Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1721: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chi-Town.

Episode Date: July 17, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the conditions David Fletcher has faced during his hitting streak compared to those Joe DiMaggio faced, follow up on a discussion of baseball in a multiverse scenario, discuss the difficulty of extending (or trading) Byron Buxton, mention a quest to collect Willians Astudillo cards, puzzle over the stagnation […]

All three fielders jump their best Trying to climb that high-fork fence They all grow whiskers on their chin Joe DiMaggio's done it again Up along the clouds where the eagles roam Joe cracked that ball with wine and rum His buddies all at best, they tried on him. Jordan Matthews done it again.

Hello and welcome to episode 1721 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. I meant to mention a fun fact last time when we talked about David Fletcher and his 24-game hitting streak, which is still active as we speak heading into Friday's game. I enjoy the genre of fun facts that compares how many pitchers Joe DiMaggio faced during his 56-game hitting streak to how many pitchers some other modern player faced during his active hitting streak. I saw this on an Angels broadcast the other day, I think when he was at 23 games, and I have updated it now. So Joe DiMaggio in 1941, during his 56 game hitting streak, he faced only 54 pitchers. And thus far, David Fletcher, who is only up to 24 games, has faced 64 pitchers.

So he's already faced 10 more pitchers during his much, much shorter hitting streak than DiMaggio faced during his much, much longer one. And that is, of course, because DiMaggio was playing in a league with eight teams and was seeing the same teams over and over. And because pitchers often went the whole way, went the distance at that time. So you might just see one guy the whole game. So that is one of the many, many, many reasons why David Fletcher and almost certainly no one else is going to match DiMaggio's feat. But that is another one that kind of puts into perspective how much things have changed since then. Yeah, geez. I mean, we tend to be skeptical of fun facts because it always feels like they're trying to pull one over on you rather than tell you something. But that actually does tell you a lot, even if it doesn't tell you quite what people might expect. Yeah. I mean, it was improbable that he would do that even then. But now, where you have a higher caliber of competition, so typically the best players are not separated from the worst players by as much. And the league batting average is about 20 points

lower than it was in 1941. But also he probably had some help from official scorers, it seems like, who maybe helped him extend it, as I've read in the past. So there are all sorts of reasons why that would be difficult to duplicate. But one of the many is that you don't get to face the same pitchers over and over within games or across games. You have to face guys who you were seeing maybe for the first time that season, certainly for the first time that game. And I don't know if that phases David Fletcher because it seems like he'll swing at anything and make contact with anything at any time. But that does raise the degree of difficulty, which is already extremely high. Yeah, considerably. So we're going to talk to our pal Jake Mintz later on in this episode.

He is half of Cespedes Family Barbecue, and he is about to embark on a bike ride from New York City to Chicago. And he is about to embark on a bike ride from New York City to Chicago because late last year, he said that the White Sox were not going to hire Tony La Russa as their manager. And that if they did, he would walk from New York to Chicago. And he is not quite walking, but he is biking, which is pretty good. So we're going to talk to him about that because he is doing it not just for content or because he said he would, but for a good cause and a charitable endeavor as well. So we will bring on Jake quite soon here. Just a few other news items or follow-ups I wanted to mention here. Last week when we did an email show, we got an email about alternate realities. And if you had many alternate timelines or parallel worlds, and you could get some glimpse into those other worlds, how would that affect your fandom for

baseball? Or how would that affect the way baseball works or how it's covered? And my inclination there was that I would immediately lose much of my interest in everything possibly, or baseball certainly, because I think that my own timeline would suddenly seem insignificant. If it's the only one that I know of, then it's all important. But if it's one of many, many, many varieties of outcomes that are happening, then who's to say mine is actually special and every possible outcome is happening somewhere? So who cares? Why pay attention to the world where I am? And we actually got an email from listener Matthew who said, I am writing this because your discussion on the multiverse of baseball reminded me of a short story that I once read

called All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven. If you would like, you can read it here. It deals with many of the same issues with multiple universes that were mentioned in your podcast. And I took a look at this. I like Larry Niven. This is a sci-fi story from 1968, I believe. It's a short one. I will link to it for anyone who wants to read it, but it's a similar setup. It's not a baseball short story. Baseball is not mentioned, but my concerns about baseball are mirrored exactly here where what happens when the people in this world discover all the other worlds is that it just descends into chaos and murder and suicide and lawlessness because no one cares about anything anymore. So I'm quoting here. The protagonist is a detective who's sort of investigating this rash of crimes. And he says, it didn't do to think too much about these alternate timelines.

There were too many of them. The close ones could drive you buggy, but the ones further off were just as bad. And then it continues. There was no luck anywhere. Every decision was made both ways. For every wise choice you bled your heart out over, you had made all the other choices too. And so it went all through history. Civil wars unfought on some worlds were won by either side on others.

