Effectively Wild Episode 2481: Tarp Off the First

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2481: Tarp Off the First

Date: May 21, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh & Meg Rowley
Podcast: Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ben and Meg dive into the latest quirks, controversies, and trends shaping the baseball world. The "Tarps Off" craze (fans going shirtless at ballgames) sparks a wide-ranging, humorous, and slightly sociological discussion about fan behavior, masculinity, social norms, and where baseball is headed. The duo also tackles the evolving vocabulary around injuries and surgeries, quirky stat blasts, ABS (automated ball-strike) challenge system trends, and the subtleties of baseball embarrassment. Listener questions highlight everything from Little League home run definitions to players who thrive with just one team. The episode is, as ever, an in-depth, lively tour through the game’s customs and oddities, with a tone that’s thoughtful, playful, and just "effectively wild."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The "Tarps Off" Trend: Shirtless Fans and Social Commentary

[00:42–13:51]

• Introduction of "Tarps Off": Ben describes the recent nationwide trend of fans—mostly male—going shirtless at baseball stadiums, noting that such playfulness is unusual for baseball compared to soccer or college football.

  “This is a very un-baseball behavior… It’s really catching on, seemingly.” (Ben, 01:15)

• Meg’s Take: Raises the broader question, "What’s going on with men?" While not strictly critical, Meg explores the spectrum from "goofball hooligan" energy to the more aggressive edge of sporting crowds, citing the importance of maintaining a fun but safe environment at stadiums.
• Rules of Engagement: Meg establishes basic guidelines: pants on always, shirt preferably on, but “goofy, silly” shirtlessness is not a societal violation as long as it doesn’t slip into aggression.

  “If your behavior inspires vigilance in others…you've violated the social compact much more than your shirt being off.” (Meg, 05:00)

• Origins and Spread: Ben traces the current version to Rockies fans in Section 329, then the Cardinals, and its organic spread—especially involving college groups. Emphasizes the importance of consent and non-exclusion in mass participation trends.

  “It was just a patient zero of the tarps off…people flocked to his banner… and it ultimately encompassed the entire section.” (Ben, 11:22)

• Body Positivity: Notes that not everyone participating looks like an athlete, and appreciates the trend’s inclusivity so far.
• Societal Threads: Meg finds it refreshing that the trend is youth-driven in a sport with an aging fan base, and keeps her “eyes on” the situation should the vibe ever turn.

Baseball Injury: Nano Needle, Bone Spurs, and the Evolving Medical Lexicon

[23:43–31:45]

• Trend in Surgery Reporting: Ben and Meg marvel at the increasing granularity in how teams, agents, and media report details of player surgeries—such as counting and sizing each bone spur removed.

  “We’re just getting so much more detail about the bone spurs and the loose bodies than we ever did before.” (Ben, 23:43)

• Nano Needle Craze: Discussion of a new, less invasive procedure (the “nano needle” or “Skubel scope”) embraced by Tarek Skubal and, now, Blake Snell. They joke about tracking “beans” by size and count in elbows.

  “Now I just, I want everything reported in beans… Give it to me in beans.” (Meg, 29:13)

• Why the Obsession?: Speculate this is driven by the novelty of the procedure, agents’ involvement, and fans’ endless hunger for updates—though ultimately, Meg just wishes for less joint detail and more healthy arms.

Stat Blasts and Historical Notes

Fastest Grand Slam Ever

[33:42–38:31]

• Recap of a Diamondbacks grand slam on the sixth pitch of the game—a new stat blast record, smashing the previous (eight pitches) for fastest grand slam.
• Revisit of prior research on similar records (both to grand slams and to four runs in as few pitches as possible).

Inside the Park Home Runs & "Little League Home Run" Definitions

[40:55–48:43]

• Debate over whether fielding-independent pitching stats (FIP) should include inside-the-park HRs, given they so often involve defensive misplays.
• Listener question leads to a definitive "Effectively Wild" definition: a "Little League" home run is any play where a non-homer batter circles all bases due to defensive errors—with more errors making it more "Little League."

  “It does need to be kind of funny though… If playing Yakety Sax is too much, then it’s not a Little League error.” (Meg, 48:18)

• Historical context from SABR and past oral histories about the origins of the "Little League HR" term.

"Most Embarrassing" Baseball Plays

[52:44–59:15]

• Revisiting the hierarchy of embarrassing plays, like pinch runners being immediately picked off, group errors, relievers not getting an out, and batting out of order.

  “If you are a reliever and you’re supposed to put out the fire and you don’t even get…an out—that’s more like you had one job.” (Ben, 56:28)

ABS Challenge System: Shifting Strategies

[70:15–81:45]

• Meta-Analysis: Ben and Meg note an organizational shift where teams are increasingly limiting batters’ and pitchers’ opportunities to challenge automated ball-strike (ABS) calls, funneling most appeals to catchers, who have the best vantage and the highest success rate.

  “Now it’s becoming…an advantage for the defense, for the catchers specifically.” (Ben, 71:16)

• Joe Sheehan’s Lament: Reference to Joe Sheehan’s hope that challenges would help level the playing field for hitters, now somewhat dashed.
• Mechanics & Psychology: Discusses the challenge mechanic, structural difficulties hitters face, and possibilities for future strategy—such as training especially adept batters to challenge more.
• Potential Rule Tweaks: Contemplate if MLB could split challenges into "offensive" and "defensive" quotas for fairness, but are skeptical this will be needed unless a bigger imbalance emerges.

Listener Prompt: One-Team Wonders

[60:55–68:28]

• Inspiration from Gio Urshela’s recent retirement: players who only ever shined for a single team, prompting both statistical and sentimental reflections.

  “Players whom you might have a distorted view of because they were good for your team even though they were bad for basically every other team.” (Ben, 61:00)

• Discussions of Yankees folk heroes, along with the psychological phenomenon of remembering “special particles who behave differently when observed,” and how fan base bias shapes legacies.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Tarps Off:
  “...if we are going from goofy hooligans, silly hooligans, not self–serious hooligan vibe to edgy hooligan, well then we have a problem that has to be addressed because we are theoretically still in a society.”
  — Meg Rowley [07:14]

• On Anatomical Updates:
  “I don’t know how many little bits and bobs are usually in there… but I just wish good elbow health to everyone in baseball because I don’t want to think about the inside of anybody’s joint quite this much.”
  — Meg Rowley [29:00]

• On Synchronicity of Fan Experience:
  “It’s almost like when the Wave goes around and some people are conscientious objectors… You can have your fun, but also some people prefer not. Don’t be mad at me if I don’t wave with you.”
  — Ben Lindbergh [21:36]

• On Baseball Fandom:
  “Baseball fandom is football fandom now, evidently. We will continue to monitor and track this trend.”
  — Ben Lindbergh [23:30]

• On Little League HRs:
  “If you go all the way around and you shouldn’t have, if not for some screw up or screw ups, then that’s a Little League home run… But it is more satisfying if there are multiple errors involved.”
  — Ben Lindbergh [48:03]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:42] – Ben introduces his "tarps off" stance; opening the debate on the shirtless fan trend.
• [02:09] – Meg’s sociological take: “What’s going on with men?”
• [11:00–14:11] – Historical origins and spread of ‘tarps off’ at MLB games.
• [23:43] – Bone spur and injury detail explosion in reporting.
• [29:13] – Meg’s “bean” measurement proposal for injury reporting.
• [33:42–38:31] – Fastest grand slam ever (six pitches); stat blast discussion.
• [40:55] – Inside the park HR debate, effect on FIP, Little League home run definitions.
• [52:44] – Embarrassing baseball moments: pinch running mishaps, group errors, reliever woes.
• [60:55] – Prompt to listeners: players who thrived for just one team.
• [70:15] – ABS challenge usage trends; fielders outpacing batters.
• [81:46] – Joey Wiemer goes from WAR leader to demoted.
• [94:48] – Meg’s Mariners-meltdown reflections; manager critique and pitcher usage woes.

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Episode Tone & Language

• Conversational, tongue-in-cheek, deeply knowledgeable.
• Irreverent humor, self-deprecation (“I’m gonna respect myself and my own time…. I don’t need this heartburn. I’m almost 40.” – Meg [87:59])
• Frequent meta-commentary and playful banter (“You can’t keep those White Sox down. I was throwing good pronunciations after bad.” – Ben [90:29])
• Regular encouragement to listeners to write in with stories, opinions, and statistical oddities.

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Memorable Moments

• [09:40] – Meg’s extended riff on why men’s toenails are always “cloudy”—and how this should be mitigated by wearing closed-toed shoes.
• [21:36] – Ben’s confession of not being a joiner: “When they ask for volunteers, my hand does not go up. And when they compel participation, I am shrinking in my seat.”
• [29:13] – Ongoing inside joke about measuring loose bodies/bone spurs in “bean” units.
• [48:18] – Definition of ‘Little League home run’ as one requiring “Yakety Sax” accompaniment.
• [69:13] – The running “Yankee exceptionalism” thread, and the mythmaking around certain teams.
• [79:05] – Digression about men lying about their height and the psychology of self-deception.

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Listener Involvement & Follow-ups

• New prompt: Players who thrived only for the listener’s favorite team.
• Follow-ups to previous stat blast segments (fastest grand slam, embarrassing plays).
• On potential adjustments to ABS challenge protocols.
• Correction on the first instance of a position player switching throwing arms/positions in a game (hat tip to Larry Kimbrough in the Negro Leagues).

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Final Thought

Ben and Meg’s freewheeling, deeply nerdy, and often very funny take on the world of baseball, from shirtless fandom to elbow beans, provides a one-of-a-kind lens on how both the sport and the society around it are evolving. Expect incisive, granular detail, but also a big-hearted spirit—and keep your shirts (and pants) on, unless you’re feeling silly.

Transcript

[Meg Riley]

Effectively Wild. It's the only show I need. Hosted by Ben Lindbergh and Meg Riley. I wanna hear about Shohei Otani

[Ben Lindbergh]

or

[Meg Riley]

Mike Trout with three arms.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hello and welcome to episode 2081 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, present by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Riley of fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

[Meg Riley]

Hello.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, we don't do these podcasts on video, so no one will ever know if I'm telling the truth, but I'm going tarps off for this pod. This is a tarps off episode for me at least. No obligation to join me. Just in recognition of the trend, the craze that is sweeping the nation at baseball stadia, and that is the tarps off. Look, guys are going shirtless, I think just guys, as far as I'm aware. But lots of skin being shown in baseball stadia these days. And this is a very unbaseball behavior. Yeah, this is being covered as if it's some new innovation in fan behavior. And football fans, college football fans maybe most of all, are. Are like you just discovered that you could remove part of your clothing at a sporting event. But. But it is. There's a scale to it that perhaps we haven't seen in baseball, at least in mlb. And it's really catching on, seemingly. So I don't know what. What accounts for this exactly, but humans, we're natural mimics, I suppose, and so something becomes a meme and we're all highly suggestible and we will follow whatever anyone does, often for the worse, but in this case, for the entertaining. I don't know. How do you feel about the tarps off trend?

