Effectively Wild Episode 2468: The Baseball Barometer

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2468: The Baseball Barometer

Podcast: Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs), with Rob Mains
Date: April 21, 2026
Episode Theme:
A lively, analytical, and often humorous exploration of current baseball news and statistical oddities, featuring memorable baseball metaphors, emotional fan moments, the woes of the Mets, early season surprises, and deep dives into player performance and league broadcasting developments.

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1. The Scott Boras “Prosperity Turkey” Quote (00:39–09:10)

• Key Topic: Scott Boras's bizarre and memorable metaphor about baseball's economic health: "Baseball's prosperity turkey is done. The barometer says it’s ready to eat."
• Discussion:
  • Ben and Meg dissect Boras's quote, noting the misuse of "barometer" (should be "thermometer") and the odd analogy overall.
  • Quote:
    • Ben: "Baseball's prosperity turkey is done. The barometer says it’s ready to eat." (02:01)
  • They riff on the seasonal inappropriateness and the strange implications (is baseball’s boom about to be “eaten”? Does prosperity run out?).
  • Meg: “But then it's April... This is not when people are typically thinking about turkeys being ready.” (02:29)
  • They marvel at how Boras, a core baseball business figure, delivers an expert interview and then drops a wild metaphor.
  • Underlying question: Is this the peak of baseball’s prosperity? Is the “turkey” about to be picked clean?
• Tone: Amused, delightfully bemused, affectionate parody.

---

2. Heartwarming Baseball Fan Moment: Sibling Ball Exchange (09:15–15:55)

• Key Topic: A viral fan moment involving Pirates’ Jake Mangum
• Description:
  • Jake Mangum threw a ball to a girl in the stands wearing his jersey; her brother caught it, but immediately handed it to her, resulting in a sibling bear hug.
  • Ben: “I defy anyone to watch it and not get a little bit sappy about this because it's so heartwarming.” (11:09)
  • Discussion of how such moments are unique to baseball, given the tradition of throwing balls into the stands.
  • Meg shares a personal anecdote about sibling rivalries, contrasting typical sibling friction with this touching display.
  • Reflection on the special, story-laden souvenirs fans take home, and how these foster lifelong fan connections.

---

3. Accidental Challenges & Learning Curve in New Rules (15:59–21:05)

• Key Topic: Accidental pitch challenges, featuring Michael Lorenzen
• Description:
  • Lorenzen repeatedly used a gesture that unintentionally triggered official pitch challenges because he and his catcher, Hunter Goodman, hadn’t worked out clear signals.
  • Quote:
    • Lorenzen: “I gotta come up with a different signal... because I do not want to challenge any of that personally.” (16:54)
  • Discussion about the need for players to adapt gestures and the potential for “user error” under new rules.
  • Ben: “Don't use the actual official signal for the thing to suggest that maybe you should signal for the thing.” (19:59)
  • The humor and confusion underpinning the early adoption of rule changes.

---

4. The Mets’ Epic Losing Streak and Its Implications (21:09–39:40)

• Key Topics:
  • The Mets' 11-game losing streak: context, stats, precedent, path forward, and team “vibes.”
• Mets’ Situation:
  • Second-highest payroll, high playoff odds, high expectations—now in a deep hole at 7–15.
  • Loss of “margin for error” in playoff race; playoff odds dropped from 80% to 41%.
  • Key players underperforming: Lindor, Bichette, Semien, Polanco; injuries to Soto and Young.
• Statistical Precedent:
  • Only a handful of teams have made the playoffs after 11+ game losing streaks.
  • Deep playoff history comparisons (2017 Dodgers, 1951 Giants are rare exceptions).
  • Quote: Ben: "Since 1996 ... 64 teams have lost at least 11 in a row within a season... Of those 64, three finished above .500." (28:20)
• Vibes & Narratives:
  • Team’s morale appears poor ("just seem terrible around that team").
  • Jokes about curses and rituals ("Curse of Kokomo," sacrificing mascots, bringing back old "bits").
  • Meg: "Look, it pains me to say this, Ben, but they might need some bits, you know, the solution to their problem." (36:56)
• Upcoming: Potentially easier schedule, with optimism that regression might help.

---

5. Early Over/Underperformers: Munetaka Murakami’s MLB Start (48:42–62:22)

• Key Topic: Munetaka Murakami’s hot start with the White Sox
• Analysis:
  • Murakami is on pace for 59 home runs and a ~6 WAR season, combining a 153 wRC+ with a high strikeout and walk rate.
  • Baseball Savant percentile stats: 99th in barrel rate, 1st in whiff rate.
  • Unique “three true outcomes” player profile: extreme HR, walk, and strikeout rates.
  • Discussion on pre-season scouting skepticism (issues hitting high-velocity fastballs) versus his current MLB production.
    • Meg: “One of the things we can say definitively is that ... we could perhaps all do a little bit better of a job trying to sit with the uncertainty of forecasting players coming over from international leagues.” (55:01)
  • Likely that league adjustment is coming—will Murakami adjust back?
  • Ben: “If he could keep this working … the quality of contact is there … I want this to work. I want to believe that this could work. He's just... going full Gallo now.” (52:59)
  • Reflection on statistical modeling versus scouting, and the limitations of both.
• Tone: Curious, statistically analytical, cautiously optimistic.

---

6. Mason Miller’s Dominance: “Should You Even Swing?” (62:24–72:14)

• Key Topic: Padres reliever Mason Miller’s otherworldly strikeout run
• Stats:
  • 27 strikeouts in 38 batters, 0 ERA, negative FIP, near unhittable arsenal.
• Debate:
  • Should batters just not swing? Analysis shows Miller’s zone rate is low and yet hitters swing often (because the fastball/slider combo is so hard to identify).
  • Ben: “Maybe people shouldn't swing. I would suggest that, that swinging isn't working.” (65:18)
  • Discussion of psychological and strategic barriers—hitters want to swing, but Miller’s stuff is so overwhelming, “You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
• Context:
  • Contrasts Mason Miller with Roki Sasaki’s struggles in Japan.
  • The unique challenges facing hitters versus elite relievers.

---

7. MLB Streaming Rights and Proposed Legislation (72:23–84:12)

• Key Topic: Congressional interest in sports broadcasting and streaming blackouts.
• Details:
  • DOJ antitrust probe into NFL media deals.
  • Senator Tammy Baldwin pushing “For the Fans Act”: would make national games free to local fans, eliminate blackouts for out-of-market subscriptions.
  • Meg: "Do I have faith in government to regulate? I do. Do I faith in this government to regulate? I do not." (83:20)
  • Skepticism that legislative or bureaucratic action will yield meaningful change, but notable that the issue has reached Congressional attention.
  • Possible positive movement in the longer term, but entrenched interests and cable/league resistance slow progress.
  • Ben: “You can't just snap your fingers and make all of those deals void.” (81:21)

---

8. Stat Blasts & Listener Questions (85:04–113:44)

• Rapid-fire detailed stat explorations, many courtesy of Michael Mountain:
  • On-Base Streaks vs. Actual Times On Base:
    • Ohtani’s streak doesn’t count reaching on error/catcher’s interference—should it?
    • Meg argues against adding more subjectivity, citing consistency.
  • Reverse Standings by Run Differential:
    • NL Central had standings perfectly reversed from run differential, a historic oddity.
    • “The 2026 NL Central is not only the deepest into the season we've ever seen an upside down division ... but it’s the highest number of distinct win and loss records.” (96:21)
  • Name Matches (Pitcher/Batter):
    • Fun data on pitcher last names matching batter first names, with examples.
  • Solo First-Place Droughts:
    • Nationals haven’t been alone atop division since 2018; historic braves and Tigers droughts.
  • Runs in a Single Inning Only:
    • Phillies (2003) and Braves (1972) scored 13 runs in a game, all in one inning, still the record.
  • Promotions & Attendance:
    • Bobbleheads most effective; promotions increase attendance more on weekdays; diminishing returns with more frequent promotions.
• Listener Corrections & Follow-ups:
  • Ryan Christensen (A’s coach) found out he holds a unique HR record and was amused.
  • Feedback on whether pitchers/managers show pain/not post-injury; batters’ approaches after fouling balls off their foot.

---

9. Notable Quotes & Moments

• Scott Boras’s “prosperity turkey” becomes the episode’s recurring punchline (02:01, 06:38).
• Meg on mascot ritual sacrifices: “...you start with the giraffe, the evil looking giraffe. And you just see how many of them you have. You know, like do one a week because who knows how long you're gonna suck.” (46:00)
• On Mason Miller’s dominance: "Being a hitter against Mason Miller is worse than being the Mets. Maybe now, just in general." (69:53)
• Murakami’s wild split: "He is very true outcomesy ... Well, that can be fun as long as one of the outcomes is the home run part." (61:46)
• Ben, philosophically: “We try not to be too confident about anything. Maybe almost to a frustrating degree, but that's why it's hard to predict performance and predict baseball..." (60:59)

---

10. Episode Structure & Tone

• Sections are conversational and tangent-rich but always anchored in current events/statistical insights.
• Tone: Wry, witty, affectionate about baseball’s oddities, analytical but never stilted, with frequent self-aware asides.

---

Recommended Segments and Timestamps

• Scott Boras’s “prosperity turkey” discussion: 00:39–09:10
• Mets losing streak & existential despair: 21:09–39:40
• Munetaka Murakami statistical breakdown: 48:42–62:22
• Mason Miller, the unhittable reliever: 62:24–72:14
• NL Central “Upside Down” Standings: 92:09–96:39
• Listener Stat Blast highlights: 85:04–113:44

---

For listeners or readers wanting a memorable, entertaining, and statistic-heavy baseball podcast, this episode delivers everything from front office word salad, heartwarming moments, and the Mets’ misfortunes, to evolving player performances and the minutiae of league-wide broadcasting policies.

Transcript

[Ben Lindbergh]

If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben

[Meg Riley]

and Meg have to say.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Philosophically and pedantically, it's effectively wild.

[Meg Riley]

Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2468 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraph Spaceball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer. Ben, how are you feeling?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Good.

[Rob Mains]

Because I believe we've been blessed with maybe the best Boris quote ever.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, no.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So this appeared in a piece that Brittany Droli wrote for the Athletic published

[Rob Mains]

on Friday about the Padres sale price, which we podcasted about on Friday, and

[Ben Lindbergh]

various industry reactions and what it means for the CBA negotiations that the Padres

[Rob Mains]

have garnered this reportedly record price.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Scott Boris is quoted a few times in the piece, and unsurprisingly, he is of the opinion that this shows that the baseball business is robust and booming.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, we largely agree with him on that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

As we said. And, you know, some of the suggestion

[Rob Mains]

in here as well, are the Padres

[Ben Lindbergh]

kind of an outlier because of what

[Rob Mains]

we mentioned, that they don't have Big four competition in town?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Scott Boris downplayed that idea and

[Rob Mains]

said, I would say the truth is

[Ben Lindbergh]

the Padre's valuation outs the lies that baseball isn't at the most prosperous point of its existence, and some other unobjectionable, unremarkable quotes.

[Rob Mains]

However, there is one more that is just quintessential Boris, and it comes at the end of a longer quote. And I'll just read it to you, it's two sentences.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Baseball's prosperity turkey is done.

[Meg Riley]

What?

[Ben Lindbergh]

The barometer says it's ready to eat.

[Meg Riley]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, wait, wait, wait.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Baseball's prosperity turkey is done. The barometer says it's ready to eat.

[Meg Riley]

Can't wait. Okay, wait.

[Rob Mains]

Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So the prosperity turkey has been cooking and it's done.

[Meg Riley]

But then it's April.

[Rob Mains]

Yep.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's not at all timely or seasonally appropriate. You can eat turkey, Whatever, I guess. But this is not when people are typically thinking about turkeys being ready.

[Meg Riley]

Not in a non, like, sandwich context.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Also, you use a thermometer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's the other thing.

[Meg Riley]

Determine the Dungeness.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Our man, Mr. Boris, is using a barometer to measure the temperature of his turkey.

[Meg Riley]

But that's not. That's wrong, though, because that is not

[Ben Lindbergh]

at all the correct instrument.

[Meg Riley]

Right. Yeah, that's. That's pretty.

[Rob Mains]

Your food thermometer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I don't know what a barometer would say about a turkey's readiness.

[Meg Riley]

Well, I. Wait, wait, wait. So has the turkey been in the oven since November and now it's ready. So were you just like, sorry, Thanksgiving's canceled and we can't, we can't use this sucker at Christmas either because it's like, brings new meaning to the phrase low and slow, I guess. But it's. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm too, I, I, I can't be undone like this on a Monday. Ben.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't know what to make of this. It comes at the end of this longer quote about private equity and why

[Rob Mains]

they are enthused about 162 games of

[Ben Lindbergh]

inventory and content and selling stadium rights and all that stuff. And then suddenly he hits us with baseball's prosperity.

[Rob Mains]

Turkey is done.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Which is interesting because that suggests. Does he think that this is the peak of baseball's prosperity and that if it's going to go downhill from here, it'll be overcooked?

[Meg Riley]

Right. Or that you can consume all of the prosperity turkey and then there's no more prosperity to be had?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also picking the bones of the carcass of baseball. I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

Right. And like, a turkey is like a very finite resource. Now. There are a lot of turkeys in the world.

[Rob Mains]

That's true.

[Meg Riley]

And I'm given to understand that in some parts of the country, there, there's something of a nuisance. Turkeys can be kind of a nuisance bird in some parts of the countries. In other parts, maybe that's less true. But, but it, but like you, you make a turkey to eat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And then you eat the turkey, and then there's no more turkey unless you make another turkey. But this, this implies, like the baseball

[Rob Mains]

prosperity turkey, it's just one baseball is the turkey, and it's just been in the oven for 150 years or whatever, and now it's finally ready, which, yeah, suggests that now is the time, I

[Ben Lindbergh]

guess, to be charitable.

