Effectively Wild Episode 2433: Off the Dome

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2433: "Off the Dome"

Date: January 29, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)

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Overview

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley reunite for another episode at the tail end of a slow MLB offseason. With minimal hard news and big moves, they indulge in “off the dome” baseball musings: reflecting on the experience and value of spring training, examining confusing baseball terminology, fielding an array of listener questions (including a Lord of the Rings lineup exercise), and presenting an in-depth “Stat Blast” on historic roster turnover. The episode is marked by their trademark blend of geeky statistical analysis, personal anecdotes, playful tangents, and affectionate teasing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Baseball’s Quiet Offseason, Spring Training, and the Wait for Real Action

• The Downside of the Offseason News Cycle

  • Ben jokes about the paucity of baseball content:

    “There comes a point in every offseason where things slow down considerably and podcasters are reduced to poking the few remaining free agents with a stick, saying, come on, do something." (00:34)

  • He notes the rising anticipation for spring, with this year’s WBC breaking up the offseason drought.

• Spring Training: Underrated or Overstated?

  • Meg makes the case for enjoying spring training, highlighting its appeal for prospect-watchers and the pleasure of seeing baseball return, however imperfectly:

    “I think that spring ball is a lot of fun. You can upgrade your degree of prospect knower pretty appreciably just by watching your favorite team’s available spring training games... It’s like going to a class reunion. And in some ways better...” (02:39)

  • She calls out teams for not putting names on jerseys, advocating for dignity for minor leaguers and non-roster invitees (03:01).
  • Ben agrees spring training’s charm can fade quickly, with games becoming background noise, but acknowledges the joy and ritual of baseball’s return (04:40).

• Analysis of the Modern Offseason & Fan Experience

  • Ben observes that the offseason feels shorter due to longer playoffs and earlier Opening Days, with year-round baseball content available for hardcore fans:

    “There is baseball out there for you just about all the time. And also you can just revisit old games if you want to...” (09:16)

  • They discuss the increased accessibility of spring training broadcasts and greater international baseball exposure.

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Confusing Baseball Terminology: "Back-End" Relievers vs. Starters

• Listener Question: Why is “back-end reliever” a coveted role, while “back-end starter” denotes the opposite?

  • Ben acknowledges the contradiction:

    "To have a back end of a bullpen and a back end of a rotation... for them to mean sort of separate things, it is a little confusing. Not to us probably. It’s probably clear from context. But to a neophyte they might be a bit thrown..." (13:39)

  • Meg suggests using “leverage” or inning-based descriptors rather than the ambiguous "back-end", and jokes about defining terms during radio breaks (14:20).

• Fun with the Baseball Dictionary

  • Ben reads through multiple, often obscure definitions of "back end" in the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, to Meg’s amusement:

    “The trailing runner in a double steal... the second out of a double play... the second game of a double header... the bottom of the order... back of the rotation... back of the bullpen...” (17:24)

  • Both agree the bullpen and rotation definitions are most current.

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Listener Emails: Baseball Thought Experiments & Ethics

Magnetically Repelling Outfielder Hypothetical (“Off the Dome”)

• Listener JJ’s Question: Would a magical outfielder who “repels” any ball hit their way be a net positive or neutral defender?
  • Meg and Ben debate the “rules” and logistics:
    • Is the force field predictable? Is it unfair?

      “If the range of the dome is very tight, then it seems like it would be... a problem, right? Like... is the other fielder going to be able to recover in time to field that, or is it just going to be like the funniest version of an outfield blooper ever...?” (24:18)

    • Both ultimately decide MLB would probably ban such a player for “unfair advantage”, likening it to banning telekinesis or magical powers, but have fun exploring possible scenarios via superhero analogies (Magneto, Jedi, Juggernaut, etc.).
    • Ben:

      “I don’t know if I’d want to be an outfielder playing alongside this guy because you’re going to get many more opportunities... but... you have a lot less ground to cover because you can essentially just rule out this entire field.” (29:04)

Is Throwing Balls “Cheating”?

• Listener Sean’s Question: Should pitchers who throw balls rather than strikes be considered “cheaters” since they’re not obeying the “strike” in strike zone?
  • Both hosts give a resounding “no”, discussing the distinction between cheating and rule violations:
    • Meg:

      “Cheating often contains an element of subterfuge, because you want to conceal your cheating so that it goes undetected, and you accrue an advantage as a result of that. Whereas if you violate the pitch clock, you take an immediate consequence, and you’re almost always doing that in error.” (42:00)

    • They compare this to sticky stuff, PEDs, and sign-stealing, and reiterate that things policed openly and immediately are not “cheating”.

“Spoilers” Super-Team Playoff Proposal

• Listener Nick’s Proposal: Should MLB allow non-playoff players to form a “Spoilers” squad and compete in the playoffs, maximizing stars’ postseason exposure?
  • Both hosts admire the creativity but reject it as antithetical to the point of the playoffs:
    • Meg:

      “There should be consequences for missing the postseason, and one of them should be that you missed the postseason.” (51:04)

    • Ben notes it would be unfair to teams who “earned” their postseason spots, and would effectively reduce the stakes of the regular season:

      “If players don’t get shut out because their teams did, then I think that would further erode the reason for playing 162 games, at least the competitive purpose, ostensibly.” (54:54)

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Geek Corner: Lord of the Rings Fellowship Baseball Lineup

• Listener Chris’s Question: Assign the nine members of the Fellowship (movies, not books) to optimal baseball positions.
  • Both hosts revel in a nerdy deep-dive, tweaking Chris’ initial lineup:
    • Legolas in center field = non-negotiable.
    • Gandalf: debate whether he’d pitch or DH (eventually prefer pitching, given deceptive powers).
    • Gimli correctly slotted at catcher; Sam makes sense at first for chatty encouragement.
    • Mary and Pippin as double-play duo is plausible, though their distractibility is an issue.
    • Boromir compared to “Luke Raley” as lumbering but fit; some concern about disrespect!
    • Tangent on “allowable powers”—no telekinesis, teleportation, or setting things on fire ("size matters not").
    • Lively analogies to baseball tactics, LotR lore, and character attributes throughout.
  • Meg:

    “I love Gimli at catcher. I do think you maybe want to just go a little bigger in the outfield. But then what do you… I feel like Sam should play first.” (67:00)

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Stat Blast: Historic Roster Turnover

Intro

• Ben investigates how rare it is for a winning team (like this year’s Mets) to overhaul its roster and still expect to contend.

Core Findings

• Correlation Between Team Quality & Turnover:

  • Bad teams make more changes (“about 32%” turnover), good teams fewer (about 22%) (75:50).
  • High turnover after a good season is historically rare and usually portends regression.

• Past Precedent & Notable Examples:

  • Cleveland Spiders (1890s), Philadelphia A’s (1910s and 1917-18), and more recently, the Padres and Yankees.
  • “Only 19 teams with a winning record... have turned over at least half their roster... only two improved their winning percentage the next year.” (approx 92:35)
  • The 2003-04 Yankees and 2023-24 Padres are rare exceptions, with unique circumstances.

• Mets’ 2026 Outlook:

  • Projected 43.2% turnover; even at that rate, only 4.2% of historical winning teams matched and only a fifth of those improved the next year (93:16).
  • Ben:

    “Turnover not good. Not a good sign. However, I also developed lists of the highest turnover teams, the lowest turnover teams...” (91:30)

  • He notes the context-dependent nature of roster moves, suggesting optimism for the Mets given other circumstances.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Meg, on the aesthetic value of spring training:

  “Let it wash over you a little bit… think about warm weather. It’s always funny because the teams that play in cold places, they go to Florida and Arizona and have wonderful sun. And then it’s, like, April in Chicago. Enjoy everything that comes with that.” (08:07)

• Ben, on the double standard in "back end" terminology:

  “It is a little confusing... probably clear from context, but to a neophyte they might be a bit thrown.” (13:39)

• Meg, riffing on superhero powers in baseball:

  “What kind of baserunner would the Juggernaut be?” (34:14)

• Ben, on quantifying the value of a magical outfielder:

  “How would Statcast tabulate that value? Usually a defensive system, it’s based on where the ball is hit and where you stand and your opportunities…” (29:04)

• Ben, sly quip on Boromir:

  “All I know is you probably wouldn't want Boromir toward the top of the lineup, as he famously said, one does not simply walk.” (95:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Spring Training Musings: 00:31 - 09:16
• Baseball Terminology ("back-end" discussion): 13:38 - 20:35
• Listener Email: “Magneto Outfielder” Hypothetical: 21:06 - 39:13
• Is Throwing Balls Cheating?: 41:42 - 49:13
• Playoff Spoilers Proposal: 49:13 - 59:12
• Lord of the Rings Fellowship Lineup: 61:01 - 74:50
• Stat Blast: Mets, Roster Turnover, and Historical Precedent: 75:50 - 95:43

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Tone & Language

• Conversational, playful, and welcoming to both deeply nerdy baseball fans and casual listeners.
• Shows a love for digression: pop culture, personal anecdotes, and literary/genre references blended with serious statistical analysis.
• Good-natured teasing (especially about fandom and knowledge gaps).

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Summary

This episode is an excellent showcase of Effectively Wild’s unique blend of dry analysis, high-concept baseball nerdery, and warm, witty banter. Baseball’s quiet season gives Ben and Meg room to stretch out: swapping stories about spring’s return, geeking out over terminology and superhero hypotheticals, getting philosophical about what constitutes “cheating,” and even assembling a fantasy Fellowship baseball team. Ben’s closing Stat Blast on the rarity and risk of high roster turnover in winning MLB teams—focusing on the Mets—wraps up with classic context, caveats, and cautious optimism. Even with little breaking news, Effectively Wild delivers polished “background baseball,” full of insight, fun, and connection for baseball fans of any stripe.

Transcript

[Meg Riley]

They say I waste my time tracking all these stat lines, but it's here I found my kind. They're all effectively wild.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hello, and welcome to episode 2433 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Riley of fangraphts. Hello, Meg.

[Meg Riley]

Hello.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think we have hit the low ebb for baseball news. There just. There comes a point in every off season where things slow down considerably and podcasters are reduced to poking the few remaining free agents with a stick, saying, come on, do something. And counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report. And it's not many days, by the way, not many days to count down. And then they do report. And we remember that nothing really actually happens when they report. And then we go back counting down the days until games begin. And then we remember that spring training games aren't all that interesting after you watch a few. Maybe, maybe they could be background if they're on. And then we resort to counting down the days until opening day. Except this year, we can count down the days to the wbc, and that's fewer days. And this was a note of optimism that I struck at the start of the off season. Just, hey, this is going to be a short off season because it's already November and opening day is a day earlier than ever. And also there's the wbc, so there's just a little less time to wait. And it's true. And so I'm grateful for that.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I guess your mileage might vary. I mean, I'm excited for the wbc, even as the vibe around it feels fraught.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, we'll see how the Winter Olympics goes first, and then the WBC and then the World cup, and we'll just navigate a whole bunch of international sport competitions.

