Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1713: The Straw That Broke the Umpire’s Belt

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s borderline excessive consumption of Angels games and the latest, greatest exploits of Shohei Ohtani, who and what is to blame for the Yankees’ ongoing struggles, Gerrit Cole’s performance post-sticky stuff, Hector Santiago becoming the first pitcher ejected for alleged foreign substance use, a Triple-A umpire’s broken-belt ejection, […]

I'm wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again, bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I. Bewildered, bewildered am I Hello and welcome to episode 1713 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing alright. How was your weekend? My weekend was good. Mine was too. I watched nine hours of Angels baseball. I have a problem, Meg.

I don't know if it's a problem. It's not a problem for me, really. But I watch basically every inning of every Angels game now. And it's not a good team. It's just really not. Worse lately. Yeah, but it does employ one Shohei Otani. And that's pretty much enough for me. They were playing the playing the rays so at least i was watching one good team yeah and i got to see

wander franco but yeah he was not the main draw for me it's just otani who like it used to be that i would watch his starts as a pitcher and maybe i would check in on his plate appearances as a batter and then I would flip away. Now I'm really just riveted. I just watch all Angels games so that I don't miss a moment of Shohei Otani and trying to restrain myself here because Otani is in New York this week, which means this is probably not the last time we'll be talking about him. But I just can't say enough about him. He is incredible. And despite my extremely high expectations for him, he has met or exceeded them. And it is wonderful to watch.

He now has a 174 OPS plus and a 177 ERA plus. He has almost no platoon split. And he had a big one in his rookie season with the Angels. Now he has a thousand plus ops against lefties and righties he has 5.6 baseball reference war which puts him 0.8 war ahead of anyone else and on pace for almost 12 like 11.8 war he is still just behind vlad in fangraphs war like a tenth of a win now behind vlad But still, if you take the baseball reference war in that sort of stratosphere. So we're talking 20 years, essentially. And I think you could make a

good case that if he keeps this up, which is not certain, obviously, and he could get hurt, he could be fatigued, he could wear down. But if he were were to sustain this and there's a lot about it that seems sustainable like i think this could have a pretty good case for the best season ever basically i don't want i don't want to be too hyperbolic but given the level of competition in the league which is like higher now than it was even in the early 2000s i mean bonds was was bonds but he was still facing pitchers who were throwing like four to five miles per hour slower than pitchers are today. Like the caliber of competition keeps getting higher and higher and it keeps getting harder and harder to separate yourself from the pack like this. And so if he were to keep this up and we're less than halfway through the Angels season now, they played 77 games as we speak here here on Monday, and he's hit 25 homers, and the stats are what they are. So if you essentially double them

and a little more, I think you could make the case that, especially given the degree of difficulty of how he's doing it, basically splitting it down the middle between pitching war and batting war, could be the best season ever. I want to spend a moment on his June, just on the hitting side of things. Because his season line is terrific. But this last month has just been, you know, and there are a couple of guys where they've had really superlative Junes. But let's spend a moment on Shohei Adani's June. And I'm going to do a thing that I caution Fangraph's writers against.

But I think that this is an exception to the rule. I often tell our writers, and they know this. And so it is a thing that I really mostly have to remind folks of when they're like, you know, getting their sea legs at the site. And they're finding their way that sometimes we need to resist the urge to narrate the player page in a piece because, you know, a reader can look at the player page on their own and they can dig around and they often do. And so we want to we want to use that as a jumping off point to, you know, tell them something and show them something they don't necessarily know and tell them why it matters. It's a big part of writing. Like, why do we care about this? You have to answer that question every time. Why should someone

care about this? And if you can't answer it, then you got to do some work before you submit a draft. It's pretty easy to answer for Otani. Right. But yes. And sometimes a guy's player page is just so superlative and so incredible that it it is a thing that we should take a moment to like luxuriate in so in june otani is walking 18.6 percent of the time he has a 29 k rate whatever we don't care about that we don't care about those k's we care that's fine he's walking almost 19 percent of the 442, 857. He has a 543 ISO. That's quite high.

He has a 237 WRC+. He has a 519 WOBA, Ben. He's got a 519 WOBA. I love the line that he put up on Sunday so much because it is just everything that he does well as a hitter, including some of the things that I still think, despite the fact that you and I have both talked about them and both told people no pay but more attention to this part that he does not get nearly enough credit for. So yesterday he went three for four with a homer, a triple, a double.

He had three RBI, two run scores. He stole a base and he walked. He did not hit for a cycle, but I submit to you that this is more impressive than that. Yeah. I mean, he got on base. He got to first via the walk, but then he got himself to second. Yeah. In essence, it's basically the same as a cycle.

Yeah. And he did the hard stuff. He did the hardest parts of a cycle right he had a triple he had a double he had a home run boy what a home run he hit oh my gosh it's hard to choose between the best home run of the weekend because yes the friday home run he hit which according to stat cast went 453 feet and it was like 116 miles per hour off the bat and it hit the D-ring catwalk at Tropicana Field and Joe Madden, who has managed many a game at Tropicana Field, disputed the 453 feet measure. He said, that's wrong. It hit the top of the catwalk above the scoreboard. There's

no way that's 453. I'm sorry. I've been here many times and I've never seen that in a game or in batting practice. Regardless, that was an absolute bomb, which he followed up in that same game with a bunt single, which he does from time to time, his fourth bunt single of the season. And every game in which he's had a bunt single, he has also hit a ball 110 miles per hour or more, just showcasing everything he can do. And then, yeah, on Sunday, he did it all. The double, which went almost all the way to the wall, was a broken bat double. Doesn't matter. He hit it out there anyway.

And the home run, which was off Pete Fairbanks, who is a good pitcher and I believe had not allowed a home run to a lefty in his career. He has career reverse splits for whatever that's worth. And Otani takes a ball 95 miles per hour on the inside corner, takes it oppo just like several rows into the stands in like left center field. I mean, I don't know how he does that sort of thing.

So I don't know whether it's more impressive when he gets all of it and just absolutely crushes it or when he doesn't get all of it and it still gets out and it looks like no home run you've ever seen other than i don't know maybe some john carlos stanton shots right he is in he is in the 93rd percentile for sprint speed and the 98th percentile for hard hit percentage he is he is in the top percentile for max exit velocity he hits the ball so hard he runs so fast he's in the top percentile for barrel percentage i mean like some of these stats like we you know we've reminded people that that some of these stats are are descriptive some of them tell you a little less than you think like really uh average exit velocity sometimes you gotta look under the

hood on that one and then you look at shoya tani and you're like, holy Moses. Yeah. And the reason I cite his war, which normally with someone who's so hot, I would be cautious about saying you could just double it or extrapolate over the full season. But he seems to be getting better in ways that are pretty believable. His full season expected Woba is the same as his WOBA, even a little higher. So it's not as if he has been especially fortunate on batted balls. He just crushes the ball constantly. And on the pitching side, he has totally curtailed the walk problem that he had earlier this season. And so that makes me optimistic, too. In addition to the fact that he's been more durable, he had a season high pitch count his last time out, and he's pitching now sometimes with five days rest instead of six days rest. So it seems like he's getting more innings, even if he maybe has a little less don't know. But nothing about the skill set makes me think regression is in store here. If you took this same model of Otani I just have this dumb grin on my face like hours a day when I'm just watching him or thinking about him and seeing him excel in this way. So really, Sam used to do those articles at ESPN about the most watchable player in baseball. And he did that the last couple of years. And he came up with the answer of Fernando Tatis, which obviously he was the most watchable player in baseball. And he hasn't done anything to lose that title.