[Rob Mains]

Maybe he's saying now. It's, it's, it's appetizing. It's, it's ready. It's savory.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Rob Mains]

Smells are wafting from the kitchen and everyone is following their nose because they want a piece of baseball now. But yeah, when you start to think about it a little more, which clearly he wasn't counting on, it does kind

[Ben Lindbergh]

of fall apart on multiple levels. Just the barometer is the best, I think.

[Meg Riley]

Barometer. Because you don't, you, you use like a meat, thermometer Right. And yeah, you're not worried about, like, the barometric pressure of the bird. It's.

[Rob Mains]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And we talk about barometers in a

[Rob Mains]

figurative sense, you know, trying to sense which way the wind is blowing, but not the actual physical wind. So just, you know, trying to take

[Ben Lindbergh]

the air and, you know, see if, if things are getting better or worse or whatever. It works on that level. But once you've introduced the turkey and the idea of the turkey being done, then you really have to have the

[Rob Mains]

correct implement to measure that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And the best part is that this is the final line of the piece. This is the conclusion. This is the kicker. Like, you know, you want the money quote. It's like, what do I want to leave readers with?

[Rob Mains]

Okay, here's the one big takeaway.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it's Scott Boris saying, baseball's prosperity turkey is done. The barometer says it's ready.

[Meg Riley]

Right. Because the, the phrase that comes to mind with it is like, your goose is cooked.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And that's not a positive. You're not delighting in the, in the sudden presence of cooked goose. You know, and maybe that's a weird phrase, but that, the phrase has an, the saying has a negative connotation.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

It's just a goose and a turkey, those are different birds. Right. So we need an impugn the honor of turkeys because of the potential issues with goose. With geese. Oh, not with geese. That's a whole other, that's a whole

[Rob Mains]

other conversation in the music world.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But, but really, this is, this is

[Rob Mains]

the dichotomy Boris on display here because

[Ben Lindbergh]

he's cited as an expert and he is, I mean, who is more expert

[Rob Mains]

in baseball's labor relations and economic well being than its most powerful agent for decades?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And mostly we agree with, I think, his wider thoughts about baseball, and mostly

[Rob Mains]

he sounds like any other expert you're going to be quoting. And then suddenly this just, this comes out of nowhere.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The, the turkey analogy. It's not a, it's usually like a nautical analogy of some. So. And I guess bringing the barometer into it, maybe there's a hint of that.

[Rob Mains]

But, yeah, that's the best. And the fact that it's just left

[Ben Lindbergh]

to speak for itself as the final lines in the piece. This is what I will be thinking, which is a, It's a perfectly fine article and mostly fine quotes from Scott and then this.

[Rob Mains]

So the best.

[Meg Riley]

I want to have sympathy for it because I suffer from, you know, Reddit, never said it syndrome at times. And, you know, if I, if I Were to share some of my most embarrassing examples, people would be like, are you Jessica Simpson? We were so mean to her. Silly label. Seems like a fine lady. Yeah. It's a funny one. Your goose is cooked. Your turkey should have been done months ago.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I am heartened that he agrees with our underlying conclusion, Although now I'm concerned that we were actually reaching only divergent ones.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, that's a little moment of Zen for your Monday and maybe other people's Tuesdays by the time they're hearing this.

[Meg Riley]

And the moment that will undo me for the rest of the week. Maybe one or the other to bring

[Ben Lindbergh]

you back from that. Did you see the moment on Sunday, the fan moment, when.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. Jake Mancombe, this.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I am just. I'm such a SAP for these. When you get the crowds with the kids getting a ball, and it's just so heartwarming. And we've talked before about, are you

[Rob Mains]

actually obligated to give the ball to a kid?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And some grownups, they were kids, and they're still kids at heart. And maybe they never got a ball when they were a kid, and maybe they've been trying their whole lives. And sometimes I feel like people are

[Rob Mains]

piling on and it becomes this almost like Lord of the Flies sort of. Everyone's chanting like, give it to a kid.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And generally I'm all for that, and that's fine. But I also think, you know, sometimes

[Rob Mains]

you've earned it, a lifetime of fan

[Ben Lindbergh]

game going and you don't know the history there. So as long as you're not ripping it out of the hands of some child, then I'm. I'm not going to jump to conclusions.

[Rob Mains]

But I think it's always nice if you can sure. Give something good to someone else, kid

[Ben Lindbergh]

or not, but especially a kid, because maybe you're creating a fan for life and all of that. But this specific case, none of that

[Rob Mains]

really entered into it because it was

[Ben Lindbergh]

a kid giving a ball to another

[Rob Mains]

kid, and it was Jake Mangum of the Pirates, outfielder.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And the great thing about this. So he. He threw the ball between innings to

[Rob Mains]

a kid, and the kid who caught it was a boy with a glove.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Mangum's throw was maybe a little slightly off target. It was a little low because he was throwing it up into the second deck. Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

And the boy had to reach out and catch it. If he had not snagged it with his glove, it might have bounced off the facing or. Or been too low or something.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then the boy handed the ball to his sister.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Who was the intended target of the baseball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then the sister instantly, immediately just bear hugged her brother.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Mains]

And it's just, I defy anyone to watch it and not get a little bit sappy about this because it's just. It's so heartwarming.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it was heartwarming even from Mangum's end, because the reason, or one of

[Rob Mains]

the reasons that Mangum threw this ball to that girl, or intended to, is

[Ben Lindbergh]

that the girl was wearing a Mangum

[Rob Mains]

Jersey, a number 28 Pirates jersey.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Mangum is a new Pirates player. And he said he hadn't seen anyone in the park wearing his jersey yet. And so this little girl, it was a special moment for him to see his jersey in the stadium. So it was cool for him. And then it was cool for him

[Rob Mains]

when the brother caught it and handed it to the sister.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then I believe the father of the two, you could kind of see in the background of the clip who's just celebrating how heartwarming a moment this was. And it was just so joyous and so palette cleansing. And Mangum has younger sisters he's close to, and so this was special for him.

[Rob Mains]

And he was reminiscing about how when

[Ben Lindbergh]

he was a kid, he's bringing his glove. And we've even talked about, like, you

[Rob Mains]

know, what's the statute of limitations on bringing your glove to a game? And like, can you get too old for that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And again, I say, I don't think so, as long as you're not getting in anyone's way. But this was just so special and kind of an only in baseball moment. Just because other major sporting events, for the most part, don't have as many souvenirs. They don't have as many interactions of

[Rob Mains]

this kind between people on the field and people in the stands where you're just chucking baseballs in a good way to defense.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, I mean, every now and then a puck will. Will go into the stands or something, but it's not usually intentional like this. There's just way more foul balls and home runs and. And fans can keep them.

[Rob Mains]

You know, in the early days of

[Ben Lindbergh]

baseball, you had to give them back sometimes. Supplies were limited.

[Rob Mains]

But now you can have that souvenir in that memorabilia. And when it has a story like this, I don't know, it was just, I will break down watching any one of these clips. It's just. I don't care how basic that makes me.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's just I can watch this an infinite number of times or an infinite number of highlights.

[Rob Mains]

Like this. And it's special and tear inducing every time.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, it was just really lovely. And, you know, kids at that age, when they have siblings, it can be a frat bit of business. You know, I've. I've joked before on this pod that, you know, my sister and I, we. We tried to, like, kill each other at that age. Not literally alone. It was one knife incident, everyone was fine, and now we're like, so close, very dear friends. But you, you know, you have a. You have to come up together and sometimes you hate each other and you're annoyed. And especially if there's like an age gap, the older sibling can feel kind of haughty in comparison to the younger sibling. And so it's just a really lovely, sweet thing. And, you know, you can kind of see other older fans in that clip kind of moving, like they're going to try to get the ball. And so it was nice that, like, it went to its intended target and then it had meaning for the player, too. It's just a really sweet, nice thing. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And the boy is not old either.

[Rob Mains]

I don't know the exact ages here.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And so if there had been sort

[Rob Mains]

of a sibling lively about this, and I'm an only child, so I don't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't have.

[Meg Riley]

Understand any of this at all.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. I never had to share anything that I had. But only child syndrome.

[Meg Riley]

But, yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so you could imagine, maybe the boy has not gotten a ball, and

[Rob Mains]

maybe it was ambiguous which one of them Mangum intended to throw the ball to. I guess the fact that the girl was evidently wearing a Mangum jersey, maybe that kind of gives it away.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But the boy could have plausibly thought, oh, he was throwing the ball to me, or it's, you know, fair game. It's first come, first serve. It's in our general vicinity. I brought a glove, I made the play, I get to keep it. So it could have gone in a

[Rob Mains]

completely different direction, where suddenly it leads to a fight or something, and who

[Ben Lindbergh]

knows what happens this very short clip,

[Rob Mains]

but I don't want to know. But.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But yeah, in that moment, he instantly gave it to her, and she instantly

[Rob Mains]

reacted as gratefully as you could ever imagine. And it was just. I'm sure if they're like normal siblings,

[Ben Lindbergh]

they are often at each other's throats and not. Not bonding like this, but the fact that we got this one window into that relationship and then they get to enjoy that for the rest of their lives, hopefully they get to reminisce and See that clip of when they were

[Rob Mains]

kids, And I don't know. It's just really nice.

[Meg Riley]

It was a lovely moment. It was a really lovely moment.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A follow up on the topic of accidental challenges, which we talked about the last couple times, and we got at least two more since the last time we recorded both courtesy of a player who just seems to come up constantly on this podcast.

[Rob Mains]

He's just.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's like the. The Zelig of effectively wild, even though he's never actually been on. He was on the Ringer MLB show, but Michael Renzen, he challenged twice, both inadvertently. And I'm gonna just play a clip

[Rob Mains]

of Lorenzen explaining the miscommunication in here. And when he's talking about Goody, he is talking about Hunter Goodman, the Rockies catcher.

[Michael Lorenzen]

I'm looking at Goody, and I'm thinking, goody, what do you. What do you think? Is that close? Because we're not. I'm not trying to challenge anything. I don't want to challenge anything. And so it was just a natural reaction, like, Goody. Like, what do you think? Goody.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then.

[Michael Lorenzen]

And I get it. It's. I can't. I got to come up with a different signal, maybe of, like, goody, I thought that was good. And then I did it again on accident. Like, I didn't even mean to challenge it the next inning. I think I did the next sitting. And where I'm like, like, is that close? And then he challenged. I'm like, oh, I don't want to burn a challenge there. I was just asking Goody, but so I have to come up with something to where I can communicate with Goody. Like, I thought that was good. What do you think? Because I do not want to challenge any of that personally.

[Rob Mains]

Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So this is another example to add to the pile of accidental challenges, but I think another good example of how there's a learning curve here, and this seems to be user error.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Seems to be a skill issue. I mean, we were talking last time

[Rob Mains]

about how players will probably learn that

[Ben Lindbergh]

they have to stop tapping their heads or their helmets sort of subconsciously when it could be interpreted as a challenge. This is very funny, frankly, because Lorenzo is just like, yeah, I wanted to try to signal to Goodman that maybe he should challenge. And so his signal for maybe we should challenge was basically a challenge signal. He's just like, I'm gonna tap my head to indicate that maybe he should tap his head so that we could actually challenge. I think we can. We can lay this at Lorenzen's door. I don't blame the umpire for misinterpreting this one.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, it's funny too, because I just. Every time we hear about one of these and, you know, I think that there are probably a couple of others of accidental challenges that could fall into this same category. I'm like, you guys have so little time to do this. And, like, the mental processing. Isn't Hunter Goodman's sort of mental processing better spent just making his own assessment of the challenge worthiness? I also do love Lorenzo. Me, like, I don't want to challenge. I. I shouldn't. You know, I don't. I don't want to. And it's like, well, but maybe you do a little bit. Maybe. Maybe you actually do because you. You wondered, oh, is that one close? And like, he's. He's just. He's just back there, Michael. He's just back there looking at it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So he says he's gonna have to come up with a different signal. And I think that's a good idea probably. But, yeah, this is. This is very amusing, I think.

[Meg Riley]

So funny.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And one of them was correct. One of them was upheld or there was an overturn.

[Rob Mains]

And the other, it was incorrect challenge. Not that he was intending to challenge.

[Meg Riley]

It was a funny moment. I happened to have that game on during this sequence, and I was like, man, Hunter Goodman's having a weird day back there because he. He did it. And the. If I'm remembering the sequence correctly, his initial challenge was unsuccessful. And then, like, almost immediately, he did another one. And that one. That one was successful. But I was like, I think you guys are being too loosey goosey with these, you know, like, you gotta reign them in. And I didn't. I didn't see Lorenzen's little tap, tap, tap. Yeah, it was a wild game for a number of reasons.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anyway, people should learn from Lorenzen's example there. And yeah, don't use the actual official signal. Signal for the thing to suggest that maybe you should signal for the thing.

[Meg Riley]

Right?

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, Goody.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Goody reminds me of, like, reading the Scarlet Letter.

[Rob Mains]

It's like all the. All the town gossips are Goody something.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Goody Hibbins or whatever. You know, Puritans.

[Rob Mains]

That's probably not what Good Wife. Right? That's not the show which has been discussed on effectively Wild.

[Meg Riley]

But yeah, I believe it was. It was meant as a nod to Good Wife.

[Rob Mains]

Yes, that. That probably. I guess calling him Goody probably doesn't lead to a lot of confusion with characters from the Scarlet Letter, but signaling that maybe he should signal that that did in this case.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So one for two. Could have been worse.

[Meg Riley]

It could. It could have been worse. But there, you know, it's like, Michael, you're being a little bit of a doofus. And he clearly, he does know. He was. He was not defensive about it. He. He obviously volunteered this insight.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But, yeah, well, it couldn't really be

[Rob Mains]

much worse for the Mets these days. And we probably should talk about that. It's the talk of baseball. It can be briefly the talk of effectively wild. And they are off on Monday, which is when we're recording, which means that they cannot lose on Monday. So they've hit upon a way to

[Ben Lindbergh]

at least stall the losing streak at

[Rob Mains]

11 for one day.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So 11 losses in a row.

