Effectively Wild Episode 2477: Can Cleveland Framemog the Majors?

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2477: Can Cleveland Framemog the Majors?

Date: May 12, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer) & Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Theme: Daily baseball statistical analysis and commentary

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into a host of current baseball happenings, including notable rookie debuts, trade reactions (especially the Cleveland Guardians' acquisition of Patrick Bailey), prospect updates, and the evolving value of catcher framing amidst ABS and the challenge system. The hosts also reflect on shifts in baseball culture, the memory of Bobby Cox, and range far afield—from the peculiarities of baseball nicknames to video game cameos. The episode brings the hosts' signature blend of humor, granular stats, and big-picture musings, tying the daily grind of the season into broader baseball trends and personalities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spencer Jones’s Debut: Tough Break or Destiny?

• Yankees Prospect Spencer Jones makes MLB Debut: Called up due to Jason Dominguez’s injury, Jones—a massive, strikeout-prone rookie—faced one of the most intimidating assignments possible: Jacob Misarowski.
• Misarowski’s Dominance: Threw six of the 14 fastest pitches ever tracked, reaching 103.6 mph multiple times. Jones struck out in his first plate appearance, drawing quick "told you so" reactions about his contact issues.
  • "His starting assignment in Game 1, like the guy who's rivaling Garrett Cole's 2019 strikeout rate and then ascends to a higher plane of elbow endangerments—just, that's... cosmically funny and unfair." – Ben ([08:19])
  • "No one could hit the Miz on that day. It wasn't just Spencer Jones." – Ben ([08:38])
• Comparisons: Jones draws Aaron Judge comps by build, not by prospect status or skills—a theme exaggerated by media hype.
  • Meg calls for everyone, "Hold your horses, Horsey Holder, everybody, but everybody just chill." ([07:07])
• Yankees’ Outfield Height: Discussion of modern Yankees' reputation for massive outfields, comparing this trio to past lineups.

Timestamps:

• [00:44]–[09:42] — Spencer Jones’s call-up, performance, "The Miz" pitching, expectations

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2. Prospect Watch: Walt Schmidt & Gage Tater Workman

• Ryan Walt Schmidt Call-up (Diamondbacks): Insight into swing mechanics, discipline, and perhaps the best (accidental?) quote:
  • "I'm able to see the ball for the full 90 ft." ([15:46]–[18:58])
  • Ben and Meg debate whether this is a gaffe or a secret advantage. Calls for “What if?” hypotheticals.
• Gage “Tater” Workman’s MLB Homer: His literal middle name is Tater, a first in pro ball.
  • "Tater is his middle name. And not in a—not in like a self aggrandizing... Like literally Tater is his middle name." – Ben ([19:59])
  • Meg: "Tater is precious. Taters. What, what is Taters like? Taters. Taters. Taters." ([21:42])

Timestamps:

• [15:46]–[21:42] — Walt Schmidt debut, contact mechanics, Gage Tater Workman’s unique name

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3. Medical Corner: The 'Skubal Scope'

• Tarek Skubal's Elbow Procedure: Scott Boras touts a new, minimally invasive “Skoobul scope,” supposedly even less invasive than arthroscopy, removing a “lima bean sized particle.”
  • "He stuck this needle in, just withdrew a lima bean sized particle." – Ben ([25:12])
• Medical Skepticism & Squeamish Laughter: Hosts banter about medical tech, reluctant to learn too many details about joint surgery.

Timestamps:

• [22:25]–[29:47] — Skubal’s “needle” surgery, the size of “loose bodies,” Boras’s penchant for catchy branding

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4. Major Trade: Guardians Acquire Patrick Bailey

Giants Trade Defensive Standout to Cleveland

• Surprise Deal: Giants send Patrick Bailey (elite framer/defensive catcher with weak bat) to the Guardians for a draft pick and prospect Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson.
  • “[Bailey] was off to a really rough offensive start, at least based on the surface stats. And the Giants cut bait and the Guardians perhaps bought low.” – Ben ([32:22])
  • “I thought it was weird.” – Meg, on the trade ([34:11])
• State of the Giants: Discussion of instability, Tony Vitello’s rocky managerial debut, questions about organizational direction, and whether Bailey’s defensive value is now deprecated by changes in the challenge system.
  • "Tony seems like he's in over his head a little bit..." – Meg ([38:34])
  • "There's a reverse correlation between framing and challenging." – Ben ([53:31])
• Why the Guardians?: They double down on defense/framing, perhaps acknowledging Bo Naylor’s struggles, or simply acquiring “their type” of catcher.
  • "[Bailey] has historically hit better than Hedges, which is not saying much..." – Ben ([46:10])
• The Value of Framing in the ABS Era: Stat cast and BP numbers suggest the defensive edge elite framers once had is eroding.
  • "[Even] elite framing is only worth, I don't know, 10 runs instead of 20..." – Ben ([54:09])

Timestamps:

• [32:22]–[57:23] — Bailey trade breakdown, Giants’ catching depth, Guardians’ motivations, framing stats evolution

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5. Rapid Fire: News & Notable Performances

• Bryce Harper’s (Phillies) Bounceback:
  • "He has his best WRC plus and highest expected weighted on base since 2021..." – Ben ([64:37])
• Matt Olson’s Ironman Streak: 10th-most consecutive games played in MLB history, rare in an era of load management.
• Pirates' Homegrown Rotation: Ben’s preseason prediction coming true as all five starters are homegrown and delivering.
• Craig Kimbrel Watch: Classic “lulls you into a sense of security” followed by grand slams and blown saves.
  • "This is how he gets you. Team after team, they see that setup and him perched on the mound and they think, oh, Craig Kimbrel..." – Ben ([74:08])

Timestamps:

• [64:37]–[77:50] — Harper, Olson, Pirates' rotation, Kimbrel’s recent meltdown

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6. The Legacy & Complications of Bobby Cox

• Cox as Manager & GM: Old-school archetype nearly extinct—drafted Chipper, traded for Smoltz, oversaw a dynasty.
• Managerial Ejections & Era Comparison: Ejections are down significantly with ABS, meaning Cox’s fiery style may forever be unmatched.
• Domestic Violence Incident: The hosts address Cox’s 1995 arrest for domestic violence, noting changed standards and the complexity of legacies.
  • "[It] would be handled very differently today than it was at the time...there's very little chance...this wouldn't at least result in him being put on some sort of leave..." – Meg ([90:48])
  • "[His] case was handled...even then, people were saying, this is not okay. This is not sufficient for him to be back." – Ben ([95:06])

Timestamps:

• [79:05]–[102:34] — Remembering Cox as a manager/GM, ejection rates, handling of domestic violence then and now

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7. Endnotes: Humor, Rumors, and Games

• Trade Deadline Watch: Bob Nightengale rumors about the Giants possibly shopping major pieces; general skepticism from the hosts.
  • "First of all, it's too early for trade deadline watches. It's not even halfway through May." – Ben ([102:34])
• Baseball in Indie Gaming: Ben spotlights the new narrative video game "Mixtape," featuring humorously deadpan “baseball guy at the party” dialogue—a satire on baseball pedants.
  • “[Dave Bowler]...His eyes light up and it's fucking baseball time.” ([107:39])
  • “Not all of us baseball knowers are so boring when we talk about baseball. We don't buttonhole you, we don't corner you...” – Ben ([107:58])

Timestamps:

• [102:34]–[110:26] — Trade rumors, video game appearance, playful reflections on baseball fandom

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"His starting assignment in Game 1, like the guy who's rivaling Garrett Cole's 2019 strikeout rate and then ascends to a higher plane of elbow endangerments—just, that's... cosmically funny and unfair." – Ben ([08:19])

"Tater is his middle name. And not in a—not in like a self aggrandizing... Like literally Tater is his middle name." – Ben ([19:59])

"He stuck this needle in, just withdrew a lima bean sized particle." – Ben ([25:12])

"I thought it was weird." – Meg, on the Bailey trade ([34:11])

"There's a reverse correlation between framing and challenging." – Ben ([53:31])

"Tony seems like he's in over his head a little bit..." – Meg ([38:34])

"[It] would be handled very differently today than it was at the time...there's very little chance...this wouldn't at least result in him being put on some sort of leave..." – Meg ([90:48])

"[Dave Bowler]...His eyes light up and it's fucking baseball time." — Mixtape character ([107:39])

“Not all of us baseball knowers are so boring when we talk about baseball. We don't buttonhole you, we don't corner you...” – Ben ([107:58])

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a rich exploration of baseball’s present and past, blending the highly specific (rookie swing mechanics, framing stats in the ABS era) with the human and the humorous (nicknames, office gossip, and awkward baseball guys at parties). The hosts blend narrative recap with statistical scrutiny and a critical awareness of baseball’s evolving culture, serving both hardcore and more casual fans.

Transcript

[A]

We're gonna crunch those stats. We're gonna talk about baseball sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all. If you want good takes on baseball and life, just tune in to Ben

[B]

and his lovely co host, Ben and Meg.

[A]

It's Effectively Wild. Hello and welco. Welcome to episode 2477 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by meg rally of fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Here's my attempt at a TikTok style POV meme. You know the POV where you say POV and then supposedly there's something from that person's POV, except usually they do it backwards and it's just POV, but then they just show someone doing something instead of showing that person's point of view. But pov, you're Spencer Jones, Yankees outfield prospect, and you're called up to make your major league debut replacing the injured Jason Dominguez. And you want to make a good first impression. And people are concerned about your strikeout rate for good reason, because it's been upwards of 30% in AAA. So maybe you come out swinging, maybe you come out not swinging. You don't want to strike out. Maybe you want to make some contact. You want to first game. So it's Friday, May 8, and your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is Jacob Misarowski. That's whom you have to face as the strikeout proud rookie. You have to face the guy who is basically the best at striking people out in the world. At least for starting pitchers, that seems unfair. So then you come out, you face Misarowski and. And the first pitch that you see from him is 103.6 miles per hour. Take it, you take it for a called strike and then you say, well, maybe I'll offer it one. And then the next one, you know, he dials it back a bit. This is a change of speeds. He takes something off. It's down to 102.3, but he still beats you. You swing through it. Then you say, okay, well you can't beat me twice with that cheddar. You better not come in there. Again, he throws you 103.6 again, you manage to get a piece of it. You foul it off and then down 1, 2, he throws you an 89 mile per hour curveball and you, you strike out in your first major league plate appearance. And everyone says, ah, see Spencer Jones contact issues, he's going to Strike out too much to succeed. He did. I think he tipped that last one. It was a foul tip. Strikeout. But nonetheless, I just, I felt for the guy, you know, like you don't want to come up and immediately confirm everyone's worst fears. Oh, yeah, Spencer Jones, he's the strikeout prone rookie. And then you draw the Miz. That's just. And not only the Miz, who's striking out 40% of batters. If he keeps this up, I think it would be the highest strikeout rate ever for a qualified starter, if he even is a qualified starter.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But the Miz seemingly leveled up too, because in this game, of all games, maybe he was excited by the prospect of facing Spencer Jones. Who knows? But he throws even harder than he usually does. He's. He's already the hardest throwing starter, but in this game, he just decides, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna raise it a little bit. I have another gear here. And he throws. In this one start the six fastest pitches ever tracked by a starting pitcher. So that just seems unfair. There are. There are 14 tracked pitches in the pitch tracking era, regular season plus, postseason. 14 of them that have gone 103 miles per hour or more. And Jacob Misyrowski is responsible for 11 of them. And one of them was on May 1, and the other 10 were in this game. This game. That's not fair. Come on.

