Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1717: The Bad Hatters

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Rays’ combined seven-inning hitless game, knuckleballer Mickey Jannis as a secret weapon in MLB The Show, Jacob deGrom and the near-impossibility of breaking the ERA record, Billy Hamilton and players with the highest highlight-to-value ratios, a six-man outfield against Joey Gallo, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the retelling […]

In the end, we'll leave it all behind In the end, we'll leave it all behind Because the life I think I'm trying to find Is probably all in my mind. Hello and welcome to episode 1717 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangrafts and I am joined as always by Ben Limburg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing alright. So this season we've had six solo no-hitters, one combined no-hitter, one solo seven-inning hitless start, which was technically not a no-hitter.

And now, courtesy of five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers on Wednesday, we've had a seven-inning combined hitless game, which is not technically a no-hitter. Are you excited for the seven-inning combined hitless game? No. This whole season has been an exercise in like, okay, do we still care about no hitters? What about this permutation of no hitters? What about this thing that had no hits, but it's not actually a no hitter? We're lowering the bar over and over.

And yeah, I think the seven inning combined hit list game, that's a little bit lower than I can limbo under personally yeah it's not on the floor but it's in the vicinity it's hovering with with pronounced precarity over the floor i mean i'm i mean like good job all you rays you know you did what you were setting out to do today which is you won your baseball game. So that's exciting. I'm glad for you. Doesn't cheapen your win, but it does make me not particularly care about the constituent elements that went into that win.

Yes, exactly. So I've got a bunch of banter here. We're going to have a guest and we're going to talk about hats, something that I know nothing about, or at least knew very little about before this interview, but now I know a whole lot more and soon you will too. But before we get to that, our guest on our latest episode, Mickey Janus, the knuckleballer in the Orioles organization. When we were talking to him, I was saying something about how it sure seems like in this day and age where everyone's throwing super hard, it should be extra advantageous to be a knuckleballer, maybe not only

because he's the only one currently, but also because the change of speeds and the contrast should be so strong. And he said that they've even talked about using him as an opener potentially for that reason to have some sort of hangover effect. And I came to learn that that is already happening in MLB The Show. So in that game, Mickey Janus is now a superstar suddenly. So knuckleballers are always pretty popular in the show, as I understand it. I was corresponding with Matt Piscitella of the NPP group, who is also an Effectively Wild listener. And guys like Steven Wright and Ryan Firbin, they've been valuable before, even though they weren't great pitchers because the

knuckleball is hard to hit in the game. But now Mickey Janus is the only knuckleballer in MLB The Show because he's the only knuckleballer in MLB or was recently. And so he was just added to the game and suddenly he's popping up everywhere because the contrast going from really hard throwers to Mickey Janus is apparently really tough. And the current meta in the game, the prevailing strategy that everyone is using, it's like sinker cutter apparently because it's just it's easier to tunnel those pitches in the game. And so it's hard to distinguish them and they can be thrown in the zone effectively and so janice you know he has the sinker but he also has the fastball and the knuckleballer and apparently it's pretty effective when it comes to disrupting timing and if you look on youtube i'll link to a video that was like, I used the most toxic

pitcher in MLB The Show. And it's Mickey Janus. And you can see footage of it looks pretty hard to hit, which, you know, the actual knuckleball is designed to be, but maybe even more so in the game. So that's kind of cool. You know, not necessarily an MLB superstar, but an MLB The Show superstar, at least. He's going to have a very strange contingent of people like clamoring for him to get back up to the big leagues and he'll say oh you're so invested

in my career and they're like yeah we play you in the show right exactly yeah that's how i came to realize this because mickey jenis tweeted about his podcast appearance and matt was tweeting at him like hey i just faced you in my last four online games in mlb the show because everyone is using you suddenly. And it seems like they anticipated that. Every player has a rating on a 99 scale. And Mickey Janis has a 41, which is very low, which could be partly because he's maybe not the greatest pitcher much as we love him, or at least he hasn't demonstrated so far that he should have a star level rating. But also it seems like they may have intentionally nerfed him or weakened him

in anticipation, you know, just to dissuade players from using him. But apparently it's not working because as low as you put his rating, it's still fun to use him and it's still effective to use him. And so it's not the first time that I've been made aware of something like this. When we used to talk about mid-plate appearance pitching changes on the podcast, and I wrote about that and, hey, why doesn't this happen in MLB? It happens in college baseball, but not at the highest level. And people let me know, well, it happens in MLB The Show, and it works really well. It's impossible when someone makes a pitching change with two strikes or something and brings in someone else and it's like automatic out. So sometimes, you know, it's not a perfect recreation of baseball,

but sometimes maybe it tells you something that MLB teams should sit up and take note and give Mickey Janus a shot. I continue to be weirded out by the faces, just the uncanny valley effect of the faces in the show. I am, as you know, not. I'm not a gamer, Ben. No one's putting me on a Twitch stream to play a game for eight hours. But part of the problem with the show specifically for me is that I can't stop looking at the faces. I get too distracted by the faces. Yeah. I get too distracted by the faces.

Yeah. Even the new next-gen versions of the game, they're not really rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of that hardware. So perhaps in the next annual rollout or two, they'll really upgrade the faces and maybe they'll be a little less uncanny and then you can get into it and use Mickey Janus. There you go. Yeah. Apparently, it's like everyone's using Corbin Burns and Corey Kluber and all these like sinker cutter guys. And then Mickey Janus, just a wild Mickey Janus has appeared in every online game suddenly. So that's pretty great. So we can do our daily dose of Otani, I guess, but I will put it off for a moment, putting off the inevitable. But we're recording

here on Thursday afternoon and Jacob deGrom has already pitched. And he has pitched quite well, as he always does, but it really hammers home how hard it is to break Bob Gibson's record because he keeps pitching great, and yet you have to be almost perfect in order to actually have an ERA that low. almost perfect in order to actually have an ERA that low. So in this game, he went seven innings and gave up four hits and he didn't walk anyone and he struck out 10, but two of his hits were solo homers. So he gave up two earned runs and that raced his ERA to 1.08. So he is now just barely below Bob. And it's like, I'm looking at all his recent outings and his ERA keeps climbing every time and they're all good games. But it's like, you can't allow runs if you want to have an ERA of one or lower. So there's absolutely no margin for error. And you can see why it's just so

impossible. Even with lower innings totals, it's just so, so hard to do. Yeah. I was about to ask, is part of the problem that he's going a little bit deeper of length than he was before? It could be. Although, yeah, in his previous start, he started out poorly and gave up a few runs and then he settled down and was great the rest of the way. So I don't know if it's that or if it's just that he is not quite perfect, as close to perfect as he looked. He does allow runs every now and again. And if you want to have a sub one ERA or a sub 1.12 ERA, you can't do that. You're just not allowed to allow earned runs ever. So you have to hold him to an extremely high standard or low standard when it comes to ERA. So his ERAs now have gone from, you know, he had a 0.50 ERA on June 21st when he pitched five shutout innings. And so his last few starts, he went six,

gave up two runs, you know, that's a good game. That's better than a quality start, but his ERA went up from 0.50 to 0.69. And then he pitched again and he went seven innings and he gave up three runs and he struck out 14 and didn't walk anyone. And his ERA went up to 0.95 from 0.69. And now another really good game. And it went up again from 0.95 to 1.08. So it's tough. It's really tough.

But he remains really awesome at baseball. He remains really awesome at baseball. I mean, just like really very awesome at baseball. It's okay if he doesn't have the lowest ERA ever. He has the lowest ERA now. He's really awesome at baseball. I mean, just like really very awesome at baseball. Yeah. It's okay if he doesn't have the lowest ERA ever. He has the lowest ERA now. Right. And that's still pretty good.

Yeah. And I wonder how far removed from that little run of like what part of Jacob deGrom is ailing him today. Right. We were on for a bit. How far removed from it we will have to be before we can fully relax. a bit, how far removed from it we will have to be before we can fully relax. But I think part of why the slow creep of his ERA hasn't quite registered with me is that I'm just so happy that his arms are attached and he's not on the injured list and he's pitching so well. And yeah, it's really a marvel to see. It's really a very cool thing that we get to witness, but it has to be irritating on some level to come away

with a start that just anyone would say, I did good work today. I did really excellent superlative work and then be like, oh no, I have a one, two, three, four. That's not how Jacob deGrom talks because his voice doesn't sound like that, but the spirit's there. Yeah. At least the Mets won that game. So that's something. So he's a player who generates a lot of highlights and he is also excellent. And there's another player who generates a lot of highlights who is not as excellent on the whole, and that's Billy Hamilton. And I'm sure that you've seen the catch and probably everyone's seen the catch and we will link to the catch in case you haven't, but he made a phenomenal catch on Tuesday and, you know, he ran like halfway across the outfield and he slid and he almost did like a Jim Edmonds where he catches it as he's running it in the other direction. It was a little more diagonal than that, but it was rainy and muddy.

And so he did like a slip and slide on the warning track and it was awesome. It was a catch so good that the white socks dfa'd adam eaton i know that was not actually why they did that i don't think that's why they did no he had been bad also but it was a really great catch and yet you know billy hamilton is kind of where he usually is as far as war value and and other stats i guess he's he's hit for a bit more power this year, and he has an 83 WRC plus as we speak, which is good by Billy Hamilton standards, and the defense is always there, of course. But he is someone who we have watched in a lot of exciting highlights over the years, and yet the war, he has produced, I guess, 10.8 war according to Van Graaff. So that's not

bad. And he's been in the big leagues for a while, but he never has been a star player and he's never gotten on base enough even to start regularly in recent seasons. And so he's kind of been a little bit of a journeyman of late. But I just wonder if you can recall anyone whose ratio of highlights to war or highlights to whatever metric of choice is higher or was higher than Billy Hamilton's or among active players, because with him, it's the defensive highlights, of course, and then also the base running and base stealing highlights. And he turned out to be a little less of a superlative base stealer, I guess, than we had hoped when it seemed for a while when he was in the minors. Like it might just be physically impossible to catch him because he is just so fast that your pop time would have to be unbelievable in your time to the plate.