He is just as watchable as he was. But I feel like Otani has taken it from him. And that's no slight on Tatis, obviously, who has been amazing as well. And your mileage may vary and your tolerance for Angels baseball may vary. may vary and your tolerance for Angels baseball may vary. But still, I just don't see how anyone could be more watchable than Otani has been this year. It's just been an unreal, incredible run. And Tatis was asked over the weekend which player he's most excited to watch, and he said Otani too. I guess he couldn't have said himself. That might have sounded sort of conceited. Yeah, it's been really spectacular. I feel like when Trout went down,

I don't want to say that there aren't a lot of fun and wonderful players in the game. And so I was trying to not be sad, but I was sad that we didn't get to watch. The version of Trout we had was just so incredible. He was putting on such a show in the early going. And I still miss watching that thumb-looking guy play baseball because he is the best. But I feel like between Vladi and Tatis and Otani, it's not that I don't miss him, but I miss him a lot less than I thought I would. And it's been such a delight to have just another reminder

that we are so fortunate to get to watch such incredible players right now. And when you look at the top 10, this is just on the position player side, so, you know, I'm not looking at the combined war leader board. We've already talked about how his combined war stacks up. But you look at the top 10 war leaders on the position player side at Fangrafts right now,

and it's, you know, we have Vlad at the top and then Tatis, Correa, Ronald Acuna Jr., Xander Bogarts, Nick Castellanos, Cedric Mullins, which we're going to have to, I know we got an email about Cedric Mullins today, which I have not had a chance to read, but to all you Orioles fans out there, I am so happy for you. Yes. I am happy for Cedric Mullins and I am so happy for you yes i am happy for cedric mullins and i am also happy for you because you have had more bright spots than i anticipated this season and i'm glad for that

and then you have otani and marcus simeon and trey turner and it is just like a really fun amalgamation of guys you noted the last time we recorded just like the international presence that we have here is really lovely it's just you know it's a good time to be a baseball fan in a lot of ways there are things that we could improve and i hope we do because we certainly have a game that's worthy of improving because gosh look at these look at these dudes it's great it's just a great thing so and that makes it more impressive that otani has monopolized my attention like this because there are so many competing attractions and I'm trying not

to have tunnel vision here because there are so many great players doing so many great things. And just this weekend you had Tatis with his three homer game and you had that incredible Cabrian Hayes play which was enabled by Yadier Molina being not the most fleet of foot but

nonetheless. Yeah. Incredible play. It was still amazing. Yeah. And you had Kershaw, the old guy still got it, striking out 13 Cubs. And he's been fantastic despite throwing like 90 again. And Vlad Jr., homers every other game. I mean, really just so many players. And so here I am watching the Angels every day and also other teams and players.

But still, I want Trout to be back just so I can see some better baseball players as I am watching the Angels in between Otani plate appearances and innings. And it's a strange experience for me because I have not watched one team like this in so long because I haven't been a fan of any particular team. I haven't covered one specific team. Right. Baseball games take a while and baseball is only part of the job I do at the ringer. And so I always have to be reading or playing or watching something else. So I try to squeeze in the baseball where I can. But with Otani now, I just cannot look away, essentially. And it's just become appointment viewing for me and my wife where it's just like, what

time is Otani playing today? OK, we'll just set those three hours aside, essentially. Okay, we'll just set those three hours aside, essentially. Also, the weird, wonderful fun facts that you get after seemingly every game, like after he hit the leadoff homer on Friday, I guess it was, he became, according to Jeremy Frank on Twitter, the first AL or NL player with a leadoff home run and a pitching win in the same season since Jimmy Ryan for the 1888 Chicago White Stockings. That's just the quintessential Otani stat where it's, you know, he's the first to do something since the 19th century and the Angels lost anyway. So it's strange for me to have this experience of watching one team and not really rooting for that team. It's not like I'm an Angels fan now. I'm watching for Otani. And if the Angels lose, I don't particularly care because they're far enough out of the playoff picture that they're not going to make it if we're being realistic. I mean, they have an 8% chance to make the playoffs

now. And if they were closer, if they didn't have two good teams ahead of them in the division and a bunch of teams ahead of them in the wildcard race. Then I might root for them to make the playoffs just to get Trout and Otani into October, but that's just not going to happen realistically this season, I don't think. And so I'm not really expending much mental energy on that. So really, I'm just rooting for good Otani outcomes, which I guess indirectly means I'm rooting for the Angels. I want them to score runs so that Otani gets five plate appearances instead of four in any given game. That's the level of my rooting for the Angels. It's just not a fun team, Otani aside. Once Trout gets back, they will have a competent core of position players at least.

They might have three of the top 10 players in baseball in that lineup. Rendon has not played like that this year, but I would have ranked him that high coming into the season. So if you have Trout Otani, Rendon, Jared Walsh, who's been really good, David Fletcher, who is good and I enjoy watching him. Justin Upton was having a good year before he got hurt. Maybe Joe Adele will be back up later this season. He's hitting well in AAA. There's a lot to like there, but there's just not enough because there's still some weak spots in the lineup. It's good for my minor league free agent team that Scott Shepler is getting played appearances, but it's not so great for the Angels. The defense is truly atrocious. Oh gosh. I think you can look at the defensive efficiency, which I think is second worst this season. But watching them as much as I have been, it's really not good. And the bullpen's not good. The pitching has just perennially been their problem with injuries and even with their healthy pitchers underperforming. odd experience of watching this team without really rooting for this team, just rooting for

one specific player, just sort of being spellbound, transfixed by this one particular player. And there's this online culture basically of like Otani stans who have Twitter accounts and YouTube accounts and Instagram accounts. Shout out to Portia who who runs at ShowHeySaveUs on Twitter. And I interviewed for a piece last week, and she's a podcast listener, so perhaps she is listening. And she's part of a group of Otani fans that call themselves the ShowBase. That's like a large portion of the fun for me of following this season is not just the stats and the highlights, but also the people who are so excited about Otani. And it's his teammates, it's his opponents, but it's also his fans like around the world, really. And the way that people document his every movement and expression and just everyone else. And there's this trope essentially of like the athlete archetype of like the player who is just so good, so talented that he's kind of a jerk and gets away with it or get special treatment or is like a ultra efficient robot and is just weird and doesn't seem very relatable. Like you might have the Michael Jordan who seems like just sort of this just perpetually aggrieved

narcissist type and just doesn't seem to be having much fun because he's so driven and so hyper competitive. And then you have like the Tom Brady or the Novak Djokovic who's just like trying to extract every last bit of performance as they can and going through all sorts of strange routines and everything. And then you have Otani, who is as talented as basically any athlete in the world at this point, and certainly as talented as anyone in baseball, and just seems silly and like he's just having fun out there. And it's a strange experience. It's like, hey, you can be incredibly talented, but also just kind of an easygoing guy seemingly at the same time. And like, I'm sure he's working as hard as anyone, but it doesn't seem like he is as miserable as a lot of elite athletes are. He said in 2017, I do not feel pressure at all when it comes to playing baseball,

and this is being 100% honest. Playing baseball is genuinely fun for me, and I enjoy every moment of my time on the field, whether it's practice or game time. He doesn't seem like he's suffering for his art here. He's great, but also he's just having fun, and he is consenting to umpire inspections with a smile and picking up litter on his way to first base and handing bats to bat boys. And it's just something else.