[B]

He's just amped to deal with the Yankees. There's something very fitting to my mind about the occasion for Spencer Jones's call up being an injury to Jason Dominguez. And we should take a moment to just be like, Jason Dominguez, you know,

[A]

yeah, he was hitting.

[B]

Yeah, it's been a rough go. He didn't have a spot right away. And then he, you know, he's up and he's hit sitting and he runs into a stupid chain link outfield wall. They ought to do something about that. I would prefer that those not be there to cause such, to wreak such havoc. But Spencer Jones is sort of a. Like a. A light, a light echo of Dominguez. Not in ways that have much to do with them as players because obviously, like, Spencer Jones is famously enormous. And you know, the Martian's like, but he's not six, seven. Both of them suffer from a inability to just have any sort of normal expectations put upon them by normies. Because, you know, Jones is fascinating. He's gone through an ebb and flow in his time as a prospect. There was a while where he peaked as a top 100 guy at most publications. The, the power is just so undeniable. He's got this huge frame. But then like the, the contact issues last year were profound, you know, profound. And so he hasn't been in our top 100 for a while. He hasn't been in most places top one hundreds for a while. I don't think that we're like unique and having moved off of him, but the thing about him is that he's six, seven and he strikes out a lot in the minors. And you know who else did that? Jesus? No. Aaron Judge.

[A]

So yeah, he is kind of cursed unless maybe that helped him somehow because the Yankees could talk themselves into. Well, Aaron Judge was huge and had some contact issues. Not as extreme, not as extreme as

[B]

Jones did, as Jones did. So I, I, I feel for Jones and there was, there was some of this with Dominguez, right where Dominguez had been famous for so long. And you know, Jason Dominguez was a top 100 guy and sort of maintained his top 100 status, although he fluctuated within the top 100. But you know, he, he was famous for such a long time. His, his playing card like secondary market was bananas.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so these guys come up to the majors and part of it is that they're Yankees. Part of it is like the extremity of the profile in Jones's case lends itself to a particular kind of narrative as it compares to Aaron Judge. And it's what hope do you have, you know, for anyone to be normal? And it's not helped, you're not helped by the fact that when the news of your call up breaks, MLB's own network is like, here's Aaron Judge and here's Spencer Jones. I'm like, what are you guys doing? What are you doing? He's not a top 100 prospect at Pipeline either. So it's just anyway, that's sort of secondary to what you're describing. Although I think you're right to note that we got like a full, a real look at some of the deficiencies. But also just like you can see this guy's a normal. You can see why it played at certain points. But I just, I know people and it's fine to be excited, but I just want to implore while really MLB Network, because I will say that I think most prospect oriented outlets are actually pretty responsible in the way they talk about Spencer Jones now, which is to say hold your horses, Horsey Holder, everybody, but everybody just chill. I'm just inviting everyone to chill. I'm Just saying we could all.

[A]

I just think it's cosmically funny and unfair that starting assignment in Game 1, like the guy who's rivaling Garrett Cole's 2019 strikeout rate and then ascends to a higher plane of elbow endangerments in that very day. Just, that's. I mean, he, he did strike out against Miz in his first play appearance, and then he walked against him in the second one, which great. And no one could hit the Miz on that day. It wasn't just Spencer Jones. He gave up two hits and two walks and struck out 11 over six and didn't allow any runs. So if he could keep sitting 103 or whatever, I mean, he might not ever allow a run again. I don't know how long he can do that. But only Mason Miller has thrown a pitch harder this year, and he's only thrown one pitch harder than Jacob Misarowski throughout four on this day. And a couple of them were to Spencer Jones in his very first big league plate appearance. That's rough because usually you might think, you know, a young guy making his debut, you're not going to like, reach back for a little extra against that guy. Unless it's just that that guy is so huge that you, Jacob Misarowski, who are also huge, are threatened by his hugeness and there's a threat response and you dial up your speed or something. Anyway, he's judge has struck out in five of his 10 plate appearances.

[B]

Thus I'm just imagining the Miz now with like porcupine quills, you know, like. Ah,

[A]

it's like a puffer fish. Puffer fish or something.

[B]

Exactly. Well, and it is funny because, like, how many times does Jacob Mizrowski look down the mountain and go, oh my God, that guy's as tall as I am. Doesn't happen very often. It is funny too because, you know, they're the same age, they're both 24. We have noted before that Jacob Mizrowski just. And it's not like, you know, Spencer Jones looks like a grandpa out there or anything, but the Miz just has such a. He's still so baby faced, you know, he's just like a real. He is a real youthful face. Some of that is that I can't get the image of him reacting to finding a Charizard out of my head when he was opening packs on stream. But he has such a. A youthful face. And so even though, you know, compared to Spencer Jones, a seasoned veteran at this point. Right. Yeah, he looks like if you were going to. If you were to show those two young men's faces to someone who had never seen a baseball game before and asked them which of them was making their debut, they absolutely would have picked Mizarowski instead of Jones. So the visual contrast was just funny. But I think that if you are a Milwaukee brewers pitcher, not that you don't try against every opponent, but I would imagine there would. You would get an extra sense of satisfaction by being able to take it to the Yankees. And in some ways, I guess it's just a sign of respect for Spencer Jones. It's like, congratulations, Rook, you're part of the laundry now, and you must be dispatched.

[A]

Yes, it's true. Yeah, be careful. The Miz, you were great already throwing 101, 102, whatever. You're triggering my Jacob deGrom reflex here. Anyway, yeah, it's true. They are Both listed at 67, but the Miz is spindly. He's lanky.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Whereas Spencer Jones is hulking. And he is. I love how he's crouched. You know, it's like everyone who has a distinctive batting stance, almost all of them, and maybe there are fewer of them now than there used to be, but. But in the instant before the pitch comes in, they all kind of look the same. It's just the setup before that, because there's. You're kind of constrained. There's a narrow bound of positions you can be in in order to get the bat to the ball fast enough. So usually it's. You start in some strange position. Well, yeah, Spencer Jones might be out of that bound, but. But you know, you start in some strange setup and then you into the normal. So everyone, almost everyone has a fairly normal batting stance in the snapshot second before the swing. It's more just like what they look like when they set up. And he looks unusual in a really endearing way, but he's, you know, he got his first hit, he got his first run batted in, but he has struck out in 5 of his 10 plate appearances thus far. With. With anyone else, I'd say small sample, but nothing about Jones is small, first of all. And also, that might not be far from his MLB true talent at this point. So. Yeah. But again, he had to face the Miz a couple of those times, so. Special circumstances.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, like, look, I think that we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that you don't call up the guy striking out almost 37% of the time at AAA if you don't have injuries on your roster. Elsewhere that necessitate you, you know, filling in. So I also think that the Yankees in all likelihood are quite clear eyed about the limitations of this young. They didn't like put him on the opening day roster and be like, figure it out. They were like, you should go to aaa. It's probably where you belong.

[A]

At least he had the platoon advantage against the M. But even so, I

[B]

have to, I have to correct myself. I, I apologize. He. I was obscuring a number. He's, he is, he was striking out 32.4% of the time at AAA.

[A]

Prior last year was 35 or so.

[B]

Excuse me. I'm so sorry. Spencer Jones. I have impugned your honor and I mean no disrespect.

[A]

Fact. Anyway, welcome to the show, Spencer. They don't, they don't all throw that hard, but I can just imagine him going back to the bench just like, oh, that's what the major leagues are like.

[B]

It's okay.

[A]

Like you're in trouble here. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's like, you might be in trouble here, buddy, but it's not going to be like that every single time.

[A]

Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

[B]

I didn't care for that.

[A]

Sorry. Okay. We did get a question from Kenneth Patreon supporter who wanted to know if this was.

[B]

You're just gonna move on. You're moving on from that. You're like, there's no redeeming it. I simply must gate away to keep moving.

[A]

Yeah, we did get a question. Kenneth Patreon support wanted to know if this was the tallest outfield ever because on Saturday they had Cody Bellinger in left, the shrimp at 6 foot 3 and then Jones and Judge et cetera, right respectively. And it actually was not the tallest outfield in MLB history. This was looked up a coup couple years ago during the illustrious Joey Gallo Yankees era. There was a day when Joey Gallo was in left and he was the small one. He was the weakest link because Aaron Judge was in center that day and giancarlo Stanton at 66 was in right and Gallo at 6 5. So collectively that is one inch more of height than, than the Bellinger Jones Judge outfield. So close. But yeah, the Yankees, they've been big. I do like when Yankees are just big that just, it feels on brand for the Bombers just to have gigantic teams which they have a lot lately. Anyway, speaking of guys with contact issues in New York, hopefully Spencer Jones will be closer to the Judge career track than the Gallo career Track, but I'm not betting on it. Anyway, talking about other outfield prospects who were just called up, the Diamondbacks called up Ryan Walt Schmidt.

[B]

They sure did.

[A]

And he is a more highly rated prospect. And there was a lot of buzz about him coming into the year and he had a nice spring tr. And so it was only a matter of time until he came up. And now he has come up. But I saw this quote, which was posted by someone in our Facebook group, and it was from an MLB.com piece that was published on Friday about Walt Schmidt and whether he could provide the offensive boost the Diamondbacks need. And there's, there's a funny quote here where it quotes Walt Schmidt and he says, and it's talking about his how he has tried to combat some swing and miss and how he has kept a disciplined approach in the box and how it ties into his stance and everything. And so it says, and this is a quote from Walt Schmidt in March. The reason I set up the way I do is because that allows me to be loaded early enough by the time the pitcher's releasing the ball to really get the full distance to recognize the pitch. I think that also plays into why I walk so much and why I work counts and why I have good strike zone discipline. I'm able to see the ball for the full 90ft. He may be laboring under a, under a misapprehension here that the distance between the mound and the plate is 90ft. That's famously cited as the distance between bases, although that's not quite true. But the ball is traveling from the, the mound to the plate. I mean, that's famously 60ft 6in. So I don't know if this was, I mean, it's still there days later. I don't know if this was a, a misquote, a typo, or whether he misspoke or whether he is actually confused about how far the mound is from home plate. Because that would actually be a big advantage if he's able to see the ball for the full 90ft somehow, even though it's traveling 60ft, 6 inches or a lot less when you take into account that the Miz is releasing it sometimes and, you know, he's got the, the wingspan. But that, I assume maybe just a brain fart or something. Yeah, but I guess that would explain his plate discipline if he gets, he gets like, you know, everyone else has two thirds the, the distance of Walt Schmidt to appreciate. I mean, I'm all for moving the mound back. I, I've said, I think that would help hitters if, if Spencer Jones had 90ft, the full 90 to take in the pitch trajectory, maybe he could. I mean if, imagine if the Miz had to throw 90ft by then, even if it started out at 103.6 or something, it's really going to lose a lot of speed by the time it's at the plate. So maybe he could handle that heat.

[B]

I think he'd still throw pretty hard.

[A]

Still pretty hard. Yeah. But might have some control issues and worry about his, his arm. But yeah, this is, I mean this is made for an effectively wild hypothetical.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We've answered like what if you had a split second longer, you had like one second of foresight or something. How big an advantage would that be if One guy has 90ft and everyone else is stuck with 60ft, 6 inches? I think that would be a huge advantage. So no wonder Ryan Welchman is such a highly rated prospect.

[B]

It has to just be a. He just has to have misspoken, right?

[A]

Probably. Yeah. He has to be aware that, that the base passer longer than that.

[B]

I'm sure, I'm sure it was just a brain fart on his part probably. He had a nice, he had a nice debut weekend, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's, that's something. He almost did a home run in one of those games but had to, had to settle for a mere RBI double. So.

