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Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2476: Bodies, BABIPs, Batter’s Boxes, and Birds
00:38:33
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- [00:02]
A
Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2476 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 Limburger, the ringer. Ben, how are you?
- [00:28]
B
I'm doing well and I've got good news. As relayed by John Heyman of the New York Post. Here's what he tweeted on Thursday afternoon. Terex Goble elbow surgery was such a success, he could start working out within days. And two months is even seen as a conservative estimate for the two time Cy Young winner to return. Four to six weeks possible one relatively small loose body was removed. So we got a count of the loose bodies. And in fact, it's not even plural. It's just a single solitary loose body. Yeah, not even bodies, just loose body. At most, one joint mouse. Not even joint mice. And I'm sorry to inflict that phrase on you again while we're fighting. I can't remember ever seeing an update like this. The precise number of loose bodies or body in this case. Now, does this have anything to do with the purportedly cozy relationship between John Heyman and Scott Boris, who just so happens to represent Terry Skubal and might be happy to pass along such a report about his client's health? I couldn't possibly presume to say. But, you know, sometimes we hear the surgery as a success. Very rarely do we immediately hear that it wasn't a success. Sometimes long after we learn that it wasn't such a success. But rarely do I hear that it was such a smashing success that in fact the return to play timeline estimate is better than everyone thought. And we had a precise count of the number of bodies and it was one. And it was relatively small. It wasn't even. Wasn't even a big loose body. It was a small, loose body.
- [02:16]
A
Let's start there. Of course, it was a small loose body. In his elbow, there is an upper bound to the size of the loose body that can be in his elbow. That's a.
- [02:31]
B
That's a good point.
- [02:32]
A
That's not a big part of your body. You know, it's not like he had a loose body in his abdomen, a much larger part of one's body. Proportionally, it's a.
- [02:42]
B
He did say. He did say. A relatively small loose body. So even by the standards of loose bodies, which are small to begin with, in your elbow, presumably it's a small loose body.
- [02:53]
A
Okay, so I saw this update and I don't want to impugn John. But hey man, what are you talking about? What are we talking about? So, okay, great. I'm glad. Here's the most interesting and I think happy optimistic part of that update that when they got in there and they were looking around and hey, yeah. They only found one relatively small loose body. It's like, what is that as a unit of measure? I have no idea. What is the size of a typical loose body? Sorry, I'm going to get distracted. We're, we're, we're going into this cul de sac of distraction for a moment. Is a big loose body like the size of a quarter? Is it like a nugget such that you would feel like, oh, there's gold in them there hills like you got a prospect. What is it the size of a microchip? Is it the size of an ant? Is it the size of a large but non dangerous spider? What is that? What is.
- [04:01]
B
I really don't know. I have no frame of reference for that.
- [04:03]
A
I've never seen. No one has a frame of reference.
- [04:05]
B
A loose body. Not this kind of loose body.
- [04:07]
A
So that doesn't make any sense. I mean it does, but it's, it's, it is information without a reference point to the point of being sort of useless. Right. Because I don't know what a. Relative to what the size of. We don't know what that is. What is that? So there's that. Okay, so set aside the potentially ant or penny shaped bit of bone that they pulled out of his elbow.
- [04:30]
B
Right.
- [04:30]
A
The, the best part of this update, the part of it that makes you feel the most optimistic about schools, both short term and long term health, is that when they got in there they didn't see any other damage. Right. Because sometimes they get in there and they're like, oh, bomb went off in here and nobody noticed and stuff is frayed and we are into a, a different, a different genre of movie. It's like there's a war film in there and we didn't realize it.
- [05:01]
B
It's like the, the Stone song from Exile, Torn and frayed. That's what it looks like in there often. But not this time, evidently.
- [05:08]
A
Not this time. Evidently. I mentioned to Ben Clemens that I find Loose Bodies to be like a very horror film adjacent injury description and he made the excellent joke of Loose Bodies Bodies Bodies. Which I was like, beautiful. That might be our episode title. Anyway.
- [05:26]
B
No, doesn't apply in this case though because it's only one loose body.