And as it turned out, like, you know, he's very good at stealing bases, but he wasn't uncatchable. But still, there are some base stealing highlights. And then there have been a lot of highlights where like Billy Hamilton scores from first on a pop up or something like, you know, that was a whole genre of highlights for a while. So I'm trying to think and I don't know that anyone comes to mind who was like that watchable in spurts, but also not actually that great on the whole. Yeah. Gosh, what a good question. good question yeah which i spring on you with no preparation you really did use camp um i thought about it a little bit and no one better really came to mind or more fitting that makes me feel better i'm like scrolling through years of

decades of sad baroness times to be like does that guy fit no he was just bad yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna think about it though and if i come up with a good answer before we record next i will write it down lest i forget and and see if it passes muster because if he isn't at the top of that leaderboard he's in the top two right like it's it's him and, you know, I can't come up with another name right now. Bo Jackson. In our baseball watching period, you know, Bo kind of predated us really for our prime baseball watching years. But he's up there. I mean, he was an above average hitter, but not a great player overall because he was trying to play two sports.

And, you know know he started late and all of that but you know he probably could have been an incredible player if he had devoted himself to baseball from the start most likely and not been injured well yeah and i think that part of the difference too is is an aesthetic one you know like billy hamilton's this like beanpole of a of a guy yeah and like you you look at bo jackson and you're like wow cool demigods they're real who knew right like so part of his watchability was just his person was just you know like he's like beautiful in like an art form kind of way yeah and i think that that that changes the dynamic of watchability and as you said like he was just a

far better hitter than Billy Hamilton has ever been. So you had that potential for fireworks there too. But yeah, I mean, it's hard when you're the guy who everyone associates with wall climbing, right? With scaling a wall to maybe catching the outfield. Or snapping your bat over your knee, making incredible throws or whatever. Yeah. Right.

So I think Bo was too good and too consistently watchable. Again, as you pointed out, like before our time. So I don't know what someone who engaged with him sort of contemporaneously as a baseball fan would have to say about that. But my sense of him is that he was more consistently watchable but i'm gonna i'm gonna think about it i'm gonna feel bad if i don't come up with a good answer listeners think about it if we're overlooking anyone obvious feel free to write it and i don't mean someone who like was incredible for a year and was really watchable but was like actually

good during that time but then got hurt or declined prematurely or something i mean like a player who just actually was never really that good on the whole but in spurts in short bursts in individual plays was riveting and i guess like you know vince coleman maybe is like in the billy hamilton genre also although he got to play more in a long time because it was the 80s and everything. But yeah, someone like that. We'll mull it over, but I'm happy that we've had Billy Hamilton, even if he has not panned out to the extent that some hoped that he would. He's still been a lot of fun.

So Joey Gallo is the latest hitter to just go on a Otani or Schwarber level tear. He hit two more on Wednesday. I think he's up to now 10 in his last 10 games, something like that. And he is going to be going head to head with Otani in the Home Run Derby, which I'm looking forward to. Always enjoyed Joey Gallo and always enjoyed seeing him mash homers. But did you see the defense against Joey Gallo the other day? I think it was the Tigers who shifted against him and it was a four-man outfield, but that is not unique or even all that uncommon against Gallo. You see four-man outfields against him from time to time, but this was really sort of a six-man outfield, at least with two strikes. And I'll link to the stat cast diagram of where all the fielders were positioned and their distance from the plate. But it was like total four man outfield. And then also you had two fielders in the outfield to the right of second base. And the only infielder, the only person who was either on the dirt or on the infield grass. Anywhere inside of the outfield grass was the first baseman who had to be. And that was it. Other than that, it was just an entirely absent infield, at least with two strikes. I think initially it was just a regular, quote unquote,

four-man outfield. And then when he got two strikes on him, I think the other two infielders went out to the outfield. So it was this spectacle that you don't typically see. And I guess if he hits home runs every day, there's just no way to defend that effectively. But on this particular play, I believe that he grounded out to the shortstop who was in right field. So it worked. And people get mad at him for not bunting more than he does and when there's literally only one infielder and he is glued to first base you can understand that but also

he's hitting home runs every game now so do you want him bunting it's the age old debate but anyway I would miss things like this if we ban the shift or we force everyone to start in certain places. I still get a kick out of this, not the regular infield overshift, which is now almost the default defense. When you see something like this, which will never be the default because it doesn't make sense to do this against everyone, but I still enjoyed this and I would be sad if teams were not allowed to do this on occasion when it seemed to statistically make sense. Did you just hit home runs all the time? Everyone would just hit dingers every single time. But if I were someone who were good at hitting home runs, even relative to other baseball players, which I think we can safely say Joey Gallo is, I would really want to put a little something extra if I looked out and saw this.

Just as a ghost grew off, guys. And he grounded out, as you know know to the shortstop 198 feet away in right field what are we doing but i would if i had the ability to time a home run perfectly right we've spent so much time in the last couple of weeks talking about predicting events on the field and if i were a baseball player and i had the ability to say, like, I get a certain number of home runs in a season and I'm going to mostly spend those in moments where they really matter, right? Where they put my team ahead, where they give us a decisive lead, where they walk off a game, right? Those are the home runs you kind of save because you're like, ah, those mean something. They're big moments. They win games games for us but i would allow myself five to

stick it to the show not every time because you know you're you're joey gallo or i guess in this situation i'm joey gallo which is very surprising i am now quite tall but you know i'm joey gallo and i'm seeing maybe not this extreme of a shift but i am seeing a shift quite often because of my own tendencies so i couldn't do it every time because i would waste home runs that would otherwise be better spent trying to help the rangers win but god would i give myself five i'd give myself five so i could be like oh tigers you didn't know that this is one of the days where i get to decide silly yeah it would be very satisfying i also want to mention many people have sent us the clip of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. seemingly sort of predicting.

Yes, even though I hopefully politely discourage people from sending us every instance of a player predicting something because as it turns out, there are so many of them and there have been a few that we haven't actually mentioned on the podcast because they're just more of the same. But I did want to mention this one because there's a little bit of a different wrinkle. So this clip comes from a longer clip, which was just one of those players were mic'd up during a game, which is just the best. I honestly would rather watch players just talking on the field during the game than watching them actually play baseball. Do it every game.

Partly it's the novelty value, I guess, but also it's just so great. It's so much fun. It's such a good marketing thing if you want to look at it that way. Like, hey, baseball players are fun and they make silly jokes and they say stuff and they rag on each other. Anyway, I will link to the YouTube video because it's much longer than just the Vlad quote and it's just great. There's just so much good stuff in it that I want more of this. But I wanted to read an email we got

from Patreon supporter Wyatt, who notes an interesting thing about this video. So he writes, I felt this clip of Vlad Jr. on the base pass was worth sharing. In the bottom of the third of the June 30th game against the Mariners, Vlad walked. After Springer flies out in the next at-bat, Vlad tells Mariners first baseman Ty France that Randall Gritchick is going to double and that he will probably score from first. Gritchick ended up doubling down the left field line, and Vlad did manage to score from first. And Wyatt points out, I'm not sure that this qualifies as a called shot, since it seems more like a statement of intent. That is, if he doubles, I'm going to dig hard to try to score. But it's interesting hearing Ty France's retelling of the prediction to an umpire moments later, which is also in this video.

France says to the umpire, he just told me Gritchuk's going to hit a double and I'm going to score from first. That's exactly what he just told me, a man of his word. In France's version, Vlad boldly predicts with total certainty a double followed by him scoring. France totally admits the two probablies, Vlad included. Can't help but wonder how many of these successful prediction stories follow a similar path, with one player saying something like, you know, I think I might just hit a home run in my exit bat, which then turns into I'm going to hit a home run right here upon retelling. And I think that is probably true. So we're sort of seeing this happen in real if this happens, this is what will probably happen. Like he did say two probablys that he would probably score from first, probably. And then when Gritchick retells it, he admits the uncertainty and he just said, nope, he predicted he was definitely going to score. And that makes a better story. And it also makes a better story than the failed predictions you can see in the same video. If you watch the whole thing, you can hear Vlad saying he's going to hit a home run in that game, and he actually didn't hit one that whole series.

And in a different part of the video, Teoscar Hernandez predicts the Jays are going to score 10 runs in the inning, and Vlad says he's going to drive an 8 by himself. So players like to predict things. They're just being sort of silly. sort of silly. And I would guess that that is how a lot of these stories start and get circulated, that someone says something kind of tongue-in-cheek or maybe not with the certainty that he is reputed to have exhibited here. And then over subsequent retellings, it's, nope, he knew it all along and he declared it with complete confidence. This really complicates things for us in our analysis. Yeah. Because I think that it gives us a framework in which to understand why we only hear about the so-called predictions that come true. Because if you're just sitting there being like, I bet I could do that or I'd like to do that.

If you don't do it, no one remembers because it's like, well, we'd like to do a lot of things, but we don't get to because that's how life works. But then if it actually comes to fruition, it takes on this totally different tone and you're suddenly in Nostradamus. Also, I have a proposal for you. I'd like to make a trade in the way that we consume baseball media, which is I think that what we should do is we should trade out the in-inning manager interview for mic'd up moments. Oh, yeah. nobody nobody likes the manager and and they don't like them even if they like the manager it's not it's it's manager agnostic it's even broadcaster agnostic it's just sort of a waste but the mic'd up moments universally

delightful so i think that that's the swap that we should make because then we all get more of what we like and less of what we don't or don't care about. Yeah, totally agree. I just solved baseball. We can stop running the articles. It's done. At least I haven't seen any of those mid-game interviews with players on the field lately. So stressful.

Yeah, I sort of ranted about that when those were happening, but that seems to have stopped hopefully. But yeah, I would be in favor of making up every player who wants to be mic'd up. And I'm sure many don't because they want to just speak freely and not feel like someone's listening to everything they say. And I guess some other players might be wary of that too, just because if you think no one's listening, you might say things that you wouldn't say at other times that seems to happen sometimes so i don't know if there's like uh do you have to like tell people it's like you know two-party consent with the recording do you have to be like hey i'm mic'd up i think i've

seen that actually they all do it it's so yeah they all say hey just so you know yeah yeah hot mic here but you know that's an additional burden on the player. Like you have to go around telling everyone like I am a hot mic right now. So don't speak freely if you're going to say something that you don't want a potentially national audience to hear. three innings ago so that someone in the truck has a minute to look at it and say, oh, gosh, he's talking smack about someone everyone likes, going to cut that bit out or whatever. He did a bunch of swears or maybe he said something nasty about a teammate that's going to cause problems. You'd want to filter on it because we're trying to live in a civilization, but I think that you could rig it such that it would work and people wouldn't have to be too fussed about it.