And like there are a lot of ways to be in the world, right? And, you know, we love Mike Trout and I find him charming and I like that he likes weather and hanging out with his wife, but he's a more reserved personality seemingly. And there are a lot of different ways to be in the world, but it is a very cool thing when this kind of talent seems to reside in a person who, as far as we know, seems very affable and to enjoy what he's doing and enjoy the time he spends with his teammates. And not that he doesn't enjoy what he's doing and enjoy the time he spends with his teammates and not that he doesn't take what he does seriously but perhaps is able to place it in the proper perspective it's just a very cool it's just a very cool and rare thing and um i don't know that it's one i don't know that that approach is the one that's necessarily incentivized by

the professional sports apparatus and i don't know that I'd go so far as saying that that apparatus necessarily incentivizes the opposite, but it is a thing that I think people have to make a conscious choice to do. And so it's neat when that's the choice they make. Yeah. I feel almost disloyal to Trout getting so giddy over Otani while Trout is absent. But it just is the case that Otani is, I think, more eye-catching than Trout, not better than Trout. I mean, Trout is the best at what he does. He doesn't pitch, obviously, but he is just not quite as incandescent, I guess, as Otani. I love watching the wars add up when Trout is good and he does all the things that he does extremely well, but it doesn't quite leap off the screen in the way that it does with Otani.

And Trout has incredible power and incredible speed and even better plate discipline and all of that. There's nothing Otani does better than Trout except pitch, which is a pretty big thing. But I just don't know what it is. But Otani is just so singular that I get more of a charge out of watching him on a day-to-day basis, even as I appreciate Trout in a similar way. It's just not quite the same aesthetic experience somehow. Yeah. Yeah. We still love you, Mike. Yeah. Yes, we do.

Go well very soon, please. Yes, please. And I don't know whether Joe Madden is a good manager or not. And I don't mean that as an insult. I don't really know whether anyone is a good manager, to be honest. But I do think that Joe Madden is among the best managers that Otani could have. Agreed. And that is more important to

me than anything else right now. I just think that if you could somehow redo the past few years and put Otani on every other team or with every other manager, I don't know that the outcomes would be as good as most of them. I think in some cases he would be forced to specialize and do one or the other, or the reins would not be taken off the way that they have here with Madden and Otani. He seems willing to let Otani go, and that is what I want to happen. So I'm grateful to Madden for making that happen, independent of his other qualities as a manager. I think he's kind of the ideal manager for Otani at this particular time. And the only thing that I'm left wondering now is how you get Otani to play both ways in the All-Star game, because I think that has to happen.

Despite my reservations about his fatigue and how he'll hold up, If he wants to pitch and hit in the All-Star game, and if the Angels are okay with him pitching and hitting in the All-Star game, I think it would be a great thing for baseball because he is not on the national stage all that often. All-Star week is going to be his big chance. And hopefully that's a big home run derby performance, but also hitting and pitching in the All-Star game against all of the best players in baseball who we were just talking about. That would be a pretty special moment. And so I wonder how you achieve that exactly in this game, because presumably he's not Otani gets the first inning, and then you could surrender the DH and then just have a series of pinch hitters throughout the game, which might be feasible because you have't have as many innings left to go and you can just pinch hit a few times. That would probably work. Or whether you could just say, hey, it's an exhibition game, so who cares about the rules? Like Otani gets to pitch and hit and also the AL keeps the DH now because it's more important that that happens than that this be a real baseball game. Right. So I don't know which is the solution, but if everyone involved wants that to happen, I hope that they find a way to do it. Right. I think the All-Star Game should be a, you know, it should give the suggestion of a

normal baseball game. But I think that it is very much one where if what you're prioritizing is is very much one where if what you're prioritizing is we have this look-in audience and we're here to have some fun and we want to showcase all of the best dudes doing all their best dude stuff, then you take the wrapper, the container, the flower pot. What was Boris's analogy? Anyway, you take the vase of baseball and you fill it with all the

good fun stuff and the only thing that should really uh matter is that no one um be put in a position where they are likely to injure themselves and as long as that is true you have you have succeeded um and so whatever weird but you know just tell people you're testing a new rule in that game. Sure. And you're just going to, you know, you're just doing a look and see. You're just doing a little let's look and see. And then we get to watch Otani do all the best stuff he does as one of the best, most fun guys. So that's my thought on that.

The rule is that Otani gets to do whatever he wants. And you know who wins? All of us. Yes, exactly. Alright, so Otani will be playing the Yankees all this week and I wanted to talk for a moment about them. It was not a great weekend for the Yankees

in Boston. They got swept by the Red Sox for the second time this season. They are now 0-6 against the Red Sox. I believe they're 5-8 against the Rays. And Yankees fandom is melting down again. I swear several times this season, I just see Cashman trending on Twitter, and then I see Boone trending on Twitter, and it's the same refrain each time. And understandably, this team has underperformed. I understand why the fan base is up in arms. One aspect of it that's interesting to me is that the Red Sox have a couple of ex-Yankees who have pitched well for them

and who the Yankees essentially gave away or let the Red Sox claim in Adam Adovino and Garrett Whitlock. And the Yankees traded Adovino to the Red Sox before this season in essentially just a salary dump. They traded Adovino and a prospect to Boston because of Adovino's $7 million salary, I think it was. And they were trying to maneuver and stay under the luxury tax threshold. And that's one way that they did that or tried to do that. And Garrett Whitlock was in the Yankee system and was a rule five pick by the Red Sox. And so there's a way in which this makes it look even worse for the Yankees. I saw a lot of tweets that were about Adovino and Whitlock. Not that bullpen has been the big problem for the Yankees. They have the best bullpen war in baseball. They have the

best bullpen park-adjusted fit. That has been a strength for them. It is the offense that we've talked about and can perhaps touch on again here. But it does look bad when your rival who is leading you in the division just gets a couple guys who have been good for them without giving up anything really except some money. And they both pitched well against the Yankees and Adovino has pitched in four games against them, allowed a 2.08 ERA and a 3.69 opponent OPS. Whitlock has pitched three games against them and has not allowed a run in those games for 10 opponent OPS. And so that just highlights it, I think. And so in some of the, you know, fire cashman tweets that I saw, a lot of it was about how he gave out of, you know, away. And that was, you know, maybe more of an example of ownership mandating that a move be made to stay under a certain spending limit.

