Effectively Wild Episode 2459: Pump the ABS Brakes

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2459: Pump the ABS Brakes

Date: March 31, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Theme: Early-season baseball stats, the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system’s first regular season action, baseball name delights, and how to responsibly interpret and enjoy the game's new storylines and small samples.

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Episode Overview

Ben and Meg dive into the beginning of the 2026 MLB season, using Mike Trout's small-sample resurgence as a jumping-off point to discuss the perennial temptation to over-interpret early numbers. The main theme centers around the now-active ABS challenge system—how it played out, public reaction, and the sociological underpinnings—and what its introduction signals for the game and for the ongoing push-pull between human judgment and machine intervention in sports.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mike Trout, Small Samples, and Baseball's Early-Season Mirage

• [00:39–06:54] Trout Atop the WAR Leaderboard and What It Means
  • Recapping the old “stats are real when Trout is on top” podcast bit: Trout is leading—does that mean stats are finally real, or is it a sign we're still in the land of small sample size nonsense? (Ben)
  • Noting Trout's early positive trends: Walk rate > K rate, possibly revived, but also just 20 plate appearances. (Meg)
  • Quote [03:17, Meg]: “A new man, you know, a man revitalized, one who has found the fountain of youth and his power stroke... One of two things will happen... he will revert to his recent form... or he won’t.”
  • Caution about the meaninglessness of April stats due to sample size—enjoy what’s fun and don’t panic about what’s not.
  • Wistful hope that Trout might settle into a “just good” year (4 WAR), not only superhuman or hurt. (Ben)

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2. Navigating Early Data & Analysis Temptations

• [07:26–09:57] On How Writers (and Everyone) Overreact in April
  • Ben and Meg discuss resisting the urge to derive conclusions about teams, players, and new rules based on the opening handful of games.
  • “Can we just take April off as a month?” Meg jokes, but since FanGraphs has a business to run, the best they can do is caution and caveat constantly.
  • Quote [08:29, Meg]: “You just have to make a very conscious decision about how you’re going to let the early going wash over you because very little of this will mean anything... You can be driven insane by things that are outside your control, or you can just let it wash over you and know it won’t matter that much and just enjoy small sample theater...”

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3. The ABS Challenge System: Debut and Implications

• [09:57–60:28] Main Deep Dive: Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) System Goes Live
  • Ben recaps the viral national response to ABS’s debut (“It went mainstream”—Slate, etc.).
  • Comparison to other rapid, soon-forgotten baseball novelties, like the “torpedo bat.”
  • The early evidence reflects what was observed in minors/Fall League, but the novelty has casual fans and mainstream media newly invested.
  • Meg points out the challenge system is bringing to light how fine the margins are for many ball-strike distinctions, subtly reinforcing how difficult umpiring actually is.
  • Cautions not to rush to judge “best” or “worst” at challenges:
    Quote [10:15, Meg]: “What does best mean? By what measure? ... It can't just be your success rate at challenging. It can't just be that. Because some ... are not all the same.”
  • Ben highlights data: 54% overall overturn rate on challenges, with catchers (64%) and pitchers (40%) much different—pleads for breaking out the numbers, not just "fielders."
  • Conversation around redundancy of “ABS System” (Automated Ball-Strike (System)), style—conclude it’s not truly redundant.

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ABS Challenge System Sociological Angle

• [20:55–24:28]
  • Joy for fans seeing umps corrected publicly—“comeuppance”—but also an uncomfortable, gladiatorial aspect when umpires are shamed on stadium screens.
  • The CB Bucknor “two overturned strikeouts in a row” incident as the symbolic moment, and its awkwardness.
  • Quote [31:00, Ben]: “It is like a gladiator arena... everyone’s watching... just a tremendous ovation because your mistake got highlighted and corrected... I felt a little bit bad. Like, I was entertained and then kind of felt ‘aw’... that’s a tough day at the office.”
  • Meg: Balance between technological intervention and respecting genuine human expertise/judgment—most up-close “bad umpiring” is actually an extremely tough job.

Fan & Analyst Reactions and Slope Toward Full Automation

• [51:11–54:31]
  • The issue of running out of challenges is already needling fans (“If you can fix the error, why not always fix it?”).
  • Suggestion of ninth-inning extra challenges, or full ABS at game’s end, as slippery slope steps toward total automation.
  • Ongoing dilemma: is it better to draw a firm, if slightly artificial, line—call it fixed—or introduce “buffer zones” for too-close-to-call pitches (and risk opening the door to challenge overload)?

Subplots and Quirks

• Body language vs. action: players strutting or bat-flipping in protest, but then not issuing a challenge—revealing false bravado, or perhaps hesitancy in using up challenges.

  • [74:09–76:38]

• Special cases: The catcher's dilemma on steal attempts (should pitches during stolen base tries be auto-reviewed?), probably infeasible for reasons of game flow and complexity.

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4. Names That Delight: Dub Gleed and Baseball’s Star Wars Moniker Competition

• [11:20–18:04]
  • Ben introduces “Dub Gleed” as a newly anointed “Star Wars name” among active players, though he laments that “Dub” is a nickname, not official.
  • Joy in the wildness of baseball names, though with a preference for honest-to-birth-certificate weirdness.
  • Meg offers a pathway to love Dub Gleed regardless, speculating about the generational and familial passing down of nicknames.

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5. Quick-Hit Listener Questions

• [60:28–69:43]
  • When to call a strike “called strike” if it’s issued by the challenge system? Consensus: "No, not a called strike three – you struck out looking, but not on a called strike."
  • Statistical questions: Will we see games with zero ABS challenges? Maybe 1.5% of games.
  • Early-season quirks: Teams vary in aggressiveness with challenges. Rockies were slow to adopt; some teams still more timid.

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6. Other Season Observations / Odds & Ends

• Murakami’s MLB start: Three homers in his first three games, but asterisked small sample; Ben notes the concern about handling “hard” MLB fastballs still stands, but plenty of pitchers throw 92mph, so one can be productive without conquering elite velocity.

• Unprecedented prospect extension: Brewers' Cooper Pratt close to an 8-year, $51M extension before MLB debut, unusual for Boris clients—possibly signaling a new phase in prospect contract dynamics.

• Broadcast praise for Jason Benetti: Meg lauds his command, blending advanced stats and human stories, his skill lifting national broadcasts.

  • Quote [91:28, Meg]: “He’s really talented... exactly in my wheelhouse for what I want out of a broadcast. Really excited to spend more time with him.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On challenging the ABS narrative:
  “[On ABS]...It’s a very compelling encounter between populism and the machine.” [45:43, read by Ben from a popular tweet]

• On embracing or resisting sample size madness:
  “You just have to make a very conscious decision about how you’re going to let the early going wash over you because very little of this will mean anything. Right?” [08:29, Meg]

• On the crowd’s schadenfreude in the CB Bucknor game:
  “It is like a gladiator arena… everyone’s watching… just a tremendous ovation because your mistake got highlighted and corrected.” [31:00, Ben]

• On challenge system’s “slippery slope”:
  “Every move you make like this is… further down the slippery slope. …If it’s really important, then don’t we want that in place all the time?” [58:03, Ben]

• On star prospects struggling with ‘hard’ MLB heat, despite initial power:
  “He hasn’t really answered the critique, which is that he can’t really hit hard fastballs because… the home runs were all on low-90s stuff and he has also struck out four times.” [82:39, Ben]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:39–06:54] — Mike Trout, early WAR leaderboard fun, and small-sample foibles
• [07:26–09:57] — Early-season written-overreactions; how to emotionally approach April
• [09:57–24:28, 26:42–60:28+] — The ABS system’s rollout, data breakdown, fan reactions, sociological reflection
• [31:00] — CB Bucknor’s rough day in the challenge system limelight
• [45:43] — Machine vs. human: the symbolic societal battle with the challenge system
• [60:28–69:43] — ABS terminology questions, challenge stats, early-adopter teams
• [81:21–84:47] — Murakami’s start and the nature of early scouting report narratives
• [86:05–89:39] — Brewers prospect Cooper Pratt’s surprise pre-MLB extension
• [91:28–93:20] — Broadcast notes: Jason Benetti praise

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The ABS Challenge System is a hit for now, mainly as an entertainment spectacle—especially when umps get publicly corrected—but skepticism grows around its limits and it appears inevitable we may soon see a transition to full automation as public patience wanes for any unfixable error.
• April stats are fun but almost always misleading; watch, enjoy, but don’t let them dictate confident analysis.
• The language and etiquette of the challenge system are still developing, with the season’s opening week revealing new kinds of player bravado, managerial protest, and broadcasting quirks.
• Baseball’s parade of unusual names continues to delight, and there’s a genuine philosophy of celebrating the weirdness and playfulness of the sport and its personalities, even as tech and data steadily encroach.
• Above all: “Chill.” Enjoy the small sample theater—don’t get swept away by newness or novelty, and remember to let the data and stories develop.

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For full links and stats referenced, see the episode page on FanGraphs or in your podcast notes.

Transcript

[Meg Rowley]

Have a catch in the slog with me. In a virtual rise from small sample size, these fun facts must lie. It's effectively wild.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A strange, brooding effectively wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 2459 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangirls. Graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of fan graphs. Hello, Meg.

[Meg Rowley]

Hello.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It was a recurring bit for the first several years of this podcast history that stats stabilized became real when Mike Trout was atop the WAR leaderboard.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so I find myself wondering what to do now, because as of Saturday through Saturday, Mike Trout was atop the WAR leaderboard at fangraphs. And even now, he is tied. Unless you export. And if you export and you go out to several decimal places. Yes, then, of course, Joey Weimer, as everyone expected, is leading the major leagues in WAR. He's ahead of Mike Trout by 0.006174 WAR, which is certainly significant. So I guess we could say Trout is leading the American League in WAR at the mom. At least he was leading the majors in WAR very quickly. What are we to make of this? Are we to bring back our bit about, well, stats are real because Mike Trout is top the leaderboard, or in these latter days of Trout's career, is Trout being atop the leaderboard? And this is sort of a sad thought itself, evidence of the fact that stats are not real yet, that we've kind of come full circle and now it's small sample because Trout is leading the majors in war.

[Meg Rowley]

Do you mean to tell me that you don't think he's gonna have a 500 BABIP the rest of the way?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't. I mean, maybe he doesn't need the luck. Maybe his performance will improve. He's been great, he's looked good. Yeah, I do believe somewhat in the physical skills, just with the typical caveat. If he stays healthy, if healthy. And I'm just. I'm not gonna get invested, I'm not gonna believe, because it will only hurt me.