Yeah. And in the other statistical curiosities or oddities that I wanted to acknowledge briefly, Eric Stephen, friend of the show, pointed out on Twitter on Wednesday that Albert Pujols is making his first career start in the number two slot in the lineup, which is kind of incredible. And I guess it makes, yeah. Can you believe that? That's like total fun fact. I can't believe that. I think that's an actual fun fact. No, it absolutely is. I mean, he has been playing for 20 years, 21 seasons at this point, and he's been a great hitter. And apparently he has never started a game in the number two spot. And I guess it sort of makes sense because his prime predated the period when it became

common for the best hitter on a team to hit second. So in Pujols' heyday, it was more common to have your power hitter, your best slugger batting third or fourth. And then later on, of course, he declined and Trout was batting second ahead of him all the time. So weird that he could have such longevity, such a long career and be such other great hitters from the past who that is probably also true because they were also they were always hitting third or cleaning up. But because Pujols is still with us, even though he is sort of a link to almost an earlier era of baseball. So for him not to have done it until now and then to do it now in his diminished state, of course, he has been better with the Dodgers, of course, and they've been shorthanded. But who would have guessed that Albert Pujols at age 41 would be batting second for what was supposed to be and may still be the best team in baseball. So that's just weird and fun all around.

Yeah. I mean, now that Steven Souza Jr. isn't there anymore, they can really let loose. Yes. What a weird year. Yeah, it really has been. And in the old guy still got it category, Joey Votto has hit well since we spoke about his recent decline. I often kind of mentally lump in with Pujols because like Pujols, he was signed forever and then became sort of a one-dimensional first baseman DH and then like a no-dimensional first baseman DH because he wasn't really hitting anymore. Miguel Cabrera has kind of been hitting lately, which has been nice because for a while, it was this depressing slog to milestones. It was like, all right, he's going for 500 homers, but he never hits them anymore.

And he's just like slowly, slowly crossing the finish line. And it was sort of sad to watch in a way, remembering how great Miggy was. But he is, I just thought of this because he got a hit in his first at bat on Wednesday. And entering Wednesday's game, since the start of June, Miguel Cabrera had hit 311, 351, 447. That's a 118 WRC+. It's a little Miguel Cabrera mini renaissance after he looked completely cooked to that point. Now, over that period, he has a 414 BAPIP. Sure. And I guess that's not sustainable.

No, probably not. 14 BAPIP. And I guess that's not sustainable with Miguel Cabrera's current sprint speed. And he had a 4.5% walk rate and a 27.9% strikeout rate. And it's not the best ratio either. And only hit three homers over that span. But he was hitting over 300 for a good more than a month there and we've talked about the tigers looking pretty darn good lately and holding their own and a lot of that is the young players and some of the recent arrivals and the young guns in the rotation but for at least a little while a little resurgence for Miguel Cabrera so that as he crosses the uh milestone lines here and he's at 2924924 hits, I suppose, as we speak mid-game and 494 homers. So he's looked a little bit like his old self lately, which has been nice to see. Yes. When I wrote about Cabrera as part of the positional power rankings to cover the Tigers DHs, they were ranked 13th. You might remember that we only rank 15 teams when we do the DH positional power rankings, unless it's 2020.

And I said, but maybe a small rebound looms, one driven by thump and plate discipline. If they can refloat the ever-given, surely other industry's giants can come unstuck. It's not the comp you want if you're Miguel Cabrera, I guess No, but you know, look at his June, he sure showed me Alright, and I also wanted to just shout out the odd Pablo Lopez start that happened over the weekend We didn't talk about it last time, but I think it was his July 2nd start He threw one pitch and that was it because he got ejected from the game. And this was not the first time that had happened. Baseball prospectus said that this was the ninth

time that a pitcher had been removed from a game after a single pitch, a starting pitcher that is. And in most cases, it was because he got hit by a comebacker or something or felt a twinge and was injured. But in this case, it was because he was ejected because with his first pitch of the game, he hit Ronald Acuna and there's all this history between the Marlins and Braves. And so the umpire thought, oh, this is that old bad blood heating up and boiling again. And so I'm going to nip this in the bud and eject Lopez and sure did nip it. My goodness. Yeah.

I don't know if then I Sonia was jumping the gun a little there or not. A lot of that's from a few years ago. I don't know if that was actually lingering or playing a role here or whether he was a bit jumpy there and had a quick hook or a quick thumb. But whatever the case, Lopez, who's been great this year, was gone after one pitch. And the interesting thing about this was that because Lopez hit Acuna and Acuna came around to score, and then the Marlins never had the lead again. So Pablo Lopez, who threw one pitch, he allowed an earned run and he took the loss. And you can't really be more efficient than that when it comes

to taking the loss. That's like, we've talked about the minimum inning and whether that should be the term for the three-pitch inning, because technically you can have fewer pitches in an inning. I guess technically you can have zero pitches and take the loss. Like if you were for some reason to intentionally walk the leadoff hitter and then get ejected or leave the game for some reason. I can't imagine why that would happen, but it is conceivable that it could happen. But realistically, you can't beat throwing one pitch and taking the loss. So rough day at the office for Pablo Lopez, who has subsequently made a start and pitched well and went more than one pitch. So that was nice. But I should note that this was not unprecedented.

Jeff J. Snyder of Baseball Essential did the research and he found that in baseball history, there have been nine pitchers who have taken the loss after facing one batter. And many of these pitchers were pre-pitch-by-pitch data, but he did the legwork and he went into the newspaper archives and he read accounts of these games and he found that only one prior to Pablo Lopez had been pulled after one pitch and taken that loss.

And that one was Art Schallach in 1955. Schallach mostly pitched for the Yankees, but in 55 he was with Baltimore. And on August 3rd, 1955, while he was warming up, according to the account in the Baltimore Evening Sun, he felt a twinge of pain in his salary whip. His salary whip, presumably being his arm. He threw one pitch to Kansas City A's first baseman, Vic Power. Power lined it for a base hit, and Schalick left the game and eventually took the loss. And Schalick is 97 years old, lives in Sonoma, and didn't know he held this distinction, but Snyder actually called him and talked to him and let him know. So good job by him, and didn't know he held this distinction, but Snyder actually called

him and talked to him and let him know. So good job by him, and I will link to that post. So Lopez was not the first, but he was the second and the first for 66 years. I just, I, again, I know that there is history between these two teams, and poor Ronald Acuna Jr. has gotten thumped a number of times by Marlins baseballs. But just logically, if you're trying to continue some sort of Hatfields and McCoys-like run of revenge, don't you wait? Within the logic of the intentional hit-by-pitch, which we agree is silly and a thing that you shouldn't do, if for no other reason than when you establish a reputation as a team that is keen on doing that, your pitcher gets ejected after one pitch sometimes. So don't set up the precedent that this is a thing that you do. But even within the logic of that, if you're the home plate up, you don't say, this is probably not when he chooses to do that.

He probably doesn't want to put the first hitter of the game on base. He probably doesn't want to put Ronald Acuna Jr. on base. Don't you not do that? Yeah. I mean, I guess I'd rather have them be quicker than too slow. Sure. But also, I would not be pleased about this if I were Pablo Lopez and probably did not intentionally hit Ronald Acuna and then my day is over. And also, I take the loss.

That's rough. Yeah, that's a rough day at the office. Yeah. Also wanted to read a tweet from our pal C. Trent Rosecrans, which is very much in the genre of players wanting to be naked and going to great lengths to be naked. Yes. players wanting to be naked and going to great lengths to be naked. He tweeted, Sonny Gray stripped naked after the fourth inning of his start on Wednesday and changed everything but his cleats to, quote, reset and start over. He retired the next nine in order after that. So we have a pitcher getting naked, not because of a sticky stuff inspection, but just because

things weren't going great. And he figured, I'll just change all of my clothes. And that's what I need to do here. And apparently it worked. Correlation is not causation. But, you know, in his mind, I'm sure it probably paid off. And I don't know if this is something that we should all emulate in our respective fields. Having a rough podcast, take a break, get naked, change all your clothes. But it worked for Sonny Gray, or at least it didn't hurt him. Well, maybe this is just his way of overcoming decision fatigue, right? He's taking his break, starting fresh and coming out a new version of himself, one not burdened by his prior choices and able to take the mound and start anew. Mm-hmm. And also, I was reading the latest Fangraphs mock draft, and I was dismayed to see that projected to go to the Dodgers in the first round. Ben, it's a real problem.

It is a real problem. With the 29th pick, according to the latest Fangraphs mock, the Dodgers may be selecting Max Muncy. And they have the same birthday. They have the same birthday. They're both infielders. He is, what, a high school shortstop. Right. He's named Max Muncy.

Clearly not the same year of birth, but the same birthday. Yeah, this cannot be allowed to happen. The Dodgers cannot draft Max Muncy. In a way, it might be simpler in some respects, I guess, to concentrate the Max Muncy so we don't have to worry about them proliferating. But having multiple Max Muncy's, Max's Muncy in the majors at the same time or even in the same lineup conceivably, that's just too much. I guess it'll be a while before he reaches the big leagues even if things go well for him but come on it doesn't matter though because as soon as he has a player

id yeah he's gonna bork up my player linker he's gonna bork it right up and he'll do that regardless of whether or not he plays for the dodgers but I'm here to say that it will be harder once he reaches the big leagues to know which one to do. It's like how sometimes I forget to send cards to people because I went through a 10-year period where I was completely reliant on Facebook to remind me of anyone's birthday who I'm not immediately related to. And so I miss some sometimes, and i feel bad about that but like i

know julio rodriguez's birthday because you got to be able to tell which one you're linking to in the player search yeah this is a weird problem to have everyone else is delighted they think it's funny it's not funny it's a nightmare problems. Yeah, for sure an editor problem. At least he's a right-handed hitter instead of a left-handed hitter. So that's something, but that doesn't help you in the player linker. No, but they're doing better than all the many Logan Allens. Yes, that is true. And the Luis Garcias.