[Rob Mains]

That is. It's never good. It's not good at any point in the season. It's not good for any team. But it's particularly bad, really, for the Mets, who are coming off of a late season collapse in 2025, and then an overhaul of their roster. And then they start out by getting

[Ben Lindbergh]

their collapse out of the way early. I guess that would be the positive way to interpret it. But when you enter the season with the second highest payroll, the second highest

[Rob Mains]

projected playoff odds, the second highest projected win total, and all the baggage and history of just being the Mets, and then this happens, that's obviously going to lead to managers who were maybe on a wobbly chair already being on an even wobblier chair. This will lead to unrest as it pertains to David Stern, certainly.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Carlos Mendo questions about what is happening here is the season already lost and they are now down to 41.1% playoff odds.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

And 11.8% chance to win the division. And when the season started, they were

[Ben Lindbergh]

at 80.4% chance to make the playoffs and 38.4 to win the division. So they've lost basically half of their

[Rob Mains]

preseason playoff probability and, I don't know, two thirds or more of their division probability.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So we did talk after, what, the first couple weeks of the season about

[Rob Mains]

how penance can be lost in April,

[Ben Lindbergh]

as Dan Simborski recently wrote.

[Rob Mains]

And I'm not writing them off. I don't think they're a terrible team, but they have dug themselves a pretty

[Ben Lindbergh]

darn deep hole already.

[Meg Riley]

They have indeed done that. Dan will actually have a piece out tomorrow on the Mets and their skid. He'll inspire you to feel a little bit better about it, but not that much better about it. You know, Jay, Jay wrote about this team when I think they're losing streak was only what, eight games at the time.

[Rob Mains]

Their last loss came courtesy of Craig Kimbrell. Who else? By the way?

[Meg Riley]

Craig's. He's doing it for you there, Ben. You know, he's, he's helping you out. The offense has been quite poor over this stretch. They have scored, you know, sort of in the, in the midst of this run of 11 losses, they have not managed to score like really very much at all. They have two games in, in that stretch where they have scored more than three runs. They've been shut out three times, they've scored one run three times. So it's just been a very, very lousy sort of time. They got walked off in extras on Sunday. Yeah, I was like, oh, they're gonna do it. No, they didn't though.

[Rob Mains]

And it was Devin Williams who blew the save. It was Kimbrell who then suffered a loss.

[Meg Riley]

But yeah, and you know, like they're, they're not pitching particularly well, like really outside of McLean, Kodai Sanga's, I've been good, but the offense is the real, is the real killer. I mean, you're probably going to lose a game where your starter gives up 12 no matter how many you score. But some of these have been tighter margins that an offense that was clicking on more cylinders would have been able to sort of, of manage or overcome. I mean, I think when, when Jay looked at it, they only have two regulars apart from Soto, who is currently on the injured list, who are hitting at a league average clip or better, namely Francisco Alvarez and Luis Robert Jr. Jared Young, who was hitting well in limited action, is on the, the IL with a torn meniscus. So like that seems like going to tame. Well, that's what sort of paved the way for MJ Melendez's ascension to the, to the active roster. But Lindor has been bad and Bichette has been bad and Semian has been bad and Jorge Polanco has been bad. Carson Benj, whose last name I've only ever said correctly, has been really bad in a way that makes you think that like he could perhaps benefit from some more time down on the farm, but like to be replaced by whom? You know. So of the guys on the Mets who have at least 20 played appearances, so I'm cast in a wide net here. Only four of them, as I've said, are could be classified as like good hitters. Two of those four, Soto and Younger on the il, although Sodas should be back later this week. The remainder of the 13 all have WRC pluses that are not only sub 100, they're sub 80. Francisco Lindor is a 76 WRC plus bench. Yeah, so does.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's not the first slow start for Lindor as met but it's bad

[Rob Mains]

and he's not look great in the

[Ben Lindbergh]

field at times too. And obviously.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, okay, so we're, we're Talking about

[Ben Lindbergh]

an 11 game losing streak and that's

[Rob Mains]

half of their season at this point. They played 22 games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So yeah, the numbers are going to be bad.

[Rob Mains]

And they are. They have the fifth worst run differential in baseball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Only the Phillies, Phillies are dead last in that case category. And the the Royals, who've also been having a rough time of it, lost seven in a row. And the White Sox and the Blue

[Rob Mains]

Jays defending AL champions.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So there are some pretty good teams or teams that were expected to be good that are off to slow starts there. And we got an email from a Mets fan named Brian who just the subject line was need some hope? Just as a Mets fan I need some hope right now and wanted to

[Rob Mains]

know about precedent and has anyone ever had this sort of losing streak and

[Ben Lindbergh]

still made the playoffs? And yeah, a handful of teams have.

[Meg Riley]

It's not very many though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's not very many though.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, you're already getting to the point.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's.

[Rob Mains]

It's not even a handful really. It's three teams. It's the famous 1951 Giants, the 82 Braves and the 2017 Dodgers, who were famously weird and hot and cold.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Then last year's guardians had a 10 game losing streak. They came back to make the playoffs. There are a few other wild card

[Rob Mains]

era teams, teams that had nine game

[Ben Lindbergh]

losing streaks and made the playoffs.

[Rob Mains]

2023 Diamondbacks, 2012 A's 2010 Braves Joshian had the stats.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Since 1996, the first full 162 game season with eight playoff teams, 64 teams have lost at least 11 in a row within a season. Some of them did it more than once. Of those 64, three finished above.500.

[Rob Mains]

And those 2017 Dodgers were the only one to win more than 84 games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's a pretty short list. Now all of those lists of how

[Rob Mains]

many teams to do this or not do this made the playoffs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's skewed to the point of perhaps being unhelpful to look at the past present because the playoffs have expanded so

[Rob Mains]

dramatically that for most of MLP history

[Ben Lindbergh]

you had a lot fewer playoff teams and it was a lot harder to

[Rob Mains]

qualify for the playoffs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But even so when you have this short a list of teams that have had this sustained a stretch of losing and have recovered from that to make the playoffs, it's easier to do that now than at any previous point in history other than the past couple years. So that's the reason for hope. And the playoff odds still give you some hope. It's 40% or so, but that's a lot lower than it was a few weeks ago. So, I mean, the reason for hope is that they.

[Rob Mains]

You look at the names and it

[Ben Lindbergh]

seems like it should still be a pretty decent team.

[Rob Mains]

And the projected rest of season winning percentage according to the playoff odds page

[Ben Lindbergh]

started the season at 5:55. Now it's 5. 40, which is actually a pretty big

[Rob Mains]

drop for 22 games, but still 540

[Ben Lindbergh]

rest of the season. It's just that if they hit that target and play.540 baseball the rest of the way, they're an 82, 83 win

[Rob Mains]

team and they'd have to really luck out to sneak into the playoffs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So they have to be considerably better than that. Can they be better than that? Yeah, sure, I think they could be. But the fact remains that the preseason expectation for them was like a 90

[Rob Mains]

win team, and now it's down to 82, 83. And so you're just losing whatever margin for error you had. And yeah, I mean, it's. It's tough to come back from something like this. And unless you believe in the gambler's fallacy, which has fallacy right there in

[Ben Lindbergh]

the name, then you don't think that a cold streak streak produces a corresponding

[Rob Mains]

hot streak after that to kind of make up for it. Right.

[Meg Riley]

There's nothing that guarantees that you'll play better.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, I mean, they will play better, but they won't play correspondingly better. Yeah, necessarily. So it's not like, yeah, we're just getting our losing out of the way. And maybe you'll look back at the end of the season, then they will just have gone on a tear and

[Rob Mains]

they'll end up with 88 or 89

[Ben Lindbergh]

wins or something, and they will squeak into the playoffs or perhaps even by a more comfortable margin. And then we'll look back and laugh

[Rob Mains]

at how dire things seem to be in April.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But as of now, there's no guarantee of that.

[Rob Mains]

It's far from a guarantee.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. One thing, you know, sort of related to this, though, that I would. I would mention, and I don't feel bad spoiling part of Dan's piece, because by the time this goes up, it'll be hours away from being posted. You know, many of the teams that have fallen into this bucket historically have been expected to be very bad to begin with. Right. And so if you are looking for a reason to have some hope, it's that, you know, one could probably argue that the true talent of a lot of those clubs is a lot worse than what it might be for this Mets team. And so while you're not guaranteed to have like an equal and offsetting win streak in the future, your odds of playing meaningfully better than you are at your lowest point. Points seem higher for the Mets than they would be for, you know, a club that was expected to only win 65 games going into the season.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Riley]

The other thing about it is that those rest of season expectations also inform rest of season strategy. So if you have committed big payroll to a team and you think that you're actually much better than this, well, maybe you don't and you, and you start to get some traction and that is a key part part of this. Right. You just keep losing. It doesn't really just going to be bad and probably miss the postseason again. But assuming that your fortunes sort of turn around and you're able to start scoring, that the return of Soto helps some. Although the degree to which they are failing to score seems like it is a problem that is going to require more than even one Juan Soto to remedy. But you know, assuming that they can kind of turn things around and right the ship and then maybe go on a little bit of a run, the likelihood that they say sell at the deadline is lower than it would be for a club that was expected to be bad, was worse than that, and then proceeds to continue to be poor and then maybe has, you know, a really ugly post deadline record because they've traded away all of their other good players. Dan has something on this as well. So I think that there are circumstances that are not unique to the Mets, but that probably put them in an importantly different bucket of lousy team than some of the other lousy teams that are grouped in this cohort. And it helps that the Phillies have been bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there's only one winning team in

[Rob Mains]

the NL East, Atlanta. So that helps spit.

[Meg Riley]

And Atlanta is far exceeding preseason expectations. So that division is to some degree being defined by aberrant performance, which again is not a guarantee that like it necessarily will write itself or the that it will write itself in a way that is sufficient to sort of flip the script. But it does seem like there's just like a lot of early season yuck going on in there or yay if you're an Atlanta fan. They made Crook wear a suit on Sunday night baseball like a caged animal.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that's unnatural.

[Meg Riley]

Look, I'm on record as having some complaints about John Smoltz. And for those of you who think that I have a mean streak when it comes to curmudgeon, I present to you my limitless affection for John Krug, who is a treasure who should be protected at all costs and allowed to wear comfier clothes. They even made him slick back his hair. It would have been better if they, if they had been like, hey, so John, it's the national broadcast and you know, Benetti's gonna be in a suit and C.J. nikowski is gonna be in a suit. So you should, you should probably wear a suit. And you can't wear the team polo. I know you love the team polo, but you gotta wear a suit. They should have let him, they should have made him wear the suit, but let him wear his hat. You know, he normally wears a baseball. Yeah, but all that to say weird stuff's going on in the NL east, the Mets are losing all the time and John Kruck wears suits now, so who knows what's going on over there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But not that he really looked distinguished in the suit. I mean he looked like Chris Farley in the van down by the river

[Rob Mains]

sketch sort of where he's a motivational speaker. You know, it's, it's not like he,

[Ben Lindbergh]

he looked super corporate and professional, but it just, it seemed unnatural.

[Rob Mains]

Why you trying to force Croc into conforming?

[Meg Riley]

It looked bizarre. You know, I, I'm, I think that that man should get to go to funerals in comfy clothes that look, it's just, you know, be yourself, John. And he, he still was himself on the podcast because yeah, he's a national treasure. Y All of that to say, should you have hope? Well, I don't think that there's any reason to throw in the towel on hope entirely after 22 games. That feels quite premature. But got their work cut out for them now. And I think that, and you know, this is a, a Vibes based read of the situation which might not be supported by science. The vibes also just seem terrible around that team right now. Like they, the guys seem kind of in a bad way and you know, no one enjoys being on the wrong end of a 7 and 15 record.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Be hard pressed to find a team that was on an 11 game losing streak where the vibes are great.

[Meg Riley]

It would be, it would be a little disconcerting if they were like, no, everything's fine. You would worry that they didn't perhaps appreciate the stakes of their circumstance. But it doesn't seem like a club, at least from a distance. And again, this is. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe everything's fine, but it doesn't seem like a club that is radiating. No. Like better days are just ahead for us.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

So I guess. Look, it pains me to say this, Ben, but they might need some bits, you know, the solution to their problem.

[Rob Mains]

Wow, that's true desperation. When Meg Riley is calling for bringing the bits back.

[Meg Riley]

Look, it's an 11 game losing streak. I don't enjoy seeing Francis go Lindor look dejected like this. This. That makes me sad.

[Rob Mains]

This is the equivalent of burning sage or whatever to try to improve the spirits.

[Meg Riley]

Just what is your humpy? And how can you ritually sacrifice him? Because I don't think you're allowed to kill Mr. Mutt probably, or Grimace probably around anymore. This is the problem. Maybe this is why they should have had one bit and it should have been Grimace. You should always have. In much the same way that sometimes a manager's job is to get fired. Sometimes like a secondary mascot's job is to get eaten by a man. Care. You know, and so what is. And you can't. I, I don't think that you can kill either Mr. Or Mrs. Matt. You definitely can't kill Mrs. Met. I, I would entertain arguments. You can't kill a lady mascot. It's. It's unchival rest. Plus that dog deserves to be preserved. But you gotta contemplate some hard choices. So who is Timmy Trumpet still around? Probably not, because Edwin Diaz isn't on the team anymore and he's a real person, so don't really.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, I mean, the latest bit is that people are. Are calling it the Curse of Kokomo because.

[Meg Riley]

The Curse of Kokomo.

[Rob Mains]

So after Brian Wilson died last year, the Mets played Kokomo as a tribute at Citi Field.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Kokomo was part of it.

[Rob Mains]

And Brian Wilson had nothing to do

[Ben Lindbergh]

with Kokomo, even though it's.