[Meg Rowley]

I hesitate to have us talk about it even. You know, like, I worry that we will, like, shine a light on his performance that the. The baseball gods have heretofore missed. And they'll go, oh, oh, wait, sorry, we meant to. Sorry, we meant to tweak a thing or have something pop or even just have him revert to the shape of his production last year. I mean, obviously, this is guys, friends, comrades. This is for games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It just warmed my heart to see him up there, but sure, well, and

[Meg Rowley]

I guess the thing that I'd say is if you wanted to draw a hopeful signal out of this, which is really maybe just hopeful noise because again, it's only 20 played appearances. But you know, one of the things that was so interesting about Trout last year was like how three true outcome oriented he became and, and how heavy that had shifted to one of the bad outcomes, right? Like he struck out 32% of the time and his numbers are like kind of flipped this year where he's walking 35% of the time, only striking out 15%. A new man, you know, a man revitalized, one who has found the fountain of youth and his power stroke. I think we should just enjoy it as long as it persists. Because one of two things will happen and one of these is perhaps much likelier than the other. He will revert to his recent form. Whether that is a guy who strikes out more than you, like a guy who's hurt more than you'd want, or he won't. And then a couple weeks from now we'll go, well, Michael. Well, Michael, I don't know what Mike Trout's middle name is, but Michael, what are you up to, buddy? What's going on over there? And then I will have to say to the fan graph staff, hey, somebody needs to write about Mike Trout. And then we'll be disappointed to learn that somebody else had done it and maybe had done it a little prematurely. Michael Nelson. That's right, man.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Michael Nelson. Trout. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

So he's just been an old man his whole life. You know, that's the thing to know about Mike Trout. Nelson. How many Nelson's do you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Do you know the kid? Kid?

[Meg Rowley]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

His famous nickname?

[Meg Rowley]

No. Terrible. So bad. So bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You hate when I say that.

[Meg Rowley]

I do. I. There's something about it that really greats. It's. It's real nails on the chalkboard. And I'm willing to accept that this is a Meg problem and not in anyone else problem. I don't want to make you feel bad, Ben. You know, some of my bits probably great on others too, but that one.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, well, there is a third outcome that you didn't list, which is that he continues to play well until his body breaks down in some way, which is maybe most likely of all. And that's why I'm hesitating to.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't care for that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, neither do I. I don't care for that.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hope to avoid that. But we haven't and he hasn't in several years. So yeah, let's just enjoy it for old time's sake. Mike Trout a top WAR leaderboards.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Long may he reign. And even if he doesn't end up toward the top of WAR leaderboards, I think he could have a bounce back season. I think he could have a good productive year. Just better than kind of drifting off into irrelevance and late career. Ken Griffey Jr. I think he could have some sort of not a peak Trout season, but he hasn't really had just a, a good year really.

[Meg Rowley]

He's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's kind of had great years and years where available.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And years where he played really well but wasn't available that much. And then last year he was kind of average maybe. So he hasn't had just like a good. Here. He hasn't had a year where he's worth like four WAR or something. It's just kind of like six or two or three, you know, like. So maybe something in the middle there. I would certainly settle for that at this stage. But let's just hope his health holds up obviously. And, and he's no Joey Weimer, we all know that. But yeah, former Marlin has not. My God, yet made an out on the young season as we speak. So that's impressive. It's only.

[Meg Rowley]

That is impressive.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's not very many plate appearances. It' fewer than Trout. Nonetheless, man is leading the majors in war and that's no small feat even after four games.

[Meg Rowley]

This is the time of year where you have to make a very. And I say this about myself and I invite everyone to join me. You just have to make a very conscious decision about how you're going to let the, the early going wash over you because very little of this will end up meaning anything. Right. Or it might mean something very different than we think. Like I had a minor meltdown earlier today that thankfully I mostly kept a G chat where I, you know, I understand and look, we're gonna, we're gonna have a piece about the challenge system. Okay. We're gonna have a challenge system piece. Sometimes the discourse demands its answer. But there, there were a bunch of pieces this morning, Ben, about the challenge system, what it means. I'm like, you don't know. You don't know what it means yet. You don't know what it means. It is not that many games. It is very few games at all. It is so few games. And on a, on a per player, per umpire basis, now you might say, hey, Meg, sure looks like CB Buckner had a bad day. And to that I say you needed the challenge system to learn that CB Buckner's a bad home plate umpire. Are you an adult or are you a child? Be a grown up. Be a grown up. There are all of these pronouncements about what it means. And I'm. I'm. I was undone by it, Ben. I felt insane. I felt like. I was like, do we not. Do we not care about sample size? My sample size? It's very simple.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. You know, please. Song courtesy of Ted Berg. Yeah, well, we're going to talk about the challenge system, too. But there's. There's a way. There's a responsible way to do a responsible way.

[Meg Rowley]

But then I had to. I had to make a decision, Ben. I was like, you can. You can be driven insane by things that are outside of your control, or you can just, like, let it wash over you and know that it ultimately probably won't matter that much and just enjoy the small sample theater or be heartened. That small sample theater you don't like doesn't mean anything. You know, you. These are our choices. Because if I had my druthers, if I won the lottery tomorrow of how I'm constructing a scenario where I have won the lottery and then immediately get back to work that doesn't require therapy at all. It's fine. I would say to the good people of fangraphs, including David Appleman. So, hey, what if, you know, if we don't have to worry about money, can we just take April off as a month? Because it would be better to come back a month from now with more data and. And then do our little work, you know, our little pronouncements. But we can't do that. We got a business to run. We have to run some biz. We have to do biz. So we just have to. We have to caveat where we can. We have to enjoy the little small sample blips where they're fun, dismiss them where they suck, and then a month from now, look up and be like, I think I can say more about stuff with at least a little more confidence than I could before.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So that's another leaderboard. Mike Trout is sitting atop the challenge leaderboard. He has issued the most challenges of any better four, and he has been successful three times.

[Meg Rowley]

Four.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Everyone's like, who's the best guy? I'm like, you don't know the answer to that question. You're not going to know. You're not going to know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

What is. And what does best mean? Right? This is so. And here's the other choice we can. We can decide to make. And I love how I'm saying we as if other people are as touched in the specific way that I am. We have an opportunity, an exciting opportunity to do some term defining. Right. Best. Best how? Best? By what measure? What does best mean? Because as we've discussed, it can't just be your success rate at challenging. It can't just be that. Because some of the challenges. I just went to a really interesting register that I don't tend to go to very often. No, they're not all the same.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We could say he's the most prolific thus far. He has the most challenges. And that's why the baseball savant leaderboard has various ways to break this down, expected challenges, and tries to account for these things. But it's true. Obviously, challenging the most is not necessarily good. Challenging the most accurately is not necessarily good either. It kind of depends.

[Meg Rowley]

Challenging the least is not necessarily good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sure. Yeah. So it's highly dependent on a lot of factors which we can factor in. But it's just too soon, really, to break this down on an individual basis. But we will have more to say on that subject in a second. So Joey Weimer, former Marlin excelling for the Nationals. Another now former Marlin who made some news this weekend is Dub Gleed. Dub Gleed, who the Marlins traded to the Blue Jays. He's a minor league third baseman. Dub Glebe Gleed. Not Glebe Gleed.

[Meg Rowley]

Glee.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gleeb might be actually even a little bit better, but I'll settle for Gleed. But this immediately, I think, was dubbed, no pun intended, seriously. But I did it anyway. I actually didn't, but if I had thought of it, I probably would have. But it was immediately anointed the Star wars name, at least among active players, maybe all time in major league history. Here's the thing, though. Now, this is a delightful name, Dub Gleed. And it is extremely Star Warsy. But it is a nickname and that doesn't mean that we can't be delighted by it.

[Meg Rowley]

But Doug is a nickname or his last name.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Dub. Dub D U B. Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

Dub.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. His name is William and his nickname is Dub. I assume the Dub is for the W in William.

[Meg Rowley]

William.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So his name is William Stanton Gleed. And he goes by Dub Gleed. And that's great. Obviously, that's great. But I don't know, you could just hear me qualifying how great it is because many of the other contenders for just Star Wars. Yes. Name. I mean, yeah, Jet Bandy gets Bandied about that pun was intended.

[Meg Rowley]

Sure. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You hear about Zebulon Vermilion?

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, you hear about Akil Badu do. Right. Like, yeah. All of these guys, though, they come by it honestly. These are actually their names. These are their given legal birth names.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Dub Gleed decided to go by Dub and I. That just somewhat detracts when I saw that his name was William and that it was a nickname. It just. It bothers me a little bit. And look, I'm not above being delighted by just a plain old nickname. I mean, we were tickled by Coker Triplet last time. Right.

[Meg Rowley]

Coker Triplet.

[Ben Lindbergh]

His name was not Coker. His name was Herman. His middle name was Coker, which at least it was his middle name. So.

[Meg Rowley]

Middle name.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It was his middle name. Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

A little different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Middle names can get adventurous. Right. Middle names, you know, you can get a little wacky.

[Meg Rowley]

Ridiculous. Patently, we try to be polite about it, but.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Because. Because in polite company, middle names often don't come out. They don't show themselves. And so you can kind of sneak a weird one in there and no one needs to know.

[Meg Rowley]

But if you strap of names.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sure. I mean, it depends what. What kind of top you're wearing, though, I guess. And maybe it shows through. And so if you're Coker Triplet, and you just decide, I'd rather go by Coker than Herman or however that ended up. Fine. But then it's a little bit different, I think, than if you are actually named Zebulon or you're actually named Jet or you're actually named Akil.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Whatever it is. So, yeah, I'm not saying don't be delighted by Dub Gleed, because I certainly was when I saw it. But then I did some additional research, and I just, you know, it does detract slightly that that's not his actual name. He has just adopted that.

[Meg Rowley]

Can I offer a pathway to enjoying it sort of unreservedly?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sure.

[Meg Rowley]

I would imagine. Now, I don't know. Dub.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Mm.

[Meg Rowley]

Glebe. Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's Glebe Glee. Duh. Gleed. Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

I feel like we've said that 17 different ways in this segment so far.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The capital city of Naboo is Theed. This is Gleed. That'll be a good mnemonic device for you to remember since we're talking about Star Wars.

[Meg Rowley]

Relax. I'm a Jane Austen nerd, not a Star wars nerd. I like Star Wars. I'm not. This isn't an anti Star wars take, although it does feel like that most recent movie is a cash grab, but. But we love Pedro Pascal, so get your bag, I guess. I imagine that Dub

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gleed.

[Meg Rowley]

Gleed. Gleed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gleed.

[Meg Rowley]

Gleed. I imagine that Dub Gleed did not adopt Dub. Well, first of all, did he give him. Did he actually give himself the nickname Dub? Or is. Or did, like, his family start calling him Dub?

[Ben Lindbergh]

So, yeah, it could have been one of those, you know, you can't pronounce it when you're a baby or something or someone else in the family. Or maybe.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. There might be a bunch of Williams floating around and they're like, this is Dub.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Or maybe he was just dubbed Dub by teammates or something. Who knows?