[Meg Riley]

We're gonna get boots so bad during those opening ceremonies, Ben. We're gonna get booed so loud and so long during those opening ceremonies. I'm looking forward to the Olympics. I do enjoy an Olympic. An Olympiad. An Olympiad, sure. I also, I haven't maybe put all my notes together on this, but I think I'd like to make the case that spring training baseball is good. Actually, it's not good baseball a lot of the time, to be clear. And, you know, I, too, get to a point where I'm like, oh, it's all. It's a bunch of guys with no names on their jerseys. I've long been an advocate that this is an area where for minimal expense. I think teams could do a better job of like, you know, respecting the dignity of their staff. It's like, just put his name on there. It's okay. You know, how much that will mean to him. Like, he's not going anywhere. Like, I might never wear an affiliated uniform ever again, you know, probably. But maybe not put his name on there so he has this. We can frame it and put it on a wall in a house sometime, you know. But I think that spring ball is a lot of fun. I think that you can upgrade your degree of prospect knower pretty appreciably just by watching your favorite team's available spring training games. Part of it is like, there were a lot of these games on all the time. If you have a Mobly tv, you can kind of space it out. There's always something. But how many spring games go in thinking about it as a scarce resource? You're getting to see your friends after a long absence. It's like going to a class reunion. And in some ways better because you know, you know what class reunions should have. I'm going to get off this tangent in a second. I promise I won't go over long. But class reunions, they should have name tags.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You're saying they don't have them? I would think they. I don't think we had usually have them.

[Meg Riley]

I don't recall us having.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No. I guess maybe it depends on the size of your. Your school and how long it's been, perhaps how unrecognizable you are.

[Meg Riley]

Some of us went to public school, Ben. Yeah, some of us went to public school. And we have 440 kids in our graduating class. Now. Did all of them come to the Roosevelt 20th High School reunion? No, they wouldn't all have been able to fit in Ravena Brewing, you know, But a lot of them were there. And do I still know many of them? Sure, but not all of them. And then I was like, you. And you can only do that so many times before it's obvious what you're doing. So anyway, that's enough about high school reunion.

[Ben Lindbergh]

High school reunion is a good comp. The thing about those is that you go to them maybe every 10 or 20 years or something one time. And spring training you do every year. And also you do it 30 times or something in that year. And so I agree that the first time you immerse yourself, sure. In the sounds of baseball. And look at the warm weather. And wherever you're watching, it might be cold. Not where you are, but they hold spring training where you are, but for, for many of the rest of us. And so it's soothing. It feels like baseball's back and Major League Baseball is back in a sense, at least Major League baseball players are back. But then you realize that Major League Baseball, actually Major League Baseball is not quite back and won't be back for another six weeks or so after pitchers and catchers report, which is kind of a long slog. So yeah, it's appointment viewing for that one game maybe. And then it's, it's background sound, which is, it's nice enough or if you're lucky enough to be in the area, you can go and you get great access and good sight lines and it's, it's a nice environment. I have enjoyed spring training.

[Meg Riley]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Trips as a kid. So yeah, if you're in the area, by all means take in some spring ball, but if you're not, yeah, you.

[Meg Riley]

Know, it's a nice.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Charming. The charms wears off a little bit. It's diminishing returns. And then everyone starts talking about does spring training have to be that long these days? You know, these guys, they stay in good shape year round and they don't do other jobs mostly and they're, they're pretty much ready to go. But then the pitchers, they have to be warmed up and stretched out and even as it is, they all just drop like flies over the course of spring training. So you wouldn't want to shorten it even further. So I get that that's sort of scary anyway. Yeah, I think it's probably a little lower stakes than it used to be though, just because I would guess the spring training position battle is still a thing, it's still an institution. But I have a sense that maybe it's a little less prevalent than it used to be. And it, it makes sense that it would be less prevalent because teams just know more. They're just better informed about players and they're also less likely to be misled or, or led in either direction by someone having a hot few weeks against inferior compet. They have just statcast data and they have great advanced minor league data and incredible video and scouting reports. And they have projections and spring training action might move those projections slightly, but not that much compared to all the past data and information that you have. And so I think you're a little less likely probably to get, oh, this guy went 15 for 40 or something. You're, you're getting the call. Kids, come on up. You know, I know you hit.200 last year, but you just had a hot couple of weeks, so congrats. Like, you probably get a little less of that than you used to. For better or worse. Maybe for better from a projection standpoint, but maybe worse from an entertainment standpoint because it just feels like there's maybe a little less at stake or to be settled or decided in camp. And then it just becomes about, don't get hurt, don't get hurt. Please don't get hurt. Just everyone stay safe and healthy and make it to opening day. Because these games don't actually count.

[Meg Riley]

I think that part of the reason that people have gotten so down on the experience of spring training is actually in person attendance, because they then it's a vacation and it's expensive. Like it's so expensive now. And that's ridiculous. I wish that that were not the case. Like it used to not be this way, but now it's like an event. And so, you know, traffic gets worse in the valley and hotel rooms that go up dramatically. And it's so expensive to rent a car. But if you're at home just saying, let it wash over you a little bit. And I think I'm right that you can really improve your exposure to the prospect side of things by paying attention to just, just your team, even just your favorite team. You don't have to watch all the other teams. Spring trainings, that's for sickos. I mean, we have a lot of those listening. But for the non sickos listening, you don't have to. Don't fest yourself, you know, get a sneak peek. Yeah, yeah, get a little. Get a little sneak peek in, you know, think about, think about warm weather. It's always funny because like the teams that play in cold places, they go to Florida and they go to Arizona and they, you know, have wonderful sun. And then it's like April in Chicago. Enjoy everything that comes with that. And they're just right back to being frozen again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But yeah, anyhow, I think also probably part of it is that the withdrawal from Major League Baseball, it doesn't last quite as long as it used to because the off season is actually shorter, or at least the break between baseball of some sort is shorter because the playoffs are longer. Go into November, Opening day is earlier. It used to be mid April, late April, sometimes. Now it's March. So there is just less of a layoff there. And there's greater access to baseball year round, whether you're watching or paying attention to lead home or, you know, other international baseball, Australian baseball, whatever it is. Like if you are an Extreme sicko. There is baseball out there for you just about all the time. And also you can just revisit old games if you want to. You know, if you really need a fix, you can just put on MLB TV and watch, well, a couple years worth. Beyond that, it never happened. You can't access it anymore. But these games will self destruct in three years or whatever it is. But you can always just dial up a game if you want to, just hear and see some baseball again. And there's constant year round podcasts, some of which don't even change their schedule in the off season. And there's coverage and you know, there's MLB trade rumors and there's constant speculation and so there is sort of a steady drip of baseball if you want that, and it's fine if you don't. If you actually want to take a bit of a break and just sort of reset your system, pursue other interests and passions and hobbies for a few months and then get back to baseball. And it'll be the sweeter because the absence will have made your heart grow fonder. That's fine too. And we're just constantly plied with all sorts of ways to entertain ourselves or distract ourselves or focus on other stuff. So maybe you, you feel the absence of baseball a little less acutely than you might have in earlier eras when, when it was gone, it was just gone and there was really no way to tap into it. And even spring training games are easier to access remotely than they used to be. It used to be a rare treat to be able to watch a spring training broadcast. And you know, there was a time when they didn't have tv. So I'm just saying it's a little bit different, I think. And maybe that's part of why people always say, oh, it's this just adherence to tradition, that it lasts as long as it does. And look, it's nice for the local economies, I guess, and the towns and the people who live there and stadium workers.

[Meg Riley]

That's the worst part.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I'm sure there are some downsides to it too.

[Meg Riley]

Oh my God, the traffic, Ben, the traffic.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Economically speaking, there are some upsides. So those are our many musings about spring training. And I guess that's what we resort to when there is no baseball news. But we don't have to get too desperate ever on this podcast because fortunately, low tide for baseball news tends to arrive at a about the point where our season preview series ramps up, which will be not too long. We should talk about that. We Gotta do some scheduling. So there's, there's that on the horizon. Yeah. And of course our listeners constantly come through with emails and queries that prompt stat blasts and so let us just answer some emails. And I also do have a stat blasts back to back blasts on consecutive episodes here. So here's an email from listener Keith who says do you have a problem with this term back end reliever? It's kind of confusing, isn't it? On one hand, the later and generally higher leverage innings are at the back end of the game, implying if you are a back end reliever, you are pitching in the more important spots, so are probably better. But this would be inconsistent with how we use the same term in say a starting rotation. If you are a backend starter, you're probably a number four, number five, I. E. The lesser preferred option for your team. If you're the last batter off the bench, it's like your manager tried to avoid having to use you in the game in the first place. You don't usually say backend bench guy, I guess, but point taken. If you're the last reliever out of the bullpen, it means we're saving the best for last. Anyway, if anyone is going to care about this, I know it will be you two. Let me know if I'm grasping at straws here. I, I don't think you are, because.

[Meg Riley]

I, I, I don't either.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I, I could have sworn that we brought this up at some point that I made this observation or that this occurred to us and we may have mentioned it in passing. I asked effectively wild wiki keeper Raymond Chen and he couldn't dig up any time this came up before, but I, I don't think that this is the first time this has been invoked on the podcast, but it's true. To have a back end of a bullpen and a back end of a rotation, back end starter, back end reliever, for them to mean sort of separate things, it is a little confusing. Not to us probably. It's probably clear from context. But to a neophyte they might be a bit thrown by that, I might imagine.

