← Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
They say I waste my time tracking all these stat lines, but it's here I found my kind. We're all effectively wild.
- [00:17]
B
Hello, and welcome to episode 2501 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fan Graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Riley of fangraphs. Hello, Meg.
- [00:31]
A
Hello.
- [00:32]
B
Well, figured we could catch people up on a few things that happen over the weekend because some people may have missed some of Sunday's action, what with Star Spangled Sunday being in effect, which was, in a sense, it was a blackout. In another sense, it was the absence of blackouts because there were no actual blackouts in the traditional sense. That was the good news. The bad bad news potentially for some people was that NBC Sports was airing all 15 games on Sunday. And so you were possibly out of luck if you did not have access to Peacock. It, it depended really on which team you were watching because in some cases you may have had some access to it. So the two NBC proper games, Mets, Braves, Padres, Dodgers, were available over the air for anyone who can get their TV that way, as well as on Peacock. And then every other game was on Peacock and NBC Sportsnet. So you would have to have one of those at least.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah.
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B
Although there's a handful of other games, Phillies, Royals, Giants, Rockies, Blue Jays, Mariners, Red Sox, Angels. Those were available on the visiting teams regional sports network. But yeah, it was not ideal to just, well, do you have Peacock? Do you have NBC Sports Network?
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A
Right.
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B
If not, maybe you're out of luck. I do have Peacock, so I was fine.
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A
But.
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B
But not everyone. That's just the streaming sports world we live in.
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A
Yeah, it can be a little fractured and discombobulated and even the times when it sounds like they're maybe like doing something to improve your access, you're skeptical of that fact.
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B
Yeah. And yeah, the announcer pairings, NBC was sort of stretched thin in some cases. They often had some of the local broadcasters participating, which is nice. But yeah, it was an unwelcome surprise. Some people who found themselves not able to access those games on a holiday weekend, Sunday, when a lot of people would have been liking to watch baseball. There was also like four games at once, MLB multi view, but you can't really choose which ones. It was weird. And people who've paid for MLB TV were not thrilled to not have access in some cases.
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A
Yeah. In general, I think that like the access that we get on MLB TV is quite, is quite good for.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Especially for the price point. And I Know that it got a little more complicated in terms of its composition and whatnot because of the espn. This isn't that. But yeah, on occasion you really feel like you're getting jobbed. They should have just done big inning all day for people on like if you want to say that individual games aren't accessible on MLB TV because of exclusive rights that NBC holds, okay, fine, but then give everyone the whip around show for the whole day. You know, And I love beginning, even though I always sound like I'm saying beginning beginning. They're so mean on that show sometimes. I think I've commented on this before. They really don't hold back. They think you're playing poorly. You're gonna hear about it. I would have loved to hear the beginning guys react to Yuri Perez getting pulled in the midst of her perfecto. I'm sure we will talk about that in greater detail.
- [03:56]
B
But yes, I would like to address that. But first I wanted to talk about Two big leaguers made their debuts on Sunday. There were two brand new big leaguers on Sunday people might have missed amid star spangled Sunday. One was a minor league draftee of yours, Eddie Jean, I believe it's pronounced. According to MLB.com that's Y E A N. So he arrived to bolster your minor league free agent draft team, thank God. Yeah. What was interesting to me, well, a couple things were he's a Nationals reliever, big guy, hard thrower, and he had a couple hitless scoreless innings. So that was a good debut.
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A
Yeah.
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B
He took the bullpen cart.
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A
He did, yeah.
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B
Which. That's pretty ballsy. Or I don't know. Yeah, that's a statement really. Which it's rare. And we did a Nationals bullpen cart interview a while back and Sean Doolittle used to take it at times, but to do it in your MLB debut, I almost would think that a lot of guys would shy away from that.
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A
I think that the average guy probably shies away from it. The I'm coming up through the system and I'm debuting at a pace that is typical. Maybe that guy says, nah, it's not for me. That's. I don't know if it's big for your britches or actually demonstrating like an understanding of one's own weakness long from the bullshit out there. But when you've gone through like minor league free agency, do you just go, when am I going to be here again? I don't know. It's. It's all very precious and precarious and yeah, I want to Ride the cart. And this is my shot to do that. I think maybe that's our understanding of this moment. Was he asked about it after the game?
- [05:42]
B
I don't know. I. Well, unfortunately for him, he was optioned after the game. So this is. Yes. This is what we talked about last week with the mlbpa. Proposals about trying to add some friction and maybe make teams a little less likely to do this because it stinks. You call up a guy because you need a fresh arm and then he delivers. Couldn't have done more. Just no hit frames and then his rewards. Back to Rochester with you. Back to aaa. It stinks. And hopefully he'll be back. Probably he'll be back. But yeah, that kind of call up and that's the congratulations you get. That seems to be what the MLBPA is aiming to reduce the number of options per year. And if you do get options like that, maybe you get your big league salary and service time for a few extra days because this just an epidemic. And more and more, just as a percentage of all MLB players in a. In the league in a given season are these guys who are making the league minimum and are just sort of cycling in and out.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But, yeah, I mean, you can't have confidence that you're going to be around. So do everything. Don't leave anything undone. Right. Including taking the bullpen cart. So.
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A
Right.
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B
Yeah. I applaud it. I mean, I said most guys wouldn't do that. Most guys don't do it ever, let alone their big league debut. But yeah, something qu. Whimsical about that. Just finally make it and then why not? You fought hard to get here. You might as well get a free ride to the mound.
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A
Exactly. Yeah. No one can accuse him of loafing, like, in his life if he wants to ride in the little cart. I would have a hard time if I were in the little cart. Resisting the urge to go beep beep. Like I. I would just, you know, it's such an inherently childlike thing to me. I would. I would want to go beep beep. You know, like I was driving a Wheels car. Do kids in New York have Hot Wheels cars? When.
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B
Oh, sure.
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A
Okay. I didn't look.
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B
Which is I don't have an actual car or a license, but Hot Wheels. Yes.
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A
I never had, like, the ones you can ride in.
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B
Oh, I see. I thought you meant the little cars.
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A
I think they're maybe called something else. Yeah, Hot Wheels. But I think Hot Wheels makes one of those little cars.
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B
The electric ones, like the motorized ones.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I didn't have one of those. I've seen them around, but obviously, space is at a premium.
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A
This is why I'm asking. I was like, is that a reference that means anything to you? And then it would help if I called it the right thing. You know, that would probably help. For your recall, I wanted one of those little cars so bad, and they were very expensive, and so I didn't get one. And that's okay because, you know, it's okay to not get everything you want as a little kid. Keeps you from being a real jerk when you grow up.
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B
Yeah. In our playroom in the building where Sloan goes, sometimes there is the kind of car that you have to pedal with your feet. Tones, style, you know, like, there's just a hole in the bottom of the car, and then you like using your feet to go. Yeah, we have one of those, but not the fancy motorized kind.
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A
I think that they were power wheels.
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B
Ah, yes, that's right.
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A
Power wheels is what they're.
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B
Those always looked quite cool in the commercials. The top speed was, like 2 miles per hour.
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A
Yeah, they went so slow. They had. I mean, they had to. Wow. This one is power wheels, a Disney encanto Jeep wrangler. That is such a specific constellation of words designed for joy, built to last. I mean, what are you gonna make an heirloom of your power wheels? Come on. I mean, I guess that's a nice thing to do, because otherwise, what are you gonna do with all these power wheels floating around? Yeah.
- [09:18]
B
Anyway, the player doesn't get to drive the bullpen card, of course, though that would be extra whimsical if they did. If they could toot the horn. Toot their own horn coming in. But they would have to request that the driver do it. Or the driver overcome with excitement because someone finally took them up on the offer.
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A
To be clear, I am envisioning him going beep, beep and miming, beep.
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B
I see tool wheel.
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A
That is not there. He's not driving. He has to think about the matchup. In some ways, it's like, are you more locked in because you just have this little ride and then you can get up there and get going? Or are you distracted by the fact that you are effectively in big kid power wheels, distinct from an actual car and importantly, different than just a golf cart because you, like, put stuff on the front to make it look special?
- [10:07]
B
Well, as John Brebia revealed last week, that jog can be tiring if it's hot out there or humid as it has been lately. So, sure, make the ride in style. Now, on a less light note, there was one other debut on Sunday, and that was by Eleazar alfonso, Eliezer Alfonso Jr. In this case, not to be confused with his dad, Eliezer Alfonso Sr. The former big league catcher for a bunch of tea teams. Eliezer Alfonso is also a catcher for the Dodgers in this case, and he made his debut on Sunday, too, but he did under tragic, heartbreaking circumstances. Yeah. What with the ongoing damage and death toll from the earthquakes in Venezuela that we talked about last week. And as we noted, lots of Venezuelan players are playing with heavy hearts and playing with a lot of emotion. In fact, Wilson Contreras, since we discussed those incidents, he actually apologized. I don't know that he was the one most in need of apologizing, but we covered Cade Cavalli's statements. Yeah, Wilson Contreras actually subsequently apologized too, just for his getting ejected a couple times and his reactions to that. And obviously he's been going through a ton, But Eleazar Alfonso Jr going through as much as anyone because he found out that his sister and his stepmom were killed.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And he found out about this. And it coincided with what would have been one of the happiest days of his life, making his major league debut. And he went through with it. He decided to play really as a tribute to his lost loved ones and with the support of the rest of his family and his teammates and everything. And it was a heartwarming moment. Just, you know, heart sore, heart sick too. But also, obviously the fans were well aware of what was going on here and he got a standing ovary innovation in his first plate appearance and they pinch hit for him after his first couple plate appearances. And I don't think he did anything at the plate. But still, that was one of those moments where it's like, you just have to remember people are going through some stuff off the field. And the large contingent of players from Venezuela and mlb, they've all been thinking of this, whether or not they've been directly affected by it. But it's heartbreaking. And there are a lot of situations we've seen over the years where someone loses a loved one and they play through it and maybe they play through it as sort of a tribute. And usually it's not a big league debut.
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A
Right.