[Meg Riley]

I have, like, a broader question about this. And like, this is. We're not going to be able to answer my question on today's podcast. We might not ever be able to answer my question. And I want to. I want to make clear I don't know the answer. I'm not sure what to make of this. Here's my broader question. What's going on with men? You know, like, are you guys okay? I mean, the answer to that is clearly no across a number of different factors, but I don't know how I feel about this, Ben. On the one hand, where's the harm? You know, sure, this feels like it falls into the dudes being guys, gas being bros kind of a category. It doesn't feel aggressive, you know, necessarily. Or rather the energy around it appears to be, despite the. The obvious desire for there to be sort of an infectious quality to it contained, by which I mean, you know, sometimes when you're watching college football. Because you're right to. To draw the parallel to that is like, the primary place, at least in the American sports context, when.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Where we see this. I feel like the soccer guy is often shirtless. You know, I feel like a lot of the. The dudes enjoying soccer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

In Europe are, like, shirts optional for me. Friends.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. This is sort of hooligan behavior, which is maybe.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Unusual by baseball standards.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. And I think that there's like a. There's like a fun and so sort of silly. They're like goofball hooligans. Right. And we. Like a goofball hooligan. I feel like a goofball hooligan is sort of a natural spiritual complement to. To the himbo.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And maybe you can be both. You know, maybe you can be both a himbo and a. And a goofball hooligan. Right. A guy who's. He's there to have fun with the fellas. He's enjoying the. The connection he is feeling not only to the team in question, but to. To his. To his boys. That has a nice. It can be nice. You know, it's just like. There's a silliness to it. There's, like a lack of seriousness that I think is important. And then there's like the. The like, edgy hooligan.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Actual violence.

[Meg Riley]

Right. And the edgy hooligan in. In the sports context, even when that does not devolve into something violent or aggressive, it does serve to, like, kind of put you on your guard at a sporting event. And I'm here to suggest that one should never have to feel on one's guard at a baseball game. It's better when. When you can relax, you know, when you can lean into the pastoral. When it is bucolic, when you are sitting there with your friends and a. And a beverage and you're. You're having a good time, if you have to be, like, paying attention, if you. If your behavior inspires vigilance in others, then you've. You've violated the social compact. That's the violation of the social compact much more than your shirt being off.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

To be clear, like, I think that as long as you do need to keep your drawers on. Okay. This is a. This is a belief I have, and I know that I. I was here lightly defending the rights of. Of baseball players to thrust at one another, provided they were doing so in an affirming way and not A homophobic way. An important distinction.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I was going to say there some parallels, some overlap. This conversation in that one, you do

[Meg Riley]

have to keep your pants on. I require that of everyone, regardless of their sex or gender presentation. Pants on shirts. You know, I still would prefer a shirt on, if I'm being honest with you. Because we, we teeter on the edge of societal collapse in, in so many ways. And I do wonder sometimes it's like, I don't know, maybe we should have to have shirts on and, and do away and flip flops. What are we doing there? Like once flip flops became like acceptable in public, especially for men. I'm sorry. Because your guys's feet are disgusting. You don't take care of them. I don't know what's going on there. Why do each of you have at least two cloudy toenails?

[Ben Lindbergh]

What's going.

[Meg Riley]

What's going on? Okay. They have over the counter solutions to this problem. Why are all of your toenails cloudy? And look, sometimes some people struggle with that. I. That's fine. That's a medical condition, Ben. But then you need to wear close toed shoes. Don't make your cloudy toenails my problem in public. What's that about? You know, what's that about?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

I think that my conclusion, having talked myself through my feelings and thoughts on this and I appreciate so much the opportunity to do so because I was sort of unsure what I thought of the whole thing. I do love the name, to be clear, the name.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Working it out in real time.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I'm working it, I'm working it through. So I do appreciate your patience as I, as I did that and our listeners as well. I think that mostly my reaction is okay, it's okay for now, but I am keeping my eyes on you guys. You know, I am going to be aware of what's going on up there because if we start to shift into a different vibe, if we are going from, from goofy hooligans, silly hooligans, not self serious hooligan vibe to edgy hooligan, well then we have a problem that has to be addressed because we are theoretically still in a society. So I, I think it's okay. But I just. You're on notice that we reserve the right to revoke the this is acceptable baseball behavior. I do like that it seems to be sort of an organic bit of silly fun that mostly seems to be the behavior of young people. And I'm just happy to have a young person trend in the baseball True space.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Maybe this is a reflection of baseball's rejuvenation, but. Well, first of all, I've inspected my toenails, and I think they would pass muster. Clear as the day. Not a cloudy day, either. I do have one or two toenails that. Years ago. This might be too much information, but I was getting an ingrown toenail, and that sucks. And so I. It kept happening, and I went to the podiatrist, and she just made it so that it never happened again. She, like, trimmed the side of. Of the toenail that was causing the problem, and it. So it just didn't grow back in that way. So. But otherwise, I think I'm doing okay in that department.

[Meg Riley]

I want to be clear my. My judgment is not of the issue itself. And it isn't, I think, a problem that is unique to men. Although many of the men who. Many of the people I know who have that problem have happen to be men. You know, there's like, an overlap there. And sometimes it's just like that's what your feet do, or you live in a clammy place and you gotta deal with various bits and bobs. But then keep those. Keep the. Keep your. Do we call them dogs? You call your toes dogs? You keep. Then keep the dogs inside. You know, it's like. It's. It's the decision to be like, hey, yeah, the. These dogs are cloudy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

These dogs are compromised dogs. Don't you want to see them? And it's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, hide them in shame.

[Meg Riley]

Well, and look, maybe we have podiatrists listening, being like, hey, Meg, you got to air them out. I don't know. That might be the. That might be the answer. You know, there's that saying about sunshine being the best disinfectant.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

So maybe it's that, but I just think flip flops, generally sandals, They're. That's. It's. It can be a dicey proposition sometimes people. It could make better choices, you know, and so I just. Every day, it feels like the. The social contract phrase a little bit more. The obligations we feel toward one another become, you know, less pressing, softer at a distance from us. So I would say, like, mostly keep your shirt on, please. And if you feel compelled not to make sure that you are on, like, the goofy, silly end of the. The hooligan spectrum.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. I think the association with hooliganism, it's often because in many contexts, if you are removing your shirt in a public place in some celebratory fashion, perhaps alcohol was involved. Perhaps Some sort of substance which has lowered your inhibitions.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so the shirtlessness can get associated with other kinds of behavior that is undesirable. And, and, and maybe that's sometimes just correlation and not causation. In these cases, perhaps it's not so much causation, it's just people having fun and doing a trend. This is the, the flash mob of baseball in 2026 as we all get together and take off our shirts. And if it's not inspired by drunkenness, boorish behavior, well, then it's just. It's fun. Right. It's not really intruding on or impeding anyone else's enjoyment of the game, probably. Hopefully. But I, I do want to be clear about the origin of this trend, because Cardinals fans are getting a lot of credit for sparking this and seem right, though maybe they do deserve some. I don't want to claim that Cardinals fans are not the best shirtless fans in baseball. I'm just saying that this trend, or at least an isolated instance of it, did predate the Cardinals reviving it over this past weekend, because I think the Rockies and Rockies fans were the first to do it or to gain notice for doing it. Yeah. And this was back in mid April, and there was a fun game where I think it was just one guy. There was like a patient zero of the tarps off who is just standing by himself in section 329 in the upper deck in Coors Field. And he took off his shirt and started whipping it around and there was no one else around him. And then gradually people flocked to his banner, right. And. And they congregated around him. And if you did a time lapse of just that section, it was just. People just gradually gravitated to this shirtless man and they shared in his shirtlessness. And it ultimately took up encompass the entire section 329 and even started to spill over into 328. And there was chanting and it was nice. It was, I think, entirely unplanned and spontaneous and organic. And the Rockies won and this was against the Astros. And it was. It was a good game. And. And it was like a nine to one game or something. And it was just an era of good feelings for fans of the Rockies. And they had started off somewhat strong, relatively speaking. And so maybe that started things. I don't know. Maybe these things can have independent origins and they spring up in different places at different times. I don't know if it's like the. The spark from what took place at Coors needed a month to catch. You know, it gradually blew to St. Louis and found some tinder and, and it turned into a conflagration. But that was. The more recent origin of. It was this past weekend in St. Louis. And this was a college baseball team that was in town for these games.

[Meg Riley]

That feels right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, Right. So there was kind of a college sports origin to this. Yeah, but it was Cardinals, Royals, Friday night, Saturday, there were college baseball players from the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team, the Lumberjacks, and they were there for the National Club Baseball Division 2 World Series.

[Meg Riley]

Amazing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And yeah, the Cardinals gave tickets to the team and a bunch of them went and then other people joined in. And Cardinals manager Ali Marmal, he embraced it, I think to his credit because he said that it really helped with the energy. He said it was awesome and it was a fun environment. And he said that he would fund their continued attendance at games and that this was going to bankrupt him, he was going to go broke. And, and they were only in town for so long. But it has continued now and it's almost become a tradition and it has spread to Detroit, I think. There was a Rays game. This was happening in Florida, Philly, Anaheim, and now even Seattle. And so I guess it just goes to show just how, how willing we are to follow the lead of others. Maybe, but. And, and maybe, hopefully, as far as I know, so far it's wholesome and it just, yeah, guys having fun and being body positive. I don't know, not everyone, you know, the, the baseball players were, I guess they had somewhat athletic physiques in some cases, but not everyone who has gotten on this trend is chiseled and I think that's, that's nice too. And yeah, as long as, you know, much like we, we discussed with the thrusting of the Giants, and by the way, they brought that back just this week, at least Drew Gilbert did. And the others just like were forced to go along. Yeah, there was a double pump because they did the group embrace. And then maybe it was just muscle memory and it was just force of habit, but Gilbert, yeah, he gave it a couple pelvis thrusts and so that tradition's not dead yet either. But, but as we were saying with that, as long as there's no peer pressure, as long as it's consensual, as long as no one feels excluded, like I could imagine, you know, if this is like a designated section where everyone's doing it or if you want to do it, you're in that section or, you know, you end up in that section or something. But I wouldn't want people to feel like they were obligated to go along with this. And obviously if you have, you know, you have women, you have children, I mean, right. Like you want it to be family friendly. You don't want anyone to feel like they have to go along with this or this is. They're being oppressed by the shirtless fans or anything. I often, you know, it's almost like when, when the wave goes around at a stadium and some people are conscientious objectors to the wave and sometimes they get booed for not wanting to wave because it's this, this mass hysteria. You know, everyone's doing the wave and everyone's got to get in on it. And if you, if you sit out the wave, then sometimes there will be opprobrium. You know, people will be harsh about you not wanting to get in line. So as long as it stays the way that it has been so far, I think it's fun and it is. It's not very baseball. And so, yeah, I don't know if this is emblematic of some change in baseball fandom or enthusiasm for the sport, but I guess it makes sense that this has not been a baseball thing so much because, well, maybe it's a few factors, right? Maybe it's, you know, when baseball is played and where it's played. And so maybe historically you're, you know, kind of coastal and northeast and it's cold and you start the baseball season when it's still cold and the baseball season ends and it's getting chilly. So maybe it's kind of a climate thing, but obviously there are plenty of places in MLB these days where you could do this and it hasn't really regularly been done. Again, not that it's like brand new for fans to be shirtless at a baseball game. And you know, you often get the, the body paint going on to spel out, but that's just generally a few fans who got together, whereas this is more of a, a mass thing. But I think probably it's just that there are so many games and they're relatively low stake. So if you commit to this bit, you're signing up to be shirtless for a lot of the time. And, and like the enthusia, if you're, if it's football, if you have one game a week or something, it's a big event. And also like people are tailgating, you know, it's becomes this social phenomenon and you're, you're pre gaming for this and again, maybe that helps with the being a bit lubricated, socially speaking, but also high stakes, right? And it's, it's an event. It's once a week, it's the weekend, and you only have so many games in a season. So there's a lot riding on this. Whereas in baseball you got 162 games before you even get to the playoffs. And so it's hard to muster that same demonstrative excitement, I think, for any given game.