[Meg Riley]

I think it's particularly flummoxing less because of the bench situation and more because of the concept of a back end starter. Yeah, you know, if a, if a writer isn't careful, you can end up kind of confused and turned around, which is why I think that a lot of people will default to describing the leverage, typical leverage situation that a reliever comes in at. And I think that that is a much safer Avenue. Or. Or you might find it more relevant to describe them in terms of, like, the number of innings that they might cover. You might call them a 9th inning guy. I think that even in a. In an era where we have more and more teams that kind of do closure by committee and they're mixing and matching based on, you know, the particulars of a arsenal versus a certain batter or the leverage index in a given moment, there are so many ways that you can talk about the. The dude, you know, the screw you guy at the back of your bullpen. See, it's so. But. But if I said it that way, you'd know what I was talking about. If I said the screw you guy at the back.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Especially appropriate to talk about Arsenals when you're talking about a back end guy. It just makes all the sense in the world. I was trying to remember whether I do refer to the back end of the bullpen. I think end of the bullpen, yes. I would assume that they were referring to the elite arms in the bullpen, but I do probably write around or speak around that when I can. And, yeah, I just say late inning guys. You know, that's a way of conveying that it's the end of the game, but not with potentially confusing terminology or leverage guys or whatever. There's just a lot of alternative terms we could use. But you are right, Keith, that I think this is a little confounding, perhaps. And I'm sure that some people at some point have been confused by this. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry that baseball has messed with you. And. And maybe in the between inning breaks on the radio broadcasts in the upcoming season, instead of defining oppo taco, they should define back end, and they could get into the nuance of back end to the bullpen, back end starter, back end of cal rally, whatever back end we invoke in a baseball context, I think that might actually be helpful.

[Meg Riley]

I. I think that's right. I think that they should. They should hire us to define a bunch of terms and present us with a fun challenge, which is to only talk as long as an AD break, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

See if we can do it, like, as an exercise, but we could do a bunch of them.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I just. I'd do it as a public service, just to spare everyone from incessant apo. Taco reminders. I do it pro bono, I think, just. Just to be easy on everyone's ears. Yeah, I just looked up back end in the baseball dictionary, the Dixon baseball dictionary.

[Meg Riley]

I was like, tell me you didn't Google back end because that could go any number of directions.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, but there are actually six definitions for back end. Yeah. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

It seems like too many to be useful.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, the first one and. And this is a valid one, although I would not put it first probably, if I were compiling this dictionary now. But the trailing runner in a double steel. So like the backend runner. So it says with runners on second base and third base, the back end is the runner on first. With runners on third and first, the back end is the runner on third. Since he begins his attempt to steal after the runner on first base makes his attempt. Egg Garrett Jenkins scored on the back end of a double steal. Yeah. Okay. And then the second definition is the second out of a double play. I'm trying to think. Do I hear that? Do I hear people refer to the second out as the back end of the double play? No, I don't think so. I'm sure it has happened. I'm sure it happens sometimes, but.

[Meg Riley]

Sure, but not with any kind of consistency.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And then the third definition is the second game of a double header, which. That's just rare these days because there aren't that many double headers. So this may be dated, I think, in terms of at least the ordering and how prominent these usages are. And then the fourth definition is the bottom of the order, which I don't think.

[Meg Riley]

I think that like, that you'd say like the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Like the back end of the order or the back end of the line. Yeah, I wouldn't say that.

[Meg Riley]

I wouldn't say that either.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No. Bottom. Bottom of the order. Sure. But back end of the order. Back end is enough. Things we don't have to. I mean, coming up with different.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, because there's no other understanding of the word bottom these days.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We really. We just. This is even more. We're talking about how two are confusing. And how about six and then only at number five do they get to see back of the rotation. And then number six is C, back of the bullpen. I'd probably put those one and two in current baseball usage.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I don't think that that's quite right in terms of the. The way the vernacular is deployed now. Yeah, that's quite right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I'm sure. I think the most recent edition of the Dixon Dictionary might be 15 years or so old now at this point. And it includes. Yeah, like, when double headers were more common, you. You'd maybe say. Although even then, do you. Do you really describe it as the back end of a double Header or.

[Meg Riley]

I don't think so. I'd say the second game of a double header. I mean, look, language is so very variable, men. And it evolves and changes and it's a. It's a big country, you know, got all kinds of people saying all kinds of things. But I don't think that I would have those uses ahead of referring to the rotation or the. Or the bullpen. That.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And because that is where the primary source of potential confusion comes from, that it is applying to pitchers, but in very different contexts, both in terms of their role and then also their caliber. Anyway, I feel like we've said enough about this one.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe this use is still evolving because while you used to be able to call the second game of a doubleheader the nightcap, but then it's not always really at night. If it's like. So, yeah, it's kind of.

[Meg Riley]

You can still refer to the ones that happen at night as the nightcap.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

You're not allowed from that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anyway. Maybe the usage is evolving and we're just at an intermediate stage where we use back end of the bullpen and back end of the rotation come up.

[Meg Riley]

On the land, but we don't yet have legs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right? Yes. And maybe, maybe because of the potential confusion that we are talking about here, maybe people will stop saying back end of the bullpen, but we'll find out. Okay, here's a question from JJ Patreon supporter. A couple episodes ago, Ben mentioned that Shohei Ohtani may naturally repel balls in the outfield. This was not a serious suggestion, but I was noting that he played almost a full game's worth of innings out there in a corner on games. He started when they just moved him out when he was with the Angels, and he never got a defensive chance. A ball was never hit to him. And so I suggested maybe it's magic. Maybe he actually repelled balls. But JJ says how valuable would an outfielder be if they magnetically or by some other means repelled any ball hit in their direction? Would they be a neutral defender because they never had any opportunities? Or would they be a net positive for team defense, as the other two outfielders could take more aggressive positioning because they know the ball wouldn't land in a given third of the outfield?

[Meg Riley]

Okay, but I have questions, though, because I think. And I think the answers to those questions will determine this. So is it the sort of thing where you, like, can't believe that we can't discern it from the email? Okay, you have a header. The hitter Makes contact, the ball is going to the outfield. Is it diverted from its path, like at the point in its flight where it's still technically on the infield? Or is it like, you remember, under the dome? You know, is it like an under the dome situation where it like, gets to the point where you are meeting the outer bounds of the outfielders? Magnetism or, or negative magnetism isn't what I mean. Anyway, they're dumb. They're a little dumb. And then it like ricochets effectively or like, is diverted. Because that seems like it would be important if, if it is interfering with the ball in flight as early as the infield. I don't think they let that guy play baseball because, like, that feels unfair to the hitter too, you know, that it would. That it would. And like, what if. What if you, you know, are like, you know, you're like an extreme oppo guy or you. Or you put your extreme pole guy and then they put your. They put Magneto out there to the side where you are hitting most often. Is that to your advantage or to his? It feels unfair. It feels like him being Magneto shouldn't impact the way that you are able to. To hit the ball. I think, unfortunately, this guy would probably be disqualified. And in terms of what it would do, I mean, I do think that where it starts to meet the. The edge of the magnetism matters a great deal because. And is it predictable, right? Like, if, let's say, you know, where the edge of his dome is. The made for TV movie Under the Dome wasn't very good, I would. I wish it had been better. You know, it's a cool story.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. It's very long.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. The book was okay. It was. So why is it so long anyway, if. If the range of the magnetism is predictable for Magneto, but is the trajectory that the ball takes once it encounters that magnetism predictable? Because if it's predictable, then it seems like it would be a defensive boon because you. It would be like, it would be like a version of the shift, right? You know, where to put your other guy. And maybe you move Magneto around and so you can kind of play with where the ball goes, but that seems like it would be to the defense's advantage. But you are fundamentally like kind of playing a man down out there. So that seems like it would be bad. And if, if it, if the, the range of the dome is very tight, then it seems like it would be obviously a problem, right? Like, if it's just like a couple feet in any direction Around Magneto and the ball gets all the way out there. Well, it's going to rickshaw away and then it's like, is, is the other fielder going to be able to recover in time to. To field that, or is it just going to be like the funniest version of an outfield blooper ever, where the ball, you know, the ball falls in and Magneto tries to run up to it and then it's away again. Because it's like I'm negatively polarized against Magneto. It could be really funny. So I. I think that my answer is, I don't know. And not for the reasons that are obvious.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

But for the reasons that I've just said, which is like the answers to those questions, I think really have a lot to do with the ultimate answer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Well, first things first. Priorities. The under the Dome adaptation was a series.

[Meg Riley]

Right. But it was a made for TV series.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it was.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, it was like a multi.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It was three seasons or something.

[Meg Riley]

But it was three seasons. That was. Oh, my God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Nothing about under the Dome is mini, I don't think, but.

[Meg Riley]

I know, but like, there's no way you have enough story for three seasons. That's bonkers. Was it on Sci Fi? I feel like that was an NBC joint.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it was a CBS show, I think.

[Meg Riley]

Anyway, anyway. All right, let's get back to the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Importance that thing, which is the scenario of a fielder who can repel baseballs. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think you're asking the right questions here.

[Meg Riley]

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, really thinking about it, because.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The trajectory is pretty important because if, if it does just sort of hit off a force field that surrounds that fielder and just drops, then, well, even that, would that be good or bad? On the one hand, it'd be bad because you never make a catch. Right. So you can't make any routine play unless you can catch it off the force field or something. But presumably any can of corn you are prevented from catching. Meanwhile, everyone is just rounding the bases. So that would be very bad. On the other hand, depending on how high into the airspace the dome, the force field reaches, it's essentially like a green monster. So it's, you know, you're blocking a home run potentially, and you're knocking down potential extra base hits. So that might be good. But then almost everything is going to be an extra base hit, even if it's a popup because it's just going to be in the air so long and it's not going to get caught. But if it's not that. So I think that would on the whole be bad. But if it's just that somehow this player prevents the ball ever from being hit in his direction, then that would probably be pretty valuable. Right. Because.

[Meg Riley]

But I think that he wouldn't let him play then I think they wouldn't let him play.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, on what grounds? Just, I mean we end up in the same scenario we always end up in with the original Gany Jones question hypothetical where you just have to declare someone a witch or a wizard and say God is real and gonna Jones is a wizard or whatever.

[Meg Riley]

I think that for a witch or a wizard to be real, the goddess.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That could be drawn and some other source of power. But.

[Meg Riley]

Right, yeah, these are. These could be discrete traditions.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We don't know there's something paranormal in the world. There's something that can't be explained by science as we know it. Maybe Bryce Harper could explain it.

[Meg Riley]

But it's like when we do Wednesday shows, they like always channel Friday show energy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's true. We don't normally record on.

[Meg Riley]

We don't. And we're like until and off our axis a little bit. And then we're constant contemplating the force field. I think they would just say like it's. This is too weird. And being, you know, a force field guy is the dog can play baseball but force field guy can't. You know, we're just gonna make it a rule. Sorry.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And you'd only do that if you felt that it gave the team an undue advantage and. And that this player was overpowered. So we are saying that that would be valuable. I don't know how it would be quantified exactly. I don't know how safe statcast would tabulate that value because usually a defensive system, it's based on where the ball is hit and where you stand and your opportunities and how many of them you catch versus how many of them you should be expected to catch and everything. And this person's just never getting to make a play ever. So maybe statistically speaking they'd be sort of a zero, just like null set or something. But. But I think in practice they would be pretty valuable because. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'd want to be an outfielder playing alongside this guy because you're going to get many more opportunities. You're going to be busy out there, you're going to be just peppered with balls. But on the other hand, you have a lot less ground to cover because you can essentially just rule out this entire field. Well, then again Maybe you don't have less ground to cover because you still have the two outfielders out there covering the same amount of territory. Right, right.