[Rob Mains]

It's a Beach Boys song. He was not with the group at the time. He was not writing that. He was not playing that.

[Meg Riley]

And that's so imperious rehearsing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And look, I'm Pro Kokomo.

[Rob Mains]

For anyone who thinks it's like the worst song ever, I think it's fine.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's cheesy, it's, it's schlock, but it's good.

[Rob Mains]

I don't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't care, you know, and you can get me to criticize Mike Love at any other time. But Kokomo, I quite enjoy. I'm sorry.

[Rob Mains]

And I enjoy the video and I enjoy John Stamos's role in it and in the Beach Boys in general.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I don't mind Kokomo, but it

[Rob Mains]

is not an ideal choice to play as part of a Brian Wilson tribute.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So anyway, the mets are are 47

[Rob Mains]

and 70 since the team played Kokomo on the day of Brian Wilson's death last June. And this became kind of a Reddit sensation and has been going around.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So yeah, the curse of. Of Kokomo could be. Maybe. Maybe that's the new bit.

[Rob Mains]

Maybe you have to play a more fitting Beach Boy song to exorcise the demons or something. I don't know. But yeah, that's the latest explanations.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But when you're at the point of.

[Rob Mains]

Of reaching for that as an explanation, it does suggest how bad things have gotten.

[Meg Riley]

What other bits could they do?

[Ben Lindbergh]

They could just do the bit of

[Rob Mains]

being better at baseball and getting Woto

[Ben Lindbergh]

back and then Francisco Lindor and Bobaette

[Rob Mains]

being good players as they have been before.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And also they do have an easier stretch of schedule coming up and, and not a tough schedule really projected for the rest of the season, but they

[Rob Mains]

do have, after they face the Twins, these surprisingly successful Twins.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Then they play six against the Rockies, three against the Nationals, three against the Angels.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not that all those teams have been pushovers, but still, that should help a little bit. Plus, I said they were projected to end up around 83 wins. Well, they ended up at 83 wins

[Rob Mains]

last year despite everything that went wrong at the end.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And they almost made the playoffs. I, you know, it would have forced

[Rob Mains]

the tiebreak game if we still had tiebreak games, if we were still a civilization and played out tiebreakers instead of having statistical ways to settle that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So if they end up that bad again, they could still make the playoffs. So the bar. The bar is lower. Anyway, I think better days will be

[Rob Mains]

ahead because there could hardly be worse days ahead. It doesn't really get much worse than this, I hope.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Famous last words, but I would not be feeling great about my job security if I were Carlos Mendoza and he was already somewhat in jeopardy and so

[Rob Mains]

perhaps his squid could be fried if this continues for much longer. But you know, I'm not a big believer in firing a manager to light a fire under a team or anything. While it's hard to say struggles like this are his fault.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He doesn't seem to be helping.

[Rob Mains]

Definitely doesn't seem to be a tactically gifted skipper.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Which you can forgive if everyone's getting along great and the team is doing okay.

[Rob Mains]

Harder to forgive if everything's on fire and you're pouring fuel on the flames.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But I think regression will be their friend.

[Rob Mains]

Just will it help enough?

[Meg Riley]

It. Will it be a sufficiently strong regression?

[Rob Mains]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it does. I guess.

[Rob Mains]

I stat blasted and wrote over the off season about high turnover teams.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And how history is.

[Rob Mains]

Is not great with the high turnover teams. And that all else being equal, if you had a high degree of turnover

[Ben Lindbergh]

from one year to the next, that

[Rob Mains]

bodes il for you that stability when it comes to a roster is generally good. And that can be for a lot of reasons. Obviously if you have a good team,

[Ben Lindbergh]

you don't have to have much turnover. You just bring everyone back. But even holding the goodness of your

[Rob Mains]

team and how many games you won the previous season, constant. Just having a ton of turnover tends to be bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I thought that the Mets would overcome that because I thought that the guys that they ended up with were good

[Rob Mains]

enough to do that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I think they will still look good eventually.

[Rob Mains]

Does that have anything to do with the slow start, the team not gelling because it's a bunch of new faces and players at new positions?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't know.

[Rob Mains]

These are all kind of post hoc explanations we come up with to try to make sense of a random universe.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Michael Lorenzen]

Well.

[Meg Riley]

And you know, it's one of those things where one has to acknowledge that. Sure. Can difficulty with positional adjustment not the positional adjustments, but adjusting to a new position affect your performance at the place? Almost certainly. But the, the bats, they're very sick. And I think that that is probably a problem that extends beyond. Okay, so Ben, I have a suggestion for the. For the Mets. I've come up with it and I. I blame you for not immediately interjecting here. Okay. Did you know, and I don't know if they still do this, but the Mets have a five borough mascot race now.

[Rob Mains]

Oh yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Okay. So here's the thing. You can't ritually sacrifice the Empire State Building in New York because of 9 11. And it's probably bad to do so. So they, you know, like how many teams have mascot races like say the Mariners with Humpy and the other fish, the pierogis, the presidents in the Diamondbacks have the Legends race. They never let Randy Johnson win as much as they should. I continue to think that there's something Weird going on with that. They have, they being the Mets apparently introduced the 5 Burrow mascot race.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Last year. And the options are car. The queen's mascot is a little 7 train and it's got a funny little bird on top. Like, you know when the birds get stuck in the subway. That's not funny. You always feel bad for them. They seem very stressed. But there's a subway car. There's a piece of pizza, a lady piece of pizza. She's a woman piece of pizza. She's not shaped like a woman, she's shaped like a piece of pizza. But she has lady features. She represents Brooklyn. And then you have the Empire State Building with sunglasses and like a, you know, an arched eyebrow representing Manhattan. And then the Staten island looks like a fairy. And then the Bronx mascot is a giraffe from the Bronx Zoo that looks very like, dangerous. I don't understand why they made the. The Bronx guy looks so dangerous other than maybe this is just a dig at the Yankees. Right. Because that's the borough where the Yankees also live. But like the Bronx giraffes wearing a white T shirt and it's dirty. I don't need to know why. So I'm just saying start with the Bronx one because it's the most unnerving and just start ritually sacrificing. The mascots from the burrow race obviously save Queens for last. Really try to avoid sacrificing the Empire State Building because again, like, I'm not trying to make light of it. You don't want to induce trouble.

[Rob Mains]

Supposed to be just a generic skyscraper.

[Meg Riley]

I think it's not supposed to be the Empire State Building.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't think so.

[Meg Riley]

Well, I think my logic stands regardless of the nature of the building. I think you, you just don't want to do like building related murder in New York. That's form. So I, I think you start with the giraffe, the evil looking giraffe. And you just see how many of them you have. You know, like do one a week because who knows how long you're gonna suck. You know, you need to have room to continue the mascot murder until morale improves and then. And see where it gets you. I don't. The, the, the more I think about it, the worse I feel about the pizza one. We will, we will find and send. We will link to a photo in the show notes. The pizza one is demonic, actually. Yeah, it is.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. I think that's the most disturbing.

[Meg Riley]

She's got a headband on and like, you know, 80s style track pants. But then her. Her mouth and nose is a mushroom. Her little rosy cheeks are, I'm assuming, pepperonis. But then she also has a little rosy cheek pepperoni up above the. The headband, which makes it look like she's got like an air pimple up there or something. I don't know what the eyebrows are supposed to be. They look like they're supposed to be a food of some sort, but it's not. Is that. Are they supposed to be onions? They're purple. Are they supposed to be purple onions? I don't care for her at all.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think eggplant.

[Rob Mains]

I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

That's not what eggplant looks like. Anyway, I'm just saying, you know, the bits served you guys well. Although their. Their magic proved to be limited. Right now you have no bits and you're mired in a slump. You could try to resurrect a bit, but it's going to feel like you're forcing it. Although that was true of the bits before. And so I think, you know, nothing doing but ritual sacrifice at this point and playing better baseball. But you have more direct control over the ritual sacrifice. Arguably, yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Maybe. To head off pedantic emails, I should

[Ben Lindbergh]

note that Brian Wilson vocals did appear

[Rob Mains]

on the Spanish language version of Kokomo.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, really?

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's so funny. There is a Spanish language version on which Brian did sing, so I don't know whether that invalidates the curse of

[Rob Mains]

Kokomo or not, but do with that information.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Wow, it's a good song.

[Rob Mains]

I don't care what anyone says.

[Meg Riley]

That feels like a young PR person's mistake. Sorry, young PR people. That's like someone who's not steeped in the lore being like. Just pick the most upbeat one of the songs.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, probably. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Other Wilsons are on it. Or at least one. One other Wilson Car Carl, the voice

[Rob Mains]

of an angel on that song and every song.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, let's also talk about a better

[Rob Mains]

than expected start by my man, Munetaka Murakami.

[Meg Riley]

So, yeah, you're just anticipating the entire slate of articles running at Fangraphs for me, by the way.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, well, he is on pace for 59 dingers, so that seems good.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, and something like a six WAR season.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And he has a 153 WRC. Plus he has eight actual homers to

[Rob Mains]

date after homering in each game this past weekend.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And the line and the stat cast percentiles and all of it highly entertaining because so funny at baseball savant. Now he's in a 99th percentile in barrel rate. So he has hit the ball hard more often than just about anyone else

[Rob Mains]

on a rate basis.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And he also has has a first percentile whiff rate. So it's just the quintessential swing hard in case you hit it. When he makes contact, it goes a long way. He hits it very hard, but often he does not make contact.

[Rob Mains]

And so he has walked a lot. He has upwards of 20% walk rate.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also has struck out in exactly a third of his plate appearances, which is a lot. But obviously if he could could keep these things in balance the way that they are now, if he could keep slugging and keep swinging, missing, it would

[Rob Mains]

work overall and he would be a valuable player even though he's not giving you much on the bases and he's maybe an average first baseman, if that. I mean he's not giving you much defensively.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's just, it's all about the bat. And the bat has hit the ball

[Rob Mains]

very hard when it has hit it. So.

[Meg Riley]

Mm.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I've been fascinated by him for a while. I mean, I wrote about him years

[Rob Mains]

ago and then this offseason when he ended up getting so much less money from the White Sox than he was forecasted to get from someone. And then there was a chorus of scouty types breaking down the swing and looking at here's how he's performed against 95 mile per hour plus fastballs. And as we covered last week, the

[Ben Lindbergh]

average four seamer is essentially 95 now. So it seemed not to be a good sign for him that he was coming over to a league where he was going to be facing even more high velo.

[Rob Mains]

And he hadn't done so well against it in recent years in npb.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I was purely scouting the stat line when I was sort of more

[Rob Mains]

optimistic just because he has been good in the past and he was great

[Ben Lindbergh]

in the second highest level league in

[Rob Mains]

the world, adding a very young age. But also he did most of his

[Ben Lindbergh]

mashing when he was very young.

[Rob Mains]

And then the past couple years he was good, but not as good, but also injured. He had been hurt. Yeah, he had been hurt.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And. And 23 and 24. He played full seasons basically and was

[Rob Mains]

worse and struck out more. And then 25, the numbers were good again. But he played 56 games and he

[Ben Lindbergh]

was injured so it was pretty hard to forecast.

[Rob Mains]

And I kind of defaulted to anyone

[Ben Lindbergh]

who was that good when he was that young.

[Rob Mains]

Like there's got to be something in there that he won't be just a complete basket case when he comes over here and he'll look totally overmatched. But when you dug into the swing

[Ben Lindbergh]

metrics and the stuff and everything, it

[Rob Mains]

was reasonable to think that he might struggle in the transition.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And he still very much might. I think it's still an open question.

[Rob Mains]

So I'm not declaring during victory or that everyone who thought he was going to be bad or unplayable was wrong. Like it's very possible that this extreme balance that he has going on here will not stay in balance and that

[Ben Lindbergh]

the strikeouts will soar and the balls will not keep soaring. You know, right now he has a.208

[Rob Mains]

batting average and he is slugging.542 and on basing almost.380.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so if he could keep this working and you know the, the quality of contact is there and the expected weighted on base is 93rd percentile and everything. So I want this to work. I want to believe that this could work. He's just, he's going full gallo now. And so yeah, the, the shape of the production is I guess very much what was forecasted.

[Rob Mains]

It's just that the slugging has more than made up for the whiffing thus far.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Far.

[Rob Mains]

But will it continue to. That is the question. So he has a 153 WRC plus the fan graphs, depth charts, rest of

[Ben Lindbergh]

season projection is 123wrc which would be fine. Which would be you know, still like an above average player and worth the

[Rob Mains]

kind of small contract he got relative to expectations. So I think if he can do that, I think this will work out well for the White Sox. But can he keep doing anything like he has done to date is the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The question and remains a mystery.

[Meg Riley]

It's also funny and I don't want to get too far into this because again someone is writing about it for the sake tomorrow. Did you just look at this line? I mean you are in there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm just. Guess I'm talking about a couple of the biggest stories in baseball.

[Meg Riley]

So you mean to say that your reason for it and my reason for suggesting it to Ben Clements were identical?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Good, good editorial judgment on both of our parts, I guess.

[Meg Riley]

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. It is funny to look at his performance by pitch type. Also just given what everyone expected destroying fast balls and can't. Can't hit a look against secondary. So that's very funny considering that one of the primary concerns which I think was a fine one to raise was that his performance against sort of MLB caliber velocity had been quite poor relative to the rest of his performance. Performance. And obviously he was not seeing the same sort of frequency of high velocity fastballs in NPB that he was likely to see here. So there's the fact that not all of those fastballs have been particularly hard that he's hit well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But anyway, yeah, he hit the grand slam I think on Friday on a 98 mile per hour pitch.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. It's not that there haven't been any.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

One of the things that we can say definitively is that, that we could perhaps all do a little bit better of a job trying to sit with the uncertainty of forecasting players coming over from international leagues than we are. Because I think folks were right to raise concerns about his capacity to hit high velocity. And you know, when you have exposure to the data of VSA Synergy Sports like we did at fan graphs, it was like, oh, this, this might be a problem for him and there isn't a lot of precedent for a positive adjustment here. So it's something to keep in mind. And it's clearly something that affected his market. And it's not like, you know, all 30 teams were like, well, you know, Eric says so well, I guess we aren't going to sign that guy. Right. I think that this was an industry wide concern, but I think that the way that that ended up playing out in the like, public discourse around it, particularly as it pertains to Murakami as a potential draft target in fantasy, was this guy will never do it. And that's not exactly the same thing. And I think that even, you know, like, Bauman had really pronounced concerns about some of his contact stuff when he wrote about Murakami, which they, those were fair. Those are fair concerns to raise. And sometimes you get a guy who can figure it out and also sometimes you've played in 21 games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep, yep.