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B
That's a special circumstance. So I can't imagine just the range of emotions there, the highs and lows. I don't know whether he could really enjoy what would have been the highs given the lows. But yeah, that is another guy who's been bouncing around. He's 26, Jean is 25. Alfonso signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers and just had his contract selected on Saturday. And yeah, it was his sister's dreams. One of her dreams was that he would reach the big league. So it's really sad, but it's also, I mean, it's nice that people really had his back and, and were supporting him like that, but, yeah, it's rough.
- [13:26]
A
Yeah. I always wonder in moments like that, you know, not that there's any one way that grief washes over people. It's such a specific experience both for the person and obviously the circumstances of the one you lost and how that happened. But I wonder in moments like this. You know, so much of being a high level athlete of any stripe, but I think in some ways, particularly a baseball player, is about routine, right? Like the value of finding a routine that allows you to be your best and, you know, the reps and experience that come from observing routine and sort of committing to routine. And I think that when you suffer a loss like this, not only personally, but like, I'm sure feeling the reverberations of that loss beyond your own immediate family to other people, you know, and love, to a place that you know and love, you know, it's profoundly disorienting and it, it knocks us off our access in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that things that you, we counted on being able to do, people we counted on being able to call, you know, texts we might send first thing in the morning, pets we might feed, whatever it is, like it comes with routine. And I think that when you're sort of unmoored from so much of the experience of your life that you had, had previously, I can imagine there being some amount of comfort in being able to root yourself back into something familiar. Which isn't to say that it's, you know, a completely perfect distraction. I'm sure he was thinking of them the whole time. But I always wonder if it proves to be some comfort to be like, well, this is familiar. At least everything about my life is going to be different now. But this is still the same thing, right? Like, my gear still goes on the same way. I still have the same obligations to a pitching staff, what have you. So I don't know, I hope that that serves as some sort of comfort, even if it's only a temporary one. So.
- [15:26]
B
Yep, okay. Well, we met a couple major leaguers. Congrats to those guys and condolences to Alfonso and at least the Dodgers didn't option him immediately after that game. Cause that would have been too cruel. But he's filling in for Will Smith while Smith is on the il. And congrats to the Nationals on no longer having the least valuable bullpen in baseball by finish drafts were the Kansas City Royals now claim that distinction.
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A
Rough. It's a little rough out there. It's a little rough out there, huh?
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B
Also on Sunday, you mentioned it, another young pitcher. In fact younger than either of the newly minted major leaguers, but. But a big league veteran at this point. Yuri Perez of the Miami Marlins pulled mid Perfecto.
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A
Yeah.
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B
After seven innings and 92 pitches. And he was immediately replaced by Lake Bacher, Marlins reliever, who had essentially the opposite of the outing that Erie Perez had. Can you even call it an outing if there were no outs recorded? Did we. We had a term for this, right? Or that was a yes hitter, I guess.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The opposite of a no hitter where it's just all hits. This wasn't all hits.
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A
I think all hits.
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B
Yeah. Or all on base events or something. I think we talked about a no outer, but maybe that was when a hitter has a quote unquote perfect game at the plate, doesn't make it out. Anyway, there was quite a contrast between these two appearances because Perez, seven innings, no stains on his line, eight strikeouts. And then Bakker comes in, doesn't record a single out. It was kind of amusing, not for him or for the Marlins, but just to look at the game log here, because it was just like nothing doing whatsoever and then everything doing all at once. And so here, here is the sequence. The A's come up in the bottom of the eighth against Bakker. Lawrence Butler walks. Well, there goes the perfecto.
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A
Right?
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B
And then Joshua Kuroda Grauer singles, there goes the no hitter, and then Carl's Cortez doubles and Butler scores. So there goes the shutout, right? Then Max Muncie the Younger walks and then Jonah Heim hits a grand slam.
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A
Yep.
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B
And suddenly it's eight to then Brian Serin singles and that's it. Baker's day is done. So it did maybe make it extra controversial. Or at least people who were complaining and first guessing were kind of vindicated by the fact that the Marlins bullpen imploded and this was an 8 nothing lead. When Paris was pulled, it ended up being a 98 squeaker and the Marlins just barely pulled it out here. But obviously the focus was on lifting Paris. Now this is also related to something we talked about last week. Which is just the leash for starting pitchers. I don't, you know, leash makes them sound like pets or something, but they don't get as much leeway when it comes to pitch counts. And we were talking about how 90 is the new 100, basically, and that, you know, it's almost routine for pitchers to be pulled mid no hitter now. And when guys are cruising through six or seven and their pitch counts are low, even now, we see those guys getting pulled and we just sort of shrug it off. However, it's still noteworthy when someone gets lifted in a perfect game right after seven innings, because that has happened only three times. And each time it has happened, it was a big story. So there was the Rich hill incident in 2016. There was the Clayton Kershaw. Yeah, Clayton Kershaw in 2022. And now eerie Paris. And each time, of course, there are extenuating circumstances and there are reasons why this picture and this outing, but everyone, all the old schoolers were out in force on Sunday complaining about this. And even though I. I understand the move that was made by Clayton McCullough here and, and why they do this, and I can certainly defend it on a lot of grounds. Did sort of stink from a spectator perspective.
- [19:52]
A
Yeah. I was gonna say I saw a lot of. Did you call them old heads? I saw a lot of new heads raising their eyebrows, too. Myself included. I mean, look, I can appreciate the. Any time that Yuri Perez starts, you're going to have sort of generalized injury anxiety.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I know that he was recently returned from an IL stint. A non arm injury. Right. A lower half injury.
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B
But yes, remember it, it was the. The injury he suffered stretching in the dugout between innings.
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A
Right.
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B
And that's. Right, ironically, they didn't stretch him here. Or maybe that's not ironic. Maybe that's perfectly fitting, actually. But yeah, that was the gracilis strain, the muscle that we all familiarized ourselves with.
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A
Yes, the gracilis strain.
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B
So inner thigh. Yeah. Right.
- [20:39]
A
And I'm just gonna, like, see the little trap that you sat around stretching. I'm gonna swerve right around it like I'm in Mad Max Fury Road. I know that bait when I see it. But I appreciate that there is, you know, more than you, the concern you carry for a starter, just any starter, by virtue of the danger of pitching for any guy that, like Yuri, comes with elevated injury concern, some of which has been more sort of idiosyncratic and strange and recent and some of which has been further in the past, but is more catastrophic. Right. So I can appreciate there being a concern there. I guess what struck me about it was less that I think, you know, it's defensible for him to go, you know, 130 pitches or what have you. And I know that they had concluded the half inning. And so in some respects there's like a clean break to be had there. But I just think that some of these teams are implying a precision and understanding of exactly which pitch it's going to be. Right. That just isn't supported by anything we know about biomechanics about individual pitchers. Which again, isn't to say that, like, Yuri should be throwing 120. And if he had gone back out there for the eighth and had it had taken 10 pitches to retire the first batter, well, then, you know, the likelihood of him being able to do it in anything resembling like a quote unquote responsible pitch count is pretty limited. But I think the, the way to sort of thread the needle on this stuff is let him go batter to batter, right? Like, what if. And of course we don't know what would have happened if he had gone back out there. I feel comfortable guessing that it would have looked less ridiculous than what we ended up seeing from his teammates. Although, you know, not really their fault. I mean, it was their fault, but, like, they didn't pick that circumstance to come in. This is just the reality that they find themselves in. Right. Like, sometimes you're just the guy who got a bad red card and now it's an international scandal because the dumb president can't resist getting involved in stuff that's none of his business. Right. Like, what is his responsibility? No, like, anyway, I don't understand soccer, but you guys are so messy that I think I like it a lot more than I thought I did. You know, there's like a lot of bad mess here, but some of it's kind of fun. I don't know. A lot of soccer, FIFA, yeah, Some of it's pretty high stakes, so it's hard to get like, too delighted by it. But some of it is silly and we can talk about that and be delighted by some of the guys. Anyway, that's not the point. I would have let him go sort of hitter by hitter and just seen what, what it looked like. Because what happens if he goes back out there and he gets, you know, three first pitch pop ups and then you're like, wow, he only on 94 pitches. Let him go back out there for the ninth and try it again. I just think that, like, they are. I don't know, I imagine that if they were being honest about it, it was less about the pitch count on its own and more about a pitch count which is approaching sort of the upper bounds for him, coinciding with a clean inning break. And it just seeming like an opportunity to bring a guy in and like, let him give it a try with nobody on. I don't know. But I thought, you know, I thought it was kind of silly. I'll admit it. I thought it was kind of silly. I thought that they should have let him try. He gets injured all the time. When's the next time he's gonna do this? Yeah, it's going to be exciting. You don't think you're going to be thrilled? You know, you don't think you're going to be thrilled to see. And as an aside, you know, you didn't bring this up. And of course, I think most fans, even if it comes at your own team's expense, if you have the opportunity to see a perfect game in person, like, you want to see that, that doesn't happen very often. That would be quite a thing to see. And if your team, your home team isn't very good and really going anywhere, then, well, yeah, you would definitely prefer to see it. But I had to tell the Athletics something. You guys are in real trouble. Your fans are feral. They have been encouraged, for good reason, to just let ownership know what they think of them. And they're gonna let anything that is ownership adjace, even if it isn't your team, even if it isn't the age. They're gonna let them know the business shouting shame for like two innings, Ben. They just went on and on and on. They just kept yelling shame. And they would pan to the crowd and it would be Ace fans saying it was Ace fans. There were not. It wasn't being driven by Marlins fans who were frustrated with their own organization. It was the Ace fans who were pissed at the Marlins. They were madder at the Marlins for pulling Perez than they were happy about Jonheim hitting a grand slam. That. That is unreal fan behavior. I love it so much. I want it to be clear. This is not a criticism. I think that you guys are great. We need more of this energy in the sport. And that might have something to do with the fact that I finally started seeing those support of salary cap ads during MLB tv. I hadn't. You know what, Ben? Last time we talked about ads, I was like, whatever, I'll take a salary cap ad over this Ozempic ad. I haven't seen the Ozempic ad one time.
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B
Time.