[Meg Rowley]

Right? So, first of all, we don't know that he selected his own nickname. And even if he did, I'm going. I'm going to hazard a guess that he didn't do it to be like, you know what? This sounds like some Star wars stuff.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I.

[Meg Rowley]

No, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe he has a tattoo and everything. Maybe he has an opinion about whether the most recent movie is a cash grab. You know, maybe he has also grappled with the reality that some people told you that if you rewatch Rogue One after and. Or you'd be like, oh, my God, it's better. And then you're like, no, it's worse. You said it was better. Not you. No, I mean, maybe you. But you didn't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I did write about that.

[Meg Rowley]

I didn't hear it from you. People were like, oh, my God, like, it totally recasted. I'm like, yeah, recast it as they should have let him make the movie. He wanted to because look what happens when he gets to make it. What, the way he wants it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Well, he got late to fix it, is the thing, but yeah. All right. I don't want to derail this into a Star wars podcast because I do some of those sometimes. But, yes, maybe it's just, look, he's a winning player. He puts W's on the board. He's dubbed leads. I like it. And it obviously to embrace it to the point then it becomes your just for baseball purposes, given name, basically. Like, yeah, you're listed as that everywhere. It'll be on your baseball card. If you have a baseball card. It'll be on all of your stat pages. You'll be officially listed as that. That's a little different.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. From his player page at Fan Graphs is Dub.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, Gleed. It is baseball official. So I'm just saying, absolutely delighted by It a little less so than when I first encountered it and thought is his name actually Dub? No.

[Meg Rowley]

You are the only human being who has this complaint on the entire planet. There's no. You are unique. You are special.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is true that you're the only person annoyed by many of the nicknames we celebrate in baseball history were actual nicknames. I mean, the names that we celebrate and we're so delighted by, they were just nicknames. Again, we were tickled by Dick Crutcher. Obviously Dick is a nickname. If it's just Richard Crutcher, it's not nearly as entertaining. Now that's a very common nickname for Richard, so it feels a little less

[Meg Rowley]

like, which is crazy. As an aside, the fact that you all keep going back to that well is so funny. Like you should know better by now. Come on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not Richard Lovelady. He's not going back to that well, I guess.

[Meg Rowley]

No Dicky.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not Richard Fitz either.

[Meg Rowley]

No, he's a coward. We've established this. Dickie Hero, Richard.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Speaking of those guys, you know how I started the last episode by struggling in vain to try to do a stat head query that would make 2026 unique in terms of the the standout performances by guys in their first regular season game. At least that was also their team's first regular season game. Just great debutante opening day performances. And I kept digging deeper and deeper and I was like, what If I try re 24? No, it's a tie. What if I try ops? No. Oh, it's a try. What if I. And that. And I was looking at all these different stats and came up with with ties every which way. And I have no regrets because we got to know Coker Triplet and and Dick Crutcher, et cetera. However, I should have simplified because as Zach Kreiser demonstrated in the Bandwagon, I could have just said home runs, guys with home runs. Because there were four guys who hit home runs in those games. Ben Stalater, Murakami and Weatherholt. And that was actually the most opening day debutante home runs or players with home runs. And the previous high was two a several way tie including 1938. So I could have just made it the ultra simple home runs stat and instead I got too fancy and I was trying to come up with all kinds of advanced stats. Sometimes the simple stats are the best. Just the old tried and true stats that everyone knows. Anyway, I've learned my lesson and I've learned about Coker Triplet and Dick Crutcher and Dick Crutcher okay, so, challenge system. Yeah, this was the weekend of the challenge system, pretty predictably, I think. But yeah, it was everywhere. It went mega viral. It went mainstream. And I want to pump the brakes a bit because it was exactly a year ago that everyone was talking about the torpedo bat and that was a mainstream story. And non baseball fans were texting me like, what's this? They're using big fat bats now? Isn't. Isn't that cheating? And on and on. And I wrote about it and it was a big story. And then it became quickly a pretty insignificant story. There were guys who kept using torpedo bats, but it turned out that they were not some kind of cheat codes. They were not some sort of hitting life hack. They were maybe helpful in some cases marginally advantageous, but certainly didn't change the pitcher, batter, balance of power or anything like that. And mostly people forgot about about them. It just became a big story because, right, it was new, or it wasn't even new. There were guys who had been using them before and no one even noticed. But it became a big story because it was opening day weekend and the Yankees just teed off on the brewers and hit a ton of Titanic taters and they were torpedo bat eated. And suddenly everyone made too much of that. So I think we'll see a similar decrease in interest in abs over the course of the season. I don't think it's going to be a constant, just oh, hu. Stories and headlines and everyone interested. I think that it will gradually die down. We'll continue to be interested in it, but there is just kind of a gold rush. Yeah. To draw conclusions about it. It's like there's. There's gold and then there hills those abs. We got to crunch the numbers. We got to figure out what it means. It's most interesting to me to this point as sort of a sociological experiment, just seeing how this works on an interpersonal level and some of the awkwardness and some of the ejections that arose and some of the humiliations and what we can extrapolate from all of that. So I definitely want to talk about that, but I do think that there will be just kind of a decay curve when it comes to how fascinated everyone else is by this. But initially it was like, wait, there's now a way for the batters to fight back and to show up those umpires who've been ostentatiously signaling those strikeout calls for centuries at this point, and no one could deliver any kind of comeuppance. And now they can be hoisted on their petards. They can have their faces rubbed in it. And people seemed somewhat delighted by that, I think, at least for this first weekend, because there was a newness to it. Now it's strange because this is not new. This is new at the major league level. And so there is a lot that we already know about the challenge system and how it will probably function because it's been in use in major league spring trainings, it's been use in the minors, in the Arizona Fall league. Like, there's a lot of data, and I don't know that anything that has happened so far has been really surprising. If you were reading any of the what will abs look like? Coverage out there, right. I think it's largely looked like that. But of course, most people were not reading that. And maybe most people were not even paying attention to the fact that there was a challenge system now. And so suddenly these clips start circulating about, wait, they can just challenge now. And then there's a little graphic and an animation, and then what, the umpire's wrong. And you get to. Again, everyone is very delighted by that.

[Meg Rowley]

For now, it just is a good reminder that nobody watches spring training. I mean, people do, but not most people. Most people do not. And so there was, I think, a lot of like, oh, what's this? And I do think that in a. In real games, that mattered. In moments where it. It did correct some incorrect calls, it washed over people. Well, I mean, it went badly for CB Buckner, but, yeah, in general, it seemed to wash over people.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well.

[Meg Rowley]

And I think it is illustrating to a lot of fans who are accustomed to yelling at the strike zone and thus the umpires, that, like, these are often quite fine distinctions. You know, maybe, maybe a player is correct, that something that was, you know, that they perceived to be a ball was in fact a ball. Maybe that strike really was a strike. But some of these are like, you know, minute to the point of maybe like straining credulity in terms of how finally we can measure them. And I think is. Is perhaps driving home for people that these are. These are tough calls, that this is a tough thing to get right, and that a lot of umpires are doing a good job, that a lot of hitters are correct, that sometimes are wrong. You know, I saw some successful pitcher challenges, which I was shocked by, because it's just amazing that they can even see it. But I think it's going well. It seems to be going well. I will invite everyone to just like, pump the brakes on being able to say, like, yeah, that guy's really good at challenges or that guy's really bad at challenges because we just, we need to see more. We just need to see more before I think we can put any rigor behind those kinds of statements. But I think the fact that the overall reception to the system seems to be a positive one, that it is doing what it's meant to, that it's moving quickly, that, you know, it is getting the crowd sort of engaged, like, again, CB Bugner had a really bad day, but like, that crowd was wild. Like they were amped, man. Now, do I think that that level of energy will persist over the course of a season? I sure do not. You know, we're going to get used to it, and people who are seeing it for the first time will become accustomed to it and, you know, the process and theory behind when teams challenge and whatnot will get refined. And I think we will reach a point of optimization and it'll be less exciting, but it, I think, will still be serving an important function. And I, you know, it's nice. It's good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, good. So one of the things we thought or thought we knew based on the previous trials is that the overall success rate would probably be not that much better than a coin flip. And that has been the case. It's 54% overturns thus far. And you'd think players might get a bit better at that maybe, but then umpires might get better too. I don't know that it would be all that different because that's kind of of been the neighborhood where it. Where it has been. And batters are at. At 42% now by default. Baseball Savant and I've seen MLB.com in a lot of articles says fielders, and so they say batters and fielders. And I don't really see the point in lumping together catchers and pitchers because they're so different.

[Meg Rowley]

You want to break. You want each group broken out?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'd just like to see batters displayed separately from catchers, from pitchers. And on Baseball Savant, there's a little widget, so it says fielders by default. But then if you click on the little refresh icon, then it'll cycle through catchers and pitchers. So that's nice. But they're so different in terms of frequency and accuracy that I don't really even find it that useful to lump them together like pitchers. We're recording here on Monday afternoon, pitchers have attempted five. They've had five challenges, and three of them were confirmed and two overturned. So 40% success rate. Catchers, meanwhile, have attempted 92 and have a 64% overturn.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So these are such different cohorts. I understand that they are both defenders and fielders technically and teammates and battery mates and everything, but I don't really find it that useful to lump them together. Another sort of pedantic point of clarification, because this was coming up in our discord group and people were chewing over whether ABS system is redundant, like, like ATM machine, because that atm.

[Meg Rowley]

But the S stands for strike, doesn't it?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think so. So that's. That was my position. Yeah. Now if you go to Wikipedia earlier today, when I went to it, it said the automated ball strike system, and then, yeah, had ABS in parentheses after system. And so it seemed like the S stood for system or that it was redundant or something. It's like, you know, automated teller machine machine or something. It's not, though. I don't. I don't think it is like that. I think ABS stands for automated ball strike right now.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I guess it's a little awkward because sometimes people will just refer to it as abs and then there's no system anywhere. But when people say the ABS system, I don't think that is redundant. Not that it really matters if it were, but I. I don't think it is. I think the ABS just stands for automated ball strike. And then you can add system to it and not have to worry about whether it's like atm. Not that anyone really is that bothered by that. So that's a little point that came up. But I think that CB Buckner game, that was the most notable instance of ABS just really like showing up and showing off. And here's the potential for entertainment value. So he had six pitches overturned in Saturday's Reds versus Red Sox game in eight attempts. And it could have been worse because the Red Sox ran out of challenges. Right. And so there were challenge opportunities that they could have used their challenges and could have gotten more overturns, but their hands were tied at that point. But the most notable was Eugenio Suarez. Yeah, he's batting bases loaded and CB rings him up twice on back to back pitches. And Suarez challenged both of them. They were both overturned. Buckner seemed taken aback when he got challenged the second time. Yeah, but really, how could you blame Suarez for challenging you? Because you made the wrong call, cb and he made the wrong call twice. Now there was some sympathy in my heart. I will say.