[Meg Riley]

And they got to get over there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And you can anticipate balls being hit in your direction more readily because you can just rule out a third of the outfield. But then you still do have to cover that ground. Unless this player can expand their force fields, make their dome bigger. If they're. If their dome is only the size of a typical outfielder's range, then maybe it's effectively a wash. Is that possible?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, of course it's possible, Ben.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Like, anything's possible in this scenario.

[Meg Riley]

Magic. It's. Well, if the. If the player can expand and contract the force field, I think they definitely wouldn't be allowed to play. Like, it's one thing if they are just naturally magnetic or. Or repellent. It's not even magnetism. Right. Because it's not like they're interacting with metal and the ball. But you. You know, if. If it were natural or, like, the results of, like, an industrial accident or, like, you know, one of some sort of Kaiju attack, then one thing. But if it's something manipulable, you know, well, then they're not magneto per se. Maybe they'd be like one of the students. I don't want to define a version of baseball where the X Men can't play.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, there have been comics where they have. I mean, many superheroes have taken the field. We've probably gotten that question before if we haven't answered it. Sure.

[Meg Riley]

But I think we would say, hey, you're not allowed to use your power.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Probably.

[Meg Riley]

But, you know, I mean, what's the. But. But athleticism is about exceptional people, right? Or exceptional skill or characteristics. So it's a real. That's a real tricky thing, you know, That's a.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Meg Riley]

Sticky wicket, as it were. Can we answer a different question? I've run out of bits about this one. I don't know. I don't know. I need to know more about the. The domes parameters, and I do think the manipulability of the dome and, like, how aware. How aware is the fielder? Because. Because also, what if the fielder is, like, what's going on? You know, what if they don't know that they. So then maybe it's not an industrial accident because you remember when you've been involved in an industrial accident, your memory.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Was wiped in the incident. Yeah. That can happen. But. Yeah, if any kind of telekinesis, magnetism.

[Meg Riley]

I think we would say that that's not fair play.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's out of bounds. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Should be able to, without touching the ball, alter the ball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Ball does not contain a magnet, so. So that might provide some limitations, but any kind of telekinesis. Yeah. Jedi powers using the Force. It's. Right.

[Meg Riley]

No. Problematic.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. I don't. I don't care to know of metichlorians, but they can't be in play here.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We're fans of framing, but even we say there's. There's a line, they're touching the ball. Cross. Yes.

[Meg Riley]

No telekinesis after you catch it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But if you're moving the ball before you catch it, that's. That's right. Out. That's quite dangerous, right?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I don't. I don't think. I think that a good line of fair play is that you can't use a telekinesis while playing baseball. And someone's been listening this whole time being like, stop calling that fielder Magneto. Because they're not. It's not about metal, you know, it's a baseball. But no telekinesis. That feels like a good boundary. But like, if you had a very tall mutant, I would say that that person can play, you know, or like a very burly. Or like, what. What kind of. Who is the. Like, think about what kind of baserunner the juggernaut would be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, yeah. I mean, this is probably one who.

[Meg Riley]

Would do a lot of damage to other fielders. I also think a good rule is no teleportation. You know, no teleportation. But if you have, like, sticky pads on your fingers because you're some sort of lizard mutant. Source. I think that that's fine. You can shimmy up the wall, but you can't teleport. You know, it has to.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm pretty sure we've assigned superheroes to positions at some point or drafted a superhero team that seems to have happen. I'm. I'm sure that we got that question.

[Meg Riley]

Are we gonna do that one email that we got this week?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, there is one that's kind of related to this, I guess. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I loved that email.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There is that at some point, I guess Magneto, technically, his power is like magnetokinesis. I mean, he can do all sorts of stuff, right?

[Meg Riley]

But he can't. But he couldn't do it to wood. Like, he couldn't make the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean, put anything past Magneto. He's little metal.

[Meg Riley]

Like, with. What's the. What's the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He could do it all. He Just needs like electromagnetic energy. He can get around any, any limitation here. But I was thinking when I initially read this question and I was envisioning it, I was thinking it of the ball goes in that direction, but just kind of goes like. And it, it just, it's repelled and it's, it doesn't actually make that sound.

[Meg Riley]

Probably as if, like I. Not only can our living listeners not see you, we don't do this show on video.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And so I, I can imagine you going woo. But I, I don't know for sure if my woo and your woo.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Imagine I'm making a hand movement to see. People are going to say, this is why you should do the podcast on video. Let me tell you, it's not worth it just for one little hand motion while I do this sound effect. But I'm imagining you all.

[Meg Riley]

I'm not doing my hair for you three times a week. I'm sorry, I'm not to get effectively.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Wild hair and makeup in here before every episode. That'll have to be as a Patreon perk or that'll have to be supported by Patreon. You'll all have to really pay up for that. But yeah, I was imagining it just kind of being pushed. Not necessarily like impacting on the outside. Sort of like, you know, Luke trying to shoot the proton torpedo into the, the Death Star exhaust port, but. Or like, you know, some sort of Star Trek scenario. Shields are up and it just impacts on the surface and it dissipates. I was thinking of it as being like actively pushed in another direction and that might be helpful for a fielder, I think.

[Meg Riley]

But wait, but wait. I'm sorry. Canonically he didn't like guide the, the, the missile into the port, did he?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, no, it wasn't like a wire guided sort of.

[Meg Riley]

No, it was like he was using the force.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He was focusing on the force to nail the perfect timing and shot.

[Meg Riley]

Right. But he wasn't. Like, he wasn't. I'm Sorry, guys. It's January 28th. We had to record two days in a row. Very little has happened. It's this or we talk about a number of very small Rockies moves. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Primo material right here. I don't know what you're talking about. This is, this is our A grade stuff.

[Meg Riley]

Wait, but so, but I just want to make sure that I understand Star Wars. The. The suggestion is not that like once the, the missile.

[Ben Lindbergh]

What do they call proton torpedo.

[Meg Riley]

They're proton torpedoes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Even in, in Star Trek, those are photons.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, Star Wars Photon versus Proton 4. Okay, sorry, sorry. You're right. You're right. I've seen them both. I'm so sorry. So sorry, everyone. No emails. I'm so sorry. So the suggestion is not that when the now say the wrong one, he's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not reaching out with the Force to guide.

[Meg Riley]

Guiding it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, he is. Just my understanding, at least.

[Meg Riley]

Okay, okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

From a certain point of view, the Force works in mysterious ways, but that's not the way I interpret the text. Anyway.

[Meg Riley]

Okay, anyway.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So, so, so if this guy. The only advantage I can think of is that if you know that he has this power and it's legal and it's allowed, then you could position him so as to blunt the batter's advantage, perhaps. Because as you were saying, like, if a guy tends to be someone who goes oppo, or their power is to a certain field or something like that, and you can just. Just nullify that advantage by stationing this outfielder there and forcing the hitter somehow to hit it in the other direction. Right.

[Meg Riley]

Like imagine, Imagine you're. You're Isaac Paradis.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right, Exactly.

[Meg Riley]

You know, you're Alex Bregman. You had the Crawford boxes all that time, and then the marriage could just put someone out there and it's like, sorry, buddy, those are all. I mean, probably a lot of them would be doubles, maybe, but if it's. They could also just all be outs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I don't know whether you'd want to put him toward where the hitter's pull power is, because most fly balls go the opposite way. But then when you really get a hold of one, it. It tends to be pulled. So you'd have to. It would be based on the situation and based on the tendencies of the hitter. And so you could play matchups, I think, and probably derive some advantage there just from. From guiding the ball. Not exactly guiding, but preventing the ball from going in a certain place or to a certain fielder. And you could kind of camouflage, because you only need two good outfielders is the other thing. And, and how often does a team have three gifted defensive outfielders? And this way you wouldn't need three because you are just roping off a portion of the field. So that might help you a bit. You just. You need to get two good glove guys and then this guy can go wherever. So you can configure your outfield maybe more effectively that way. So, yeah, I think there are some advantages. It would be tough to quantify, but if I could have this ability, if you could grant me this ability and I could Use it at my discretion. I think I would. I think it would be advantageous. Yeah. Okay, so we settled that in a very straightforward Protons.

[Meg Riley]

Star Wars Photon. Star Trek.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's right. I don't know whether this was the question that you were just alluding to, but this is the question that came to my mind as we were talking about mutant abilities, which might or may not be banned. This was from Sean, who says with the annual hall of Fame talk. Oh, I know which question you were talking about. It wasn't this one, I think. Think. But. But this one is also related with the annual hall of Fame talk about whether players who cheat either with PDS or banging schemes should be honored. I started wondering about how often cheating goes on. I think technically, all violations of the rules would count as cheating. So anyone who commits clock violations, catcher's interference box, and out of the baseline running, would all be considered cheaters. My question is, do balls count as cheating? It's called the strike zone. Would you say pitchers are required to throw it in the zone where a hitter can strike it, and if they break that rule, they're penalized with a ball? Never know whether to say penalized or penalized. It's a choose your own adventure every time I say it out loud. No, I would not say that, Sean. I would not say that pitchers are required to throw it in the zone.

[Meg Riley]

Right? You're not required to throw it in the zone.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it's not even like the early days of baseball, when you were supposed to throw it where the hitter wanted you to throw it. And then before they figured out balls and strikes, the games would go on forever because people could just kind of keep throwing things that weren't strikes, and they hadn't figured out what to do about that. But. But no, that's not cheating.