So if you want to identify one person who might be responsible, you could probably point to the Steinbrenners even before you point to Cashman or Boone. But that does sort of highlight why trades between rivals don't happen very often. It was an exception when the Yankees traded Adovino to the Red Sox. It was the first Yankees-Red Sox trade in years. That doesn't happen very often. And you can sort of see why. Here's an example of why. Because when someone pitches well for your rival, especially against you, and things aren't going great for your team, then it looks bad. Even if the absence of Adovino and Whitlock is not really the problem for the Yankees this year, it just looks bad.

And so that's why you see so rarely trades being made between rivals, even when they match up at times, because it can just come back to bite you from a PR perspective. Yeah, and it feels, I think as as a fan it feels uniquely biting you know it's one thing when like imagine this example involves the red socks that you're citing but like you know imagine you have a team that has a trade reputation like the rays do and you know there's been some investigation to how well earned that reputation is but we'll just take it at face value like you know that or you already worry you're going to be had, right? You're going to be bamboozled

because they're a team that has a reputation for taking scraps and making them great. And then imagine you're the Yankees and it's a team that has such a low payroll and then you just feel terrible, right? You feel like you've been had twice. And I think you're right that it is it is a psychological barrier that a lot of front offices have not only from a PR perspective, but I imagine it just feels uniquely bad to you, regardless of how it gets written about. You know, it's like why we thought that Mike Trout wouldn't get traded. You don't want to be the GM with that in your bio when you die. Yeah, sure. And I don't know what to make of the Yankees struggles because they have essentially a league average offense to this point. It's a 99 WRC plus, and that is not good. And that is not something that I anticipated with this Yankees team. If you had asked me

what their Achilles heel was coming into the season, I might have said starting pitching depth. I mean, they had a lot of starters, but few of them were dependable or had recent track records of durability. And that's been a bit of a problem too. And that's another reason why people are mad at Brian Cashman. But really, it's the offense that's been the biggest issue. And it's largely the same hitters who have been brought back. And most of those hitters have been good before. And we've talked about their issues with runners on base and runners in scoring

position. They're scoring, I think, an MLB low percentage of their base runners. And Lindsay Adler has written about this recently. And it does seem like maybe there's some problems with the way they're constructed. They're slow. They're kind of clogging the bases, as Dusty Baker once would have said. They're making a lot of outs on the bases, as we've discussed. They're grounding into a lot of double plays, which can be a sign of a productive offense that puts a lot of righties who are hitting the ball on the ground, they really have just not converted their opportunities. And I think a lot of that must be bad luck and maybe some of it is lineup construction, but you look at the names here and you would expect them to be better. And so it's always a tricky thing, like whom do you blame in a situation like this? And they're not out of it or anything, but they are very much on the bubble. They're just a few games over 500. Entering Monday's game, they have roughly a 50-50 shot to make the playoffs. But a lot of that is wildcard odds because they're behind Boston and Tampa Bay in the division and even a bit behind the Blue Jays at this point. Boston and Tampa Bay in the division and even a bit behind the Blue Jays at this point.

And so it's a pretty tenuous spot. But you look at their projections coming into this season and not that the Fangraphs preseason playoff odds are the be all and end all, but they were projected to have the best record and the best playoff odds of any team in the majors except the Dodgers. Coming into this year, there were certainly people who were pointing out, yes, they could have spent more, they could have been more aggressive. But given what they had, they really stacked up pretty well. They seemed like the favorite in that division and probably in that league. And so that hasn't happened.

And so when you go from looking great on April 1st to looking not so great on June 28th, then is that Boone's fault for not getting more out of that roster? Is it just the player's fault? Is it Cashman's fault for not being more aggressive? Is it the Steinbrenner's fault? You have those choruses of, oh, if George were still alive, he would do this and he would do that. And he probably would have traded all of their homegrown players years ago. Also, how old would he be if he were still alive? He'd be pretty old. Yeah. Yeah. I think that if he were still alive, we maybe don't

know what he would be doing right now. He might be like, I am tired. I would prefer to not do this. Yeah. He'd be about to celebrate his 91st birthday, I guess. So, you know, possible. But yeah, I think people remember the Steinbrenner spending, which was good at sometimes, but they forget that he was constantly draining the farm system and bringing in over the hill veterans. And so that might have happened too. So there are trade-offs here, but I don't know what you do. Do you just wait and hope that they those seasons where things don't work out.

And, you know, Yankees fans are frustrated because they haven't won a World Series since the ancient days of 2009, which is a long time in Yankees land. Look, you live the life you live. And so the things that are emotionally resonant to you are emotionally resonant to you and I think that having perspective on their relative hardship is useful as a human being in the world but also like you live the life you do and so I don't want to make fun

of Yankees fans for being big crybabies because you've waited a long time by your standards but I again submit that it is useful for people to be well they're Jets fans so they are fans of a bad team

I do wonder you know as we think about the impact that the changes to the ball had to the way teams are gonna experience and perform offensively you know this is a they're literally dead last from a base running metric perspective

by our base running metric at Fangraphs. And you have a lot of guys who are big boppers and you've noted the problems they've had hitting into double plays and not being able to, you know, bring runners in. And so I wonder if some of what we're seeing is the effect of, you know this this ball on this team although i will say if you know anyone's going to be able to thump their way out of a slightly de-juiced ball you would expect that it would be aaron

judge and john carlos hanton so yes but perhaps not dj lemay hue who seems like he may have been one of the big beneficiaries of the ball not Not that he's not a good player. But yeah, like a lot of their offensive problems, you know, they're ninth in the majors or I guess tied for eighth as we speak in home runs. And if they were first or second in home runs where they've typically been, then I think a lot of these issues with the base clocking

and the slow hitters, like that's okay if you're hitting a bunch of three-run dingers, which historically they have, and they aren't to quite to the same extent this season. And so that really exacerbates the issues with like, you know, not making things happen on the base pass. Like they don't necessarily need to manufacture runs when they're hitting lots of home runs and manufacturing runs is often counterproductive. And that's been kind of a constant complaint about Yankees teams. Like, oh, they're going to be at some extra jeopardy in the playoffs because they're this all or nothing team. And there have

been so many studies about that that have shown that it's sort of an insignificant factor and there just isn't that much difference really. And so if you can be the big boppers that they're supposed to be and they've had injuries and that's been part of it too, but so many teams had, you know, I'm just saying like, yeah, you could critique the lineup construction and say they have too many of this same sort of guy, but they've had a lot of that same sort of guy in recent years too. And they've just slugged their way through it and it's been okay, but you're right. Maybe the ball is affecting them more than the typical team.

Yeah. I just wonder if, you know, Lindsay tweeted about this over the weekend that it was striking to her and seeing them play against Tampa and the Red Sox that, you know, they just, they do look slow. You know, they look like a team that is last in base running. Yeah. Which, you know, and we'll remind our listeners, isn't just taking into account success on stolen bases.