[A]

And another item about a recently promoted, well, not mostly an outfielder, but has played some outfield. Gage Workman who is, he's up now with the Tigers. This is not his MLB debut. He was with the Cubs and the White Sox last year. But he's another mid-20s guy who just got called up because of a Tigers injury stack. Not a, not a highly rated prospect or anything. But he did hit a home run, his first major league home run. And I learned that his middle name is Tater.

[B]

Tater.

[A]

Tater is his middle name. And not in a, not in like a self aggrandizing. Yeah, Tater is my middle name. Like literally Tater is his middle name. Yeah. Gage Tater Workman.

[B]

And he is spelled Tater.

[A]

T, A T E, R. Tater. Tater. Yeah. So this is nominative determinism at work. He has finally hit his first big league Tater and I believe he's the first Tater ever in pro ball. There have been some guys who had a nickname Tater or Tates or something like that, but no Tater prior to Gage Workman in propol. And it turns out that he is nicknamed. Well he's not nicknamed Tater. It's his actual.

[B]

His name is Tater.

[A]

Yeah, right. A nickname Tater would not be that extraordinary. No, but it was his grandpa's nickname and his grandpa, he said this is a workman explaining it last year his buddies called him Tater all growing up. And my dad was like, well, that's a baseball name. We'll go with Tater. And it turned out to be a great baseball name. Yeah. And, and he says when I was in Toledo, a lot of guys called me Tater. My wife, my wife calls me Tater. And then he says it's a normal nickname, which I guess it is probably a pretty normal nickname, but it's not a nickname is the thing for him. I mean, I guess it is if it becomes his, his given name for baseball purposes, but really it's his grandfather's nickname. And Gage says that his grandpa did play baseball when he was younger, but he ran track. So Gage doesn't think it was a baseball nickname for him necessarily. He was just called Tater. And then his dad was like, good baseball name. And yeah, turned out to be a sign of things to come. He has now hit a Tater in the big leagues. Gage, Tater, Workman.

[B]

Tater is precious. Taters. What, what is Taters like? Taters. Taters. Taters.

[A]

Tater. Yeah, I saw some, some previous Tater nicknames. If, if I search at Baseball reference, Brennan Nomo supposedly nicknamed Tater. And then we had Frank Larry who played in the 50s and 60s and one of his nicknames was Tater. And then Anthony Santander. One of his listed nicknames, Tony Taters. You never know with the baseball reference nicknames. They're not often in common circulation. And then Matt Beatty has a listed nickname of Bader's. Taters.

[B]

Baiters. Taters.

[A]

That sounds dirty somehow. Anyway, Baters.

[B]

Taters.

[A]

We have an official Tater now, so that's exciting. And one I hope final follow up about Terex Goble and the loose bodies. Slash Loose Body. Slash Joint. Mouse. Slash Mice. So Scott Boris elaborated on the medical procedure that Terek Skuple underwent here because last time we led with the John Heyman report that this was like the best loose body you've ever seen. It was only one loose body and it was like the opposite of Carlos Kray's ankle, the one that he didn't just hurt, but the other one, which was like, you know, the worst ankle anyone's ever seen on the medicals. And this was just the, the best possible outcome for cleaning up loose Bodies because there was only one loose body in there and it was relatively small, supposedly. And now we have learned. Boris went on Buster Only's Baseball tonight podcast at ESPN and Boris is saying that they invented Dr. Neil L. Trash, who's, you know, one of the famous baseball surgeons, sports surgeons in general. This was a new procedure, according to Boris, that it, it wasn't just that they did the usual thing and it went well. But here's what Boris said that he had. There's new technology where a needle sized device, he can manipulate it where it doesn't in any way. He can put the scope in and has a camera on the end of it that gives him 120° look at everything, where he can be precise about where the bone chip was. And he could do this in a way that would not interrupt the tissue as a normal arthroscope would. So he's saying that this is some new procedure that the doctor has pioneered and used on Skuba here and that it's even less invasive than arthroscopic surgery. And that he says, I don't know whether Boris coined this or, or Dr. Ella Trash, but I'm, I'm gonna guess. Boris has called it the Skubal scope. So they're trying to brand this now as a Tarek Skuple is the Tommy John of the Schuyl scope. And thus Boris is saying that because it's so uninvasive that it will be a much faster return and he'll be able to come back and he won't have to build up his. Because he won't. There's just not as much tissue damage. He likened it to receiving a shot like they just stick a little needle in there and then they just withdraw it. But crucially, you were questioning how small I know the loose body was because. Relatively small, but we didn't really know well, how big is a loose body generally. So Scott Boris, according to Scott Boris, medical expert, he says that it was a lima bean sized particle.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. So he stuck this needle in, just withdrew a lima bean sized particle and that it would be this return. Well, less than half of what's your usually expected. So we'll see if that's the case. But now we know. Evidently a relatively small loose body in the elbow is lima bean sized.

[B]

Do you like lima beans?

[A]

I do like lima beans, yeah.

[B]

I'm not a big lima bean fan. I wonder if it's a preparation issue. So I have a question for you and I don't want to make too much of this so don't be mistaken. Don't get confused about how much of a much I'm making about this school bull is a free gin at the end of the season, as we have established. We have also established that even though it seems like there are generally wider error bars for your return from loose bodies, that it is acknowledged to be a less invasive even when you're not getting a scubal scope, a less invasive procedure certainly less serious than UCL reconstruction whether it's a traditional Tommy John or internal brace. And so I get that part of it. Would you want to talk about how your guys doing a brand new thing? Well, I found a little. I find that a little surprising candidly. And again I'm not making a big deal out of this. I'm not saying he's derelict. I'm just a little surprised that there would be a rush to volunteer hear that information. Although maybe people in front offices were like look, we were listening to Effectively Wild and we think that this was agent nonsense and so he felt the need to respond. So maybe it's. It's my fault when it comes down to it, but I, I am a little surprised by that. Also not to pick a nit. I know, I know that our, our guy likes some wordplay. He enjoys wordplay kind of time your clients like the best pitcher in baseball, best handful of guys, certainly the best pitcher in the American League when he's healthy. At least lately you really want a surgery named after him. That's something you're keen on, even if it's just a little needle. Also, we don't need to talk so much about the little needles. I mean, look, needles are important. I'm not a. I'm not squeamish about like getting my blood drawn or whatever, but it doesn't mean I want to hear about it. You know, I don't need. Is it like sucking the end of the. If it's lima bean sized, yeah. How can it just. I am so. I'm. I'm also confused about some.

[A]

How do they withdraw it if it's such a small little insertion?

[B]

It's just a little insertion. And look, somewhere out there is a doctor listening to this podcast. And your instinct as a medical professional is going to be to answer my question. And I want to be clear about my objectives here. And it's not to get an answer. It's not to have an email about it that has a lot of detail because I just, I don't want to know about what's in my joints, you know, that's not a business.

[A]

Your joint sack. Using the technical terminology for that.

[B]

Like, how do you get the lime of bean out of there? Is it like a. I mean, I

[A]

guess they just suck it up, but yeah, it's.

[B]

They just suck it up. Now I have a vision, like, you're getting venom out of a snake bite or something.

[A]

That seems like it probably trash. He just. He puts his mouth to your elbow. Yep. Singing.

[B]

We've had mouth sounds. I don't know about this episode. We're a little off the rails.

[A]

Yeah. This is not the first time I. Because this. Initially, it made me think of Scooby Snacks when I heard Scoopel Scope. And I don't know if that was intentional or not, but of course, people remember from the GM meetings last year when Scott Boris said the fans in Detroit want the Tigers to build a Tarek Barrack. The Little Caesars are running around town saying, si. Sigh. It should be Scooby done. Right? If not, I think the fans would certainly think it's a Detroit doink anyway. So this is not the first time that something Scott Boris has said has made me think of Scooby Doo in connection with Skubal. And on purpose, no less. But I did think that that lima bean. Now, even that is somewhat imprecise because lima beans can be different sizes. They vary much like loose bodies in the elbow. A lima bean could be a big lima bean or a relatively small lima bean. But if a. A small loose body is lima bean sized, that actually makes me think the loose bodies are bigger than I would have expected.

[B]

How big are loose bodies normally?

[A]

Yeah, because if they're usually bigger than lima bean size. And also usually there are a bunch of them too. And so I think they're like a bunch of lima beans just floating around in there. That sounds like a lot crunchy. Yeah. We did have one doctor in our Patreon Discord group weigh in, and this was not their specialty. They were not like an elbow surgeon, so. But their understanding was that generally fewer bodies the better because. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I guess it's intuitive. Just because if there are a bunch of loose bodies, then that suggests that more stuff has broken off. Right. And that's probably bad if more of it is broken. I guess that's extremely basic, you know, just kind of vibe doctoring, basically, bro. Science. But that does hold up, I guess. Anyway, so we will see whether all the hype about the Schuyl Scope is borne out by an actual quick return. And you're right. I guess you Might not want your client associated with a brand new medical procedure. I guess it's not brand new, but maybe it's brand new for a big leaguer. But if you think it's better and safe and you can convince people of that, then I guess you would want it known that, hey, this was not the usual thing that takes longer to come back from and has more side effects. This is even easier to come back from. But you'd have to get people to buy in to the idea that the Skubel Scope is actually preferable. And we'll see. But look, Tommy John, I mean, he. He weathered the Tommy John surgery and came back and pitched forever after that. So maybe this will be the same and you'll be associated with that procedure, but that procedure paid off and gave you another lease on Major league life. So we can hope. All right, so we should probably talk about the big baseball news. Relatively big, just like the Lima bean was relatively small. We talked about Austin Hedges last week and we talked about Patrick Bailey last week and now we're talking about them again. We somehow anticipated that they would both be back in the news again because now they are teammates. Because the San Francisco Giants have traded Patrick Bailey to the Cleveland Guardians for the 29th pick in this year's MLP draft. And yes, you can, in some limited circumstances trade draft picks in mlb. It's a competitive balance round pick, which is tradable. And left handed pitching prospects. Matt Wilkinson, better known as Tugboat. So we've gone from Tater to Tugboat.

[B]

Tugboat.

[A]

Tugboat is not actually Matt Wilkinson's middle name, sadly, but it is a fantastic nickname. And I definitely want to hear your takes on Tugboat.

[B]

I love Tugboat.

[A]

Tugboat's great. But the headliner here is Bailey. And this was a surprise, I think. I mean, a player of Bailey's caliber over the past few years and it being early in the season still and also the team that he was traded to, where it's like, we have Austin Hedges at home. We have the actual Austin Hedges. Why do we need Bailey too? And everyone made the joke now about now that Hedges is an offense first catcher, right? They had to go get the glove guy in Patrick Bailey. But this was so quick and early to make a move like this. A guy who had been quite valuable for the Giants and was a homegrown guy. And the Giants are off to a really lousy start. And is this a panic move? Does this make some sense? Does it even make sense for the Guardians to stockpile good framers who are not known for their bats. Obviously Bailey not known for his bat for quite a while, but the bat has been been particularly unproductive this year as we discussed. And I also saw some people make the joke about how I think he was assigned number 16 for the guardians and that was his WRC plus when he was traded. So they, they gave him the number that corresponded to his WRC plus. So that's not ideal. But yeah, even by Bailey standards, he was off to a really rough offensive start, at least based on the surface stats. And the Giants cut bait and the Guardians perhaps bought low. But what are they actually acquiring here? So what did you think of this news and this trade?