Else when another animal had first done murder with an antelope femur. Some worlds were still all nomad. Civilization had lost out. If every choice was canceled elsewhere, why make a decision at all? And then it goes on to say, Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything and one of you will or did. It's a pretty dark story. fraud. You can do anything and one of you will or did. It's a pretty dark story. So Larry Niven was very much thinking along the same lines that I was when we got this effectively wild email. I wonder if in that scenario where you're grappling with the psychological impact of seeing every potential timeline, some of which are better or worse than your own,

if anyone would have the sort of wherewithal to even play baseball to the level of it existing as a professional endeavor, right? Would you even try? What difference does it make to you if you're a Yankee in this life, if you might be engaged in literal civil war in another? My goodness. Yeah. Why do anything at all?

Just descend into hedonism. Yeah. Anyway, that's one possible outcome. Maybe other people have more positive interpretations of what would happen in that scenario, but Larry and I are very much on the same page there. So just a couple other things I wanted to mention. There was a report from Ken Rosenthal that the twins are looking into an extension for Byron Buxton. And that's sort of fascinating. Can you imagine how you would possibly structure a Byron Buxton extension? So Buxton is on the IL, as he often is, and he is a free agent after the 2022 season. And he is a free agent after the 2022 season. And it sounds like the twins are starting up some extension talks with both Buxton and maybe also some players who could potentially be involved in trade talks, depending I will update it here. Since 2019, the start of 2019, the only player with more war produced per plate appearance among position players is Mike Trout. And then it's

Byron Buxton. It goes Trout, Buxton, Fernando Tatis Jr. I mean, he is right up on that pantheon, except that he is rarely healthy. So since the start of 2019, he's played 153 games, 540 play appearances. That is basically a full healthy season. And he has produced 6.64 in that time. That is really great. But he has amassed essentially one season's worth of playing time in two and a half seasons. And that is a long-term pattern for him so how would you even approach that because the good outcome is that he's healthy and he just keeps playing the same way he's played like you don't even have to project him to be better at baseball right you just have to project him to be healthier she has to stay on the field but that seems pretty tough to project too. So you have to pay him accordingly as someone who, in terms of per plate appearance production and talent and skill and all of that, is one of the best players in baseball, but just has not been able to keep him. You don't want to let him leave and then see him get healthy somewhere else and not get to have him in your uniform.

But that is tough because he probably feels like, hey, I play really well when I play. So I should be paid like someone who plays really well. But you can't pay him as if he is always in the lineup. Right. And if you're Buxton, how do you think about the sort of risk and reward of a contract? I mean, obviously, it's going to depend a lot on what terms are offered to him that will, funnily enough, like the deal he's offered will determine whether or not he takes it. What a keen insight I have offered. But, you know, from his perspective, you sit there and you think about where is the tipping point at which you say,

okay, if I accept this deal, I have, you know, I've taken care of myself and my family in a way that is going to sort of set us up. And I also am cognizant of the limitations that my health has sort of put on my career and might put on my future production. And so this feels like a good deal to me. I just don't really know what the answer to that is because, you know, his, like you said, like when he is healthy, he has been, you know, very good sort of since he's taken a step forward. But it just every year we talk about what would it be like if we finally had like the full and healthy season from him and we haven't had it yet. So I'm just asking your question back to you, but from the other side of the table. And I would say, which makes the fact

that this is sort of being tied to his trade value in like two weeks feel like a weird way to, a weird prism and sort of timeframe to put around this because I think there is a lot of understandable uncertainty on both sides as to what his real value would be. And I don't know that if they're not able to reach a consensus around that, I wonder what it does to sort of how teams understand his value in the trade market, right? So it's a weird thing to kind of put this all around the deadline. Although, you know, given the injuries, it makes sense that this wasn't the kind of negotiation that they would necessarily have done in the offseason. But that does seem like a more natural place for it.

So I don't know, Ben. I'm here to tell you, I don't rightly know. Forget about the long term. Like even think about the short term. If you were a team that was interested in Bayern Bucks and services for the rest of this season, how would you even value that? Because you could be picking up one of the best players in baseball or you could be picking up someone who will get hurt again and not help you at all down the stretch. I mean, he's dealing with a fracture right now. It's not something that you would think would be a chronic lingering issue.

But unfortunately for him, he comes back from one thing and then something else happens. So at this point, you'd have to say, yeah, maybe he's been a little unlucky at times, but also health is a skill and he hasn't demonstrated that he has it to this point. Yeah. And there's also the history with him and the twins where, what was it, in 2018, I think, where he had some injuries and he was demoted. And then they did not promote him when rosters expanded in September. And I think that is the reason why he is not going to be a free agent a year earlier than he is.