It's like converting opportunities and not grounding into double plays and what have you. So it's an all-encompassing metric that's supposed to measure your efficacy on the base paths, not just as a base stealer, in case people were confused about that. But they do look, by comparison, like a team that is meant to thump a bunch of home runs. And that is not the sum total of their offense,

but it is sort of a meaningful gap between where they've been in the past and where they are right now. And I do wonder if it is a thing that they might find themselves sort of uniquely peeved by. Peeved by it, Ben? Yeah, because it can be extra frustrating, I think, when you have that style of offense and it's not firing on all cylinders.

I think people just get more miffed about that when they see guys swinging and missing a lot and not bringing in runners in scoring position, whereas you have, well, I mean, the Rays are a high strikeout offense too, but the Red Sox are not, and they put the ball in play and they converted a lot of their opportunities with runners in scoring position this weekend. And so that contrast was especially strong. It's like a tortoise and the hare sort of situation where you might rather have the bad base running team if it's also just the big beefy sluggers who hit more home runs than everyone.

Like in the long run, that might work out even if it's more frustrating for a series here and there. But they just have not delivered in the big beefy slugger department this year. So that has really amplified the other issues and it has made them less fun to watch. Well, and it's striking. You know, it's like you have certain expectations of guys coming into the year. And I think that often fans will be

like, well, if this guy is doing X, then here's where the team is going to end up being. And like, if you had told me before the season started that Gary Sanchez's WRC plus would recover to a 128, I would be like, they're leading the division by 15 games right because you just have this expectation of like who the underperformers have been in the last little bit and who the guys who have been sort of reliable stalwarts are and so it is interesting to see like even within that i'm like oh i would expect a good gary to mean a really good yankees team like good for gary he had this garbage year last year he's you know he's still not hitting for a higher average but that's not his game he's gonna you know bop a bunch of home runs and he's

walking a bunch and then he's doing those things and they're still like behind the race so it's just a funny it's a funny thing and the blue jays i have to remind myself of that old Carson that's a stoolie but yeah it's a six and a half games shouldn't feel so insurmountable for this club that we thought would be like the best one of the best teams in baseball but it feels like they're gonna have to work their way through the gauntlet of a wild card game at best and then kind of hope things go from there you know they're like a team where it's like the ball's been really important let me say what that means because everyone's like yeah meg it's baseball it's a funny thing about it the ball's really important but it's like you take the de-juiced ball and it's like maybe really getting at those yankees

and then you take the whack of sticky stuff on the ball and you know famously impacting some of them and they're probably just sitting there being like, we expected to have a very different relationship with this piece of equipment than we've ended up having. Yes. Yeah. Garrett Cole, I don't want to make too much of it, but in June, we're talking five starts here since his spin rates first sank. And they've been a bit up and down in his past five starts.

I don't know if he's experimenting with different substances or the lack thereof over those starts, but prior to June, all of his starts, he had an average four-seam fastball spin rate of more than 2,500 RPMs. Since then, it has been consistently below there and sometimes quite a bit below there. And in those five starts, and he's been effective in some of them, but coming into June, he had a 1.78 ERA with a 1.75 FIP and he was striking out 12.3 batters per nine. In the most recent five starts, he has a 4.65 ERA and a 5.63 FIP and he's striking out 9.3 per nine. So he's had some effective games in there, but even the effective games were like four strikeouts in eight innings, six strikeouts in seven innings. And I'm not saying he can't be good or effective in this version of himself.

He still throws really hard and has good stuff, obviously, but he has been diminished thus far. Good stuff, obviously, but he has been diminished thus far. Again, fairly small sample, but it does raise your eyebrow a bit. And given that he was one of the strengths of this team coming into June, that is somewhat dismayed that he has not delivered at the same level. But they do have a lot of games left against their division opponents, particularly the Red Sox. So if they do get things together, they could make up some ground fairly quickly. So it's not hopeless, but Yankees fans are not accustomed to being in the situation

where they're 50-50 shots to make the playoffs. They should just be in from day one. So I guess the good news is that Jason Dominguez is making his pro debut this week in the Complex League. So help is on the way, a few years away, but it's on the way. Yeah. I don't know. It is an interesting thing to sit with one's expectations of success and find them disrupted and needing to adjust them. And again, I am glad, in some ways, I am glad that there are fan bases where the expectation is one of both effort and success, right? Because there are plenty of fan bases who don't get to enjoy that. And I think that on some level, it does inform the sort of ownership's understanding of what they can get away with from a PR perspective. And so it is good for there to be teams where people's expectations are that they will try hard to win and then they will succeed at winning. That is good for the sport. Also, sometimes you just have a down year, and it doesn't mean that everyone affiliated with the organization has to lose their job. Sometimes it's just not your year. Sometimes the ball is different and guys aren't

performing quite the way that you'd expect. I think part of it is that in the recent past, as injuries have befallen the Yankees, we've looked around and been like, it's amazing what this depth has been able to do. Like they are dramatically exceeding our expectations. 2019, everyone gets hurt in the 103 games anyway. Right. And I remember we had a conversation with Lindsey

in August of that year about how are they doing this? Right. Like, how is this team managing to pull it together the way that they have? And, and so I wouldn't blame a Yankees fan who is perhaps just like confronting it based on what they've been able to do when they've been brought low and think, oh, well, you know, they were able to manage that in a year where, you know, I was about to suit up for the club. And so now in this year where a lot of guys have been healthy and you have basically the same team back together, well, why can't they? And so it is a natural human thing to have expectations informed by recent success or failure but i also just would you know invite those yankees fans to think about their good times because they've had a lot of them many more than most other people declining that invitation politely but politely well maybe not so politely yeah maybe they'll get some help later in the year I don't know Corey Kluber could come back Luis Severino could come back

Zach Britton could come back Maybe they'll make some trades at the deadline Maybe they'll have a happy ending Those poor Yankees But yeah things have been up and down I guess inconsistent has been the watchword Which I always feel like Inconsistent is not the most apt term to use.

It's kind of a euphemism. It really means like you just haven't been good enough. That's what it comes down to. I mean, I guess you could frame it that way. We've been good sometimes and not other times, so we haven't been good all the time. Therefore, we are inconsistent. Maybe I'm just scarred from the Joe chats at ESPN That they used to make fun of on Fire Joe Morgan Where Morgan would say that everything was inconsistent

That was the problem with every team and player That just wasn't good enough It's true that they've had some cold streaks And some hot streaks in the middle of this year But most teams do So all right I did want to mention While we were talking about Garrett Cole

And his lack of sticky stuff That we did have our first ejection. We were wondering if and when that would happen. And it did happen over the weekend. And the first player ejected under the new foreign substance enforcement plan was Hector Santiago of the Mariners. Yep. Probably no one had Hector Santiago in the pool, but that's who it turned out to be. And he is not admitting wrongdoing here. He maintains his innocence, and we're going to get some testing on the glove that was confiscated. But essentially, he had his glove checked between inningsnings and I will read some quotes here. The umpire who checked it, I think was Phil Cussey and the crew chief was Tom Hallion. It was a case of consultation. The umpires all got together. Hallion said, what we do is we go around the whole glove feeling for anything that would be sticky or something. It was very noticeable. feeling for anything that would be sticky or something. It was very noticeable. And then the rest of the crew inspected to make sure we were all in agreement. All four agreed that it was a sticky substance.