- [05:31]
A
All right, I have faith in your ability to work as an editor, Ben, even though we are fighting. So I am skeptical of anyone's ability to fundamentally change the diagnosis or timeline for return based on there only being one relatively small loose body. Like, wouldn't his timeline to return be dictated more by things like, hey, does the inflammation from surgery come down? Does he have full range of motion? Does he have like full strength in the joint? Right. Is he able also, hey, it's Tarek Skubal. Don't screw around and rush him back. What are you doing? What would you be doing? Now I say that, and I want to be clear that this does not read as official communication from the Detroit Tigers. What it reads like is a, is a text message from somebody's agent, which is likely what it was just saying, hey, man. Offering a hypothesis for the origin of, of that piece of information. But it did have a certain agent flare to it.
- [06:38]
B
Yes, there was a spin.
- [06:39]
A
I don't know why I'm so worked up about it, but something about it really kind of irked me because I feel like this is an injury where people's understanding, and I will include myself in people here of the, like, a long term prognosis, the return to any play at all, the return to effective play is much squishier, sort of like the inside of his elbow than our understanding of, say, Tommy John, where we have a very good understanding of how long it takes to start rehabbing, to be able to throw in games, to sort of return to one's peak form. We have a good sort of generalized timeline for that with deviations obviously up or down depending on the guy and certainly depending on the extent of the procedure. Right. Internal brace threw us off for a long time. Now we're getting a better sense of the timelines there. But I just feel like I'm being, excuse the swear bull here in a way that I don't understand the motivation behind because we've already determined that he didn't need the worst thing Tommy John, and that upon getting in there that he didn't have a worse injury than we had originally believed based on the loose baddies diagnosis. So we're just going to find out what's happening.
- [07:58]
B
Yeah, we will see.
- [08:00]
A
It really irritated me.
- [08:02]
B
I was mostly amused, but I, I
- [08:05]
A
found it very irritating. I feel like I'm being, excuse my swear again, bull. And I, I for and to what end? For what purpose?
- [08:14]
B
Yeah, ultimately the proof will be in the pudding of Derek Skubal's elbow and how quickly he is able to return. But now I'M curious to see what his actual time frame is and if he does come back more quickly than anticipated. And I'd be happy to hear from any sports surgeons in the audience whether the number of loose bodies is correlated. Right? Is it? Is the number of bodies in there determinative? Now I'd rather hear this, I suppose, than remember when we talked about Carlos Rodan and the surgery that he had that was back in January, episode 2432. We talked about his comments about his surgery and he had a bone spur shaved down, I think, and some loose bodies cleared up. And he described it as the surgeons took a lot of bones out, but it's better now, which was also amusing. So I guess I'd rather hear one relatively small loose body than took a lot of bones out. It seems it's probably better, but I don't know because a lot of it is just going to be the recovery. It's an arthroscopic procedure, so it's not super invasive, but obviously it's going to take some time. Once you're in there and you insert something into an elbow, then I don't know whether the number of bodies you suck out of there really affects how quickly you come back, but perhaps it does. I will defer to superior medical knowledge, though not necessarily John Hayman's medical knowledge. Anyway, I will be disappointed from now on if we do not learn the precise number of loose bodies in every loose body removal. I need to know whether we're talking about mice or mouse in this joint.
- [09:50]
A
Okay, well, now we're back to fighting. But I, I think I've identified the source of my frustration and consternation with this. And, and it's, it's, it's less about how I feel like I'm being bs, although I do feel that way. My position on medical waste is well established on this podcast, which is that that's none of my business and I don't want to see it, but now I want to see the loose body
- [10:16]
B
and, and that's see the loose body.
- [10:18]
A
Well, cuz, what size is it? Okay, how big is the loose body?
- [10:22]
B
Yeah, poor Terub. He wanted some keepsakes from this surgery.
- [10:26]
A
He.
- [10:27]
B
He has only one. He has no, not multiple bodies to choose from.
- [10:31]
A
Lucky, lucky man. A lucky man. And I hope that when they came to him in the recovery room, if he said, cuz I'm imagining him still kind of drugged up when he's talking to the nurse and the nurse said, I'm sorry it was so small we lost it and now he doesn't have to grapple with what to do with it. You know, that burden that's been removed from him, it's been placed on me because now I want to see the loose body.
- [11:00]
B
All right, well, now we know possibly more than we wanted or needed to know about.