And at the time, that ruffled some feathers. His feathers, his agent's feathers, his representatives said they were displeased and disappointed about that. And Buxton himself said that that didn't go over well. But he also later, I think, said that he still hoped to spend his whole career with the Twins organization, which is one of those things where sometimes you wonder whether that will actually linger or whether players will hold it against the team if they kept them down or manipulated their service time in some way. And often it doesn't necessarily seem to. I guess maybe they're all jaded and cynical and assume that any team or most teams would have done the same or they just form bonds and want to stay where they've been and been happy. And it isn't necessarily an obstacle or a sticking point down the road. But yeah, just the larger issue of how do you value him? And I'll link to Ken's report, but he said that Minnesota offered him a deal. I guess this is kind of the opening offer that would guarantee him more than $70 million

and would also include escalators and incentives. Yeah, you'd think we talk about incentive-laden deals. Like, usually we're talking about maybe, like, a one-year deal, a guy coming back from injury or something, and if he hits certain playing time he hit, if he ended up with his 90th percentile outcome, or even his 50th percentile performance outcome, but 90th percentile durability outcome, then he would be immensely valuable. And so he would probably want to build in some provision so that he could get paid that way if he were to play so well. But then also, like the twins will say, well, we're taking some risk here also because you haven't been able to stay on the field and we're committing to you long term. So we don't want to give all of the upside to you in this deal. So, yeah, you'd think that that would be a complicated discussion.

Like the people in the twins front office whose job it was to model that or the people at his agents who are trying to model that. I wonder whether their models look anything alike. extension with the idea of a guy being traded, right? Like if we sign Buxton to a deal and we lock him in, well, that automatically means that he won't be traded. And oftentimes that's true, right? Because you're committing to a guy because you want him on your roster and think that you're going to be competitive. But sometimes it can have the opposite effect where it's like, oh, now we know exactly what that guy is going to cost. And sometimes that makes him a more attractive trade trip, trade chip, trade trip, a trade trip. It's hard to say. And sometimes that makes him a more attractive trade trip, trade chip, trade trip, a trade trip.

It's hard to say. It's hard to say, Ben, because you know exactly what he's going to cost escalators or know, you know, you have an understanding of what the baseline is and then what the upper end of the range is. So I don't know. That isn't really a Buxton specific comment,

but I do find it interesting that we sort of put these things on opposite ends of the spectrum as if they don't sometimes meet in the middle. But mostly I think what I would like is for Buxton to be sort of fully healthy and fully operational and then stick around because twins fans have had a hell of a time this year. And it would be very sad if, you know,

in this down year, which we don't think really has much to say about the long-term viability of their strategy as a club or their ability to be a contender in future years, if this year they can't get some kind of deal done and they trade Buxton away and then he's fully healthy and doing great somewhere else, I would feel very sad about that if I were a Twins fan. So hopefully, you know, they can find something that works for both sides and that both sides find palatable from a risk perspective, because we would like to see a Twins team win a playoff series just to like see what it does in the playoffs and cannot get swept in the playoffs. So there's your silver lining. While we're talking twins, I was directed to a quixotic quest that a card shop has undertaken. Drew's card shop in San Francisco is for some reason attempting to collect every Williams-Astadillo 2019 Bowman No. 24 Rookie Card. So this is a specific Williams-Astadio rookie card, and this card shop is trying to collect every one of them in existence. They want to own the entire print run, and their reasons are, one, we love Williams-Astadio, you do too.

Two, Williams-Astadio is the best two-way player in the history of the Minnesota Twins. And three, this will be fun, and that's what card collecting is about. So thus far, as I speak, they have 826 of these Williams-Estadio cards, and they estimate that there are approximately 150,000 of them in circulation. Wow. 50,000 of them in circulation. Wow. Yeah. So they're 0.6% of the way there. So they're on their way and they are relying on the public for help here.

So if you have one or more of these Williams Estudio cards, there's an address on this website, which I will link to. There was also a Reddit thread about this. You can mail your Williams Estudio card to this P.O. box in San Francisco, and they will send you a $1 coupon to use in their online card shop. So this is partly trying to drum up business for Drew's card shop, but I'm a mark for anything Williams-Estudio related. So I am helping them with that promotional effort without receiving any coupon credit myself. So this is happening.

And if you happen to be sitting on a treasure trove of Williams-Ecidio 2019 Bowman number 24 rookie cards, they are wanted. And you can find on our show page where they can be sent. Well, we always like it when local card shops are able to kind of make a mark and do some business. So yes, without any sponsorship or endorsement, I applaud the effort. Yes. And there have been some other efforts like this. There's a lawyer in New Mexico who's trying to corner the market on Tim Wallach cards because Tim Wallach was his favorite player. He is not nearly there yet, but he is up to 27,224 Tim Wallach cards.