And that's why he was ejected. Santiago denied that he was using anything untoward. He said, all I used was rosin. I used it on both sides, trying to keep that sweat from dripping down to the hands. And Scott Service, his manager, denied that there was any sticky substance on the glove. And the interesting thing here is that it's not necessarily the case that the umpires were saying he was using spider tech or whatever exotic substance. Santiago said, what they told me was you can't use rosin on the glove hand.

When I use rosin, I dab on both sides. The umpire said you couldn't use it on the glove hand. And if that's the case, I went back and I looked at the memo that MLB sent to the ball and may not, quote, have on his person or in his possession any foreign substance. Although pitchers may continue to use the rosin bag as contemplated by the rules. That's a weird word to use there. Official baseball rule 6.02d prohibits players from applying rosin from the bag to their gloves or otherwise dusting any part of their uniforms with the rosin bag. There's a Q&A section later in the memo that says, can pitchers continue to use the rosin bag on the pitching mound? And the answer is yes, but official baseball rules 6.02d prohibits players from applying rosin from the bag to their gloves or otherwise dusting any part of their uniforms with the rosin bag. So I guess it could be the case that he was just

using rosin, but he was using it on the glove hand and the glove, and that that is the problem. And so even if they don't detect some exotic substance on there, they could still say, it was a lot of rosin on the glove, and therefore you are still guilty. So that would perhaps be still grounds for suspension, but not the case that he was detected using something that he's not supposed to be using, just that I guess it was possibly applied to some part of his person or his equipment where it was not supposed to be. Although again, service says it was not on the glove. Yeah. And so this is part of the issue too, which is that you're not only enforcing to find the stuff that has changed, right? Spider attack and what have you, but there are going to be guys who probably just don't have a complete understanding of the rule, even as written with respect to something like Rosin and think that this is fine. I don't know. I did like the forensic files approach they took to it.

No, I did like the forensic files approach they took to it. Yeah, it didn't seem like it was total CSI. The person who put the glove in the bag didn't seem to be wearing gloves or anything as far as I could see. And then they shipped the glove off. I saw some tweets like, the glove has arrived in New York. It's like the chain of custody, I hope, is clear here. But yeah, Santiago said, once they take it back and check it, it's just sweat and rosin. If they're going to do all this science stuff, it's going to be sweat and rosin. We'll be all right.

And Server said it's about 85% to 90% humidity today. He had rosin all over himself. When you put rosin on sweat, it gets sticky. Our guys are doing the right thing. We're following the rules. But Halian said, you just use your judgment on what you would consider is sticky and not sweat it gets sticky our guys are doing the right thing we're following the rules but hallion said you just use your judgment on what you would consider is sticky and not a norm for what we have seen over all our careers in baseball so he's saying it's extra sticky even compared to the norm

but then again umpires have not actually been checking pitchers routinely so do they even know what the norm is i don't know and. And is it possible to, if you are super sweaty and it's hot and humid, and if you're using rosin in the approved way, might you still get it on some other part of your person? It's like we were talking about with the sunscreen, which Santiago said he used to use sunscreen and rosin, and here he was just using rosin. But again, could it maybe migrate in an innocent way to your glove it seems hard to say yeah i i think that there is the potential for not false positives but false positives yeah right and given that it is just rosin presumably like let's assume that it is just rosin and sweat

and there is some amount of natural substance migration that can take place like what are they what are they gonna do after that you know like what is the conversation that they have with the player in the club to determine the veracity of what he just said like can they look and be like well you didn't pitch especially well so you're probably trying to right yeah any business here i don't know We just got an email from a Patreon supporter, Brooks, who said the discussion about the sticky stuff enforcement often notes how awkward it is for everyone when the umps check a pitcher who just got shelled.

So here's my idea. If at least one run scores that inning, the pitcher isn't checked. What's the downside? So that's an option, I guess, like the you suck exception. No. If you are ineffective, then we just presume that either you weren't using Stinky Stuff or it wasn't a performance enhancer because you were so bad. Therefore, you don't get checked.

Like in that inning when he was checked or before he was checked, I think Santiago went walk, strikeout, single, single, walk. And then he was replaced after a run scored. So you could say, oh, he's exempt because he sucked. I don't think that you can do that, though, because the purpose of the rule is that someone is using a substance with the intent of improving their performance. Over the last two years, it's not like there have been no bad pitching performances, but we still think that the use of sticky stuff was pretty pervasive, right? And so I think that if you're going to have enforcement that people view as fair and equally applied, that it is just better to check everybody and then do what they're doing here, which is follow up with testing if there's a case that is somewhat ambiguous, rather than say, oh, well, you know, you gave up two earned because it's like, what is the measure that you're using?

Is it runs? Is it you gave up heart contact? Is it you gave up, you know, singles? Like what is what is the measure of it being sucky? And people might have one in mind, but I think that it is just cleaner and less apt to result in some sort of favorable treatment for some rather than others. If you say, this is what we're doing. Position players, when you pitch like we did, we're going to check you for the sicky stuff. We're going to check the best starter and the worst reliever. Everybody gets checked because what we really don't want to have is some sort of inequitable enforcement that sort of prioritizes some guys over others.

So I think, unfortunately, you got to check them all. I agree. So we will see what the results say and whether Santiago can escape this suspension. But we had the first case of an ejection. And while we're talking about umpires intervening and having confrontations with teams, can we just talk about this minor league incident, which happened on Friday in a AAA game involving the Louisville Bats, the Reds AAA affiliate. And this was a weird one. So we had an umpire wardrobe malfunction, and it was not a pant splitting, which we have discussed before. This was a belt breaking. And so there was already some acrimony here going on between

these teams, and people were upset with the umpire's strike zone. It was the bottom of the sixth, and there was one out, and the bats shortstop Alfredo Rodriguez was hitting, and he took a pitch, the second pitch of the at bat, which was called a strike. And he wasn't happy about it. And he dragged his bat along the part of the batter's box where he believed that the pitch had crossed. And he was immediately ejected for that gesture. And then the manager of the bats, Pat Kelly, came out to argue. But it settled down and no one was ejected immediately. And he went back to the dugout and then another batter came out, Errol Robinson, and he finished the at bat.

And he fouled a pitch off his foot. And as he was kind of collecting himself after that foul, it became clear that there was an issue with the home plate umpire's belt. And this umpire, Takahito Matsuda, who I believe was promoted to AAA last season, but there was no AAA season last year. So he's a rookie ump in AAA, and he is trying to become the first Japanese-born MLB umpire, which is a cool story. And we wish him well, but this was not his best day. This sort of thing can happen to big league umps too. But in this case, his belt broke and it looks like his buckle just came clean off. I don't know how this happens. I've never had a belt mishap quite like this. And it's not like he is straining the belt like you sometimes see in the

the pants splitting incidents he is a slight person and so it's what a nice what a what a tactful way of saying he's a skinny he's a skinny guy he is quite skinny and he couldn't continue without the belt because it looked like his pants would just fall down. They used the belt to hold up the balls. True, true, yes. Ball bags. I was about to do a bad sentence and I saw the edge of the cliff

and I pulled up. Barely. You still said ball bag, but yes. You have to have something to clip that to. To kill those weighty balls. Oh, no. But not sticky, at least.