[Meg Rowley]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I know CB Buckner is one of these umpires whose names people Know, which is. Yeah, never really a good sign.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, never a good sign.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, hardly.

[Meg Rowley]

Or at least hardly ever a good sign.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, usually not. And. And usually it has something to do with the quality of umpiring, but also maybe the attitudes, the ump shows, the way that the umpire presents themselves, which maybe makes them less sympathetic characters. And he is one of the less accurate umpires, if you just look at the pitch calling accuracy rate. So, yes, I guess he is a likely candidate to be put on the spot in this way. But I did feel a little bit bad for him. I mean, I really did, because, like, you know, presumably he's trying his best out there. I'm gonna give him credit for at least attempting to make the right call. And it's just such a stark comeuppance, as I wrote. But it's just like, you gotta feel a little bit bad for him because the whole ballpark's on its feet. And it is. I mean, it is like a gladiator arena. Kind of like thumbs up, thumbs down, you know, and it's just like he's not gonna get thrown to the lions or anything. But imagine being in that spot. And umpires, of course, they've always been criticized. They're used to it. They have thick skin, they know what they're signing up for, but not quite like that, where you're showing their error on the scoreboard. Everyone's watching it in unison with bated breath. And then just a tremendous ovation because your mistake got highlighted and corrected. Yeah, I, I felt a little bit bad. Like, I was entertained by this and then kind of felt like, aw, you know, like, that's a tough day at the office.

[Meg Rowley]

It's a weird thing because we are used to interacting with players in this way. Right. Where, like, if a guy, you know, particularly if it's a player who has been struggling and has like a golden sombrero, you're like, ah, buddy, I'm sorry. We don't have that feeling for umpires very often, I think, because they read as cops. So we're like, don't go too fast in a 25. I think part of why I've. I am feeling something of an allergy to some of the early night challenge system analysis, some of which has been good and some of which has been appropriately caveated and some of which feels way too definitive, is that I think you, you do risk an early season bad performance from an umpire that goes on to be demonstrated to not be particularly representative.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Sort of tainting a fan's understanding of that guy. Now, in. In Buckner's case, to your point, like, we're familiar with some of CB Buckner's failures, my confidence that this is sort of an aberrant performance is much lower. I suspect it's pretty representative.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's one of the longest tenured, which is part of why we know his name. He's been umping since 96. I think he's one of the two longest tenured. And. And as we've seen, some of the umps who came up before any of the tracking stuff, they. They have zones that map onto the rulebook zone a little less tightly than some of the umps who came up later. When you couldn't just kind of craft your own zone and just explore the studio space, you were kind of graded and got this constant feedback from the start of your career.

[Meg Rowley]

So I think that, you know, what we. What we have seen is that that feedback is a really valuable training tool. And I suspect that the robo zone, the ab, it has to stand for strike, because otherwise, what does the B stand for?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Rowley]

That doesn't. Right. Like, yeah, I'm gonna be self. Now. I'm gonna be self conscious about it, though. I think that you will see gains on the part of umpires the longer that the system is in place. That won't be universally true, but I imagine there will be umpires for whom it is this. Is CB going to be one of those guys? I mean, probably not, but everybody has a bad day at work. Even the most competent people have bad days at work. Like, that just happens. And again, we're used to that being sort of an understood occupational hazard of being a professional athlete. And it is an understood occupational hazard of being an umpire, but also our relationship to, like, when we boo them and how we get on their case only very loosely tied to the accuracy of the calls. Right? Like, there are times where a home plate umpire will just really botch one, and it's bad. And that's part of why we have the challenge system. But you just boo when it goes against your guys. You just boo that man. You boo him. Now, boo doesn't sound like a real word to me anymore, but you just boo them and you do it indiscriminately. And now everyone knows, oh, I'm right. So they feel righteous in their booing, and so they're going to be all the more vicious about it. So, yeah, I think it's okay to feel a little bad about it, but you just have to, you know, accept that this is this is part of the. The risk for these guys. And maybe. Maybe it'll move some of them to. To call a different zone.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, I imagine so.

[Meg Rowley]

That.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, even though they've been getting feedback and they've been getting graded based on this, there's no stronger form of feedback than an entire ballpark yelling at the top of its lungs because you just got shown to have made a mistake. So now, will that necessarily make umpires better? Kind of depends. Right. Because they could go on tilt, they could be petulant, they could be bitter about this. This could get in their heads. They could get emotional, they could be dwelling on those mistakes. It could, in the short term make them worse, which might be some interesting analysis to do at some point. Just looking at. Do umpires accuracy rates improve in the immediate aftermath of, say, an overturn or maybe do they get worse? So.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

One reason why you might not be so sympathetic to CB here, there was an incident later in that game when he called Trevor Story out out on a check swing. Strike three. And didn't even check with the bass hump to see if he had gone around. And it looked pretty debatable. I mean, it looked questionable that he had gone around. And so was this payback? I don't know. Alex Cora got ejected coming out and arguing about that. Yes, it was.

[Meg Rowley]

Alex Cora got ejected so that Trevor

[Ben Lindbergh]

Story wouldn't get well.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, it's true, but there's a little bit of like, oh, gotta get in front of my guy there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. And Cora said it wasn't his best day of Buckner. So was that. I. I keep thinking like Buckner. I'm talking about the Red Sox. It's. It's Buck nor. It's B U C K N O R. Not like Bill Buckner. But. Yeah. Was that the frustration boiling over? Was that payback? I don't know. Maybe. But we'll never know. But that was at least an overconfident call. And you would've liked to see him ask for some help there. But I guess the solution to that is. Well, we just get the. The check swing system. Get the check swing robo umps up there. You know, when we talked about the robo umps system for check swings that they're testing, and I was saying that because they're being so lenient, seemingly maybe in an effort to reduce the strikeout rate, that basically, like, nothing counts as a. Yeah. As an actual swing anymore. Some people pointed out this is kind of the way that it used to work earlier in baseball history. If you look at old highlights, guys. By our modern definition and eyes. Not that there is a rigorous definition, but.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We're swinging modern classification. Yeah. They. They were going around and things were. Were counting as check swings. And. And Sam has written about this just like, what if nothing was really. What if everything was a check swing? You know, like, unless it was an absolute loot, 100% go around. If you made any attempt to slow the swing, maybe. Maybe we just give that to you. Maybe that's even consistent with how it was historically. But it's. It's jarring now. If you were to transition to that sort of system. But I guess I'd prefer that to perhaps an umpire just taking vengeance on someone who. Yeah. Showed him up with challenges earlier in the game. Obviously that was on the Red Sox, not the Reds. The only disappointing thing was that Suarez grounded out.

[Meg Rowley]

I know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

After the second successful challenge. So ultimately he was out anyway. But still, it would have been even more entertaining if he had gotten a big hit there, which he often does. But, you know, you. You gotta hand it to CB I guess, to have the confidence to do the. The full punch out, like, equally enthusiastically the second time. Time. Even though.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, man. No, it's like. No, I got. I got it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And that they do teach you in the umpire manual. Like, you. You have to project confidence. Yeah. Or else people will think that you don't know or you're. You have some sort of doubt. But yeah, the ump scorecard on that one was pretty rough. It was like 88 accuracy, I think. And yeah. And then like, the run value was heavily skewed just because those were some pretty impactful calls and overturns and everything. But, yeah, that was. That was rough.

[Meg Rowley]

I do feel like we've had a little bit of a monkey's paw curl situation here because I feel like. And granted, I didn't watch every single game this weekend, but I feel like I am seeing the strike zone overlay far less often.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

In the early going.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Beautiful.

[Meg Rowley]

You know what? I've seen a lot more of those ump scorecard counts.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. It's true. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know about that, though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I. I don't have a problem with them. I think, you know, there's always going to be some squishiness, I guess, when it comes to how you define certain things. But I. I feel like they're directionally right. They're. They're not bad. It's.

[Meg Rowley]

Are.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's good to have some handle. I think on the alternative is just probably everyone guessing or assuming that the umps are, are always wrong.

[Meg Rowley]

No, the alternative is to write a little post. The alternative is someone write a little post.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, not everyone has the write a little post option available to them, I suppose. Although they should try maybe. Yeah. Fan graphs, community blog, maybe, I don't know. But there you go. Yeah. Yeah, it's. It's tough because you're right. I think we've seen less of the strike zone boxes, the K zones, but then sometimes they're even more deceptive because sometimes the zones are uniform and so they'll have the same box for hitters who are dramatically different sizes. And so that's not accurate at all.

[Meg Rowley]

And it is funny, though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is funny.

[Meg Rowley]

Especially if you end up with like a shorter, taller guy back to back and you're like, oh, well, those are. Should have different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Boxes, shouldn't they?

[Ben Lindbergh]

How can the box be the same size. Size for two guys who are dramatically different sizes? Yeah. I know that the one change that they've largely made at MLB's request is, well, we're not going to have colored dots color coded based on whether it's a ball or a strike. But honestly, I never even really noticed that, at least consciously. I always look to see, well, is the dot in the box or not? I. I'm not sure I even really noticed that. Well, maybe it's an open circle instead of a closed circle or a colored circle instead of a plain circle or something. Something. Not sure how many people were even really aware of that. So it's just kind of like, well, is it in the box or not? And if there's still a box and if that box is not accurately drawn and you're still plotting the pitch location, well, that's going to be troublesome sometimes. But yeah, I do applaud a little less of that in general. But if what's remaining is even less accurate than before, that's not great. But yeah, I saw some really popular tweets and posts about this. Just sort of the broader societal analogies. And what does it mean that we're now living in an ABS society? Like there was this one. I'll link to this. ABS has turned baseball into the true sport of our time. Human experts trying to prove their continued worth in the face of a soulless machine that can humiliate them at any moment. And, you know, I was asked about this on an interview. I was on Slate's what's Next Pod and they were doing an ABS episode, which again, that's a. A Mainstream pod. And this is a mainstream story, at least for now. And I was trying to explain it. It was one of those interviews where I'm getting in the weeds and then the interviewer is like, so explain what a strike zone is. Oh, no. I'm like, right. I am not unaffectively.

[Meg Rowley]

Wow.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, okay.

[Meg Rowley]

But like, wow though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But yeah, you'd think maybe that's kind of common knowledge, but I don't know. Better safe than sorry.