- [11:05]
A
I think we do.
- [11:07]
B
Or maybe we don't actually know anymore at all.
- [11:09]
A
I don't think we really know that much more. I remain convinced that this is a mostly
- [11:15]
B
Ben, I'm mad. I'll try to settle you down here by transitioning to another banter topic, which is that the American League is full of loose bodies or just full of teams that are not off to strong starts. We have discussed this, we have mentioned this in passing and we got an email about this from listener Brett Patreon supporter who said, and this was a couple days ago, I was looking at the standings and noticed that only 10 of the 30 teams currently have positive run differentials. And that's across both leagues, obviously. Which got me wondering what's the lowest share of the league that has finished a season in positive territory? And by the league, he's talking about both leagues, all leagues combined. So Michael Mountain took a look at this frequent Stat Blast correspondent and found the number and rate and percentage of AL NL teams finishing with positive run differentials greater than zero run differentials since 1901. And the lowest share of the overall league was 37.5%. So 6 out of 16 teams in both 1912 and 1917, there were a lot fewer teams then in the 30 team era we've never seen fewer than 13 teams end the season in the black and we're at 10. Or we were at 10 when we got this email. And obviously that is mostly the the American Leagues doing the nls over here going, don't look at us. We're we're an entirely normal league. It's not our fault. And obviously this is fluctuating by the day. Like we're recording here going into Thursday's games and the Cardinals are at negative one and the Rangers are at positive one. So this will change even by the time people hear this, most likely. But right now we're at I think 11 teams across both leagues with a positive run differential and actually five of those are in the American League. So the Yankees are well into positive territory. The rays are at plus 15, the Tigers at plus 6, the Mariners at plus 4, the Rangers at plus 1. So some of those teams are are barely qualifying. But nonetheless, however, when we look not at run differential but actually record Wins and losses, then that tells a somewhat different story because as we speak there are two winning teams in the American League. Two. There are more winning teams in the American League than there were loose bodies in ter school's elbow, reportedly. So it is only the Yankees and the Rays who are neck and neck in the AL East. 25 and 12 and 24 and 12. And then no one else is above.500. Now obviously all fun or unfun facts lie. The guardians as we speak are exactly.500. The A's are exactly.500. And the Tigers are two games under. And the Mariners are two games under and the Rangers are two games under. And the Royals and White Sox are three games under. You get the point. The Orioles too. So there's a lot of clustering, but a lot of those teams are clustered in mediocre territory. So I was looking also to see about lopsided distributions win loss wise over the course of a full season. And I just look this up and if you want the the lowest percentage of teams in a single league, or you know, if we do a full league, both leagues, AL, NL combined to going back to 1901 when the AL joined the party, then right now we're at 10 of 30, so 33.3% or maybe it's 11 as we speak, but 1994, which of course was cut short, but who knows what we were in store for because that year there were 10 winning teams of the 28 total. So that was 35.7%. That's the lowest combined percentage across both leagues and not a full season, of course, 1954 was 6 of 16, so that's 37.5%. 1944 and 42 war years were also 6 of 16 and so was 41. So those were all sort of the same. And if you want a 30 team year, but you don't count this year, then 2017 is your low with 12 of 30 winning teams. That's 40% if you look at a single league. So in the AL this year we're at two of 15. Two of the 15American League teams have winning records as we speak. That's 13.3%. In 1941 it was 2 of 8, so that's 25%. But much smaller league in 2017 it was 5 of 15, 33.3% over in the NL, the low is 1984. 4 of 12 were in winning positive territory. So that's 33.3%. And that's. Those are the lows. So where we are now is Super Extreme, but within a game or day or two, it could be into not totally unprecedented territory, but obviously it's a little lopsided. And we answered a question and did a stat blast recently about run differential or record, comparing the leagues to each other. So the NL is holding up its end of the bargain, or more so, and the AL is not. And we've remarked on this and it's noteworthy, obviously, when you look at the standings and the playoff picture and everything. But ultimately, does this matter? I guess it. It matters that we've noticed it and that we've mentioned it in passing previously. But I guess this goes back to the old debate about what makes for an exciting race or finish or season. Is it. Do you have to have elite teams or is it enough to have parody and a bunch of teams that are close to each other? Is it. Is it more about the relative records, like the relative size of the loose bodies? Is it more meaningful to know just your record in comparison to other records or your record in comparison to excellence? Is this detracting from your enjoyment of baseball in 2026 that some of these teams sort of stink if they're still in good races?