There are so many Luis Garcias. So many, yeah. So many. And then the real problem comes when sometimes there'll just be two and you'll be able to tell pretty quickly once they reach the big leagues which one you want because you look at their active years

in our search and you're like, oh, I want this Will Smith. But the problem that you get is after a while, they've been in the majors long enough that your recall of which one came first sometimes gets a little fuzzy especially if they're you know they're close together in terms of their debuts so i think that maybe what we need to do is like take the screen actors guild approach and it's like if there's one of them already in the union you got to throw a middle

initial in there or add like an e to the end of your name or something. Like Max Muncy. Max with an E on the end. Or he could add an extra X and then he'd be so cool. Yeah, sure. All right. So there was a poll taken in our Facebook group and the choices were, which do we want 20 minutes of at the start of the podcast going forward? Ben on Otani or Meg on Zunino? And I regret to inform you that thus far,

Ben on Otani is winning. It's not a landslide, possibly because I talk about Otani so much and you do not talk about Zunino so much. So just the novelty value of it would be nice. But Ben on Otani is still winning. I will try to keep my daily dose of Otani relatively brief this time but don't look now but which is a weird expression because when people say don't look now they mean do look now yeah look now Otani is up to his usual tricks over the past couple days on Tuesday he held the Red Sox to two runs over seven innings as a starter and also doubled in a run as a batter. And on Wednesday, as a DH again, he went two for four and he hit his 32nd home run, breaking Hideki Matsui's single season record for most homers by a Japanese born player. So that was wonderful. new semi-new observation about Otani was prompted by something that the Angels broadcast did

on Tuesday, which is they essentially did the Otani cam that we've talked about on Japanese telecasts where they just follow Otani all the time. They did that between the top of the first and the bottom of the first. So when he got off the mound as a pitcher, they didn't go to commercial. They just stayed on Otani and they followed his routine as he prepared to hit in the bottom of the inning. He was batting second in that game. And I found this to be really eye-opening because he was so busy. You know, usually the starting pitcher comes back to the dugout and just sits there, cools

off, you know, maybe puts a jacket on, talks to his catcher or his pitching coach. But mostly he's just chilling until it's time for him to go back out there. And Otani had no break at all. And I was aware of this, but just seeing it was sort of striking. So he's like nonstop activity between the times that he is normally on camera. So he is putting on his protective elbow pad. He's putting on his protective foot pad. He's getting his batting gloves and putting his batting gloves on. He's getting his base running gloves and sticking those in his bat pocket. He is getting his bat. He is getting his helmet. You know, he's doing all the things that a hitter does that a starter doesn't usually do. And he had no break. And that's not every inning. Of course, he doesn't hit every inning. He was due up in this one. But still, to see him do those things that the typical starting pitcher doesn't do. And then I was just thinking of all of the things that he has to do that a typical player doesn't do.

You know, he has to memorize two sets of scouting reports. He has to do bullpen sessions and batting practice. practice. He has to do multiple workout programs and exercise regimens probably, or at least ones that are tailored to hitting and also tailored to pitching and arm care regimens and all of that. And that's on top of the mental strain that comes from being the center of attention at all times, although obviously he is used to that. But put aside the physical skills for a second of what he does, like what he does in a single game or a single inning. No one else can match really because no one else can throw as well and hit as well and run as well. But to do it not just in one game or one inning, but in every game and every inning, it's like mind boggling thinking of like all of the extra work that he has to do.

And like Babe Ruth said it was too hard to do both. And his prep was pounding hot dogs pregame. I mean, I'm exaggerating there a bit like the young Ruth was was pretty svelte. But you know, in those days, they didn't do nearly the amount of prep that modern players do. And, you know, how much attention he must have to pay to his nutrition and his diet, he's burning more calories than everyone, he's under more physical strain and he must have to get sleep and recovery. And granted, he's not appreciate in a single swing, in a single throw, just his physical skills. But the amount of extra work that we don't even see because it doesn't take place on the field, it really is like mind-boggling when you think about it. And so to stay healthy and active and engaged and do this over the course of a full season or at least more than half a season so far. It's just super impressive on top of everything else he does that's impressive.

Right. It's the number of ways in which this performance that he's put on in the season that he's having are superlative. When you don't consider all the weird edge things that he has to do in order to do both, it's like it's like this is an incredible season then you consider all that stuff and you're like it's it's maybe the best thing i've ever seen yeah it's maybe the best thing i've ever seen i have an uh related but like not perfectly related story that i'd like to tell you sure so i went to the the u of a super regional so i'm going to tell you about college baseball that's going to be worth it for you. And they have a catcher named Daniel Susak, and he did a thing that I'm sure other people have done,

but I just haven't seen in a big league ballpark where if there were two outs and he was on deck when he was supposed to come out, he's a big, tall guy, he would leave his leg guard and stuff on. Because if the guy at the plate gets out, he's just going to have to go catch. I haven't seen anyone do that in a big league game. I've maybe seen it in college games before, but it's been a long time. I was like, why don't they do that in big league games? Have you seen a big leaguer do that?

I have not seen a big leaguer do that. Not that I've noticed. Yeah, Otani accidentally left his base running gloves in his back pocket when he went out to the mound in a recent game and then realized- Did he look adorable when he realized? Of course. When does he not look adorable? But there have been periods in my life where I've done two jobs at the same time. When I was first a full-time editor and writer for Baseball Perspectives, I was also working basically a full-time job at Bloomberg Sports for a while. And that was exhausting. Or when I've done my day job writing and doing the podcast and working on a book on

the side, that's pretty grueling, but I didn't do it forever. And it was tough while I was doing it and had to make various other sacrifices in my personal life or whatever to make that work just from an hourly perspective. And that's tough and that's draining and that's not even physically draining. And I was doing related things in all of those jobs. So it wasn't like two separate skills. So that just kind of puts it in perspective for me that he's done this for so long really. And when I was watching him on Wednesday when he hit the home run and talk about fatigue, remember, this is a day game after a night game in whichically repaired back knee, and he was hobbling around looking like Kirk Gibson for a while. And then he hit a home run 114.5 miles per hour a couple pitches later. And it's like, all right, he's superhuman. But just thinking about the extra wear and tear that he takes, even just fouling balls off himself, taking as many at-bats as he does and hitting the ball as hard as he does. Most starting pitchers don't have to deal with that. So just imagine the bruises that he accumulates that most pitchers, certainly most AL pitchers, just don't have to worry about.

That must take a toll. And so I'm just saying, savor this while he's doing it. And hopefully we are on this podcast. And let him start the All-Star Game as a pitcher and a hitter or we riot. And you know, the Angels were 18 and 22 when Trout got hurt, I believe. I think they're 26 and 20 since Trout got out. So war is a lie and I'm going to become a war truther. I think it's true what they always said.

War is just a stat designed to make Mike Trout look good. It doesn't actually translate to team success. The Angels are winning without Trout. They didn't need Trout look good. It doesn't actually translate to team success. The Angels are winning without Trout. They didn't need Trout anyway. No, it's a small sample, and they will definitely be better with Trout. But I saw a tweet by James O'Hara who pointed out that the Angels' record through 85 games,

2017, they were 43-42. 2018, 43-42. 2019, 42-43. This year, 43-42. Just so stubbornly 500 year after year although this year they've done it largely without trout and often without anthony rendon also otani has played like better than trout while trout has been out so that helps too yeah it does help but yeah yeah who needs him if you hit a home run you have more time as you round the bases to be ginger with your recently fouled off body parts.

That's what they said on the broadcast. They didn't call the home run, but they said, I bet he hopes that he can just trot around the bases this time. And then he did. Yeah. See? This is another example of the prediction thing. Yeah. Broadcasters probably telling everyone, see, I called it.

Yeah. Yeah. Not quite. A whole new world open to us, Ben. Yeah. I was thinking also, because in this most recent start, Otani was working with Max Stassi, Angel's catcher, and that is a change because Kurt Suzuki has basically been his personal catcher since early April.

And that's been a source of some frustration to me, people who are watching Otani closely, because Kurt Suzuki is one of the worst framing catchers in baseball, and Max Sassi is one of the best. And Madden has said, I like how they work together. I don't care about framing as much as others. Well, no one cares about framing more than we do. So it's been somewhat painful, especially because Otani's command will come and go at times. And so you want him to get every borderline call he can. And seeing Suzuki not get him those calls, maybe he's a great pitch caller. Maybe he's good at settling Otani down. Maybe he is beneficial in other ways, but the framing is rough at times. And so Madden put Stassi in,

he said, because he liked the offensive matchup and Stassi was one of the hitting heroes in that game as well. But I can't say what a comfort it was to see a good framing catcher getting Otani some of those borderline calls that he might not have gotten. Otherwise, that was a lot of fun. And we got an email from listener Seth, who wrote in to say that one of his problems with catcher framing as a valuable skill that should be kept in the game and as a reason to be perhaps against the robo zone, he says he'd be interested if someone could take a highlight reel of two random starting MLB catchers and show them catching or framing, say, 200 randomly selected pitches without seeing how the umpire called the result. If you could identify the better framer, my position is that I definitely couldn't do that and would only judge their ability based on the results as called by the umpires, which is a fine skill, but makes it harder for me to appreciate as a skill that the player has, not doubting the abilities,

just that I can't differentiate with my eyes as to who is good or bad. And that probably goes for a lot of baseball fans who don't laser focus on framing the way that we have. But I'm pretty confident that if you were to give me that test, I'm trying to remember if I ever did that in an article or Sam did or someone did. I'm usually the first to say that although I went to scout school, I'm the furthest thing from a scout. But when it comes to framing, I think if I took a test like that, I would do pretty well, I hope. Someone wants to send it to me, I'll take it. But just having written about it and talked to players about it so much and done a This Week in Catcher Framing series at Baseball Perspectives for a while, I've watched so many framing GIFs that I think I can

recognize it pretty well now. But I understand that's probably a niche skill. I think that you would, not you, I think that like our listeners, if they have doubts, would pick it up more quickly than they imagine. Because when most people are watching, you know, they're watching an at-bat from the centerfield camera, they're watching the hitter more than they're watching the catcher. And so part of it is, as you said, just, you know, focusing your attention in a different spot. And then you will really be like, wow, that guy's good. Or wow, no, he's not. And yeah, I think that you start to pick up on the nuances pretty quickly.

And the nice thing is that it's just so many pitches over the course of a game. So you get a lot of reps really, really fast if you want to try to hone in on sort of who's good and who's bad. really fast if you want to if you want to try to hone in on sort of who's good and who's bad and if you're trying to do that and you're interested like i would start in a simple way and just look at the leaderboards for who is actually a good framer and watch them specifically and see kind of what they do and then go back to the leaderboard and find a bad framer so that you have something to to compare and contrast to it's like yes you know if you were if you have something to compare and contrast to. It's like, you know, if you were going to a game and you were sitting behind home plate

and you were like trying to put grades on fast, you know, on breaking balls and you'd never seen a good one before, how could you do that? So go watch a good framer first and then watch, you know, the people who are going to catch for the White Sox from now on

and you'll kind of get a sense of it. Yes, come back soon. Yes, Monty Grandal. Yeah, that's how framing techniques have circulated around the majors, even having talked to some catchers who were like, hey, emulate this guy who's good at framing. Maybe he goes down to one knee or whatever it is. I will borrow that technique. So I saw some quotes from Stassi and Otani and Madden saying nice things about how they work together and how he called a game. So I hope that that becomes the routine.

