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Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2378: MLB’s Big Finish
01:36:44
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the standings and stakes of an unexpectedly wild last week of the regular season, whether there’s such as a thing as a playoff team that can’t make a deep run, why Cal Raleigh is the player of the year regardle...
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- [00:01]
Ben Lindbergh
If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben.
- [00:11]
Meg Rowley
And Meg have to say.
- [00:13]
Ben Lindbergh
Philosophically and pedantically, it's effectively wild.
- [00:24]
Meg Rowley
Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2378 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrass baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you feeling?
- [00:39]
Ben Lindbergh
Grateful for this wondrous week. We've been given this exciting grand finale, not Downton Abbey. The grand finale, though, that was great, too. But the finale to the regular season. This is super exciting. I'm hyped. We've talked multiple times, probably this season, about whether the end of the regular season would be boring, whether it was all set in stone. We knew who was going to be on the playoffs, what was there even to root for until the playoffs started. And here we are, we're recording on Tuesday afternoon. So by the time people are hearing this, there will have been games that change the playoff picture. But just big picture, this is a super exciting conclusion to this regular season. I did not expect so much to be in doubt, so much potential for incredible comebacks. Collapses. We've got it all.
- [01:31]
Meg Rowley
We got it all. And it's interesting, right, because I felt like we were saying the same thing over and over again, and I was a little. I was a little concerned about that. It was fretting like, oh, my God, we don't have anything new to say. And then it was like, no, we're gonna. We're gonna make this final wildcard spot in both leagues highly. I don't know if competitive is quite the right word, because it's mostly being driven by collapses, but not entirely right. You gotta keep winning on the. On the bottom end for the. The poor performance at the top end to mean anything. I'm trying to not take anything for granted, because that way lies madness and disappointment. And as we've covered several times, I'm quite familiar with that feeling. But it is. Are the Astros mis supposedly said, are the. Are the Mets going to.
- [02:22]
Ben Lindbergh
These things are within the realm of possibility. There's so many permutations and potential outcomes. It's just. It's really exciting. And I'm sure that Astros fans and Mets fans and Tigers fans would prefer that it be a little less exciting and more predictable. So we are profiting from their anxiety.
- [02:41]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [02:42]
Ben Lindbergh
And I'm sure that the majority of MLB fans, they're just paying attention to their own team. And maybe they don't care what's going on in the rest of the playoff picture if it doesn't directly concern their team, their team is in or their team is out and that's that. But for anyone who's just into the sport and the league and is a neutral observer or just likes an interesting story in addition to following their team, just so many storylines here, just so much to pay attention to. We talked last week, I guess it was about how we wish that somehow there could be more head to head finales. That somehow you could engineer it such that the teams that are in direct competition would actually be in direct competition instead of having to do a lot of scoreboard watching. Well, you can't ask for better than the Guardians and the Tigers going head to head for three games this week. That's about as good as it gets. And of course we just had Mariners vs. Astros and the Mariners just took care of business. They just, they swept. So everything coming up, Meg, right now in that series at least. So we've gotten those highlights that we wanted.
- [03:50]
Meg Rowley
I listeners might remember that I've been, I've been on vacation. It's been a little, mostly a staycation, a breather to reset to feel less stressed going into the very busy season that is October. But I did take a little jaunt up Seattle way over the weekend to see the family go to a Seahawks game with my sister. The vibe is so good and so nervous simultaneously. My stepmom is a big camper. She is a camping enthusiast and I think as a result of that has an expression to try not to jinx things is the worst campfire I've ever seen. You know, when you get a campfire going just at the beginning and it's like, you know, it could go either way, right? You don't, you don't know for sure that it's going to flourish, that you're going to get that roaring. The number of times that we said that over the course of the weekend, they, it was high. It wasn't always directly in correlation to the score, to be clear. Again, just a nervous disposition in Mariners fan land. But I think the underrated storyline, at least as the American League is concerned and then we can spend a bit of time on the NL2. It's not just that the Mariners went down to Houston and swept and took care of that business and so now they have a three game division lead with six to play. It's not just the, the Tigers staring down the Guardians for their own division but the, the collapse of the Tigers, um, they have lost six in a row as we are recording on Tuesday. As you noted, they, they start a. A series in Cleveland, but because of their skid, not only are the Mariners leading the west, they are in line for a first round body mate.
- [05:42]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah, how about that? Yeah, you've gone from looking like they might fall out of it entirely. Entirely to actually being set up pretty well. In fact, they do have the highest World Series odds, according to Fangraphs.com I noticed.
- [05:59]
Meg Rowley
I was asked by a member of the Mariners front office who will remain nameless, what precedent is there for that? I'm happy to report that that question inspired me to bother David Appleman about it because I have a good amount of work life separation while on vacation, totally good boundaries for myself. And this is the hot. In the history of our playoff odds, which, you know, caveat, right? This is. I'm sure that their World Series odds, you know, one were probably pretty high, if that had existed, right? But we, we didn't. That wasn't a thing yet. So prior to this year, their high was 10% on April 16th of 2015, and then it was right around nine and a half when they won the wild card in 2022, but otherwise the highest it's. It's ever been. So that also just fills me with profound dread. I don't want anyone to be mistaken. I don't want any potential Mariners Etsy witches. I wonder if it's a booming business, right? Is there a competition in that marketplace now? Don't know. I don't want anyone to misinterpret this. Still profoundly nervous. The disposition is inherently anxious, but they're in a good spot. Now, if you're feeling nervous and you want to do your own, this is the worst campfire I've ever seen. Sure, they have this series starting against the Rockies, and sure, the Rockies are famously not a very good baseball team, but don't get trapped, Mariners, don't you get trapped. Okay? You just take care of yourself and your business and let other people fret about their own business. You drive your car, and then we'll kind of see where things land. But yeah, man, it's something.
- [07:49]
Ben Lindbergh
There's a lot at stake. There's the Mariners, who have never won a pennant, very much in the running. There's the Astros, who have not missed the playoffs since 2016, running some risk of doing so. There is the Mets, adding to their pile of collapses for their fans to brew, of course, summoning memories of 2007, 2008, etc. Going back even further, we could come up with other examples. And then there's the Tigers, who are now under threat of blowing the biggest lead ever. The biggest leads in a division, the biggest lead in a league. Prior to the existence of divisions, they had a 15 and a half game lead over the Guardians and now as we speak, they have a one game lead. They might not have any lead by the time people are hearing this. So it's really incredible. That's the kind of thing that people will talk about for ages if that were to happen, at least if they miss the playoffs as well. If you're one of the AL Central teams, you have multiple paths to the playoffs, whereas the Astros right now would really have to have a lot of things go right to win the AL west after being swept by the Mariners. But if you are one of the AL Central teams, then you have the potential to win the division. You also have the wild card path. So there are a couple potential routes that you could take and that helps your playoff odds. And if the Tigers end up blowing the division lead but still winning a wild card, maybe that would ease some of the sting of the collapse. But you have to hand it to the Guardians too, who've just been playing incredible baseball with an unlikely cast. Just, you know, they've lost people to injury, they've lost people to pitch fixing investigations. You look at their rotation and you say this doesn't necessarily seem like it would be the best rotation in baseball on paper. And yet it has been this month just been absolutely lights out. And yeah, they don't hit very much, but they have timely hitting. They've been incredibly clutch. They've been the clutchest team on both sides of the ball. If you combine the fan graphs, batting and pitching clutch scores, then they are the clutchest team. And not only have they timed their hits well, but they've kind of clustered them of late. And that's the change, I think, because we talked about how well is it really an exciting race if everyone is just mediocre and no one's really catching up? And yeah, it's close, but there's no real change in the positioning. I wrote about this at the ringer on Monday and talked about it a bit on Hang up and Listen. But from the end of the All Star break through September 1st, all of the contenders, the wild card contenders, at least their records were all clustered between 17 and 24 and 24 and 17 like no one was going on just a great run. And no One was completely incompetent. But lately that has changed. The Mariners just win almost every game. The Guardians win almost every game. The Tigers and the Mets lose almost every game. So we've had some extremes here. We've had more of an impression of teams seizing their moments or fumbling at the worst possible moment. And so that has really made it more exciting. I mean, I get to profit from other people's pain, but look, it has made it more exciting. If you don't have a horse in the race and you just want to see good races and things kind of coming down to the wire, then that's what we're getting here. And some teams are actually trying to take it from others. And it's fun.
- [11:23]
Meg Rowley
There have been enough swings back and forth. You know, we talked about how the Mariners were in danger, just falling out of the race entirely. And then they found their way into this position where they like really, really control their own destiny. But it has gone back and forth enough that I wonder, if we look back, are we going to feel like we underrated the day to day excitement of the race? Because there have been swaps, right? There have been, there's been coming and going, there have been changes at the top. Like there's these tight wild card races. So I, I don't know, I. You gotta hand it to them, they kind of pulled it out at the end of the races to be more fun, to be more. These, these wild card races and, and playoff races generally are more dynamic than they seemed like they were going to be.
- [12:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, much more. So I tracked the odds in my article. I made a graph of just the day by day graph, the sum of the odds of the pre September playoff field. So the playoff field as it stood on August 31, what were the odds by day that there would be some change, that some team that was not in playoff position would end up in the playoffs. And at the start of the month it was like 40% combined chance. So the odds were that there wouldn't be any change whatsoever. But now in the past couple days it's been more than double that. It's been, it's been almost triple that it's been. The odds are that there will be a change now. So if it turns out that there is no change, that all this was late season excitement and then it ends up the Tigers do win the division and, and the Astros win a wild card and the Mets cling to that wild card and the Reds don't take it from them, well, then it will seem like nothing really changed, I guess, and nothing will have changed. But what has changed is that there's real suspense, there's a real risk of change or real potential for change, depending on your perspective. It's just gotten much more likely that there will be some sort of turnover. And that I think is what has catapulted it to a new level. And it was really this weekend, just the outcome of things this past weekend with the Mariners sweep and everything and just the Guardians and the Tigers continuing to close that gap and the Reds pulling even with the Mets and, and actually technically taking the lead because of the tiebreaker and all of that.