- [17:21]
A
Well, if they're still in good races, it. It's less bothersome. Although how good can the races be, you know, if everybody is truly not very good? I'm not concerned about it right now. I will be concerned about it if this persists for another month. Now, last year we remarked upon sort of the midness that we were observing across baseball, and this was true across both leagues. Last year, if I recall, we were like, it is a big mushy middle. I wasn't yet calling it the fat middle, which I have a. Anyway, we have this big kind of mushy mess of teams. It didn't feel like anyone had had really distinguished themselves, with a couple of possible exceptions, but in general, kind of a meh team distribution. And then we had like a completely thrilling October, right? It was a great postseason, lots of tight series, great World Series drama, excitement. And one of the things that can happen when you have sort of midness is that if there are standout units within the midness and they are countering more mid units, you have this like, opportunity for drama. And so sometimes it can be the. The composition of the midness, I think matters a lot because if everyone truly stinks, if there's just like a lot of bad baseball being played, well, that's a bummer, because bad baseball, I mean, bad baseball can be amusing. Bad baseball can be interesting for the contours of its badness. But it's not something you necessarily want to engage with for 162 if there are units within the badness that are really good or very exciting. Standout individual performances, which I feel like we got last year, right? We had Cal versus Judge. We had Otani being Otani. We had, you know, we had school season, we had Skin's season. We had all. All these guys who were individually interesting. It still managed to like, elevate it enough that I, I had fun. I felt like it was a fun year of baseball, but I don't know that I would call it a good year of baseball. And it's hard to know exactly where we are on that continuum after, you know, a month and change of play. So I'm not, I'm not panicked, and I don't think that it necessarily means that we're doomed to like a drab October. But I will say that it feels like the quality of play sort of across the board, with a couple of exceptions, like the Yankees are good at baseball and they seem like they're playing good baseball as we are recording this on Thursday, they played a day game and Jason Dominguez looked like he suffered a very scary injury. So we hope that Jason Dominguez is okay. We also hope that the Rangers don't have occasion to play Jock Peterson in the outfield again because that did not go well. But, you know, I think that it kind of depends and we don't yet know if we are going to have, you know, more teams joining the. The sort of ranks of. Well, at this point, I would say the teams that are just seem like they're objectively pretty good. Unequivocally, the Yankees and the Dodgers, increasingly the Braves, although I remain skeptical of them just because I'm. How is it working? It. Well, I mean, part of it is that Matt Olson and Aussie Albies are playing out of their gourds. But how is it working? But then you have a mid. You have a. A midass team like the Mariners, then it takes two or three from the Braves. So it's also still baseball. You know, all of that's a long way of saying, I don't know, man, I'm having fun. Mostly part of why I can say I'm having fun is that I got to watch Paul Ski's pitch live yesterday, which was pretty spectacular, but it was pretty special.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah, a one nothing game in Arizona that doesn't happen all that often. I mean, there was a one nothing game. I think In Colorado this year, which everyone was like, whoa. And this was also unusual, but you got to see a pitcher's duel. The headliner was Skin, but it turned out to be not only Skin's dealing.
- [21:16]
A
Can I rant briefly?
- [21:18]
B
Yeah.
- [21:19]
A
I'm very annoyed that they didn't let him try to finish that game.