[B]

I thought it was weird. Yeah, I thought it was strange. Let me talk about the part that I don't find weird and I am of course sort of leaning heavily on the analysis being provided by our prospect team when I say this. This is not a bad draft to have additional picks in, right? And the pick acquisition piece and specifically the bonus pool that goes with that pick. I think for a team in San Francisco circumstance, meaning they're not very good, it makes a good amount of sense to try to infuse your bonus pool with a couple million dollars. So not an insignificant amount of money. They now have one of the bigger bonus pools to throw, which means that in addition to just the pick itself, they have greater flexibility in a draft that has a great amount of depth in it. Right. And being able to spread that money around to multiple picks might be appealing. Being able to sort of persuade some guys to sign rather than go to school. Like there's, there's real value there that I think makes a, a ton of sense. They are in a really precarious position at the big league level now as it pertains to their catching group. Which isn't to say that they don't guys, but that they don't have like an obvious dude and they certainly don't have an a particularly obvious starter. And I don't mean to knock, you know, friend of the pod, Daniel Suzak and Jesus Rodriguez, who was already on the roster, had been acquired from the Yankees and last year's Duval trade. And who you know isn't like a top 100 guy. The projection systems, I should note, freaking love Jesus Rodriguez. Zips, Zip Ships views Jesus Rodriguez as like a 55 future value guy. It sees him as like a 2, 2 and a half war player and

[A]

he plays a lot of positions. He does catch, but he's not a catching specialist. It's a big Fall from Patrick Bailey to anyone defensively really. But yeah, when Rodriguez was called up just recently, I raised an eyebrow because I was thinking, well, where is he gonna play? I know Susak has been hurt, but he's about to be back. And they had Logan Porter hanging around and Eric Haas hanging around, but I was won. If they're calling up this catching prospect, even if he's not exclusively a catching prospect, then what does that mean for Bailey? And Bailey had not started a few games too, so they had already sort of sidelined him. So the writing was on the wall.

[B]

Rodriguez is interesting because he plays a lot of different places. He has like really cool multi positional versatility. I think that when Eric was sourcing stuff on him and sort of doing a fresh coat of paint on Rodriguez, he was impressed to learn that like he is a, he has been a very good framer in the past in limited opportunities. He was like plus four framing runs last year in the minors even though he only caught 60 games. So he's not bad back there. He isn't as good at the other parts of catching in part because of his size, but you know, his ball blocking is pretty below average and his throwing needs polish. So like you know, he is procedurally still in progress and certainly relative to some. Someone like Bailey is going to seem kind of undercooked but like he's hitting well so far. Although I think the guys are skeptical that that's going to continue because there was some like contact concern and his more granular chase data doesn't look as good and. But isn't like so bad that I think Eric said something to the effect of like he doesn't think that he's going to struggle the way like Kieber Ruiz has. So you know, be a piece Giants fans. It won't be the worst it could be but they are now in a very like, like unsettled sort of throw. A Rule 5 guy and a recently called up dude and like the, you know, remains of Eric Hoffs at the wall kind of a spot as it pertains to their catching and I just, I wonder. And this is, this is a lot of like speculation and tea leaf reading on my part. But I just, I wonder how things are going over there. Yeah, like vibes wise within the Oregon not just hey we're, you know, we're kind of bad right now and have. We're 16 and 24 and we're eight games out.

[A]

Yeah. Worst run differential in the, in the majors.

[B]

Yeah. Like some of it is just gonna, it's not going to be going great over there because things aren't going great over there. But you know, we had heard in the spring that Tony Vitello was open to the notion of calling pitches from the dugout and obviously like Bailey, among others, objected to that idea in a way that like made a ton of sense and also made us kind of raise our eyebrows because it's like, well, if you're removing one of the aspects of this guy being able to add value, even if it's the one that we can't quantify as well, like what is your understanding of this player? Also it seems like a not great, like thinking out loud kind of an exercise to sort of tacitly impugn the value of catcher defense when that's what that guy does because he's clearly not going to hit a lick. So I just. And they backtracked on that and, and now they're sort of mixed messaging about how serious they are about that as a, as a potential organizational philosophy going forward. But yeah, all of that to say, like, Tony seems like he's in over his head a little bit and most of that has nothing to do with the Patrick Bailey trade to be. You don't have to have the best defensive catcher in baseball on your roster to like know that you need to signal which handedness you want out of the bullpen when you come in to make a pitching change.

[A]

That was weird for anyone who hasn't seen just this past weekend. Yeah. Vitello just like didn't specify which.

[B]

And they're like leaving from the bullpen like who do you want? Cuz they, they had a lefty and a righty opposite.

[A]

Yeah. And maybe he thought it should have been obvious or something based on the matchup, but it was weird because he was just sort of. And Willie Adamus had to signal and Patela was just like standing there stone faced. It was. Yeah, it was one of many strange incidents involving that team this year.

[B]

And so look, we had a suspicion that there would be a learning curve and an adjustment period. But it's like this is a, an eyebrow raising blend of, of incidents where it's like on the one hand you're demonstrating like a little bit of, of maybe interpersonal clumsiness in some of your messaging around say Patrick Bailey and game calling from the dugout and then there's like actual seeming procedural deficiency. Anyway, that's not. Again, that's not specific to the Bailey trade. But I do wonder how is he kind of relating interpersonally to his Players was there just like, you know, were they not kind of vibing in a way that maybe in conjunction with the extreme underperformance at the plate was like, let's just move on from this guy and see what we can recoup in terms of draft value. It is interesting to me that a guy who is such a proficient defensive catcher is seemingly not someone who Buster Posey views as like one of his guys. And I think that, you know, as Posey has sort of settled in, like he does seem to want his dudes and you know, Bailey not, not his dude seemingly. Well, certainly not anymore.

[A]

Yeah, they have also had some cases this year where there was a suspect pitch calling and people questioning the pitch calling because, you know, many of the same pitch type thrown over and over again and then who was making that call and who should have. But for Bailey to be traded, first of all, since the day he came up, so May 19, 2023 was his major league debut. Since that day, Fangraphs were he ranks 41st in the majors and number one in the Giants. He's been the Giants most valuable player over that span and among catchers, really, only Cal Rally and William Contreras have been more valuable. So if you just look purely at war, he has been a very productive player and not the sort of guy you should be cutting bait on because he had a slow start now was an extremely slow start even by his standards. But he has been quite unlucky seemingly. And I know Baseball Prospectus's deserved runs created plus stat had him at 94 I think at the time of the trade where 100 is average, which is quite high for Bailey, I mean close to league average. And between that and his expected weighted on base being higher than last year's and last year's was low. Don't get me wrong, it was bad. But even with a 70 WRC plus last year, he was still a fairly valuable, certainly playable player. And so if the underlying offensive metrics are sort of the same, then maybe it's smacks of impatience or impulsiveness a little bit. I know it's hard to watch a guy guy not hit at all the way that he has not been hitting. But also it doesn't seem like at least based on the underlying numbers and quality of contact that he's really any worse than he was before. And so if you could put up with it before and even be happy to have him before then, why now, I guess decide to cut him loose? So maybe that's part of it. So. And Buster Pobo, he's made some pretty. I don't know if it's impulsive, but at least like headline grabbing moves. And he's clearly willing to do kind of dramatic stuff. He's not A.J. preller exactly, maybe, but you know, he's gonna, he's gonna pull the trigger on some stuff. And I saw a quote in Andrew Baggerley's piece about this for the Athletic where Matt Chapman was quoted on Posey saying he acts like a player. He's like, all of us, we're impatient, we want to get it done and we want to win now and then. He goes on to say, I'm not saying that he acts on a whim or anything like that. I just think that he really wants to win and he's going to make whatever move he thinks he can to make this team better. And I trust Buster, blah, blah, blah. So he acts like a player. I'm. I'm sure Chapman meant that as a compliment. Kind of like, he wants to win. He's not going to just let us be bad. He's going to do stuff. But also, sometimes you don't want your Pobo to act like a player. You want to have kind of a longer view on things. And a player is always going to say, yeah, let's go make a move. Let's. As long as it doesn't affect me personally, let's. Let's go bring someone in. Sure. But Pobo has to look at things that a player is not always considering. And given that Popo is coming from being a player and then, you know, came into this job with very little front office experience and baseball operations experience, he's. He's like the Tony Vitello equivalent for a front office executive, sort of. Except that obviously Buster has been at the big leagues and with this organization and everything, but in the sense that Vitello lacked major league experience of any kind, Pobo lacked baseball operations experience really, before he got this top job with. Which also seemed like a bit of a rush. Whatever his excellent qualities and leadership skills, that you still want some seasoning, you still want a little bit of an apprenticeship there to learn the ropes because it's a, It's a different job. So he has made some bold moves, whether it's the Devers trade or Chapman or the, I guess, you know, the Adamus signing and then. And then hiring Patello in the first place and then also this trade. So you might think, you know, things are going bad, why pull the rip cord on Patrick Bailey or get rid of him? Is he really the problem? And maybe you're sort of selling low on a guy who's been pretty valuable for you. That would be at least the case against the Giants making this move. And maybe you can't even quantify whatever value Bailey's bringing in terms of pitch calling and some of the stuff that's a little more intentional to this point. So that's why it was surprising to me. And then as for the Guardians, well, they do a good job with player development typically, so a draft pick is pretty important for them. But I guess I get why. Obviously they have a type. They like the Austin Hedges profile. So if they can get a younger Austin Hedges and someone who historically has hit better than Hedges, which is not saying much, I understand that Hedges has hit well by his standards this year and even late last year. But let's. Let's pump the brakes a bit. Maybe I don't think he's a good hitter. Maybe he's a not a historically terrible hitter. Who knows? But if you can get another Hedges and a younger guy who's under team control for a little bit and maybe has a little more upside, then I guess I understand it. So it's just kind of doubling down on the profile of the type of defense first Gold Glove type catcher that they already like. So maybe it seems like overkill. Like, why do you need Bailey if you have Hedges? But I guess I understand why you would want even more like that if you like what you have had in Hedges.

[B]

Well, and I think that it also has a lot to say over sort about where things stand with Bo Naylor. Right. Because if they were getting any kind of production out of him, I have to think that this trade doesn't get made. But he's hitting a buck 43 with a 23 WRC plus, and he's nowhere near the defensive player that Bailey is. So his ability to sort of, sort of overshoot that number from a WAR perspective is limited because he's not the same caliber of defensive player. Now, I know that there's like, we don't want to be like, too fine with sort of parsing out the framing and the WAR and the whatnot, because, you know, depending on how you're dealing with abs challenges, like, those numbers might look really different. Like, BP's numbers look really different than savants from a framing perspective because of the way that they're trading challenges stuff seemingly, if I'm understanding the ABS documentation right over at Savant. So, like, you know, I doubt that they're saying, oh, well, There was a particular threshold that Bo Naylor couldn't clear and thus, you know, in 90 plate appearances were confident here. But he like hasn't been the guy he was in limited run in 2023 since, well, 2023. So there other options outside of Hog were a little limited. I am. I do have some amount of surprise that, that a team like Cleveland would be willing to move on from the. The draft capital piece of it. I love Tugboat. I think Tugboat's a good prop.

[A]

Tell me about Tugboat man.

