out. And I wouldn't be surprised if late in the season load management, he's got to like maybe take care of those legs a little bit. But I love him so much. This might be better long term. If he was doing this in Japan, I don't think there's a coach on earth that can stop him from, because I mean, this is a league that is a little bit more conservative. And so I think there's very much the drama cannot be contained inside the body. It's going to come out. And so I'm very optimistic. We will see more

Starting point is 00:42:29 high flying from from yon yeah i was going to say it seems tiring and given that one of the pitcher objections to the pitch clock was like they need those precious few seconds to like let their body continue recovering i know it's his legs and not his arm and pitchers were mostly referring to their arm but like the legs are still a factor here so i could see just the exhaustion part of it getting to him and then as far as transitioning to a more michael jackson-esque move speaking of biopics that did not capture the full character of the man. Oh, God. Yes.

Starting point is 00:43:02 Yes. Good segue, I suppose. So let's transition to WPBL talk. And hopefully this will not be the last time that we talk about the WPBL on this podcast. I've been trying to set up some player interviews, which I hope will come to fruition after the season is complete. But let's talk WPBL now. And then I will have the interview with Dimitri and Al. I might even conclude with some stat blasting.

Starting point is 00:43:28 All my material must go before Meg returns, and we wipe the slate clean. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com slash Effectively Wild to access the rest of this episode and plenty of other exclusive content. Weekly subscriber-only episodes, monthly bonus shows, our Discord group, our live streams. Either way, we will be back with. another episode soon, which will appear in full on this feed. Until then, we wish you well,

Starting point is 00:44:00 and thank you for your support of Effectively Wild, whatever form it takes.

Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2533: You Win Some, You Lose 40 in a Row

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