- [21:22]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [21:23]
A
For those of you who were not paying attention to yesterday's Diamondbacks Pirates game, P was brilliant and poly. Immediately prior had been kind of poor. But one could not say that about his start yesterday. Again, we were recording on Thursday, so this was his start Wednesday night against the Diamondbacks. It's just easy for that guy when it's going good. And I know that that's a sort of simplistic way of. Of describing it, but he was spectacular. He had everything working for him. His changeup was devastating. You. You look at his secondary stuff, when you see it live and the amount that everything is moving and wiggling, you're like, I get why, you know, he throws his. His fastball very hard. Its shape is still not amazing. And I get why that doesn't matter, because everything else and the command that that man has, it's the way he is able to dot things. Ben, it's beautiful. It was beautiful. I was just like, this is beautiful. I'm really having a good time. Part of it was that it was the first day in a week that I had felt legitimately healthy. So that also helped. But, and you're right, it was a 10 game, and the Diamondbacks in the first inning, Michael Siroca gave up a home run to Brandon Lau. That was the only run he gave up. He had traffic for much of the evening. The Diamondbacks made a number of very sharp and impressive defensive plays, so that really helped them stay in it. But even though it was only a one run game, I don't think that he gave up his first skeens, gave up his first hit until the 6th. He gave up 2 hits total. I know he only struck out 7. It felt like he struck out more, but there was just like very little hard contact until right at the end. He threw 97 pitches. He had an. He had a protracted a B against Gabrielle Moreno in the eighth inning. And I think that that is probably why they wouldn't send him back out there. But I was furious. I was so angry. And look, I understand this is. You gotta protect this dude. You know, he is so important. And I feel like, in a way that must feel like something of an undue burden on the Pirates, but One that they have to assume they have a responsibility to like baseball. Like, capital B baseball. To not screw around with this dude and to not jeopardize his ability to appear on the mound. And is it fair that I feel like that responsibility has ratcheted up in the last couple of days because of the relatively small, loose body and Terror Scubal's elbow? No, that's not fair to them. Guess what? That's how I feel anyway, because it's just we gotta see this guy do his thing because it's really special to get to see. Having said that, how dare you take 97. It wasn't like he was at, like, 110. You know, he was carving.
- [24:20]
B
And his career high in the majors is 108.
- [24:23]
A
I understand. I understand. You cannot convince me. And you know what? Of course you can't convince me because you can't, like, unfurl the alternate reality where he gets to go back out there. I acknowledge that he could have gone back out there and immediately given up a home run. Right? Like that could have happened. They were starting to hit him a little harder that at bat with Moreno, it was clear he was seeing him better. Like there was more of a battle emerging. I understand all of that. How dare you. Let him. Let him try. Let him. I was almost. I was like, they deserve to lose. Which is a crazy thing to say because they had played a great game. Also, man, o' Neil Cruz were really bad in center field. But here's another defensive observation that I had that pertains to the guessing I had to do on the Savant site last time. Yeah, Savantal. Where part of what flummoxed me initially was that the fielding and range scores for Nolan Arenado were, like, very blue. And I'm not confused by that anymore, having seen it play out now, he made. He still made a number of very nice little defensive plays, don't get me wrong. But, boy, it's. It's not what it was anymore. It's.
- [25:31]
B
It's unfortunate. It's.
- [25:32]
A
It's really. It's, like, so stark. But anyway, it's been a long time since I have seen a guy have won. Such an obvious plan for every dude coming up there, execute so precisely, have just such pinpoint, beautiful, sharp command, such a strong handle on the entire arsenal. And, like, here I am being like, hey, did you know the Paul skin is good? Which. What an unoriginal observation. But this was the first time I had seen him in person. It was really a special thing. It was. And the roof was open, which was beautiful. It was a beautiful night. We're at that point in the year here where you're like, how many more of these are we getting? I don't know. It'll still be nice at night, I think. But it's getting there. It's starting to ratchet and it was really something. I was so glad to get to see it. Also, the Pirates welder helmet does travel with them and so I got to see Lau put it on and it's. It's freaking cool, man. It's so cool. And. And I didn't get to see it very close, but it was. That's a nifty. That's a nifty thing. One more observation from my rant and then we can move on because I feel like I have bogarted enough time here. I would like to submit to you that the Pittsburgh Pirates are possessed of an abnormal amount of neck. There's a lot of neck on that team. And you think she's talking about Connor Griffin and I am in part talking about Connor Griffin because there's a lot of neck. Spencer Horowitz got a lot of neck. There's a lot of neck on that guy. He's just got like a. In a way that is. They put his roster photo up there and then you're like, whoa, it's a lot of neck. And look, I don't want people to think that I only make fun of Mike Trout for looking like a thumb. I will also just note the amount of neck. It's a lot of.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, you are. You're very neck centric. You. You've been most on the necks of Jesse Winker, Kyle Tucker.