[Meg Rowley]

Were you like, imagine a prison in your mind?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I really was like, so there's. There's a home plate. There's a plate. The home plate, famously. And it's 17 inches wide. And then. Yes. Yeah. So I really was sort of explaining the dimensions of the strike zone. But. But they asked me about that just. And I kind of touched on this, I guess, in a piece I wrote. Just kind of the idea that everything's being automated and it's all algorithms and now the computers and the machines are coming to baseball as well. But. But this, at least in principle, is supposed to be a way to preserve the human element from the rise of the machines. And we'll see whether that can continue. And as you know, I have my doubts and my doubts were not reduced by what we saw this weekend. But it is designed at least to be a way that humans and robots can coexist in harmony and we can find some middle ground where we preserve the human element, but. But also improve upon our flawed, fallible human minds and senses in some way. So that's the idea. Like this is. This is like the way forward. Maybe ABS actually offers, or the challenge system specifically offers some way for us not to be immediately obsolete. Though I think, you know, we set the over under at five years for going from challenge system to full abs. I think I'm taking the under on that. Just seeing some of the unrest that I've seen. All the entertainment, it's true, but also some of the unrest. Here was another quite wordy tweet about abs. I don't know that I understand it entirely, but it was quite popular. The ABS system sits at the vexed crossroads of several highly charged dynamics in our collective life. Successful challenges by your team feel amazing, like a long awaited blow against capricious and unearned authority. But the overall existence and putative infallibility of AB inevitably ignites anxieties about the superfluity. Superfluity, Superfluity.

[Meg Rowley]

I made it so much worse.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Of human judgment. And yet the challenge system relies on human hubris, intuition, boldness and risk. It's a very compelling encounter between populism and the machine, which I think is more or less what I was just saying. It's a little less impressive vocabulary words,

[Meg Rowley]

but I, too, used to post on social media when I was in grad school.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anyway, there are a lot of deep, profound thoughts out there about what abs means, and maybe it is in some ways a bellwether. Maybe it is a sign of the times.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, maybe it's a sign is. You know, I do think that it is. Oh, well, here. I'll be here. I'll be a little bit serious for a moment. You know, it. It is a negotiation between human expertise and technological intervention, which is a simplistic way of putting it. Right. Because that technological intervention is itself an example of human expertise. Right. So you can't completely disentangle the. The human from it because the machines, despite what Justin Steele might think, they aren't people. They can't have a conversation with you. There's no. Because he was talking to the chat bot. Yes, he was talking to Crock. It was Justin Steel. Right. I'm just remembering that. Okay. I don't. I don't want to defame anyone. You know, it's really important to get these things right because. Indication of an unwell mind. I. Sorry, Justin, I don't know you. You're probably perfectly nice, but stop it with that. It's not real. It's not your friend. So it is like this, I think, very modern mediation between what we can do with our own human eye. It also, I think, does have, as I've said, this unintended consequence of, like, reinforcing a confidence in the human judgment and human expertise. Because we are seeing, even in instances where call happens, has to be overturned, how close it is a lot of the time. You know, these are not big errors born of incompetence. These are judgment calls in a incredibly different and I would argue, inherently probabilistic circumstance. So good job to the humans, you guys. You know, I also think mostly what it is illustrating is there are just parts of the zone that, like, different people, particularly hitters, like, just can't see. You can't really. You can't really see. And then even if you can, you're, like, processing too slowly to, like, challenge in time. We saw some controversy around that this weekend, right, where it's like, oh, did I challenge a time? You did not.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

And I would argue that you maybe did. But the. The Braves, I think, just have to tell their guys, you're not allowed to challenge Unless like it's going to be the difference between a strikeout. Not because they were like out of challenge challenges two days in a row after like the first ending. I'm like, that seems bad, you might need those later.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, yes. We got a question from Patreon supporter Davin who said challenge system wrinkle. Matt Olson was denied a challenge barely a second after the call. Is umpires denying challenges the new what's wrong with baseball controversy? So yeah, this was, I think wasn't even so much being a stickler. I think it was a little just quick on the trigger here.

[Meg Rowley]

By the way, I agree. I think that he should have been able to challenge. I think that, that the, that it was denied incorrectly.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Cuz by any reasonable definition, obviously you need to wait to see what the ruling is before you decide whether to challenge. And then I get the need to rush things along because you don't want this to be a delay. And also you don't want anyone to be influenced by anything. You don't want anyone to have time to consult with teammates or the dugout or for someone to yell something from the bench. And, and, and so it has to be self sufficient and self reliance. I get that it has to be a snap judgment. But even so, I think by any reasonable definition of the within two seconds, like it is very vague wording in the rules, like it's not exactly clear when the clock starts for that two seconds, but it has to start after the call is made. Right. So I don't think that this was too long. And so, and we saw another ejection in this case. Right. So we were all wondering are there going to be fewer managerial ejections because of the challenge system? And I think there probably will be on the whole. But we're still going to see some whether it's Quora maybe being mad about a call that was perhaps sparked by earlier challenge system usage or this one where Derek Shelton was ejected because he was protesting the ruling that the challenge came too late. I think reasonably so. We know that most or a high percentage of the managerial objections in the past were incited by ball strike disagreements. So there should in theory be fewer of those. So you know, I think there will be fewer ejections, but there will not be a great shortage or they will not be extinct. We will still see the managerial ejection. We will still see managers and players upset at either the machines themselves or at situations adjacent to the machines.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that that's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that was one little wrinkle there. And we also got a couple other questions about possible tweaks to this, because the one undercurrent that I was sensing among fans was that even though the challenge system was largely well received, I think it. It vexed people more. It was more galling when you have a challenge system but you run out of challenges or players just don't use them, which might, again, because, B, because there's a margin of error and there's just a level of uncertainty there. And so we might look at the replay or look at the location in our app or whatever and say, oh, should have challenged there. Well, yeah, easier said than done, right? And yet, knowing that it's possible to challenge and seeing players not do it, it. Or even more frustrating seeing players prevent it from doing it because they have already used their challenges, I think that is bugging people more. And so I think that's going to be the ground swell that builds to ultimately transition us to full abs because people are just. Even if they like the entertainment value of showing up CB Buckner, they're just not going to like it when their team can't show up CB Buckner because it's out of challenges. And. And it's just such a short leap from that to, well, wait, why don't we just get all the calls correct from the start? So I suspect that especially as the novelty value of this wears off. Okay, it's really entertaining the first weekend and the first time many people are seeing these graphics and these animations, but when it's not the first one, when it's the thousandth one and it's the dog days of summer, it's just going to frustrate people. People more. So I stand by what I said and. And double down on what I said. I think even though this was seemingly a success when it came to getting baseball talked about Gleeb. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Gleed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gleed. Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

Dub Gleed. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The other thing that I saw questioned by some was whether there should be some sort of buffer zone. And this was discussed prior to opening day, and Jason Stark wrote about this. But there is this idea because we have started to see some challenges where a call will be confirmed and a team will lose a challenge, and it'll be so close.

[Meg Rowley]

So close.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Like, you can't. There's no daylight. And it really is. Even according to the system, it's like 0.1 inches or whatever. It's like. Like actually within the margin of error of the system, which is not big. And it's. It's very accurate. But there is still a level of uncertainty here. And so there has been a suggestion in some quarters that if you get that close that you should not lose a challenge.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I. I don't know how I feel about that, because I think there's always going to be some cutoff. So MLB says it's 95% confident that a pitch will be within 0.39 inches of where it's judged to be 99% confident that it would be within 0.48 inches. So the average miss is tiny, but you're getting enough challenges in that zone where, yeah, it really could kind of go either way.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And also, like, it's not a frivolous challenge if you challenge and it's that close.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. You're not frustrated? You're not like, well, you deserve to be robbed of a challenge because you were wasting all of our time. You were so wrong. No, it was a reasonable, good challenge. It was so close. So I have seen that suggestion, but I don't know, maybe it's better to just really draw a line and say, well, this is as precise as we can possibly be, and maybe it's slightly false precision and it's a fiction that we're all maintaining. But then if we do away with that fiction, because we've talked about, like, should it be, like, a probabilistic zone and. And should it kind of map onto how umpires used to call it? And I've thought. No, I've thought that would just infuriate people if you were kind of doing, like, a random number generator to sort of simulate how often it might have been.

[Meg Rowley]

It's like, just have them call the whole thing, then, like, what's the point of the system if that's what you're doing?

[Ben Lindbergh]

This I'm a little more receptive to, but I don't know. I think ultimately we're going to end up with a system where either we have more challenges or the calls are just automated from the start. But I do understand the frustration if you're that close and you lose your challenge.

[Meg Rowley]

I want to reserve the right to change my mind about this because I also was kind of back and forth on it. But I. I like this as a solution to the most, I think, frustrating loss of challenge, because you are. You. You're getting. You're getting the spirit of the thing. Right. And I tend to. To think about the zone probabilistically. And, you know, this is part of why I like framing and why I think it's not just Flopping, like there's, there's real skill there. And I think that it would. Well, apart from anything else, it feels more honest because I know they say, oh yeah, we know for sure. I'm a little skeptical on some of these very, very precise ones. I'm just a little. Are you sure? Are you sure you're sure?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Are you totally sure that you're sure that you're sure? So I, I kind of like it as a way of you're not wasting anyone's time. You are identifying correctly that this is very, very close. And it does feel like you should kind of get to keep your challenge. Now the flip side of that is I worry that the number of challenges issued in any given game would then explode. Because if those are the calls that you're like, you have no disincentive to not challenge then. Right. Like depending on how they define the buffer zone and the margins, like there are a lot of calls like that in every game. And if you're not going to lose your challenge and you can just challenge and challenge and challenge. Well, I think it might get tiresome. You know, it could get vexing. So maybe that's the downside.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Really? Yeah, it would have to be within a tiny margin of error and so there would be fewer calls that fell into that zone. But even so. So I think there's something to be said for just saying, yeah, this is the best determination we can make. And we also got a question. This was from listener Axel who said, and this was inspired, I think, by watching the USDR WBC game and bad game ending calls in general. I think there's a decent solution, at least for MLB play in the ninth inning or later with two outs, every game switches over to full ab. Yes. That means any plate appearance that might end the game on a botched call will be ruled accurately and unassailably, saving us from the potential drag of any losing team with challenges remaining trying to overturn a game ending strikeout. That ought to be the cause for immediate celebration, not a stadium of people awkwardly standing around for a while waiting for the Jumbotron to deliver the final result. Sure, it infringes a little bit on the compromise between ABS and catcher framing established in the current rules. But what's one more at bat? So there's that suggestion. Just go to full ABS there to deal with the possibility to have an ending, a false ending. But then I've also seen the pretty popular suggestion, just give teams an extra challenge in the ninth. They get an extra challenge if they go to extras. There's some provision for that. But if they're out and it's the 9th and you don't want a game to end in that way, then just give people extra challenges and maybe they will ultimately go in that direction. I'm not against it. I just think that every move you make like this is just. It's further down the slippery slope. It's just, well, yeah, we really don't want to screw up anything with two outs in the ninth, so let's just have the computers take over and then. Okay, but then we are okay with screwing things up before that, though. Like, if this goes fine, if it's really important, then don't we want to have that in place all the time? Time or. Yeah, if you add an extra challenge, then it's just, well, is that because we don't want anyone to ever run out of challenges? And if that's the case, then why are we even using challenges in the first place? So why put ourselves in that position? So I think every step along that path, and maybe there is a happier medium that MLB has arrived at. The reason they have two per team at the start of the game is that they surveyed fans in AAA and fans said they didn't want too many challenges. And so they tested with three per team. They tested with two per team, and they found that two per team ended up within the threshold that most fans said they wanted, where it wasn't too much. It was the Goldilocks zone for challenges. But that would be different in a particular game where you don't have a challenge and then everything is ruined. So, yeah, I'm not against it, and maybe that's a tweak that they make to the system next season or something, but it just feels to me like every step down that path, you're getting closer and closer to just saying, yeah, full abs.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. Yeah, I think you might be right. I'm. I'm. I'm more. I'm more concerned than I was coming into the weekend. I'm more concerned now. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And here's a question. We got a lot of challenge system questions. Obviously, this one was from jj, who said there's been one inning of Major League Baseball without an ABS challenge. He sent this during opening night. How many games this season will feature zero ABS challenges? So that first opening night game there was just the one, and it was a confirmed call, but according.