[Meg Riley]

Right. And I don't think I would refer to a clock violation as cheating, either. It's not underhanded. Right. Like, cheating often contains an element of subterfuge because you want to conceal your cheating so that. That it goes undetected, and you. And you accrue an advantage as a result of that. Whereas if you violate the pitch clock, you take a. You take an immediate consequence, and you're almost always doing that in error. So I don't think I would call that cheating. And, like, guys who balk aren't cheating. They're. They don't want to b. I mean, sometimes they do want to balk, but they are, first of all, very obvious about that, because, hey, look, a bok. And Then the guy gets his base right away. So I think because of the immediacy of the, the consequence or adjustment, it, it doesn't contain the same elements as cheating does. And yeah, you're not required to throw it in the zone.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And there's a penalty for that, which I guess is not inconsistent with it being cheating, perhaps, but there's already a recourse in the rules. And I guess cheating does imply some degree of intentionality and premeditation too. So you can commit a clock violation by accident. You can do any of these things by accident. So that's an important difference. I think you, you could try to do some of these things. It's like the line between cheating and gamesmanship and, and that's a little squishy. It's a little hazy for sure. But these are low grade instances of cheating. Sticky stuff, for instance. That was cheating, right? That was going against the rules, I think. But also it was essentially sanctioned or condoned and everyone just looked the other way until they didn't. And that's a part of it too, I think. It's just if this is something that is technically prevented, but also everyone understands that it's kind of okay and you can get away with it and no one gets too upset about it. And yes, if it's out there in the open, as opposed to the banging scheme, which in retrospect was kind of perceptible and players did perceive it, but wasn't widely perceived in the moment that taking illicit substances, PEDs, these are things you're doing that no one can see or hear, or at least that's your hope or expectation, and you're trying to get away with it and pull a fast one and get one over on everyone. So that's a little different. Yeah. Yeah. If you're committing a clock violation, well, there's a big clock there that's counting down. So if you get away with it, then it's almost umpire error, I guess, which we've had the question before about framing versus flopping and is framing cheating? And so we don't have to rehash that whole thing. But, but that's also something that the umpire can see. It's out there in the open. Yes, you are sort of hoodwinking them. You are sort of deceiving them. I guess the whole point is that the Empire is seeing it. It's that they, they, they aren't really realizing what they're seeing.

[Meg Riley]

Right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

They aren't seeing it. Well, yeah, but it's, it's out there. So I don't think that these things would qualify as cheating. Maybe it's a distinction of degree, not kind, and it's all just a sliding scale of nefariousness. But seems like going a bit overboard to label some of these activities cheating. Now, there are people who think that Andy Pettit was balking every time he attempted a pickoff. And you could call that cheating, I guess, you know, people pretending they understand what a Bach is or isn't. We're on too well, but I get it. And that was a common refrain as I was watching Pettit growing up. You'd always hear about how he had either a great move or a move that should have been banned and just, yeah, for him it wasn't. And so that wasn't really cheating either, because he was allowed to do it.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Perhaps he shouldn't have been, but he was and he was for many years. And everyone sort of understand the situation when a player does something repeatedly and it is allowed. And then there are various other. The Carter Caps Hop, for instance, that when he debuted, and others who did something similar that could have been called cheating, it caused confusion. Is this legal? Is this cheating? And that, of course, was not subtle either. Everyone could see it, and eventually it was ruled illegal. And it was in that legal gray area for a time where you couldn't really call it cheating either, because it wasn't as if he was banned from doing it and they said, hey, stop doing that. And then somehow he figured out a way to keep doing it. Right. Without anyone noticing. Right. That would be cheating. I think when there is some system built in and okay, with pds, there's testing, there's a system of suspensions and penalties. So again, it's not mutually exclusive. You can cheat and also have some prescribed penalties for cheating, but it's often something that goes above and beyond, or it's just hard to police, or there's no realistic way to detect it or reliable way to punish it. And that's the banging scheme, for instance. The whole idea was that no one would notice and you wouldn't be able to see. And so you couldn't stop them because you couldn't detect them. And that's illegal. And it was illegal because of the methods they used and the technology and the devices and everything. Whereas it's legal in game to steal signs if you can do it just with your own cleverness and your own perception. And. And I guess there are a few reasons for that. You know, maybe you think, well, that you can guard against you can just hide your signs. This is, you know, the pre pitchcom, a lot of this. But you could do something to defend yourself against that kind of cheating. And it wasn't super powerful because you were just using your own faculties. So. Yeah, kind of a cute question, Sean. I see where you're going with this.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, well, and you know, like the clock, the purpose of the, of the clock is not to enforce like a level playing field. It's to move the game along. Right. So part of it too, I think is, is what is the intent of the, of the rule relative to something like, you know, electronic sign stealing. The reason that that that sort of went beyond the pale is that there was a perception, I think accurately that it afforded an unfair advantage to the hitter. Whereas, you know, if you can decipher signs in real time on second base using just your human brain, well, that is you pressing an advantage. And then to your point, there's an obvious counter that is available to, to the catcher and you know, the rest of the defense. So I think part of it too is like what is the purpose of the rule?

[Ben Lindbergh]

So. Yeah, yeah. Okay, here is a question from Nick who says, I have a baseball playoffs proposal for you. What if MLB introduced a rule that at the end of the season all players on non playoff teams and maybe even minor league teams can opt into becoming playoffs free agents. The players selected from this group will become the spoilers. The spoilers become another playoff team or teams that compete for a World Series. Fans will get to see more of the best players in the league and some top prospects on a national platform. Free Mike Trout, a great former player or non playoff coach can manage and make the selections. Like the wbc, there's got to be a revenue sharing mechanism to make this worth the owner's while. And while it won't be the same as hanging a banner, it will give non contending teams the chance to celebrate their players with commemorative giveaway days, et cetera, and expose more fans to their best players. There's injury downside, but again, the precedent is the wbc. I think watching and or rooting for the spoilers would be a ton of fun. What do you think? So this immediately reminded me of another scenario we've discussed. We've entertained the idea of, of you get to claim a player when you beat a team and you draft a player from the defeated team. In some places this is actually in place and it happens. And so if you steamroll over some team in the division series or the wild card series or something, then you get to claim as bounty, basically a player or two or something, and they stick with you. And each team gets to do that as they advance. And we've talked about the. The merits and the possible appeal of that, but this is a whole team of guys who have lost or not even made the playoffs, and they are just a unit unto themselves. The spoilers.

[Meg Riley]

I can't say that I care for it as much as I like the idea of, you know, us having had Prime Trout in the postseason more than we did. And. And goodness knows I would have liked that because arguably, when he was in the postseason, he wasn't yet, like, really prime dropped. There should be consequences for missing the postseason, and one of them should be that you missed the postseason. You know, like, I don't think that if your team has scrapped and has clawed its way into playing October baseball, that your reward for getting there should be, hey, you have to face like a strength super team of guys from other clubs who were themselves individually excellent, but, you know, mired in a. In a collective mediocrity. I just don't know that that really, like, rewards the things I want rewarded by. By the playoffs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I would quibble with. Did you say that Mike Trout, when he made the playoffs, wasn't really prime. Prime Trout at that? I think he didn't. He didn't play like he was. He didn't play like it was three games, but it was. Was 2014. He was prime TR from his first full season.

[Meg Riley]

You're right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But yeah, it's. We were deprived of prime tr.

[Meg Riley]

We were depressed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Except for three games in which he had one hit, which was a homer. But. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say that I see some appeal here, but it seems to be pretty disruptive to the concept of the postseason.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I kind of. I would watch. Like, I like the idea of. Well, first of all, this team would be really good. Right. Because you're taken, you know, you're taking 18 teams and culling the best players from them. And yes, they are mostly going to be bad teams or not the best teams, but it's baseball, and bad teams have a lot of good players. So if you consolidate all of those players into, you know, more than half of the league's teams onto one team, then that's going to be quite a squad. Yeah. So they would immediately be the, the World Series favorites if. If they just sort of entered the playoffs any year. And. Yeah, I'm with you. You. You have to earn it. I feel bad for individual players because you can only do so much personally to earn it. You can do everything yourself to earn it, but if the rest of your team is not good enough to earn it, then you don't earn it through no fault of your own. So I don't love that players are punished just based on the circumstances or their ownership's lack of investment or their front office's incompetence or bad luck or whatever it is. But that's why they play the games, as they say. That's why we watch a whole season to see who's good and who deserves to get beyond that point. And yes, there's a ton of randomness in the playoffs. Of course, whether you think that's a bug or a feature depends on the year and which team you're rooting for and the moment, probably. But it is certainly a staple of the baseball postseason and pretty inherent to it. So if you then inject a bunch of players who individually were good but weren't on bad teams, and then that team eliminates the teams that actually earn their spot by playing well all season and playing as a unit and everything, that's. Yeah, that's unfair. That seems to undercut the purpose of postseason competition. So. And I know that postseason competition, the purpose is not exactly to anoint and determine the best team because of the aforementioned randomness. So it's true that. That the best team usually doesn't win the World Series. So I guess you could say, well, what's the difference then? You're just injecting a team of really excellent players into this thing. But no, it. It does reduce the already reduced stakes of the regular season. You know, enough teams make the playoffs now and there are enough rounds that we've already diminished the importance of the regular season and the pennant race and all of that. And so if players don't get shut out because their teams did, then I think that would further erode the reason for playing 162 games, at least the competitive purpose, ostensibly. So that'd be bad. If we could make it some kind of exhibition somehow, then I'd be into it. If we could, say, take the World Series winning team and have them play the spoilers just as some sort of for bragging rights or something, that would be entertaining. But then how would you do it? Would it seem like a sideshow or an afterthought? Would it start to seem like the real World Series and then it would diminish the actual World Series, or would people still treat it as a sort of meaningless but fun exhibition? If it's not Actually officially deciding anything. And then the big problem, I guess is that you're playing a month of postseason baseball. And what are the spoilers doing as they're sitting? Maybe me. The rust is the equalizer. Everyone just obsesses over rust and rest and all that.

[Meg Riley]

Think about the discourse.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If you were actually out for a full month though, I think there might be something to that.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

While everyone else is playing. So maybe that would equalize things where you have this stacked team, but they haven't played together ever and they also haven't played in a month. But would that even lead to good baseball? And then injury risk would be off the charts and no one would want to do it unless they were stuck some enormous payday which would be reliant on this actually being of great interest to people. So I think there are more problems than potential perks and upsides here. But I did enjoy contemplating the possibility.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I mean, look, I. I like the idea of being able to sub in the guys that we want to see the most for some reason. Why did I think that his. His playoff year was in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Here's what I was just say, so long ago.

[Meg Riley]

His playoff here was earlier, but of course it wasn't. And even if I thought it was earlier, as long as there's a full SE. Man, he was so good. He was so good then.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Well, now that he's back in his regeneration chamber, I'm sure he'll be great again. But that either. Yeah. Unless they had made the playoffs only once in. In 2011.

[Meg Riley]

Right. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

His very first season.