[B]

His name, his nickname is Tugboat. And if, if you'll allow me to brag on our. On, on the site a little bit. Apparently the origin of Tugboat is a nickname is Matt Wilkinson is a very slow runner. He's 61250. He's a big boy. And one of his teammates noted that he was like a Tugboat chugging around the basis at one point. And I thought to myself, well, sure, that's the origin of the nickname, but that's easy. And so we talked about how his fastball, despite its low Villa was like a tug of boat. Pulling his profile. I think that's a. I think that's better writing, Ben. I think that's. I think that's a better, better writing. If I could go back in time and offer notes to his teammate. It's like, hey, Tugboat nickname beautiful. Let's. Let's tweak the origin story here a little bit. He will probably be familiar to some of our listeners who watch WBC Action because he, he played for Team Canada. He is from Vancouver. He's great. Like, he, he throws 90. What a contrast to them is. But that fastball plays like an elite pitch. It has a crazy miss rate. They have been quite conservative in how they've promoted him. So, you know, they're telling you what they think of Tugboat long term, probably both in terms of their promotion pace and the fact that they were willing to trade him. But he's like, got like a lot of deceptive elements to his fastball. And I think he's the sort of player where, where when people are trying to understand that like athleticism as a concept can manifest in a lot of different forms of physicality. Like, Tugboat's a great example of one of the archetypes that might surprise people based on what they think athleticism looks like because he's a big guy, but he's very mobile and flexible and he moves really well on the mound. So he's just, he's a lot of Fun. He's a lot of fun. You know, he's not a. He's not a top 100 guy. He's a 45, but he's gonna, you know, he's performing well this year, and it's a. It's a cool combination of, like, traits and fastball. And his nickname is Tugboat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And now Ben. And now if everything goes to plan, he'll be playing in that ballpark. I'm sure they use tugboats in the bench bay. I'm sure they use tugboats in the bay.

[A]

Perfect. Yeah.

[B]

In the bay. Tugboat.

[A]

Kismit. I love it. I also wanted to bring up the framing in Bailey's situation too, because his framing has still been good, but I think he has lost a little, probably because of abs. Patrick Dubuque just wrote about this at bp, and even though he's at or near the top of the league in framing, it's still a lower ceiling, I think. And I've referenced how I chose my top 10 catchers going into the start of the season at MLB Network, and I agonized over whom to include. And one of the tough cuts was Bailey, because Bailey last year, I had sort of stuffed him and I had him high on my list. And he was a top 10 catcher by war last year, even with a 70 WRC plus because he was that good on defense. But I figured a, he doesn't hit very well and balance be. If he even loses just a little because of the challenge system, well, then the thing that's propelling him onto the top of this list, it's not going to be catapulting him to the top anymore. And that has sort of been borne out thus far. And Patrick noted, at least according to BP's framing stats like 70% worse or so through the same point or the same number of innings like last year, fan graphs framing, he was 21 runs better than average. And that was about what he had been the season before. And that was a thousand plus innings. And, you know, now he's like a quarter of the way to that point. We're exactly a quarter of the way through the season, and he's at 1.7 framing runs. So even if it's still good, it. It appears that the top end of the leaderboard, it has been compressed a bit, which I think makes sense because if you're the guy who was getting the most favorable calls and. And able to get a lot of. Not that framing is all about getting strikes on. On balls. It's also sometimes about getting Strikes on strikes and not losing strike calls. But a lot of it was that he could make the zone behave bigger than it was for other catchers. And now he's getting challenged sometimes. And as we noted, he has not been an elite challenger himself. And as we talked about, if you're a good framer, probably fewer easy challenge opportunities for you out there. And so there's a reverse correlation between framing and challenging. So if he's not making it up there and his true talent framing skill has, like a little, has been lopped off the top, even though he's still good relative to other catchers, that I think does appreciably change his value. Value. You don't even have to forecast, okay, there could be full abs and no framing value at some point during his career, which is possible, but I don't think it's so imminent that you have to worry about it necessarily while he's under team control, say. But even in the short term, if he's relatively elite at that, but elite framing is only worth, I don't know, 10 runs instead of 20 or something like that or even less. It depends on the source, but. But then suddenly that really eats into his value a lot because he's not giving you anything offensively. So that would be the case for Posey kind of accurately appraising him and realizing that he's actually less valuable in this era, which is possible. Part of it, according to the reporting, seems that Posey just. He didn't really like watching Bailey because even though he understands that framing matters, he likes blocking and catching the ball cleanly and that he's had some past balls and things because he was, like, trying to frame and so, you know, like the ball would. Would tick off his glove or something and that Posey just kind of got frustrated watching him. So if it's that, which is weird because Posey himself was a great framer, you know, that'll help him sail into the hall of Fame, I think so. So if he was frustrated that Bailey was overemphasizing framing, then maybe Posey was over indexing on his preferences, his aesthetic preferences for a catcher. So that's sort of suspect too. But also maybe he's right and maybe relatively speaking, framing is a little less valuable than it was pre challenge system. So there are a lot of wrinkles and angles. Here is what makes it so interesting to talk. Talk about.

[B]

And again, we'll note that, like, the way that. That they are doing it on the savant side is a little bit different. And the amount of drop off has been muted relative to say our FRM metric or BP's metric. So there's. The circuit courts aren't in alignment on this one, but it stands to reason that there would be some muting of the effect. I don't know that I buy that it's quite this dramatic just because of the percentage of pitchers that actually get challenged. But as we have seen and as we noted in our conversation with other Ben, like the mere existence of the ABS zone is altering the way the pitches are called, even in instances where there isn't a challenge. So you can imagine other non challenge effects that do have a root in, in, you know, some combination of the ABS zone and the changes in how, how things are being sort of evaluated on the umpire side that would be kind of squeezing the best framers.

[A]

So yeah, and these metrics, if they're kind of context neutral, wouldn't account for the fact that even if there is some framing and it still has an impact, some of the most important, most valuable frames would have been high leverage ones.

[B]

And that is more likely to see them challenged.

[A]

Exactly. And so yeah, just the, the straight sort of framing numbers, if you're not taking into account the context, then you might overrate framing because it might be that the really high leverage frames, you're less likely to get those calls now. So that sort of subtracts your value. Anyway, it's all fascinating. I think I kind of prefer the guardian side of things just because I do feel like the Giants really sold low on Bailey and that maybe part of this was also kind of personalities clashing a little bit and that overriding the straight value appraisal. But I don't know. It's possible that Bailey is just a little less valuable player now regardless of the bat. And maybe the Guardians are just in love with the, the idea of Bailey that they had before and not the current Bailey. So we will watch that and we'll also watch, yeah, the, the pitches from the dugout. There was a line in Bagger's piece, he said that Posey said that this was not prompted or that they haven't talked about pitches being called from the dugout after this trade. Posey said there's been no discussion of calling pitches from the dugout now that the Giants are lighter on experience behind the plate. But I wonder just because there was a lot of smoke surrounding that and it, it was kind of of the fire was put out by Bailey and Logan Webb and other guys who were like no thanks, not for us. But now if Vitello was leaning this way and suddenly he has all these unaccomplished and rookie catchers. I mean this would be the perfect time for him to implement this much like the Marlins did. So wouldn't be surprised if there's at least more pitch suggestion going on for better or worse. And I will be curious to see if, if, if the Giants keep struggling this way. I'm not going to say that my bold preseason prediction that one of the newly hired managers will be fired this season. I still think the odds are against it, if only because it would reflect very poorly on Buster Pobo if, if he were to give up on the Tello. But man, the like stream of consciousness, just weird quotes and like the rah rah stuff and then the like questioning his player's effort and all. It's just very, very, very college coded very and, and weirdly like foot in his mouth a lot of the time too in a way that it's not like he never talked to the media before. So some of it I get, it's inexperience and it's hey Tony, no one cares about like your college grudges that you keep dredging up. But also sometimes he just has the most meandering way of answering questions and, and saying things in the most like attention getting, getting kind of way and not in a good way that you'd almost think he wasn't media trained. Which I'm sure there's more media spotlight on him now than there was before, but it's not like there was none. So that has surprised me.

[B]

I wanna make sure that I'm not impugning the good reporters of the SEC and the folks who cover college based

[A]

Michael Bauman covered him.

[B]

Right. There are definitely journalists doing good work down there there. Some of whom are professionals and some of whom are student journalists. Right. But I don't want to lend the impression that it's like a bunch of college kids covering Tony, like they have.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Professional reporters and again like a lot of student journalists doing really good work in all kinds of contexts. So I don't want to make too much of it, but I, I do think that it is probably not wildly out of line to suggest that it is a more, more skeptical media environment that he has been thrust into than he is used to. Which isn't to say that it's like unfairly antagonistic or whatever, but it's like, hey, you're the manager of the San Francisco Giants. Like we don't. This is an SEC country. Right?

[A]

Yeah. So and you're off to a rough start, which I don't think is his fault, mostly, but it has increased the scrutiny.

[B]

You gotta do the. You gotta do a little tap, tap, tap cap on your forearm, Tony. And which one is gonna bring in a different guy?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, come on, man. He's not the first manager to brain fart during a pitching change. Okay. Like, he's not the first one to do.

[A]

It's been there. Former Giants manager, though, that was with

[B]

the Phillies mostly, I guess, seeing a trend. Yeah. But, you know, I. I just think that the growing pain are obvious. We're seeing the seams. Do I think that he is going to be, like, let go? No. It's May 11th. I'm sure that there was some amount of on the job, growing pain, you know, anticipated when they decided to make this higher. And you're right to say that, like, this was a big swing from Posey, and so he is going to be mindful of the way that it reflects on him, however long he decides to stick with Vitello. But also, as we noted, it's not like it's the typical pobo relationship either, because he's a part owner in the team. So, like, is he gonna. Is he in any jeopardy? You know? Yeah, I think you should. I had so much fun watching Buster Posey's career. He is an important player in the, like, establishment of my baseball lore. He was such a joy to watch. Frame. Having said that, I. I think that it might be important for there to be the possibility of jeopardy when it comes to that. The person occupying that seat. And that doesn't mean that they have to live in fear. That doesn't mean that ownership needs to make them feel as if their chair is wobbly for no reason. But I. I do think that like. Like having the consequence of maybe not having a job you really like is an important part of it. Maybe.

[A]

Yeah. Well, it has made the Giants more interesting. I don't know that anyone thought they were going to be good. And if anything, they had a very boring off season. They've just been so consistently. 500. I expected them to have another lackluster year. And we thought, well, Tony Patella might be the most interesting thing about them this year. And he kind of has been. Not in a great, straight way, but. Yeah. Anyway, we will see whether they're able to right the ship with Tubboat here. So a few other observations. One just wanted to. To mention that Bryce Harper, he has bounced back. You know, he's having a nice year, and the The Phillies are 10 and three now in the Don Mattingly managerial era. So a little lost in the slow start for the team and then the quick recovery under Mattingly is that Bryce Harper has his best WRC plus and highest expected weighted on base since 2021 when he won his last MVP award. Now, the defense has graded out poorly and that has suppressed his WAR somewhat, but the bat has been back. So whether that is because Dave Dombrowski challenged him, suggested he was not elite anymore or not, I don't know. But he did sort of seem like the type. I mean obviously he took that personally and, and used it as motivation in and yeah, he has looked more like the old or younger Bryce at the plate. So that has been fun.

[B]

It's been quite the turnaround really. And I think, look, he's hitting like a man who drinks pasteurized milk. What more could you ask for?

[A]

Yeah, I mean he's not hitting like Michael Conforto, but he's hitting pretty well.

[B]

I think that Michael Conforto hitting well is like a sign from the baseball gods to crack Craig specifically. Of what I don't quite know, but I do feel like he is being tortured, you know.