[Meg Riley]

I feel like that's a lot of words to say. Baseball fans are old, but, well, there's that too, you know, Like I, I'm sorry. I think that that's definitely part of it. You're way more inclined to expose your bits when you're young than you are when you start aging. I'm sorry, you just are. You're like, look, these are great bits. I gotta show them. I gotta flaunt them while I got them. And then as you age, you're like, wow, everything's pointing down. I suppose weather could play a factor, but I, I do think that I don't want to over generalize, but I do feel like there's sort of like a generational divide here. It was not surprising to me to learn that it was a like out of town group of college kids who started doing this for the first time at Busch Stadium because you were like Cardinals fan. Spiritually, Cardinals fans don't feel like shirt off people to me. That doesn't feel true to the best fans in baseball. Right? You want to be alike in dignity with your club. I think that people who get booed when they don't participate in the Wave should just do the Hannibal Burris meme and be like, why are you booing me? I'm right. The Wave is more offensive than being shirtless in public. I mean, just like that's, that's a no. That's a no brainer. Now I say that having gotten very huffy on behalf of Diamondbacks fans who did the Wave during the season and some out of town reporters who will remain nameless. Jeff Passon were like, there? Haven't they ever been there before? And I was like, not in a long time, Jeff.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, there is at least a stereotype that when you're waving, you're not paying attention to the game because the game becomes a sideshow and everyone's watching the Wave and cheering the Wave. And frankly, usually the Wave breaks out when it's a pretty boring game. Now if you do have some high stakes close game and People are waving, then I probably do look down on that behavior a bit because clearly you're not engrossed by what you're watching here. It's like second screening with your body, basically. And so. And it also compels people to participate in a way that I don't care for because I'm not a joiner. And when I'm at some sort of built different. Yeah, whatever. I'm a lone wolf, you know, I don't travel in packs. I work alone except on my podcast when I kind of need a podcast co host because monologues would be boring. But yes, I think when there's ever some possibility of participation, you're at whatever it is, a comedy show or a play or something, and there's some interaction. When they ask for volunteers, my hand does not go up.

[Meg Riley]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And when they compel participation, I am shrinking in my seat and hiding behind someone and also resenting the entire thing. So that's part of it with the Wave, where, yeah, you can have your fun if you want, but also some people prefer not. And so don't be mad at me if I don't wave with you.

[Meg Riley]

And this is the thing. It's like the, the group of rambunctious youngsters trying, can I make myself sound any older? They, you know, it's not that it doesn't have any effect on the people around them. They're loud, they're rowdy, they're standing. I mean, can you even hear them over the stadium sound these days? Unclear. Depends on the ballpark, I suppose. But you know, there's not. No impact to the assembled masses. But I would submit that it is far less distracting than doing the Wave, which is, I mean, and here's the, here's the thing. You need to. You have to negotiate these things amongst yourselves. Right? Like, it's one thing. I don't want to hear from out of town fans that you're being sort of amateurish by doing the Wave. Let us, let us fix our own house. But between us girls, have respect for yourself. Don't do the Wave. Like, come on, like, scroll on your phone. That would be better than doing the Wave in a, in a down moment. Like, come on, come on. These games aren't very long anymore. They're so short sport. And you really feel the difference in the ballpark. So just like, have a some self respect.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is kind of a cool visual, though. So I do understand that the Wave, it can be cool to look at, going around.

[Meg Riley]

Seen it 10,000 times.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, yes. Yeah. Maybe it's.

[Meg Riley]

This is like, I need to hear Don't Stop Believing one more time to really get it. No, you don't. You could never hear that song again in your entire life and be so content. You'd be fine. Fine. You wouldn't be mad even a little bit, I tell you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Anyway, baseball fandom is football fandom now, evidently, we will continue to monitor and track this trend.

[Meg Riley]

Terps off, as a way of describing it, is like, that's beautiful.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The other trend is that we're just continuing to get so much more detail about the bone spurs and the loose bodies than we ever did before. How did this happen? It used to be that someone would just have loose bodies or bonus spurs or whatever, and they'd just get it cleaned out. And that's it. That's the last we would hear of it until they came back. And now we're getting so much granular detail. And we talked about Tarek Skubal several times and what size the loose body was, and was it a big lima bean or a little lima bean? So I mentioned last time that Blake Snell is also getting the surgery. He now has gotten the surgery, and I speculated that he might also get this same surgery. This new innovation, nano nubel, is what I just called it, but the nano needle, which Scott Boris branded the Skubel scope. And so I wondered whether we would get the Snell scope, even though Scott Boris does. He does represent Blake Snell still, but as far as I know, he has not attempted to rebrand it. But Blake Snell did get the nano needle, which is also interesting because I guess this thing that most baseball fans had never heard of one guy, it's like you have to be a trailblazer first into the breach. And if Tarik Skubal, who has as much riding on his elbow as anyone possibly could, given how good he is and his impending free agency and how much the Tigers need him and everything. And then he says, yeah, I'll go first. And I know he wasn't the first, but he was the first MLB player, prominent player that I'm aware of in this sport. And then I guess it makes sense because Boris represents both of them. So if he was cool with Skubal doing it, then why not Snell? I guess we'll see whether this spreads to players who are represented by other agencies. But, yeah, suddenly, nano needle, a thing I had not heard of previously, now I'm hearing about it constantly. And we heard that Blake Snell's nano needle procedure, he had three Bone spurs removed from his left elbow. And I. Look, it could just be selective memory. I just never paid particular attention to this before. Maybe we were getting precise spur counts before. You know, I haven't done the research. If people want to go Google a lot of loose bodies from past years and see whether we knew how many and how loose and how large, then please do do that research and report back to me. But it just seems like we've suddenly decided that we need so much more detail on this than was ever provided to us in the past. And I'm not quite sure why. Whether it's just the fact that there's this new procedure, or you have a couple of past Cy Young winners who are undergoing this, or. Or we've seen just a bunch of guys have the loose bodies and this sort of surgery in quick succession. But I don't know that I need to know this much if it's. If it's out of the ordinary. And maybe that's why we heard so much about Scubals, is that people were surprised that there was only one loose body and it was relatively small. And then we were all shocked to learn that a relatively small loose body is evidently fat, lima bean sized.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We. We haven't heard how large Snell's bone spurs were. So that's one small mercy that we have not been subjected to. But I wonder whether this will continue. I don't care to necessarily.

[Meg Riley]

Okay, I'm sorry, you are in a hot dog suit going, we're all for the guy who did this. What do you. What are you talking about?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm really reporting what others have. I have signal boosted. I have amplified. It's true. I'm guilty of that. And I'm not. I'm not disturbed by it the way that others are. It doesn't make me sick to my stomach or anything. I'm just saying I didn't necessarily need to know. You can tell me that it went okay and you can tell me what the timeframe for recovery is. But beyond that, the specificity of bone spurs being numbered. And also, what's the baseline here again? Is three good? Is three abnormal? I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

It is interesting. Well, I mean, I think the relative newness of this particular version of the procedure is why we're getting such detail. I think that in conjunction with the profile of Pitcher. Certainly. But it's like. Remember when everyone was all of a sudden getting internal brace?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Meg Riley]

And so then we had to think about internal brace. Probably an ickier surgery. As I sit here you know, get skeeved by lima beans. But I think that the, the relative newness of it is likely responsible for the amount of attention. But you're right, it's like, I don't know. I don't know how many little bits and bobs are usually in there that cause a guy to need surgery for loose bodies. You know, I feel like I know more than I did before because even though there can be wide variance in the size of lima beans, even fat ones, we have some sense of, of it now. But in terms of the number, I don't know. And, and it's interesting because, you know, when Edwin Diaz had a surgery for loose bodies, and I think this. I don't think that Hunter Green's was the nano needle either. Yeah, they had sort of the more typical version of it. And it's like, so is three the upper bound? Right. Because Skubal had one, Snell had three. If you, if you're up to four, are you, Are you no longer eligible for the Nano needle scope 2.0? Or if you have like, six, but they're all like, tiny lima bean size? Like, what if they're all like, the size of lentils? Are you able to have a greater margin for error? For how, For. For using the, the nanoscope 2.0? So I, you know, now I just, I want everything reported in beans I needed in bean terms, you know? Yeah, Like Fabian was reporting, oh, he had three removed, and I was like, give it to me in beans. Beans. What does that mean in beans? How big are these beans? Are they. Are they like gigante beans? Are they. Are they little? Are they little lentils? I guess lentils are distinct from beans, but both legumes don't send us emails. I'll look it up on my own. Okay? I'm gonna find out for myself. I'm gonna use the power of the Internet. I just would wish good elbow health to everyone in baseball because I don't want to think about the inside of anybody's joint quite this much. And I would invite you to have some, like, introspection about your own behavior and wonder how you contributed to the trend, because I wouldn't have known about some of this stuff if it were not for you. Okay, okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, with you on that. And, and also, I am sorry because you might personally not have known if I hadn't subjected it to you when you're a captive audience on this podcast as my co host. But I don't know whether the eligibility for the surgery, this new procedure depends on the number of beans and quantity and quality and size. I think they may not necessarily know how many. Right. And so I think probably just about anyone who has this ailment can do it. And then they go in and scope and scope out the situation, root around a little and then they know what's in there. But yeah, I don't, I don't know if it's like they have a little, a little lima bean shaped thing that they stick in there to compare the loose body to. And if it's, it's like the amusement park. You must be this tall to ride. It's like you must, you must be this small to be removed by the nano needle. If you're as big as this bean, well, you're out of luck. Sorry. Anyway, you have to do the, the old fashioned way. We just give you a knife to stick in your teeth and a swig of hard liquor and, and then we get you out of.

[Meg Riley]

Well, I don't think that's a good approach. No, that's a valuable joint, Ben. That's the middle ground.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Multi million dollar joint that they're working with over there. You can't be messing around with that. Come on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hey, in, in. Positive elbow related news. Garrett Cole's coming back. How about that?

[Meg Riley]

How about that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

He had a, a more serious surgery and ailment than the loose body removal he had. Full on Tommy John and he is, he's returning on Friday. So, so that's a solid addition getting Garrett Cole back. He hasn't pitched in a big league game since the disastrous for The Yankees Game 5 of the World Series, but he has been rehabbing. He has gotten his pitch count up so he should be more or less back to full strength if not full effectiveness. And it's handy because Max Freed just went on the IL with his own elbow complaint, which hopefully seemingly for his sake and that of the Yankees is not super serious. But any elbow issue that befalls a pitcher, you're gonna be worried. Yeah, but it's just a bone bruise seemingly. But yeah, freed out coal in. It's not the worst exchange you could make. So, yeah, one of baseball's main pitching characters returning. And I don't know how soon Corbin Burns will be back, but I know he's, he's throwing bullpens and he's going to be ramping up and getting into game action. So yeah, we lose guys to Tommy John all the time, but the nice thing is that most of them do return at some level of performance and, and then I say, ah, welcome back with open arms. Garrett Cole. How we've missed you.