- [13:49]
Meg Rowley
That's right. Yeah.
- [13:50]
Ben Lindbergh
My one complaint about this is, is having to constantly look up head to head records and then intra division records. I can never remember who holds the tiebreaker over which other team. And then I have to continually remind myself of that. And then it's not super satisfying too because I just tantalize myself with oh, how much more exciting would this be if we had the potential for a tiebreaker game instead of just deciding it based on these, these head to head results? Which I guess, you know, it's not like a head to head record, I guess in some respects is more telling than just playing a single game to. Cause that's, you know, we're determining based on a head to head record. You may have played several games, you may have played many games against another team. Not that that's super predictive, but it's more telling maybe than a single game 163. And yet the single game 163 is just so much more exciting and satisfying than just looking up what happened to this point. That's just not nearly as exciting really. It's just like either way, I guess you're deciding it with sort of small sample results. That's how the playoffs work. But it's not, it's not satisfying to my sabermetric heart to settle it with head to head records. And it's so much less exciting. I now I get why they do it because there's one break Monday, teams are off next Monday and then the wild card series starts. So they just, there's so many rounds, there's so many teams that they just want to get it going and they don't want to build in time for a potential tiebreaker that could screw things up. But what are you sacrificing there? There would be a real chance of, of seeing that sort of game to conclude this race. And that would be wonderful.
- [15:37]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, it would be nice. And you're right. It is a pain. I have like the, you know, the little MLB.com explainer up. It's like, okay, they're. The Mariners are three. It's sort of like being four up because they have the tiebreaker against Houston and you're like, geez Louise, Houston gets really. They had the chips fall in an unfortunate sequence as it pertains to tiebreakers, because I think they.
- [16:00]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, yeah.
- [16:01]
Meg Rowley
They don't have. They lose out in tiebreaker scenarios against all four of the teams closest to them in the standing is like, really rough. So.
- [16:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, I guess they shouldn't have lost so many games to those teams. But also they do finish this last week with the Angels and A's, so that's something they've got going for. I mean, you know, not that the, the sequencing. I mean, of course there's still some degree of imbalance in the full season schedule strength, but it's all just sequencing in terms of. Well, other teams have already had their games against those teams in many cases. So just hyper fix on what's happening here in late September. And we weren't paying as close attention when other teams were playing those same opponents back in May or whenever it was. But still, it's a point in their favor because these other teams, they're playing each other. They're playing some tougher teams. And look, the Red Sox are in the mix. The Diamondbacks are in the. That's. I think what is good here is that there's not just like one team chasing one other team, but you do have all these scenarios where a number of teams could still make it or lose it. You could get the Diamondbacks, who, as we speak, are just a game out of the wild card. And then there's the Reds and there's the Mets and there's the Red Sox still in the mix, and the AL up, but not comfortably up, and the Mariners and the Astros and the Tigers and the Guardians. So it's, it ends up being a pretty significant percentage of the teams that are in this, not just for seeding and clinching. And there's some of that still going on, too, but just, you know, in or out. And that has vastly exceeded my expectations for what the stakes would still be at this point.
- [17:38]
Meg Rowley
Oh, yeah. I was like, I'm going to have all of our postseason assignments done.
- [17:42]
Ben Lindbergh
And no, not quite considerate for an editor in chief of a.
- [17:46]
Meg Rowley
They don't care. And that's fine.
- [17:47]
Ben Lindbergh
That's not the low priority for other people. Yeah.
- [17:51]
Meg Rowley
But I, I am noting simply that it's like, well, I got some. We're going to end up.
- [17:56]
Ben Lindbergh
You're going to have to do some scrambling last minute there, but for a good reason.
- [17:59]
Meg Rowley
Scramble. You know, we like to scramble. It is so funny to look at like the, you know, you look at the, the NL field and you do have, you do have the, the spot, that final wildcard spot. But it's like, you know, when you look at the MLB.com standings, there's a lot more clinched division and clinched playoff birth there than there is on the AL side where I think the only team that has technically clinched at this point is the Blue Jays.
- [18:28]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And at this point the, the team strength, it almost doesn't matter that much. Yes. You can look at the numbers and you can say, oh, the Guardians have been incredibly clutch. The Mets have been the opposite. They're the third least clutch team. That's why they find themselves in these situations. And then the base runs standings page will say, oh, The Guardians are 10 games better than they should be and the Mets are nine games worse. Well, it doesn't matter anymore.
- [18:52]
Meg Rowley
Not really.
- [18:53]
Ben Lindbergh
It doesn't have a material impact on the projections for those teams when you're talking about just six games.
- [18:59]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [18:59]
Ben Lindbergh
Ye. Yeah. So, yeah, the Guardians have been outscored on the season and suddenly they're doing this with, with Jose Ramirez and Kyle Mansardo and not a whole lot else. I mean, I guess Stephen Kwan's been back, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a weak offense, it's a good bullpen. Not as otherworldly great as last year's was and obviously without Class A and everything, but still like they've, they've gotten the job done. So I'm glad that they have at this point because it's just made this way more exciting. I don't know which would be worse. Like, if the Tigers blow this, is that more painful than the men's blowingness? Because the Tigers were just sitting so.
- [19:44]
Meg Rowley
Pretty, so it felt so comfortable.
- [19:48]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And the Mets, they had near virtual lock playoff odds at various points too. It's been a while since they were that close in the NL east, but they appeared to, to have that wild card spot on lock and that is just not happening. So the Tigers, I mean, they have just. It's been a complete offensive outage for them for quite some time now. And I've been ragging on the Guardians offense, but it's not like the Tigers have been hitting these days. Maybe the, the names are slightly more impressive, but the results have not been. And with both the Tigers and the Mets, it's like they both got off to great starts. They seem to have sewn up playoff spots, if not divisions. And then it's just been coasting. It's just been coasting into a collapse and basically like will the buffer that we built up early in the year when everything was clicking, will that last? And they've both had injuries, obviously. The Mets have tried to rebuild their rotation on the fly and patch it together with a bunch of prospects they promoted and you know, like the Tigers, all the, the early season guys who were super successful, like, oh, Javi Baez is back. He's the starting center fielder for the American League all star team. He has barely gotten on base since that game. So some of that where, okay, this is unexpected and it has not continued to happen. So some of that is just they were playing over their heads, but it's been bad. And, and this is coming on the heels of last year, which was the polar opposite of course where they sell at the deadline. Everyone writes them off. They write themselves off and then they have this surge and they make it into the playoffs improbably. And, and this is just the polar opposite from a vibes perspective.
- [21:34]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, they, they've had like a freaky Friday with the Diamondbacks in a across league freaky Friday. Like they're know, here's the deadline seller that might, you know, work their way into the postseason. I don't know the answer like which is worse. I'm, I'm inclined to say the Tigers at least on a single season basis. I know that anytime we experience some form of Mets collapse, there's like agita about it because of the Mets of it all over the long term. But like it was incomprehensible. We thought they were going to be the number one seed in the AL for most of the season.
- [22:10]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [22:11]
Meg Rowley
So if they, if they fall out of it or they, or even if they don't fall out of the field entirely, but they just end up a wild card, I, I mean that's, that's bad business. And then, you know, we've had this reporting around sort of the state of the organization and the combination of those things. If I were a Tigers fan, it would make me feel very uneasy. Which isn't to say that they can't pull it out. And as we say every year at this time, you get in and who knows what's going to happen.
- [22:40]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, I, I meant to say that the other day that the idea that there are some teams that you don't feel like they'll make a real run if they get in. I don't know that I feel that about any team, really. I mean, I know you have not.
- [22:53]
Meg Rowley
Watched enough Diamondbacks baseball for you to be saying that because that bullpen is terrifyingly poor.
- [23:01]
Ben Lindbergh
It is quite bad. Well, and how about the Tigers bullpen another way in which they're the inverse of last year's team Pitching chaos? This is.
- [23:10]
Meg Rowley
Where's your pitching chaos now? It's like actual chaos.
- [23:13]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Gotta get John Brevia back in there. I don't know that that would help, but. No, they just. They can't miss bats. No one in that bullpen can get strikeouts, really. Of Finnegan they. They picked up and I guess he's been their best guy when he's been healthy, but it's just you don't have those dominant late inning arms that you like to see, especially in October, when you're getting a disproportionate percentage of your innings from those guys. They just don't have them anymore. But we've seen that happen before where teams that seem to have weak pens coming into the postseason, they just rip off a great month. It's not that many innings. It's totally possible. So when people say, like, yeah, I don't foresee this team actually making a run if they get in, I feel like it's going to be quick. I mean, sure, some teams have better chances than others, but not by so much that I would really write off anyone. If you get in, you really can just go all the way. We've. We've seen it too many times to count anyone out, right?
- [24:09]
Meg Rowley
Like, speaking of those Diamondbacks, right? Like, think about their World Series, Ron Ginkle.
- [24:15]
Ben Lindbergh
Who? The Gink. The Gink.
- [24:17]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, The Gink is here.
- [24:19]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, it's been super exciting. I don't know. I think the other thing, if the Mets were to blow it, obviously they had higher expectations from a payroll perspective, because, sure, the Tigers, even though they ended last season in such exciting fashion, they were not nearly seen as a lock coming into this year. A lot of people thought they would take a step back, and so their early season success was somewhat surprising. And we were weighing like, is this actually a good team? Yeah, I think this is actually a good team. And then it turned into not so great a team for the rest of the season, but the whole season counts. So on the whole, pretty good. Exceeded expectations. But the Mets, because of their payroll, because they signed Juan Soto, literally Juan Soto, who's now has a career high in homers and steals. I mean, their payroll is higher than the payrolls of the two teams that are chasing them combined, the Reds and the Diamondbacks, plus 35 million gets you the Mets payroll. So that has an impact, I think, on how fans feel and how much of a embarrassment it's seen. As if you blow that lead, probably, but. But yeah, blowing the biggest lead ever would certainly set the Tigers collapse apart if that is completed.