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A
And I would prefer that. I was wrong. I was wrong. I would rather see the Ozempicat. I am starting to get to the point where if I have to see that Baja Blast ad with Danny Trejo one more time, though, I'm gonna machete my tv. Instead of a Baja Blast. It's like, I should be able to say, fine, I'll buy a case of Baja Blast. Yeah, Case. Do they come in cases? Anyway, I just really appreciate the vibe of being willing to say, you guys are ridiculous. We find this unacceptable. And the broadcast was, like, pleading with the fans who couldn't hear them, which is great. They're like, they don't understand his injury history. I'm like, I'm sure some number of them probably have an understanding, even if they don't have a sense of the recent lower body injury. Like, they probably have some sense of Yuri Perez's, you know, past history and his arm issues and what have you. Like, don't assume that your audience is stupid. Assume that they're feral. Assume that they're angry. Assume that they wanted to see a perfect game and are being denied the opportunity. How many runs? And then I'm gonna stop talking. How many runs into that run that the A's went on did it take for you to find it funny? Because I was annoyed for the first little bit. Like, when Butler walked, I was annoyed. And when Coroto Grauer singled, I was annoyed. Although I was happy for him because he has a cool story. And when Cortez doubled, I was like, oh, you guys, you gave up the. It's not even a shout out anymore. And then next month, he walked, and I was like, I amused. Now I have come full circle on this.
- [27:30]
B
When the grand slam happens, for sure, I was thinking, yeah, this is some kind of cosmic comeuppance or, you know. But it's tough. Yeah. It was sort of a Cersei Lannister walk of shame, walk of atonement situation. And I get that outrage, and I felt it to some extent myself. I think that the problem is. Okay, so Paris has never gone all that deep into a game. He's never thrown more than seven innings in a professional start in the minors or majors.
- [28:00]
A
Yeah.
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B
And they have slowly raised the ceiling year by year pitch count wise. 20, 21. He topped out at 81 pitches in a game. 20, 22, 88. 2023, 93. 2024, 0. Because he didn't pitch.
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A
Sure.
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B
Because he had tummy down surgery. Because he had Tommy shot 20, 25. He got to the century mark for the first time, I think his last start of last season. And then this year he's topped out at 102, which was in mid May. So that's sort of his ceiling. That's his established ceiling. And I get that if you are asking someone to do something that he hasn't been conditioned to do, now as you're saying, you can. You can just wait and see. You can see. Maybe he'll come out and he'll have a minimum inning. He'll have a free pitch inning, which is not actually a minimum inning, but maybe he will just, you know, one pitch, one out, and he'll be right back out there. Now, that's not likely to happen, of course. And, you know, if you're, what, 92 pitches through seven, you're on pace for 118 pitches. And it only gets harder as you go deeper into games. And he had lost about a tick on his pitches in that last game.
- [29:11]
A
He was still throwing like 90.
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B
Yeah, he was right. And he.
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A
His final. Sorry to interrupt you. I'm very rude. But also, in his matchup against Galoff, his first pitch was a 98 mile an hour called strike.
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, he still had good stuff. He did get one whiff only in that last inning. But, yeah, so you could squint and see, oh, maybe he's starting to lose a little. The problem is, I guess if you're McCullough and you say, okay, I'll let him go batter by batter. What if he gets through eight and his pitch count is still, you know, like, okay, maybe he has a really quick inning, but odds are he's gonna be going into the 9th already at a career high or very close to a career high. And look, it's a special circumstance. Maybe it's worth setting a career high. But. But you might end up in a situation where if he gets through eight, then it's even harder to pull him after eight. And so then it's like, well, we've let him go this far and maybe he's in triple digits now and do we bring him back out for the 9th? Well, we've kind of committed to it now until something happens. I mean, you know, he could always have a plate appearance with nine fouls or something and then might pull him after that. But probably if he racks up the pitch count, it's because he has lost the perfect game and guys have gotten on base or he's walked someone or something. But, yeah, you could end up. I Sort of see the point in preemptively just pull the cord after seven, because if you try to go batter by batter in the eighth and he gets through it, then you could really end up in a stickier situation where the cries of shame are even louder going into the ninth, but you're even more worried about endangering him. The problem is, and, and look, I guess we could say, well, this is what you get for coddling pitchers. All these years, he has never been asked to do this. And so, okay, maybe to ask him to do it now it would be too abrupt and it would be dangerous or something. And so you could blame the previous five years of pitcher development or non development. In his case, that ship has sailed, really. But that is often how pitchers are handled now. He was so good, so young, and he came up so young that I think it's appropriate. We used to talk about the injury nexus when guys are at even greater risk of injury, when they're like, like late teens, early 20s for a pitcher. And there are so many cases of guys who came up really young and just blew out their arms or were never the same or didn't age well or whatever. So, okay, it's good to be careful and treat a kid with kid gloves like that who's so talented. But the problem is that you can never actually demonstrate that it was a good idea, right? It's really tough because you don't get the counterfactual right. And when it's, you're pulling someone because of the times through the order penalty or something, similarly, you never know. Well, if we had left him in that time, maybe it would have been fine. But there's at least a pretty firm empirical grounding for moves like that based on many moves or non moves that have been made in the past and the whole history of times through the order effect and familiarity and fatigue and all the rest. And so we just, we know that on the whole, pitchers get worse when they see the same hitters in games multiple times. So yes, It's n of 1 and you don't know what would have happened that time. But there's a lot you can say analytically, whereas in this case there just isn't really, at least in the public sphere, I'm open to the idea that teams might know a little bit more, but I don't think they know that much more. And you could say, okay, leaving him in here to, let's say maybe he exceeds his career high by 10 or 15 pitches to a range that would have been not Even worth raising an eyebrow years ago, like not even that many years ago. You know, it wasn't that big a deal if someone went 110 or even 120 or something. But if you could say, okay, well, we know the whole history of this, that he's x percent more likely to blow out or something because of this or endanger his long term health wealth, then it would be easier to sell this sort of thing. But as it is, it's just a nebulous. Well, it's probably bad for him to ask him to do something he hasn't done before and maybe it's good to keep being more restrictive and more restrictive, but it just, it hasn't paid dividends is the problem.
- [33:36]
A
Right.
- [33:36]
B
You can't point to. Even in Yuri Perez's case, you can't say, ah, look, it has protected him. No, he still blew out his elbow even though they were treating him very carefully. Which doesn't mean mean throw caution to the winds. Sure, okay, he broke once, we might as well just ride him as hard as we can. Get what we can here. No, still be responsible and everything.
- [33:57]
A
Sure.
- [33:57]
B
But whether you're pointing to Perez or league wide where it's not as if injury rates have declined or anything, and you know, that's, I think it's partly a response to the fact that guys are throwing harder than ever, like Perez, who throws very hard. And so it's maybe a reasonable response to everyone throwing so hard in max effort all the time that you say, well, if you're doing all that damage in short bursts, at least we're going to keep the bursts short because we can have you going max effort and also going eight or nine in a game, it's so hard to untangle. It's chicken and egg. Because part of the reason guys are throwing max effort is because they're not expected to pace themselves and go deeper into games. And on the whole, it doesn't seem as if that trade off has paid dividends in terms of pitcher health. Health per pitch, per inning effectiveness, maybe, but it doesn't seem as if this is actually protecting pitchers and meanwhile we're losing something from a fan perspective. And that stinks.
- [34:52]
A
Yeah. And I just, I want to be clear that I don't think it was like, it's not that it's not a defensible concern. And you're right. Maybe the calculus on the part of the staff is, hey, we have a clean break in the game, we can bring a reliever in with the bases empty. I mean, not that they stayed that way for very long. But you don't know that when you're. You're calling to the bullpen. Right. So we can bring a reliever in with the bases empty. This is only his second start back from the injured list, albeit again for under third. Yeah, sorry.
- [35:23]
B
You know, third start back from a leg strain. I feel like that's almost past the point where I would consider someone really hypert in any way, but.
- [35:32]
A
Right. So it's not that. It's nothing. It's just that, like, my first of all, my reaction to it would be different if the reason he had been on the injured list most recently was elbow inflammation or his forearm was working or something that suggested that there is a loud precarity to his arm, because there's always precarity to his arm. Like, this is. This is the part of it that I think is so tricky. And I do have sympathy for teams and players as they're trying to figure out, like, what is the right answer here? How do I balance, you know, being there for my team in the way I want to be? Like, I'm sure that Yuri didn't want to come out of that game. All you had to do was look at his face in the dugout. He's doing his best to seem so careful and, like, neutral. But you could just, like, the body language alone made it seem like he was pissed.
- [36:22]
B
Yeah. He pulled. He said through an interpreter. When I saw him, McCullough approaching, I knew it was going to be like that. And I told him that I understood and that this was part of the plan. I took it in a good way. So, you know, he was not trying to undercut his manager publicly, but I'm sure he was disappointed on some level.
- [36:40]
A
Yeah. So it's like, you know, I have sympathy for the broader project of trying to keep these guys healthy and understanding, you know, what is the increased risk beyond the baseline that is always present when a guy takes the mound that he is going to blow out. If you have a history of having had a Tommy John, if you are recently compromised in other ways that maybe, like, can have an effect on your mechanics that would cause you to pitch in a way that further compromises you and actually does lead to an arm injury. Right. Like, I understand trying to balance all of that stuff. I just think that part of what you are doing is being mindful of, like, where these guys. Guys sit in the history of your team, in the history of their own careers, in the flow of the history of the game, and being able to Say, hey, we're not going to do anything that is wildly irresponsible. We're not going to let you throw 150 pitches. We're not even going to let you throw 130 pitches. And if you go out there and you face any hitter and it takes more than 10 to retire him, that's it. You know, there feel like there can be guardrails that are still, you know, allowing guys to try for these benchmarks that mean something to them. They mean something to them, they mean something to the team. And if you're not in a spot where it feels like it's being blatantly irresponsible, I think it's okay to flirt with that Upward bound a little bit, even for a guy with an injury history, because, again, to your point and the point I made earlier, we just don't know what pitch it is. He could, and I hate to even say this because, like, obviously it would be so devastating he could blow it on his first pitch of the next game he starts. Right. Like, you just never know which pitch is going to be the pitch that does it if the guy is compromised again. And, you know, you're right to say that we have to allow for the possibility that teams know more about this in general. And I certainly want to allow for the possibility that the Marlins know more about his specific arm than we do. Right. And I do think that one of the jobs of a manager is to guard these guys against their own competitive nature. And sometimes they are willing to compromise themselves in pursuit of a perfect game, a shutout, a complete game, whatever it is. I just don't think that this was obviously a circumstance where it necessitated managerial intervention. And if you're willing to make the hard choice to pull him with a Perfecto in progress, progress, then you're willing to make the hard choice to pull him an inning later if he's still carrying a perfect game, but he's thrown 120 or 125 pitches. I think the reaction to this is, and again, we just have to assume a counterfactual here, because we'll never know how he would have pitched if he got back out there. But I do think the reaction to it would have been different if he had gone out for the AIDS, had gotten through that inning, but had thrown another 20 or 30 pitches, is I think people would say, hey, look, like, this is exciting, but if you have to make this choice, you have to make it. I think the calculus around it changes. It might not change for the people of West Sacramento, who as we have established are feral in this particular instance. But in terms of the broader reaction to it, I think it would have been markedly different.