[Meg Riley]

Felt like his rehab went for a long time. Yeah, it was like this year, it felt like it went for a long time. Like it's, you know, past the middle of May, rehab assignment this whole time. What's up with that? I guess he was a little complex for a little while, but yeah, for

[Ben Lindbergh]

a long time it's true. Because I guess of the, the time that he did it, since he hurt himself when he did, sometimes it's like you can kind of take your time trying to come back before you go under the knife because it's not really going to affect when you return just because of the typical return time. And other times it's more advantageous to do it expeditiously. Do whatever you're going to do. Like Jordan Westberg, for instance, who is now having Tommy John. He was trying to rest in rehab and do PRP or whatever. And as is often the case, though not always that culminates in the surgery. And you say, oh, well, that didn't work. I guess we're going to get the surgery anyway. And then everyone gets upset because they feel like, well, you just squandered a couple months. You could have been on the comeback trail already and you just sort of, you dallied and you might as well have just gotten it out of the way. And sometimes I, I share that sentiment. But also sometimes it doesn't matter that much because if it's the beginning of a season, for instance, then you're probably done for the year whether you go under the knife or not at the start of that season. So you could, at that point, maybe you have a couple months to play with, especially if you're a position player and you can come back from that surgery more quickly, at least the hitting part of it, then maybe there's no great downside to trying to come back and help your team in that season because one way or another, if you have to get the surgery, you're not going to be back till next year. But yeah, it is frustrating when the timeline does get pushed back because someone was trying to pursue alternative treatments. But I get it because you always do want to avoid surgery if you can. It is a serious surgery, even though unfortunately it's kind of a common one. So, yeah, he did make several rehab starts, though. So I guess the good news is that he should be built up. So we will see. Okay. Also, we had an update last time on a past stat blast. We were talking about Rico Garcia and having his 0babip streak snapped. And then the Mets failure to come back late in games, they snapped that streak too. And I have one other follow up on an even earlier stat blast because some history was made the other day where we got a grand slam super early in a game. I don't know if you saw this, but it involves the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks were playing the Giants and Nolan Arnado hit a grand slam for the Diamondbacks on the sixth pitch that the Diamondbacks had seen as a team in that game. Yeah, he just sort of speed ran scoring. So yeah, it wasn't the top of the first because the Diamondbacks were at home, but bottom of the first. Catal Marte singled on the second pitch against Giants starter Robbie Ray, and then Corbin Carroll singled on the first pitch and then Geraldo Perdomo batted next. And on the first pitch also, I think there was a fielder's choice with an error. And so the bases were loaded. And then on the second pitch, Noah Nado took Robbie Ray deep. Grand slam, just like that. So one pitch or two pitch, plate appearance? One pitch, plate appearance. One pitch, plate appearance, Two pitch, plate appearance. And that was it. Grand slam. And as I was reminded by many listeners, this had been the subject of a previous stat blast on episode 1717, which was back in 2021, when we were asked by a couple of listeners what the the fastest time to grand slam was because that July Andrew McCutcheon had hit a grand slam on the 10th pitch of the game. And so people were wondering, can anyone beat that? And it turned out that, yes, the fastest to Grand Slam was 8. 8 pitches, which had happened a couple times in 1997 and 2000. This is obviously since 1988, the pitch tracking data era. And this is now a new high score or new low score, I suppose. As far as I'm aware, we have not followed up on this stat blast since 2021. But I assume if it had happened since then, we would have been aware of it and people would have notified us, just judging by how many alerts I got about this happening. So, yeah, we have dropped the fastest time to grand slam from eight pitches to six. So that is. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. And the Diamondbacks ended up winning that game 12 to 2. So there was not a, a Giant's comeback. But that's a pretty deep hole to be in. Even. Even in the bottom of the first, you're already down by four and you don't even have an out yet. That's pretty demoralizing.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I mean, you, you would have to feel like you should pack it in, but you can't because it's so early. Everyone has to fix six simultaneously. I don't know. Now we're burping.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, you could, you could forfeit, but people probably wouldn't approve of that, nor should you. Yeah, so that was pretty impressive scoring rapidity. And we even, we looked up and this was also because we did as part of that stat blast, just runs being scored in a certain number of pitches, not necessarily by grand slam. And this actually tied, I think the record for four runs because that had happened before six pitches was, was the fastest two, four runs. And that had happened in a Pirates Cardinals game on April 2, 2012. But fastest to grand slam. Yeah, we now have a new record and thanks to everyone who remembered a stat blast from five years ago and reminded me about it so that I could do a follow up on the show. And also we looked, I think at the fewest pitches from the start of any inning to giving up a grand slam. And that was five. So that was done against Chris Carpenter on June 12, 2004, but that was not the first inning. So yeah, different, different varieties of record here, but this was the beginning of a game, at least for one team. And there was also, I think, one time when a reliever entered the game and gave up a grand slam and at least fewer than 10 pitches where they were responsible for all of the runners. But yeah, this was still pretty impressive. And also in other grand slam related news, James Wood hit an inside the park grand slam, which is fun because that doesn't happen all that often. But I have a little hobby horse. I don't know if it's even a horse. It's a hobby pony. I don't have that much occasion to get up on it. But I do think that since inside the park, home runs are almost always the result of some defensive mistake, I personally feel that for fielding independent pitching purposes, they should not count as home runs. This doesn't really, it doesn't really matter that much.

[Meg Riley]

It doesn't because they're, it's so frequent a thing. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. On a league wide level, it really would not make that much difference. And even on an individual level, it wouldn't. But I believe FIP just counts any home run as a home run. And of course, you could get into trouble if you, if you started coming up with fart slam home runs or fart bat home runs. You know, not just fart slam, but fart bat where we have the, the Ball doinking off of someone's head or body part or something. Well, that's not purely fielding independent either. So that's, that's kind of rough. But if it was over the fence, at least I don't expect the purveyors of FIP to scrutinize the flight path of every home run to determine whether it was actually. Because even some home runs are technically catchable, because some fielders rob home runs, and sometimes there are failed robberies, balls that could conceivably have been caught, but we're still over the fence. So even your over the fence home runs are not necessarily a hundred percent fielding independent, but I think inside the park ones, since you can classify those separately and look them up separately, and because they're definitely not fielding independent. And I think just for consistency's sake more than anything, maybe those should be handled differently by fip. But it is a frustration to me that so many inside the park homers. It's really kind of a scoring question.

[Meg Riley]

Yep.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because there's so rarely a true legitimate inside the park home run that was based purely on the placement of that batted ball and the speed and base running acumen of the batter. That's very rare.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Back in the day when you had more irregular ballpark configurations, I think it was more common. But now that there's more conformity and standardization, you typically. It's hard to just have a ball land in a certain spot where it actually can just kind of carry them and roll around and afford time for even a speedy runner to make it all the way around the bases. So then it's kind of a question of, well, should that actually have been an error that James Wood inside the park grand slam? Yeah, I, I think it was pretty legit. It would have been a tough play. It definitely did. It was catchable technically. And the outfielder went up and. And I think it was off an arm or something. So there was contact made. And whenever contact is made, in theory, you could assess an error if you really wanted to, but it was, it was a tough play. So I, I don't begrudge him the home run on this one. I think it was Nick Morabito because the.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The Mets just call up an outfield prospect every other day seemingly. So, you know, it. It kind of clanged off his arm, but he had to run a long way and it was up at the top of the wall and it was a challenging play. So, yeah, okay. I think by the standards of inside the park home runs, this was, this was pretty Home run like. But then Morabito and Tyrone Taylor, they were just sort of standing there frozen for a bit and maybe they didn't realize that no one else was going to get that ball and, and Moribito kind of fell so Taylor was checking on him and then they're like oh, this is still a live ball. We gotta, we gotta go get this. So yeah, there are always caveats I guess is what I'm saying. But it wasn't like the one last week when Jung Huli hid an inside the Parker at Dodger Stadium. That was just TE Oscar Hernandez completely misplaying a ball and TE Oscar didn't even touch it. Which I guess was part of the problem. But that's why it wasn't ruled in error. This one it more or less passed muster.

[Meg Riley]

I, I think that your, your general sentiment is correct though that it feels, it feels hard luck to have those count against the pitcher in the way that they do. Which isn't to say that you know, you get into the tricky thing of like. Well often it, it if there are other men on base, it's not like none other run should count. Right. But maybe not the last guys. Yeah, that should be an unearned one because.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Riley]

Some, some error somewhere. But yeah, it seems, it seems a little mean.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Wait a minute, I didn't do all of that. Some of it, sure, sure. But not all of it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that was fielder dependent right there, right? Yeah. Yes, I'm trying to pass the buck but also. Yeah, and we got a question related to this from Patreon supporter Articuno, like the Pokemon I suppose who said and was referring to a couple of recent plays. There was an Otani triple in error and Cody Clemens double n error and and these were not ruled inside the park home runs. The they hit the ball, they came all the way around to score but there were errors involved according to the official score. And so yeah, it's triple and advancing on the air double and advancing on the air. But Articuno wanted to know these were both referred to as Little League home runs. In my view, Little League home run should apply only when there is an error on the initial hit with other errors leading to the run. What is the official effectively wild ruling? So do we have any ruling on the definition of a Little League home run?

[Meg Riley]

So it needs to involve like a multi error situation and the in the hit itself needs to have been the result of the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that's the suggestion. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I don't know how I feel about that. I mean I Suppose I tend to think of them as home runs, quote unquote, that do involve compounding errors. I don't know if I care about exactly how they are sequenced though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I think on the Clemens play, in the Ohtani play, there were throwing errors, I think.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

On the Clemens one, there was a ball that went into the Twins dugout. So there's going to be kind of a automatic advancement. I guess that happens there. But on Otani, I think it was more of a low throw from maybe Joe Adele, who. And the cutoff man couldn't catch it. And then the ball rolled for a bit on the infield and so Ohtani came around and so the determination was that if the throw had been accurate, Ohtani would've held up a third or been thrown out, I guess. So there's an error. I don't know. I think it's kind of a blanket term that is often just applied to when a guy scores when he shouldn't have scored. Yeah, it's just whatever the specifics are, if you go all the way around and you shouldn't have, if not for some screw up or screw ups, then that's a Little League home run. So. Yeah, I don't know that I have exacting standards for what qualifies here. The more the merrier as far as how Little league it is. And apologies for denigrating the youth out there. Some little leaguers are very good. Well, sure, but they're not very. But they're not bigger.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, they're not big leaguers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

They might Little Leaguers.

[Meg Riley]

In fact, they might be big leaguers eventually. Some of them are.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. But not, not that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. But when it's kind of a comedy of errors, I think it, it helps if there are multiple errors. But even if there's just one, I, I think I'd still probably say that it qualifies.

[Meg Riley]

It does need to be kind of funny though, I guess. Like this is a hard thing to, to, to. To really put a specific sense on. But like, if you would feel like playing Yaffity Sax is too much, then it's not a Little league error, you know, it's not a little League home run. If it's a. If you're like that's what. And I think that's maybe why I'm thinking of it as involving sort of a multi pronged cascade.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's a higher bar. Because just one throwing error. You're probably not gonna break out yakety sacks for that.