- [25:37]
Meg Rowley
It's funny because it's like, what do you, you know, what do you want to see if you're. You set aside the, the fandom piece of it. Like, in general, what do we want to see rewarded when it comes to the playoff field? And it's like, okay, I would like, you know, I want to see. See the teams that spend money and invest in their rosters. The Mets, the Diamondbacks. Right. I want those teams to succeed because I think it's good for the sport when clubs that do that succeed. That doesn't need to be the only sort of flavor of playoff team, but it is one that I want to see in there. So in that respect, maybe I wouldn't be happy about a Mets collapse. You want to see teams that added the deadline succeed. Which isn't to say that every team that doesn't add at the deadline is doing something wrong. There might be very sound reasons for that. I didn't blame the Diamondbacks for selling at the deadline. I feel like I'm talking about these Diamondbacks a lot. Surprising given the fact that they are one game out. But I didn't blame them for. I didn't think that they were like, you know, throwing in the towel on a winning club. I understood why they were willing to part with guys who are going to hit free agency anyway. Makes good sense, right? But it sure is nice. And not just because I would prefer them to win regardless of circumstance. To see the Mariners doing well when they. They addressed real needs on their roster at the deadline. Right. They were willing to trade prospects who they liked so that they could go and get a couple of bats to reinforce the lineup. Isn't that going great? You know, even though AO Honey wasn't hitting for most of the time, he's hitting a little bit more now, so that's good. But it's like, you know, there's sort of different archetypes of, of clubs that you want to see rewarded for their effort in. In the hopes that it inspires other teams in similar positions in the future to be like, no, we should we should go for it with this is. This is the right thing to do, you know, so.
- [27:36]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, yeah. And you could look back, I guess, with hindsight and say, oh, maybe the Tigers should have been a bit more aggressive at the deadline, or maybe the Guardians should have. It's just they've surprised themselves in multiple ways. They've certainly surprised us. So this has just been a ton of fun. I'm glad that we're here, however it shakes out, whether there's actual upheaval here or not, or the teams that we thought were going to make it end up making it. The fact that there's so much up in the air here with just a handful of days left in the regular season, that's awesome. That's an unexpected gift. So thank you, baseball, for entertaining me so well.
- [28:17]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.
- [28:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Good stuff. At the point of, like, breaking down pitcher matchups and, oh, the Tigers have two Tarek Skuple games if they want, with him on regular rest and then other teams don't. And, oh, the. The Red Sox only get one crochet start. And the Astros, they got Paredes back, but they lost Jordan and all these other guys that I'm just, like, looking and breaking it down on a day by day, game by game basis in a way that I'm unaccustomed to in the regular season. It's really. It's only a late September phenomenon or an October one, where suddenly you look at hyper, scrutinizing individual games and series, which would just seem sort of silly to do for most of the season. And here it just. It gets granular. And every game absolutely matters in this Detroit Cleveland series. Maybe that swings it all, maybe decides it. So just the epicenter of the SP is Ohio these days. Just the two Ohio teams. Just.
- [29:19]
Meg Rowley
We're always saying that.
- [29:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Delivering great intrigue here at the end. And of course, awards races coming down to the wire as well. And Cal with another home run outburst to get up to 58 as we're speaking. So he's already made all the history, but there's more he could make. And if you're invested in that AL MVP race, then that's something to watch. If you're invested in the AL Cy Young Award race, which I guess is basically just Skubal versus Crochet if. If Skubal hasn't sewn it up already. Yeah, there's just. There's still some stuff at stake here.
- [29:56]
Meg Rowley
It's just.
- [29:56]
Ben Lindbergh
It's fun and I want to see how high Cal can go.
- [29:59]
Meg Rowley
I would Also like to know the answer to that. It was so. It's so nice on Saturday I went and just watched my nieces play soccer. Man, Youth soccer cultures. Intense. Those. Yeah, it's like. Was like a lot of folks and they're coming and going in different fields and it was great fun. And, you know, it's a Saturday. There's a Seahawks game the next day. That day was the day of the Apple cup, which for people from not in the state of Washington is the University of Washington and Washington State playing one another. To all of my Washington state, not as in the school, but just the locality football fans, yes, it remains ridiculous that they play this game in September. Now what are we doing? What have we lost in realignment? We've lost an Apple Cup. That makes sense. That's one of the things we've lost. That's one of the things. That's one of the things. September. September for the Apple Cup. What the are we doing with that? What? Anyway, furious. Big day. Big day of sports, right? Big day of sports that day. Big day of sports the next day. And I'm looking around and, you know, a lot of the people there are wearing garb for their kids team. You know, I am so. And so's mom on the back. I'm, you know, I'm a. Whatever team. The Sea Sprites. That wasn't one of the teams, but I'm a Sea Sprite dad. You know, like they're. They're there to support their kids playing soccer. But. But Ben, there's so much Mariners gear. There was just so much people and it's just, you know, this. They. Oh, people want it so bad. Oh, they want it so bad. Oh, I'm so nervous. And so. And you're sitting there and you're trying. You're trying to honor the anxiety, both because it is a real emotional experience and also because you still don't understand how the Etsy Witch works. You don't understand that magic. You don't want to disrespect it in case it's real. You just, you know, so you're trying to figure it out, but you can't help but think things like, well, you know, we don't really know what's going on with Brian Wu and his Peck, but like, if they have a buy, he could. Yeah, he can just rest. He can just be arrested. Woo. You know, yes, he can be a fully. Hopefully knocking on wood. Get at me. Etsy Witch fully rested. Woo.
- [32:28]
Ben Lindbergh
You know, the Etsy Witch is. Woo. Woo. I guess they Just need. They need woo back as well. There's the potential here if we get Mariners and Guardians and brewers in the playoff mix. I mean, just teams that have never won one or haven't won one since 1948, and there's just a lot of good rooting interests potentially in this playoff field.
- [32:53]
Meg Rowley
I already used up my. A team that hasn't won a World Series. I did that the year the Rangers won. Right. That was one of my pre season predictions that year. Is that right?
- [33:03]
Ben Lindbergh
I think so. And then maybe I. Did I predict that once, too. I forget. But.
- [33:08]
Meg Rowley
Oh, I don't remember.
- [33:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, you can. You can run that back. You can always repeat that. Although there are fewer and fewer who have not won one. But.
- [33:15]
Meg Rowley
And hopefully after this year.
- [33:17]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes. Right. That number will dwindle further, you know.
- [33:21]
Meg Rowley
And by that I mean hopefully the Milwaukee brewers will win a World Series. I just spilled water on myself. Been like a. Like some kind of distracted rube, I guess.
- [33:31]
Ben Lindbergh
It's still in play for the Mariners to finish with a.540 winning percentage and make all of Jerry's dreams come true. That's still possible, but it looks like they might exceed that.
- [33:41]
Meg Rowley
I want to know. I don't want that to happen because what I would like basically here and here, I'll. I'll put my cards on the table as it pertains to the Seattle Mares. I would really like it if the Dodgers Series that they have doesn't matter. Right. That. Like. Because I think. You tell me if I'm wrong. This part. I always get kind of goofy and I thought they used to have a column on the standings page for this and maybe they got rid of it or maybe it's just too early yet. But am I right to think that they need. They need a combination of either three wins of their own or three losses for Houston to. To win the division. Is that right?
- [34:21]
Ben Lindbergh
That sounds right. Yeah.
- [34:23]
Meg Rowley
So here's the thing. I just. I don't want. Because the Dodgers are playing for something, you know, like they haven't won their division yet. Right. They haven't clinched that division.
- [34:34]
Ben Lindbergh
No, no. So they're soon. But they might soon.
- [34:37]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, but not yet. And so they're still playing for something. They're still playing for something. And I don't want a motivated Dodgers team to be the thing that a motivated. But you know, still deeply anxious. Foundationally in the disposition Mariners team. No, just you take care of your business against the Rockies and hopefully. Hopefully that then you can just be done. You know, you win the Division.
- [35:02]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And there's also stuff about like, do you want the buy or what do you want? You want the buy, you always want the buy.
- [35:09]
Meg Rowley
Do we have to do this every year? Not you and I. We're civilized. We've answered this question.
- [35:14]
Ben Lindbergh
I don't even mean the layoff conversation, though. That's. That always rears its head. But, but just which matchup do you want? Because the NL west winner will almost certainly not get a buy anyway. So what you. What's at stake is, well, bragging rights, but also just do you play the Cubs on the road or do you play the Mets slash Red, slash Diamondbacks at home? And you'd probably want the latter. So sometimes they're these kind of perverse incentives. And then also there's stuff like fans rooting for teams that they normally would not root for that normally they would be opposed to because, like the Blue Jays are playing the Red Sox. And that means that Yankees fans sort of have incentive to root for the Red Sox because Yankees are still within striking distance of the Blue Jays in the AL East.
- [36:08]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [36:08]
Ben Lindbergh
They want to win that division. And so you've got Yankees fans rooting for the Red Sox and then you have Red Sox fans wanting to win so that they make the playoffs, but knowing that by winning they are potentially helping their mortal sports enemies, the Yankees, by beating the Blue Jays and perhaps handing the division to the Yankees. So you end up with all these just unlikely bedfellows and just weird rooting interests. Bed, fellows, Lions lying down with the lambs, whatever that saying is.
- [36:40]
Meg Rowley
Cats and dogs living together.
- [36:42]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, I love it. I just love these things that happen with the end of the season. And it's just, it's not a marathon at this point. It's a, it's a sprint. And I even, I liked that on Monday. There was a bit of a breather. It was just the calm before the storm.
- [36:57]
Meg Rowley
Yeah. So few games on Monday, there were three.
- [37:00]
Ben Lindbergh
Three games, six teams in action and few playoff implications. I guess technically the Giants and the.
- [37:07]
Meg Rowley
Cardinals, not eliminated, clinched a spot. So.