Not that I have anything against Kurt Suzuki as a person. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But yeah, I'd rather be watching Stassi with Otani as I'm hanging on every pitch. And Otani threw two pitches that I think were slower than 68 miles per hour. He threw a couple slow curves. His two slowest pitches of the season, 67.7 and 67.8. And he had one sequence

where it was like 68 mile per hour curveball, 98 mile per hour fastball back to back. It makes for a beautiful pitch overlay gift. So I'd recommend that people check that out. So I just want to end with a quick stat blast here related to something that happened this week. So Jake Arrieta had his second straight disaster outing for the Cubs. It wasn't so many years ago that Arrieta had a degromish ERA,

but it seems like longer. Gather ye Cy Young awards while ye may. Things have not been great for him lately. On Tuesday, he failed to finish the second inning for his second straight outing, and he gave up seven runs and was pulled after one and two-thirds, and the Cubs entered Wednesday having lost 11 games in a row. It's not looking so great. They were neck and neck with the Brewers until very recently. And then

the Brewers won every game and the Cubs lost every game. And suddenly there's a lot of separation between those teams. Seems like trading you Darvish and going with a super soft tossing rotation was maybe not the best idea. Not that that's their only issue. But this outing by Arrieta prompted a couple listener emails about potential stop-loss material here because arietta allowed a grand slam very very quickly in this game things went south right away so michael wrote in to say in the top of the first of the tuesday cubs phillies game andrew mccutcheon hit a grand slam on the 10th pitch of the top of the first inning. Is that the earliest into a game a grand slam has been hit?

What about anywhere in the game? What's the fewest pitches a team has needed to go from having the bases empty to hitting a grand slam? That can really be a shock to the system. You go from no threat at all. Everything is just in the starting condition, to uh-oh, bases loaded, to uh-oh, home run, and suddenly I'm down four runs. And this has happened pretty quickly in the past. So there was a tweet that I saw that was tweeted in response to this too by MLB insider Dinger

on Twitter. I will link to this, but the person behind this account went back to the beginning of pitch data in 1988 and found the fastest from the start of a game to the Grand Slam. And the fastest in that period was eight pitches. So that's the fastest. It was April 26, 2000. Jermaine Dye hit a Grand Slam off of Ryan Roop. Remember some guys. So that was the fastest that it's been done at the start of a game in the first inning. And the person also tweeted that the only time they could find where a reliever entered a game and gave up a grand slam on fewer than 10 pitches where all the runs belong to him was Jared Riggin on July 2nd, 2002, who gave up a grand slam to Jorge Posada after nine pitches. But I was also curious about any inning, not just the first. What's the fastest you go? Because, of course, every inning starts with no one on base.

And I asked Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Prospectus about this, and he did some querying wizardry with Retro Sheet. And he found that the fastest anyone has gone from beginning of inning to Grand Slam is five pitches. Five pitches. June 12th, 2004, the Rangers against the Cardinals. Bottom of the fourth inning, and the Rangers were already ahead 3-0 at this point. Chris Carpenter pitching for the Cardinals. He gives up a first pitch single to Gary Matthews. Then he gives up a second pitch single to Gary Matthews. Then he gives up

a second pitch single to Rod Barajas. Then he gives up a first pitch single to Michael Young, and then a first pitch Grand Slam home run to Hank Blaylock. So five pitches from start of the inning, bases empty to, oh no, Grand Slam. That is almost as fast as you can do it. Yeah. no grand slam that is almost as fast as you can do it yeah so that's pretty bad and then he settled down rest of the inning strikeout swinging ground out strikeout looking so just one of those weird things but things uh ran off the rails very quickly and it would just you don't even have time to recover emotionally yeah right it's just just such a strange and sudden shift of fortunes. It's like getting ejected after one pitch.

And we got another email about this from Dave from Wrigley. He was at this Arietta game and he emailed us from Wrigley Field. Couldn't even wait to get home. And he said, I'm at Wrigley watching Arietta pitch. And my buddy just leaned over and asked, was that the fastest Grand Slam ever? It was 10 pitches into the game. But that got me wondering, what's the fewest pitches that have yielded the most runs in a game? And Lucas also went above and beyond and he was only able to go back to 2000 as opposed to the 1988 pitch tracking era. But he looked up the fastest to

every increment of runs. So, you know, you can obviously score one run with one pitch and you hit a first pitch leadoff homer. That's happened 373 times since 2000. But then he looked up, okay, what's the fastest to two runs, to three runs, to four runs? So I will put this spreadsheet online for anyone who wants to look it up. So fastest to two runs. That has happened, unsurprisingly, in two pitches, although that's only happened 11 times since 2000. You just have back-to-back first pitch homers. And then fastest to three runs. That takes four pitches. That has happened three times. Fastest to four runs. That's happened in six pitches. Fastest to five runs, 11 pitches. Fastest to six runs, 13 pitches. Fastest to seven runs, 19 pitches. This is all still in the first inning here. Fastest to eight runs, 25 pitches. Fastest to nine runs, 30 pitches. Also first inning. Fastest to 10 runs, 37 pitches, also first inning.

Fastest to 11 runs, 39 pitches, also first inning. So that's the last one that it has happened in the first inning. And this was Jason Jennings made a start on July 29th, 2007. This was Padres against Astros. This is a real nightmare outing here. Yeah, because I was going to ask, is this all the same person? And if you're the manager,

at what point in that score progression do you just decide he's just wearing it? Yep, this is all poor Jason Jennings who was pulled after two outs, but also after 11 runs. So this is top of the first. Poor Jason. fly Khalil green, single Josh Bard run scoring, single Kevin Kuzman off fly ball, Jeff Blum, walk Tim Stouffer, single scores,

runs Brian Giles up again. We've batted around at this point, run scoring, double Mike Cameron, home run to run Homer, Milton Bradley singles. And then Adrian can tell us finally, mercifully,

if you can call it that knocks Jason Jennings out of the game with another two-run homer. And as you might surmise, other than the walks, there were a lot of short plate appearances here and early in count swings. So that's about as terribly as you can start a game. Damn. And Lucas went on to higher numbers of runs as well. But beyond 11, you have to go into the second inning. So I'll put the spreadsheet online. But yeah, you know, catch between starts, Lance Lynn is always wearing a hoodie with long sleeves underneath, which was still the case on Monday as temperatures went into the high 90s. He explained that if you always feel miserable, it offers a sort of consistency, which is an interesting way to think about things. Yeah, I think he just needs to come on the pod and talk about his life and sweating. It's fine. Imagine how mad Michael Bowman would be if we had Lance Lynn on this podcast. Yeah, we couldn't do that to Michael. He'd stop being our friend. The world's biggest Lance Lynn fan.

Although, I got to admit, I like Lance Lynn too. Not as much as Michael because no one does. But I liked his quote last week too where James Feakin tweeted this too. How do you know when you're up to the task of throwing 117 pitches? I'm a big Bastard said Lance Lynn that's how I know It's not wrong he is a large man

It's just delightful Yep alright so that Concludes a lot of banter and stat Blasting for today so we've got a guest We're going to take a quick break and when we come back We will be joined by Benjamin Christensen, who works for Hat Club. And he's going to tell us about baseball hats,

which have caused a stir in recent days and weeks because New Era has put out a couple of lines of baseball caps. First, the local market caps, and then more recently, the mixed font caps. And baseball Twitter, at least the portions of it that we belong to, seems unanimous in agreeing that these are terrible caps. And what were they thinking and who would possibly buy these?

And it turns out that actually people do, that maybe there is a market for these and maybe it is not so inexplicable that these hats look the way they do. So as I've said, I don't claim to know anything about fashion. I don't even wear hats. So I'm totally out of my wheelhouse here. And normally fashion is so subjective, we probably wouldn't even talk about it. We did pile on a little with the local market caps because it was just the chorus, the refrain was so loud in condemning these caps. But we wanted to dig a little deeper and find out more about why these caps look the way they do. So we'll be back by reading a little passage about hats that was written by Baseball Prospectus' Shaker Saman.

Shaker's an old pal of mine from The R ringer So not trying to pick on him here Just wanted to quote him because I think he sort of Summed up the sentiments of baseball Twitter when it comes to some of New Era's recent hats So here's what he wrote at Baseball Perspectives on Wednesday For some reason beyond my own Comprehension, New Era, Major League

Baseball's chosen hat supplier, hates Baseball. It must. There's no other explanation for why a clothing company which surely employs at least one, if not dozens, of creative and design specialists would continue to roll out such supremely underwhelming and bizarre products. Things got even stranger this week when Nuera unveiled its mixed font hats. Not one of these hats is good. None of them are even passable. They're all different shades of awful. It goes on there about who approved these and who came up with this idea, etc., etc.

Well, it turns out that even though that did really kind of encapsulate, I think, much of Baseball Twitter's reaction to both the New Era local market caps as well as the mixed font caps, there actually is a pretty good explanation for why those hats look like they do. And maybe Nuera actually does know what it's doing. And to talk about that, we are joined by someone who, unlike us, is actually a hat expert, Benjamin Christensen, who is the community manager for Hat Club. Hello, Benjamin. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. So tell us a little bit about the baseball cap market in general, because I understand that it is doing quite well. focus from just generic baseball on-field looking hats, side patches, et cetera, and really kind of turn it into more of a fashion statement, more of a fashion movement, really. And since that point,

I would even say COVID times kind of gave a little bit of an aid to it as well. And for whatever reason, the fitted hat market has really kind of exploded over the last year and a half. It's interesting that COVID helped because people weren't socializing so much, weren't going out as much. You'd think not that you have to only wear hats around other people, but you'd think if part of it is, hey, I want to look good. I want to show off my hat. If you're not actually socializing with anyone, then maybe it wouldn't be so beneficial. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that nobody's going out getting haircuts. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that nobody's going out getting haircuts.