[Meg Riley]

No, that would be cruel. You would. You would feel like a jerk at the end of that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, Sam weighed in on this at Pebble Hunting about a year ago, so I will read you what he wrote. He said the earliest reference to the Little League home run on Newspapers.com dates to 1991, when Dave Henderson hit an RBI double, moved to third on the throw home and scored. When that throw went wild, you just run until the ball stops rolling. Henderson said after the game. We call that a Little League home run. Like all unofficial baseball language, our personal definitions for a Little League home run vary. Many announcers will use those words to describe a triple and an error, which is basically what Henderson's was. He went to third in a normal sequence and scored on a late errant throw. If there is an authority on Little League home runs, it's Chuck Hildebrandt who presented on the topic at the 2015 Sabre Convention. Okay, so there was scholarly research on the subject of the Little League home run. His definition was much stricter. Okay, so his definition called for the batter scores and either two errors are committed on the play or one error is committed on the play which is not an extra base hit and the error is charged to a non outfielder. Oh, that's, that's super specific. So Sam says, I have no problem with Hildebrandt's conclusions. He did a lot of work. But my own preference is for the most expansive definition of Little League home run, as Dave Henderson's was. Any play where the batter scores without hitting a home run. A triple extended by a wild throw is very common in Little League and not an actual home run. So I'd consider Little League home run the right term to describe it. That hypothetical play is not a very interesting or satisfying Little League home run. But that's okay. Ryan Yarborough's fastball isn't a very interesting or satisfying fastball, but we still call it what it is. Wow. Ryan Yarbrough catching strays there. But I think I'm, I think that's where I come down to that. It is, it's technically a Little League home run if you, you go all the way around and you score and you didn't do it yourself. Basically it shouldn't have been a home run. You shouldn't have scored otherwise except for some screw up, some indeterminate number of screw ups. But I definitely agree that it's more satisfying if there are multiple errors involved. Yeah, yeah. Cuz it just like anyone can, can make one mistake, even big breakers. So when it really compounds, then that's when it Starts to feel Little League. And. Yeah, that's when you can get the yaky sex or the Benny Hill or. Or whatever. Yeah, it's not that embarrassing a single error. It's. It's more embarrassing because the guy scored. And so it was costly. But, yeah, it doesn't reflect poorly enough on you for me to use the term with gusto.

[Meg Riley]

The Yakety sax is. Or is that the Benny Hill theme?

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's the.

[Meg Riley]

Leave it in, Shane. If you edit that out, we're gonna. We're gonna have words. Oh, no, we're gonna get emails is what we're gonna get.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe they're. Are they. They're one in the same. Right. They're the same. Right. That yakety sax is from. From the Benny Hill. Yeah. So we're not.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So we don't actually disagree about that, but. But maybe we slightly disagree about what qualifies as Little League home run. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Okay, good. I'm so glad to clarify these things. It's good for people to know how often I goof this stuff up lest I get. Lest I get big for my britches, you know, gotta have a. Which, as we've established, you need to keep on at the ballpark. Gotta keep those britches on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Yes, that is on somewhere. On the hierarchy of embarrassing baseball plays, though, which we talked about last time.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I solicited suggestions for what else might rank up there as far as a regular baseball play. That is embarrassing because it was prompted by a pinch runner immediately being thrown out. And often when you're picked off, not just thrown out, but picked off as the pinch runner, that might be it for you. There's no opportunity for redemption because usually it's late in the game or also you might just be removed from the game. And so there's no opportunity to make good for that. So that was high on my list. But we discussed some other possibilities and people wrote in with some others, but I think the Benny Hill yakety sacks Little League home run, I think that's up there. But it's usually a group effort, which is. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's embarrassing for the team.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But it's usually not just one guy. If it is one guy. If one guy were to, say, whiff on fielding the ball and then have to go run and get it and then make a bad throw, and so he was the star of the comedy of errors and. And the runner came all the way around, that would be up there. I think that doesn't happen all that often. But yeah, that's up there.

[Meg Riley]

Is that what we would refer to as pulling a Mets?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Maybe that could apply to so many

[Meg Riley]

things, but a group effort, when it's a team, when it's a group, that's

[Ben Lindbergh]

when you need the. The Joe Davis or the humanity call. Oh, no. Yeah, the Mets.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, no, the Mets. I'm just saying. And look, I don't mean to kick the Mets while they're down because how

[Ben Lindbergh]

rude have they been up more regularly lately? So.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, but here's, here's, Here's a thing I believe, Ben. I don't think this is a particularly controversial assertion that I'm about to make. I think that if you're the Mets and you're barely hanging on to respectability and you have a game where Boba Shet hits two home runs and Nolan McLean is the starter and you lose to the Nationals, you gotta, you gotta think about the state of your spirit in that moment. You know, and that's, that's what happened to the Mets on Tuesday. They. They had their best on the mount. They had Boba Shet do a thing that he has struggled to do, not only to hit the ball, but hit it far this season. Did it twice. Yeah, and they lost, Ben. They lost that game. And look, we gotta. It's relevant, you know, because we were just talking about James Wood and his inside the park grand slam. And who did that come against? It came against the Mets. And so here we are. Maybe we should think of this as the Dickie Lovelady revenge game. Really? His player page is Richard Lovelady, sir, you exhibited such courage last year. You had bravery in your spirit and now it is gone. Now you're. I'm disgusted. You know, I can't believe it. I can't believe that he. Ben, I'm so upset. I'm so upset. I didn't know until this moment when I pulled. I thought he would just be like, look, they're calling me Dicky Love lady. Put it on the player page. No, that's not what happened.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No. Maybe someday he will stop disappointing you. Our friends Richard Lovelady and Richard Fitz,

[Meg Riley]

he has been brave where Richard Fitz has been the coward, you know, Go buy Dick Fitz. Be brave. Yeah. Be brave.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. We also got some submissions, nominations for reliever related ones. Because the questioner who asked us about that suggested a reliever coming in being bad, but that happens so often and it's hard to pitch. And also it's partly on the manager, so that's not so bad, but.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We did get listener. Jeff said the really embarrassing thing is when a reliever comes in immediately, gives up multiple runs and is replaced before recording an out. And as Jeff says, maybe the manager shares some of the embarrassment, bears some of the blame. He did, after all, decide which reliever to summon. But, but that's bad. If you are a reliever and you're supposed to put out the fire and instead you add more fuel to it and you don't even get, get your team any closer to a win. That's, that's pretty bad. If. Yeah, that's more like you had one job which was get some outs or get and out.

[Meg Riley]

At the very least get an out, one out. Most of the time that's what guys are getting and out, you couldn't do it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That is very bad. Yeah. And, and also another reliever related one I think was just like if you wild pitch in a run or you bulk in a run, that's pretty bad too. So ways when you can be beaten that seem more like unforced errors because it's not just that, hey, the hitters are good and sometimes they beat you, but you kind of beat yourself by balking someone in. I kind of got at this with the bases loaded walks. Obviously the hitters have something to do with drawing walks, but also you are, you are handing them out, you're dispensing those walks and if you do it repeatedly and when you have no margin for error, that's bad. But yeah, if you were to wild pitch in a run or maybe you, you set up the double play. I think listener Ctar suggested if you issue an intentional walk to set up a double play and then yeah, you bach or wild pitch someone in or walk someone in or whatever it is because then it's like you were almost denigrating the abilities of the batter you put on and suggesting I'd rather face this next guy. And of course the manager is usually calling for that. So it's not so much on the pitcher, but it, it looks kind of bad for the pitcher when it's like I'm going to engineer the situation that I want and then I'm, I'm fully face planting once I put myself in that situation.

[Meg Riley]

Right. Yeah, that's pretty bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, some people also suggested including a Patreon supporter cuff, that an embarrassing thing is when you bat out of order. Yeah, that is pretty, that's embarrassing.

[Meg Riley]

It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And that's partly on the players. It's partly on the Coaches and managers. So maybe again, you're, you're spreading the load of the blame a bit there. It's not only on one person, but it's bad. That is a total unforced error. And maybe it's worse because you have to be called out on that because the umpires won't call you on batting out of order. The other team. Yes. Has to catch you doing it.

[Meg Riley]

Yes. It is a requirement of the rule that the other team has to note the mistake to the umpires. If you, if it does, if it goes unremarked upon. Well, yep, there you go.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that's extra embarrassing because your opponent is like, gotcha. Caught you in the act. And Cuff also suggested that it's embarrassing if you throw your glove or cap or mask or something at the ball and make contact with it. And then everyone has to relearn the rules about how many extra bases are awarded as a result of that. It's a triple if you throw your glove at a batted ball in the field of play. That kind of thing doesn't happen often and usually it's a last resort sort of instinctive thing where it's, oh, I can't catch it, I'll just throw this thing at it. Maybe that'll help. But, but because you can't do that, that's, that's pretty embarrassing, I guess. Especially because there's a specific rule and penalty about it. And Patreon supporter Jonah suggested the, the outfielder assisted home run that we just mentioned earlier. You know, the, the Canseco assist. Especially if it's that if it's off the dome, if it's just off the glove and you're going up to try to rob or something. Well, that's not so bad because it's a higher degree of difficulty maybe. But yeah, this is good, good ideas, good suggestions. But I think still probably nothing actually surpasses the, the pinch runner immediately getting picked off in terms of embarrassment. That's up there for me. I feel secondhand shame on on your behalf if that happens to you.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah, agreed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. Also, I just want to throw out another prompt for people, if you care to write in. Gio Urchella just retired. Some people may not have realized Gio or Shella was not already retired, but no, he was not. And he was playing in the majors as recently as last season. And I saw some Yankees fans singing his praises and saying, happy trails, Gio or Shella. And probably only Yankees fans because he was pretty much only good for the Yankees. And so I was Thinking about this, just players whom you might have a distorted view of because they were good for your team even though they were bad for basically every other team. Because I have a colleague at the ringer, Ben Glicksman, yet another Ben who has been a big Gio or Shella fan and not by coincidence, he's also a Yankees fan. And it's almost been a running bit where he has this affection for Gio Urchella. But he's probably not alone among Yankees fans because Gio Urshella was pretty good for the Yankees and pretty bad for just about everyone else. And it was kind of a surprise because he came up first with the Guardians or the not yet Guardians in 2015. He had like a 10 year career. People might not realize that about J. Urcella. He didn't play full seasons in all of those seasons but. But he was there. So he came up in the mid-2000s with Cleveland and then he was with Toronto and he hadn't hit at all for those teams and he was sub replacement level. And then it was weirdly, he was great for the Yankees in 2019 and had a 132 WRC plus and was a three win guy and he played 132 games. And then the next year was 2020, so he played only 43 games that year but he continued to rake and had a 13034 WRC plus. And then the year after that he was not as good, but he was not terrible. And then he moved on and he hit okay for the Twins that next season he was pretty decent for them. But then he moved on to the Angels and the Tigers and the Braves and the A's and he was bad for pretty much all of them. So all told, he had 25 weighted runs above average as a Yankee and for his seven other teams combined he was negative 30.3. So plus 25 as a Yankee, negative 30.3 everywhere else combined. Gio or Shella, true Yankee. Time to retire. Number 29, put him in Monument Park. So I just, I wonder what thoughts or associations that prompts in some of our listeners. Yeah, a guy who was almost a folk hero for your local nine. You just. You love that guy because he was good for you.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And maybe was not good anywhere else. And so like the guy who would have the biggest disparity in.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Like how he is perceived by perception versus other. Yeah, yeah. And I know we did a stat blast one time, episode 2146 on pitchers specifically who were better with one team than they were overall. Prompted by Jesse Chavez and his many stints with the Braves, with whom he was more successful than he was anywhere else pretty much. But, you know, we could stat blast this and we could make it more rigorous, but I'm almost more interested in just remembering some guys or having our listeners remember and help us remember some guys. Just anyone who falls into that bucket, that category where it's like maybe you had an outsized sense, an inflated sense of how good they were because you saw them. It's like that related phenomenon when someone plays really well when you're watching their games and then like they make it out every time you, you get up to go to the bathroom or you're not watching. But when you're watching them, they have just a really skewed production. And so you think they're good if you don't actually pay attention to anything except what you're watching personally. So sort of that. But on a career level, I would, I'd love to know. So it could be one fluke season, but. But I think bonus points if it's multiple seasons because then it's a little less fluky, but it's still localized to that one team. So. Yeah, I don't know if anyone comes to mind for you because like they're. There are guys who had that one kind of out of nowhere season like, like Aaron Small was another guy during my time as a Yankees fan where it was like he went 100 in 2005 and they really needed him and they were shorthanded. And then Aaron Small rides to the rescue. This guy who had been with a bunch of teams and had never really caught on or been good anywhere. And then suddenly he just couldn't lose, you know, and he in 2005 had a 3.2 ERA in 76 innings, 15 games, nine starts and10.0 record. And it was just. The secret weapon is Aaron Small. Whenever Aaron Small pitches, we win or at least we can't lose. And that was fun, except it didn't really continue because the next year he got into 11 games mostly in relief, and he had a near nine ERA also for the Yankees, which really put into stark relief how improbable he was that he was sort of the Savior in 2005. But also the pixie dust wore off with that team. So that might work if he had had only that one outlier year as Yankee. And then he went somewhere else and had a near nine era, but because

[Meg Riley]

ups and downs sort of undermine it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, he had the downs in the same place as well. As the ups and so doesn't quite fit what I'm saying. And the success was only one season. But yeah, yeah, preferably a long career like Gio Urchella, who. Who played for eight teams over 10 years or whatever, but there was one where he just really excelled, I guess, plus the Twins, but especially the Yankees. So, yeah, just throw that out there. If anyone has any. Anyone who comes to mind, let us know.