- [37:10]
Ben Lindbergh
That's true. Yeah.
- [37:12]
Meg Rowley
But yeah, their win clinched them a spot in the postseason.
- [37:14]
Ben Lindbergh
Most of the teams that are in the thick of this were off. And I kind of liked that. It was just like, ooh, we get a day to appreciate and anticipate much as we will next Monday when this is all said and done after the weekend and there's a one day break there for travel and everything. But. But I kind of liked this. This Monday almost universal off day. It reminded Me of. In the Phantom Menace, before. Before the Duel of the Fates, you.
- [37:41]
Meg Rowley
Could have given me 1,000 guesses, and I would never have anticipated that the Phantom Menace was about to make an appearance in this conversation. It could have been. Wow. All right, so in the Phantom Menace.
- [37:56]
Ben Lindbergh
Guessing that I might reference Star wars is a pretty high probability bet, I guess. But also that Star Wars. But you know, that. That one moment at the end before, you know, the Duel of the Fates kicks in, and Darth Maul and Qui Gon are going head to head, and then Obi Wan comes in and they're the energy barriers on Naboo. And so the fight is interrupted. They're pirouetting everywhere, and they're jumping and they're leaping and then they're separated. There's like a little break in the fight because the red energy barrier comes across and Darth Maul is just stalking and scowling, just ready to resume the fight. And Qui Gon meditates and kneels and gathers his strength and tries to center himself for all the good that it did him. Spoilers for. For Phantom Menace, but.
- [38:43]
Meg Rowley
But gonna get one angry email. How dare.
- [38:47]
Ben Lindbergh
I was just gonna get around to watching that.
- [38:50]
Meg Rowley
Watch that.
- [38:50]
Ben Lindbergh
You know, that's probably. Some fans were probably stalking restlessly like Darth Maul, and others were just, okay, let's breathe deeply here. Whatever happens, you know, I'll be one with the Force, right. I can reappear in Obi Wan Kenobi, the Disney plus streaming series decades down the road. So what do I really have to lose here? Qui Gon is.
- [39:13]
Meg Rowley
Or Darth Maul is.
- [39:14]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, yeah, Qui Gon appears in that briefly. Darth Maul has appeared in, you know, their Disney Star wars properties.
- [39:21]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, that's right. But he's not. Not dead. Right. This is like a back in time kind of appearance.
- [39:26]
Ben Lindbergh
Qui Gon was dead, but, yeah, he, you know, became one with the. The living force and everything.
- [39:31]
Meg Rowley
So he's like a Force ghost.
- [39:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, eventually. And then Darth Maul is not dead, though he does appear to be when you're watching.
- [39:39]
Meg Rowley
Well, yeah, because he gets sliced in half further.
- [39:41]
Ben Lindbergh
Spoiler alerts. Yes, but not fatal. He comes back.
- [39:44]
Meg Rowley
Right. In half.
- [39:45]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, that might surprise some people, but not if they've seen various animated shows and. Or Solo A Star Wars Story. Anyway, it's dangerous when I set off on this track. Yeah, that's what that moment reminded me of. It's like, okay, how are we going to handle this brief break before all hell breaks loose here? And I was Stalking more like Darth Maul than I think I was meditating.
- [40:10]
Meg Rowley
Like Qui Gon, that actor. Oh, well, I guess it would probably be more accurate to describe him as a martial artist who was in. He was also Toad in X Men.
- [40:21]
Ben Lindbergh
Oh yeah. Ray Park.
- [40:22]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, yeah, he was Toad in X Men.
- [40:26]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Okay.
- [40:30]
Meg Rowley
What, you're the only one who can make obscure references? Grief.
- [40:36]
Ben Lindbergh
Anyway, we have a lot to enjoy here and we will talk about it all as it happens and break down the way that this ended. So I'm excited. By the way, when it comes to Takao, I'll probably be writing about this. I don't know if I'll be the only one with this take, but I don't really care who wins AL mvp because in my mind, well, for a few reasons. One, I just care less about awards outcomes now than I used to. Just in general, I've just kind of.
- [41:06]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [41:07]
Ben Lindbergh
What? It's not even the entire BBWA. It's such a small subset of the BBWA. It's 30 people.
- [41:15]
Meg Rowley
Right? It's a small. You never had an award?
- [41:18]
Ben Lindbergh
No, and I never had one. And so it's just luck of the draw and just sort of randomly assigned. Sort of. And it's. It's not even the entire body of baseball writers. It's just. It's a small minority of the baseball writers.
- [41:31]
Meg Rowley
A little, A little sliver.
- [41:33]
Ben Lindbergh
And we've had a number of recent races that yielded unanimous results and so maybe that was representative of what the larger body would have voted for. But in this case, where it seems like it should be close in theory, you may well end up with the outcome just being determined by who happens to get a vote this year. And if you put it up to the. The full body of the bbwa, you'd get a different outcome. So it's not really representative even of the baseball writers.
- [42:00]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [42:01]
Ben Lindbergh
And as a baseball writer myself, you don't have to outsource your conclusion about the most valuable player to the baseball writers. That will obviously get a lot of attention and will help to determine those players legacies and tell the story of the season and everything. But. But the results don't change. You know, the vote happens at the end of the season. We find out about it November and the season's set the numbers happened. So who wins ultimately doesn't really change who was actually most valuable. And it doesn't have to change what you conclude offered the most value. So for all those reasons, and plus these days you don't so much get awards voting being a Referendum on kind of the culture war, baseball stats and how we evaluate players. We're not. It's. There's more of a consensus now, and everyone's just kind of paying attention to war or whatever. And the results map what we think of as value more closely than they used to. And it rarely turns into this larger conversation about, oh, if you vote for this guy, it means that you think this about baseball, and if you vote for that guy, it means you think that there's just.
- [43:11]
Meg Rowley
There's less.
- [43:11]
Ben Lindbergh
Less at stake. Obviously, for the players, there's plenty at stake and for fans who care about this. But I, I just, I care less for all these reasons, but I think regardless of the outcome, the other reason I, I don't feel that strongly about it is that I think they're very equivalent in value. I don't think there's really a. A wrong answer. It's. There's no great separating factor, especially if you're taking into account Cal's defense and framing, which I do. And they're both barely separated by fan graphs.
- [43:41]
Meg Rowley
War.
- [43:42]
Ben Lindbergh
You can't even really separate them based on other factors. It's not like one has been so much more clutch as we've covered.
- [43:49]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [43:49]
Ben Lindbergh
In terms of their value to their teams. Both pretty darn important. You know, still, in close races that these guys are. Are swinging whether they're in the playoffs or not. Like, you take Cal away from the Mariners, the Mariners missed the playoffs. You take Judge away from the Yankees, the Yankees missed the playoffs. So 100%. Yeah. And, you know, I guess you could give extra credit to Cal just because they're the Mariners and they've won a whole lot less than the Yankees and maybe they just have more riding on this kind of in a karmic sense, but. But really, like, they've both been essential to their teams. And I just, you know, if you told me you're voting for Cal, I'd say, yeah, that makes sense. And if you told me you're voting for Judge, I'd say, yeah, that also makes sense. Depends on your rationale, but you can't really go wrong with either. And so my take is basically that regardless of who wins, I think that Judge has a very legitimate case as the most valuable player in the league. But Cal is the player of the year. Like, yeah, that's the distinction in my mind. Like, this season has been more defined by Cal.
- [44:53]
Meg Rowley
Yes.
- [44:53]
Ben Lindbergh
And that's. That's not the actual award, or at least it doesn't have to be. I, I tend to approach it as value on field value. And I'm not really gonna give the narrative. I mean, you know, if you want to say, well, Cal was just like one of the biggest stories of the season, and he's doing this thing that's unprecedented, whereas Judge is kind of a victim of his own prior success. Like, he's not doing anything unprecedented because he has done it before. So. So that's just made Cal more noteworthy and just more fun to follow and more fun to talk about. I haven't really liked, you know, we haven't talked that much about Aaron Judge lately. Yeah, we talked about him early in the year when he just seemed to have reached an entirely new level and was like, is he as good as Bonds? Is he better than Bonds? And then he cooled down a little and he got hurt. And then we talked about the injury and like, can he play the field and can he throw and all those things. But it's kind of like, ho hum, he has a 200 WRC plus, whereas Cal, he's. He's just doing something we've never really seen before. And that doesn't make it more valuable than what Judge is doing, but he's having like the best catcher season ever. He's got the home run record for catchers in multiple ways. He's got the home run record for Mariners. He's got the home run record for switch hitters. Like, you know, it's just a more fun, extraordinary season. And he's doing it by kind of being the model of the modern hitter, just like pulling everything in the air. Like that kind of approach that teams help hitters take. Now he just, he gets it up in the air. He just yanks it like t mobile can't contain him because he's just getting everything in the air, down the lines. So I think Cal is the player of the year and if he doesn't win mvp, personally, I won't care all that much. And I don't. I don't think him being the player of the year, quote unquote, should necessarily have a bearing on whether he wins MVP or not. But it's just. That's ultimately more important to me. Cal season is more memorable in my mind, whether 30 people decide that he was the most valuable player.
- [46:58]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, and, and I, I want to be clear. I have a awards vote this year, but it is not an ALMVP vote. So in case people are like, the bias will seep. And no, I don't have that vote. Would have talked about the whole thing very differently if I'D had the vote. Here's the thing that I'm appreciating about cow season. Just even setting aside the. The Mariners of it all, obviously I thought that When Judge hit 62, it was very exciting, even with us spending so much time with the Marisses, which got a little old after a while. But it felt false. It felt a little false to me. Right. Because we know who's hit the most home runs in a season. I was an Aaron Judge, you know, and I understand the discount that people want to apply to Bonds and that's.
- [47:46]
Ben Lindbergh
You know, and Sosa.