And even though we're all sitting around the house, it's like, all right, it's nice to have something to kind of hide that little bit of scruff that we got going on. Yeah, cover up the pandemic hairdo on Zoom. So, Benjamin, I just have a bunch of process-related questions that maybe we can knock out before we get into these specific hats, which have raised such a stir. And I wonder if you can just give us and our listeners a sense of sort of what is the process from design to production that goes on for a brand like New Era? How far in advance are they designing these? Who is involved in that design process? What market research are they doing to try to hone in on a particular aesthetic? Because I think that the sense that baseball Twitter, and of course, baseball Twitter is really broad, so maybe we should say the part of baseball Twitter

that we see, but I think that the sense on baseball Twitter is that this is very haphazard and that there's no design input and that we might be seeing misprints for all the joy that these particular hats have brought to a certain segment of the baseball community. So I'm just curious what the process is that a company like New Era goes through when they're getting ready to release

a new hat like the ones we've seen recently. Sure. I'll kind of give the best example from Hat Club's perspective, at least. So our design team is actually made up of about two, three people. Our lead designer, John Nguyen, he is also our primary buyer. So the design process usually starts out, give or take about four to six months in advance. So they will go through a couple of different color options, team options, et cetera. And then because of the fact that the patches on the side have become, you know, such a hot commodity unto itself as well. It's all a matter of like, okay, what does New Era have available in their catalog that we can actually attach to these hats as well? So four to six months and, you know, at least in Hat Club's perspective, we try to put a story behind it. So primary example

of that, a couple of the designs that we did, there was an all yellow collection with gray underbills that we called the Taxi Cap Collection, all green crown, green top of the bill, pink underbill, green eggs and ham was the name that kind of went with that. And so from design to, you know, production, because nothing is really made in the United States anymore, like it used to. So everything's either being made in Haiti, Bangladesh, or China. So that's why the four to six month timeframe is kind of falls within here because the design process gets sent in, Nuera produces the hats. And then of course we have to go to the shipping process back,

which case majority of everything is usually coming by boat as opposed to air freight. So receive them at the warehouse, put a marketing plan together, and then release them on the website. So that's about where the four to six month timeframe comes in. And then on top of which,

sometimes it's a little bit longer, just depending on how much stitching is going into the crown of the hat. That includes logos, patches, and especially in the case of the script series that just came out where all the letters are going across the front and then kind of the size of the hat. Something like that would take a little bit longer just because of the amount of detail that goes into it. Okay. And when you're designing something that is going to have a bunch of different iterations for each team, right? So the series that you're describing where, you know, you're getting, you know, whether you're a Mariners fan or Yankees fan or Cardinals fan, you're getting some version of that hat. I think that the earlier stir that came up for New Era,

at least, was the city-specific ones where they were trying to evoke a particular understanding of place. We can debate the static merits of that, but I think that one of the things that really rankled people about that was there seemed to be some factual errors too, right? Area codes that were misplaced or omitted entirely. I'm curious what the the i don't know if this is the right way to refer to it but what the sort of quality control process is like for something like that like do you make sure that you have a person from each place in the room to say hey that's not what we do where i'm from it's funny because we kind of police ourselves in

that regard anytime we use anything that is very city specific and then once again this is this is hat club's perspective right we are very detailed when it comes to that, because I think the part that I missed in my, in my previous explanation is there is a legal process that we have to go through with new era because they need to ask the teams themselves, Hey, is this okay? If we, we put this together, because not only are they using the team logos, but they're using all these other little formats to it. New era, when they produce their own style collections and such, has less of a legal realm that they have to fall within because they clearly have the licensing behind it. They usually get immediate league approval just because this is kind of their own baby.

So when that specific collection dropped originally, it was kind of confusing to us on the outside, even though we have a new era contract, that there would be those kind of mistakes. So I don't want to put words in their mouth as far as why this kind of happened other than somebody was just kind of looking at a phone book or somebody just kind of briefly looked on the Internet and they're like, oh, yeah, hey, these are these are the right numbers, et cetera, et cetera. So it was kind of a weird move from our perspective to see New Era kind of make the mistakes that they did in that regard. Yeah. So some of those factual errors maybe were strange and some of those hats were actually recalled or at least sales were paused. Oh, yeah. Some of those details were fixed, right? And do we know how big a deal that was? Are you privy to sort of the insight into the business ramifications of, you know, it was portrayed even in places like the Washington Post that's like, oh, Twitter hated these

things, social media hated these things. And so new era chastened by the backlash, you know, pulled products basically. But how accurate do you think that perception was? I mean, from an outsider perspective, I think it was very well warranted that a lot of people, you know, had issues the way that they did. And then the process for that, that I, to my knowledge, and this goes back to my time working for New Era about six years ago, all of them were basically recalled and then destroyed. Because, you know, when you have that many errors in design and production process,

and then the final result, you know, causes so many issues with so many people, then you do have to basically start from ground zero again. So let's just say, to my knowledge, everything was pulled, and then as far as that specific collection Everything was destroyed But as far as like whatever What happened to the pieces That part I don't exactly know Okay so they didn't intend to get those details wrong

But a lot of the reaction has been To the aesthetics of these caps Both to the local market caps And to the mixed font caps And just basically everyone saying These are ugly Who would wear these basically aesthetics of these caps, both to the local market caps and to the mixed font caps. And just basically everyone saying, these are ugly. Who would wear these? Basically, what designer thought this was a good idea?

And much of the reaction, I guess, in the hat community was like, no, actually, people do want these and people do wear these. And so the audiences maybe are different. Baseball Twitter, at least our corner of baseball Twitter, these might not appeal to those people, but there are people who are wearing these hats and buying these hats and do like these hats. And so New Era is not just doing something nonsensical here. There's a market for these. So can you talk a little bit about what the market for baseball caps is and for these specifically? I mean, how much is it baseball fans or hardcore baseball fans who want to represent their team? And how much of it is people who want to wear

these because they like the way they look and they're a fashion statement, not that those are mutually exclusive necessarily? I mean, it goes into different realms just because of the fact that there's no perfect style that's going to come out. Granted, Hat Club has had a lot of success over the last year and a half with a lot of the designs we put together. But the particular collections that New Era brought out, I wouldn't exactly say were, you know, really outside or they didn't really come from a bad place. I think the execution altogether, there were some pieces of it that I, you know, from seeing, you know, what sells and what doesn't sell, there were little pieces where it that I, you know, from seeing, you know, what, what sells and what doesn't sell, there were, there were little pieces where it's like, okay, you, you guys probably should have improved upon this. And I think a lot of it goes back to, you know, coming back from COVID middle of 2020.

And I know newer had let go a lot of their design staff. And so for a lot of the people who are still there, it's a matter of looking at what's selling consistently on the market and then, you know, putting together something similar. Because even though our account is through New Era and most of the hats that we sell are through New Era, it's not to say that we're in direct competition with New Era, especially when they're kind of, you know, putting their own designs together, because they're still looking at, okay, what are these other companies that have accounts with this doing, putting together what's selling well, because at the end of the day, they're still trying to make money unto themselves. So this kind of goes back to where I'm not trying to put words in their mouth. I'm just

kind of like going based on what I'm seeing at least. But in the case of, you know, the larger font style, I look at that. And the one thing that I probably would have changed was adding the larger primary logo, direct center of the hat, really kind of messed things up a little bit. It made it a little bit too jumbled. Whereas if they just want to go straight across, right to left with just, okay, old English style lettering, just the team name, something like that probably would have been a lot better. Because on the market for, especially for New Era resale, there are some independent designers that will take basic New Era hats, you know, any team, any color that kind of comes out and add their own little artistic touch to it. One of which was, you know, the long script Old English going right to left across the panels.

For whatever reason, there are some artists that have put that together that have been incredibly successful with it. And the turnaround time that they put together with it, the resale price that they put on it, for whatever reason, is much more successful. I can't really explain why because it really breaks down to consumers. Can't really explain why, because it really breaks down to consumers. Me as a hat guy and kind of the hats that I prefer, I'm primarily an on-field guy. Just give me a logo. If it has a patch on it, cool. I go more for historical value on it.

So like a World Series patch, for example. If the team actually wore it in the World Series, yeah, I probably want it. But from when you're looking at custom colorways and all these other custom designs, it may not be my fancy, but, you know, out there, there are thousands of people that this is their particular, you know, niche. So I can't fully explain why, like really the buyer mentality behind it, other than I see an increase in sales that has to do with these specific hats. And so, you know, we try to, we as Hat Club try to replicate that as much as possible. And I know New Era is kind of doing the same thing. And when they're looking to sort of individual artists who might be taking a base New Era hat and adding their own flourish, maybe

like selling it on Etsy or whatever. Do they ever bring those folks in-house to do design work for them? Or are they using sort of the marketplace as its own sort of testing ground for what's popular? A lot of times they're using the marketplace as their own testing ground. But the one thing I've known in the past with other specific brands, there are other companies that have accounts with New Era specifically. Farmer's Market, it's a company based out of Hawaii where they would take, you know, blank New Era hats, put their own designs on them and then put them out on the market and, you know, sell them for, when I say inflated price, I just mean kind of like their own set price. You know, anything when it comes to art is always, you know, in the eye of the beholder and based on whatever the artist put together. So something like that, New Era will see because how do we replicate this kind of process?

And from my knowledge, they haven't necessarily brought any of those specific artists in to work with them just because of the fact that a lot of them are using the canvas that New Era had already put out, and so they don't feel necessarily the need to bring that specific artist in, just because, and this is speculation really more than anything, like, New Era kind of sees it as, well, you're using our already finished product, and, you know, kind of putting your own spin on it. So they feel themselves in a legal realm to, you know, reproduce a very similar style because this is their own product. They have the legal right to do so because they have the licensing right to work with these companies, work with these teams and put it together themselves.

And have there ever been any instances, and it doesn't necessarily have to be limited to New Era, although I know they're the sort of primary actor in this space, but have there been instances where that has caused controversy for them or they've sort of, I don't necessarily want to use the word appropriate, but sort of borrowed a design from another artist and either faced legal action or just pushback from cap collectors who might say, hey, I've seen that before. Yeah, I've seen it happen pretty often. And I think this last year is when I kind of saw it

more often. In the case of like the City Edition collection, we're just kind of throwing patches all over the hat, whether it has anything to do with the city or not. It's just kind of that style of like, okay, we're going to start with like a Dodger hat, for example, and then we're going to throw these two other patches on the side and then another patch in each of the other panels. We had a very similar product like that called the Local Icons, which we did with Dodgers and Yankees because those are the two biggest market teams. There were other companies within New York. There's an artist in Florida that does this. I can't think of their name specifically off the top of my head. But, you know, New Era kind of saw what was going on

with that. And it's just like, well, shoot, why don't we just do this ourselves? And they kind of did their own research, talked to the teams about it, because, you know, even though they have the licensing right to do whatever with the particular team logos, the team themselves may not appreciate, hey, throwing all these other things on, which may or may not have anything to do with the team or the city or the market that they're in. And so when New Era got the green light from the teams, it's like, okay, we'll just take this concept and just kind of do it ourselves just because they have to deal with less middlemen, whereas a lot of these other companies or artists that are putting these things together themselves, they may not have an account with New Era necessarily. And so they're just buying, you know, large volume quantities of hats and just kind of putting these things on themselves. And much to the chagrin of whether, you know, New Era wants them to do it or not. So there's always a cultural component and a generational component to fashion, to any fashion accessory. What we wear is one way that we express our identities. And baseball caps