[Meg Rowley]

We missed it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, we didn't even see it on the broadcast, but I think according to the Triple A data I saw the this in an MLB.com article probably Petriello I think about 1.5% of games in AAA last year had no challenges. So if you extrapolate that over 2430 games, like we're going to see some in theory, we, we should certainly see some at some point this season. Like, you know, maybe 30ish now. Yeah, maybe MLB will play a bit differently than AAA and maybe, yeah, players will be really reluctant to not use them. But we know that players are are saving some for late in the game and then you're going to end up in some situations where you hoarded your challenges and then you no longer need them and there's just the game gets broken open or something and it's unbecoming to challenge at that point. So yeah, I think it'll happen. I think we'll see some of those. It won't be unheard of.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. But I do think it will be the minority.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh yeah, it'll be be small, it'll be rare. It'll be weird when it happens. But but I do think it will happen. And then we also got a question about whether we'll see more 30 challenges in the time being until everyone adjusts to this. So Josh Patreon supporter said on opening day, the second ABS challenge during the Twins Orioles game was on a 30 strike. The call was overturned and relative to most ABS challenges, it wasn't close. Do you think there will be more 30 challenges early on because umps will be giving the Courtesy Strike on 3 0?

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You'd think that would be one of the things that would take a little time to.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Adjust to because that has been pretty entrenched the zone.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Changing dimensions based on the count and the 30 auto strike. So I wouldn't be surprised. I'm sure umpires have been coached on that and, and they've gotten graded on that for years and yet the behavior has persisted. So even if they know okay, now we might actually get called on that and maybe the leverage of 30 pitches won't be considered sufficient to always challenge.

[Meg Rowley]

But I think that that'll be, I think that'll be a big part of it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. But if it's clear and obvious, then you're not really risking that much. So I think that makes some sense to me. I think yes, we might see a diminishment of the expansion and shrinkage of the strike zone over the course of the season because that's just been so ingrained for years, maybe forever and it's gotten less dramatic over the years. But, yeah, I'm sure that's still going to be there. And that's sort of a free overturn in theory. So. Yeah, yeah, I, I think that you're right, Josh. I think that will happen.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that's right. But I think you're right that it might take a. Take a beat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And that is one of the things that I will be curious about. If there is less of an expansion and contraction in the size of the zone, as we've always said, even if it's not on purpose, I think there has been some utility to that because it does mean that when a pitcher falls behind 3, 0, well, they're not totally out of the plate appearance because they might. Might get a little love from the ump and they might get that three auto strike or when a batter is down 02, whoever falls behind, they're getting a little leg up, they're getting a little helping hand. And it's subtle, but it's significant. And so as hard as it is to hit with two strikes these days, and on O2 counts, if we're taking that away and the O2 zone is the same as any other zone, which, which is fair, which is consistent, which is technically how it should have been all along. But the fact that it wasn't, I think, did actually make plate appearances a tad more competitive. And so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some extremes in the count splits this year.

[Meg Rowley]

That's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I don't know how obvious it'll be in a single season. I don't know if it'll be glaring, but I think we will probably see in the long run, run, just a wider disparity in, say, you know, ops after whatever count, just because fewer batters and hitters will get back into a plate appearance after they fall far behind.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that that's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then here's a question from Colby Patreon supporter, who says, I have what I hope is the first pedantic question about the challenge system. Well, you might have to settle for second, Colby, because we already talked about what ABS actually stands for, for. But on Red's opening day. And by the way, when I was talking the other day about how that Jason Stark fun fact about how the Phillies hadn't had a home save, no reliever had recorded a save at home on opening day, and I said the Reds had the most. They had 18 or something. That's because the Reds always or typically play at home on opening day on opening day, they just had more opportunities. He so Kobe says on Red's opening day at home, a catcher's challenge. I forget the exact inning in team converted a ball into a third strike, securing the strikeout. The Reds radio crew said something to the effect of the batter is out on a called third strike. Here's my question. If it was an overturned ball, is it still a called third strike? It's definitely still a strikeout looking, but I need an official effectively wild ruling on whether the verb called is still applicable. So yeah, it's a ball, it's changed to a strike and thus a strikeout. Is that a called strike or a called strikeout? I mean, it is a called. Yeah, it's. It's a strikeout looking. But is it called?

[Meg Rowley]

I'm going to be annoying in my answer and I'm going to say, oh, but do I. Do I really think this or am I more committed to the bit than to my actual belief? I want to reserve called for the. For the umpire, but isn't it sort of dehumanizing to take it out of their hands? But they did get taken out of their hands, so maybe that's just. Just accurate. You know, if you were looking at the game day for say a, A a batter runner who gets called out at first base and then replay review reveals that actually the first baseman didn't hold the battery bag and didn't. Didn't have the bag and the. The batter runner was safe, the game day would indicate that the. Wouldn't it indicate that the. The batter runner had singled and then there would. It would note the overturn and it would just call it. Is that right though? See, I brought that up as an example and now I'm doubting myself.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So you're saying that there's precedent with replay review.

[Meg Rowley]

You know, what I did, I didn't see all weekend and I'm sure there was one, but I just didn't see it. Or maybe I just wasn't thinking. I didn't see a single replay review all weekend.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, it's like it's just been so supplanted.

[Meg Rowley]

Everyone's just so distracted. I'm sure there was one. I don't want to say that there were none.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No one cares.

[Meg Rowley]

But I don't recall seeing a single one of them. I don't. I don't have no memory of a replay. Only challenges.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, we only have eyes for the challenge system now. It's just the new hotness. Who cares about replay review? That's old Hat that I don't know

[Meg Rowley]

what the answer is because, like, technically you didn't do that. Right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, I. I don't think I would call it a called strike three. I don't think I would. I guess you could say the computer called it, but I can't decide what

[Meg Rowley]

I think the right answer is.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm gonna say, yeah, I'm calling it. I'm saying no, called strike three. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

No, called strike three. You just struck out looking.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, you struck out looking. It's a. It's a taken strike three. You took strike three. But, no, I don't think. I don't think it was a called strike three.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. Because it wasn't called.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No. Unless you say that having it called by the computer counts as having it called.

[Meg Rowley]

But I don't think I want that. I think I wanna. I think I wanna keep that for. For people. For human people.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah. We're gonna have to navigate this lingo as we go on the terminology.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, you and I especially, because we've. This is the bed we've made. Now we're gonna have to lie in it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know people come to us for official rulings which can also be overturned by some sort of system, I'm sure, But people seem to. To trust our authority on that. For whatever reason. Maybe because we're the only ones who care. We make a ruling, no one. No one bothers to overturn it.

[Meg Rowley]

I think it's because we're so confident. You know, maybe be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We're like C.B. buckner, just.

[Meg Rowley]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gesticulating with full confidence. Even if we're not. Right.

[Meg Rowley]

Well, I mean, I. I started that way, and then I got all. I got all flummoxed. I got all discombobulated. Ben. I don't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there are a lot of teams that still. There are some teams, not a lot, but some teams that just have not even issued a challenge. Like, they've just been left out of the party thus far.

[Meg Rowley]

Which are the teams that have not issued a challenge?

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's a good question. That is not easy to answer because it looks like on the ABS leaderboard at Baseball Savant, it just lists the teams that have challenged, and it looks like it's 26 of them. And.

[Meg Rowley]

Okay, so you just have to do a little process of elimination there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's like the Rockies have not yet issued a challenge, which I guess makes some sense. Rockies, but. But, yeah, it is going to be a big separator. I think there's some teams that are really going to take this seriously. Like, if you. If you haven't issued a challenge through the first four games, I wouldn't consider that to be a good sign. Even if you didn't have that many high leverage situations, there were certainly some. Some challenges. You're. You're passing up free strikes there.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. It does suggest a conservatism.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

And I don't mean that in a political way, but that. A reluctance. You need. You need to have some of them overturned because it. It suggests you aren't challenging enough of them if you haven't done any.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

I have to answer my own question. I have to answer my own question about the game day. I introduced it, and here I am being like, what is the answer? I'm going to find out, Ben, because I went to the instant replay database. There was one. I didn't watch that White Sox brewers game, which is why I didn't see it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Most of these are pitch result challenges, and I think you guys should separate these out. That's what I think you should do. You should keep the challenges and the replay reviews in separate spots because it's not the same people. It's not people deciding at all. Yeah, you know, you know, you know,

[Ben Lindbergh]

the Rockies, they did get around to it. They did eventually issue a challenge. I think they had through the first couple games, maybe, but. But they did. So they are aware that there is a challenge system. So that's good to know.

[Meg Rowley]

They are aware that. Okay, so brewers challenged play @first play first is in parentheses. Call in the field was overturned. And then we say, Gary Sanchez singles on a ground Balta shortstop Colson Montgomery, Luis Reno to second base. So that's how it appears in the game day. And so I imagine that that would be the way that I would want it rendered.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We're.