- [40:06]
B
Yeah, it's pretty impressive that he had this kind of game going in Sacramento to begin with.
- [40:12]
A
Right. That's the other thing about it. It's like. Like if we're park adjusting outings, like, didn't he throw a perfecto? Really?
- [40:18]
B
Yeah. And I know you might be thinking, oh, was it sweltering? It was only 83 degrees at first pitch, so it wasn't as hot as it could be. And sometimes it is there. So that wasn't added stress. But yeah, you know, maybe the added stress of the perfect game, maybe he throws too hard, maybe something happens. It's hard to know. McCullough put it partly in terms of the Marlins competitive hopes, which is understandable because as we discussed last week week, the Marin are pretty good. They just had a heck of a June, so weird. They're making a real race of it in the National League east, let alone the wild card. And McCullough said us looking to play beyond the regular season, Yuri's going to be an important part of that. He had it really going today and I totally get it. And there was a part of my heartstrings pulling at his opportunity to keep on going. But I think I have to think about Yuri won in our organization, our team, and what's best moving forward to give us a chance to continue to win games. So I made more of a calculated decision with where he was with the pitch count to take him out. And both he and Paris said that they had planned 90 or 90 plus a hitter.
- [41:21]
A
Yeah.
- [41:22]
B
So if you set a plan, it is often wise to stick to it. You know, you're in the heat of the moment and your emotions get the better of you. And maybe it's better not to deviate. But boy, sometimes the specifics dictate a deviation. You know, it's because of and Joshi and made this point too. That emphasis on the playoffs is just so overriding now that even if you have a really special game for the player or for a team or for the fan base or multiple fan bases, in this case, maybe at least the people who were in attendance. That really pales in comparison now to. Well, does it help or hurt our chances of winning the World Series?
- [42:04]
A
Right.
- [42:05]
B
Which is important, to be clear. Very important. Important. But there is something to be said for a single game, memorable historic event because most teams are not going to win the World Series. And it can be a Real saving grace if you're one of the 29 that doesn't to have some special memory like this that can help define your season. So now it's just sort of if something is perceived to lower your playoff odds or your World Series odds by a tenth of a percent or something. Nope, no good. Like, there's just no prioritizing a cool accomplishment in a single game or a regular season accomplishment over the postseason. And I sort of lament that too, while also understanding postseason's important. Everyone wants to win a World Series, but there is something to be said for this, too, because this can be just as memorable as anything other than hoisting that trophy. And most teams don't get to hoist that trophy. So. So I'm sort of sad that the postseason has been prioritized to the point where it just kind of dictates all of these decisions. But it's tough. Like in 2016 when Rich Hill was pulled, he was dealing with a blister injury, as he often was in those days, and Dave Roberts didn't want to take any chances. And he put it then in terms of, well, we want to win a World Series. We want Rich to be available for us. And the Marlins rotation is, you know, sort of shorthanded, and they need Yuri Paris. He's pretty important to them. And then in 2022, with Clayton Kershaw, it was more than just the World Series. This was his first start of the season. Remember, it was April. It was like lockout, delayed spring training. He had been hurt the previous year. He was just ramping up like he was at 80 pitches, but there was just no way. Right. And yeah, he conceded as much. And so I think those circumstances were more mitigating than in this case, where it's just young guy with an injury history who had a leg injury a while back. You know, it's just, I don't know, it's tough. I'm sad that we're in this situation. Like, I don't totally fault the Marlins in this specific case. Like, I get it. I think most teams probably would make this choice now. And it's certainly the safe, risk averse choice. Sure, if you're a McCullough, if you're the team, you're probably not going to be fired for pulling the guy after seven today. You might have been in an earlier era of baseball, but not today. So some people will chant shame at you, but it's probably not going to hurt your employment status. Whereas if you leave him out there and he does blow Out. Ooh. Well, you might be in trouble if you deviated from a pregame plan to keep him to 90. So I get it. But it's just, it's not a brand of baseball I love. I would like a little extra leeway. There was a time where when a guy was going for a no hit or a perfect game or something, something, they would push it a little and you'd see some 120 or 130 when really no one else was doing it. And now it's basically nothing, not even a perfecto, which is meaningfully different and more special from a no hitter. Now you're just not budging from that plan, so.
- [45:07]
A
Right.
- [45:08]
B
I'm disappointed, even though I understand it.
- [45:10]
A
Yeah. And I, I want to be clear. Like, I don't think that this is any peculiar, anything peculiar to the Marlins. I don't think that this decision is like wildly out of step with the industry. I don't think that, you know, I don't know if I would have sat there chanting shame. I do applaud the energy and I want to make clear that I mean feral in a complimentary way. But I don't think that the decision itself is so wildly out of step with what we would see. But I do wish that there was just at least more of a recognition that there is a really strong sort of n of one dynamic to these moments. And while you want to be mindful of the guy's particular injury history, you also should just know that you don't know exactly where the upper bound for these guys are, even when they've had prior limits that are much lower. So it's just, it's unfortunate, and I do think the ball will lie, but I also think that it likes to deliver little lessons, you know?
- [46:08]
B
Yeah. So.
- [46:09]
A
And, and I'll say this. I'm glad that they didn't lose because Yuri Perez deserved for his team to win that game because he pitched a dandy. And, and it was made meaningfully harder by the environment in which he had to do it and that goofy little ballpark they have. And so, you know, I was like, oh, boy. But I was like, all of the writers, you need to. We can just do subtext again. It's okay. Someone's gonna bring subtext back and we're all gonna be floored by it. It's gonna be like Isaac Chotner doing an interview or like you're allowed to just ask follow up questions.
- [46:44]
B
No. Anyway, I think he probably would have lost it anyway if they had left him in there, probably his pitch count would have come up, they would have had to pull him after 8 or odds are he probably would have just allowed a base runner. But now we'll never know. And I will not exactly be haunted by the what if, but I will wonder. And I do wish that there were really. It's more of a pervasive, sweeping thing than it is a single case. Because it's just the whole. The way that pictures are developed and deployed these days just conspired to lead to this outing. So it was perfectly emblematic and symptomatic of the way pictures are used these days. And that's what people were responding to and what all the old schoolers were talking about. This is one point where even if we get it, we at least spiritually feel aligned with that the analytics ruined baseball kind of argument argument, which I think is particularly true because in this case I can't actually make that compelling and analytics based case for yes, this was the right move, which doesn't mean it was the wrong move. It's just, it's hard for me to point to data that actually supports it. All right, so Lake Bakker, who was the reliever, if you can call him that, he didn't provide much relief in this game. But his Instagram name is 6th Great Lake, which is pretty self aggrandizing. You know, he's from Illinois, but. But I mention this because one of the actual Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, conspired against the Cubs and the Cardinals on Saturday.
- [48:18]
A
Amazing.
- [48:19]
B
We had a fog bowl, basically. A baseball fog bowl.
- [48:22]
A
Yeah.
- [48:23]
B
And there was actually a brief delay. They had to pause the game because no one could see anything. It was pea soup out there. And if you were sitting behind on plate, you couldn't see the scoreboard in center. And in fact, ABS was defeated by the fog. It was not fog of war. I guess war could still be calculated, but there was a challenge attempted and the ump had to say, ABS just not operational right now. I think even the, the pitch tracking data was out. I mean, I guess that makes sense. They're kind of connected. Got a challenge coming here from Pothes. That is the catcher. If you're wondering, technology might not be able to see the strike zone. There is a chance that with this fog being this thick, they can't get the input. They can't get the data input into that. Yeah. So because they couldn't get data right there, the call just stands.
- [49:28]
A
It is a ball.
- [49:29]
B
I don't recall seeing something like that. Obviously we haven't seen Abs in. In the big leagues before this year. But just pitch tracking itself being taken out of action by fog that thick, that's something. I guess it probably wouldn't have happened in a previous incarnation of statcast when it was Trackman based. Because trackman was radar.
- [49:50]
A
Radars, not cameras.
- [49:51]
B
Yeah, radar's pretty unaffected by fog, which is handy cuz you can use instruments to fly through fog even if you don't see. But in this case, yeah, you have the optical tracking and the cameras and everything. And so if humans couldn't see anything, well, neither could the cameras. And so the fog was too thick. We have not seen that before. I don't know if we'll see that again, but that was quite amusing.
- [50:15]
A
The photos from it are really something. It looks. Yeah, it looks like. I don't know what it looks like. It looks like a fog game.
- [50:23]
B
It's like Sherlock Holmesian. It's like, like faces looming out of the. Yeah, it's really.
- [50:29]
A
It has a very spooky kind of. I only have one more episode of Widow's Baben.
- [50:33]
B
Only one more. Enjoy. Yeah, there's some fog in that show too.
- [50:36]
A
There is some fog, man. There's some creepy ass fog in that show. So yeah, it was, it was pretty cool. When I originally saw it, I was like, oh my God, are they going nuts with the fireworks already? But no, it was fog.
- [50:48]
B
No. Yeah, this was, as Lindsay Dial pointed out, baseball Prospectus. One thing that was unaffected by the fog was the ads superimposed behind. Behind home plate. So you can barely see just there's like a. An outline of a pitcher and batter. And vaguely you can make out there might be a catcher at an umpire back there. But you can see FanDuel in bright blue superimposed behind home plate. And also playball.org because you got the digital ads superimposed right there. Yeah. So can't lose out on any gambling, sports betting revenue, even when there's a. A fog game and you have some sort of Sherlock Holmes, Silent Hill, Widows Bay situation. But yeah, that was. I mean, we're accustomed to weird weather in Chicago, obviously, and fickle weather, but I don't know that I've ever seen fog so thick that it just took stat cast out of action. That's really something. Yeah.