[Meg Riley]

I just. I think I had a little brain fart bent. Think it was a little brain fart.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's ancient history. It's hard to cast our minds back to a time when the Angels and Mike Trout made the playoffs. I've also, I've expressed some. Well, the concept of the spoiler, I've always thought, just doesn't hold that much personal appeal for me. And maybe that's because I don't really root for one team anymore. And when I did, I was a Yankees fan. And so they were possibly getting spoiled, but they never really had to resort to spoiling. And so it always seemed like sort of setting your sights low to me. That's all you can aspire to, is to ruin someone else's good time. Yes, but that's also. That's all some teams and some fan bases have. I will allow it if it's not purely mean spirited, but there's actually some rivalry and some history there. And you have A reason to hold a grudge against the team. If it's just a way of like, well, I'll ruin your day so that both of our days will be ruined, then that doesn't seem so much fun. Or if, if I could see how if you're on that team and maybe you're a bunch of young guys and you haven't proven anything yet, and you're a few years away from getting to that stage yourself, but it's a confidence booster to say, hey, we can play with those guys. Okay, I can see that. But as a fan base, just the idea of just taking someone else down and what does it really prove? If it's baseball and you win one game, anyone can win one game against any team. So it's, it's not as if you just established that you're actually a better team. So I think there has to be a reason for you to wish that team ill other than just wanting to spoil people's day. And sometimes those circumstances arise.

[Meg Riley]

Sure. I think that there are times where, you know, if you can interfere with the good time of a direct rival, there's some satisfaction to be gleaned from that. But it's a pretty fleeting satisfaction in my experience.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Audience.

[Meg Riley]

It's a lot more fun to watch your team doing well on its own terms. Your memories of that, I think persist in a way that, like, I don't know, I'm sure there were times in the, in the in when the Mariners were wandering in the wilderness where, like, they ruined the Astros day or whatever, but I don't remember any of them specifically, you know, but I like, I remember the 15 inning game name, you know, that's gonna sit with me for a while. Some of it is. It's more recent, truly, but I, I just think that it's a. It's always more meaningful when it's about, like, your beautiful boys doing well. You know, he feels so satisfied. It was like on Monday, I was like, when are all of my football podcasts gonna update? I need to hear people say nice things about all of my beautiful football guys. Even Reek Woolen, who I was very mad at for a long time time and then was able to let it go. I was able to let it go, Ben. You know why? Because it didn't end up mattering. Thank God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You can, you can be the bigger fan and the bigger team because your team is in the Super Bowl. But yeah, if you can build up your team instead of tearing another team down. It can be both sometimes, but the former is Better.

[Meg Riley]

I will say that when you are not playing a spoiler, but you are just like beating your rival.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's so satisfying. Yeah, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

You know, then you're combining the, the persistence of memory, the depth of emotion with pettiness. Very powerful stuff, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Okay, this is the question that I think you were alluding to earlier.

[Meg Riley]

I love this question so much.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Comes to us from Chris, who says, I've been going to the theatrical re release for the Lord of the Rings movies and the first one got me thinking hard about the optimal lineup for the nine members of the Fellowship.

[Meg Riley]

I love this question.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So Chris lists his lineup. Yeah, which I guess we can read out here. So Chris has Legolas and center Mary in right field, Aragorn at short, Gandalf.

[Meg Riley]

At dh we're gonna, I have some, I have some potential notes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Bormir at first base, Gimli is catching, Sam's at third base, Frodo at second, and Pippin in left. And Chris specifies these are based on the movie portrayals, not the books. So all my reading of the unfinished tales in the Silmarillion not gonna help me here, I guess. I don't know who pitches. Gollum, maybe. I think he'd be too erratic. What do we think.

[Meg Riley]

Is the One ring a. PD Inquiring minds wanna know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No.

[Meg Riley]

Or is it a.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sometimes it enhances your performance in some ways.

[Meg Riley]

In other ways, diminishes you dramatically though. Makes you a weird little golem of a guy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, so what, what notes do you have for Chris's lineup here?

[Meg Riley]

So I, I, I wonder about a couple of things. I mean, like, I guess you got to put Gandalf somewhere, right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Maybe you want him at DH if you assume he has to hit. But wouldn't you rather, wouldn't you rather he pitched?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I mean, he has the height for it and, and assuming that he's allowed to just use any powers at his disposal that.

[Meg Riley]

Oh no, we're back to this again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Back to our question about the dome.

[Meg Riley]

But I don't think he has to, I don't think he has to use his powers even, you know, he has the, he has the strength of, of many years. How old is Gandalf canonically?

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's ancient. I mean, he's, he's from an earlier age.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, right. He's from a different age. He's not as old as the elves, but kind of close, right? Is meant to be our understanding.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Depends on which elves, but yeah. Or they predate his arrival in Middle Earth at Least. So it depends.

[Meg Riley]

Fair enough, fair enough.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We won't get into that now, but yes, yes, she's been around for a long time.

[Meg Riley]

He's been around and so I think you'd rather. I think you'd rather have Gandalf pitch. It does leave you with like. Well, what do you, what do you do? Well, can't you. No, I'm changing my answer. Wouldn't you want Elrond to pitch?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, if Elrond is eligible. Right. He's not. Why wouldn't he be in the Fellowship?

[Meg Riley]

Oh, he's not in the Fellowship.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's helped and organized, but neither is Gollum.

[Meg Riley]

Gollum's not in the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not. He's very much not in the Fellowship, so.

[Meg Riley]

Famously not in the Fellowship.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And so. Okay, so let's, let's go through spot by spot. So Legolas and center seems like an obvious win.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Fleet of foot, keen of eyes, agile.

[Meg Riley]

Normal sized. Yeah, you know, like normal is. Puts a value judgment on a way. I don't mean human sized.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. Elf sized in his case.

[Meg Riley]

But yeah, well, right, but. I know, but people might not know how tall elves are. And they are the same. They are as tall as humans. They're the same height generally. Can we get one of the. Can, can, can one of the ring.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Rays Pitch the other thing.

[Meg Riley]

Well, think how intimidating they would be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I guess with Gandalf and his age, it depends on. Are we talking about his physical embodiment or are we talking about his, his immortal spirit? Because he's, he's basically, he's been around forever.

[Meg Riley]

More or less his own physically in Fellowship.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, so I like, he's, he's a physical being here. So I think that's what we're considering because, yeah, his, his like immortal Maya's spirit maybe goes back to the beginning of time, but, but he's still quite.

[Meg Riley]

Old in his physical form.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh yeah, he's still. I mean he's been in Middle Earth for, for a couple thousand years at least. Right. So. So yes, so there's some mileage on him for sure. Like he's lost a step or two. But still, if he's harnessing his powers, there's almost no limit to what he could accomplish.

[Meg Riley]

I don't have an issue with Gandalf as a hitter necessarily. I do think that if you're trying to, if there is some concern about his potential physical prowess still, that maybe you want him to pitch, but then it's like, like. Meg, are you assuming he can't field well enough or run the bases. But he can, he has heat. But I think we know he does have heat. You know, I think we know that he's crafty. He's crafty. Yeah, he could be a crafty lefty. I think that Aragorn at shortstop is actually one of the weaker parts of this potential lineup because. Well, all of the, all of the Hobbit are Hobbit sized. And so I think having two Hobbit sized guys in the corners, particularly in right, I think you want to throw Aragorn out to right field so that he can you. So that he has the arm, you know, and then you can put one of the, the little guys at short. You know, Put one of the little guys. If Frodo can play second, then Mary or Pippin can play short. Fourth stop. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe Mary and Pep and maybe they're your, your double play combo.

[Meg Riley]

Maybe they're your double play combo.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, they play up the middle.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And they.

[Meg Riley]

Amazing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The back end of double place.

[Meg Riley]

See, now when you say it, I'm like, have I heard that before? I, I do worry about. I mean, maybe you have an all Hobbit infield and you just accept that range might be an issue, you know, and you, and you, and you go big in the outfield and put like Boromir and left or whatever.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay.

[Meg Riley]

And then put Sam. I feel like Sam should play first.

[Ben Lindbergh]

See, I was seeing Sam as a catcher just because I, I think Gimli.

[Meg Riley]

At catcher is, is in style.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That makes sense. Sure. Yeah. He, he has the build and he.

[Meg Riley]

Has a little bit more size than, than the Hobbits do. I mean, he's not from a stature.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Perspective, but just for sure, he's solidly built.

[Meg Riley]

So I think he could stand up to the wear and tear of the position.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Not that you need to block the plate the way that you once did and be a physical presence, but it's true.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. What. What era of baseball are the, Is the fellowship playing? I think that might be an important.

[Ben Lindbergh]

What age is it in Middle Earth? What era of baseball? These are all important questions. But I was thinking Sam as a catcher just because he does have very kind of. You know, he and Frodo have a very kind of. Of pitcher and catcher. And I'm not shipping them here. I'm just saying in terms of. No, but just Sam has that energy, that Very reassuring. Yeah, but he's constantly having mountain conferences with Frodo sort of to psych him up and pep talks and Think about Sam. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

You know, when think about Sam at first base is good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He'd be chatty over there.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. Chit chat and. Da, da. Yeah. Okay, I think I like that. I love Gimli at catcher. I do think you maybe want to just go a little bigger in the outfield. But then what do you. You know, if you. If we put this question in the context of, like, the two towers, well, then it's not fair because then you have way more humans to. To populate your team with. Right. You can be like, you can put. But, you know, any one of the Rohirrim in your team, you're gonna have all of these, like, big, statuesque folks.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, yeah, if we expand beyond the Fellowship, then there's just such a huge cast of characters and.

[Meg Riley]

But what if you can only, like, pick one of those people? Because you do need a. You need a pitcher, you know, and so, like, maybe. And we can't. Gollum is gonna. He's a clubhouse cancer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's true. He's always trying to kill just the best in that department either.

[Meg Riley]

No, he's not. But, you know, he. He. He comes through in the end. He has. He has a. He has a big clutch moment later.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's true. You want him in that high leverage moment. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, they do end up getting kidnapped, so maybe you don't. You know, does he really do. Does he really do what he needs to?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, no.

[Meg Riley]

That's so disrespectful to a guy who dies.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe an ENT on the mound. I could see just the. The downhill plane.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, my gosh.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Out there. Yeah, that or Tom Bombadil or just someone with some size or. And Gandalf has deception, too, because, you know, he can. He can play nice and then he can be scary and he can project and he can say, you shall not pass. Maybe he should be a catcher and tell people they can't pass and no one could score. That's a possibility too, but. Yeah, it's just tough. There are a lot of ways you could go with this, really, other than Legolas and center and Marion Pippin. Yep, Pippin and Mary up the middle.

[Meg Riley]

It would be funny, though, because they'd be constantly getting distracted. I think that they would drive well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That it'd be good. Oh, that's true. That's why maybe keeping them in the corners where they can't really talk to each other. That might be better.

[Meg Riley]

That might be better.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But they would be good for the infield banter, probably. They would keep up the chatter. Okay. Yeah, The Other positions. All right. I'm fine with Gimli at catcher and Sam at first and third. So we put Aragorn in right. Is that where you wanted him?