[Meg Rowley]

You indicate up front that there was an intervention. And then you say, x batter was struck out looking. Okay, you know. Yeah, that's how I would want to do it because then it focuses the action on the players, which is really what you want to know. What did the guy do? Right. What was his result? But then you do want to indicate whether or not there were challenges or replays. And so then you have to. To do a little bit of ba, ba, ba. Then you have to do a little bup, buh.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, I was mistaken. I think every team has issued a challenge now. So, okay, yeah, there is one team that has. Or no, there are a few teams that have not won one. So they have. Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

Does that include The Rockies, it actually does that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The Rockies, they're on the board. But as we speak here on Monday, the Astros, Cardinals and Rangers have yet to win a challenge. But every team is on the board has challenged. The Tigers and Rangers have challenged only once, whereas the White Sox challenged seven times. So I will be interested to see what the range ends up being. Again, I'm. I'm not concluding very much based on just a few days here, but I wonder how many multiples, you know, if, like, one team is seven times more challenges than another team now, now, how much will that narrow and will they all kind of end up being sort of similar? I think some teams will certainly, if spring training is any guide, some teams and. And who knows whether it is, because some teams were just experimenting. They were just seeing what worked and what didn't and getting used to the idea. But now it counts. So we'll see how many multiples of other teams some teams are when it comes to challenging aggressively. I probably wouldn't want to be the team with, say, one challenge at this point. I think, again, no. No peer pressure or anything. I'm just saying they look a little

[Meg Rowley]

nervous to do it, I would say. I think that especially the batters. The batters look nervous to challenge. They look timid to me. You know, have some confidence, boys.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's like you want to instill some. Some confidence in them unless it's a hit or you just don't want challenging at all, which at this stage, I don't think would be based on knowing whether any individual would be good or not, but it would maybe be based on just how good a hitter are you, that in theory, a better hitter should get more precedents, really, to challenge, to extend their own more valuable plate appearances. But, yeah, you wouldn't want to cow them to such an extent that they just feel unwilling to challenge at any time when it's, like, a clear advantage. But then how do you trust yourself? Right. Like, it seems obvious to you, but then maybe that's just because you're not seeing where the pitch was. Like, maybe you're just deceiving yourself. So it's kind of. It's hard to see, you know. And another thing that Sam pointed out in pebble hunting is that we are now seeing some instances of players having the body language just demonstrably signaling that they thought that it was a certain ball or strike, but then not putting their money where their mouth was and challenging. And so he had a couple gifts, like Cam Schlitler did what Sam called a Case drought. You know, like he thought that he got the, the called strike three. And so he kind of strutted off the mound a little bit. And then it was not called a strike, but he didn't issue a challenge, so he did the strut. And then he didn't actually say, I'm confident enough in my strut that I'm going to issue the challenge. And then there was another one. I think it was Dansby Swanson hitting. And he tossed his bat away like he thought he had walked, which historically has always been sort of, oh, showing up. The umpire. Umpire doesn't like that. But he did that. But then he didn't challenge. He was called back. And he was confident enough to. To toss his bat away and start walking to first, but then not confident enough to issue the challenge, which really, that kind of makes it look like false bravado, you know? Yeah, it's like, well, gee, if you're, if you're so demonstrative about it, then you better back it up by actually issuing the challenge. And then I guess there's a question of, like, well, if you tossed your bat and you're strutted, is it now too late? And have you, like, right. Done other actions so that, that your tap would be invalidated?

[Meg Rowley]

I had that thought this weekend too. I was like, oh, you, you kind of put yourself in a little bit of a spot there, right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that could, that could be too. But, but really, you gotta. If you're gonna walk the walk, if you're gonna strut the strut, you kind of have to follow through on it, I think, or else you're sort of showing that you don't have the courage of your convictions and that maybe you were just putting on a little display there and you didn't even believe yourself. It's just, it's bluster at that point.

[Meg Rowley]

Maybe you didn't. Ben, they've never blustered before. Never in their lives.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, no, no. And another thing Sam mentioned that we also got an email about, this was from Alex in Minnesota who said, can they make pitches not swung at with a base runner stealing a base? An automatic pitch review. So catchers don't have to be laser focused on two things at the same time. Between, between throwing out a runner and seeing if the pitch is a strike. The extra time on the throw down during all that commotion would take little to no extra time and seamlessly go into the next part of the game. So that's, that's an interesting one because I don't care for that well, see, often when. So the runner's going and the catcher. I think in recent years there was a preference for really presenting the pitch to the umpire because there's been so much emphasis on framing. Okay, we, we can't lose this strike, like even if it costs us the stolen base, we have to just pause for a second to present that pitch and then we'll throw. But that's going to affect your pop time. And now with the stolen base changes and the base running rules, you don't really have the luxury of taking even a split second to give the umpire a good look at that pitch. So what happens is you come up firing and you throw, but the umpire doesn't get a good look and it doesn't look like you received the pitch very well. Well, because you're in the process of hopping up and throwing and you're obscuring the umpire's view. And so the idea is, well, what if you made it kind of an auto review in that situation so that you don't harm the catcher's ability to restrict the running game. And yet because they're sort of being penalized one way or another now, it's like either they jeopardize the strike call or they jeopardize the throwdown to second. And they're already behind the eight ball when it comes to guys getting big leads and everything now. So maybe there's something to this. Maybe it would be fair to say if it's the situation like that and the call goes against you, then we're gonna kind of protect you. Auto. Auto review.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah, I feel like it's a little, I feel like it's a little easy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm sympathetic because I don't know if

[Meg Rowley]

I don't, I don't know if I like it. I don't know if I like it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, catchers, now you can also, you can still challenge, I guess. Like, you know, there was a, a case that Sam singled out. I think it was the Marlins. It was Augustine Ramirez and he threw, but also challenged. And it was a pitch that was like pretty much down the middle. And I think it was actually the, the most middle, middle strike that has been miscalled and, and overturned thus far this season in the early going and the ump missed it cuz he just couldn't see it cuz Ramirez was obscuring his view to hop up and, and throw. And now I guess the catcher, maybe you don't have to make it an auto review. Just because the catcher can challenge. And it worked in this case. It. It was overturned and Ramirez got credit for the strike. I don't know exactly at what point. Just watching the play, I couldn't tell like when he signaled for it, cuz he's in the process of throwing down the second. So like it's going to take a second to tap your helmet because you got to get settled after you got

[Meg Rowley]

to get the ball away.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So I think if the catcher can still feasibly challenge and complete the throwing motion and everything, then maybe nothing needs to be done. But if they are being sort of robbed of their ability to challenge because the throwing movement itself prevents them from issuing the challenge within the time allotted in that case, I could see some sort of recourse because then it's like a damned if you do, damn if you don't. And.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And they would really be in a tough spot.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know how I feel about it. I just. I'm nervous about expand. I'm very. I think I'm a little nervous now about expanding the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know, right? Yeah. You don't want to give any grounds because you're made me nervous system so.

[Meg Rowley]

Successfully made me nervous.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Any kind of carve out like this, it's does weaken the case for preserving. Yeah. It's like we can't. Can't give an inch or else they'll take it all. Yeah. Okay. You're going to have to be a hardliner here. Hey, what do you think of. Of my boy, Mr. Murakami hitting three homers in his first.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm not rooting for him to fail. You know, I'm not. I. I don't. I think that like people raised valid concerns and Ben mostly just said there's not a lot of precedent for this, but let's see how it goes. And so far it has gone big home runs, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's encouraging and it's great. I think I saw that he is the first player, I think, to homer and walk in each of his first three career games. So that's impressive. And you know, it was, it was coming against. I mean, he's playing for the White Sox, but they were playing the brewers and they've got some good pitching. That's a good team. I will say he hasn't really answered the critique, which is that he can't really hit hard fastballs because he didn't like. No, he hasn't really yet. At least the home runs were all on low 90s stuff and he has also struck out four times. So if you want to say that the knock on him is that whatever, he has a slider speed bat or something and he's prone to whiffs. Well, he struck out four times in 13 plate appearances. That's a 31% strikeout rate. And the Dingers have come on slow fastballs.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That said, there are still a lot of slow fast balls out there.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, and so if he can feast on those. And I, I saw some analysis I'll try and find and link to, but it was by a, a Japanese analyst who was looking at his NPB data and pointing out that yeah, he didn't do great on the like really MLB quality fastballs in Japan, which are sort of scarce that, that top end velocity, but a sort of a small sample just because there aren't that many of those pitches. But there was a, a marked decline in how he had handled those pitches I think particularly inside in the past few years relative to early in his career. But he really made hay on the slightly slower fastball. So yeah, maybe he was getting beaten by 95 plus but he was really feasting on 92 or whatever. And even now in MLB, like you're still seeing a lot of 92. You know, there's still enough of that that if you really were great and didn't miss many of those pitches, you could still be a pretty productive hitter. So now that might mean that in high leverage in the post season, should the White Sox make it back there during this contract, which, you know, tall order, but maybe he would have some tendency to not choke exactly, but be unclutch kind of because he was just, you know, not well suited to that type of matchup. So that wouldn't be ideal like if he was just kind of feasting on mediocre stuff and then you couldn't count on him when there was a good pitcher on the mound, that'd be bad. But overall the numbers could still be decent. Or maybe it's just, hey, it's, it's the first look that the league has had at him. Obviously they have the data, they have the scouting reports, they have the video, but haven't had their eyes on him so much.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that that might be right. But it's, you know what, it's better than him like striking out all weekend.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So yes, it is encouraging, you know, mildly encouraging. Again, the theme of this episode is don't chill. Yeah. Don't get irrationally any exuberant or the

[Meg Rowley]

theme of the episode is chill. As my voice continues to go to new octaves.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And the theme of. Of April, really, it is. It's an awkward time because like we want to talk about baseball, we want to watch baseball. We are filled with enthusiasm about baseball.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yet often what we do is analyze things and try to come to conclusions about them. And that's a dangerous thing to do late in March, early in April. So. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's for entertainment purposes only for the first little while here. And you just have to enjoy, just revel, you know, enjoy the spectacle of it without making too much of any individual players performance. But we'll see. And, and also couple brewers bits of brewers news. One was that they called up a prospect. They called up another prospect. Another catcher, Jefferson Caro, is up. And in fact, because the brewers and the White Sox were playing each other, the two Carrows were catching against each other too. The two Caros in major league history were. Were both catching opposite each other. Edgar and Jefferson, which was. It was fun. And also, evidently there is an extension.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Cooper Pratt. This news has broken while we were recording, but yeah, brewers prospect Cooper Pratt reportedly close to finalizing an eight year extension worth something in the range of $51 million with a couple club options. And this is interesting because Cooper Pratt is a Boris client and because he hasn't made the majors. He. He just debuted in AAA. He's 21. And we've seen, you know, it's becoming a bit more common to see extensions for players with no major league experience. But this one, like he's not knocking on the door. Exactly. Right. I mean, right. He's in aaa. I guess he's one level away. But it wasn't like we were on Cooper Pratt watch. Exactly.

[Meg Rowley]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that does feel kind of aggressive. And, and, and you know, he's like. I don't know where Fangraphs had him, but he's like a 50, 60ish range in most sources. On the top.

[Meg Rowley]

He was outside of our top 100.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay.

[Meg Rowley]

He's not a top 100 prospect for.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Got it.