have been a hot button issue in baseball before, right? Just going back to Ken Griffey Jr. wearing his cap backwards, you know? So that whole thing about whether you're disrespecting the game if you turn your cap around or sticker on versus sticker off or flat brim versus curve brim, all of that. And so I wonder how much this is at play with these current cap designs because, of course, the perception is that the audience for baseball is largely older and whiter than the general domestic population. And that is not just the perception, but the reality, really. And I'm sure that also goes for baseball Twitter and baseball media member Twitter, at least, and people who are extremely online and listening to this podcast and following us on Twitter, et cetera. So I wonder how much there's just a disconnect between people who are commenting on these caps online and people who are buying them. And so I wonder whether you have a sense of that and of how closely the market for baseball caps overlaps with the market for baseball in other ways. To me, it's always kind of funny, because I'll go back to the 90s on this one. And, you know, a lot of people will see baseball hats as, you know,

just it's sports driven, it's you only buy the team that you support, etc, etc. But realistically, you know, like hip hop fashion, or even just pop culture in general, in my opinion, has always, you know, driven hat sales more than anything. And I think there's a lot of market research that kind of goes into it as well, because, you know, going back to, you know, NWA, Dr. Dre, between wearing, you know, Dodgers hats and White Sox hats and, you know, Eazy-E with the Compton hat, pop culture, I feel like has always, you know, been the driving factor for a lot of things. Jay-Z with a Compton hat. Pop culture, I feel like, has always, you know, been the driving factor for a lot of things. Jay-Z with a Yankee hat, and this goes to the song, you know, Empire State of Mind, where he even had the line that says, I can make a Yankee cat more famous than

a Yankee can. And I think the days of just, you know, primarily doing anything baseball related when it comes to clothing or fashion, and especially hats, you know, primarily doing anything baseball related when it comes to clothing or fashion, and especially hats, you know, has, has gone far away from that. And I feel like other people are the driving force between a lot of hat sales more so than the game itself. And so even though we have these baseball purists that, you know, still want to stick to, hey, you got to curve your bill, you got to wear it front side, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's such a small, you got to curve your bill, you got to wear it front side, etc, etc. I mean, it's such a small, you know, sample size for that, just because baseball only exists for, you know, six to eight months a year between, you know, February and the end of the World Series. So there's all

these other, you know, months and timeframes where, you know, baseball iconography on clothing and on hats is so much more at the forefront of our mind. And it has usually little to do with the game itself. Yeah, I would recommend a great piece. Shakia Taylor wrote for Fangraphs a few years ago about the White Sox cap and hip hop culture and to that on our show page for everyone to check out. And so because of that, maybe because there is an audience for these caps, even if it's not the same as the baseball writer audience and the people who follow baseball writers

on Twitter, these caps are selling. And so people were mocking the idea earlier this week when the mixed font caps were going around and people looked at the page and saw that a lot of them were listed as sold out. And everyone was saying, oh, sure, you know, sold out, who could be buying these? But they actually are. I mean, these are selling. So, you know, the way that capitalism works, I mean, there is a demand for these things and fashion is all subjective, obviously. And it's hard to say that something is a good design or a bad design but if you're trying to design caps that people will buy it seems like nuera is doing a pretty good job of that with these mlp caps yeah and i think a lot of it also you know falls into the realm of you know okay how

many units are we talking about that are actually selling because i wouldn't say there's like you know tens of thousands of these things going out because anything that's brand new, whether it's a colorway, whether it's, you know, adding specific logos onto a cap, much in the same sense the mixed font did, you know, everything is usually done by experiment. So even if we're talking about, you know, 144 hats for each of these teams, and then people look, you know, they'll have their opinions, whether it's positive, whether it's negative. But then when you see it sell out, it's like, there's a little bit more to the backstory there. So from my experience, at least in a lot of the hats that we

do, we don't make like a ton. But then again, when I say a ton, it's really more of an eye of the beholder thing. So a lot of the base quantity for a lot of cats that come out is, yeah, 144 we'll say is usually like the minimum amount. So if we're able to go through that in a matter of minutes, then it's like, okay, cool. Then we'll just order more for the next load, which going back to that four to six month timeframe,

it usually becomes about three to four months because at least the design is already placed. It already passed through New Era's legal realm. So then it's just like, okay, we're just ordering more and then we can have the decision to double, triple, quadruple. And a lot of that's kind of more based on, okay, the timeframe that they sold out. So a lot of it's experiments, trial and error. And so I think this is one of those cases where, yeah, a lot of people saw it as this really obnoxious, hideous looking hat. But then at the same time, you know, you have a lot of people that also look at it and like, oh, my God, this is like the greatest thing I've ever seen. And so if you get the right amount of people that have that opinion of it and it sells out in a matter of minutes then you know who's to say it was a bad idea do you think that there are other segments of the baseball fan community that

are perhaps underserved by the cap market right now who might look to the future and say aha finally the cap for me oh women hands down just don't you don't have to put sequins on all the stuff exactly some sequins are fine because some people like sequins, but we would, I mean, some variety would be nice. So the sequin lovers and the sequin haters alike can find a hat is all I'm saying. Oh, absolutely. Serve both. And this is something we did at the end of 2020. We had a collection that came out called the Finit Female Direction Collection.

It's a bit of a mouthful. The other term it was known by was Ladies Night, which was just a much shorter version of that. So we brought in female cap wearers and, hey, put together this design, anything you want, any team logo, any colorway, whatever patches you want to decide that legally we can get away with, basically. And so the first run that we did those on, I think we had four different designers put together two each, so eight hats total. And once again, this is something we dropped and within two minutes, every single one of them sold out. And then about a month, month and a half ago, we did our 2.0 version of that. So we brought in five more designers, do two hats each. And then once again, same thing happened

within two minutes, everything sold out. So, you know, leading into that, that was something that we always saw. Whereas, you know, prior to this point, women's hats, quote unquote, were always defined as, you know, oh, we're going to throw some pink together. It's going to be a relaxed, adjustable hat, which is also known as a dad hat. So it's that kind of, you know, destructured. There's no, you know, mesh webbing on the inside. It's usually adjustable. But then the reality of, you know, us actually going out and talking to our female consumers. And it's like,

what do you want to wear? And a lot of the women that we talk to, it's like, well, we want to rock fitted like the men do. And so, you know, looking back on the history of this and, you know, much like a lot of other things in women's fashion, it's very male driven. It's men that are having the opinions thinking, oh, women would prefer to wear this actually, you wear this as opposed to actually talking to women who want to wear hats. It's one of the things I'm still proud of as far as working for Hat Club is the fact that, you know, we took this route and we talked to our consumers. We talked to our female consumers about what do women want? What do they want to wear and put this together? And so we kind of spearheaded this kind of movement.

Do you think that the uproar that these caps generated on social media was intentional? Was this part of the point? Was the decision to come up with these, I'm trying to think of an adjective that doesn't have a value judgment about the design, you know, bold design, striking design. Unique design. Yeah. A unique design. Unique design. Yeah. A unique design. Whether you hate it or love it, it produces some strong reaction. And so everyone tweets about it and links to it and maybe they're mocking it, but still

maybe some subset of the audience for the tweets that are mocking those caps say, well, actually, I like these or I want to buy them ironically, or something, you know, just getting attention. I mean, it's the old no presses, bad press kind of cliche. Like, do you think that's part of it? Like, hey, we want to stand out in a crowded market. So let's make them something eye-catching. And even if some people hate them, they will say something about them, and then other people will see them, and some of those people will like them i think it's i think it's fair to kind of go in different directions on that one i don't i don't personally think that new era went out and said we want to put something together so hideous that people are just going to talk about it and you know maybe some people

will buy it maybe some people won't but we'll definitely create some chatter out of it. I think the concept behind it was a great idea because, you know, once again, Hack Club has experimented with these types of things. We've seen similar things sell on different markets. And then granted, like I said, in the case of the mixed font hat, that was something that was more primarily based on something that happened after production, where a specific artist will go in, take the hats, and add the stuff on. So for New Era to just kind of put this together from the ground up and then release it to the market, I think it threw a lot of people through a loop just because generally something like this you're not going to see except on the secondary market. So when the vast majority of your audience is very baseball driven, very, I'm going to say black and white when it comes to hats, nothing too outside the box. And usually it's all these other companies that have newer accounts, the little ones that are putting these designs together

and then finding the audience. So for the parent company really to put it together, it confused a lot of people. And I don't knock New Era for doing that. Maybe the execution wasn't as flawless as they intended. I think the ideas were good. I just feel like too many people were just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's just do that and kind of put together as opposed to policing themselves and asking internally, like, okay, does this look right? I mean, we're on the right path of these other things that are doing well, but have we done too much? And I think it really comes down to asking the right questions before you submit the order to actually put it into production.

So if the timeline for a new hat is four to six months, you don't have to give away any trade secrets, but what is the next big thing in the baseball cap market? What are we going to see when people are like, yeah, what should I get my relatives for Christmas? And they turn to Hat Club or New Era and they see, oh my God. That's always the troublesome thing is just coming up with that new idea. I mean, I can tell you straight up, like the next thing that I know for a fact that we have dropping the following week.