- [47:48]
Meg Rowley
Right. But it felt false. It felt. It felt simultaneously very exciting and, and like a real accomplishment. It wasn't like they made up a record, but they certainly emphasized a record that I think most people were not aware of prior to Judge approaching it. And there's something about Cal's various records that feels more organic to me because it doesn't. It. It's already qualified going in. Right. No one is saying that the most home runs by a catcher. And here we should remind people both he has achieved the record both as a primary catcher and then I think in the strict split, too. Right. Like he's at that point where he has hit the most home runs by a catcher, playing catcher on the day he hit the home run.
- [48:39]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes.
- [48:39]
Meg Rowley
No one thinks that that is equivalent as a record to the most home runs hit in a season. Right. I don't think anyone's confused about how we might compare the most home runs by a switch hitter, the most home runs by a Mariner in a single season. There's already qualification on those. And so you can just be enthusiastic about them because I don't feel like the league is like trying to pull a bait and switch. And it did feel like some of the league's enthusiasm around Judge. Sure. It was about it being genuinely a tremendous accomplishment. It was about him being a Yankee doing that. Right. That certainly amped up the volume on his home run chase and, you know, like no shade at Judge for that. But like, we paid more attention to it, just like we'd pay more attention to anything that pertains to a Yankee because he's a Yankee. And so I, and I. I'm not trying to discount Judge's season that year or how hard it is to hit that many home runs. Right. It is a. An AL record that still stands. And despite, you know, Cal having a couple of little cluster games here is likely to stand when the season concludes on Sunday. But it also felt like the league was doing A little, A little sleight of hand to center a player who does not come with the taint of PEDs and do a little rewriting of history there. So. And that rankles because that feels dishonest. Right. Like, I watched baseball as a child. Guess who played well? Barry Bots, you know, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa. They famously did a lot of hitting the home runs. So it felt dishonest and I didn't care for that aspect of it. I enjoyed watching him pursue and then surpass Myris's record. But I was like, eh, we can be honest about part of what we're doing here, right?
- [50:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. I'd so mind it for people to kind of caveat as long as they weren't pretending like, yeah, Judge is the home run record holder.
- [50:41]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [50:41]
Ben Lindbergh
If they wanted to say that he has the most home runs of anyone who is not tainted by having done it on steroids, as far as we can tell, during the steroid era. Well, yeah, you know, that's a meaningful distinction to make, I think. But yeah, as long as you're not pretending that we have actually rewritten the record books, because those records still stand. We just. There's. There's context to them. But. But I, I think in most seasons this Player of the Year would probably be an mvp. There are some awards that are more specifically for this. Like there is. There's a Sporting News award called Major League Player of the Year. They've been handing it out since 1936 continuously. So like, Carl Hubble won it in 1936 and Shohei Ohtani won it last year.
- [51:26]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [51:26]
Ben Lindbergh
Cal. Cal should be the MLB Player of the Year. Sure.
- [51:30]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [51:30]
Ben Lindbergh
And that's not as well known and prestigious an award. Of course. Cal should win the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award. That's the award that the commissioner. It's not an annual award. It's like when someone does something really extraordinary, then they get it. The most recent guy to get it was Shohei Ohtani. It's not even just four players, it's mostly players. But like Vin Scully won it and Rachel Robinson won it. And, you know, it's like players who do something really special, they're not just good at baseball, but somehow they kind of transcend everything. Mark McGuire, I believe, was the first winner. Actually, McGuire and Sosa won it in 1998. So, you know, the origins are tainted in that way. But, but, but you can see why, because, like, yeah, that was the story of sports that year. So that was above and beyond. So I, I think Cal should win a commissioner's historic achievement award for just all the history that he has made this season. So it's that kind of year for me. And of course I'm sure he would like to win MVP and Mariners fans would like him to win mvp. And there is probably some fatigue when it comes to judge because he's just, he's won it before. He's been great before and Cal has reached a new level for him and for any catcher. But whether he wins it or not, I just, you know, I don't, I don't care that much because it's not that meaningful to me. But one way or another he is, he's the player of the year. So he could take some solace in this. Maybe if he doesn't win mvp, which he very well might, but maybe it comes down to whether he hits a barrage of homers this week. You know, if he gets to 60 or above, that would probably help. Help. So we'll see.
- [53:11]
Meg Rowley
To be clear, it would help a number of different things. So just do it, you know. Will it feel as satisfying to hit home runs against Rockies pitchers if you do it not in, in cores? I think let's find out. You know, let's do a little natural experiment.
- [53:28]
Ben Lindbergh
Here's something I was wondering. Bauman in the fan graphs weekly mailbag this past weekend he had an aside there where he said, I imagine any twin who plays a key part, not a twin as in a sibling, but a Minnesota Twin who plays a key part in winning a World Series will never have to pay for a meal in the state of Minnesota again. 1000% might also be true for Cal in the state of Washington.
- [53:53]
Meg Rowley
I don't think Cal's paying for another beer or meal in the state of Washington already.
- [53:59]
Ben Lindbergh
Okay.
- [54:00]
Meg Rowley
I think it might be done.
- [54:02]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. This is an age old saying, but taking it hyper literally. Do you think this is actually. Do you think it's true that if you are a sports in this era, maybe it used to be true but like now because players, they make a lot of money, you know, and so like.
- [54:19]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [54:20]
Ben Lindbergh
They can, they can afford to buy themselves a drink or something. In fact, if I were a player and I were making many millions of dollars over the course of my career and a server or someone who owned a restaurant or a bar or whatever tried to just comp my meal every time I ate there, I'd probably say thank you but I will pay because like, you know, do you think this happens anymore? Like do people still offer to pay multi million, you know, just Mega rich athletes just, hey, I. I'll pick this up for you. I got your drink. Do you think that still happens? Do you think athletes want it to happen?
- [54:56]
Meg Rowley
I think that it is likely offered and almost universally, politely refused.
- [55:02]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [55:03]
Meg Rowley
I think a thing I would find really fun and sa. Satisfying to do if I, like, won the lottery would be to buy around for the whole bar. Like, I've always wanted to do that. Like, this rounds on me. That would be fun. I think it would be fun to be like, I got you guys. Yeah, I think that would be fun if you were an athlete and we hear about that happening, right, where like, a guy will come in and he's like, I got this round or what, what have you. I'm sure it gets offered, you know, and if only because I'm not gonna say that everyone who's offering that is doing so in some sort of, like, weird, obsequious way. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are like, they tell the bartender his drinks on me, and then they don't, like, make a thing of it. Right. But I also think that there are a lot of people who are like, I'm gonna pay for his round, and then he'll probably come over here, you know.
- [55:53]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Currying favor or like, trying to be a big shot or something. Yeah.
- [55:58]
Meg Rowley
Will you come sign this? So I. I bet it happens.
- [56:03]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. I'm not saying we need to retire the saying because I think it, it still speaks to something real, which is that there's just a great affection for a player and a sentiment that will last throughout their career. And that's still true of sports. If you're a sports hero, especially in some benighted sports city where you just haven't had a lot of success and then this player delivers you to the promised land, then, yeah, they're going to be a folk hero forever. But, yeah, the specific implementation of it. I'm sure that this used to happen more often when athletes made decent money, like, you know, better than average money, but still, like normal person pay scales. And now I'd feel pretty sheepish offering to, like, pick up the tab for a big leaguer, a longtime big leaguer who signed a big extension like Cal. I'd feel sort of silly even, even offering, really. And I feel kind of awkward if I were in the player's position too, because, like, because I want to, you know, I don't want to, like, flash my money too, and be like, oh, you like, little peon of a fan. I vastly out earn You. I don't need your. Your goodwill. Like, I wouldn't want to, you know, the. The thought is what counts. And I would want to recognize, oh, I. I am grateful that you offered because my career meant something to you, and now you're trying to pay it forward or give back in a way. But also, it just. I would not actually feel comfortable, like, just taking charity regularly in that way, probably, if I made that kind of money. So. Yeah, I don't know. Different dynamic than it used to be.
- [57:37]
Meg Rowley
I also think that an important thing to remember, and I. I don't know whether this is true of Cal or not, but I. I also wonder if a thing that's maybe diminishing it to the. The extent that it is diminished is that they're not always living in that place during the off season. And so the people most inclined to be like, oh, my God, you took us to the, you know, the World Series for the first time are going to be people like, if that hap. You know, let's just say that happens a year. Some. Some year this year. Who could say a year that happens this year with the Mariners? A year, some year in the future, the people who are the most likely to. One recognize a Mariners player as a Mariner in, like, street clothes are going to be people in the state of Washington, probably in the greater Seattle area, and they're gonna have them the greatest likelihood of running into one of those folks during the off season, because during the season, it's not like they don't go out for dinner or whatever during the year, but, like, they're busy being pro athletes, you know, and so the amount of, like, organic, accidental bumping into somebody might just be diminished by the fact that they're busy during the. During the season. And then often during the off season, they might be living somewhere else. So, you know, that's probably a. A drag on the occurrence of it, too, but.
- [59:06]
Ben Lindbergh
True.
- [59:06]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [59:07]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Speaking of players flashing fat wads, are you familiar with Pirates pitcher Dowry Moreta?
- [59:14]
Meg Rowley
No, but now I'm very afraid it's.
- [59:18]
Ben Lindbergh
Nothing unsafe for work. The rods in question are just stacks of cash. But this is a Pirates pitcher. He's been pretty good for the Pirates. He's back this year after having Tommy John surgery. He pitched for them in 2023. I really was not that aware of his work either, but I have become aware of it because he's kind of, like, gone mini viral a couple times because he brings cash with him onto the field and his celebration after he gets out of an inning or completes his outing is that he will bring out bills. Recently, he, he tipped Joey Bart, his catcher. He basically, like, brought out some money to hand to Bart for, I guess, calling a good game on the field, like walking off the mound towards his catcher. And he's done this for years. I think this has been less visible a because he was hurt for a while, but also because Pirates, but, but he, he's called Big Bank. His nickname is Big bank or the Big Bank. This all sounds fake, but it's true. He goes by Big bank or El Banco or Dinero Dowry or Money. Moretta. Like, there's just money.