I will link to his blog about that. And there's also a big Cubs fan who's trying to collect 1 million Cubs cards, according to his Twitter account, at 1 million Cubs. He's up to 649,099. Not bad. So we wish them all well in their cardboard endeavors. So I just want to touch on two more players who were also difficult to evaluate. One of them, there was a bit of news about Nomar Mazzara. Nomar Mazzara, who has been an absolute enigma for years now. And unfortunately for him, he was designated for assignment by the Tigers. And I assume that we have not seen the last of Nomar Mazzara. He is still only 26. He turned 26 in April, even though it feels like he's been around for a really long time. But what a riddle he has been. And multiple teams have tried with him. And I guess it's just kind of a reminder that development is not always linear or that sometimes there is no development really because he has essentially

been the same player or at least an equally productive player since the day he made the majors. And if anything, he's gotten worse since then. So typically when a player makes the majors in his age 21 season and does decently, I mean, he hit 20 homers that year in 145 games, which was not amazing for a corner outfielder in 2016. And he only had a 320 on base and a 91 WRC plus. It wasn't like he was great, but he was 21 and he made the majors and he had some pop. And then he hit 20 homers the next year. And then he hit 20 homers the year after that. And then he hit 19 homers the year after that in a few fewer games. And each time he was like right around a 90 WRC plus. And he just did not progress past that point. So normally you would expect, oh, well, this is who he is at 21. He's going to progress and he will get closer to his peak. And that just didn't happen. He just sort of ran in place. And then ultimately the Rangers traded him to the White Sox in December

2019. And with the White Sox last year, he seemed to regress and only had a 67 WRC plus, and then the Tigers took a chance on him, and he is, again, in that range, 64 WRC plus. So he's still young enough that you would think he might catch on somewhere else, but if he can't catch on with the Tigers, that's not the greatest sign. So it just goes to show, I guess, that you can't always project that someone is just going to get better. Sometimes they don't. Right. And you look at him as a guy who he can only play a corner. And so he's not producing at a level to overcome, right? It's not like he has some other aspect of his profile that's elevating his play.

It's not like he's a superlative center fielder. And so you can kind of accept an anemic bat because he's contributing in other ways he's just he's a corner guy and he's not exactly amazing there either so it's really too bad i think i will forever assume that he is just 25 or maybe i will always think that he's like 35 and be shocked by how young he actually is i don't know it's one of those two things, but it's too bad. Yeah, if he can't latch on with Detroit, who, as we have talked about, is more interesting

than we maybe assumed they would be going into the year, but they are still the Tigers, and they are still not playoff bound. So it'll be interesting to see if there is some club that can sort of course correct for him, but you'd think that if he had a gear that was just you know a swing change away or whatever that it would have been unlocked by now he seemed like he could be a candidate for that sort of thing because clearly he had power and has power and he hit that 505 foot home run, which I think is maybe the still tied for the longest Homer track by

stat cast in a game and was obviously a top prospect before he was called up too. And he was like a top 20 guy entering 2016. And I think baseball prospectus had him at number five. Like he was a highly touted guy. And so you would have expected to keep progressing to just, it hasn't happened. So sometimes guys come out of nowhere and make large leaps after not being highly touted prospects. And then

sometimes highly touted prospects make it to the majors and just sort of stagnate. So you could never take these things for granted. Who knows? Maybe he'll have a late career renaissance of some sort. Maybe he'll be like, I don't know, Carlos Pena, who was also a top prospect and it took him a while to really show who he was. And he was with Detroit and he was much better than Nomar Bizarro was, but he didn't fully break out until he ended up with Tampa Bay and then showed what he had been capable of. So I don't know. Maybe there is a fourth act for Nomar Mazzara where he will actually put it all together. But if not, it will be one of those weird kind of cautionary tales. So the last player I wanted to mention, we did not talk about the Daniel Camarena Grand Slam, which was really one of the most exciting moments of the season so far. And ever since that happened, I've just sort of been wondering how that happened. And I don't know that we need to do a meet a major leaguer for him because his place in history is assured. 28-year-old rookie relief pitcher who had been toiling in the minors for about 10 years and was a 20th round pick by the Yankees back in 2011. And then he went from obscurity, essentially, to this starring role in one of the best comebacks of the season. And that was just

one of the most improbable moments. And I know people always want to make it at about C. This is why we can't have the DH, because then we will be deprived of the Daniel Camarena moment. And for me, it doesn't rise to the level of keeping pitchers hitting all the time. But it was one of those special things where he was allowed to hit for himself, which seems questionable in retrospect. The Padres had a tired bullpen. They were worn out and he had to eat some innings and they just didn't have fresh arms ready to go.