So this will be July 17th more specifically is a cereal pack collection. So we basically took our favorite breakfast cereals growing up as kids. Our favorite breakfast cereals is growing up as kids. And it's like, okay, what can we do with the logos and the teams that we have available and do something to have the connection there? So the primary example, one that I know is going to sell out instantly, is the old 1967 Detroit Tigers alternate logo. My friend Jay Tu and I have coined it a number of years ago as the coked out tiger quote unquote um where it's the swinging bat it's it's got the crazy eyes the mouth open and so of course you know frosted flakes is the first thing that comes to mind for that so i think a lot of it is at least what hat club is doing is we're taking these pieces

from our childhood from pop, and how do you incorporate it within the hat universe or even the baseball universe? Because baseball itself is not necessarily the driving force for a lot of the sales that we're putting together. It's the storytelling. And as a representative of Hat Club, I have even gone on record as far as our daily Instagram live show of saying, I'm not against other companies putting, you know, collections designs together, unless there really isn't, you know, much of a story behind it. Because if a consumer can look at a hat and just look at it and just be like,

Hey, I know what's going on here, whether it's the color scheme, whether it's the logo choice, whether it's the underbill color, the patches using to, to us, like that's, that's the color scheme, whether it's the logo choice, whether it's the underbill color, the patches using to us, like that's the win to itself. Yeah, it's probably going to sell. And that's the end goal as a company. But at the same time, it's like, you don't want to put something out to your consumers where, you know, they're going to hate it. You want them to have something more than just this piece of headwear. You know, to me, it becomes more of a wearable piece of art. So one thing I wanted to ask, to the extent that there is a different market for baseball

caps and baseball itself, the product, the sport, it seems like it might be beneficial to not police people's tastes in caps and try to gatekeep and say baseball caps should look like this. tastes in caps and try to gatekeep and say baseball caps should look like this. If anyone is interested in something that has a baseball logo, an MLB logo, a team logo on it, then that seems like it would be good for people who love baseball in terms of generating excitement in the larger public and making baseball seem popular and cool. I don't know if baseball or at least MLB is anywhere close to cool, but if there are people who are wearing these in portions of the populace that are not typically

associated with hardcore baseball fandom, then that seems like it could be advantageous. And I wonder whether you think it is, you know, are people getting interested in baseball because they see the cap and they think, hey, that's a cool cap. What is this? Oh, it's from this team. Maybe I should check out this baseball thing I keep hearing about or not really, you know, because I've gone to countries where baseball isn't popular and I see lots of people wearing Yankees caps and I don't even know if they know, you know, if that's a Yankees cap or what the Yankees are, whether they've ever watched a Yankees game or whether it's just, you know, a nice looking logo or it has some cultural cachet to it that's sort of divorced from the sport in a way. So basically, I wonder, like, is this good for baseball or at least for MLB if people who are not already hooked on the sport the way that Meg is or the way that I am are walking around as billboards for baseball? Basically, whether

they know it or whether the people who see those caps know it or not. No, I think it's great. I go back to a comment I made earlier as far as, you know, the iconography that comes out of baseball. And, you know, even something as simple as that, you know, as you just said, it really becomes a billboard for baseball, whether people know it or not. I think to some degree that a lot of people that see these hats generally will shift into maybe not loving baseball, but they'll definitely catch an interest in it. Because I don't fully believe that people

just, they'll see something they like and buy it. And I don't feel like, you know, everything is that as A to B as that. I feel like there is a little bit more research that will go into it. And I don't feel like, you know, everything is that as A to B as that. I feel like there, there is a little bit more research that will, that will go into it. And, you know, whether it's a first-time consumer or a long-time consumer, there, there is always some kind of history that's going to be invoked within, you know, your, your purchase. I'm a huge baseball fan. And so for me, you know, speaking for myself, it, it was always about baseball and, you know, working for the company that I do and seeing a lot of the designs and the concepts that we're putting together, I was, you know, for the longest time was, you know, pretty ardently against it just because I, you know, just wanted on-field hats. I just want to wear what the players wear.

And, you know, I kind of had my own renaissance about this and, you know, seeing a lot of the color schemes that were coming out. about this and, you know, seeing a lot of the color schemes that were coming out. And it's just like, I don't know why I was so against this for so long, because there are so many cool things that we can do, so many fashionable things that we can do with these colors and these logos that turn my head. And, you know, if as staunch of a baseball fan as I am, if it changes my opinion on things, I can imagine down the road it can do the same thing for other people. Are baseball caps – I mean, it's right there in the name baseball cap, but we associate caps with baseball. We associate card collecting with baseball in some ways.

But, of course, people collect cards of all sorts of things, and people wear hats that are in that style but are not with baseball logos on them. but are not with baseball logos on them. So how do actual baseball caps that are directly related to baseball compared to, I don't know, NBA caps or anything else that people might wear a logo on? Like, is baseball more popular, disproportionately popular as a cap product than it is as a sport? So as far as any kind of caps in general, with any kind of logos in any capacity,

baseball definitely outshines any of the other sports or really any other brand logos in general, with the exception of maybe like, like Nike or Adidas, because it all still comes down to brand iconography. From what I can tell you from, from our perspective, you know, like other, other sports do sell NFL, NBA, hockey, et cetera. A lot of it comes down to, to brand licensing. you know, like other sports do sell, NFL, NBA, hockey, etc. A lot of it comes down to brand licensing, you know, what can we do with these, whether it's under New Era, whether it's under Adidas, or, you know, any other brand, that's always kind of hit or miss. But as far as,

you know, brand recognition from consumers in the way sales go, like baseball, bar none, consumers and the way sales go. Baseball, bar none, it blows every other sport out of the water just because the history that kind of goes behind it. And in a lot of teams, for example, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, teams that have been around for 100 plus years. And there hasn't been that much of a change to their logo. Maybe the Yankees kind of went through some changes over a few decades, but it's still basically the same concept idea that Tiffany and Company came up with back in the 1920s. And so people just kind of recognize it.

And so it doesn't necessarily go with it within a baseball realm. It's, hey, this is the city that I'm from. Or, hey, my name starts with a P, and that's why I buy Phillies hats, and that's why I buy Pirates hats, and so everybody has their own deep connection to any of these hats that, you know, goes outside of baseball, but at the same time, when you, like, line up all these logos together, sport by sport, and, you know, when I say generic, I don't mean this in a negative way for baseball, but it's just like the fact that the majority of baseball hats just use letter logos, you know, they'll throw some color in, whatever. But there's a story that can be told with that,

whether it's interpersonally or whether it's, you know, the team themselves telling this story. A lot of other sports logos don't really have that. There's a lot more bells and whistles that kind of get involved with their stuff, like Chicago Bulls, for example, just the iconic bullhead. There's no words associated with whatever. So for somebody who doesn't understand or know sports, it's like they'll look at that and it's like, oh, it's a bull, but I don't really know what that's for or how that really connects with me. Whereas with baseball, if you just throw a letter on a hat as famous and iconic as it is, people can draw their own conclusions and their own stories behind it. That's nice to hear because in some ways, baseball being super old and super traditional and unchanging, that can be an impediment to success in some respects, but

not when it comes to cap sales, at least. So that's something. So last question here, what's your go-to baseball cap? Either your lifelong, dingy, dirty, worn out cap that is still with you after many years, or just what's in your stable of baseball caps right now? The main three, and this changes over time, except for my top two. The top two have always been the 1969 through 1991 Pinwheel Montreal Expos. A lot of that just because I grew up as an Expos fan.

I've always liked the color scheme. I've always liked the logo itself, and especially all the little pieces that go into the M logo and how it's like, oh, they're, you know, Expos Baseball, there's the little E with a swirl, and then the B, and then, you know, there's so much that goes into that, and then just the pinwheel style, which is very unconventional now, but, you know, going back from into the 1970s, and it was just like, it was a normal place, you know, 70s baseball uniforms

were kind of weird, and so that one always stuck with me. The other one, or the second one, is the 1993 through 2013 Oakland A's road hat. I'm an A's fan as well, I'm from Oakland, and so, you know, always having an A's hat in my arsenal is a key component. But that one specifically, where it's the dark green with just the yellow letters, I always feel like that one popped a little bit more than the current home style, where it's the green crown, the yellow bill, the white logo. The one nice thing I will say about that A's hat specifically is, if you put all the current MLB on-field hats together and just look at them,

that's always the one that draws your attention the most, just because the A's at least have the most unique colorway of any other team in the majors. And then the third one for me, there's one specific one that we brought out at the end of 2020, and it's called the Crossover Collection. Unfortunately, we can't reproduce it anymore just because the NBA was not a huge fan of it, but it's called the the crossover collection unfortunately we can't reproduce it anymore just because the the nba was not a huge fan of it but it's a washington nationals hat with the inaugural season patch but we did it in the late 90s early 2000 washington wizards colorway um so it's kind of that indigo blue with a black bill copper outline around the logo and the patch. And the specific reason why for that one is I am an avid champion NBA jersey collector.

And for many years, you know, trying to find something that could match up with a Washington Wizards jersey was next to impossible. So we had put together an entire collection literally based on all these jerseys that I've collected since, you collected since I was a kid. And so that one has a really personal place in my heart. And so that would be my top three. Well, we thank you very much for coming on. You can find Benjamin Christensen on Twitter at Shaka Brody. You can also find Hat Club on Twitter at Hat Club and, of course, at HatClub.com. Benjamin, thank you very much for joining us and for teaching me something about style.

Hey, thanks for having me on. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. I want to thank Brandon Lee, longtime and loyal listener and founder of the Effectively Wild Wiki and Patreon supporter for making us aware of the other side of the new era cap discourse and for helping put us in touch with benjamin thank you very much for the segment suggestion brandon couple other players who came to mind as we were working on this episode for me in the highest ratio of highlights to war conversation ray ordonez former met shortstop who was a very

flashy defender won a few gold gloves but despite the spectacular looking plays was close to a replacement level player over the course of his career because he hit worse than hamilton willie mopena another former cincinnati red he generated highlights for hitting titanic home runs but was not on the whole a great hitter in the major leagues and chas roe also came to mind the right-handed reliever just among active players in that he's not great he's fine he's been a good reliever at times but he gets gift a lot there are montages of chas rowe throwing really nasty sliders because he has that sweeping frisbee slider that looks like some wiffle ball pitch or optical illusion so maybe sluggers who hit giant homers

but don't do much else, and pitchers with one really aesthetically pleasing pitch who don't throw much else, and good glove no-hit guys, base-stealing specialists. Terrence Gore might make the list if he played more. Good contenders for that category. I also wanted to note, I don't know whether you've noticed this, that over the past few days as I've been watching MLB TV, I keep seeing this Trevor Bauer highlight, something from early this season, I think. And every time I think, really? Trevor Bauer highlights still in the MLB TV between innings rotation? The Dodgers canceled their planned Trevor Bauer bobblehead day, unsurprisingly. But someone at MLB TV needs to flip some switch or delete a row

from a spreadsheet or something. I'm sure it's just an oversight and the people who handle administrative leave are not also the people who are handling which highlights are in the MLB TV rotation, but there's no shortage of possible highlights and clips, and one would think that while a player is placed on administrative leave while under investigation for assault, hopefully that would also sound some alarm somewhere at the MLB office to say, hey, let's not promote this player in the meantime as well. I don't know if this is still happening as of Wednesday when I'm speaking, but it definitely continued to happen after Bauer was placed on administrative leave. So hopefully that will be

caught sometime soon if it hasn't already been caught. Just show the Billy Hamilton catch over and over. Show anything Shohei Otani has done. Show Mickey Janus throwing a knuckleball. All of those seem much more likely to please people and much less likely to harm anyone than a clip involving Trevor Bauer could be. You can support Effectively Wild 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.

Ed DeShusen, Grant Mulligan, Daniel Marcotti, Josh Throckmorton, and former Effectively Wild guest and podcast host herself, Ellen Adair. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you soon. So much more than that I'm So much more than you'll ever know Oh, if I'm ugly I am still so much more than that I'm So much more than you'll ever know