- [60:32]
Meg Rowley
Moretta is money.
- [60:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Moretta's excellent, too.
- [60:34]
Meg Rowley
That's a great nickname.
- [60:36]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And so sometimes he has actual cash on him, and sometimes he just does the, the money signal, you know, rubbing, rubbing the fingers together. And so I, I, Big Bank. It's great. So here's the origin story, which was told by a Pirates reporter back in 2023. Because this is just, this is so good. So, all right, I'm reading. So where did Big bank and El Banco come from? As the story goes, during a flight, someone, Meretta can't remember who, asked Miretta for change. Miretta obliged by pulling out $2,000 worth of $20 bills.
- [61:12]
Meg Rowley
Oh, my God.
- [61:14]
Ben Lindbergh
They asked me for change, and I said, yeah, yeah, I got it here. Moretta laughed. Then they started calling me Big bank, recalled Will Crow. We were playing a little game on the plane, and he just dropped it on the table and said, I'm Big Bank. I got the money. Anybody need the money? We were like, what? He was like, I got the money. And he just left it there. We were like, all right, he got the money. That's Big Bank. Big bank or the bank. It's awesome. Colin Holderman is then quoted saying, it was a lot of twenties. That's all I got to say. I snapped my head real quick on the plane when I heard how much money he was pulling out. So he does this show me the money gesture. He, he was with the Reds, but he's been with the Pirates for the past few years. It's just, it's awesome. I love this. And no one seems to be mad about it or talking about unwritten rules or whatever. Just money. Moretta, just the Big Bank. I love the idea of tipping your catcher when he calls a good game.
- [62:11]
Meg Rowley
I, I, yeah, I don't know if you want to advertise you're walking around with, like, two grand in small bills, but other than that, I mean, I just Find it. So I find it.
- [62:28]
Ben Lindbergh
I send you the video of him.
- [62:29]
Meg Rowley
I find it odd because, like, what do you do? Okay, so, like, what are the, like, the internal politics of. Of it? Because. Okay, so the. The idea is, oh, you. You've done a good job calling this game. I'm gonna tip you. But don't you kind of have to tip them every game then? Like, aren't you. You know what I mean? Like, do you. Are there ever, like, I don't know, only worth 20 tonight?
- [62:55]
Ben Lindbergh
Like, I guess if it. If it doesn't go well for you, probably he does this if. Anytime they rocked or something. So, like.
- [63:03]
Meg Rowley
Right. Yeah. If it's.
- [63:05]
Ben Lindbergh
The outing goes well. Scoreless outing. Yeah. It's just got cash in his back pocket. Just brings it out. I love this. I don't know why I wasn't aware of this. It's just.
- [63:16]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, I'm surprised.
- [63:16]
Ben Lindbergh
Seems like this should have been a.
- [63:17]
Meg Rowley
Bigger national story that we're hearing. Well, maybe the reporters involved were nervous about advertising. He's walking around with that much cash because you just don't want to.
- [63:28]
Ben Lindbergh
It's also extra funny because it's the Pirates. I've seen many Bob Nutting jokes about this. I mean, it's not an organization that is known for lavishing funds. It's like, oh, Miretta has to step up because Bob Nutting is not providing bonuses for anyone. He's got to be a generous tipper. I love it.
- [63:47]
Meg Rowley
Oh, Bob.
- [63:48]
Ben Lindbergh
Big Bank.
- [63:49]
Meg Rowley
Big Bank.
- [63:50]
Ben Lindbergh
Merida. My new favorite picture. Yeah, this. Actually, this relates to something that I wanted to complain about. I had.
- [63:58]
Meg Rowley
Okay.
- [63:59]
Ben Lindbergh
I had a. Get off my lawn. Kind of close to this episode, I guess. Okay. Okay. So this is not why, but we got the news shortly before we started recording that the Challenge System is in. Officially, the joint competition committee, which is mostly owners and some players and an umpire. They have made it official. We're getting the Challenge System in MLB next year. Spring training, regular season, postseason, all of it. So we've. We've talked a lot about the Challenge System. I'm sure we'll continue to. We're. We're pretty pro, so this is predictable. I mean, this is not unexpected. They've been working their way up to it. I kind of had forgotten that it wasn't official yet, but. But now it's official. So, yeah, you can take it to the. The Big Bank, I guess. And it's going to be two challenges to start the game, and you retain your successful challenges. And, yeah, we probably all know how this works by now, so I guess they're sticking with the, the two dimensional rectangle. It's the middle of home plate, and then the edges are the width of home plates. It's 17 inches. But then it's adjusted at the top and bottom based on the player's height, which will be actually measured accurately. So 53.5% of the batter's height at the top, 27% at the bottom. We know the drill. Right? Okay, so this is happening. Here's a somewhat related story that I saw that dismayed me, and I'm. I'm trying to figure out whether it's consistent of me to be dismayed by this. Oh, so the Marlins are now calling pitches from the dugout in the majors. This is like a college baseball kind of thing where coaches will call pitches, they'll signal the pitches to the catchers, the catcher, the pitcher, won't call their own pitches at that level often because you're still learning down there. And it's like maybe part of player development and maybe this has happened, you know, lower levels of the miners and instructs or whatever else. I don't, I don't mind it at that level. But the Marlins are now just calling pitches from the dugout in major league games. Yeah. And this, this feels like a line that I'm not happy is, is being crossed. And I'm interrogating my own discomfort with this, but they just started doing this just a couple days ago. So it was Friday, and the Marlins ended up winning in 12 innings over the Rangers. Jansen Junk was pitching for them. Liam Hicks was catching. But the Marlins, multiple pitching coaches, their pitching coach and assistant pitching coach were calling the pitches. So the assistant pitching coach called pitches. I'm quoting here from mov.com from inside the dugout by delivering signs to Hicks, who would then check his WristBand and use Pitchcom to relay the offering to his pitcher. And the Marlins have actually been doing this throughout their organization in the minors all season, and now they have brought it to the big leagues. And this first trial seemed to go okay. And so they're planning to do this for the rest of this regular season and presumably going forward. And Clayton McCullough, Marlins manager, he talked about why they wanted to do this. He said, we keep coming back to, we think our pitchers over time will perform better if that's the delivery system we use coming from the dugout. And we kept saying the answer was yes. And I felt like this was the right time to do it. We have some season left. We feel like this is the time that I'm comfortable for us to do it.
- [67:38]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [67:39]
Ben Lindbergh
He says that it's not because they have young catchers and sort of an inexperienced staff, though maybe that makes it more beneficial or tempting for them to do, but they just think that their pitchers are going to be better with the pitches called from the dugout. And I, I don't know exactly how the calls are relayed from the dugout to the catcher because I. It says that, that the pitching coach is delivering the signs to the catcher, who would then check his wristband and use pitchcom. So I'm. I'm not sure if the pitching coach has pitchcom. I guess not. But then are you opening yourself up to sign stealing again when it seemed like we, we got rid of that. So I'm not sure how that's relayed. So that would be another reason if, if we're making teams susceptible to sign stealing again, then that would be bad. But I mean, I guess if you were. If you gave the pitching coach a pitchcom, then you could just kind of cut out the middleman and you wouldn't even need the catcher to do anything. You could just have the, the pitching coach just call the pitches right for the pitcher. I don't like this. I just. I don't like it. And I feel reactionary and I feel, you know, kind of get off my lawn, as I said. But I, I don't want this to be the case. I don't want this to happen.
- [68:58]
Meg Rowley
It seems very strange to me as an organizational decision, because it. We can't measure yet the value of game calling, but I think everyone agrees that it is an area of unexplored value in terms of our understanding of what catchers bring. So why are you removing that? That's one thing. Why can't you just teach your guys to call again? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, what happens when you have change in your catcher population across the organization either, because you draft new guys, you trade guys, you sign free agents. Like, if you're a catcher, do you want to go. I mean, you might not want to go play for the Marlins anyway, but like, do you want to go play for the Marlins if you're not going to be able to call games?
- [69:45]
Ben Lindbergh
I guess it depends if, if you want that responsibility off your plate.
- [69:49]
Meg Rowley
I guess if you're bad at it, maybe you're like, oh, thank God.
- [69:53]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [69:53]
Meg Rowley
It just seems like a weird inversion of our understood progression of catcher skill because, like, it's very, It's. It's quite common for catchers in college not to call their own games. Right. For their game to be called from the dugout, but the step after that, once they get into affiliated ball, is that they have to be a game caller. Also, you're totally goofing the dynamic between the catcher and the pitcher because, like, now you're like, I mean, this is maybe an overreaction, but I'm. I'm going to school on your shot a little bit here. Like, now the catcher's like a caddy to the pitcher instead of a partner in the battery. I don't care for it at all either. I think it's. I think it's disrespectful.