So Jace Tingler let him hit for the Padres when they were down against Max Scherzer and somehow he hit a grand slam. And he was the first relief pitcher to hit a grand slam since 1985. He was, you know, it gave rise to a whole host of fun facts. He was the first relief pitcher to have his first hit be a Grand Slam since 1898. And the immortal Bill Duggleby, who suddenly was on everyone's lips for the first time in more than a century. So it was one of the weirdest things. And Max Scherzer had never allowed a home run to a pitcher.

And his fastball is really hard to hit. And it was a good fastball. It was like a 97 mile per hour four seamer. And it was, you know, like below the zone a little bit. And in like it wasn't like a total meatball. If you had asked me, like I would have thought that you could have thrown Daniel Camarena a meatball and it would have been fine. But he hit this and he didn't seem to know how he hit this. Like he said he blacked out and everyone was shocked when this happened. And I was trying to like dig into his history to see like, was he a good hitter at some point? Like, was there something in his past that would have made you think that he could do this? And not really. In his whole minor league career, he didn't hit all that much.

And 31 plate appearances, 28 at-bats at all levels of the minors. He was a 179-207-179 hitter. That's a 385 OPS against minor league pitching. That doesn't make you think, yeah, he's an offensive star waiting to happen. I went all the way back to his high school career because like many future major leaguers, he pitched and hit in high school. And he was a decent hitter then, it looks like, according to his stats on MaxPreps. He was a lifetime 307 hitter in high school. And he was a decent hitter then, it looks like, according to his stats on MaxPreps. He was a lifetime 307 hitter in high school with nine home runs in 287

plate appearances. It's hard for me to tell if that's good. I don't know if that's good for that league at that time and for a future major leaguer the superficial stats are pretty decent or they would be in other contexts but i don't think he was like a potential two-way player or anything who was shunted into just pitching so i don't understand how this happened especially because like the swing looked like a real swing yeah if. If you watch the highlight, which I will link to, this does not look like a pitcher who got lucky. It looks like he's a hitter. And he hit the ball 107 miles per hour and 416 feet line drive, like a low liner.

He crushed this pitch. And I just do not understand how this happened. And I may never understand it. But isn't that a little nice? It is. Isn't that a little nice to be flummoxed by something and say, I can't, I can't account for this. I don't want to reverse my position on pitchers hitting because that position I think is the right one to have long-term.

But I do appreciate moments like this more than I used to, not because, again, I want to switch around and say that the NL shouldn't have the DH or anything like that, but the joy of position players pitching has really just waned entirely. When we get alerts from the MLB account that, alert position player pitching, I'm like, well, when isn't that true now? It's just not fun in the way that it was. And so I appreciate pitcher-related hitting oddity much more than I do position player pitching oddity.

And this being slightly mysterious is really gratifying, although I do think that moments like this tend to inflate our individual understanding of what we might do against Max Scherzer. And I don't think that that should be the takeaway here. You should all still just know in your heart that if you stood in against Max Scherzer, that the best outcome for you is to strike out looking. Right. Yes. I thought that too, because I was just wondering, well, did he completely get lucky? Was this a total fluke? Did

he just swing as hard as he could and he happened to hit it? And if I were to swing hundreds of times, ultimately, I would one day make contact and maybe the ball would go a long way, although probably not this long. But yeah, as much as this seems like he got lucky or something, I'm sure that he's better than me. He's better than you. He's better than just about everyone listening to this podcast. Even though he's a 28-year-old rookie relief pitcher, he is a better hitter than the vast, vast majority of people, and we would always look silly against Max Scherzer. For one thing, I would be terrified just to stand in the box against Max Scherzer.

So swinging alone might be more than I could manage. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's wow. I would fling myself on the ground in terror i i'm very confident in what my reaction would be and and you know what i wouldn't feel embarrassed by that i wouldn't feel embarrassed by doing that even though it would look really silly i'd be like this is just self-preservation you know this is just this is just my my base instincts kicking in saying get out of the way of that thing. It could kill you. Well, like every 28-year-old rookie who's been in the minors as long as he has, he has

a nice story to go along with that. We didn't play the song. This is not an official Meet a Major Leaguer segment, but I will link to some stories about Camarena if you want to learn about him. And he kind of went semi-viral in part also because of his brother's reaction. His brother, Louis, his older brother was in the park and was, as you might imagine, beside himself as he was watching this. And he has had a long route to the majors and he had elbow surgery and he missed a season and their dad died unexpectedly a couple of years ago.

And so that was part of the sentiment of this story that he was doing it for his dad and all of that. So all the things that you want when you have an improbable story like this were present. So that was just wonderful. And that could end up being a really big, significant win for San Diego. And also, he's a local kid, too. Not that he's a kid anymore, but he's from Bonita, California. So that was part of it as well.