- [51:46]
A
And it must be. It's such an interesting. I wish that I understood the physics of that versus like smoke better because I don't think. Were we to Hawkeye in 2020, that hadn't happened yet.
- [52:02]
B
I think that was when it was just Changing over. I think it was maybe 2020 was the first year of Hawkeye based Statcast
- [52:09]
A
and the Wildfire Smoke I don't think affected the pitch tracking. Obviously to your point, we didn't have an ABS system to be concerned about in that moment. But I'm thinking to the. The various teams that ended up playing through Wildfire Smoke and. But from an air density perspective, I imagine it's quite different. You know, maybe.
- [52:30]
B
Yeah, maybe from a smell perspective it's different.
- [52:34]
A
Well, I mean it's funny because it's like the one is meaningfully safer to breathe than the other, but also you can't see and that's very dangerous. Like the guys were just like I can't see the ball. Like I can't, can't. You're going to get bonked in the face with a baseball eventually, you know.
- [52:52]
B
Perfectly valid reason to pause the game until the fog clears. Yep.
- [52:56]
A
Yeah.
- [52:57]
B
Okay. Couple other things. We got the All Star rosters and obviously they're in flux and I'm not even going to venture into snubs and who was left out because we still got a little ways to go and other guys are going to decline to go and other guys are going to replace them and there will be injury absences and late scratches and such and ultimately very few players have who deserve to be there will not have had an opportunity to be there. But what was interesting is that after all the uproar over the Blue Jays and their fans support of their players and how many Blue Jays were leading the AL All Star voting, they ended up with a completely unremarkable total of all stars. They got two starters, Ernie Clement, of course, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Guerrero almost instantly pulled out of the game. He was I think the first starter to announce that he wasn't gonna go, which he said was partly a back issue.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah, he's been having a back thing
- [53:57]
B
lately which I guess would maybe help explain his power outage. Although for all I know maybe he didn't feel so great about going to the All Star Game, not having All Star stats this year too.
- [54:08]
A
But, and, and I will note, and again like whether he is actually dealing with an ailment he just doesn't want to go or he has some amount of self consc. Business as a result of the season he's having and being named an All Star starter. Like he did play. Yes, literally yesterday as we're recording. So now playing in an actual game with stakes versus playing in the All Star Game, potentially very different calculus. And I understand that But I do think it's funny where he's like, my creaky back. Although did he say my creaky back or am I.
- [54:38]
B
He definitely didn't say it in that intonation, but he didn't say it like that.
- [54:42]
A
That's not what Vladdy sounds like. He doesn't sound. He doesn't sound like a haunted Victorian doll.
- [54:47]
B
So all the guys got was those two starters and then Dylan CE and Louis Varland, who are very deserving as pitchers. But. But that's it. There's just four Blue Jays in total and two position players and one of them's not even going. And all that effort by the Blue Jays fans and all the. Are they making a mockery of the All Star Game, which we discussed here too. And as it turned out, the Braves, Dodgers and Phillies each got five allstars, so three NL teams got more All Stars than the Blue Jays or any AL team. The Blue Jays were tied with the Rays and Yankees, so they weren't even remarkable among American League teams. So I guess that whole story turned out to be much ado about nothing, really, because of the multiple phases of voting and then the selections and everything. I guess if you wanted to be conspiratorial, you could suggest that MLB was somehow cooking the books to ban the Blue Jays or something. That's probably not. Not what happened.
- [55:48]
A
But I would invite us to not be conspiratorial. There's enough of that going around these days. We needn't pile on.
- [55:56]
B
So, yeah, instead you get more of a cross section of teams. And Byron Buxton, I think, just aggravated the hip injury that he had been dealing with. And Trout's obviously been dealing with the hamstring and Judge has been hurt and everything. So there will be replacements, obviously. And, you know, you got junior Kim Andro, who hits a home run every day. He's in there. He beat out Okamoto as the AL starter. So. So maybe it was partly other fan bases rallying at the last second in that second phase of voting to preclude the possibility of oops all Blue Jays AL roster. But yeah, anyway, that turned out to be a bunch of nothing.
- [56:36]
A
Oops all. Oops all references this episode. Oops all the way down.
- [56:42]
B
Yeah. What was also amusing to be is that Bryce Harper is an All Star. And Bryce Harper got the special commissioner legend pick, which. Yeah. Which previously is something that we have seen only for end of career guys.
- [56:59]
A
Yeah.
- [56:59]
B
Otherwise. Yeah, he got the special dispensation. Rob Manfred let him in and you know, he's having a solid season. Like he could have been an All Star. And also, you know, home park and Philly and all the rests and, you know, he's a big star. Like it makes sense to have him in an All Star Game. But what was amusing to me is that Bryce's pal Rob is letting him go to the All Star Game. And he left Harper a voicemail to talk about this and Harper called back. And I was reading this@mlb.com Harper called back. He already had Manfred's number saved in his phone, the story mentioned. And Manfred told him that he chose him as a Legends pick. And Harper said, definitely grateful and I think I deserve to be in the game for the way I've been played. What is amusing to be Remember how just a year ago, yeah. Harper and Manfred were reportedly at each other's throats and Harper was cussing out Manfred in the Phillies clubhouse when he was coming to talk about a salary cap and other people were having to like, maybe prevent it from getting physical. And then there was like some, you know, implied threat that was maybe a miscommunication or something less in translation, but plenty of bad, bad blood between Robin Bryce a year ago. So evidently they have patched things up or I love the idea that Bryce Harper had Rob Manfred's number in his phone. I don't know how common that is. I don't know what percentage of players would have the commissioner's number because, you know, he makes the rounds. Obviously he does his pro owner pitches to players in clubhouses and spring training and everything. But I wonder if they talked it out after that confrontation in the clubhouse and that's why they had each other's numbers or Bryce just has Rob on speed dial or whatever. But, you know, maybe they're putting their personal bad blood behind them for the good of the game and Philly and this Jewel event or whatever. But yeah, that was amusing to use the legend pick on a guy who's still, you know, pretty young and good as opposed to on the tail end, last gasp, sentimental favorite. And also that these two are buddy, buddy evidently. Now.
- [59:11]
A
Okay, so I think that your interpretation that, like it is meant to be an acknowledgment as much of the place in which the game is being played and the season that Harper's having, which is quite strong, you know, adjusted in terms of his WAR based on the positional adjustment and all that. But he has a 140 WRC plus, like he has 20 home runs. He's playing good baseball. Having said that, I think that there is room. And I. This is the gossipy, messy interpretation of this behavior. I do not think this is reflective of reality. But. But I have just admitted to enjoying soccer mess, so let us invite some baseball mess. I think this is a backhanded slap in the face from the commissioner. Bryce Harper, who absolutely clocked the off season drama with Dombrowski, knows that Bryce is feeling away about where he is in his career and his life at the old, old age of 33. And putting him in the legend spot is a way for him to say, getting late fast. Isn't it getting late early for you, Bryce? I don't think that's actually what's going on here.
- [60:13]
B
And you just encouraged me not to be conspiratorial in my thinking.
- [60:17]
A
I'm not being conspiratorial. I'm being messy. That's a different existence. That's a different state of being. And I'm acknowledging that I think it is unlikely. But it would, I mean, honestly would imply, like an understanding of interpersonal dynamics that I don't know, that I always want to attribute to Rob Manfred. So I'm giving him too much credit in some respects. But, yeah, Bryce, you know, he just looks like a man who's drinking normal milk. I love that for him and for us.
- [60:47]
B
Good.
- [60:48]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [60:48]
B
Maybe that's why he's bounced back. Probably not, but. All right. Speaking of Rob Manfred, a little word about the ball here. So, yeah, I talked to Ben Clemens about this recently, about the reduced drag. I asked MLB about it. I reported the statement that they sent to me about how there has been an issue with discoloration of baseballs and a yellowing, which has to do with some oil that has seeped out of the yarn, evidently. And they are fixing that, but it might not be fixed this season. And if there are any cosmetic issues, then they don't use those balls. But also they're aware that the drag has been reduced lately and the ball's been flying farther. But they don't think, or at least have not established any relationship between that issue with the balls being oily, which is really just an unpleasant turn of phrase, and the evidently reduced drag of the baseballs. So something's going on or has been. I don't know that this will persist. And in fact, since I talked about it with other Ben, looks like the drag numbers in recent days have been a little more in line with where they were earlier this season. So, yeah, for all I know, it might turn out to be a small sample blip. Which would still be weird and hard to explain but might not persist anyway, you know, and Evan Drelic just wrote about this at the Athletic too. So there's been more scrutiny of the ball situation and this was all hush hush. Evidently MLB told the PA and teams about this yellowish baseball discoloration that's going on here and it affected like half of the balls. And so that's an issue because I guess they can't toss out that many or you know, they said they were using them if they were visibly discolored in games, but maybe it's hard to ramp up the production and get that fixed in season. So it might not be fully fixed until next season. Don't know how that happened exactly. Hand stitched, handmade baseballs I understand, but not sure why the yarn suddenly started seeping oil in a way that it wasn't before. Anyway, there's been a lot of scrutiny about that and the uptick in offense perhaps partly as a result of that. In June and then subsequently Bradford William Davis in his newsletter I black he did some public records requests and he came up with some email correspondence that was sent back in 2019 which was kind of the peak concern about the ball. That was the peak home run rate year and low drag here. And Bradford unearthed this email sent from current executive vice president possible commissioner in waiting according to some sources Morgan sort Q saying Morgan Morgan and this was some correspondence between Morgan Sword and Rawlings executives. And of course Rawlings is part owned by mlb. And there were also some other analysts and scientists cced including including Alan Nathan whom we mentioned recently, physics of baseball expert, someone who was involved with testing the ball and trying to figure out why it was flying so far at the time. So what Morgan Sword wrote at the time according to this email, was as I've mentioned to you before, our tentative plan for 2020 is to measure the aerodynamic properties of the 2020 baseballs, determine how they are different on average from the 2019 baseballs and then ask Alan's committee Allen Nathan for a recommended humidity setting for the storage of those baseballs so that we can manage to a target leaguewide home run rate. And it goes on and he has a couple questions and everything. So this was the phrase that Bradford highlighted. We can manage to a target leaguewide home run rate which again if you are being conspiracy minded then that phrase is perhaps catnip preu oh, the league has a secret target league wide home run rate that it hadn't divulged. And Bradford goes on and and talks to Alan Nathan and other people involved with the testing of the ball and they downplay the significance of this phrase on this quote. And I guess he got a no comment from MLB and from Sword, but other people, including Alan Nathan, were basically saying don't make too much of this target home run rate phrase, that it was really about trying to limit the volatility of the home run rate, which is good, I guess. And then Lloyd Smith, who is involved in testing the ball as well, said it was just about efforts to make the game and the ball more consistent and that there's no fire here and that it's just smoke, some fog rolling off of Lake Michigan. Anyway, what do you make of this target league wide home run rate phrase? This is again several years ago.