- [70:38]
Ben Lindbergh
Maybe that's. Yeah. And maybe one reason why they're implementing this now is with these young catchers who don't have the standing to argue with it. Like, if you tried to do this with Cal Rally or something, is he gonna want to just abdicate that responsibility or some other experienced catcher who's been doing it? So maybe you kind of. Of, you know, sneak it in with younger rookie catchers who. Maybe it's not a strength for them or they want this taken out of their hands. Yeah, because I'm reading at all. There was another article from early in the year about them doing this at the minor league level. And, you know, they've been doing it all the way up to AAA, even, but they justified it as, this is a way to learn. This is a teaching tool. And if that's the case, then then that's okay, I guess. Like, if it's. Yeah, you know, then you take the training wheel. So, like, the Marwan's catching coach, he's quoted in one of these pieces saying it was an organizational decision. I think the premise behind it is to try to develop as much as we can, the instruction of pitch calling. Well, okay, but at this point, it's not about instruction, really. It's about just taking that responsibility away from the players. So at aaa, I guess it was like, at the time, at least, sometimes the coaching staff was calling it, and then other times the catcher would call it, and then he could kind of compare. This is what they want me to do. This is what I'm doing. And you could talk about it after, and you could. It says an opportunity to help develop those skills. But if the end game here is not to need to develop those skills because you're just taking it out of the player's hands entirely, and I. I don't like that. So there is the potential for it to Backfire, of course. And there are some quotes to that effect in this article where Hicks is saying there's certain situations, obviously they can see, they've got heat maps, they've got certain things on the bench that you might not see that you might not have access to in real time in the game. And then there's also times where I see things that maybe they don't see. And he talks about the communication mattering. So, obviously, if you just have some algorithm that's telling you here are the optimal pitches to throw, but that pitcher doesn't feel comfortable throwing that pitch that day, doesn't have a good feel for it, whatever, like, doesn't have the conviction and all of that. Pitchers often will say that just being on the same page with their catcher, that's important. Feeling like they're throwing the pitch that they want to throw that they have confidence in on that day, that's important. So that's going to change your projected results for that. That pitch in ways that are probably difficult to quantify beforehand. But, okay, maybe there's some sort of communication here. I can buy that this would be beneficial. I can. I can buy that if you had a dedicated coach doing this, that they might be better at doing it than the catcher. Because, you know, you were just saying that that game calling, sure, it matters, even if it's tough to quantify. And maybe this is actually reinforcing that. Maybe it's saying, yeah, it matters so much that we don't want to take any chances here. What if this catcher doesn't know what he's doing? What if he's not studying the scouting reports? We've talked about this recently with our pitchers even studying the scouting reports, or are they just throwing the ball down the middle? Which is another thing that the Rays under Peter Bendix, who's now running the Marrowans, and the Marrowans have also done, which is just, you know, don't worry about throwing to a specific spot. Just. Just aim for the middle and let your natural stuff play up. And maybe that's good and maybe that's bad, but this, I kind of get it because it's like, hey, why would you leave this pretty important thing up to someone who maybe is not applying themselves? Maybe they're not studying the data, maybe they're not looking at the matchups. Maybe we can remove some of the uncertainty here by quantifying it really rigorously. And. And, okay, maybe. Maybe that would actually help a team. Or maybe there's Another quote from McCullough here. Our catchers need to be able to spend their bandwidth and their time and other aspects of things than the preparation part of it on that side. So he's essentially saying, I guess, like, if we take this off their plate, they can do other stuff. They could practice physical skills, they could practice hitting, they could do whatever. Right. And, and I guess another thing you were talking about, what happens if you change catchers? You have a bunch of. Well, you could argue that this would be good in that situation, because if you're a pitcher who's been working with one catcher and then that catcher gets traded or gets hurt or something, okay. Suddenly you're working with some other caddy here who might have a completely different approach to pitch calling. Maybe it's better to have a consistent organizational approach to that where regardless of who the catcher is, it's being called from the bench and then there's continuity there. But I just don't like it because. And I, I think I've been pretty consistent on this point over the years, even though there's maybe some tension because I like information and I like preparation. And I'm not saying deprive yourself of an edge, but I, I like the players to have to be the ones who are playing the game. Ultimately. I, this is, I don't know if this is like an old school position of mine, but I've, I've said this in the past about. Do you remember this? Almost a decade ago, but when there was like a, A minor controversy because the Dodgers were using like laser range finders to. Yeah. To determine outfield positioning.
- [76:09]
Meg Rowley
And they were like, hey, you can't do that.
- [76:11]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, the, the Mets complained about it, and then there was some league guidance about it, and they weren't, it wasn't even just in real time. It was like they would put, put markers out on the field where they wanted the guys to stand.
- [76:23]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [76:23]
Ben Lindbergh
So I, I didn't like that. And I also don't like the cards, the cheat cards. I've kind of come around on, on wanting to get rid of those. I thought they were kind of cool at first when they were new and novel. And I was like, oh, okay, this is good. The players will study this information. But I don't really like when they just whip out the, the cheat sheet that tells them where to go. And I mean, I've, I've. This may be extreme, but I've even come out in favor of just banning mound visits.
- [76:51]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, you're, you, you have a, a strong view about these things.
- [76:58]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, I guess I do. I just like, once the game is going on and once you're between the lines, I want coaches to stay out of it, basically.
- [77:08]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [77:08]
Ben Lindbergh
You know, like, you can do whatever you want. There's a lot of downtime. You can have your preparation meetings. You can study whatever you want to study between innings. There's plenty of time, you know, like, if you want to memorize, okay, where am I supposed to stand in the next half inning? Or how do I want to approach this hitter? What should we throw this guy? You can talk about that, you can plan it, you can study the iPads and the cheat sheets in the dugout. But when you're out there, I don't like it. I've compared it to just like being off book on Broadway or something. Like, you can have the scripts when you're practicing, but when you're out there, it kind of. It breaks my immersion if you're like, reading from a script. Because I want to think like you're the. You're the actor. You're embodying this character. I want to forget that you're an actor who's playing a part here. And so I want you to have these lines down cold so well that you don't need to consult anything. And you're delivering it naturally as if this is something that's happening in your own head. And I guess that's what I want when players are on the field, too. If there's a timeout or a break in the action, okay. But when you're out there, I just. I kind of. I want a less meddlesome way of communicating that information. So I don't know if this is an entirely coherent philosophy, but I want. I want the players to play, you know, like, I want. If a catcher is good at game calling, I want that to be a skill that benefits the team or hurts the team if. If they're not good at game calling. I don't. To want. Want like, all those edges sanded down by just the team and coaches providing that information. Even in the game. I don't know. Is this. Does this make some sense? I've gotten some pushback on this before, but I still. I feel it.
- [78:51]
Meg Rowley
I'm with you about. I want the catchers to. To do the game calling that feels essential to their function. I do. I. I think mound visits are fine. I'm not bothered by the position cards in quite the same way, but this does feel. So the function of the catcher, that. To have it removed at the pro level seems scenes wrong. And part of that is like My context for it is often college catchers where it's like, no, you do need to worry about just receiving the ball. That is not a given at the college level. Right. And you know, for really highly regarded draft prospects, you know, they're going to be good at that. But there is, I think, much more of a developmental argument there where it's like you, you're trying to get, you're still trying to lock in some of the fundamental aspects of, of catcher defense that we, we just take for granted in the majors. But hey, we take them for granted. And I don't. My sense is not that there is like a great variation in skill as it pertains to catcher's ability to do that stuff. So I don't, I don't know, man. I, I don't care for it. I don't. Yeah, I think it's wrong.
- [80:03]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, if it's successful and it would be tough to quantify, but if they get an edge here, then other teams will probably follow suit. The Rays have not done this, I believe at the major league level. But this, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure in isolated instances perhaps it has happened. You know, I thought about this when Pitchcom came in and I'm pro pitchcom, but there are some pitchers who will want to call their own games. That's okay. You know, catchers historically have done it, but, but not in all cases. And as long as a player is doing it, I just. The front office puts the players on the field and that's very important. But when the game is going on, I just, I want the players to be the separators and the differentiators. And if you didn't study the scouting reports and you don't know where to stand, then you're out of luck. Like you should have done your homework basically is. And you know, maybe, maybe the physical skills, the athleticism, that's why we watch sports more so than like someone studying the game film or the playbook or whatever. But I think that's part of it. I think that's part of being a great athlete is also the mental, psychological side too. Not just can you run fastest and have the best hand eye coordination and be the strongest, but also like can you be smart? Can you study? Can you apply yourself? And if you just take that out of the players hands and it's just all kind of coming from an algorithm or something. I'm not like anti, you know, using numbers. Bring the numbers into the pregame meeting. Absolutely. Say, hey, here's what we think would be beneficial, but then ultimately the execution of that. I want that to be in the player's hands, not just some coach who's sitting in the dugout signaling. Now I, I said this to my pals, Zach Cram, formerly of the ringer, now of espn and he brought up a reasonable objection which is what's the difference between this and relaying signs from the dugout to runners or to batters. Right. So you have, you know, third base coaches who are flashing signs or you have a manager or coach in the dugout flashing signs to a coach who's flashing signs to a player or something. And I, I guess that's sort of the same but that it's less heavy handed than just calling every single pitch.
- [82:23]
Meg Rowley
Correct.
- [82:24]
Ben Lindbergh
And also it's kind of always, it's always worked that way.
- [82:28]
Meg Rowley
It's always worked that way. And you do have like a different, some of it is like you're benefiting from different perspective than the player necessarily has. Yeah, I don't know. I just some of this is just like we've done it one way a long time. And so the, we view base running as an activity that is primarily born of the runner's own skill but is seasoned by the base coach's instincts. Right. And a base coach has responsibility on base running plays that are fundamental to their why they're out there. I know you wouldn't necessarily want to have it.
- [83:09]
Ben Lindbergh
I have, I know the idea of getting rid of base coaches too. So I'm consistent at least it, it.
- [83:14]
Meg Rowley
Feels in universe too and consistent with the broader set of responsibilities that the base coach has. This feels, and you're right, that is born of it having always been that way. But, but this is actively taking away a responsibility that is fundamental to what the catcher. Like the, the notion of like the field marshal captain.
- [83:36]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [83:37]
Meg Rowley
You know, and I don't want to say that it's necessary necessarily anti labor, but it does feel a little like that because while we can't quantify the value of game calling players reputations in that do help to inform some of their free agent market. And so to strip that skill away it's like, well now that's one less thing they can be paid for. And I'm not saying that's necessarily the intent of the project on the part of the Marlins, but that might be an unintended consequence of it and that feels bad. So.