Area man hits home run. Yes. All right. So we will take a quick break. And we will be right back with Jake Mintz of Suspitous Family Barbecue to talk about his La Russa ride. fall and if I do it won't hurt at all when I'm on my bicycle when I'm on my bicycle You all know Jake Mintz. Along with Jordan

Schusterman, he forms the famous Cespedes family barbecue duo, which you can find writing and talking about baseball at Fox and at The Ringer. He shares the Ringer MLB feed with me and Michael Bowman and Zach Cram. In less than a week, Jake will be boarding his bike in New York City and setting off on a two-week, 1,200-mile odyssey to Chicago. He will do that because last year he was wrong about something on the internet and because he made a promise and because he is kind of, but not completely keeping that promise and he is doing it for a good cause. Jake, hello.

Hi, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be sitting and not moving, something that will be foreign to me very soon. Yeah. Relish your time of not pedaling because you're not going to have much of it in the next few weeks. Hey, before we get to your wild ride, how was your all-star week? It was delightful. It was really heartwarming to be around people again. I actually almost cried or slash, you know, almost did cry right before the home run derby, just kind of looking around and seeing the humanity. We're not out of this thing yet, as the last couple of days coming out of Denver have really emphasized. However, it was incredibly, it was just really good to see that many people and see all these people in the baseball world

who you only see three times a year, and you hug them and you get drinks with them, and then you don't see them for four more months. It was good to do that after almost two years of not seeing any of those folks, including Meg. Hi, Meg. Hi. Hi.

Yeah. I might have cried if I had been in the presence of Shohei Otani too. You could admit that that's what it was. We all know. But I will say, I will say I did see him in person up close for the first time. And the thing that jumped out to me was the shoulders. It was how long they go for. They keep going outwards for days in a way that I,

because when I first saw a picture of him, I was like, wow, he's got a small head. And then I realized like, no, he doesn't. He has a regular size head and mountainous shoulders. Yeah. I have not noticed that, but it's true. He has a broad frame. So the ride, the great La Russa ride that is in your future, for those who were not with you on the barbecue podcast when you made your fateful proclamation, can you recount what exactly transpired on that podcast?

your fateful proclamation. Can you recount what exactly transpired on that podcast? So, you know, other baseball podcasts that don't offer the same level of depth and insight as Effectively Wild, you know, you have to say a bombastic things from time to time to keep the listener base going. And I do that nothing, you know, heinous or offensive or whatever. But I did claim that when the Tony La Russa to the White Sox rumors started percolating in late October, early November, I thought that was just not going to happen. Part of that was that I think the rumors came from Bob Nightingale. And so I went on the podcast and I said, if they actually hire Tony La Russa, I will walk to Chicago. La Russa, I will walk to Chicago. As we are all aware now in July of 2021, Tony La Russa is the manager of the White Sox. And I am kind of, I guess, a man of my word in that I will be biking and not walking to Chicago. Walking to Chicago would probably take about a month, if not longer.

take about a month, if not longer. And I just don't have that type of time to give. And so I have negotiated my way down to a bike ride instead of walking. And I don't know if folks are familiar with your turn to cycling. I joked when I saw you in Denver that you're basically just a cyclist influencer now. That's your primary media role. But how long have you been riding and to this level? Because I think that you're right to say that walking to biking is something of a downshift in terms of intensity, but this is still quite the ride that you're about to embark on. So how did you find yourself in a position where you felt confident to say, well, sure, I can bike to Chicago? Like that's a reasonable endeavor for me as a human person.

So I hadn't really biked extensively before I graduated college. I played baseball in college my whole life. I played baseball and, you know, never really exerted myself in any other way that wasn't related to that. I then graduated college and needed some sort of competition. So I took up doing triathlons and swimming sucks. It is the worst. And so then I put down doing triathlons because of how much I hated swimming. I would say I've really only been doing riding like intensely for the last really year and a half since the pandemic, because it was just a perfect kind of quarantine

activity. You know, part of quarantine for me and for a lot of people was the idea of kind of feeling trapped in your house. And I could just get on my bike and go places and just pack all my food with me and pack all my, you know, hydration with me and just go. So I did a lot of like hooking all my camping gear up to my bike and biking a hundred miles north of New York City camping and then biking home. And so that just kind of became a really good release for me. And then over time I started, you know, getting more intense and tense into it and seeing how far I could kind of ride in a day. And so I would say at my peak over the winter inside, I was probably riding about 250 miles a week on my indoor trainer. Yeah, I had some of that experience too,

minus like 225 miles a week probably. There are some nice and not dangerous bike routes near my building. And it was, as you said, good to get outside in a safe way. So I did some of that too. Biking can be very pleasant in addition to being good exercise, except that biking in late July with the amount of gear that I imagine you will have to be bringing with you sounds a little less pleasant than a leisurely ride next to the Hudson or something. So what kind of temperatures are we talking and how much will you be packing on your back? So I guess I will talk about the timing first of all yes so part of the trip is that i and jordan who will be joining me in a car we are going to baseball games like in the pace car just like right in front of you no i i don't i don't anticipate i will be drafting off of him. He will just be kind of coming along.