- [65:50]
A
Yeah. So I think two things can be true simultaneously. I think that the league in general has done a poor job of communicating around the baseball and the variability from season to season, the degree to which supply chain issues have affected their ability to have a consistent ball year to year and within seasons, the extent to which they have been able to sort of guarantee that first half to second half half baseballs will be the same season to season, etc. I think the way that they've communicated around that stuff is very frustrating. We have talked before on the POD about how there is, at least on Manfred's part. I don't recall Morgan's Ford having spoken about this publicly. It's mostly come through the commissioner. But how there has sort of been an insistence at times that everything's the same, it's the same ball, even though we all have action, access to the drag numbers and can see that that isn't true. And then an admission after the fact that yeah, they are different and there has been variability and it has sort of clouded the issue in a way that I think people have found frustrating, particularly since there have been leagues. And I want to make clear I don't think that Major League Baseball is one of them actually. But there have been international leagues where the ball has been intentionally juiced in a way that was concealed and that has led to scandal and the resignation of high level executives.
- [67:22]
B
Happened in npb. Yeah, right.
- [67:24]
A
So the ball and its variability as a vector for scandal is a well established one. And I understand people having skepticism of what anyone associated with the league would say about it. And it has been frustrating because this was one of the examples of Manfred sort of talking about what we could not only observe, but also what people who knew what they were doing could measure and quantify as a Difference year to year in a way that made you feel like you were being gaslit.
- [67:55]
B
Right.
- [67:56]
A
That made you feel kind of crazy because there was just a stubbornness around this issue in the initial messaging around it. So I think that the league has done a bad job of being transparent. And part of why the reaction to Bradford's reporting to the work that he and Meredith Wills did around the ball from a couple of years ago, like, part of why the reaction to that has been what it has been, is because of this sort of original sin of them not being forthcoming about the state of the ball, the challenges they were facing in ensuring a consistent product. And there is something like inherently banana about there being this much variance year to year in what is arguably one of the two most important pieces of equipment on the field at any given time. Right. So that's, I think, all true. I also think another thing that is true is that this set of correspondence does not change my opinion of whether there is a scandal here, whether the leak was intentionally altering the ball to achieve a particular result, whether they were knowingly, you know, sort of goosing home run numbers either in 2019 or in 2015. Right. Wasn't 2015 the year where, after the All Star break, things shifted really dramatically?
- [69:13]
B
Yeah.
- [69:13]
A
So. And part of why I say that is that, like, we all want there to be consistency in the bounciness of the ball. I think, you know, the effect that that has on the league wide offensive environment is well established. I think it is important for teams to be able to plan on a particular kind of ball as they are thinking about roster construction, as they are sort of, you know, making free agency moves, etc. I also think, and this is more a problem for the league than it is for necessarily you or I or even the teams. Like when you are facilitating, through partnerships with sportsbooks, a legalized gambling environment around your sport, I think it kind of behooves you to have a predictable, as predictable as possible piece of equipment on the field that is so important. And so there are all sorts of reasons why it's an important thing. And in order to ensure that consistency, you do have to be like shooting at a target. Right. And so I don't think that the statements that Morgan Sword made, I feel weird calling him Morgan, but I also feel weird calling him him Sword. You know, it's sort of like a. A weird Wario version of the Molly Jolly situation, you know?
- [70:30]
B
Yeah.
- [70:31]
A
Feels weird to call a person Sword. Just says, I'm not trying to make you feel bad about Your family. But it's weird. That's your name. That's a weird name. Sword.
- [70:38]
B
Come on.
- [70:39]
A
Anyway, I think that if what you are trying to ensure is a consistent environment across the league, that you want the baseball to behave in a predictable and relatively consistent manner, it has to be aimed at a particular level of offense. Right. You kind of need a target rate in mind to know that the ball is behaving the way that you want it to. And of course, like, the construction of the ball is not the only thing that is at play in any given year's offensive environment. So I don't want to overstate the case either, but I think this is exactly what we want them to be doing and to be pressing to say, you know, what are we going to measure? What are the. The markers by which we are determining if we are hitting sort of the target environment that we want and what do we want that to be? You have to define that in advance. Like you. Yeah, you just do. Otherwise you're just going to be kind of loosey goosey about it. You know, I think if we're going to sort of be taken aback by anything in 2026, it's less emails that were sent in 2019, which again, I think are not particularly surprising given the explosion of home runs that we saw in that season. It isn't remotely surprising to me that the league's most senior executives would be invested in, like, what are we measuring? What is it going to look like next year? What should it be like? That seems perfectly reasonable.
- [72:00]
B
Kind of funny that he has some excerpts from emails where the executives are sending around public articles about this Rob Arthur research and everything, which, I mean, they should be, right? Like, it's good. I think that they were aware of that and that they were trying to respond to it. Not so much. If it's circling the wagons, how do we deny this? How do we respond to this in a PR massage way? But if they were just, hey, is this something we should look at? What's happening here? I mean, you'd like them to be so on top of that that they know about it before public research. But I'm glad that they're at least aware of that and responsive to it to some extent. And yes, I think a league should be setting some sort of. Of target. Now, is it explicit? And Bradford didn't find any evidence that they set some actual goal or put it in writing or in these public requestable emails, at least. So there wasn't anything else about what the target was or whether There was actually like we want X home runs per game or you know, that doesn't seem to be that specific. And maybe he didn't even mean it that way, but more just kind of we want to have some control over what it is or some predictability or we want to, to get it a little lower than it currently is, which is the highest ever. So that's perfectly reasonable, I think that someone with a league would be doing that and asking those questions. And I know we talked about it on the podcast. Well, what, what should the baseline be and what would make everyone happiest? And is it for the best that it's variable? Would people get bored if it were the same conditions year after year? Or what would be the number that would please the most people? And I, I think I've seen some fan surveys, excerpts that MLB has sent out about run scoring or maybe even home run rate to try to calibrate what do people like? Because historically speaking there is a positive correlation between scoring and attendance. But within reason, in moderation, it can get to the point where you kind of cheapen the accomplishment of the home run. So I don't really see much objectionable here, just that more transparency would be nice. And if they came out and said, said that we want some target or we're setting some target, or even if they didn't put it in terms of a target, but just said this is what we're doing and it's not surprising in light of subsequent events because we know that MLB did deaden the ball going into 2021 and that was reported at the time. Now they did it in that weird way where the AP reported on it and then on the memo that MLB sent and then there was like an MLB.com story reporting that the AP reported this MLB.
- [74:32]
A
It's so strange.
- [74:34]
B
So.
- [74:36]
A
And again, a good reminder that two things can be true simultaneously. And one of those things is that they have thoroughly botched the way that they have talked about this stuff publicly. Like that is an established fact of this conversation.
- [74:48]
B
Yes. And then in 2022 they instituted the universal humidor and, and then also they started phasing in the deader balls because I think in 2021, even though they had deadened the balls slightly, they were still using some of the pre deadening stock because of pandemic production delays and everything. So all this stuff was reported or leaked in one way or another, but rarely do they come out and say this is what we want to do. And I don't know why. I guess they think that it's so funny.
- [75:18]
A
It's because they can ensure sure that it's true. Ben. That's my theory. Maybe that's why they're so, you know, I think to their credit, they are so transparent and meticulous about the rule changes. Yeah, you might not agree that all of those are to the aesthetic benefit of the sport, but, like, the reasoning is very straightforward. There's all of this testing. It's all done in public, right? They're doing it in the minors, they're doing it at fall league. They're tweaking based on feedback from players, from managers, from fans. Like, it is this iterative process that is not perfect, but I think is by and large, like, very understandable from start to finish for fans who are paying attention and then for all the fans who aren't paying attention, which is most of them. Because why would you care what it looks like in fall league? You know, they spent all of spring training in the first two months of the season telling you about ABS and the challenge system and what it means and how they're doing, doing it. And I think that all of that stuff, even if it ends up having unintended consequences if they have to make adjustments, whatever. It is like the universe of potential issues with most of those rule changes are, at least by the time they make it to the major leagues, knowable in advance. I think they really struggle year to year to control what that stupid baseball
- [76:37]
B
is going to be.
- [76:39]
A
And we've joked about it, it's like, who's the baseball this year? Like, it's like getting to know the new kid in class, and we kind of sit with bated breath and wait to see what it's going to look like. And I think that that is a big part of why they have continued to be obstinate in their communication around this. Because they can't make the same claims of, you know, not that they can't make the same claims of rigorous testing, but they can't tell you, like, oh, and this is how it's going to be, right? Whereas, like, with AB, they had to make a lot of choices with ABs about, you know, what the strike zone was going to look like, how many dimensions it was going to be measured in, you know, how many challenges per game, these sorts of things. And again, you might not agree with all of those decisions, but when asked about them, they could tell you why, right? Here's why. We are measuring it in two versus three dimensions. Here's why we like the challenge system as opposed to A full apartment BS zone because time of game gains were lost when we had the full robo zone. And so we like challenge better because it solves problems, but it doesn't explode the time of game back to three hours. Right. Like, they could tell you why. And I think that it's a lot harder for them to do that with this thing that just, it does have variability. It's not like they are hiding a perfectly controllable baseball and refusing to produce it and then being like, hey, Rawlings, throw these ones out here. And also of the oily ones, question mark, is it easier to doctor the ball on the oilier?
- [78:10]
B
I don't know.