- [27:33]
A
Yeah, sometimes they're very long.
- [27:34]
B
They're noteworthy necks. I will acknowledge Kyle Tucker.
- [27:38]
A
It's less. It's not just the neck. It's mostly. It's Kyle Tucker's profile is really what stands out to me. But that's because he is Ichabod Crane from the animated Legends of Sleepy Hollow. A true classic. So it's less neck and more like chin into neck into nose. He's just a very Ichabod crane looking fella.108wrc not exactly what they wanted.
- [28:03]
B
Good news for the Savantal superfans. Andrew updated the site so that you can play to your heart's content. It's not just one percentile screenshot a day. But you can go back and replay the old ones or just have a randomly selected ones. So yeah, it's. It's not like a loose body. Only one relatively Small one. Infinite number of savant percentiles. Well, probably not infinite but you know, close enough. And apologies to Andrew for crashing the site by mentioning it on the podcast.
- [28:34]
A
I mean I did, I did go to it like mid episode wasn't just give it a go.
- [28:41]
B
Yeah. Pulse games, by the way. He has at times through the order effect, but it's not very pronounced. He has been worse. The third plate appearance facing the same opponent in a game, but still a 616 career OPS allowed in those situations. So he has hardly been hit hard and.
- [28:58]
A
Sorry. And one more thing. Sorry, one more thing. You know, sometimes I think we have talked about, about this maybe in the past. Sometimes really transcendent starts. It's almost better to see him on TV than it is to see him in person because you just, you have the opportunity for replays. The center field camera angle is so great for being able to just judge movement, you know, and you get to really like visualize the whole like there, there's an argument to be made but this was, it was really something. Ben, you know, he does make it look easy.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah, he's pretty impressive. Aesthetically pleasing picture.
- [29:39]
A
So 2:15 time of game.
- [29:42]
B
Yeah, well one, nothing will do it
- [29:45]
A
but yeah, yeah, whipped through there.
- [29:47]
B
The two winning teams in the al. I think that this is unusual even at this early stage of the season and thanks to listener Patreon supporter Sean Kelly who looked into this for me. So couple instances in The American League, 1959 was close to finishing with two winning teams. They got to September 8th that year, but fewer teams in the league and then post expansion, 1967 made it to May 25th and then it happened in April a number of times after that as recently as say 2005. That was super early though. April 8th, there was one winning team that had a three in one record. And then every other team but one was two and two in the American League. And then there was August 4th, 1958, when there was one winning American League team, the Yankees, who had a.654 winning percentage and no other team in the league was above.500. But eight team league, this is the latest in a season that it has happened in a 15 team league. So even just to get to this point is unusual and technically I guess it has happened at a later date. But in 2020 in the American League on July 25, when the Astros were 2 and 0 and everyone else was 1 and 1 or 0 2, that season started late, as you may recall. But really it's, it's unusual and so the only one team even early in the season, Sean says happened 30 times in the 16 team era, plus another seven from the Federal League. And then twice in 2002, the NL had two teams out of their 16. So also one out of eight. But I have a spreadsheet with every day with under a 25% rate of winning teams in a league. But yeah, this is weird and unusual, but does it matter? I don't know. I think just the fact that you have mediocre records, that doesn't necessarily tell you that much about the quality of the teams in isolation. I guess it tells you about the quality of the teams in relation to each other. But they could all be pretty good and just fighting each other to a standstill or something. Or they could if we didn't have the NL to compare the AL to, because the NL has been trouncing the AL in interleague play. So if this were an earlier era where we didn't have interleague play or there wasn't as much interleague play, then there wouldn't be as much basis for comparison maybe. And you could kind of talk yourself into, ah, it's just, you know, all the teams are okay instead of just a really stratified league because people didn't love that either when there were a bunch of tanking teams and a bunch of super teams. So maybe damned if you do, damned if you don't, but I think there is just a perception because it's not purely the records and the run differentials. We can see the rosters too, and we can see the teams. And we know that these are not powerhouses for the most part, even if we've been somewhat surprised by teams that have been worse than expected or better than expected. But really, I guess what this highlights and Joshian just wrote about this, that we are seemingly in an era where the pendulum has swung back to the National League being superior to the American League. And even that doesn't really matter so much anymore because the leagues, it's a distinction without a difference really. It's just kind of geography, kind of historical affiliation. But it's not as if there