[Meg Riley]

Like, who are your very special particles who behave differently when observed? It's hard for me to relate to this question as a Mariners fan, because the way that the direction goes is like, oh, they come to Seattle and then they get worse. You know, it's like, oh, we're trading for that guy. Well, now he is a butt.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's.

[Meg Riley]

But, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And that's disappointing when you think they're going to be good and then turns out they're stinky.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I guess it plays into the Yankees exceptionalism because there are two competing takes, which is that there are guys who can't play in New York and they can't handle it. And so they come to the Bronx and they're suddenly unmanned because it's just, you know, if you can't make it there, you can make it anywhere else, but not here. As the song doesn't quite go.

[Meg Riley]

What does that mean? I've never heard of a corner store.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Did you know that bodegas have ramps? Wow. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Some of them have cats.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But. But there's that. That you can't. You can't handle the truth of playing in New York. And then there's also the. Somehow there's Yankee magic. But I think this is right. This is mostly Yankees haters. I've heard Joe Pesnansky and Mike sure express this idea on their podcast where it's just like the out of nowhere, fluke Yankees veteran resurgence or fluke sort of season. And they believe that the Yankees have a special power to confer that on various players. I don't know if that actually checks out. Probably not.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But they remember it because they're Yankees haters. And so, you know, it looms large in their mind. But yeah, I think the research has shown that if anything, maybe there's like a little bit to the big market New York effect, but not that much. It's. It's overblown. But yeah, this sticks out in people's minds because Geo Rochella. I also think of Miguel and Duhar as. As another of those guys who was surprisingly like, long lasting. I mean, he's still in the big leagues. He's playing. He has a 136 WRC plus this year. Yeah, that's almost the opposite where he he kind of came out of the gate with a bang. He had a really good I guess it wasn't his first season, but his rookie year 2018, he had a 129 WRC plus for the Yankees for war guy.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then he stunk up the joint for the next few years for the Yankees and then he went to other places and was not great for them. But now he's had a little late career resurgence.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Where he had a he's not giving you much beyond the bat, but he hit well for the Reds last year and then he's hitting well for the Padres. Who knew? Miguel and Duhar still out there, still hitting.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. As we noted when we talked about the Padres and their offensive was one of the few like reliable bats in their lineup right now. It's really something.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. When we talked about the Padres playing above expectations and projections and we looked at at their stats and their WAR leaders and we were like, huh, There was this. And I saw Petriello post to the same event where he was just like not sure how the Padres have been this good. So they've been clutched though, which is nice for them because they, they had that historically unclutched season and you know, maybe it all comes back around eventually after some changes in personnel. Anyway.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. Also wanted to note, there seems to be a bit of an evolution in the distribution of challenges which Joshean has been writing about a bit in his excellent newsletter joshehan.com I also saw Matt Trueblood write about this for Baseball Prospectus, but it seems like the breakdown in which players challenge and which players don't is becoming more pronounced over time where we know that pitchers are the worst at it, success rate wise. And then batters are better than pitchers but worse than catchers and catchers are just the best at challenging. And it seems like gradually over the course of the season, teams have realized this and observed this in action and thus are giving catchers the green light to challenge a little more and batters a little less. Yeah, and pitchers a little less too. But pitchers weren't challenging much to begin with.

[Meg Riley]

Much to begin with.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, which was not a surprise. We kind of gleaned that that was going to be the case based on the minors and spring training and everyone realizing that pitcher success rates were not great. But it does seem like batters are now maybe being discouraged from challenging and Catchers are being encouraged more. And so teams are trying to concentrate their challenges among the players who are the best at it, which, yeah, sort of makes sense, I guess. Yeah. But now it's, it's becoming more of at least the actual challenges becoming more of an advantage for the defense, for the catchers specifically. And Matt was highlighting the Marlins and the brewers, who are maybe the starkest contrast because they are among the more aggressive challengers for their catchers and not very aggressive for their batters. So it does. Yeah, it does seem to be probably some edict from on high or at least advice that, you know, let's have our catchers do this and our, our hitters, not so much. Unless you're really sure. And Joe has been bemoaning this trend because I think Joe was rooting for this to be a weapon for hitters, something that could be an equalizer.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so he is lamenting that now this is becoming, at least when it comes to the specific challenges, it's becoming yet another thing that goes against hitters in many cases. And he showed some data. There's a website called tap to challenge taptochallenge.com that has some data on challenges, but also data on challenges that are not issued, which is nice. Yeah. So it has challenge opportunities that were not taken pitches and easier said than done to say you should have challenged. It's hard to tell sometimes, but just looking after the fact at if they had challenged this, it. It would have been overturned and they didn't. So opportunities passed up and they're just, it seems like a few more misses now, at least like missed opportunities than there were. You know, they're about, for hitters, four or so missed opportunities per game. I guess per team or. I'm not sure if this is per team or, or per both teams per game, but at the beginning of the season it was more like 3.8, typically 3 point something. Now it's 4 point something, whereas for fielders it was typically 3 point something. And now it's like down to 2 point something, 2.9 missed opportunities per game, as opposed to maybe 3 and a half or something like that.

[Meg Riley]

Gotcha.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So Joe was bemoaning this because he was hoping that this would be. Batters can strike back now after all the, the framing and batters being powerless to resist. Now they could play their, their trump card here. And now it seems like teams are maybe taking the challenges out of their hands a little bit. But I guess it's hard to fault them because the, the data doesn't lie as far as who's been better at this.

[Meg Riley]

I wonder how much continued evolution there will be at it, because it's, it's not. I think there are some just obvious structural disadvantages to being the hitter trying to challenge versus the catcher in terms of the view you have of it. But I, I don't know that. We know it's like not a malleable skill. Right. That you could improve at. And so I wonder if there will be teams that feel like they have, like, here's how you can unlock your challenge ability in the offseason, go look at it this way or whatever. So I'm just curious how, how fixed that skill is perceived to be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I think teams have practiced and they have the traject machines and everything, and they can use that for ABS practice too. And there could be some hitters who really distinguish themselves. I don't know what sort of sample. You need to be confident that, yeah, this guy's actually good at this. It wasn't just a coin toss going his way a bunch of times in a row. But if someone does establish themselves as skilled at challenging, then maybe they get special dispensation. But I do think that it is just sort of structural because the catchers just have the best vantage point.

[Meg Riley]

Right. They have the best view.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, because the pitchers, their, their heads are moving around. And also it's, it's on their ledger if they get the call, even more so than it is for the catcher. And so you could imagine they might be more biased, but it's probably just that they're farther away. And, and it's, I guess, not so much the distance because we think we have a good vantage point from the center field camera, which is farther away than the pitcher is on the mound. And so you could imagine that being advantageous just getting that view. But the pitcher is doing a lot of other stuff, is distracted, and is trying to go through the delivery. And so their head is whipping around and everything. And so you can imagine they're not getting the best view. And then the batter, well, they're stationary, they're not moving quite as much, but. But they're also thinking about, do I want to swing? Do I need to start my swing? And maybe they're seeing it with one eye more than the other because, you know, the way that you're positioned as a batter and depending on how open or closed you are, and do you have a certain eye dominance, and so you're getting a different vantage point on it. And so Catchers, they just get to sit back there stationary. And so I think even though they're wearing a mask, it helps. You might have thought that hitters would be most aware of their height, at least because they know themselves. So I don't know if over time we'll see that hitters will be better because they'll understand where the top and bottom of their zone is, because that doesn't change for them, whereas for umpires and catchers, it changes plate appearance. For now, it seems pretty pronounced. And I guess I. I can't fault teams for. And as long as it's not a blanket ban, but it's just, hey, here's what the numbers say. You have to be really certain. It's like on Billions, you know when. You probably don't know.

[Meg Riley]

I don't know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. On billions, you know, when Axe was going to make a big deal, it was like Dollar Bill would say, I am not uncertain. And that was code for, I have some illicit inside info here. He knew something, that the deal should go down. So it's not quite like that, I guess, but. But you better be not uncertain if you're going to challenge as part of the cohort that is less successful at challenging. The thing, though, that I would. I would encourage and reassure Joe and comfort Joe. I think this is still sort of helping hitters, even if they're not as often getting the direct benefit on the challenges. As we talked to Ben Clemens about on the podcast, the zone has shrunk a little bit because of the threat of challenges, because of the. The challenge specific zone. And so hitters have benefited from that.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But I guess Joe is right that he was hoping it would be kind of a double whammy and they'd get the boost of the zone being more predictable. But then. And smaller, perhaps, but then also getting the advantage of the actual overturned calls going their way, which is usually not happening now. Usually that is going against them more often.

[Meg Riley]

Do you feel confident that men know how tall they are?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think they have a better sense of that than they actually project to the world. At times.

[Meg Riley]

You think that there's active subterfuge going on?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

False confidence. It's. It's fitting. They're fibbing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, definitely. There's fibbing happening. Well, now there's definitely a bit of both. Yeah, right.

[Meg Riley]

This is my point. Like, and what's the balance of those in instincts?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, you fib for so long that maybe you actually come to believe your own fib. I think that could possibly Happen because.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If you're not getting measured that often, which maybe as an adult you aren't, then you could kind of. Yeah. How? I don't even remember the last time my height was measured. I don't. You know, if. If you were listing yourself as whatever on forms and stuff in a flattering way for years, you might. You could actually talk yourself into being that tall. I don't know. Or if you start obtaining, you know, the dark arts of. Of different heel heights or something. Maybe.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Who knows?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, if. Yeah. But I mean, the thing is, if you. If you're wearing lifts, you know, you're not as tall as. That's true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's a constant reminder, really, that you're. You've procured stilts for yourself.

[Meg Riley]

So, yeah, you're up on. You're up on heels a little bit.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I just.

[Meg Riley]

Just, you know, look, I think that on the one hand, there are circumstances where it would be really difficult to maintain the lie, but then at a certain point, you're not on the same infield as Jose Altuve every day. So maybe, like, maybe I am closer to six foot.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right? Yeah. If you don't have a frame of

[Meg Riley]

reference, I'll never let this go. I'll never let it go. You know, I've. I've let. I've let the banging scheme go, but I'm never gonna let him lying about his height go.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I'm not talking about the full Desantis, but just. Or even the. The Costanza with the Timberlands. But there are certain shoes. I mean, even if you're not obtaining shoes with an eye towards. This will make me taller. There are times I'll put on a certain pair of sneakers or something. Like, I'm seeing the. The world from a whole new vantage point.