[Meg Riley]

So like, who knows what it's going to look like. But I also think that this like, stretch of good performance that he's demonstrated shows why this was just a worthwhile gamble for the White Sox to take, regardless of what its results ended up being. Because the upside on that signing is, you know, stretches like this and will he continue to hit like this the whole season? I don't know. Does a.208 batting average bother you more if you, you know, aren't just like obliterating every ball you do make contact with? I mean, probably. But also right now, in addition to hitting.280, slugging four at 5:42. So yeah, that'll play at least for a little while. So I think it was a worthwhile experiment and I'm excited to see kind of where it goes because I'm sure that the teams that face, you know, the White Sox next are gonna, they're just gonna have more on tape from this guy. They're gonna have a better scouting report, the league's pitchers will make an adjustment, and then it'll be incumbent upon Murakami to make an adjustment back. And like, that'll be fun to watch too. So.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, and I think in theory, that

[Rob Mains]

adjustment should happen more quickly now than it used to when. Yeah, all you had to rely on was having faced a guy personally in a lot of cases.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Now, I mean, we're talking about what

[Rob Mains]

the scouting report was coming into the

[Ben Lindbergh]

season, so everyone knew that and teams

[Rob Mains]

obviously had that data on him and video and he's in the WBC and everything.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So there wasn't really a shortage of information. But I think probably some players, maybe they're not paying as close attention to the scouting report as they should, or maybe he makes some adjustments and he adapts. But you know, we've seen other guys

[Rob Mains]

start slow, like Okamoto, who I was

[Ben Lindbergh]

similarly high on, so you never know for sure. But with Murakami, no one questioned the

[Rob Mains]

strength and the pop. So that was good. Because sometimes the question is, well, will the power translate?

[Ben Lindbergh]

No one questioned whether the power would translate. In Murakami's case, it was just, how

[Rob Mains]

often will he be able to get to that power by actually making contact with the baseball?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And thus far the answer is often enough. So his ceiling is still somewhat limited as a player just because unlike Joey

[Rob Mains]

Gallo, whom he's often comped to, he's playing first base and not excelling in

[Ben Lindbergh]

any area, whereas Gallo was actually a pretty good all around athlete for a while. Good to find. Yeah. And even if this works out with Murakami in the short term, will he age? Well? I don't know, but that's not an immediate concern because he's only 26 years old. So. Yeah. And there were some systems, like, I think Pakoto was pretty high on him. You know, if you were just looking at the stats basically, and how he

[Rob Mains]

excelled at a young age, then you would probably be pretty optimistic and bullish about how it would translate.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's almost a case where, like, the more information you had, probably the lower you were on him.

[Rob Mains]

And so was that a mistake? Were you hyper focusing on smaller samples?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because it's not as if he.

[Rob Mains]

He had faced that many really fast pitches over there too.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that in itself was sort of a small sample. And then one thing we talked about was well, will he just adapt?

[Rob Mains]

Because maybe he wasn't that good against

[Ben Lindbergh]

those pitches because he didn't face them

[Rob Mains]

that often over there. And maybe here he'll be aware that he has to and has to be

[Ben Lindbergh]

quicker to those pitches. And maybe he will, but easier said than done. So I don't know. I continue to remain fascinated by him

[Rob Mains]

and if I had to bet, I, I wouldn't bet on him staying at a 153 WRC plus I'd probably take the under on that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But I think I might take the over on the prediction which has already

[Rob Mains]

come up a bit since the start of the season.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So somewhere between the 153 and the 123 I guess is where I would figure that he'll sit somewhere in there and, and we'll see. And you know, I mentioned this. There was a Japanese analyst wrote a

[Rob Mains]

piece about how, how although he had struggled against some of those faster pitches, he totally crushed the slightly slower ones.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And even if the league average is

[Rob Mains]

95ish over here, well, that means that you're still seeing a lot of pitches that are slower than that. And so if you're really feasting on

[Ben Lindbergh]

those, then that's going to help you.

[Rob Mains]

But, and obviously you're seeing a lot of slower offspeed pitches. Although as you noted, that hasn't really

[Ben Lindbergh]

been to his benefit. So anyway, yeah, I guess don't be

[Rob Mains]

too confident about anything. We try not to be here at Effectively Wild. Maybe almost to a frustrating degree, but

[Ben Lindbergh]

that's why it's hard to predict performance and predict baseball.

[Rob Mains]

But that's also what makes it fun

[Ben Lindbergh]

to follow because we don't know we're all in suspense. But yeah, it's been fun just to

[Rob Mains]

see him hit some titanic taters and like be a pretty personable guy through a TV from afar. So I'm enjoying it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And, and I, I almost hope that he maintains this super extreme.

[Rob Mains]

Just like bats, 200 slugs, 500.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean that's, it's kind of a fun profile.

[Rob Mains]

It can be super frustrating when a

[Ben Lindbergh]

guy like that slumps and is just

[Rob Mains]

getting all the whiffs without the dingers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But when both are coming fairly fast and furious, then yeah, that'll play and it's fun.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. And especially cuz he's, as you noted, walking a good amount. It's like your, your impression of him when he is, is going like this is just a rather extreme one. Right. It's like he is very through true outcomesy and. Well, that can be fun as long as one of the outcomes is the home run part.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. And I could imagine that maybe if, if he were facing elite pitching, if

[Ben Lindbergh]

he's in the playoffs or something, maybe he would be more exploitable than other hitters who were equivalently good.

[Rob Mains]

But that probably won't be a problem

[Ben Lindbergh]

that the White Sox will face this season. So.

[Rob Mains]

Wow.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Speaking of whiffs and missing bats, a little Mason Miller update for you.

[Rob Mains]

Here he is now through 11 and

[Ben Lindbergh]

a third innings on the season.

[Rob Mains]

He has faced 38 batters and he has struck out 27 of them.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So 38 batters, 27 Ks, two walks and two hits.

[Rob Mains]

And then every now and then there's

[Ben Lindbergh]

an actual out on a batted ball. But yeah, that's. That's pretty much it.

[Rob Mains]

He still has not allowed a run. He's 0 ERA. He's at a negative 1.11 FIP. He has looked totally nasty.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I don't know if you saw

[Rob Mains]

he had a strikeout on a pitch that Oswald Peraza of the Angels swung at. And if you haven't seen it, I'll just. I'll send you a clip so that you can experience it as we listen because it's quite something thing where this

[Ben Lindbergh]

pitch is absolutely nowhere near the strike zone.

[Meg Riley]

It's so.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't know. But yeah, and there were, there were comments kind of denigrating Oswald Peraza and what was he looking at? And. But I kind of just give a pass to anyone who's facing Mason Miller because I don't know, like, it seems like it's impossible for everyone. One, and this was particularly embarrassing, but also I guess I would understand basically

[Rob Mains]

any swing and miss at a Mason Miller.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This was in the dirt and I

[Rob Mains]

don't know, like a foot outside or something. I mean, it had to be up there on a list of like the farthest from the strike zone pitches that someone whiffed at or swung at at all.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But that's what he's doing. He's making everyone look similar. And so it's reached the point now where I'm wondering whether the optimal approach

[Rob Mains]

against Miller is actually not to swing. Yeah, I mean, obviously I would go up there not swinging. I would go up there not swinging against every major league pitcher. Probably that would be probably the better idea for us.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But even for an actual major league hitter, I gotta think that maybe just not swinging at all would be the

[Rob Mains]

best strategy at this point, because he

[Ben Lindbergh]

has actually like there's a high swing rate against him.

[Rob Mains]

So of the, let's see, there are 231 pitchers who have thrown at least 10 innings thus far and he ranks

[Ben Lindbergh]

40th in swing rate. So he has the 40th highest swing rate, 49.7% and he actually has a fairly low zone rate.

[Rob Mains]

So the percentage of pitches that he has thrown in the ABS zone, this is 45.2% and that's 174th highest out of 231.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So if he's getting lots of swings and he's also throwing a lot of pitches outside the strike zone, well, maybe people shouldn't swing. I would suggest that, that swinging isn't working. So it, yeah, I just, it, it becomes kind of a meth equation of what are the odds that he throws four pitches outside the zone before he throws three in the zone inside.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Compared to what are the odds that something good happens if you approach the plate appearance normally, which obviously are low.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Even if you don't think this is

[Rob Mains]

quite his true talent. Even if you just take his Padres tenure, which is up to 33 games, 34⅔ innings, I mean that's, that's a half a season at least for a reliever. So I don't know how to estimate a reliever's true talent. I guess that's part of what makes it hard to project reliever performance.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But that's like a half a season.

[Rob Mains]

And I don't know, relievers, they might change, their true talent might change after more than that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So even over that span, he has

[Rob Mains]

a 0.52era and a 039 FIP. And he struck out like 19 per

[Ben Lindbergh]

9 or something with a few more walks last year. So even if you took that as his true talent over this stretch, which won't necessarily continue, but that's.

[Rob Mains]

Hitters have been so bad that maybe

[Ben Lindbergh]

just kind of hold the bat menacingly but don't actually try to do anything with it. I mean, yeah, I guess part of. And I was chatting with other Ben

[Rob Mains]

about this too and he said, he pointed out that part of the reason maybe that his zone rate is so low is because he's ahead all the time.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Rob Mains]

So you'd almost have to look at his by count zone rates cuz he keeps getting ahead and then he can finish you off with the slider and he doesn't have to throw the slider anywhere near the strike zone, obviously. So yeah, if you adjusted for that,

[Ben Lindbergh]

maybe it's, it's not like he's super wild, but it's just.

[Meg Riley]

No, he's not.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it's funny, the, the stuff plus metrics haven't really changed for him that much this year or even relative to years before he was on the Padres. But the location plus is, is up this year. So maybe he has had better locations or commands. But it's.

[Rob Mains]

I don't know. How can you even tell? Cuz like anyone will swing at anything with him.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's basically a two pitch pitcher. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard. It's like, well, it's either the slider's coming or he's going to throw the fastball which is sitting 101 point something. How hard could it be to tell the difference?

[Rob Mains]

Difference.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Obviously very hard.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because major league hitters just aren't able to do it or if they are able to do it, they still can't hit it.

[Rob Mains]

So. Yeah. I don't know. Don't swing. Maybe not swing.

[Meg Riley]

Swing is the way to go. It's less good advice than when I was being like a rookie truther during the postseason where I was like, you guys should just stop. Just make it through your strike. You should.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

See if you can throw a strike. Because sometimes it seems like he can't do that. And I don't think that it's quite that same way with, with Miller. Because you're right, he's not like especially wild. No. But maybe you'll get lucky.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, right. That's the thing.

[Rob Mains]

It's like you only have to be better than like completely terrible.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Which is.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

What everyone has been against him.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And no one wants to go to the plate not swinging and you're not

[Rob Mains]

supposed to go up there looking to take a walk. And obviously hitters become hitters because they like swinging the bat and they, they want to swing and so they probably wouldn't feel great if you gave them

[Ben Lindbergh]

the instruction, don't swing. They're probably going to resent that and

[Rob Mains]

they're going to feel like, well, you know, it's the arrest and development meme. It's like it didn't work out for them. But it'll be different for me.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It'll be different for me somehow. But yeah.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's approaching the point of I. I

[Rob Mains]

think, you know, we'd have to. To run the numbers more rigorously maybe. But depending on what you think the baseline for your actual expectation for success

[Ben Lindbergh]

against Mason Miller is, you're probably still screwed either way. But maybe you're still. You're screwed a little less if you just try to work a walk and

[Rob Mains]

get on base somehow.

[Meg Riley]

I wonder if you could convince hitters to do it. If you put it in terms of like, well, this will mess with. With him. You know, this will. This will throw him off his equilibrium. If you go up there and just, like, mean mug and keep the bat on your shoulder. Because that's not. There's a desperation to all of these abs, you know, there's like a.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, it's. It's desperate times right now for them.

[Meg Riley]

Sort of a flailing desperation.

[Rob Mains]

Being a hitter against Mason Miller is worse than being the Mets. Maybe now, just in general. So, Rob Rookie, you mentioned Roki Rookie's been.

[Meg Riley]

I know. It's not great.

[Rob Mains]

That's not great.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that's not great at all.

[Meg Riley]

It could. It could be better, you know, we could.

[Rob Mains]

Much, much better.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, we could.

[Meg Riley]

It could be going better than it's been going, which is pretty bad. You just gotta stand up there and see.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. This is for two different reasons. It's like one guy, you think maybe

[Rob Mains]

he just can't throw a strike, and so you might.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But against Roki, like, people are hitting him too. I mean, he's given up dingers and everything.

[Rob Mains]

With Mason Miller, it's a different proposition. It's not that he's wild, it's just that he is so dominant and unhittable that this might be the only way to work your way on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And of course, this is contingent on him not knowing that you're doing this is the thing. I mean, maybe it would throw him

[Rob Mains]

if no one swung at him, but then maybe also he would say, oh, you're not gonna swing? Well, I'll just lob one in there. I mean, that's the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's the fatal flaw in my plan

[Rob Mains]

to work my way on by going up there not swinging is that Mason Miller knows that I'm not a major

[Ben Lindbergh]

league hitter and he doesn't have to be careful with me.