Just sitting there taunting you as you sweat? No, I think we're going to wake up in the hotel or the motel, the Red Roof Inn, no ads, and he'll meet me for lunch somewhere and then meet me at the end of the day. So part of the rationale is I wanted to turn this into a baseball thing because, you know, baseball. And so we're going to a game 12 of the 14 nights. And in order to do that, we needed to do it when the minor league season was still in swing because the minor league season ends the first, like, you know, I think the last

week in August, first week in September when it was going to be cooler. And we didn't really have the time to do it up until this point, whether that was because, you know, we weren't vaccinated yet. You know, we got vaccinated, I think middle of April or because we were just busy with work or because the minor league schedule didn't line up correctly. So let me say, I did a lot of work to make sure that the schedule all fit together. So that is why I will be doing it as maybe like the hottest possible time of the year. I plan on waking up incredibly early around 5.30 to start my days. And I will try and be done with riding most days before noon or one as to avoid the heat. As far as gear is concerned, I will be lugging very little with me on my bike while I go.

Jordan will have like, you know, my clothes I like an extra bike wheel and stuff in the car so that I don't have to lug that with me. I will probably have like a little bag. It's called like a frame bag that goes in the middle of the bike that I'll keep hydration and nutrition in. I'll probably stop every 30 miles, maybe 25 miles to refuel because, you know, making sure that you're taking in enough calories is very important and knowing the rate at which you personally burn calories is key in order to continue going. So yeah.

So what kind of distance are you going to be doing on any given day? And are there particular days that you are looking ahead to to say, oh, this might be where this all comes off the rails? So it's funny, right? I've done a lot of research in terms of what the safe roads are. I will not be biking on any like interstates. That's actually illegal. There's a feature on this website called Strava that allows you to use heat maps to plan routes. It basically takes every single person who's ever ridden every road and shows you how frequently

bikers use those roads. And so I'm using that to kind of plan the safety aspect of the route. I am averaging around, I think it's 85, 80 miles a day. My first two days are pretty light between 50 and 60. Day number five is, I feel very good about the safety and being able to complete the whole trip, except for day number five. That is the only day that I'm just kind of putting that aside. That day will take me from Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Evansburg, Pennsylvania, which is about halfway between Williamsport and Pittsburgh. That day I will be doing about 135 miles, 7,550 feet of elevation. It'll be about eight and a half to nine hours in the saddle. So that day, there's no game that night. It's just, I'm going to wake up and just take my time with it.

But yes, that day is staring me in the face in a particularly intimidating way. I believe there's one or two other days that are around 100 miles, but those are very flat days. There's a day from like Avon, Ohio, which is kind of near Oberlin to Toledo. That's 100 miles and it's only 1,000 feet of elevation. And for those of you unfamiliar with kind of distance bike riding, elevation is key. So like on a flat terrain, I can pretty much hold around 20 miles an hour on my bike. And depending on the elevation, that can go as far down as like eight or seven miles an hour on my bike. And depending on the elevation, that can go as far down as like eight or seven miles an hour. So that's a huge deal.

This kind of reminds me of, what was it, 2014 when you and Jordan went on your minor league road trip and wrote about it for Baseball Prospectus when you were 16 or however old you were then. And you went to a bunch of games and wrote about it and it sounded like a lot of fun, but you were not riding a bike the entire time. So that might make this a little less fun, but hopefully still somewhat fun. So which games are you going to get to? And are you having to go way out of your way to get to games or were they all right along the route, even though Rob Manfred has done his best to make baseball slightly less accessible in some places? Yes, this trip would have been easier two years ago. I'll just leave it at that. The league's decision to cut minor league baseball's access, very much not ideal for

me. Although that will kind of be a theme of our trip because we're going to a team that got an affiliation in Somerset that didn't used to have it, Somerset, New Jersey, the Somerset Patriots. We're going to a team that used to have an affiliation and lost it, Williamsport, the Crosscutters are now the draft league. And we'll be going to a team that's never had an affiliation, has always been independent ball, and that's the Lake Erie Crushers in Ohio. And so part of the trip is kind of, you know, we're going to hopefully write about the juxtaposition between those experiences. And, you know, for every team that, you know, all the teams that lost affiliate status, what does that mean for them? Right. And then for the team, the very

few teams that actually gained it, I think there's only three or four. What does that mean for them? As far as places I'm very excited to go, we're going to a Tigers game. I've just never been to Detroit before at all. We're going a little bit out of the way to get to Detroit, but I think it's worth it because I just would love to cross that stadium off my list. And then South Bend, Indiana, I'm very excited about. That's actually the first or second minor league game Jordan and I went to on our very first road trip back in 2013 when we were, I was only 17 at the time. And that stadium has a very special place in my heart. The gift shop there is a refurbished and converted former synagogue, which is one of the most bizarre sites in minor league baseball. Just buying South Bend Cubs gear on the Bema is very bizarre. So those are the places I'm very... I love Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