[Meg Rowley]

Brendan and Eric.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, well, so, yeah, good for him. Yeah. And. And he's a. He's a, A large shortstop and he's a big guy. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. He was a 45 for US preseason on the brewers list that ran in November.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm guessing they're not bullish about his Stick it short stop Itude.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't remember candidly. I'm pulling up the report right now as we're chitchatting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He had a 691 OPS last year in AA, so it wasn't like he was totally tearing it up there either. So that's kind of an interesting one. Both the combination of, of where he is and what he's accomplished. And also Boris. We tend to think of Boris. Oh, he's going to take his guys to free agency, but maybe this was an offer even Boris couldn't refuse. It's like Jackson Churio, he signed an extension before he made the majors. Right. But. Right. He had finished the prior season at AAA and he was like on the verge of, of making the majors and maybe breaking camp with the big club. Which is not the case for Cooper Pratt.

[Meg Rowley]

Yes, for an athlete his size, he has good range and actions and the arm strength to make accurate off platform throws. It'd be too much to call him a quick glove caliber talent, but he should be above average there at peak there being shortstop. Okay. Pratt has a more demure offensive skill set is the next line. And I think that that is what kept him out of the top 100 is that there is concern that he will struggle against big league fastballs and have a dip in his overall performance once he sees big league velocity. That he'll essentially be late by nature of the way that his swing progresses. He loads his hands and they come to a dead stop before he fires them toward the ball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I see now.

[Meg Rowley]

I remember editing this. It was November, okay. God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, he's not late to signing an extension, getting his payday, so that's exciting for him.

[Meg Rowley]

Years. Like, for a guy who hasn't debuted, like, okay, you know, you're buying, you're. You're giving up at a discount, I guess. Two years of, of pre free agency. But like, it seems fine. 15 million a year before you've debuted. Like, that doesn't seem like highway robbery. That seems like it's probably gonna go okay, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I have no idea, really. But it's, it's interesting. It's just, it's surprising.

[Meg Rowley]

Million dollars? No, I'm not making $15 million a year. That sounds like a lot of money.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It sure does. I can't fault the man. And I think he's about 8 inches too tall for a Brewers infielder. So he's gonna be just.

[Meg Rowley]

It is gonna be. He's gonna look so funny, especially because he'll, you know, he'll be in the middle and so he's going to be like the. They could like hang a tent off of him, you know, and have it cover. I'll need to watch out in the event of a them having to bring the tarp out. Although I guess at home that won't be a concern cuz he'll just close the roof.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A giant among short kings on the Brewers, Cooper Pratt.

[Meg Rowley]

So he's. Oh no, he's Pooper Kratz.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's terrible if you do a spoonerism. But why would you.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Can I say one, one quick thing before we go? Boy, it's so nice to have Jason Benetti on national games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

What a. You know and I really appreciate. I don't think that I fully registered they were doing this and I think it's true on their other. Maybe it's true on the other NBC broadcast, but the Mariners Guardians game yesterday. Emerson Hancock. Good job, buddy. What a. What a time. You can tell how far we've progressed as a society that I have not seen any like Emerson Hancock, no hitter discourse today because it was like his first start and he was.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Have we progressed as a society or have we strayed further from God's light? I don't know. No. At this stage. At this stage. Yeah. No one bats an eye and obviously it's like it's the first weekend, so there's.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But. But whenever it is, it was like no one, no one pays any. He noticed to just someone being removed mid. No hitter anymore. It's. It's shocking how quickly the story on that has changed.

[Meg Rowley]

You know, this was the Sunday night game, although it was on Peacock because NBC also has NBA action. So they were on NBC proper. And the way that they are doing it or did it is, you know, Benetti's there and then he had local broadcasters from both of the teams. And I just, I think that that is a. I mean there's going to be variants in that strategy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right? Because.

[Meg Rowley]

Because yes, not every booth is great, but I think that Benetti can carry it and facilitate a conversation. I think it's a nice way to like bring different folks into the booth. And he's just, he knows what he's doing, man. He's really good. They're talking about Dominic Smith hitting a grand slam and I didn't realize I had just, I, I registered that Dominic Smith had done this not for either the brewers or the Mariners. That would have been funny because he doesn't play for either of those teams. But, but I registered that this had happened, but I had not registered that Dominic Smith's mother had passed recently from a long battle of cancer. And the way that, that they were talking about it was just so human and gracious. And, you know, they're talking about Dom Smith hitting a, a walk off grand slam for another team because the Mariners Guardians game had kind of gotten out of hand and so there was, there was room for contemplation of other questions. And he's just, he's really talented. And, you know, this sounds kind of like I'm like giving the stink guy sideways to espn and I don't even mean it that way. I just, I think that he is a really, he's really good at what he does and he really elevates whatever booth he's in. And I'm so happy that we get to like, have this guy be the national voice for NBC. I think it's a real. Yes, that's a real lift to the national broadcast. And, you know, he does it a little bit differently. I think that, like, he has more of a focus on the human and I think that he couples that with a much more easy fluency with advanced stats is like such a special combination. He's just so squarely exactly in my wheelhouse for what I want out of a broadcast. And so I'm really excited to get to spend more time with, with him, not just for Tigers games, which for Tigers fans, I'm happy you're not, you're not losing him. But yes, what a nice way to open Sunday night action. Yeah, that was cool.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it doesn't hurt that he shouts out this podcast from time to time, too.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, I don't dislike that. I don't have, you know, an expectation of that persisting. But yes, that is a nice thing

[Ben Lindbergh]

that it has happened multiple times. And when he says effectively wild, he will actually refer to the podcast. Every season at the start of the season, we get a bunch of people letting us know that someone said effectively wild, which I, I always appreciate the sentiment because it's like, hey, they're thinking of us and they heard that, they wanted to tip us off. We appreciate that. But also, we didn't come up with that term.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, we are not the original.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, we are named after that term.

[Meg Rowley]

Right? Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so when people say effectively wild on a baseball broadcast, it's not uncommon. And also is not a podcast reference unless it explicitly is a podcast reference, which occasionally it is, especially when Jason Benetti says it. But yeah, you don't need to let us know every time you hear someone say effectively wild, because, like, it gets said a lot if there's, if it's in some context, if the podcast is referenced, if it's I don't know, an effectively wild favorite player is described as as effectively wild. Maybe I would appreciate a heads up, but otherwise the thought counts. I do really appreciate the thought. But yeah, we're, we're not actually going to use that probably in any way. But, but yeah, but Eddie's the best and they have done that model before the sort of split booth and, and bringing in and as you said, it can be hit or miss because there is something to be said for the chemistry. And so if you haven't worked with someone in the booth before, then sometimes like there's needs to be a icebreaker period and then the game's over. Right. Like, I think Andy Dirks, who's Benetti's regular broadcast partner with the Tigers, is going to be in the the booth for Sunday Night Baseball coming up and then it'll be Brad Thompson for the Cardinals and then it'll be just Dirks and Benedy. So yeah, if you have your regular partner, great. But it doesn't always work as well as it seems like it should. But I think, you know, this is more prominent than like the peacock Sunday leadoff games a few years ago that they were trying that and I do have the utmost confidence in Benetti to handle that. Yeah, you know, it's not going to be awkward. Maybe it's not going to be like peak chemistry and camaraderie, but it'll be okay. And getting that local perspective, it's something we limit the loss of in the playoffs when we kind of lose the, the local voices and then you just get sort of the national storylines over and over again again. But yeah, it's nice to see him get that chance because seemed like he was blocked a little bit at Fox Sports. Like he, he had opportunities obviously, but there were other broadcasters ahead of him and, and nothing against those broadcasters, but want to see Benetti get his shine too. So yeah, all right. It's a lot of challenge system. I know nothing but abs. But it won't be forever. It's just all the rage right now. And you know our M.O. here at effectively Wild, always chasing trends, always talking about the popular topics. On last week's midweek episode, I mentioned the total running time of Effectively Wild as measured by a certain website that just scanned the feed and spat out the total runtime. And I said it was something like 83 days, which is a lot, but actually sounded a little low to me. Turned out it was low, as was pointed out in our Patreon Discord group by user Ben e There are a bunch of episodes in the feed without a runtime for whatever reason, and so evidently those weren't included. The total runtime is more like 27125 hours, not 1994. So that's more like 113114 days. So you know, approaching four months of continuous listening day and night. That is a lot of podcast. Also got an email from Patreon supporter Peanut Cheese Bar who says I hope I don't jinx this, but it appears that our long national nightmare is over. I was listening to different out of town radio broadcasts over opening weekend. I hope that nomenclature is acceptable. Sure, and it looks like local radio advertisements are back. Heck, I'm willing to risk the possibility of blanking on the term oppo taco during Final Jeopardy due to a lack of repeated exposure if it means I get to learn once again about the good clean fun they have at Soapy Joe's Car Wash in San Diego. Well, those are glad tidings indeed, not gleed tidings. I haven't listened too much baseball on the radio yet, but big if true, as they say. And finally, long time listeners will remember a running bit from the original SAM era where we used to mock how many people teams would adopt the slogan Burn the boats or Burn the ships. The story about how Cortez supposedly ordered his men to burn their boats to show them that they wouldn't be retreating. And we mostly mocked how this was just dredged up over and over and over again. Probably a football meme more than anything else, but definitely baseball too. Just real unoriginality on the part of many coaches who tried to use this to motivate their charges. I was sent a [e-mail] headline Syracuse Lacrosse was Will no longer wear Warm Up Shirts after Group calls Freys especially Cruel. So the Syracuse lacrosse team was wearing Burn the boats shirts at the behest of their defensive coordinator. And then some SU alums published an opinion piece in the Daily Orange. The gist of the piece was that the use of Cortez's phrase glorifies the conquest of indigenous peoples and disregards the indigenous origins of lacrosse. Given the colonial history of the phrase burn the boats, using it as a boastful slogan in any spirit sport would be deplorable, the authors wrote. But to use it in lacrosse, a sport still widely known as an indigenous game, is especially cruel. And a team spokesman said, we thank those in our community who brought the concerns associated with this phrase to our attention. The team will not be wearing these warm up jerseys going forward. So it seems that Burn the Ships, Burn the Boats has belatedly been canceled. Not for being cliched, hackneyed, but for being offensive. Thanks to those of you who continue to sign up for Patreon after our change to a partly paid model last week. If you'd like to get access to last week mostly paywalled pod or this week's upcoming one, or for that matter our bonus episode for March which we published on Sunday. We drafted the months of the year according to how good they are for sports in honor of March Madness opening day, and we also interviewed Effectively Wild Wiki caretaker Raymond Chen. So if you're interested in joining, you can go to patreon.com effectivelywild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast and help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners Jeff Altizer, Liz, Michael Puglisi, Squirrel and cj. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include the aforementioned exclusive episodes weekly and monthly, as well as access to our live streams, our Patreon Discord group, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, 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 podcastangrafts.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 effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or in the episode description in your podcast app. There you'll find links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then.

[Meg Rowley]

Where do you go in a world of bad takes for the good Takes on baseball and life with a balance of love, analytics and humor, philosophical music. Effectively wild. Effectively wild effectively wild.