[A]

Yes, poor Craig Goldstein. But it's, it's 55 plate appearances but he, he is leading the majors in WRC plus minimum 50 with a 215 WRC plus. I'm sure that will continue. But he has actually been just like hitting the ball hard. There was a time when Michael Conforto was quite good with when Michael Bauman was comparing Conforto and Aaron Judge as to who would have the better career long term. That has been answered. But Conforto who knew still some signs of life there for the Cubs despite the Dodgers Also talked about the Harper bounce back elsewhere in the NL East. Just wanted to shout out Matt Olson who is also having a a fine year at first base and is in fact leading the national league in Fangraphs war. But this past weekend end he took over the 10th spot in most consecutive games played ever. So he now has the 10th longest streak of consecutive games played. He passed the Immortal and not actually Immortal, but Gus sir who had a 822 game streak in the 30s Madison now is up to 823 and he in a week or so if he keeps playing, playing will catch up with and pass Eddie Yost the walking man whom we talked about just last week. Everything we talked about last week is coming up and becoming relevant again. But this is really Matt Olsen 10th all time in terms of longest Streak, but especially in this era, he's really an ERA adjusted Ironman because this is an era where there's a little load management even on the position player side. Yeah, I think I've talked or stat blasted about this before. You. It's not nearly the sort of precipitous drop off we've seen with qualified pitchers where there are barely any anymore, but there are generally fewer qualified hitters on a per team basis than there used to be because guys get days off now because it's generally seen as maybe not the best thing in the world to play every single day. And a lot of these Ironman streaks behind Cal, it's Lou Gehrig, it's Everett Scott, it's. Well, Steve Garvey was a little more recent and Miguel Taha of Billy Williams, Joe Se, Stan Musial, Eddie Yost. I mean it's a lot of earlier eras. And for Matt Olsen to get to this number in this era, whether that's been a good thing or not, I don't know. But the Braves came in for some criticism couple years ago. I mean, when no one took a day off and that lineup slumped and everyone got hurt, people started connecting the dots and thinking, huh, is it because they don't get any rest that they keep getting hurt? I don't know whether it was or not. Not. But Matt Olsen, he just keeps showing up to work day in and day out and this year at least he's been raking and he just hit his 300th homer. So it's pretty special. I don't, I don't know that I'm like rooting for him to keep going, whether it's in his best interest or in the Brave's best interest or not. But it does stand out as an outlier in this era of spelling guys giving guys a day and sometimes it's, it's a partial day off. It's. We'll just DH you to today. And Russell Carlton did some research that showed that that wasn't actually as restful as you might think. Like it's not even really restful at all. You're still, even if you're on your legs a little less, I guess psychologically speaking, you know, you're still kind of in the game, but really it's, it's extraordinary in this era in particular for him always to be a staple in that lineup.

[B]

It's pretty remarkable. I don't want to us to take away from his success this season. Well, who needs a day off? Put it this way, I don't think that Matt Olsen would be performing any worse on like a rate basis if he had two days off so far this year. You know what I mean? Like, I think. I think it would be okay. I think that the rest component certainly matters, but that guy's performance fluctuates for all kinds of reasons. I do think the Braves are a prime example of like, hey, give your guys some time off sometimes, because good golly. But then one of the ways you expect that to maybe show up is that the year after they've been continuing their iron man business, they'll be worse. And sometimes that's true like Cal and sometimes you're a Albies and you're bouncing back and playing great. So who could understand the human body? What a mystery.

[A]

It's an interesting race, the the Freeman vs Olsen race. Since Freeman went from Atlanta to LA and Olsen went to Atlanta, the tale of the tape now is 652games for Freeman, 689 for Olsen. Freeman still has the war lead according to fan graphs 23 to 19.4. But Olson of course is years younger and still has time to catch up and is having them more productive year in 2026. So that is not settled yet. I know it's it's not all just war, obviously it's Freddy Freeman and when he meant to the fans and the emotional, obviously that was quite wrenching for him at the time and for fans as well. But as a purely baseball decision it was. It was defensible given the ages and respective salaries and everything. And Freeman has held up quite well obviously, but Olson holding his own. So yeah, it's been pretty close and and I guess you would have expected it to be pretty close. But yeah, there isn't a clear answer as to what was the right call there necessarily. I also just noticed the Pirates. So another of my bold preseason predictions was that they would have the most production from their starters in more than half a century by guys who had been only with that team because they had really an all homegrown rotation, pitchers who had never started pitched for another organization. And so the team to beat, I noted, was the 2018 Mets, who had 18 WAR, all from guys who had never started or pitched for another organization. And the Pirates are leading the national league in starting pitcher one WAR, and they are on pace for 17.8 just off that pace of 18.0 that they needed to top that Mets team or tie it at least. So they have been as advertised as hoped, their starters. It's been really fun because just every Day they have had a guy going who's homegrown and good or at least, yeah, fun to watch and I am heartened by that. And somewhat surprisingly, they've also got good production from their position players and their hitters too, which is why they're a winning team and very much competitive. So yeah, that was one of the top things I was looking forward to this season. And it has lived up to the billing. Not just Skeins, but Braxton Ashcraft has been really good and Mitch Keller has continued to be solid. And Carmen Majinski, who I always have to remind myself how to pronounce his name because like there's no G in there. There's, there's an L. It's like all over the place. But he has been good FIP wise, not ERA wise. The only guy who's really struggled looking at the underlying stats is Bubba Chandler, somewhat surprisingly, but maybe he'll be better. Mason Montgomery has gotten a couple opener quote unquote starts too. But yeah, I was really excited for them because it's just every day you've got got a homegrown promising pitcher taking the mound and they have largely lived up to the hope so far, so that's great. And if they can be a little less lopsided than projected in terms of pitching production and position player production, they might just find themselves in the playoffs. You never know.

[B]

Oh boy, oh boy. It's the sort of thing where you feel silly saying it because they've just been so God awful in recent memory. And then you think about, about well, how many starts could you get out of ski in a postseason series.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you go, oh boy. Yeah, oh boy. Cuz Ben, it was quite something to see in person.

[A]

I know. And that's when you hope that the fact that the Pirates frustrated you by pulling him after 97 pitches. So mad maybe, maybe they're, they're saving those bullets. That's not exactly how it works. But, but maybe they can make it up to you later if he's, if he's an Iron man in October and, and they say, ah, it's because we, we gave him a spell earlier in the season, I guess.

[B]

I had seen Skeen's pitch in person from the box, but this was the first time I went on tickets when this, this most recent time. So it was a, it's a different, it's a different experience when you're back there and you're like, oh, that's what that looks like. Wow.

[A]

Cool. Yeah. Also, also Craig Kimbrell. I was the Paul Revere of Craig Kimbrell. As riding through the streets, I was sounding the alarm, kimbrell's coming, Kimbrell's coming. And he had started quite well with the Mets. But this is how he gets you. He lulls you into a false sense of security and you think, craig Kimbrell, I can trust him in a high leverage spot. And that's when he springs the surprise. And this is what happened last Thursday when Kimbrell took the loss and a pretty ugly loss in a Mets game against the Rockies. And he came in in the eighth and it was tied at two and he goes single, single, walk, grand slam. Like the, the Craig Kibble special. Granted, it was a disputed home run directly over the foul pole, but the call still. And then he recovered and got a strikeout and a strikeout and a fly ball, but it was a little too late by then and The Mets lost 6 to 2. And he has since pitched another scoreless inning. But this is how he gets you. Team after team. They see that setup and him perched on the mound and they think, oh, Craig Kimbrell and look at the resume and what he used to be and then boom. He will give up the granny and load the bases. And it's just, I would not, not trust the man. I don't have like a personal vendetta against Craig, dislike him on a personal level, but I just, I see team after team after team entrust Craig Kimball not with low leverage, mop up innings, but high leverage. Must have innings for teams that are struggling and, and are trying to contend and trying to turn their seasons around. And that is just pouring fuel on the fire. I don't get it. So I was looking at Craig Kimbrell's wpa, his win probability added. He's been bouncing around as team after team installs him as a back of the bullpen arm and then thinks better of it. Too late. But since the start of 2019, which was sort of when the phase of him just wearing out, his welcome successive destination started, he has the 7th worst WPA by any reliever in baseball. And you know that I'm, I'm intellectually honest and unbiased because I looked this up to see where Craig Kimbrell was and figured he would, he would be somewhere toward the top or bottom of that leaderboard, depending on how you sort. Unfortunately, number two is John Brebia. And yet I'm still airing this on the podcast. I'm still going to link to it and I'm still sharing this stat Even though it forces me to also report support a dismaying John Brebia stat. But yeah, only Jose Ruiz has a worse WPA than John Brebia over that span. But then it's Ryan Stanick, Trevor Richards, Miguel Castro, Tyler Alexander and Craig Kimbrell and. And then Jesse Chavez is after him. Another former Brave who now is a Giants coach and was the guy who was trying to figure out which pitcher Tony Patello wanted. Feels like Jesse Chavez should be on the Braves. I mean, after all the. Yeah, the love affair on and off again, are they together or are they not? Will they or won't they? And they always would. And now he's with the Giants. The braves are his OTP, his one true pairing. So that's strange. But Craig Kimbrell, seventh worst WPA since 2019among, I guess guys with at least 250 innings. There are 96 of them over that span. So just saying. Can't say you weren't warned. Mets can't say you weren't warned.

[B]

I know that that a lot can change and they are still reeling from the effects of their losing streak, but do you think that they are just sitting there thinking we have so many other problems that we can't even concentrate on Craig Kimbrough right now? Because do you know who has the worst record?

[A]

Yeah. Is it not the Giants?

[B]

It's not. I mean, it's a. To be clear, squeaky squeaker. Yeah, squeaker. But 15 and 25, you know who has a better record than them? Well, everyone, because of how I just put it. But just to remind everyone, even within their division, the Miami Marlins, the Washington Nationals, the Colorado Rockies, and the bullpen

[A]