[Meg Riley]

Right? Different vantage, yeah. Oh, for sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. And. And Joe also noted he was looking at the week by week walk rate, and it has come down. So after a lot of the initial hand wringing, or at least just paying attention to the fact that, wow, the walk rate is way up, it has come down, which is not unexpected because the walk rate pretty much always comes down in any season. It's not even purely ABS related, but it's come down from being basically 10% of plate appearances for the first couple weeks to being nine or even below in the last couple of weeks. So I don't know if this is just because that's the typical progression as whatever guys get ramped up, pitchers get better at their command or umpires improve or the Weather gets better and pitchers have better grip or whatever it is. But maybe that's particularly pronounced now because the challenges have shifted from batters and a few pitchers to catchers more and more. And so that's leading to more strikes and more overturns and thus perhaps fewer walks. So yeah, that's something to watch as well.

[Meg Riley]

That tracks.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. Did you see that the Joey Wiemer got optioned? I saw, yeah. Joey Weimer, life comes at you fast, I guess because, and I, when I saw that news, I hadn't paid particular attention to Joey Weimer's recent performance because we, we mentioned him a couple times because. Yeah, but he was, he was leading the league in WAR for a few days for I don't know, Week one or something.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He had a hot start and so we were all joking kind of about Joey Wiemer leading the league. The stats are real. And then I saw that he got sent down. I was thinking, wow, that's a quick comeuppance from leading the majors in WAR to then mid to late May. You're getting option but he actually still has a 157 WRC Plus. So when I saw the news, not having looked at his stats recently, I was assuming that he hadn't had a hit since the first week of April or something. Hasn't been quite that bad. He's, he's cooled down obviously. But it wasn't so much that I think it was like Dylan Cruz came

[Meg Riley]

back and yeah, they had other shifting around that they needed to do. They sent House down too, right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, yes. And so that I think just for wanting Wimur to get regular playing time and then I think Andres Chaparro, they have sort of a platoon situation or they, he gives them more right handed balance because House is, is down too. So yeah, it wasn't purely that Wimmer, just that he disappeared or anything. But I. Right, I did see that. And this is not easily stat blasted but I wonder, it's just how, how quickly you could go from not zero to 60 but 60 to zero where it's like riding high. I'm the early season sensation. I, I can't make it out. You know, he was like setting records and threatening records and then now I'm, I'm back in the minors. But maybe it's because it's a testament to him that they want him getting regular playing time and he just wasn't going to at the big league level.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I thought you were going to bring up the fact that John Brevia

[Ben Lindbergh]

got released by the well, yes, yes, it's true. Now, to be fair, it was somewhat of his own volition.

[Meg Riley]

Yes, he had a clause in his contract that he had to be either released or brought up by a certain date. And he exercised that clause and they said, thank you, John. We know that you will find comfort in our decision to let you go in the warm embrace of your best friend, Ben Limberg.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Exactly. Yeah. I'd love to have him back on sometime soon, but I think we should

[Meg Riley]

let him be consistently rostered for a little bit before we asked to talk. Talk to him again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, maybe. Although, I don't know. I. I'd be interested in talking to him about all the ups and downs too. Cuz, you know, he's. He's sticking it out like he must have if he. If he triggered this, opt out to become a free agent again and I guess he could end up resigning with the Twins. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes that happens. He must have thought the grass was greener somewhere.

[Meg Riley]

He.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He had a somewhat unsightly era in aaa, unfortunately, which I think was mostly the result of a couple bad outings. But you don't get to drop those from your stats, unfortunately. They stick. They do. Yeah. Well, our best to Brebia. Of course. He will catch on somewhere and be in the big leagues, but he must have thought there'd be interest elsewhere in his services or he could have just.

[Meg Riley]

He wouldn't have done it. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Choking along. Yeah. And also, you know, we. We talked about Wimur early on. We also talked about tons of rookies early on and how well rookie hitters were hitting and how it seemed historic and everything. And we haven't checked in on that recently. But obviously rookie hitters have cooled down, but they have still been above average as a group. So Rookie hitters have a 101 WRC plus as we record on Wednesday afternoon. And when we were marveling at it, it was 140 or something. So yeah, obviously they've cooled down, but on the whole, for the full season, rookie batters have been better than the average batter and non rookie batters, obviously. And I don't know if that'll hold up. We're only 30% of the way through the season and probably they've been below average since that hot start to get back to average. Ish. But still, that's. That's pretty darn solid. So this is. This is quite an impressive class of rookies, even if it's not quite as amazing as it seemed to be in the early going. But yeah, we've talked about Griffin's turnaround and how good Weatherholt has been. And like some of the, the top guys, they've. They've lived up to the billing.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. Weatherhole homeward again in between when we last talked about him and cold Emerson

[Ben Lindbergh]

hit a home run.

[Meg Riley]

And Cole Emerson. I know. And then I let my guard down because I was like, oh, look, I fixed the Mariners because I was mean to them. So they were like, oh, we got to play better for Meg. And then I had other things to do in the back half of their game last night. And so I was like, oh, Bryce Miller's out of this game. He like, no, no's gone. Oh, Castillo and relief. This will be fine. And then I looked at my phone later and I was like, it wasn't fine though. So Mariners. I want you to know, I want you to tighten up. Okay. What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Mariners fence were unhappy with Dan Wilson. 000 or so I gather. Which not for the first time, I

[Meg Riley]

don't know how objective I can be about it because I've just been so frustrated at different points. There's. There's growing concern and rumbling in the fan base. How fair is it? It's a mix. You know. It's a mixed bag, Ben. But some of the things with the team have been good. Some of them have been less good. Sure. Not sure. Not doing great in one run games. It is frustrating. And sometimes you sit there and you're like, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm gonna respect myself and my own time. And when I feel a little. Little twinge of being nervous about how a reliever looks at night, I'm gonna. I'm gonna listen to my instincts. Turn it off. That's what I'm gonna do. And you know what? You might think, Meg, you're being weak. You know? Like, what kind of. What kind of fan are you if you're not there? Listen, I, I, I know myself. Okay? I can't drink three IPAs in one sitting anymore. I'm almost 40 and I don't need this heartburn. Okay. Again. I'm almost 40. I don't need it. Okay? They can. They can earn back my confidence. They can earn it back. I get to be like this because who cares? You know? At the end of the day, really, who cares? I mean, I care that I would like it if they play better.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Care deeply. Yes.

[Meg Riley]

But.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean.

[Meg Riley]

But whatever.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. That this was a disappointing tarps off game because even though the Tarps were off. Ultimately, the vibes were off too, because. Because they had started off so well because they had. Bryce Miller was thrown a no, no. And. And they're doing this piggyback arrangement with Luis Castillo because Luis Castillo has struggled, but I guess partly out of deference to him and his career and partly maybe because also they think that he could still be good. And so they don't want to just fully demote him to the bullpen. So they kind of want to keep him stretched out to the point where he could get a start. And in fact, they're not even sure what they're doing the next time through the rotation. But they.

[Meg Riley]

Confidence inspiring.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know, but they had Miller through six. Right. And then they brought in Castillo for a couple innings and they were holding on to this one nothing lead. And then Wilson had Castillo come back out for the third inning of work for the ninth. And then he walked a guy and he hit a guy. Yeah, with. With one out, I guess. And then Munoz came in, but maybe too late, but he then allowed a couple steals and then he gave up a couple run scoring singles. And then the indefatigable White Sox came back to win 2 to 1.

[Meg Riley]

Crushed it. Perfect. Note 1 take Ben on that one word.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I never struggled to pronounce that word behind the scenes. Listen, Shane just cut out about a minute of me trying to say indefatigable. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And. And. And I want our listeners to know this is a behind the scenes episode. We're. We're leaving a couple of insights in. Ben struggled mightily to say that word. I'm not convinced you said it correctly either of those times. To be clear, there was one take where you might imagine the. The worst possible mispronunciation of that word.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Can't leave it in.

[Meg Riley]

Which we will not leave in. Because we don't mess around with that word. But. But because of the struggle. It was funny, but it is an outtake that no one will ever be able to hear because we love and respect our listeners and we won't subject them to that word.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Exactly. Anyway, the White Sox won.

[Meg Riley]

They did.

[Ben Lindbergh]

They're irrepressible. Why didn't I just say that? You can't keep those White Sox down.

[Meg Riley]

Encouraging you to get a thesaurus out the whole time you were struggling.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It was sunk. Cost. I was. I became so frustrated that I couldn't say it. Say it any other word. One adjective for a dollar. Yeah. No, I was pot committed at that point. I was throwing good pronunciations after bad.

[Meg Riley]

After bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And also bad after bad. Anyway, the White Sox won. People were annoyed, I guess, that Munoz didn't start the 9th, maybe with the. I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

Look, I guess I'm gonna shock our listeners here. And some of this was that I didn't watch it live, so I didn't have the, like, raw emotion of the whole thing. I think that if you're committed to Castillo being in this sort of piggyback role and you think that that has value, but you're still feeling through the best way to deploy that version of your rotation, okay, they're gonna be hiccups like this. Now, he is running up against my least favorite aspect of his managerial tendencies, which is to leave his guys in a little too long. We talked about this with division, the season preview. Part of it is that he trusts his guys, maybe to a fault. I do need you to accept new information into your decision matrix, Dan. But, you know, we. We discussed in the lead up to Miller returning that they had a. They had a tricky choice to make because Emerson Hancock has been pitching so well this season that, yeah, you didn't want to send him. You certainly didn't want to send him down. And demoting him out of that role didn't make a ton of sense because he's been murdering on Castillo. And, you know, to Castillo's credit, he has exhibited, like, a flexibility in that role that I think is admirable when you're, like, a veteran guy. But he has an ERA over six, so, like, it's not going great for Luis. Should he have pulled Castillo sooner? I mean, obviously, given what we know, but it wasn't like Munoz's lights out either, you know, so they. They're just sort of an unsettled group at the moment. And, you know, I. I don't know. They. It. Some of their woes might improve. Brash is now, like, very recently, I think, as of today, back from the aisle, they activated him off the 15 day. So hopefully Brash is actually right and the lap doesn't bother him Again, for. It's been good. Like, they. It just. It doesn't feel like the version of Munoz that they have right now is like the screw you guy that they've had in years past. Like, the command hasn't been the same. So I just think they're. They're kind of on shaky ground, and some of that is perhaps being exacerbated by having too slow of a hook on some of these guys, but some of it is just the reality of the roster right now. See, How I said reasonable things about Dan Wilson, just that I am capable. I mean, clearly this backfired on him. But I also think that, like, if you're going to use Castillo in this role, if he's going to be like, your long relief guy, you got to figure out what the bounds of that are.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Mariners fans just upset because the Mariners have been bad. They've been disappointing.

[Meg Riley]

People are 23 and 27 and high expectations.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Reasonably, yes.

[Meg Riley]

And some of the stuff has been better of late. And it just. I think part of the frustration is that, like, Julio's off to, like, his best start in a while, you know, and if you had told me at the beginning of the season, oh, well, Julio's gonna be, like, really good this year, you'd be like, great, terrific. But they must be fantastic. But it's like, cows hurt and they're tied bottom five as we're recording. Like, get, get set. Sort yourselves out. You know, I want to be. I want to be nice to them, but they're not giving me an opportunity to be nice. But it was nice to see Cole Emerson hit his full first home run, and his family was so happy. And it was nice that you. His family got to have an opportunity to be, like, stoked for him because they called him up so last minute that I don't think his folks were there for his debut. It was too late. Like, he had to, like, scoot up i5, you know, so it was nice that they were able to be there for the second game and see the big hit. And so, like, that. That part of it's very nice. So do it again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I know people are upset about pinch hitting decisions that Wilson has made or the front office or whoever else, but obviously, when your team is not going great, then.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Everything's going to annoy you. It's. It's very much like the chemistry conversation. Sure. Is it bad chemistry or is it that the team has been bad and thus everyone's in a bad mood? And that applies to fans, too. It's just the vibes can get pretty rancid in the fan base when the team is underperforming in a frustrating way. And when it appears that the manager is not helping the situation, perhaps even if he's not causing it primarily. But maybe in the long run, it's good that they have too many starting pitchers. That's better than not having enough.