- [78:11]
A
I'm genuinely asking. This is the thing I've been thinking about. I'm like, are guys, you know, like, I'm reaching into a belt that I am not wearing while we are talking to demonstrate what they're doing. Because this is still. This is still the tell, you guys.
- [78:24]
B
I don't know if it's.
- [78:24]
A
That's still the tell.
- [78:25]
B
Yeah. I'm not sure if it's still actively oily or if they're just. They're well enough oil seepage, they wipe it off, made the COVID yellow.
- [78:33]
A
At some point they use Goo Gone. Have you ever used Goo Gone, the miracle product Goo Gone?
- [78:39]
B
I have not.
- [78:40]
A
It smells like oranges. It smells like oranges and it takes off. Because we've been to the moon, but we can't design stickers that universally peel off when you don't need to know the price anymore. We just like, that's an engineering challenge, much like a reliable baseball that we just like don't have an answer to. And so sometimes you have sticker on something and then you take the sticker off and it leaves that sticky gummy residue and then you. Goo Gone is not sponsoring this podcast, but I just appreciate that it's a cleaning supply that does exactly what it says it's going to and smells like oranges. Most of them don't smell like oranges. They smell like death.
- [79:15]
B
That would be an MLB esque sponsorship arrangement. Effectively Wild and Goo Gone. Just the random kind of sponsors that MLB seems to cultivate.
- [79:24]
A
But I do think the sponsor of beginning. Are we saying beginning or beginning? Don't know. We're saying Googon or Googon. Goo Gone sounds like a Kaiju Godzilla.
- [79:34]
B
Yeah. The one part of the athletic report that surprised me when it talks about how MLB says there's no evidence that the staining had anything to do with the reduced drag. There's one line here in the report that says two people who read a report of testing at the Massachusetts lab and were not authorized to speak publicly about the study said it did not include measures of drag, which if so, then that seems irresponsible. What did you like? Oh, well, yeah, there would be no evidence if you didn't check for any.
- [80:06]
A
So you do have to look. Sometimes evidence, like, presents itself to you.
- [80:11]
B
Right.
- [80:12]
A
But what do they think?
- [80:13]
B
Which was an issue with the first wave of the ball going so far. It was because they weren't actually testing that. They were testing the core, the coefficient of restitution. They didn't realize how huge an effect the seam height could have. And so they weren't really checking that in drag. And that's why they were saying with some confidence, oh, the ball's the same. And it wasn't. But I thought that they had changed things after that so that they would be testing for that. So if that's true and if they didn't actually check the drag on the oily balls, it's brilliant.
- [80:43]
A
It's a surprisingly rough phrase. Oily balls.
- [80:47]
B
Yeah, that. I don't know how you could have any confidence that there wasn't some kind of connection there. But yes, I think you're right. That part of it is that they can't control it as well as they'd like to. And clearly, based on these emails, they'd like to, and no kidding, they should want to. I think also they can't hide those other things as easily because they're very visible. I mean, if the bases are bigger, they're right out there under our noses and they're bigger. And if the rules are different, well, we're all watching that play out on the field. If the baseball behaves differently, well, that's a little more subtle and you might have some suspicions, but you might not be able to tell for sure. And one reason we know and why this was widely circulated is because there is that public drag dashboard on baseball savant, which is there because of all the scrutiny of drag years ago. And probably there's some part of MLB that wishes that that weren't so open in public because they wouldn't be getting so many questions about this.
- [81:41]
A
But.
- [81:42]
B
But that's good. It's good that we have that transparency. But I think because it is easier to obscure these things, they don't feel the same pressure to announce them. And also, maybe they think that it would be bad PR in a way that, okay, when they publicize the new rules, they think that's going to be good pr. And it has been for the most part. People like more base stealing. They like faster games and everything. So, yeah, they want to brag about the pitch clock. They want to brag about base stealing. Maybe they want to brag about shift bands to placate people who didn't like the overshift. Maybe they think that announcing that the ball will be changed in one direction or another, people wouldn't like that. Tampering with the core equipment. I tend to think if you just put it out there, like, hey, this is no big deal. Like, we're just, we're testing the ball. We want this kind of level of offense or home runs that fans have told us they like, that this would not be some sort of black eye against the game or something. I think it's worse when it comes out in dribs and drabs and via memos and leaks and reports and public record requests. Then it makes it look like there's some vast conspiracy and, oh, what are they hiding? And then there's sort of a Streisand effect where we all pay more attention to this than we probably would otherwise. Granted, if they were promulgating this via official league channels and it was on every broadcast in MLB.com and everything, maybe people would be more aware of it than they are when it's just like, right, baseball, Blue sky is obsessing over the drag dashboard or something. You know, I mean, people listen to effectively wild people, read the Athletic, but there are even wider distribution channels out there. So maybe it's still a smaller group of people who are even aware of this story than would be if they just totally publicized it from day one everywhere. But, right. It's come back to bite them so much, many times that they haven't said something or they've denied something and then it turned out not to be true. That I think it probably would behoove them to be more transparent about this. And if they just said, hey, the home run rate is too high, it's out of whack, people don't like this. We asked our fans, they said they didn't like this. And so we're just reining it in a little bit and we're announcing that ahead of time and we're telling teams and the PA and the public and our gambling partners, who would probably want to know then. I don't think that would be that big a deal. But you're right. Maybe then they have concerns that suddenly the yarn will start seeping or the seams will be Unpredictably high or low. And then they'll look like they really don't have a handle on this process because they announced that something would happen and then something didn't happen. So it's kind of a mess.
- [84:15]
A
It's kind of a mess. And look, I understand no one thinks they're going to be felled by oily balls, but sometimes times the, the ball trouble you don't expect is what comes and gets you.
- [84:26]
B
Yeah. Especially hot summer months, you know, it's just very, very moist.
- [84:32]
A
Yeah. Oily balls. Swamp ass.
- [84:34]
B
Yep.
- [84:35]
A
Can't lose. And I also think that like, you know, it is a. You're on your back foot not only if you're the league, not only because you took an initial defensive posture and have sort of been fighting against that initial problem, that first mistake this whole time. I also think that, you know, people just don't believe that it should be this hard to produce a consistent baseball. Right. We have all kinds of regulations about the equipment on the field and we have very specific rules around the bet. And you know, players can only have their gloves laced with certain colors and if they, they have a sleeve that obscures the ball at all, an umpire can tell them to take it off. And like all of the other key components of the game from an equipment perspective, I think are much easier to get a handle on. And I think that we just, most people just don't believe that it should be this hard to produce a consistent baseball. And what they mean by consistency is something that just isn't really achievable. Because, because I think most of the, even in the, you know, in some of the years where we've had higher rates, like you're in the prescribed range, it's not that the ball is like so far out of what is allowable, it's just that that range, which is minute in and of itself, can produce wildly different outcomes. And so when people say we want a consistent ball, they mean they want every ball to be exactly the same. And for, you know, I don't want to parrot like their phrasing here, but like for a hand stitch product, that's just not something that we're likely to achieve. And so I think that they're in a weird spot where people are just like, well, what, what's the problem? You know, like we can figure out how bouncy a basketball is. Like just, just make it like the basketballs. Like you can figure out how bouncy a basketball is. We knew when there was a problem with footballs in the NFL, and then we got to make fun of Tom Brady for the rest of our lives. Win, win. You know, so it's like. And I don't know that sympathy is even the right way to put it, but I can imagine it being frustrating that the thing that you. That people most want, you're not going to be able to achieve, even with tighter product control and quality control over the baseballs. And part of it, too, is that I suspect we've had, you know, maybe greater fluctuation in the character of the ball, if you will, over the years than most people appreciate. It's just that we can measure every damn thing now. And so we can say with a lot more precision, here's the difference, year to year, month to month, you know, first half to second half, what have you. And so, you know, I want to acknowledge that it is like a difficult problem to unpack, and I think one that requires a much more careful communication strategy than we keep the bases the same distance away, but we make them big, and. And then they're big bases, and everyone's like, oh, big bases, gotcha. I understand what that is. And we show the picture of the big base and the smaller base, and they're like, oh, that is bigger, you know, and they look at it and they understand what that is meant to achieve. Right? Especially when you add in, like, that with pickoffs and all this stuff. Now, whether it actually ends up achieving that stuff, you know, we, as we have noted, like, fluctuation there too, but, like, the mechanism by which they are trying to alter the general aesthetic of the game is. Is more easily sort of like, understandable because it's a lot easier to control, which is why they should have been more transparent about it from the jump. Because part of what you need in moments like this to get people to give you some grace when there are just, like, product issues, when there is a manufacturing concern around the stitching that you didn't anticipate, you don't have any goodwill banked around that stuff. Even with all the success they've had with the rule changes, they just don't have goodwill around this particular issue. And I do think that part of why people, not you and I, because we don't gamble, but part of why people, I think, are so inclined to believe, like, the most conspiratorial version of all of these individual pieces of information is that people have money tied up in. In bets, around home run totals or what have you, home runs in a given game. And, you know, I hope that they get their stuff figured out and that they can figure out a different way to talk about it. Because like, I have seen people sort of like impugning Junior Caminero, for instance, and being like, well, you know, no wonder he's having this home run success. And it's like, well, sure, the ball does matter. To say that it doesn't would be irresponsible also. But like, Junior Camino is a great power. Like, you know, and what we've seen in prior seasons where the ball has been bouncier and has gone farther. The Junior Camin Arrows of the world aren't necessarily the guys who benefit the most from that quote, unquote. Because he doesn't have trouble clearing the fence. Right. The reason we all got suspicious was that D. Strange Gordon was hitting home runs and like, that guy was a fun player, but like, he wasn't a. A power threat. You know, that wasn't his game game. So I think that it really does do a disservice to the players when we have this sort of cloud of suspicion around it, which is unfortunate because it's like, this is one of the. It does feel like something you should be able to dial in better. Right. And so it, it is frustrating. And you know, this isn't like pds. This isn't a fault of the players. This is just like the ball that's pitched to them is the one they have the opportunity to hit. It's not like he could be like oil ball, oily ball. Yeah, give me a different one. Like, you know, so anyway, I just. Stuff like this is frustrating, but if it does have one silver lining, even if, as I think people can probably glean from our conversation here, like, I don't find these emails to like, be all that revelatory. Maybe one of the takeaways. Takeaways that the average fan could have would be to think like, yeah, like sometimes league isn't always shooting straight on some stuff, you know, like between innings with ads.