[Meg Riley]

And then I think we want him in. Right. I think you want. I think he would have a good arm.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And I think that. But, you know, it's not like there have never been short of stature outfielders. But I worry that, I mean, maybe. Maybe Mary or Pippin would surprise you. And they have a real bazooka. They do throw, like, stones at times in the whole thing. And that's useful. It doesn't end up really doing much. But I think you want. I think you want like a human arm in. In, right. I do, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, Frodo throws the ring into Mount Doom, I guess. Well, you need a decent arm over at third because we're sticking Frodo at third, it seems like, because we've just assigned, I guess. Yeah. I don't know if that feels right to me.

[Meg Riley]

But maybe before me or third born, you're at third. Oh, it's kind of lumbering. But he's like a warrior, you know. He's like a skilled warrior. Just because he's big doesn't mean he's, you know, he's sort of like Luke Rayleigh, really. I imagine Boromir and Luke Rayleigh would run the bases the same way. Like. Like a literal refrigerator running, you know. But he's like, you know, he's fit. He's. He's ready to. He takes on. He takes on a bunch of orcs before they finally get him, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I feel like I disrespected Boromir's memory. Terrible. Feel bad. Feel bad about it. Not badly. I feel fine, but I feel bad. You know what I mean?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. If we could get a win on this team, I think that would be nice, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, right. This is what I'm saying. Like, can we expand?

[Ben Lindbergh]

We could expand. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

The Fellowship, but. But I think that you would need a roster rule in this version of baseball that you have to carry all four hobbits.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, probably so.

[Meg Riley]

And because otherwise you're just like, gonna. You're gonna bring in, you know, you're gonna bring in a bunch of folks from Rohan and, like, you're. You're Gonn. Gondor calls for aid. Here we are. Do you think that, you know, if you had a team from Gondor and a team from Rohan, which team would win, you know, if they were facing each other in the. In the Middle Earth world? Series.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. That would be a good matchup, I guess. Just.

[Meg Riley]

You can't play on horses, though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

They're allies, though. But.

[Meg Riley]

I know, but it's tense.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's tense. Yeah. It's a little fractious. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I. I was going to ask about manager, but. But probably Eland is. Is the skipper on this team. I guess he's kind of putting this fellowship together. If Gandalf isn't, you know, he's kind of in it. So other than that, I don't know. You have Wormtongue out there like Tony Larussa or something. Just like whispering in someone's ear. I don't know. So maybe Wormtongue could be the bench coach and he could just prey on whomever the manager is. But.

[Meg Riley]

Oh no.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Then there's like, maybe Elrond's. The GM is gonna. It's just a lot to consider here, really. If we start expanding beyond the field, which is maybe why it's good to contain it to the nine positions. That's challenging enough. Clearly.

[Meg Riley]

Can the Balrog play? Is he too big? You know, can you. And then like, you'd get a misplay and, you know. And Gandalf will go full of a.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Size matters not. You already established earlier in this episode. So you can't ban the Balrog for being too big, I don't think. Right.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. No, I'm saying like the Balrog's just is just. That's just how tall the b.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe for setting stuff on fire, which could be dangerous.

[Meg Riley]

They would not be allowed to set anyone on fire and they wouldn't be allowed to eat anyone. I don't know if the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You're really just. These are core aspects of the Balrog's identity here. You can't. I mean, if you. You're depriving the bow rock of fire and eating people. What are. What are you leaving the bow rock?

[Meg Riley]

Maybe it's not the game they have that the bow has that great size.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Other pursuits. Yeah, they could have a Balog only league. Maybe there aren't that many bows anymore.

[Meg Riley]

I think there are enough bags. You have to let the bow Rog play. But the bow Rog. You can't let the bow Rog let other light other players on fire or use the. Really. It's the whip. You got to keep the whip out of the. It is that big old whip.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Our landscapers are here. So it's about to be really loud.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So maybe. Well, that's good because I'm about to mostly monologue a stat blast for you so we can end with that. But everyone please write in if you have burning questions. We just established burning is not allowed, but pressing questions or suggestions about the Lord of the Rings roster, let us know how you would lay it out. Okay? Step last song please.

[Meg Riley]