[Rob Mains]

But.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, if you could fool him into thinking that you were trying and not actually try. Yeah, maybe it's. It's worth a shot at this point.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Rob Mains]

I almost want to go back and look like plate appearance by plate appearance at him. And you can never really come up with the counterfactual of, well, if this guy hadn't even been intending to swing, but.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If you just played that game, would

[Rob Mains]

you have gotten to ball four before

[Ben Lindbergh]

strike three with each of those guys?

[Meg Riley]

Maybe. And it's. Yeah, and it's tricky too, because, like, it's not like he is obligated to employ the same sequence of pitches. Right. So like if, if he go, if someone goes up there and doesn't swing, well, that surely Mason Miller is going to adjust what he wants to do and, and try to get you to swing.

[Rob Mains]

Yes.

[Meg Riley]

He also has agency and two very terr.

[Rob Mains]

He's not a terrifying simulation. He is actual Mason Miller and he can see what you're doing. But.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, terrifying, just totally nasty.

[Meg Riley]

And yeah, he's incredible.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's gotten to the point where I,

[Rob Mains]

I really think you might, you're just,

[Ben Lindbergh]

you're, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't really, you know, might

[Rob Mains]

as well try something different. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. You know, like what, what, what's the worst that could happen? It's already bad. And anyway.

[Rob Mains]

Yes. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And also just wanted to note that there are some, some rumblings about legislative or governmental meddling, I guess would be the negative way or regulation might be more positive depending. But there are some, some intimations that

[Rob Mains]

maybe lawmakers might do something about streaming rights and the very fractured streaming landscape

[Ben Lindbergh]

that we have talked a lot about. So this came up. There was a Bloomberg report about how

[Rob Mains]

the Justice Department, which is maybe a misnomer sometimes these days, has opened an

[Ben Lindbergh]

antitrust probe into the NFL to see whether its deals with, with media companies are driving up costs for consumers.

[Rob Mains]

Because there is an antitrust exemption. There's the 1961 Sports Broadcasting act that still governs a lot of things in 1961 is like pre cable, let alone pre streaming. Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But maybe this is because everyone in Congress is old and they're having trouble figuring out which channels the games are on. I don't know. But, but that's a real concern that we have discussed. And so they've started to talk about

[Rob Mains]

whether this is actionable in some way. There's a broadcasting exemption in the Sports Broadcasting act and so there's leverage that

[Ben Lindbergh]

the NFL has to extract high prices and then maybe that gets passed on to consumers. And so the Wall Street Journal has been writing about this, Bloomberg, and this

[Rob Mains]

also came up in an MLB context too because evidently this scrutiny is not limited to the NFL. It's maybe extends to other leagues as well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And FCC chairman Brendan Carr, whom some

[Rob Mains]

people may be familiar with because of

[Ben Lindbergh]

various incidents involving late night talk show hosts.

[Rob Mains]

This is a guy who seems quite

[Ben Lindbergh]

willing or eager to try to force

[Rob Mains]

people that he doesn't care for to

[Ben Lindbergh]

conform just through the threat, perhaps the

[Rob Mains]

vague threat, threat of governmental crackdowns of some sort.

[Meg Riley]

Vague is one one way that you could describe it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not, not very vague in all instances.

[Rob Mains]

But he said last week, I think

[Ben Lindbergh]

you could make the argument that there's

[Rob Mains]

other sports leagues out there that are potentially pushing the limits of the Sports Broadcasting act even further than what the NFL has. The NFL is something that everyone is

[Ben Lindbergh]

aware of and focuses on and so I speak of it just as a

[Rob Mains]

shorthand, but we are focused more broadly on other leagues, leagues as well. So these probes are going on and planning to examine the streaming rights of other leagues that are subject to the Sports Broadcasting act as well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And there is also a bill that

[Rob Mains]

has been introduced by Senator Tammy Baldwin, who's a Democrat from Wisconsin, which will be called the for the Fans Act.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it's again supposed to kind of counter this issue and decrease costs for consumers and make local games easier to access and also ending blackouts for fans with out of market subscription.

[Rob Mains]

So there was an Athletic piece about this and Baldwin talked to Andrew Marchand and just talked about the frustration, how hard it is to watch your games, how costly it can be. And so is there something that could be done about this if enacted?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm quoting here from the Athletic the new bill would impact the NFL, mlb,

[Rob Mains]

NHL, NBA, wnba, MLS and nwsl, among other leagues.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All nationally televised games involving pro teams from a state would be made available for free statewide via broadcasting or streaming

[Rob Mains]

and on a consistent channel or service. This is similar to the NFL's policy

[Ben Lindbergh]

with TV partners that mandates free local

[Rob Mains]

access for fans of participating teams in nationally streamed games like Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is leveling the playing field for fans, baldwin said. Sports leagues and teams of all sizes will continue to be able to make

[Rob Mains]

money from advertising and media rights. We just want to have some basic ground rules to bring down costs for fans.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Another thing the deal would do is make it so that services like MLB

[Rob Mains]

TV or NFL Sunday Ticket or NBA

[Ben Lindbergh]

League pass other platforms that offer the majority of games for out of market fans would no longer have national blood blackouts when games appear exclusively on a

[Rob Mains]

streaming service requiring an additional fee.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it would ensure that fans outside

[Rob Mains]

their team's home market who are paying

[Ben Lindbergh]

for complete out of market packages don't

[Rob Mains]

lose access to their team's games that have been cherry picked to appear exclusively on streaming services requiring additional payment. So if you subscribe to mlptv, you can't be blacked out of those national

[Ben Lindbergh]

games, which often are some of the choices. Racist, right? So do you think, do you have any Confidence in our government.

[Rob Mains]

I could stop right there in our

[Ben Lindbergh]

government to, to try to regulate this in a positive way. Baldwin's in favor of keeping the Sports Broadcasting act, wants to keep that status

[Rob Mains]

quo, but then wants to try to tinker within the margins to improve things that. Do you think like regulation will deliver a us from this fractured streaming landscape fractured and expensive, or do you think that leagues will sort themselves out in some way?

[Meg Riley]

I have very little confidence in leagues sorting themselves out in a way that is going to positively redound to the benefit of consumers. So there's that. Yes, I have more faith in congressional regulatory action than I do in this Justice Department or FCC to do anything. Because my Meg guess of the motivation to do anything about this on the part of the various departments that are part of the executive is that maybe our president's so mad he wasn't allowed to buy the Buffalo Bills and so he wants to go after the NFL. I am also mad at the NFL about that, that you couldn't take that L for us. Sorry. Like, I know that it's been a tough time, Bills fans, but you know, you made that all of our problem. That's not fair. It wasn't the fans who did that, was it? But I think that I would, in an administration that didn't seem like it was trying to wield the power of the FCC to punish political adversaries, be in favor of more rigorous broadcast related regulations to try to maintain some semblance of public interest, to try to protect consumers from outrageous costs. I'm generally a pro regulation person, so there's that. But that sort of runs counter to the general vibe we're living in right now, you know, tbd, I guess.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there are all sorts of bills

[Rob Mains]

introduced in Congress that have some sort

[Ben Lindbergh]

of people friendly title like the for the Fans act and how could anyone

[Rob Mains]

be against a For the Fans Act? And then it just, it doesn't go anywhere really. And it's, you know, kind of a quixotic thing. So I assume that this will be

[Ben Lindbergh]

another example in a long line of those. And there are just a lot of business interests that would be against it.

[Rob Mains]

And those businesses can lobby a lot and spend a lot of money to

[Ben Lindbergh]

keep the money rolling.

[Rob Mains]

And so I'm not optimistic really of great reform here.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But it does seem like something that would be broadly popular which might help

[Rob Mains]

at least there's not going to be much blowback aside from the lobbyists. No one is going to complain about making it easier and cheaper to watch sports, which, you know, is one of the few bipartisan issues out there. Everyone likes and watches sports, so you

[Ben Lindbergh]

could certainly garner some, some popular appeal

[Rob Mains]

with something like that. But yeah, will this, will there be actual follow through here and enough people lined up to support these things? I kind of doubt it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I don't know whether I have less confidence in the leagues and broadcasters to regulate themselves or in the government to regulate them. It's kind of not much confidence either way really. But you know, we've talked about in

[Rob Mains]

the MLB context how we have been higher on the leagues and Rob Manfred's efforts when it comes to broadcast stuff than in many other arenas and sure

[Ben Lindbergh]

he does seem motivated to do away with blackouts. People hate blackouts. It's like they're. There are a lot of existing deals

[Rob Mains]

and frameworks and infrastructure. Like you can't just snap your fingers and, and like make all of those

[Ben Lindbergh]

deals void is the other thing.

[Rob Mains]

So that's why I'm another reason why I'm sort of skeptical that a bill

[Ben Lindbergh]

is going to just be able to end those things.

[Rob Mains]

But in the long run there's at

[Ben Lindbergh]

least some movement toward that, toward greater availability and being able to sign up for your team's package and just stream things in market.

[Rob Mains]

So there's some signs of hope in that area.

[Meg Riley]

Well, and I do think that there are differences between say the broadcasting priorities of the NFL compared to mlb. Right. Because you have, I know that there are carve out for local markets and what have you with national games for NFL stuff. But like the big national deals are the priority. You know, you just have a greater sort of existing precedent for prioritizing the national over the local. You don't have a notion of like as long of a schedule. So you I think can be a little more creative with how you spread out your inventory in mlb. But like we have generally been appreciative of the tone that Manfred has brought here. I mean I do want to make clear that my expectation is that he wants to get rid of blackouts so that the league can control all of the broadcasting rights and then charge you for them.

[Rob Mains]

You know, not out of the goodness of his heart.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Riley]

Like his goal is not to like return us to hey, throw an antenna on top of that bad boy and see what your local game looks like. Right. Like that's not what he wants. He wants you to be able to buy, you know, a consolidated MLB TV package where you are paying for ideally all of your local teams games and hopefully the out of market stuff too. And guess you get to spend, send that, you know, check to. Right. It's going to be the week. But I think that getting it to a place where you can accommodate streaming in a way that makes sense for a lot of, at least for a lot of young people and avoid blackouts like those are worthwhile endeavors. My expectation is that I will have to pay to watch baseball. But that's true now too. Right. So is the amount going to change dramatically? I mean, maybe. I do think that they have a pretty good sense of like what the upper bound for that stuff is, but we'll see if that ends up being true. So I, I just think that. Do I have faith in government to regulate? I do. Do I faith in this government to regulate? I do not. I do not. But I don't think regulation is really the goal for the current administration and it's retribution. So that might have something to do with it.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And consumer protection, not, not high on the list of priorities really. We just saw with the, the Ticketmaster settlement and subsequent judgment and fortunately some states and people are pressing on with, with that kind of antitrust legislation. But I think it's, it's noteworthy at

[Rob Mains]

least that this has reached the point the fan un rest has reached the point where at least there's governmental grandstanding going on about this, if not actual action. It has reached the point where enough people are pissed about it that yeah, the highest halls of government, these cries are echoing and people are at least saying things that they think will please people. So that kind of tells you. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And, and one email I wanted to answer from Paul about Shohei Ohtani's on base streak. He's up to 51 and you know,

[Rob Mains]

there are many, many people in many games between him and Ted Williams at the top of the leaderboard with 84. But this has been a biggish story because it's Shohei and it's a fairly long streak and because he for a while had the simultaneous on base streak and scoreless streak as a pitcher going on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So Paul says. I was at the Dodgers Rockies game

[Rob Mains]

on Saturday where Shohei extended his on base streak to 50 games with a two out single in the top three ninth.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Except he had already reached base twice that game.

[Rob Mains]

Once on a fielding error and once on catcher's interference.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But neither of those counted toward his streak. This feels wrong to me.

[Rob Mains]

An on base streak should mean how many games you've reached base regardless of how you got there. I realize the idea of an on

[Ben Lindbergh]

base streak comes from on base percentage and for obp it probably makes sense not to count errors or fielders choices, but I still feel like these outcomes should count for streaks, streaks.

[Rob Mains]

Does it bother you that the terms on base percentage and on base streak

[Ben Lindbergh]

aren't counting the number of times that

[Rob Mains]

someone got on base? Is there another term we could use for this?

[Ben Lindbergh]

So it does bother me a little bit just because yeah you have a

[Rob Mains]

times on base stat and it's like hit, walk, hit by pitch but it doesn't count many other ways that you can get on base whether you're reaching on an air or drop, third strike or yeah, catcher's interference or fielder's choice or something.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Now some of those it. I guess it bothers me that something where you might have helped you might have done something positive is not counted like a catcher's interference. I guess you could say you were

[Rob Mains]

just the beneficiary of that without having done anything to earn it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Exactly.

[Rob Mains]

You have to be aware of it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But even like reaching on an error, it's not.

[Rob Mains]

All errors aren't created equal of course, but we do know that there is some skill there. It's. There is like a recurring pattern to who has reached base on error a lot. And you know that depends on like

[Ben Lindbergh]

being fast or shooting the ball to a certain side of the infield or hitting the ball on the ground or hitting the ball hard or whatever it is.

[Rob Mains]

Like there is some signal that there that shows up year after year.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But then again if like an on

[Rob Mains]

base streak counted fielder's choice reaching maybe that just would sort of SAP any specialness that it had. Cuz.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But technically true like you were on

[Rob Mains]

base but also if you didn't really earn your way on there as we typically think of it, then yeah, how

[Ben Lindbergh]

would there's subjectivity with all this stuff including hitting streaks?

[Rob Mains]

Obviously a lot of that is dependent on. On an official score. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So it's always going to be somewhat

[Rob Mains]

squishy but there are a lot of ways to get on base that are not counted as times on base.