Oh, no. I would have been worried, though, about his pants staying up without the belt, just aside from the ball back, because the pants were a bit billowy on him. And so he borrowed a belt from, I think, the first base umpire. It's somewhat striking to me how much taking the belt off removed his authority in my eyes. It made him look just less authoritative. I don't know whether that had something to do with it, but during that wardrobe fix while they were exchanging belts and the umpires came together to try to help him with the belt. It looked like they were trying to repair it at first, but then they just did a belt swap. And as he was trying to buckle the replacement belt, the manager, Pat Kelly of the Bats, who had come out before, apparently said something from the dugout and i wonder why this should be like one of those caption contests or something where we speculate about what pat kelly said to this umpire as he was struggling to keep his pants up but whatever he said got him run out of this game and so matsuda

as he was trying to buckle his belt ejected the manager just like in one little smooth motion trying to buckle his pants with one hand giving him the old heave ho with the other and that was a spectacle that i had not quite seen so congrats to him on his mechanics here on multitasking doing the ejection and the belt buckling at the same time but i don't know whether it had anything to do with like insecurity about just like how unofficial he looked in that moment where he had no belt and just looked almost naked without the belt in a way. And so I don't know if it was like, I need to maintain my authority here. I'm just going to toss him while I keep my pants up with one hand or what. But this was quite quite entertaining we will link to the video for

everyone to enjoy he does look vulnerable in a way that is surprising and it made me wonder were those his pants because they don't they seem very loose yeah they do they don't seem like they are well-fitting pants so you know he either needed a new belt or a new pair of pants and he wasn't going to take his pants off so he had to use the belt but um but yeah it was he did seem quite vulnerable and i think mostly because the pants were so baggy and so he sort of had he sort of had the look it was not quite as extreme as this but it did remind me once he removed the broken belt and then was fumbling around with his compatriots belt of like you know if you were like playing dress up in your parents clothes as a kid and you're like trying to look like you're going to the office so you're wearing your parents suit yes it doesn't fit on like um you know maybe you

are one of several children sitting on each other's shoulders trying to impersonate an adult person. You would pick a suit like that. So that's kind of what it reminded me of. And so I guess if that is also what it reminded him of, that he might feel quite vulnerable. And then any kind of snarky aside would lead to an ejection because you just have to reassert your authority. Really? Yeah. lead to an ejection because you just have to reassert your authority.

While we're talking about instances of lack of professionalism on the field, I wanted to mention Zach McKinstry, who was a hitting hero for the Dodgers over this weekend and seemingly improved at the plate as a result

of a tip about his mechanics from the Dodgers who informed him that his eyes had not been open as he was hitting. And apparently that was the key. So he had a big weekend against the Cubs. He hit a grand slam, which was the first grand slam he had hit apparently at any level in his career.

And he hit multiple home runs. And so he explained after the fact, actually, I was closing my eyes on contact, which is wild to think. So I was closing my eyes on contact and we kind of saw that in San Diego. We started working on that, making sure my eyes were open and it helped. And I started seeing the ball a little bit longer out of the pitcher's hand. It's been good. I've been hitting the ball hard ever since dave roberts said that was a new one for me he said he probably wouldn't have hit the grand slam if his eyes were closed so turns out keep your eye on the ball still has some validity at the major league level when this came out craig goldstein g chatted me and is like they build a world-class player development

organization and then the thing is like hey buddy you want to keep your eyes open though yeah i just uh yeah it's like it's like when players finally get lasik and then they're like yeah it turns out like being able to see is great really helps a lot yeah also just opening your eyes yeah just gotta you gotta keep those bad boys open. Yeah. Those Dodgers, they're just on the cutting edge of everything. I haven't gone back and reviewed the video to see because one of the things that's interesting to me is that I think studies have shown that hitters cannot actually track the ball in its last little bit of the leg of the journey from the mound to home plate because it's traveling so fast that

you just don't have the ability to track it really. And so there are tests with like visual occlusion where you block out the hitter's view somehow over that last little bit and it doesn't really affect their ability to hit the ball because like all of the information that they can receive and process in time to swing that happens before that last little bit of the journey so in theory like having your eyes closed at contact should not actually matter if you had your eyes closed like a little bit before contact and so i don't know at what point he was closing his eyes like if you closed your eyes when the pitcher threw the ball that would be very bad if you close your eyes when the pitcher threw the ball, that would be very bad. If you close their eyes like as the bat was making contact, it seems like that shouldn't be as big a deal.

Right. Although I've seen some studies. I'll link to some of the studies on this. But I think there's some hitters who maybe actually intentionally take their eye off the ball in the last little bit of its trajectory so that they can focus on the point of contact. And that way they can at least get some feedback, like, did they hit it the way that they wanted to? Did they miss it? How did they miss it? Were they late? Were they too high or too low? And at least you could get that feedback and maybe apply it to your next swing. But in general, I think the ball is just moving too fast and too much at that point to actually see it and swing and adjust your swing in time. So I don't know. I would think that McKinstry might

have had to have his eyes closed like a little bit before he made contact in order for that to actually hurt him. But in general, probably for the best to have your eyes open. So that seems like sound advice. Yeah. Just like as a default, when engaged in a bat and ball skill that is dependent on hand-eye coordination, the eye's right in there. It's right in the skill set. So you got to keep them open. Exactly. Yeah. It's like when people learn to shoot guns in TV shows and movies and they always squeeze their eyes closed. And then the expert marksman says, no, you got to keep your eye open.

I don't know if that's actually correct, because I don't know anything about marksmanship. But maybe the same principle applies that you want to see your target generally, whether you're shooting or swinging. So it is funny that if you do slow-mo on pictures, a lot of them, they look like their eyes are closed at the moment of release. So, you know, that's confusing. It's also sort of scary. Yeah. So the last thing I wanted to mention, I's worse to have a team that loses a lot

or whether it's significantly worse to lose like 100 games or to lose 90 games like you're missing the playoffs. Either way, is there like a linear relationship between losses and lack of enjoyment? And one thing we were saying is that it matters like where you are kind of in the competitive cycle and do you have entertaining players and is there hope on the horizon?

And I think the Tigers are a pretty good example of that. They're going to be a losing team on the season. I think they're not going to make the playoffs. In that sense, their season is sort of hopeless, but they have achieved a level of respectability where they're not bad to watch anymore. And going back to the beginning of May, they're 26 and 25. I think over their last 45 games, if we're cherry picking, they're 25 and 20.