has not been the biggest issue for them. They. They have the number five bullpen by war. War, at least despite Craig Kimbrell's efforts. In fact, he's probably. He's probably contributed to that somewhat because wpa, you know, WAR is not taking into account whether he blew that game in that particular time, though. Obviously it's going to hurt you when you load the bases and then give up a grand slam. But yeah, yeah, WAR doesn't like that. No, but he is. He's not in negative territory. He is replacement level.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Thus far this year. Okay, well, that's the Craig Kimbrell watch. And lastly, another topic, another name that came up last week and then we anticipated the headlines. Bobby Cox died over the weekend. So we talked about Ted Turner passing last week, who was Bobby Cox's boss with the Braves. And now Bobby Cox has followed him and he was a few years younger, but he had been in ill health for a few years. And a few things I wanted to note about, about Bobby Cox, because I think a lot about Bobby Cox's hall of Fame career just sort of shows how different things are now than. Than the way they were during his tenure with Atlanta. So obviously legendary manager and, and an incredible tenure and what, like fourth all time in wins or something and, you know, had the streak of playoff appearances with the Braves and maybe, maybe they underachieved somewhat in the postseason, but they had quite a streak of making the postseason. And okay, so a few things about Cox, one we mentioned last week, which was that he was a GM and a manager, not, I guess, at the same time, but still. So he gets a lot of credit for managing those Braves teams to a ton of division championships, but he also had a hand in building that team, which is not the typical case for a manager. He drafted Chipper Jones, he traded for John Smoltz. Like he was to some extent the architect of, of those Braves teams too. Whether by acquiring players, Javier Lopez was signed during his tenure or by developing them, overseeing their development. So he should maybe get even extra credit for that. And we just, we don't see that anymore. There's such a stark dividend, not always between the front office in the field. We see some guys, you know, AJ Hinch or guys like that who have some front office position and are also managers before or after both, but GM and manager, I don't know that we will see that anymore because it's just different backgrounds, different skill sets typically. So that's something that stands out, how long he spent with that team. And of course he got fired. We talked about how Turner fired him sort of reluctantly and then rehired him later. But. But we are seeing more managerial turnover these days, at least relative to recent years. Not that you can't, if you have some success, stick it out for a while. You could maybe be Dave Roberts or Kevin Cash or someone. And obviously Cox's many years with the Braves weren't all continuous or weren't all as manager, but still, he was there for a very long time. And I wonder whether that would be the case now if you had just the one championship in 95. And then you're sort of seen as. As underachieving in the playoffs, now that the playoffs are kind of everything and there's not as much of a rings culture as there is in the NBA. But still, I. I think, I don't know, you don't typically see guys Getting fired after they, like, manage their team to a division title and then just come up short in the playoffs. But I think there might be a bit more pressure on you now if you consistently fail to break through, even if you're somewhat successful in the regular season, just because there is such an emphasis on the postseason. The. These days. Also kind of striking that he managed to get along well with John Shierholtz for years, even though Cox had been the GM for a while. You. You'd think that might lead to some friction, maybe because it's like, well, you're my boss now, but I had the job before you and I like, if anything, this is my team and I. I could sit in your seat and do what you do because I already did it. You'd think, I guess they had a good working relationship, but you'd think that might lead to a little, little tension. If you've done both of those jobs and suddenly you're. I guess it was more collaborative. But if you're. You're taking orders to some extent from someone who is doing the job that you previously did with that same team and did a decent job of it, you think you might kind of, I don't know, bridle at. At being told to do stuff sometimes, maybe so. Also ejections. Famously, he was the most ejected manager ever, and he managed a ton of games, but still had a very high ejection rate. So we were wondering whether ejections would be down this year with the challenge system. And they are, in fact. And I. I think there was good reason to think that they would be. Not that they'd go away entirely, but most ejections were balls and strikes arguing. And so if you have to argue a little less often now, it would stand to reason that there might be fewer ejections. So. So I was looking this up. According to Close Call Sports, there have been 13 ejections of managers this year. Last year, the whole season, there were 91. And again, we're 25% of the way through the season. So we're on pace for 52 managerial ejections this year, down from 91 last year and 93 the year before. So unless there's like a time of season effect, I don't know whether. Whether the weather gets hot and tempers are short and guys get it or, you know, the games are higher stakes or something. So it's possible that managers ejections aren't distributed evenly in the full season. I don't know. I didn't look that up, but we're on pace at least for a pretty significant decrease in managerial jections this year. So perhaps we will not see the likes of Bobby Cox again in that category. I don't know if you've noticed that, that there's been a good feeling a, a bonami among managers and umpires this year or anything, but it's because of the challenge system.

[B]

Yeah, I mean maybe, I mean it's probably not entirely that, but I think being able to have the, the pressure release valve of the challenge system rather than having things do probably has helped.

[A]

I think so. I do think some of the ejections that might have gone to managers in the past now go to other coaches because coaching staffs are so big. So four non manager coaches have been e ejected this year. 28 last year, 32 in 2024. Maybe we've just shifted some manager ejections and they've become coach ejections, but there is a long term historical trend toward fewer ejections. Also. One thing I mentioned last week is that we all discuss and debate and disagree. Do managers matter? And how can you quantify that? And of course it's very difficult too. And I think a lot of people have defaulted to most managers don't really matter, don't really make that much of an impact these days. And maybe that is more true than it used to be given that front offices just have more say over, you know, lineup level decisions or roster construction or whatever than people used to. But I did mention that Bobby Cox was sort of singular or at least an outlier in that all of the attempts to quantify how much a manager helps they do seem to single out him. Like Max Markey when he wrote for Baseball Perspective this years ago about the managers who most helped their pitchers and catchers. And he did a retro sheet based with or without you analysis and just looked at like how these guys did when they were with this manager versus how they did with that manager. And Bobby Cox showed up as the number one guy who most helped pitchers and catchers and, and helped run prevention. I'll link to that. But that was not a singular result either. In the book Evaluating Baseball's Managers by Chris Jaffe McCaffy, which came out, I don't know, 15 years or so ago now. But he had Bobby Cox as the number two guy all time behind Joe McCarthy in pitchers just doing well again, with or without. And this was based on like a Phil Birnbaum database and it's hard to say why exactly. And the theory was that maybe Bobby Cox because he was getting ejected and he was just giving umpires a tough time that they would just default to giving him more favorable calls. That could be. And, and also Neil Payne did an analysis on that and just found that again, Bobby Cox showed up as someone who consistently made his teams a few games better a season, which, that adds up over the course of Cox's career. And maybe he didn't have the same knack with position players and maybe he wasn't the best at pitcher usage and maybe he treated the regular season like the playoffs and he kind of rode the pitchers hard and maybe that, that's perhaps has something to do with the fact that they underachieved in the postseason. But yeah, he, he does show up consistently as one of the few managers who really did seem to have a big impact on his players performance. And then finally and last but not least, I think the other thing that was really kind of driven home for me and like, huh, things have changed relative to Bobby Cox's air era is that of course, as some people, but not all people mentioned in the wake of his death, he did have a domestic violence incident on his record and you know, it was kind of an ugly one, but was not treated as such given that it was in that time. And I'm not saying that MLB is perfect at investigating or punishing such incidents today. I know Bradford William Davis has been writing and reporting a lot about how MLB invested, investigated or didn't Mike clevenger. But in 1995 Bobby Cox was arrested on assault charges against his wife. And she called the cops and said that he punched her in the face, I guess, you know, content warning on all of this. But he, he punched her in the face, pulled her hair. The police report said her face was red and then everyone sort of swept it under the rug right after that. And according to the police report, again, she said this was not the first time that this had happened repeatedly and that she had never reported it before because of media attention and you know, the effect on their children or whatever. Right. So this was the only incident that became public and they stayed married, you know, until the day that he died. And like nothing else has happened ever, ever come to light, but this was a pretty ugly incident. And they had a press conference and she sat by him and you know, they tried to minimize it and say, oh, it was just kind of an argument that got out of hand. And you know, Cox was trying to say that he was like grabbing her forehead in her hair to like keep her away from him and that's you know, like she had been aggressive before too, and, and you know, she didn't press charges and ultimately that was that. And I think he had to go to some training, that sort of thing. But can you imagine, and this happened like in season, in 95, no suspension, no time off, no nothing. If that happened today at the equivalent, I'd certainly like to think that it would not be treated, treated like that. You know, that like a team would take it more seriously and regardless of, of whether charges were pressed, like it would be investigated, you would be suspended. Like you'd be on leave for a while. It would not be like, let's hold a press conference and say everything is fine and we'll just get right back to business.

[B]

Yeah, I think that, you know, at the very least he would be put on leave while the league investigated. You know, there's a program and a process around this stuff. Now the collectively bargained domestic violence agreement is between the players association and the league. Yeah, but we've seen the league take administrative action against non field person. Well, I mean, when you're a manager, you are field personnel, but non player personnel when there have been allegations raised. And I'm sure that, you know, for someone as high profile as the manager, there's, there's very little chance that something like this wouldn't at least result in him being put on some sort of leave while the league and, and the team did some kind of investigation. And I imagine they would apply the same sort of standard that they do to players, which, as we'll remind everyone, is that you don't have to have a criminal conviction to be subject to suspension from the league. So, so I would think that, you know, the leader of the team would, would inspire sort of a similar approach. And yeah, I mean, his, his wife asked that charges not be filed. They denied that there was a physical altercation after the fact. It seems like it would have been handled very differently today than it was at the time. And I don't know what the state of their marriage was and what kind of counseling he may have received subsequent to that, the exact particulars of the incident. But yeah, I think that particularly for non players, this is just sort of a strange era because there's enough media coverage that like we knew about this and, and folks knew about it contemporaneously. He had to have a press conference about it, right? Yeah, but the conversation around intimate partner violence was just really different culturally at the time. The sort of stickiness of this stuff to someone's reputation and it was different. And you know, I think part of the result of that is that we, we don't have much in the way of follow up reporting around this. Right. So we are in this spot where it is difficult to know what the going forward story of their relationship with was like. We just don't know. And I don't want to, I don't want to assume that it was the worst it could be. But we also just, we don't know because there wasn't work done around it subsequent to that. And you know, it wasn't like something that Bobby Cox was keen to talk about in public.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which like, you know, that's I guess an understandable instinct. But yeah, I think that it would color our understanding of him differently in part because I doubt that that wants, you know, if you Google around on that incident, you're mostly getting the same set of like AP reports. And so I think part of why our impression and understanding of where that moment sits in sort of our broader understanding of his character and his personhood, part of why it would be different is that we'd have more on this in all likelihood.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Either as a result of, of details coming out around the league's investigation to him or from subsequent reporting. So.

[A]

Yeah, right. And I guess as a contrast, look at the Tigers AAA manager who was fired last week after sending one text to a female employee, which as of now, the content of that text has not been reported. But obviously it was bad. So I don't know what that consisted of, but the fact that, that, you know, that's how it should work and how you hope it'll work, obviously the, the Tigers organization and they've had a lot of issues, right, with the AGM who was sending lewd texts and just others like in front office roles with the, you know, larger business, not just the Tigers. And so it's good, I guess, that the recipient of that text felt like she could report it and that there was no tolerance for him in that case. But, but whatever that text consisted of, you know, it's a text and it was one text. And the fact that he was dismissed and that this became a big story, hopefully that tells you how things have changed in 30 years. Not that they're not cases where these things absolutely go unreported or unpunished. I did find one contemporary piece when I was just Googling was published in the Oklahoman in May of 1995 and it was contrasting how the Bobby Cox case was handled relative to the football coach Gary Moeller's case, and it was criticizing that Mueller lost his coaching job after getting drunk in public and assaulting a cop. Now, maybe that's. That's why. Right, because if Bobby Cox had done that, perhaps he'd have a harder time than something that happened. Intimate partner violence behind closed doors. Maybe that just goes to show what. What society has historically published or not. But this piece was kind of taking Cox and the Braves to task even then for this being insensitive and insufficient. So, you know, we say different time and everything, and it was. But also, even then, people were saying, this is. This is not okay. This is not sufficient for him to be back. And. Yeah, it is. It's tough to parse a case like this because in the police report, Pamela Cox said that Cox had done this repeatedly, that he had blackened her eyes, broke her hand, and then the next day at the press conference, denied ever telling police that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so it's not as if police never make anything up in a police report, but sure. Would they do that to Bobby Cox? I don't know.

[B]

You know, so the side of a potential domestic violence victim.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I. Again, like, yeah, you, You. We must, yeah. Allow for the possibility that there was something that was miscommunicated or misunderstood. But this is always my instinct, which isn't to say that we shouldn't be responsive to additional information when it comes out. And I, you know, I want to make clear that, like, I do think it's important that we. When these sorts of incidents occur, if there is contrition, if there is genuine work done on the part of the individual to improve their behavior, to be safe, to be. To do those things, like, there should be a path back for those people. It's not really up to me to decide that stuff. And I think part of what is frustrating about all of this as sports fans is that. And we've talked about this in the context of other DV cases like that work of repair between abuser and victim is something that I wouldn't imagine benefits from, like, public scrutiny. Right. Like, that isn't, on some level, my business. It is made to be our business as sports fans by virtue of the policies that the league has in place now, which I think are generally good. But there is an uncomfortable tension there because what happens between, say, intimate partners in a therapy session is none of my business. And that's where the work gets done. Right? Like, that's where the. The. The demonstration of choosing a different way and being. Being a different kind of person. That's where that work happens. So it's a hard thing to gauge from the outside. All we're left with often are statements and those are generally like massaged and what have you. But when we are confronted with, you know, sort of accusations that the league is heavy handed with this stuff, I'm always skeptical of that as the first instinct because it's like, when has the league hasn't really demonstrated that like they err on the side of being overly punitive when it comes to punishing abusers in our midst. Like, that's just not been their posture even in an era where they have a policy that I think has generally been to the betterment and benefit of the league and, and is sort of concerned with balancing, you know, there being consequences with protecting victims. Like I, you know, it's a complicated dance that we have to do here, but it's like, yeah, yeah. Is it your experience that cops tend to be like, let's make sure all the bad guys go to jail who abuse women? Because that doesn't tend to be how that goes.