[Meg Riley]

You never have too many. I'm. I'm told, yeah, too many rather than too few.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So you gotta piggyback someone because there's no room at the rotation in. Meanwhile the Dodgers are doing their annual. Do we have enough starting pitchers? Yeah. Well we talked about Snell and his injury and Glass now is on the injured list and well you. You've got the guys like Landon Knack and Gavin Stone and then you've got. Can you count on Roki Sasaki in any given game? He's coming off his strongest start over here. But the results have been variable and so you always. You'll look up and huh. The Dodgers, they had nine starters and now do they have enough to fill out a rotation? They still do. To be clear, the Dodgers are not in dire straits or anything. They have Ohtani, they have Yamamoto, they have Robleski who's been really good and then they have Sasaki who's. Well, you never know what you're going to get. And they have Emmett Sheehan and River Ryan is maybe about to be back. He's been rehabbing. So they have guys but they're about one more pitcher breaking away from just being in that same Dodgers sort of situation that they always find themselves in which ultimately does not preclude them from winning a World Series. So nobody cares. But. And this is part of their game plan and they just kind of bake it in and if they get those guys healthy again in October then they'll be just fine. But it is funny the. The regularity. You can just sort of set your clock to the Dodgers having most of or more than an entire rotation on the AAL at some point. And even though that doesn't stop them from winning their division and winning a championship, it does tend to put a damper on the this will be the best team ever or this will they'll win 117. They will run roughshod over everyone if they win the World Series then that no one cares that they had a not superlative regular season. It was good enough to get them there. But it does always I think make sense to pump the brakes on they're going to have a historic regular season because they don't care about that and they don't really have the personnel to support that over a full season.

[Meg Riley]

Well maybe them not being historically good is just their way of exhibiting labor solidarity. Maybe that's it negotiations.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Exactly.

[Meg Riley]

They're being strategic thinkers. Ben, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep. Yep. Jose Brios had to have the full TJ too. I was not just loose bodies or maybe it was but also loose ligaments. Okay.

[Meg Riley]

I had missed that. That's too bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Missing a base that's kind of embarrassing, too.

[Meg Riley]

Missing a base is bad when you. It's. It's bad when you miss it on the way out. It's also bad when you realize you have to retreat and you fail to re. Tag along the way. Like, that's pretty. That's pretty bad, as these things go. Yeah. Anytime you also, if you fall down, you know, it's not a great one. Sometimes a guy just trips. You know, he just straight up trips and falls down, and then you're like, oh, buddy, it fell down.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And then he feels embarrassed. You can tell he feels embarrassed sometimes. Like he's, you know, the. The sort of bendy parts of the uniform, like around one's knees, it gets scuffed up or. Or, you know, another embarrassing one is, like, if you slide and you're going feet first and you, like, can't quite scoot all the way, and then you're like, short of the bag. Doesn't happen very often, but it does happen from time to time. And then you're like, oh, buddy, you're in no man's land. You're getting tagged out right there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That is embarrassing. Yeah. You slid prematurely. It's also kind of embarrassing when you slide and get thrown out. And maybe you got thrown out because you slid at first base specifically, but. But it's harder to know for sure because you never know for sure that if they had run through the bag, they would have been safe. You just strongly suspected to be true.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, and I meant to ask, when we were having our. Our discussion about how the challenges are getting sort of splintered or they're getting concentrated more among the catchers, if this trend does continue and intensify and we end up in a situation where the catchers are really taking the lion's share at the challenges. Could you imagine a situation where we have offensive challenges and. And defensive challenges, and you have a certain number allotted.

[Meg Riley]

Oh.

[Ben Lindbergh]

On each side just to preserve batters being allowed to do that just so that they. They have a little leeway to do that.

[Meg Riley]

Maybe. I'm sort of skeptical that they would, because I think they want to, you know, they still want the game to move along. They want the zone to be good, and they want the calls to be right. But they also, you know, they have to balance that with the time of game considerations. If they did it, I think it would be something like, you get one bonus that is right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Instead of two that anyone can use. It's one for you and one for you.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know if they'll, if they'll get sort of desperate like that. I don't know that they, they being the league would necessarily perceive this to be a problem. You know what I mean?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Like the, the zone seems like it is as good as it's ever been. Fans seem to like the challenge system. It does seem like it is helping to address the most egregious missed calls. I think that they largely view what's going on as a success. I don't know that they're as worried about now. If it tilts in a dramatic fashion where it feels like, oh no, we've introduced yet another edge to the pitching team, well, maybe they reconsider, but I don't know that it feels that way to them necessarily. Because if both sides can equally benefit from catcher acumen, theoretically it still feels evenly distributed across the teams even if like the, the side of the ball is different. Does that make sense? Sense?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right. Well, the Mariners won that game that was in progress while we were recording and it was a one run victory over the White Sox, who on Wednesday at least were not indefatigable. No, indefatigable. And speaking of the Mariners and Dan Wilson and Colt Emerson, another win may be in the offing for all of them. We talked last time about whether Colt Emerson is the shortstop of the future or rather when that future would begin and how the Mariners infield will be configured when Brendan Donovan returns because Donovan has not been great defensively anyway. Well, reportedly JP Crawford has been taking grounders at third base and evidently it was his idea. He brought it up to Wilson over the weekend. His agent brought it up to GM Justin Hollander. Everyone's on board so they're going to see if that will work. Maybe Emerson will be the shortstop of the very near future. As someone who grew up watching and rooting for the Yankees, where Derek Jeter clung to that shortstop position even though it might have been better for the team if he had slid over to third when the Yankees acquired a rod, I was appreciate when someone voluntarily offers to move down the defensive spectrum for the good of the team or a teammate. That's selfless. That's leadership. That's being a team first player. Could even help Crawford too if he could establish himself as a capable third baseman. Got a suggestion from producer Shane McKean in reference to our conversations about potential alternatives to head or helmet tapping to issue an ABS challenge, Shane says, at Wrigley there is a scoreboard that keeps track of note the all caps ABS challenges. Because it was all caps, I found myself reading it not as ABS challenges, but as ABS challenges, which sounds like some sort of workout. Shane says. This reminded me of your conversation about the ambiguity surrounding the head tap signal. Here's my suggestion. Why not signal by tapping one's abs? The gesture can be done with one hand and it seems difficult to misinterpret. If shifting from the initialism ABS to the acronym ABS feels too contrived, I offer the idiom gut check as further support. I like that a lot. We could call it a gut check. The tarps off. People could tap their bellies along with the batters. Now it might be a little less visible to an ump if, say, a catcher is rubbing his tummy tum tum instead of tapping the top of his head. But in principle, quite clever and maybe slightly more likely to happen than a suggestion I've seen some of our listeners make recently, tying together two of the topics we've talked about. Why couldn't the challenge signal be a pelvic thrust or three? You know Drew Gilbert's on board. And as Columbo might say, just one more thing. I sometimes get annoyed by Bullet Rogan erasure when people talk about Shohei Ohtani and say he's the first to do this or that or the only to do this or that since Babe Ruth. And I always think what about Bullet Rogan, a more accomplished two way player than Babe Ruth and slightly more recently, well, perhaps I have committed the same sin. Want to share this email from listener Steve Rizzo, who says on episode 2480 you discuss how athletics player Carlos Cortez's Ambide dexterity I certainly don't want to take away from this impressive ability, but I do want to qualify one claim that Ben made during the episode quoting below. He Cortez made some history as we mentioned previously last year. Typically what he does is he plays outfield left handed and then plays infield third base right handed. He did both of these things in one game last year. It was at least the first documented case of a position player entering a game three Throwing with one hand and then switching their throwing hand and position later in the same game. And to be transparent, I really was citing an MLB.com article published last August headline One of a Kind Change. Cortez plays right field left handed, then third base right handed and the article says there is no documentation to track a previous situation across MLB in which a position player entered a game throwing with one hand and switching their throwing hand in position later in the same game. And I guess that's still true for mlb. But if we broaden that to major leagues, not necessarily. I'll let Steve take over again. He writes. I think there is a very high probability that ambidextrous two way player Larry Kimbrough would have been the first to do so while playing for the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues in the late 1940s. In an oral history recorded in the Negro Leagues Revisited, conversations with 66 more baseball heroes and I'll link to some screenshots, Kimbrough makes several comments that bear out this theory. First, that he pitched, played outfield, played infield, everything. Second, he says that he, like Cortez, played infield right handed and outfield left handed. Third, he specifically recounts a time in which he pitched both left and right handed in the same game. He certainly meets the switching their throwing hand in the same game criterion. But the switching position and throwing hand criteria taken together can only be deduced from the fact that we know he played multiple positions with a defensive substitution in certain cases, hit and pitched from both sides and played infield and outfield using different hands. Still, I think this is a fairly high probability deduction. Anticipating the rejoinder that there is no documented case of him doing so. And that's true. Larry Kimbrough's Wikipedia page says independent accounts verifying that Kimbrough operated as a switch pitcher during his baseball career are lacking. But Kimbrough himself claimed that he earned a complete game victory in 1943 pitching from both sides. Other accounts verify his pitching win, but not that he used both arms as a pitcher in that specific game. Well, Steve says I'll just include Kimbrough's own remarks about documentary history in the Negro Leagues quote, I belong to Sabre and I go through the books they send me and the names they write about I haven't heard of. They've got guys in there, the hall of Fame, that I don't think belong in there. I don't know how these guys vote. I was up there one time when we were trying to get Webster McDonald in. Willie Mays was there. It was the same time he went in. We had a meeting and all they could say was show me stats, show me stats. See, we didn't keep stats. We kept score books. In fact, I used to keep them sometimes when I wasn't playing, but when it was filled up, we threw it away. We never figured this would happen. And yeah, that was a huge issue and an impediment to the Negro Leagues getting recognized as major leagues. And of course now a lot of the stats have been gathered by the folks at Seam Heads and elsewhere and MLB has deigned to designate them major league. But Larry Kimbrough died in 2001 so he didn't live to see those efforts. But Steve says depending on your interpretation of documented case case, whether this oral history counts as documentary evidence or if you were thinking specifically of in game records, which sadly don't exist to this degree of detail for the Negro Leagues, I think it's worth mentioning Kimbrough he switch hit and switch pitched move over Shohei Otani. That's just cool and it definitely is. Thank you very much Steve for giving me a chance to talk about the very versatile Larry Kimbrough. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to play 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 Daniel Will, Taylor, Fjord, Pining for the Fjord, Mark Rosenberg and Eric Fern. Thanks to all of you, Patreon Perks include access to a third unabridged episode every week, including later this week, plus a monthly bonus episode, exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord Group, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, Fangraphs memberships, and more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and you can check the podcast post at fangraphs 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 will be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Did Richard Lovelady ever strike a Taylor Teagard? And who had more war, Jason Kendall or Russell Martin? What if Shohei Ohtani's dog was also a good lawyer? What would you do if Mike TR showed up in your foyer? Or is it foyer? Find out Uneffectively wild. Find out. Uneffectively wild. Find out. Uneffectively wild. 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