are dramatically different rules or really any different rules. It used to be really almost, you know, different leagues was a meaningful distinction, whether it was because of DH or no dh, or different balls or different umpiring groups, crews or different rules or whatever. And now, and for quite some time now, it's been unified, really. The DH was kind of the last actual significant difference. And when that fell, when pitcher hitting went away then, eh, now it's just, it's kind of conferences really, and there's some historical resonance to it, but beyond that, not much significance. So it is, I guess, true that we are in an era where things have swung back toward the nlp because, you know, there was an earlier era where the NL reigned supreme for years and years and this was back when you had to judge based on All Star Games and World Series. And then from 2004 to 2017 the AL beat the NL in interleague play every single year. So that was a formative period for us and for this podcast. And the AL was consistently superior during that time. And we talked a lot and people wrote a lot about why that was and it was kind of interesting to try to untangle that. And people thought, well, is it because the AL has the dedicated dh? And so when you play interleague games, the NL sort of someone has to be forced into service as the dh, but they don't have a dedicated dh and maybe that handicaps them somewhat. And I think it did. But that wasn't that big in effect really. I think the big effect was that the best teams and the biggest spenders were in the al. And Joe just wrote about this, we've talked about it. We just talked about it the other day with the Yankees, how they're sort of second fiddle to the Dodgers, if that now. And so I guess the lesson from this that maybe is kind of interesting is that teams that are really trying, they do really raise all boats. And when you have a a team in a league or in a division that is outspending everyone and trying really hard, then everyone has to keep up with them. Because even if the leagues are essentially the same, there are still six playoff spots per league. There are only so many to go around even now. And so if you're in the division with the Dodgers, if you're in a league with the Dodgers, well then you've kind of got to raise your game too. And maybe the Mets start spending more or the Padres say we don't want to be also rans in this division, so we're going to try to build up our team to too. So when it was the al, you had the Yankees who were out spending everyone and attracting all this talent. And then the Red Sox said, well, we got to try to keep up with the Yankees. And so they started spending and accumulating talent and they got good. And then other teams tried to follow suit. And now that's not really where we are. We have the Dodgers and we have the Mets and we have the Phillies and a lot of the big spenders are in the nl and things have flipped where for years, as Joe documented in his newsletter, Joe Sheehan Dotcom, the tax overages for years and years were mostly in the al disproportionately where teams exceeded the competitive balance tax threshold. And now it's mostly in the NL that those dollars are being paid by NL teams. So ultimately does that matter? Not really, except in the sense that it dictates who makes the playoffs in any given year, which is pretty important. But I guess the larger point is that when teams try and really invest, then it does light a fire under other teams and then there is kind of a domino effect. And so the more teams you have spending and trying, the more pressure that puts on other teams to spend and try. And there are only so many wins to go around in Major League Baseball and there are only so many major league quality players and WAR to be distributed and everything. And it's a zero sum game and all. So there's a limit to how many teams you can have spending a ton and investing in their rosters at any given time. But it does really have knock on effects. I think it just depends on who the powerhouses are at any particular time because they do kind of pull the other teams up and now that's happening more in the NL than the al.
- [37:17]
A
I think that there's like a, a cyclicality to it, but it is, it is a notable shift back. Who's going to salvage the AL from like a big spending perspective? Like who's going to be the driver that like starts the arms race? Because it doesn't seem like it's going to be the Yankees.
- [37:33]
B
So no, the Yankees and the Red Sox have sort of seeded that territory. Not that they're not, but yeah, it has been the Blue Jays I guess of late. Not that they're off to that great a start even so. But yes, they have put the pressure with the fire perhaps under their competitors in the division. And that's why we went into this season thinking, oh, AL east, it's going to be even more of a meat grinder than usual. That'll do it for the free preview of today's effectively wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com effectivelywild to access the rest of this episode and plenty of other exclusive content, Weekly subscriber only episodes, monthly bonus shows our Discord group our live streams. Either way, we will be back with another episode soon, which will appear in full on this feed. Until then, we wish you well and thank you for your support of Effectively Wild, whatever form it takes.