So they've actually held their own and treaded water lately. And they have Manning, Mize, and Scouble all in the rotation now. And all three of those guys have ERAs under four in June, albeit not with the most impressive peripherals in Manning's case and in Mize's case. But that's the Tigers rotation of the future. And it is assembled now. And most days you get to see one of those guys go. They have been respectable. And I think if you are respectable, even if you end up with a losing record, if you can keep yourself in games and you can give your fans a glimpse of the good team to come, then there's a long way to go. And the lineup is not great. And there are a lot of holes on that team.

And Akil Badu is still good, which is fun. He's sustained his early season performance. He's kept it up. And that's nice to have that productive player in the lineup. But on the whole, there's a long way to go still. But they're good enough now. And they're enough promising players that it's not terrible to be a Tigers fan now. So I think that's a good example of a team that is like losing and not going to make the playoffs, but it's not a lost year. It's not a depressing year. So that's something.

It is something. Casey Mize has that big wide face, you know, some big wide face. I think you're right though. I think that what you want, and we will have to see how the other sort of players who are thought to be part of what will be the next good tigers team round into form i think that there is some concern there and you know there have been some ups and downs even among the three starters who you named but i think that if you can give a glimpse of something exciting that might end up defining a fan's experience of the team for the

next couple of years. That's something. I'm like, yeah, sure. Maybe you look at Badoo and you say, well, you're probably running an unsustainable BABIT, but it's a fun thing. Who cares? You want to have fun. This is part of why I think that it's so discouraging when teams that are bottoming out trade like the last respectable big leaguer they have because you're like who are who are people gonna watch and then it turns out that the answer is cedric mullins and it's fine but like you worry that you know some of the trades you're making are gonna leave people with very little and instead you get something that people can be excited about you want there to always be an answer to like whose jersey would you buy yeah and there needs to be a guy who you

think about even if you don't pull the trigger because those are very expensive and sometimes in the case of the all-star jersey is just like ugly in a way that even i can't love um but there there needs to be an answer you want a fan to be able to look at a guy on the 26th man not just a prospect but a guy on the 26th man and say i think about buying that guy's jersey right you know and if there's no one you can wear it for years to come right right and so if and if the answer is no one then you're in then you're in real rough shape but yeah respectability is is a. So much of our experience of baseball is just being able to, as we said last time, imagine and or pretend that you're one really good hot streak away from being in the playoff conversation. And if you can manage that, then you're somewhere. You're getting somewhere.

Yeah. Okay. Well, congrats to the Tigers on getting to that point where they could have a far-fetched dream of things working out. But even if they don't this year, at least you can look ahead to next year, the year after. You can see things starting to come together. They're coming out of this. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. They're on the upswing, not on the downslope. So yes, that's something. Of course, they've gone through some truly terrible years to get to this point. So there's that. And I'm still like, yeah, as you said, I'm not sure that all those guys are going to be great. I still don't know what Casey Mize is going to be exactly. Like he has turned out to be not a high strikeout guy, really. And so maybe that limits his ceiling, but maybe he could gain some strikeouts at some point. He's clearly like a tinkerer and a pitch design and a technology type. And I don't know whether his ceiling is down from when he was number one pick, number one prospect. Maybe it's not ace now. Maybe it's more mid-rotation guy or maybe it's too soon to say. But at least that's someone you can pencil in there for years to come.

Granted, pitchers are always variable and it's tough to count on them, but still, there's the makings of a strong rotation there. Yeah, and at least a wide-faced one. That too. All right. Well, it's almost time to watch Otani, so I guess I got to go. The angels call. Enjoy.

Well, shortly after we finished speaking, Shohei Otani homered again. He hit his 26th to tie Vlad for the major league lead. It was 117.2 miles per hour and looked and sounded every bit of it. He hits homers faster than we can post podcasts. He's not Kyle Schwarber or anything, but the guy is pretty good. I guess I sort of jinxed the Tigers and Matt Manning. They got blown out by Cleveland. Matt Manning's ERA in June, no longer under four. In fact, no longer under eight. But hey, you're going to get some growing pains. And the Angels beat the Yankees

five to three. Cashman and Boone are trending again on Twitter as I speak. Dark days in Yankees nation. The Yankees were 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position on Monday, adding to the frustration. Of course, the Angels were 0 for 10, and they won anyway. One thing I meant to mention earlier when I was discussing the experience of watching one team just about every day is how much the quality of the broadcast crew matters when you are hyper-focused on a team like that, when you're spending so much time listening to one group of announcers. Because usually if I'm just flipping between teams and games, I'll just catch snippets of announcers, and it might not be enough to form a complete opinion of them, or I'll just kind of tune them out, or maybe I'll even mute them. Apologies to any

broadcasters who are listening, but when you're watching day in and day out, you get a feel for that broadcast. And look, it's a matter of taste, but the Angels TV broadcast, it's not my favorite. I wouldn't say it greatly detracts from the experience, but I also wouldn't say it enhances the experience. They do discuss Otani incessantly, which of course I approve of. But other than that, I don't feel like I'm learning much when I watch those broadcasts, which maybe is too high a bar. I don't necessarily have to be learning something if I'm having a good time. There's a lot of corniness, and they do own the corniness. It's not an unpleasant listen. I have heard far worse. And they don't do a lot of corniness, and they do own the corniness. It's not an unpleasant lesson. I

have heard far worse. And they don't do a lot of misinformation or misleading information, which is kind of the cardinal sin for broadcasts, I think. There's not a lot of denigrating new age analytics or anything like that. Just doesn't really stand out for me. And when I'm watching that much Angels baseball and what is on the screen is not always the most entertaining. To have a really above average booth would be a big bonus, I think. So, you know, it'd be nice if the Angels could trade for the Dodgers booth or the White Sox booth or the Mets booth, maybe, just to sweeten my Shohei Otani watching experience.

Some booths just have that incredible chemistry, and they can also mix in the first-person experience of people who played the game with some of the sabermetric insight. And it becomes a nice blend. And there's a little bit of ribbing and joshing, but in a good-natured way. And I know Victor Rojas left the Angels broadcast after last season. So it could be that they're just finding their footing. And it could also be that you like the Angels broadcast more than I do.

Again, I don't hate it. It's just for the first time in a while, the commentary is actually affecting my enjoyment of baseball in a real way on a day-to-day basis. And that kind of came to mind on Monday when I heard David Cohen doing the broadcast of the Shohei Otani game. Not that the Yes Network booth is universally great either, but Cohen is pretty great. So when you hear that kind of analysis, that's just kind of a cut above that makes you miss it when you don't have it You can support effectively wild and make sure that you'll never miss that on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get Themselves access to some perks Jeffrey Pilch and for Evie grant Mulligan Chandler Ellsbecker and Matthew felling thanks to all of you

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild Thank you. on Messaging System if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance in sweltering Portland, Oregon, where he has no air conditioning. Please try to stay cool and stay safe, Dylan, and do not vomit as you are editing the podcast the way that Dylan Bundy vomited on the mound as he was pitching against the Yankees on Monday. Yes, that happened again. Bo Burrows can sympathize.

Thanks, as always, for listening, and we will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then.