[A]

It's like, I understand arguments can get heated at times, even in good loving relationships, but it's hard for me to understand how it could escalate to this point. And you know, could it have been a one time thing? I guess it often isn't, but it's just, just like, yeah, that can't be an accident, you know, like, right. You can't just oops, you know, it's just, it's hard for me to imagine that happening if you are, you know, not abusive or violent. I mean, everyone has lapses, of course, but that's an awfully large lapse if it actually did progress to that point, even if it was a one time thing. And really it just gets, I think when someone dies and has something like this on their record, what happens is everyone rushes to eulogize them or to kind of define their legacy. And so you have people who are saying this was the greatest guy and one of the great guys at baseball and they always do the like, better man than he was a manager or whatever. Even though he's like one of the best managers of all time. Was he really one of the best men of all time? Best people of all time. But you know, you have those kind of lionizing remembrances where it's just like, oh, what a great guy. And then I think as kind of a counter to that, you then have people who reduce that person solely to that one black mark on their record and will just kind of post, you know, like, how dare you write something positive about this guy. He was an abuser, or, you know, like we'll just post that one incident or something. And I don't know, I guess I think the latter is often a response to the former where I did see some obits that I think were appropriately just saying great manager. But also this, which was kind of how we talked about him on this episodes, you know, he was a great manager, but also this. I'm not making any claims about what a wonderful person he was. I didn't know him, obviously. And I don't know whether, like, the temper that was expressed in his yelling at umpires doesn't necessarily have to have any outlet in his personal life. You know, it doesn't mean that he has some rage problem all the time. Time. But I think it should be mentioned if you are at least making the case for him not just as a great manager, but also as a great person or figure of the game or something, then I think it's incumbent upon you, you know, if you want to just make claims about his baseball performance, okay. But when it crosses over into like talking up what a wonderful character he was, then, yeah, maybe mention it. But also I think acknowledging that he's going to be remembered for many other things as well and accomplished a lot in the game. So. So it is kind of complicated, but sometimes it gets reduced to like either or. Or very sort of stark, you know, best guy ever. History's greatest monster. And maybe it's. It's somewhere in between. Anyway, that's Bobby Cox. So I will just note in. In parting here, we started by talking about the Giants. I will note that Bob Nightingale. So, okay, consider the source. But he did a piece on like the trade deadline. First of all, it's too early for trade deadline watches. It's not even halfway through May. I mean, I know this is the convention, but we make too much of the trade deadline. It's not actually that impactful that we need to start previewing it months in advance.

[B]

I beg of you to relax with that statement because you're about to publish

[A]

a trade deadline preview. No, I'm.

[B]

We're definitely not about to publish a trade deadline thing. But like, it is impactful to my leap.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. But yeah, I'm just saying, you know, like, each, every, like a week of games or whatever has more of an impact on. On playoff odds than the trade deadline. And so we're talking. There's so much baseball between now and then, but whatever, I guess it's harmless. You know, if people enjoy Reading those things, then people will write them. But Bob Nightingale wrote one, and he talked about the Giants, and he said they'd love to unload Jung Hu Lee, Willie Adamus, Raphael Devers, and Matt Chapman and start over. They just don't have that luxury. Instead, they may have no choice but to shop their biggest trade chip in starter Robbie Ray. Some executives insist they would also listen to offers for ace Logan Webb. Yeah, so, you know, this is coming from boob, but I don't know whether this is accurate or not, but it did seem like they were shopping Bailey around a bit. It wasn't just like one team wowed them or something, so.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I wonder whether this is a prelude to a larger. But I'm. I'm not at all convinced of that. But. But that was a report or a rumor at least.

[B]

I have a proposal for you as it pertains to this.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I don't think that anyone should be able to publish trade deadline analysis before June 16th of any given season.

[A]

So specific.

[B]

Yeah, and my specific date is born of Giants Transactions passed because June, June 16, 2025, was the day that the Giants traded for Rafael Devers. And I think at the time, part of this was understood as like, wow, they're getting going on their shopping list. So that's the earliest that you're allowed to do trade deadline stuff. June 16th. Now, if someone on my staff wants to write about a trade deadline thing before then, I might say yes anyway.

[A]

So, you know, yeah, you might break

[B]

your own rule, but I might break my own rule. But I think that that's my rule, at least that I propose. Now. It has not been passed. It has not been enacted. We need to get votes from the various other editors. But I, I think that's where I'm at.

[A]

It will be broken by others, if not by you, that's for sure. And in fact, it already has been. Bye, Bob.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Also, shout out to Tony LaRussa for sometimes making confusing calls to the bullpen or not. Also because, you know, he was a great manager, too.

[B]

Oh, sure.

[A]

And he also had some. Some notable, you know, bullpen phone confusion. So happens to the best of them, in Tony Vitello's defense. But it was weird that he was just sitting there silently, like, just. Just help him out.

[B]

It was so strange.

[A]

All right, before I go, I just have to let you know about a new baseball video game. Not an actual baseball video game, but a baseball video game by the effectively wild definition. Baseball is mentioned, too. The game is called Mixtape. It came out last week. It is a coming of age game. It's an adventure game, sort of an interactive narrative. It's developed by a studio called Beethoven and Dinosaurs, published by Annapurna Interactive, which is sort of a storied publisher of indie games. It's available on all platforms, Switch 2, PS5, Windows, Xbox. It's kind of a mashup of a John Hughes 80s movie, but also sort of conflated with the 90s with a compact walking simulator style experience along the lines of what remains of Edith Finch. Kind of a classic high school kids story. It's the last day of high school, there's a big party, everyone's going their separate ways. And you play as Stacy Rockford, who is extremely into music. And she's made a mixtape for this final night that she and her friends are together before they leave the Northern California suburbs and venture off into the uncertainty of the adult world. And her mixtape sort of soundtracks the game and you play a bunch of vignettes, lightly interacting, active, some flashbacks, and you learn about her and her friend group. It's, I think, a very good game. It got great reviews and then those reviews sparked a backlash and there's a whole conversation going on about mixtape. And if you want to hear that conversation, well, you can listen to my video game podcast. It's called Button Mash. It's on the Ringerverse feed. We'll be discussing mixtape soon. I recommend it though. The game's about three hours long maybe, and you don't have to be a big gamer to play it. It's more like a playable movie. So check it out. It's only 20 bucks. But for effectively wild purposes, the relevant thing is that this is a baseball game and a softball game because one of Stacy's friends, Cassandra, she's a softball player. And in fact there is a sequence in the game where you're taking swings at some pitches. You're trying to hit home runs. That is a must play portion of the game, but there is some optional content that's baseball related. So in an early scene, you're in Stacy's bedroom, her friends Van and Cassandra are there, and this is optional dialogue that you can trigger or not, depending on when and how you interact with these friends. But here's something Cassandra said in my playthrough. Little language warning here before I play a couple clips.

[B]

If you see Dave Bowler corner me at this thing tonight, you must save me.

[A]

Sure, yeah, I'll kick his dick off.

[B]

Is he trying to bone you? Not even. I said I like baseball just to Be nice. And now he won't shut up about it. He sees me from across the room and his. His eyes light up and it's fucking baseball time.

[A]

Uh, I actually don't think that's a dick kickable offense.

[B]

I'll save you, though.

[A]

Well, I felt personally attacked by this. Not all of us baseball knowers are so boring when we talk about baseball. We don't buttonhole you, we don't corner you. But okay, Dave, evidently not a great conversationalist. So, hours later, in another scene, there's a party. It's an outdoor party, and you're playing as Stacy's friend Van, and you're filming the whole thing. So you're seeing the whole thing through a video screen. And as you're walking around, you're overhearing a bunch of conversations. Conversations. And if you get up close to Cassandra, this is again, optional, something you could focus on or could entirely ignore. But it's a great callback to the Dave Bowler reference from earlier in the game. Because there's poor Cassandra. And evidently Dave has found her at this party. And it's a little like the bro explaining meme. You know, where the guy's leaning over and holding the neck of the woman at a baseball game from 2011. And there are different versions of that. There's the John Silver explaining to Anna J. Meme, and then there's the gender reversed version, the girl explaining meme. Anyway, poor Cassandra is expressionless, staring ahead with a blank expression in her eyes as this guy, who must be Dave, leans right over into her ear and says the following.

[C]

So this guy out of North Carolina, Dan Palmo. See, that's what I'm talking about. Nobody remembers the guy, but in 84, he had the highest foul ball to hit ratio in the league. 312 fouls in one season kept exclusively to foul territory. And the thing about Palermo was he only swung with his bottom hand, ripping the bat. Like the top hand was just kind of resting there like a little bird, bro. Insane. And you know, he never actually slid into base.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

Not once in his career. Said it felt undignified. He's the reason the league actually considered banning personalized STs for a season. Because he had these ones with a little embroidered lions on them. A real chrome threat. Don't blind infielders. Oh, and. And he was the only player to ever be traded. Mid inning, seventh inning, stretch, boom, in a different dugout with the organ stop.

[B]

That's amazing.

[C]

And he was the first major leaguer to wear two different brands of pleats. At the same time because each foot has its own personality. Anyway, so this guy out of North Carolina, Danny. See, that's what I'm talking about. Nobody remembers the guy.

[A]

And then that audio sample just loops from there it starts all over again. So Dave here is remembering some guys or a guy. And he's right, no one does talk about Danny Palermo. And that's because there wasn't actually a big leaguer named Danny Palermo. But he sounds like a really interesting fella. And Dave has basically st blasting at this party. He's spitting foul ball facts. Of course I had to fact check this. That is not enough foul balls to lead the league. Last year the aforementioned Matt Olsen led the majors with 606 foul balls. And okay, in the 80s there weren't quite as many foul balls. But Even so, the first year we have pitch by pitch data, 1988 Joe Carter led the majors with 546 or 47 foul balls. So again, hundreds more than Danny supposedly led the majors with in 84. And here I am stat blasting the stat blast. I have become Dave Bowler. But I want to hear more about Palermo Cat with his no sliding and his non matching shoes and his unusual bat grip. Dave Buller if you're out there, come on effectively Wild. We'll talk to you about Danny Palermo to your heart's content. Sounds like there's more to this story. Dave can corner me at the party and leave Cassandra alone. So chill Dave. You're giving us baseball sickos a bad name. Of course Mixtape is set in a time before podcasts, so now we just save it for the show and we bend your ear about Danny Palermo only if you choose to listen and subscribe as many of you have which we are grateful for. And if you haven't yet, well you can go to patreon.com effectivelywild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners, John Goad, Joshua Murray, Connor Techouts, Robert Sasso and Matthew Foley. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to the effectively wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, as well as unfettered unabridged weekly episodes, exclusive live streams, fangrafts, memberships, shoutouts at the end of episodes, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, and check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphs.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Music and other podcast platforms. You can join our facebook [e-mail] group effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you a little later this week. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be?

[B]

On the case with Light Rippin, Atlanta, Lynn Cross, check and compile.

[A]

Find a new understanding non effectively while

[B]

I Can you not be pedantic?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

When it comes to baseball, how can

[B]

you not be pedantic.