And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Here's today be stopl. Okay, so I idly mused. Well, it turned out not to be idle musing, I suppose, because I I made something of it. But last week when we were talking about the Mets kind of completing their extreme makeover, their off season remodel, and putting some of the finishing touches on the roster, I was wondering aloud whether they were historically anomalous when it came to being a pretty good team, being a decent team. Even though their season ended ignominiously last year. They were a winning team. They had a better than.500 record. And so I wondered what kind of precedence there might be for a team coming off of a winning record to turn over its roster to the extent that the Mets have, and also to seemingly be in a position to contend again and be a winning team again and maybe be better than they were last year. Because I figured it would be tough to do all of those things. And so I did some stat Blasting about this. Earlier in the off season I did a Stat Blast with the assistance of Michael Mountain and we talked about the Mets exodus. This was before the McNeil trade, but we shared some information about how rare it is for a team to lose a lot of long tenured players in a single off season. But this time I called upon another member of the fellowship of Stat Blast correspondence, in this case frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson, who actually has been off for a bit. He has been on a bit of a Stat Blast sabbatical, a statbaticle, so I'm happy to have him back in Blast. He is back to blasting and up to his old excellent tricks here. And he supplied me with some information which I have also turned into a piece [e-mail] so there is a written version of this and links to various spreadsheets and data sources. As always. But here's what I have learned. Slash Confirmed. First of all, I guess the big takeaway is turnover. Just in the abstract, in isolation, all else being equal. Turning over your roster is not good. That tends to be bad. It tends to bode ill for you. Or it just tends to be associated with bad teams and that it makes all the sense in the world, right? Because if you've got a great team already, then you don't have to turn over very much of your roster. You can just bring it back and be pretty confident that you will be good again. That was sort of what prompted my musing in the first place, because it seemed like the Mets weren't really in that situation where they were bad and thus they needed to drastically reconstruct themselves. But if you graph this and chart it as I did in the piece, it is just a very linear sort of trend. If you graph roster turnover rate by your winning percentage or do it the other way around, a very clear trend and pattern here that the lower your winning percentage, the higher your roster turnover rate tends to be. Which again is probably not really blowing anyone's mind here or breaking any news, because, yeah, bad teams, they have more incentive to do more to get good again. If you're bad, then you don't want to just run it back with your bad team. You want to change things up. And in that case, change could be good, maybe. And if you're good, then why mess with success? So teams with losing records in year one have collectively had roster turnover rates of about 32%, whereas teams with winning records in year one have collective turnover rates of about 22%. Now, as I have also written and documented previously, you can take don't mess with success too far. You can become complacent. And there does appear to be a trend where World Series winners sometimes are overly fixated on just bringing back their World Series winning team. And sometimes that costs them. And at least the last time I looked at this, World Series winners tend to do worse in the year after the World Series than the World Series losers do, which I, and also Sam Miller in his own work, have attributed to a little resting on the laurels by the World Series winners or just a commitment to keeping the gang together as opposed to prioritizing upgrades or maybe just feeling like you can sort of sit on your hands because, hey, you just went all the way, so why wouldn't we just try to do that again? But sometimes that can come back to bite you. On the whole, though, the worse the team is in year one, the higher its turnover rate in year two. And the other way, if you look at year one winning percentage by roster turnover rate. So I broke it down into different buckets of turnover rate. If you know, know less than 10% of your roster is turned over if 10 to 19, if 40 to 49, if 60% plus is turned over. There's a. A clear change in your winning percentage too, where the lower the turnover rate, the higher the winning percentage. It is true that the higher a team's turnover rate, the better its winning percentage tends to be in year two compared to year one. So, for example, teams with turnover rates above 60% tend to improve the next season by about 20 points of winning percentage, whereas team with Turnover rates below 10% tend to decline by about the same amount. But that's just regression to the mean at work, because those high turnover teams tend to be terrible in the first year. And you take any group of terrible teams, they're more likely to be a little less terrible the next year. You take any group of great teams, they're likely to be a little less great the next year. Okay, so this is not really rocket science. And I should note that Ryan developed. That's a kind of clever method, I think, for calculating turnover rate, because there are all sorts of ways that you could calculate that, and I've done it differently in the past. But the way that he did it was to look at the total playing time across both seasons, just consecutive seasons, by the same team, and look at the plate appearances and the batters faced, and then just look essentially at how much of the playing time in those two seasons is produced by players who were present in both seasons. So that's the way that he went about it. As he described, instead of measuring what percentage of plate appearances batters face in season two were players from season one or vice versa, he did a dual season waiting. So of all playing time opportunities across both seasons, what share came from players who were present in both? And as Ryan wrote, this is symmetric and automatically penalizes, penalizes both losing big contributors from year one and adding big contributors in year two, and also considers players changing roles. Okay, so we've established the basics here, but what I wanted to know is if you do hold winning percentage constant and you just account for that, then in isolation on its own, is turnover still bad? If you can sort of disassociate it from the correlations with how you did before the turnover, does it still portend doom for you? And it turns out that even if you do adjust for all of that, it's still actually not a good sign. So I grouped all the teams into buckets of winning percentage, like 25 point spans, basically 300 to 325, 325 to 350, all the way up to 625 to 650. And within each of Those groups. I then compared the higher turnover half of the teams that qualified for that group to the lower turnover half of teams. So for instance, limit the sample to teams with winning percentages between.300 and325 in year one and then sort those teams by their turnover rate and compare the least stable half of those teams to the most stable half of those teams. And the then do that for every one of these winning percentage groups and in every category, every bucket. The high turnover team tends to do worse in year two than the low turnover team relative to their records in year one. So essentially, if all you know is a team's record in year one and its turnover rate and you don't really know anything else, you don't have projections or anything else, but if the, the records are equivalent between two teams, but one has a higher turnover rate than the other, then that's actually bad, then that suggests that that team will do worse relative to its performance in year one than the team that is coming off the same sort of season but had a lower turnover rate. So even if you account for that all else being equal turnover, it's still bad, I guess. And you know, again, it's because teams, they're skilled self evaluators, the teams that know they don't need reinforcements are less likely to go get them. Plus, team building tends to be a pretty painstaking process. It's just, even if you set out to do it, it's difficult to dramatically reconfigure a roster in a hurry over the course of a single off season and have those plans pay off and, and it all just, just comes together as it maybe seems to have for the Mets. So that's what I've learned. Turnover, not good. Not a good sign. However, I also developed lists of the highest turnover teams, the lowest turnover teams, et cetera. So the highest turnover team, to probably no one's surprise, it's the Cleveland spiders. The infamous 1898-1899 Cleveland spiders where basically the entire roster got, got transferred to another team that had the same owner and it was just an entirely different team. And as Ryan calculates it, that was an 89.6% turnover rate. So that's as high as it gets. The next highest, it's the 1917-18 Philadelphia Athletics, 82.6%. It's Connie Mack teams. That's like post initial Philadelphia A's fire sale. Then, then there's some like 19th century teams, the 1898-9 Cardinals, the 1905-6 Boston Braves, the 2014-15. Atlanta Braves 70% turnover rate 1945-6 Red Sox. You do get a bunch of like 1945, end of World War II. Of course, you know, they're often sort of extenuating circumstances with the extremes. And also you do see say the 1970s to 6 to 77A is another Charlie Finley famous infamous fire sale. So that's the high range basically almost 90% for the spiders, that's the extreme. But more of the leaders are more in the 70% or so. That's kind of the more conceivable scenario. The lowest turnover teams are in the low single digits. So 1.7% turnover. The White Sox 1904 to 1905, essentially the same team. The Orioles 1969 to 71.8%, the Pirates 2.3%, 71 to 72. So these are all ancient history teams. Not ancient. Some of those are barely divisional era, but a lot of early, early 20th century. And nothing really more recent than, I don't know, I guess the top 10 includes 1980-81 Reds at 4.7%. That was a strike shortened season in there. So this doesn't really happen anymore that teams are that stable. And that's because there is also an extenuating circumstance for the Mets here there's an era effect because there is more roster turnover these days than there used to be. And this is another thing I graphed. And again, probably something that won't shock you really, and there's been some previous research that has shown this, but the roster turnover rate rate from year to year on a team level by decade has ticked up significantly in the 21st century. So if you graph it, in the 20th century, there's a little spike. In the 1910s there was the Federal League, you had people jumping among leagues in the 40s, of course you had World War II, there was a spike. But generally up until like the late 80s, it was in the low 20% turnover mean or median. And now it has really jumped up. So it wasn't, you know, the second they flipped the switch on free agency, it took about a decade for, for that to kind of the full effects to be felt. But as of the 90s, the roster turnover rate jumped up over 30%. And in this decade, this half decade that we have seen so far, it's up to about 35%, almost 35%, which would be a new high. And maybe part of that is pandemic and lockout and who knows what else. But still it's a long term trend. So the Mets turnover seems a little less anomalous given that it's in this era where we have become accustomed to two more roster turnover. But even by the standards of today, it's still a ton of turnover for them. Now here's kind of the the money maker of of tables, the highest turnover teams with winning records in year one. So that's the Mets are maybe aspiring to join this group because they are coming off of a winning record. And well, it's still the Cleveland Spiders because they did have a winning record in 1898 before that team got destroyed. And then it's the 76A's before Charlie Finley broke it up. And you can see the whole tables and spreadsheets and it's all linked. There was actually the 2001 Mets are on this list too and I mentioned them early in the article because that's kind of a negative precedent because 2000 they made the World Series. 2001 they missed the playoffs. And then 2002 they were very busy and Steve Phillips tried to get them back there by bringing in Roberto Al Mar and move on and Jeremy Bernitz and Roger Sedano and a whole bunch of pitchers and it just did not work. They finished last in the NL east and that's sort of the precedent for winning the winter, not necessarily equating to winning. But here's the the takeaway. Only 19 teams with a winning record in year one have turned over at least half of their rosters at least a 50% or more than a 50% turnover rate. Of those 19. So it's already a small group. Only two, the 2003-4 Yankees and the 2023-24 Padres improved their winning percentages the following year. And even that there's kind of a caveat because the the 2003-2004 Yankees. That's an interesting one. I mentioned this in the earlier stack last this off season with Michael Mountain and the Exoduses. But they lost arguably the most single season WAR of any team ever. And yet they won the same number of games the next year. So they lost a ton of war from 2003 and then in 2000, 2004 they had also 101 wins didn't phase them whatsoever. And that was the era when, you know, the Onion had headlines about the Yankees signing every player and they were vastly outspending everyone, which helps and it's helping the Mets these days too. They only qualified cause baseball reference counts a tie for the 2003 Yankees because there was this weird suspended game that was official and it was five innings and then they replayed it another time. But but it it kind of counts in baseball references figures. Anyway, the 2023-24 Padres are a good recent example of doing this, and in their case, of course, they were extremely unlucky in 2023 and we were all wondering why aren't they better? And they have the underlying numbers of a better team and then finally that did show up in 2024. So it has happened, but it is very, very rare. Now, one minor drawback to this method that Ryan concocted is that we can't actually tell what the Mets turnover rate is until they play this season, and we see how the playing time shakes out and everything. But based on their projected playing time via the fan graph step charts, I calculated their projected turnover rate and that was 43.2%, which is significantly lower than turning over half your roster. But I would imagine that the final figure is likely to be higher than that because as great as Jason Martinez and co are at prognosticating playing time, they can't anticipate future acquisitions and injuries and that's going to lead to extra and anticipated turnover. So I would guess that the Mets turnover rate will end up higher than that. But even if they have a 43.2% turnover rate, of the 1361 qualifying teams with winning records in year one one, only 57 of them, 4.2%, had a turnover rate that high, and of those 57, only 13. So 22.8% of that tiny sample had a higher winning percentage in year two. So it's a tall order, is what I'm saying, that it is actually pretty darn uncommon, as I was musing out loud on that episode, for a team to turn over a lot of its roster coming off of a a superficially successful season. You certainly wouldn't call the Mets 2025 successful. But it looked good for a while until those last couple months, until the final standings even even the last day of the season, you know, they were in playoff position except for that pesky tiebreaker. So yeah, it's rare for a team in that position coming off that kind of season to decide to do an overhaul like the Mets have done and for it to work well enough that they are good again and actually improve their record, which the Mets are certainly setting out to do here. Because if they don't improve their record from last year, then this will be a big failure, right? And, and they will almost certainly miss the playoffs again. So they need to be better and make the playoffs. And historically speaking, going by, I don't know, a century and a quarter or so of hot stove history, there's not a ton of precedent for a team doing what they're doing. And as I noted on that episode, the. The Yankees just across town, quite a contrast. Cause their projected turnover rate is less than half of the Mets, 17.1%. And yet the funny thing is that their projected team more totals are almost identical. They're separated by less than one win above replacement. And I looked up what the projected team WAR totals were one year ago. So just last January. And both the Mets and the Yankees of this year, their projected totals currently are within a win of where they were last year. So the Yankees are basically bringing back last year's roster. Maybe that makes some sense. But the Mets, they have done this whole dance and they have changed everything. And yet the projected WAR total is almost identical to what it was one year ago, which.

[Meg Riley]

How about that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, could be an ominous sign, I guess, given the way that that last season ended. But it started strong, so they'd sign up for a regular season that starts like last year's did, as long as it ends differently from that one. So that's what we learned. They are indeed unusual. And also typically high roster turnover is a bad sign. So the Mets will hope that it is not in their case. And you know, I don't think it will be in their case. I'm a believer. I, I think the Mets are pretty good.

[Meg Riley]

Sure. But did they add the equivalent of Lego Lawson center field?

[Ben Lindbergh]

They didn't. And you know, this is not factoring in that they did sign Craig Kimbrell to a minor league deal. And given his. I feel like I have to adjust down any kind of projection now based on the Kimbrell factor, because if, if he gets into any games, I'm coming around on.

[Meg Riley]

So, like, I, I mean, I don't think it'll go well if he gets into any games, but that guy must just really love baseball, man, you know? Yeah, he looks pretty cooked. He looks pretty cooked. But he's just like, I'm gonna try it. You know, I want to be out there with the boys.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm all for, for players trying to play as long as they can. Yeah, I am not necessarily all for a team that has competitive aspirations enabling his desire to play.

[Meg Riley]

Deal, whatever.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, that's how it starts, Meg. That's how it starts. And then it becomes a big league deal. It's just a small step for that man to go from minor league Deal.

[Meg Riley]

To big league deal accumulates by a magnitude.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It happens. Yeah, but they underperformed their base runs record by nine wins last season, which was more than any other team. And so I think they were a bit better than their record reflected. And then they spent a lot of money and they got a bunch of good players without really walking the team into a whole lot of additional long term commitments. Other Ben just blogged about how he likes the Mets offseason and likes their roster. So all of this historical precedent stuff we're looking in the abstract and in the aggregate, but in this case we're Talking about the 2026 Mets, a specific team whose roster we know. So yeah, there's not a ton of precedent, but that is not necessarily determinative. It does not not doom them because we know more about them than just that and we know that they have a bunch of good baseball players. We also know that they are the Mets and that some people think they are cursed forever as a franchise. So factor that in as you will. Okay, it occurs to me now that in addition to doing the defensive alignment for the Lord of the Rings Fellowship roster, we could have done a batting order too. All I know is that you probably wouldn't want Boromir toward the top of the lineup, cuz as he famously said, one does not simply walk Couple quick notes from the weatherheads out there. Last time we talked about some of Bryce Harper's TikTok reposts, including one that seemed to be along the lines of some kind of chemtrails conspiracy, and also made what seemed like a dubious observation that it always snows on the weekends. Again, I guess furthering the idea that the weather was somehow engineered. Two things about that one. In the course of that conversation we kind of conflated the concepts of of chemtrails and cloud seeding, and they're not the same. Cloud seeding is an actual practice. Its efficacy is still somewhat in debate, but it has been done for quite a while in various places with at least some support for the idea that you can increase precipitation that way doesn't seem to be a firm consensus on the subject. The other thing is that there is some evidence that precipitation actually does increase on the weekends. This is not conclusive either, but some studies have shown that it's true, that it might be measurable anyway. And the idea is that air pollution builds up during during the work week because you got people commuting people around the roads, there's industrial activity, and then that aerosol pollution, the particles peak toward the end of the week and then drop quickly over the weekend because people aren't going to work. And then maybe that can have some effect on the clouds and influence the likelihood of precipitation. So there's at least something to that notion, which we poo pooed on the pod. It's almost as if human activity might have some impact on the climate. Who knew you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners Charlie Grueller, Evan Hu, Robin, Jessica Costa, Carrie Pucko, or possibly Puko and Tim Pierinboom. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, one of which we'll have coming up soon because we're coming up on the end of episode month playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad free fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the [e-mail] 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 [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted 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. Thanks to all of you for listening. We're with you. You have our sword and you have our bow. And our ass. And also our mics. Of course we need those for you to hear us. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. I want to know about baseball. I want to know about every single team. I want to know about stating up on our the analytics I want to know about baseball presented by Patreon supporters.