[Meg Riley]

So yeah, but I think that we just should resist the temptation to interject more subjectivity on the part of the official score into these sorts of things. And like you're going to say oh well that was an error. But like yeah, a lot to do with it. You know, like that's a, that's a judgment call that we would be asking the scorer to make and they do a good job. I don't, I'm not saying that to impugn official scorers out there. I am not One of the people who's in the air conspiracy camp. Right. That we're just getting really sticklery about those. But.

[Rob Mains]

Well, there are, I mean, there are fewer errors.

[Meg Riley]

There are fewer than ever.

[Rob Mains]

But.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, but there are people who think that it's, it's like.

[Rob Mains]

Oh, because MLB instructed them.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. To try to juice the low batting averages. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And I, I'm not a, I'm, I don't participate in that conspiracy. I don't find it compelling. But I think that it is good to. The, the cleanest way to deal with questions like this is to say that this, this category of reaching very often has more to do, like say in the case of errors with the fielding team games goofs than it does with any special acumen on the part of the hitter. Which isn't to say that the hitter might not have anything to do with it or that like being very fast might not inspire a fielder to rush a throw or what have you. But on average you're going to give a more accurate rendering of that event as one that is the fault of the fielder rather than an expression of skill on the part of the batter to say that doesn't count. And I think that you're just, you're gonna end up being right more often than not, or at least more often than you would be if you left it up to the judgment of, you know, 30 different, or I guess it's not 30, 15 different official scores on any given day. So I think it's okay. I think it's better than the alternative is, I guess what I would say.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind if there were a times on base stat that actually

[Rob Mains]

did say how many times you were on base by eight.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Any means. That might be interesting. But yeah, yeah, not just the subjectivity, but I guess you have to draw the line somewhere or no one's going

[Rob Mains]

to care about this.

[Meg Riley]

Right. That's the other thing. Right. Like we already have a hard time. I feel like on base streaks are kind of getting a little bit of a glow up in the last couple of years where I am, I am hearing them cited much more consistently. And I, I have long been. Here's where I'm a bit of a truther. Like I have long been an on base streak truther. That we should maybe not hold it in equal regard to hit streaks, but that we ought to give them more play than they get because I think that people1 mistakenly discount the percentage of them that really are guys hitting their way on, which is often A lot of it. And two, that like walking is a skill. It's not merely charity on the part of the, the, of the pitcher. Like you're, you're working, you're working blade parents there, buddy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And hit by pitches too.

[Rob Mains]

Of course you have to get hit,

[Meg Riley]

but that should definitely count because. Ouch. You know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, yeah, that's true too.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So I get the frustration.

[Rob Mains]

Maybe that's part of why people don't care as much about on base streaks. I think it's largely because for a lot of baseball history that wasn't considered a skill so much, much the way that hitting was.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But also maybe, yeah, hitting, it's just

[Rob Mains]

simpler even if that's subjective too. You can kind of know instinctively what a, what a hit is and, or at least easier than a time on base where you can actually literally be on base and it doesn't count as a time on base, which is kind of. Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Kind of confusing.

[Rob Mains]

But yeah, I understand the frustration, but I think to preserve how cool the accomplishment is, you do have to actually, actually make it something that's a little

[Ben Lindbergh]

less random or subjective or unearned.

[Rob Mains]

But yeah, it's never going to be perfect. All right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I just wanted to close while the standings are as they are.

[Rob Mains]

We got a couple stat blast questions about standings related things and score related things.

[Meg Riley]

Or ob.

[Michael Lorenzen]

And then they'll tease out some interesting

[Meg Riley]

tidbit, discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today blast.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We got four, four emails over the

[Rob Mains]

weekend about the same thing and there were I think multiple requests about this in our Patreon Discord group as well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So when, when one of those happens and everyone is noticing something at the

[Rob Mains]

same time, then we know we must blast.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So Owen, Dan Ryan, Seth, perhaps others

[Rob Mains]

all wrote in to note that the

[Ben Lindbergh]

NL Central standings, I think this is

[Rob Mains]

still true as we record here on Monday afternoon noon are in reverse order of run differential. So yeah, it's perfectly inverted from what you would expect based on run differential. So the, the NL Central, which is a powerhouse. Yeah, we were talking about the weakness of the NL East. Every team in the NL Central is a winner thus far the worst teams are 12 and nine. And yeah, there are some, you know,

[Ben Lindbergh]

unusual records with one run games and everything. Even the Mets, the Poor Mets are 1 in 5 in win 1 run games. And yeah, there's been some, some good luck going on there with the Cardinals, the Reds, but it was the case

[Rob Mains]

at least that it was exactly in inverse order because the Reds were at the top with a negative 11. And then it was the Cardinals at negative 10, the brewers at plus 21, the Pirates at plus 22, and the Cubs at plus 29. There is a tie. There was a tie. The Cardinals and the brewers were 12 and 8. So this was, I think, Sunday that this was true, or going into Sunday after Saturday's games. But we got asked by many people what's the latest in a season that this has happened? And Michael Mountain, frequent Stat Blast consultant,

[Ben Lindbergh]

writes, everyone is clamoring for run differential standings info and their right to do so because this has never happened before.

[Rob Mains]

For at least not exactly like this.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All of the NL Central teams have played at least 20 games and the run differential is completely reversed from the standings.

[Rob Mains]

I'm calling this upside down standings.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There's a pair of tied teams prior

[Rob Mains]

to the untimely death of the end

[Ben Lindbergh]

of season tiebreaker game. Ties in the standings could be listed pretty much in any order according to the whims of the publisher. Even if we're generous and allow teams that are tied to be listed in any order, this is still still the furthest into a season since 1901 that any AL or NL division has had upside down standings. It's never happened at any point in the season without taking advantage of the

[Rob Mains]

flexibility that ties allow.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But even with that assistance, there's a

[Rob Mains]

real difference between the current NL Central

[Ben Lindbergh]

arrangement and previous examples. For instance, look at the standings when this happened on April 19, 2017, the second furthest into the season we've ever seen the this. At that point, each AL Central team had played 14 games. The Tigers, with the worst run differential

[Rob Mains]

in the division -14, were in first with a record of 8 and 6,

[Ben Lindbergh]

one game ahead of the other four teams, who were all tied at 7 and 7, and therefore sortable in whichever order you like.

[Rob Mains]

So it's trivially possible to put them in order by increasing run differential.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That arrangement is way easier to accomplish than the current situation in the NL Central because there are so many more time ties. The current NL Central standings have four distinct team records and one pair of teams that are tied. No division has ever had upside down

[Rob Mains]

standings with four distinct team records before,

[Ben Lindbergh]

regardless of how early in the season you look. With three distinct team records, the 2008 NL east had upside down standings on April 8, 2008, but that was only

[Rob Mains]

six games into the season.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So to recap, the 2026 NL Central is not only the deepest into the season we've ever seen an upside down division, regardless of how many ties there are, but it's the highest number of distinct win and loss records in an upside down division, regardless of how deep

[Rob Mains]

into the season you are.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Wow.

[Rob Mains]

So how about that?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, how about that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Made history in multiple ways.

[Rob Mains]

No wonder everyone noticed it and emailed us about it. And Michael includes a spreadsheet of the 21 previous times it has happened and how far into the season they were and how many distinct win loss records

[Ben Lindbergh]

were involved on that date.

[Rob Mains]

So.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So yeah, kudos to everyone who bombarded

[Rob Mains]

us with this question.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's nice, you know, when you get a lot of questions when it is actually something somewhat notable.

[Rob Mains]

So all the emails were not wasted, so that is good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And another similar standings related question, this came to us from Raymond Chen, effectively wild wiki caretaker, who said he was curious about the latest in a season that a division standings had the teams with consecutive descending win totals where the first place team has n wins, the

[Rob Mains]

second place n minus 1, third place n minus 2.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because it happened this year in the

[Rob Mains]

AL Central when Cleveland was 9 and 6 and the Twins had 8 wins

[Ben Lindbergh]

and the Royals had 7 wins and

[Rob Mains]

the Tigers had 6 wins and the White Sox had 5 wins.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So again, Michael determined that the latest in a season this has happened actually a lot later than this. August 4, 2006, in the NL west, the Padres had 56 wins, the Diamondbacks had 55, the Dodgers had 54, the

[Rob Mains]

Rockies had 53 and the Giants had 52. And if you want to also specify

[Ben Lindbergh]

that the number of games played is identical among all teams to get the

[Rob Mains]

pleasing symmetry in the game's back column as well, then it's May 7, 2011 in the AL west when the Angels had 19, the Rangers had 18 and the A's had 17 and the Mariners had 16. Only a four team division at that point. And if you disqualify the AL west for having only four teams, then it's April 23, 2022 in the AL east, ranging from the Blue Jays at 10 wins to the Orioles at six. So the 2026 AL Central equaled the

[Ben Lindbergh]

record for latest into a season where

[Rob Mains]

wins, losses and games back all step up or down by one in a division with five or more teams. So some strange stuff happening in the standings. You know, we did the stat blast recently about how there was incredibly compressed

[Ben Lindbergh]

standings and there was just very little separation from the best team to the worst after 15 team games or so. And now also we have this weird inverted run differential situation in the NL Central.

[Rob Mains]

Or we did and then we had

[Ben Lindbergh]

this AL Central situation for a while. Just a lot of, a lot of

[Rob Mains]

weirdness happening and it's not entirely related to the main minutes.

[Meg Riley]

It's not entirely related, but that's because they haven't yet sacrificed the pizza mascot.

[Rob Mains]

Yes, that's true. Yeah. And since I just mentioned the Rockies

[Ben Lindbergh]

again, gotta give credit to the Rockies for for being a little frisky.

[Rob Mains]

You know, they took two out of

[Ben Lindbergh]

three from the Dodgers this weekend and they also they got on Dalton rushing because Dalton rushing said there seemed to be something fishy suggesting that Rockies were sign stealing or something and Roberts was

[Rob Mains]

like, nope, shutting that down.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But Dalton, he was.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And and then the Rockies, they seized on this. They did fishiness and they made it a meme and they turned it into their celebration and now they're all fishermen

[Rob Mains]

on the bases and they're all just reeling in lines.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean, that's pretty good. You know, they're they're still going to end up not being a very good team probably, and the Dodgers are going to be be miles above them in the NL west standings, but at least for now they're holding their own and

[Rob Mains]

they're standing up for themselves.

[Meg Riley]

Sometimes all you can be is a thorn in the side of your rival. Sorry, I'm about to be rude to the Rockies as I'm praising them. Rival isn't quite right, but you know, the big team on campus you can just be not a spoiler even, but again, a thorn.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. And just to round up our our standings Related questions here, Daniel Patreon supporter

[Ben Lindbergh]

said According to the AP Gamer written after the A's beat the Rangers on Wednesday, they claimed sole possession of the division lead for the first time since 2021. This strikes me as a relatively long time as even a very bad team

[Rob Mains]

could accidentally win their first few games of the year. What's the longest streak all time of this?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'd imagine the Pirates and Rockies current streaks are longer than the A streak. And Michael says Daniel's instincts are correct that most teams are alone in first

[Rob Mains]

place at some point during the season. Season 17 out of 30 teams did so last year.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Daniel's instincts are also correct that the Pirates and Rockies are two of the teams that did not do so last year. However, they are not running longer streaks than the A's were. The A's had the second longest active streak behind the Washington Nationals, who have not held sole possession of first place

[Rob Mains]

in their division since June 11, 2018,

[Ben Lindbergh]

which is before they won the World Series, surprisingly. But but yeah, the Other teams with an active streak of more than 365 days are the Red Red Sox, Royals, White Sox, Diamondbacks, Orioles and Cardinals. The Reds and Twins also played their way off that list earlier this week or last week, taking their first division lead since August and October 2023 respectively. The longest streak in the divisional era, 1969 to present, is held by the Atlanta Braves. After winning the first NL West Division title in 1969 by three games over the Giants, they didn't have sole possession of first place in the division again again until April 9, 1982, 4,572 days

[Rob Mains]

later when they started the season 30 en route to their second NL West Division title. Guess they made up for it later when they were winning the NL east

[Ben Lindbergh]

every year for years under the current three divisions per league format, the longest streak belongs to the Detroit Tigers. They played their first game as a member of a five team division, the AL east, on April 4, 1994. 4 Their first solo division lead came on April 7, 2004 in the AL

[Rob Mains]

Central after starting the season three and oh, that is a 3,656 day streak or that's days later.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, and lastly we got a question from Todd who said On Friday the Orioles defeated the Guardians 6 to 4 in this game. All of Baltimore's runs were scored in the eighth inning. My question is what is the most run scored in a single inning when the run scored in said inning were

[Rob Mains]

the only runs scored by that team in the game? I'd be curious to know. The most in a win as well as a loss.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Michael says something else noteworthy about

[Rob Mains]

that Orioles Guardians game. The Guardians also scored all their runs in a single half inning, although it was not the matching half of the same inning where the Orioles scored the

[Ben Lindbergh]

highest scoring game on record in which both teams scored all of their runs in a single half inning is the Phillies Reds game on April 13, 2003. The Phillies won 13 to 1. The Reds one run was scored obviously in a single half inning the bottom of the fifth, while the Phillies scored all of their 13 runs in the

[Rob Mains]

top of the fourth.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That mark of 13 runs by a

[Rob Mains]

single team is also the record for

[Ben Lindbergh]

most runs scored in a game where all scoring happened in a single inning. The only other time it has happened was by Atlanta on September 20, 1972 in the second inning defeating the Astros 13 to 6. The highest scoring loss where all the

[Rob Mains]

losing teams runs came in a single inning.

[Ben Lindbergh]

11.

[Rob Mains]

The Philadelphia A's lost 17 to 11 to the New York Yankees on June 3, 1933. And all of Philly's scoring came in the third inning.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Finally, if you require all of the scoring in a game for both teams combined to come in the same inning, the highest scoring game on record matching that criterion is the Pirates playing the Giants.