- [84:06]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, yeah. And managers have always borne some responsibility for things that happened in games. Obviously, you know, they'll signal intentional walk or A pitch out or a hit and run or, you know, sacrifice whatever it is over the years. And so, yeah, that is a manager just dictating what the players do. And that's kind of the manager's job to some extent. But, yeah, I guess it feels different to me from relaying signs because it's. Well, it's just. It's more impactful. Maybe philosophically it's similar, but it is. It's more pervasive. It's more impactful. And yeah, like, as long as there have been signs, they've often been relayed from the bench or from a manager who was standing around third base or whatever it is. And so. And, you know, historically, you've had. Catchers often had some responsibility for positioning, too. They'd kind of, as you said, be that field general, and they'd walk out and point. So go over here, go over there. Because it is. It's unusual, baseball, the degree of, you know, you have coaches, managers in uniform, which is kind of quaint and, you know, charming in a way. It's silly, but I kind of like it, I guess, for tradition's sake. But it's symbolic of the fact that, like, managers can go out there. You know, like, they can trespass on the field. It's not trespassing. They could just walk out there. I mean, they're limited in the number of visits they can make and mound visits, but they can. They can go across the borders where you don't typically see that in, in most other sports, where the coaches are wearing suits or something, and they can call a timeout and then you can come to the sidelines and they'll tell you what they want to do, but then you go back out there and it's your job. Now, you know, in football, of course, they have headsets and everything. And so that's another thing that could happen, I guess, in baseball does, at some levels, has been tested at least. But yeah, I'm just all for minimizing this direct role. And maybe it seems like an arbitrary distinction to draw and just say, yeah, you can tell your players anything they want between innings before the game. And then they go out there. Why shouldn't you still, you know, like, they're. Often there's like an outfield positioning coach who will yell out there from the dugout and gesture and say, hey, shade over this way, shade over that way. Now you see that less because it's just on the cards that you pull out of your pocket. But something about that even offends me less than Something you're actually bringing out onto the field. Because if you took it to some sort of logical extreme where it's like players don't have to think about anything and positioning is out of their hands and game calling is out of their hands, you know, And I'm fine with the challenge system, but I do suspect that at some point we will get full abs and there will be some merits to that. But. But I do appreciate catchers, and I really like the catching position. And you're going to be taking just most of the value away from. What makes that a premium defensive positioning, what makes it so special, is that these guys are calling pitches and they're receiving pitches, and how they receive them matters, and they're doing all these things, and I guess you could say it's too much to ask of any one player. Let's just. Let's make it easier on them. And the computers will call the pitches, and then the coaches will call the pitches, too, and catchers will just have to worry about base stealing and blocking and. And that's about it. And even base stealing, it's harder to catch guys now. So I don't know. I kind of. I don't want the catching position to be diminished because it's. It's a. A great joy of baseball to me. But I. Yeah, I just. I don't want this to be so transparently like coaches pulling the strings because I'm. I'm there to watch the players and the athletes ultimately.
- [87:52]
Meg Rowley
I also. Can I be a little rude about the Marlins?
- [87:55]
Ben Lindbergh
Sure.
- [87:55]
Meg Rowley
I do have some skepticism that the team's starting to pioneer. This is them versus. It's not like there aren't smart people who work for that club. There are, and Peter Bendigs is a smart guy, but. Yeah.
- [88:08]
Ben Lindbergh
Is Big Bank Maretta just going to tip his assistant pitching coach after he calls a good game? Come on.
- [88:14]
Meg Rowley
I just don't think that it's.
- [88:16]
Ben Lindbergh
It.
- [88:16]
Meg Rowley
I don't know. It feels like it's. It's fundamentally misunderstanding one of the most important relationships on the field, and I don't care for that.
- [88:27]
Ben Lindbergh
So, yeah, I'm almost. I'm worried that it will work too well, because I. I have thought that this is potentially an area where there are gains to be made when it comes to quantifying and improving pitch calling. And if those gains come from the fact that you have a dedicated person whose job that is, who can look at the numbers and everything, then maybe that will actually be an improvement. But I just. I don't care for It. So, yeah, it's. It's tough. Cause we, we wrestle with this with like defensive stats now where, you know, the stat cast stats don't really take into account positioning or, you know, positioning. It's sort of like they take into account the starting position of the fielder, and then we measure how well the fielder does based on where he's standing and where the ball is and everything. But then there is that positioning component, and how do you know whom to credit that to?
- [89:18]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [89:18]
Ben Lindbergh
Some, historically speaking, there were players who excelled at positioning and they were just. They read the scouting reports, they read the ball off the bat. They could think ahead and know, okay, here's the count and here's the pitcher and here's the batter, and he's probably going to hit it this way and I'll shade a little that way. And there was a real edge there for some guys, and now maybe there is that edge, but it's all just down to the team because the team is telling you where to stand. I don't know if it just becomes super prescribed like that, where you're just kind of going through the motions. It's not. It's never going to be alt. I mean, you know, you're still going to have to have the pitcher throw the pitch and have the hitter hit the pitch. It's not like it's all going to be just, you know, paint by numbers. But there's just a degree of that that I'm just not comfortable with for whatever reason.
- [90:02]
Meg Rowley
So I'm with you.
- [90:03]
Ben Lindbergh
All right. Yeah. Write in if. If people have have suggested before that this is like an inconsistent position or, you know, I'm open to that too, but there's just something that rubs me the wrong way about it.
- [90:15]
Meg Rowley
Sometimes we contain within us contradictions. You know, that's a. That's the thing about being alive.
- [90:21]
Ben Lindbergh
So, yep, I can only be myself and be sincere about my feelings here. So, anyway, okay. Did you see that Mike Trout, he hit his 400th homer finally. And. And part of the reward that the fan asked for to give the ball back, he hit a absolute bomb. I think it was in course, it was like 485 or something. And the. The fan asked for autograph bats and balls or whatever. He got his swag. But he also asked to play catch with Trout. And, and they did. They briefly played catch just like in foul territory between home and first or home in third. And, you know, I thought that was kind of nice, like the experiential reward, because ultimately that would be more Memorable or a better story, I think, than, oh, yeah, I got this autograph bat. Okay. Maybe if the player hands that to you personally, it's kind of cool, but much cooler, I think, to have a video of you playing catch with Mike Trout. Yeah. As long as it's not like you're imposing on, you know, you're being some super fan and, you know, you're like, dance for me to get this. This ball back. Like, you know, treat me to an experience. You know, like, don't ask for too much. Have dinner with me. You know, let me come over to your house or something. Like, don't. Don't go over the line. But I thought it was funny that Trout did not wear a glove.
- [91:40]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [91:41]
Ben Lindbergh
He was just catching bare hand with this fan, which, you know, kind of a. A flex, I guess that just, like, there's no way that you can throw this hard enough to hurt me.
- [91:51]
Meg Rowley
It's going to be a problem. Yeah.
- [91:52]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Now, because it's Mike Trout, I might say. Wear the glove. Just be on the safe side.
- [91:57]
Meg Rowley
Yeah. Come on.
- [91:57]
Ben Lindbergh
Now, don't take any risks here, Mike. But, you know, I guess he mostly hasn't hurt his hands and fingies and bird bones, but sometimes he has a hamate bone or whatever else slide. That went wrong.
- [92:08]
Meg Rowley
Those bird bones.
- [92:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Plus, like, that fan in that situation is going to have every incentive to throw it at their max speed.
- [92:15]
Meg Rowley
Oh, yeah.
- [92:16]
Ben Lindbergh
To impress the player. Right.
- [92:18]
Meg Rowley
You want to look cool in front of Mike Trout.
- [92:21]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And so you're gonna throw it as hard as you possibly can. And that still probably won't be that hard if you're a typical fan. Maybe he sized this fan up and was like, yeah, I don't think you have the velo that I have to worry about here. But it would be, you know, if the player was like, yeah, I think I'm good without a glove. And you were wearing a glove. That'd be a little. I don't know if that would, like, spoil the experience for me because it's, you know, maybe a little emasculating. It's like, you don't think I could throw this hard enough to hurt your bare hand if I fired it in there, but maybe that would actually make the story better because it's like, yeah, you know, you play with this athletic God, you don't want them to use a glove. Maybe it's, you know, it's like, yeah, they wanted to maintain their separation and draw the line here and show that they're still different from me, even though we're both on the field playing catch. Casually, apparently. Yeah, well, I'm recording this after Monday's results came in. The Astros lost and the Mariners won and clinched a playoff spot. The Mets and Diamondbacks won and the Reds lost. New York reclaims a wild card spot for now. Meanwhile, the Tigers lost to the guardians, so that 15 and a half game lead has fully evaporated. In fact, the Guardians even hold the tiebreaker, so technically they are in playoff position. Plenty of time for that to change, of course, but we have a tie atop the standings. Tough to believe. Quite a story. Red Sox also won, in case you were wondering. So the plot thickens. Or stays thick. Guardians beat the best. Tigers threw Scubal at him and he wasn't enough. Not yet, at least. Lots of talk about teams controlling their own destiny, which I've pedantically complained about before. I think it's a useful phrase. We know what it means. But of course you can't control whether you win or lose even the games that you are directly involved in. If you could, then you would just win. It will, but your opponent and general randomness often have something to say about that. One more note. We talked recently about Blake Trinen's zombie Runner induced loss where he suffered sort of a hard luck loss after being pulled mid extra inning. He didn't put anyone on base. He didn't do anything wrong. He'd actually gotten out of a jam in the previous inning, but he was charged with the zombie run when it scored and thus was the loser. Well, Trinen's been terrible lately. He may have been blameless in that particular game, but he's been blameful in plenty of other games. And in fact, Mike Petriello and Jason Bernard of MLB.com determined that Trinen, who has been charged with the loss in five Dodgers losses in a row, is the first pitcher on record ever to have made that history. Ever to have been the losing pitcher in five consecutive team losses. There were 13 previous instances where a pitcher was charged with four team losses in a row, but the Zombie Runner loss pushed him over the top to an unprecedented five consecutive losses. My heart does not weep for Blake Trinen, even though there's a Zombie Runner caveat to this unfun fact for him. You can support effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectively the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast coming, help us stay ad free and get access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Jared Goodman, Eric Hickman, Seth Rosner, Craig Ruderman and Matthew Suderman. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams coming up next month, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad, free fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Music and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group@facebook.com group effectivelywild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R effectlywild and you can check the show notes and fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then.
- [96:32]
Meg Rowley
Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Baseball Broadcast.