- [90:52]
B
Sure.
- [90:52]
A
Another reason for beginning, you know. Yeah, there's another reason because then you're just bopping back and forth. You don't even see the salary cap ad. You're just like, oh, beginning.
- [91:00]
B
D. Strange Gordon is a farmer in Florida now. I read about that recently. Yeah, it's nice.
- [91:04]
A
Oh yeah, that's nice.
- [91:06]
B
Just too bad that the baseball ball doesn't get inflated and deflated so that we could have.
- [91:11]
A
Right.
- [91:11]
B
Deflate gate scandals as they have in the NFL or the NBA even at times. But yeah, we get a different brand
- [91:17]
A
of skin they had ball bounciness issues.
- [91:20]
B
They have, yes. At previous times. Yeah. So anyway, I do think that there's probably a way to automate the construction of the ball and we talked about it way back when and probably if you did that well, you'd lose a link to tradition. You'd probably have a bunch of people out of work who are stitching those balls. There would certainly be downsides to that. But yeah, it is. You know, it's like the ball rubbing mud and the hand stitched baseballs. There's something quite quaint about it, which I appreciate. It's very baseball to do things that way, but it is more unpredictable. It's true. So yeah, there have been efforts to try to standardize these things. Right. And remember there was, you know, pre tacked balls which we seen in other leagues and international competition. And they've experimented. MLB and players here didn't like the experimental balls that they came up with. So it doesn't seem like it should be an insuperable problem.
- [92:16]
A
Anyway, wouldn't you rather have experimental balls and oily balls?
- [92:20]
B
I would. Unless you had a combination of both. Experimental oily balls. Worse of both.
- [92:24]
A
What if that's the experiment is to make them oily?
- [92:28]
B
All right. And the last thing, just briefly, I just wanted to shout out and Joshi and just wrote about this too, but there is one team I think that has not had to use a sixth starting pitcher this year. It's the Cleveland Guardians. They have used five guys for more than half of the season.
- [92:45]
A
That's great.
- [92:45]
B
Yeah. And there are two teams that have used six. One of them is the Cardinals. So it's Cards and Guards. And the Cardinals have had a historically healthy and stable starting rotation last year too. And then also your Mariners have gotten away with six starters all year and they've had their whole piggyback situation and six man rotation and all of that. Yeah, it's always really nice though when you can get through a season without your guys getting hurt. And according to the Baseball Prospectus injured List ledger, the Guardians and Cardinals have the fewest days and games missed to injury this year. So if you're wondering how they have both exceeded preseason projections in the Guardian's case for the umpteenth time, that needs
- [93:28]
A
to be a big part of it.
- [93:29]
B
That's a big part of it. And they're both either clinging to or just outside of playoff position as we speak here through the weekend's games. And yeah, if you don't have to dip deep into your rotation depth chart then that's really going to help. And it kind of comes full circle because we started this talking about the lack of durability and your repair and how pitchers are used and everything. And I do keep thinking and hoping and wishing that maybe some team will just say, well, if we can just not go all stuff and max effort but go for durability and prioritize that to some extent, then maybe we would have an edge and we would be able to come up with some guys other teams aren't really targeting and then we wouldn't have the flashiest staff. But also if our guys didn't get hurt, we wouldn't be forced to use our seventh and a string starter or whatever. Like the Cardinals have used Hunter Dobbins for a couple spot starts and I think maybe are contemplating a six man rotation now because he's been pretty effective. But really no one has been hurt and Guardians haven't had anyone hurt. Pirates I think have only used seven. You know they had guys at the start of the season who were hurt who came back. Jarrett Jones. If you can get through a season like that, it's quite an advantage. Both Cleveland and St. Louis have middle of the pack stuff and speed. Just looking at four seamers and two seamers sinkers combined average V this year, Cardinals pitchers or starters are 12th and guardians are 19th. And it's not like they have elite rotations either. Right? So The Guardians are 11th in Fangraph starting pitcher WAR and the Cardinals are 21st. So yeah, meanwhile the Mariners are first, so that's good I guess. But the Mariners also, they have better stuff and they are fourth in that fastball speed metric. So I don't know that you can point to the Cards and guards and say this is their plan. Let's just go get guys with lesser stuff and they'll stay healthy and we won't have to go to the 10th guy who won't be as good good, but it's kind of working out that way. And it's other stuff that's responsible for the Cardinals because they had good, stable, healthy, durable rotation last year and they still just sort of stunk but this year they've been good enough. And so I want this to be a model that is replicable or even to be a plan as opposed to just a happy outcome. But if you can, like whenever a team is surprising you, you can see why. Why maybe it's you're underrating the defense which is a little less visible. Maybe they've been clutch, whether pitcher or hitter clutch or maybe They've just been healthy, which is something that you might not notice because it's like, well, the absence of injuries isn't all that noticeable. But the default is not to get injured. The default is a lot of guys getting hurt and when that doesn't happen, you might not notice, but it really helps. So, you know, I don't know if this is a plan in, but I like that it's happening. You know, it's hard enough to get through half a season now without using a six star. I mean that's tough to do and it really does give you a boost even if you know it's still not like that great a strength of, of these teams. Non Mariners, but Guardians and Cardinals. But it's good enough, right? If they had these sorts of staffs and then a bunch of guys got hurt and they were using losing their ninth starter or something, well, then they'd probably be really bad. So the fact that they're good enough that they're middle of the pack and thus they're in contention, I think those things are kind of connected. Of course. Could the Guardians just go actually spend some money for once and like go get aces and stuff? Yeah, they could do that too. And then that would maybe be another viable plan. And I know Heim Bloom wants the Cardinals to have better stuff and get strikeouts and throw harder and everything and get on board with the rest the of baseball. So if anything they'll probably go away from this model more. But yeah, yeah, if you can get through a season with the same rotation, yeah, that's, that's an advantage. Maybe that's an obvious statement, but it is happening for a few teams.
- [97:30]
A
Yeah, I think that Cards and Guards should have played on Star Spangled Sunday.
- [97:35]
B
Yeah.
- [97:35]
A
Cuz it sort of sounds like you're saying stars and bars.
- [97:38]
B
Yeah, it does.
- [97:39]
A
You know, but cards and cards and Cards. Guards. Cards and guards. Yeah. I mean I think that often consistency from like a guy who can take the ball every five days and, and give you innings, even if they're just okay.
- [97:53]
B
Yeah.
- [97:53]
A
Is something that can be underappreciated because you're right. People fail to think of like, well if that guy goes down, what's the next dude up from AAA really capable of? If he were better, wouldn't he just be here already? You know, so you want to, to do better. And I'm sure that as St. Louis is thinking about like what are the objectives of our new approach to player development? That it's a lot more like, you know, what Seattle's been able to achieve or what Cleveland has been able to achieve than it is sort of their current state. But having the consistency at the big league level to say, not have to rush guys who are still benefiting from, you know, the that player development work in the minors like that is part of achieving that long term goal too, right?
- [98:39]
B
Yep. Consistency in the ball. Consistency in who's taking the ball. Both desirable and both elusive.
- [98:47]
A
Yes.
- [98:48]
B
Okay, that'll do it for today. By the way, so many rhymes we talked about Lake Bakker's bullpen blow up in relief quote unquote of a perfect Yuri Perez. Well, the president of retro sheet Tom Tress posted on this has to be the most extreme contrast in pitching lines by consecutive pitchers for the same team in the same game. And by submetrics. Yeah, I guess it does. Almost by default by percentage of runners reaching base against a Pitcher, for instance, 0 to 100 is as big a gap as it gets. But I asked stat blaster extraordinaire Michael Mountain if he could quantify that any other way and he came up with a method based on re 24, which Baseball Reference calls base out runs added. It's basically the change in run expectancy from the beginning of one plate appearance to the end of it and then extrapolated over pitcher outings to come up with a cumulative number. And Michael homebrewed a version of that that accounts for era though, not park effects. And by that method, Perez Tabaker was the fourth most wildly divergent RE24 total from starting pitcher to first reliever. Michael sent me a sprinkler spreadsheet with the top 100 from 1910 to 2025, which I'll link to on the show page. But the top three number one is Eric Milton, Twins pitcher to everyday Eddie Gordado, Twins reliever. On April 9, 2000 against the Royals, Milton went 7 2/3, gave up 2 runs. Then Eddie came in, gave up 4 runs without recording an out. He entered with 2 outs and 2 on, went walk, 2 run single, 3 run homer, solo homer pulled. As Michael notes, Bakker faced more guys and allowed more guys to reach but didn't come come in with men on base already and didn't have the excruciatingly painful hope of just one out and we can escape from this mess. The other two Devil Ray's pitcher Ryan Roop to Roberto Hernandez May 23, 1999 against the Angels. Roop went nine one hit, no runs, eight strikeouts. Then Roberto Hernandez came in in the 10th and gave up four runs, three earned while recording only two outs took the loss, spoiled Roop's gem and third Cubs versus Phillies September 20, 1996 7. Jeremy Gonzalez starts eight scoreless innings. Terry Adams comes in, blows the save and takes the loss. Doesn't record an out, gives up three runs. But there is something about the Perez to Bakker game going from perfect to perfectly imperfect and as Michael says, like win probability added. RE24 doesn't care if you're throwing a perfect game as long as you haven't allowed any runs. Getting more outs is beneficial and those starters in his examples got more outs than Paris. But seven scoreless innings is seven scoreless innings no matter what the run environment is the only thing that would separate one seven innings pitched zero run start from another as far as re 24 is concerned. So the fact that this start is tops among seven innings pitched starter outings mostly says that Bakker was dreadfully bad and indeed he was not the sixth Great Lake on that day. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners Luca G, Mike Coniglione, Jonathan Hauser, Jason Chiao, and Max Carlin. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to a third unrestricted episode every week, plus a monthly bonus podcast, exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships and more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com 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 podcast and fangraphs.com youm can join our Facebook group at facebook.com group effectivelywild. You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit @r effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Isabel Robertson filling in for Shane McKeon today for her editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you a little later this week.
- [102:53]
A
Oh baseball. What have you done? Something's never been seen Something factually fun oh, there's so much of you but there's so little time so thank God for effectively wild.