[Rob Mains]

The New York Giants at the polo grounds on July 26, 19, 2028.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The final score was 7 to 5,

[Rob Mains]

Pirates with all 12 runs being scored in the second inning. I like when the runs are distributed a little more widely than that. I don't like all the scoring in a single inning.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That. Yeah, we want the action spread out

[Rob Mains]

a bit, I think.

[Meg Riley]

What's. What if that's the inning you went to the bathroom?

[Rob Mains]

Oh, yeah. Then you'd. You'd miss all the action.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, you probably wouldn't miss all the action because if it's all that scoring and wanting, the inning probably lasted a long time, but still you'd miss some of the action.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's true. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I guess you'd miss some of the action if it was spread out too. Maybe there you should just not go to the bathroom.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah. Hold it if you can.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, and. And we got a response. Remember when we stopped last, last week about Ryan Christensen and the fact that he hit all of his 16 home runs against different teams one a piece.

[Rob Mains]

And so he was the answer to

[Ben Lindbergh]

the question, who has the most homers? With all of those homers coming against

[Rob Mains]

different teams, never doubling up.

[Meg Riley]

Up.

[Rob Mains]

And he had the record all time

[Ben Lindbergh]

and also even to start a career.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And we, we got an email unsolicited from Olivia Hummer, who is the senior manager for baseball communications for the A's.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Olivia wrote, don't know if you are aware that Ryan Christensen is the

[Rob Mains]

A's first base outfield coach, but wanted

[Ben Lindbergh]

to let you know he was totally unaware both of the record and also that he'd hit all his homers off of different teams. He was delighted to learn the fact, though, and we all got a good laugh. I sent him the clip as well because I had. I had mused, I wonder if Ryan Christensen is aware of this and maybe we'll cold call him someday. No need, because Olivia with the A's

[Rob Mains]

was listening and played this for him.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And now we know he did not know this was news to Ryan Christensen as well as to us. And one other response that we got

[Rob Mains]

to a recent conversation. This is from Alex Vigderman with Sports

[Ben Lindbergh]

Info Solutions, who wrote to us on

[Rob Mains]

Monday and had a couple notes related

[Ben Lindbergh]

to episode 2467, he said. You had a couple of musings in quick succession that I felt we had some ability to put numbers to. So I figured I'd reached out with respect to the idea that pitchers might quote unquote man up and not present themselves as hurting when they're hit by a batted ball.

[Rob Mains]

Because we talked about Tobias Myers getting

[Ben Lindbergh]

hit by a Freeland line drive and not reacting.

[Rob Mains]

And Ron Darling and Oral Hershiser were talking about this in the booth and how you never want to show them that that you hurt them.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So Alex says SIS tracks all kinds of injury events, including things that the players don't show a reaction to. So while we can't tell how the player is actually feeling, we can at least try to judge if getting hit by a batted ball elicits a less

[Rob Mains]

dramatic response than expected.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So the Sports Info Solutions stringers they not only record when someone gets hit by a batted ball, but they record

[Rob Mains]

the apparent severity of the injury. So you can classify it as no

[Ben Lindbergh]

visible effect or some visible effect might shake off an arm or something something or medical attention stays in the game or leaves the game, or the worst,

[Rob Mains]

the game stops and there's a cart slash stretcher situation. I did not know that they recorded this in such detail.

[Ben Lindbergh]

To roughly compare analogous plays, I looked at injury events since 2018 where a pitcher was hit by a medium or hard hit ball and compared them to a hit by pitch or a foul off a body part. I would accept an argument that these aren't apples to apples comps, but I think they get us close close if we remove injuries that are initially severe enough to merit medical attention. Balls hit off of pitchers have about a 5050 chance of the player showing some kind of ill effect right afterward. For the comparison group, it's more like

[Rob Mains]

a 40% chance, and that 40% rate

[Ben Lindbergh]

is more consistent with the overall average across all injuries. That could suggest that pitchers are actually showing more pain, but also could be that these injuries are a little worse. On these injuries, the expected days missed per our prognosis log shortly after the injury is slightly higher for the pitch, particularly for the injuries that they're showing some effect from two expected days missed versus 0.5. This could suggest the opposite of the above that pitchers and batters show a similar response, but the pitchers injuries are actually a little worse. The overwhelmingly most relevant detail here though is how often someone checks on them. Pitchers receive medical attention almost 60% of

[Rob Mains]

the time they're hit by a decently

[Ben Lindbergh]

hit batted ball compared to under 10% for batters hit by a pitch or fouling a ball off their foot. But when we compare the expected days missed on these injuries, the pitchers have a lower average, 2.6 than the batters, 4.3. So there's a lot more sensitivity to the pitcher getting hit despite there not

[Rob Mains]

being a meaningful difference in health on average. That's interesting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So the teams are doting on the pitchers.

[Rob Mains]

They're more likely to go out and check on them even though they're not injured more than someone who fouled a ball off themselves or got hit by a pitch or something. I guess it's just.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's rarer maybe for pitchers, and so it seems more noteworthy.

[Rob Mains]

And obviously it could be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I mean, both hit by pitches

[Rob Mains]

and getting hit by batted balls can be bad, depending on where one is hit. But that would, I guess, support your argument that maybe pitchers don't show the pain because they're more likely to be lifted or visited. So they don't want to give you any. Any excuse to come out there and yank them.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. Did you see Jake Runningworth get hit in the face?

[Rob Mains]

Oh, weekend.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Again, none of these guys throw up. It's so crazy. I would.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And he had all his teeth. He kept, like, kind of like grimacing at the camera in a way that showed all of his teeth. And I was like, I'm sorry. This is one of the rare moments where I think it is incumbent upon the trainer to approach a living human being a bit like a horse and be like, I need to pry it open and look at all the. Why did he. He, he. He was like, I'm staying in the game. And I was like, I think that's a dereliction of duty. I think they should have been required to pull him. He got hit square in the freaking face.

[Rob Mains]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Alex also checked with respect to the frequency of pitchers coming back to a low and inside pitch after the

[Rob Mains]

batter fouls one off his foot. Because I mentioned there's the old bromide that if. If a guy fouls one off his foot, then you come back in low and in because he might be wary of swinging or something.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Something. And Alex said, I looked at any plate appearance since 2018 where a batter fouled a ball off his foot and compared the pitches before and after to keep the context as similar as possible. He found, unsurprisingly, balls hit off the batter's foot are more often low and in 39% versus 19% on other pitches. However, the pitches preceding and immediately following the foul off the foot are not

[Rob Mains]

more likely to be low in in according to his analysis. So the rates are all basically even at 19 to 21% low and in

[Ben Lindbergh]

except for the one that's fouled off the foot.

[Rob Mains]

So he says there's no no particular

[Ben Lindbergh]

trend as far as he can tell

[Rob Mains]

of avoiding or or targeting low and in before or after the foul off the foot. So I don't know, maybe there's no truth to that on the whole.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But anyway it's nice when we have of stat blasts that are done in response to our stat blasts that we didn't even ask someone to do.

[Meg Riley]

So very thoughtful.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right, closing the loop on a few matters. Stat Blast Related Scott in Vancouver Patreon supporter said. Just wanted to bring to your attention something we Blue Jays fans have been tracking Second year pitcher Braden Fisher has yet to allow an earned run on the road in 31 and a third innings in his career while allowing 15

[Rob Mains]

earned runs in 25 innings as of April 9 and at home.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It was only last week in Chicago that he allowed his first road unearned

[Rob Mains]

runs thanks to a Tyler Hyneman error.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Wondering where this would rank on the most road slash home earned runs allowed before allowing the first home road earned run to start a career? Well, first of all, Fiser did subsequently allow an earned run on the road

[Rob Mains]

against the brewers on April 14.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But also Mountain says this isn't particularly notable in terms of runs allowed simply because the there are plenty of examples of mediocre starting pitchers who made several

[Rob Mains]

road starts and gave up lots of runs before appearing at home, or vice versa.

[Ben Lindbergh]

For example, the all time record for runs allowed on the road before allowing a run at home is 36, achieved by Philadelphia A's starter Carl Doyle, who had a 3.33 home ERA in his rookie season of 1935, but just happened to make his first six appearances on the road. Also, Michael followed up on a stat blast from episode 2464 about switch hitters

[Rob Mains]

who hit notably higher in the lineup from one side than from the other.

[Ben Lindbergh]

At the suggestion of Raymond Chen, he took another look at this via a different method which quantifies how far away the center of gravity is in the batter's platoon split for average batting order

[Rob Mains]

position using a unit circle with a

[Ben Lindbergh]

radius as 1 as the mapping domain. A hypothetical player who hit only leadoff

[Rob Mains]

versus left handers and only fifth versus

[Ben Lindbergh]

righties, for example, would have a platoon difference of 1.97 nearly a full diameter of the circle when he removed the.500 plate appearance overall minimum requirement. It revealed 1994 Bernie Williams, my favorite player as the most extreme standout. He took nearly 75% of his left handed hitting events batting 7th and 66%

[Rob Mains]

of his right handed hitting events batting leadoff. I will link to the new spreadsheet.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also a question about player names and batter pitcher matchups came up in the Discord group. Listener Joseph noticed that Bubba Chandler was

[Rob Mains]

pitching to Chandler Simpson and wanted to know how often has there been a

[Ben Lindbergh]

wheel of fortune before and after situation

[Rob Mains]

situation where the last name of the pitcher is the same as the first name of the batter.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, pretty often. Michael found 2,153 occurrences on record dating back to 1910 via retro sheet. That also includes pitcher first name being the same as batter last name. It happened in 46 plate appearances last season. The most prolific name matches are John.

[Rob Mains]

Lots of Tommy John in there 330 batter pitcher matchups from 1964 to 1988 where the name John was a match. Second is Scott, third is Lee. I'll put the full list online.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Even the Early's early win faced Jake Early Listener Skelly wondered whether Joe Ryan makes the list for both of his names and indeed he does. He has pitched to both Ryan Mount Castle and Connor Joe.

[Rob Mains]

He's also pitched to other Ryan's Lavarn Way, McMahon, McKenna O'Hearn Bliss, other players

[Ben Lindbergh]

who have faced batters or pitchers with both directions of name matching. Russell Martin has batted against Martin Perez

[Rob Mains]

there's an accent mark difference there and

[Ben Lindbergh]

Adam and James Russell Jackson Merrill has batted against Luke Jackson and Merrill Kelly Garrett Mitchell has batted against Reed Garrett and Mitchell Parker John Denny pitched to Denny's Gonzalez and Walling and also Tommy John Joe Kelly pitched to Connor Joe and Kelly Johnson and Kelly Shopkick Boone. Logan pitched to Aaron Boone and Logan Morrison Scott Terry pitched to Mike Scott and a whole passel of Terry's Jackson. Todd pitched to Reggie and Ron Jackson and also Todd Cruz and Paul Williams. Wilson pitched to Josh Paul and Wilson Delgado Connor Joe coming up clutch there

[Rob Mains]

for all the first name Joes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And last week when we were talking about Tatsuya Imai and his acclimation to the majors or lack thereof, I was

[Rob Mains]

talking about how no players had come directly from NPB to the Astros before.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I may have said or suggested that the same was the case for the White Sox and Murakami.

[Rob Mains]

If I did, that's not the case.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The champion 2005 White Sox in fact

[Rob Mains]

had two players who came over directly from NPB Tadah Hito Eguchi and Shingo Takatsu.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Takatsu was Murakami's manager with the swallows in npp, and actually he was in White Sox camp this spring and he predicted, somewhat jokingly, but maybe not entirely, that Murakami would hit 55 homers.

[Rob Mains]

Well, he's on pace.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And finally, Sean McCormick, Patreon supporter, responded to our conversation about promotional giveaways by

[Rob Mains]

teams and he said Listening to your

[Ben Lindbergh]

conversation about the impact of promotions and promotion creep reminded me that I wrote

[Rob Mains]

a paper on this in Underground Undergrad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's been a few years, but I refresh my memory reviewing a few economics

[Rob Mains]

papers I referenced, including one called Does Bat Day Make Sense?

[Ben Lindbergh]

C E N T S at a High Level Games with a promotion increase attendance by about 3,893 fans per game, a 14% increase according to that paper. Factoring in promotion frequency, teams with a greater number of promotions experience diminishing effects, as one would expect with a promotion increasing attendance by 12% on average, down

[Rob Mains]

from the previously mentioned 14%.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The difference is still small enough that the promotion creep we're feeling has been historically effective for getting butts in seats. Ignoring Cost I can hear Bob Nutting complaining about cost being ignored, so we've got that looped in. Quality is of course relative, but they found that for every additional dollar spent on the item given away, an additional 2688 fans are brought in.

[Rob Mains]

If not clear, this is on a

[Ben Lindbergh]

rate basis, not the total cost of 20,000 bob bobbleheads. A few other points from other papers expected, but bobbleheads are the most effective. Giveaway promotions on weekdays are more effective than promotions on weekends, and promotions draw returning fans, not new fans. The Mariners seem to follow these ideas as their bobbleheads and Funko Pops are

[Rob Mains]

often two or three day giveaways that happen on Monday through Wednesday. Thank you Sean. I will link to a couple of

[Ben Lindbergh]

those papers you can support effectively. Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some

[Rob Mains]

monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners Liam Daniel Morocna, Matthew Abbott, Benjamin Hooker and Kenneth Hardy.

[Rob Mains]

Thanks to all of you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Patreon perks include access to our full weekly patron only episode, monthly bonus episodes, exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord

[Rob Mains]

Group, Fangraph's memberships, shout outs at the

[Ben Lindbergh]

end of episode, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, and more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild if

[Rob Mains]

you are a patron, you can message

[Ben Lindbergh]

us through the Patreon site, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com you 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 fangraphs or on Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for

[Rob Mains]

links to the stories and stats we cited today.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. I've been in makeup on our life. I know it's going to be a good time. I want to learn about new statistics. I want to hear about dynam rbis. Yeah, tell me about some prospect I should know about.