I'm a big Little League World Series fan. But that stadium is very cool, even though this World Series won't be going on while we're there. But yeah, this trip is definitely inspired by all the road trips Jordan and I did when we were in college. I think we did trips for four consecutive summers, kind of when we were growing up and cutting our teeth in this business and really helped us kind of get to where we are today. We did one from DC to Iowa and back. We did DC to Houston and back. We flew to San Diego and drove to Seattle. And then the major one we did was DC to Maine to San Diego and back. So that was literally the whole country. So this is inspired kind of by those experiences. And you see fun and bizarre things

on the road. And just getting to baseball stadiums and talking to players and interacting with people helps you really learn a lot about the communities where baseball takes place. Speaking of Jordan, his days will obviously be shorter in the car, but he's going to be driving this. Have you talked to him about how he's going to occupy his Jake-less time in the car each day? I think Jordan loves his Jake-less time as a general rule. Now we live in different cities. Jordan has moved since moved out of New York. I'm still here. But I think he'll be fine.

Jordan loves alone time is something to know about Jordan. He will put on podcasts. He will, you know, listen to music. He will be quite okay. He will call people. He'll probably even call you, Meg, at some point in the car, I bet. But his driving a day, it really doesn't go above like two and a half hours. Right.

So his days are basically going to be wake up. I'm already, you know, 45 miles done. Drive, meet me for lunch, get in the car, drive 45 minutes or an hour and then meet me at the hotel. So I think he will be OK. I just watched and wrote about the new Paul McCartney docuseries on Hulu. And of course, he gets into the whole Lennon-McCartney partnership. And really right up there when it comes to creative duos, it's Lennon-McCartney, they would write songs separately after a certain point, but they made an agreement basically from the beginning that every song was just going to be Lennon-McCartney, even if it was really more the product of one or the other in any individual case. So I wonder if anything like that happened with you and Jordan, where it's just like, like we're gonna share this Twitter account for all time and we are bonded for life because we are a brand now and thus we are always inseparable

well I mean it is important this is for everything we do there's no plan and there has never been a plan there's never been like you have this trip but I mean more like there's never been a meeting where we wrote like the words social media direction on like a whiteboard you know what i mean like and i think that part of what we're very different people and i think as we've grown up we've learned that but there's kind of this like unconditional love that exists just between the two of us because we've known each other since middle school and like we know that neither person is ever ill-intentioned and like we don't i mean despite the fact that you know we've built what we built, like there's no desire for clout. Like we're not like, that's not vital to us. We like to, you know, spread the joy of baseball and make a living off of it. Right.

And then that's it. And I don't think we've ever actually had a fight because of that, but yeah, we are very different. You are correct. This is not something Jordan would ever, ever do at all. The one difference between us is I am much needier. I will call him multiple times a day. And I know that if he has to call me, he actually has something to say. Where I'll just call him to be like, hey, did you see that thing? Well, you're not just biking to bike and you're not just biking to get to see some communities that have baseball or have seen their baseball change. You're also using this to raise money for a great organization. This is your opportunity, Jake, to talk about the impact that you hope this trip has beyond what it does to your legs, presumably. Yeah, I mean, I kind of came to the realization, like, you know, if I'm going to do this, I might as well raise some money, you know, for a good cause and do something good for the community and find somewhere that could use some money.

Because we figured that this was going to get some attention and we wanted to try and kind of utilize that to the best of our ability. I would say when I first came up with the idea for the trip, I reached out to Russ Dorsey, a friend of ours who writes about the Cubs, Chicago native. And I said, do you know any organizations in Chicago that can use some publicity and use some funding? And this was like, I want to say right after I said what I said and realized what was going to have to happen. And he made me aware of Lost Boys Inc., which is an organization on the south side of Chicago founded by a guy named LeVonta Stewart. And they, you know, provide baseball opportunities for kids, mostly black and brown kids on the south side in a neighborhood called South Shore.

The opportunity to play baseball and softball, a lot of those communities are incredibly underfunded and underserved. And they provide youth with those opportunities. There's been a lot of good writing about them. Shakia Taylor wrote a very good piece about the organization, I believe, on Yahoo at some point last year, and she has done a lot of very good work for the organization to kind of give them some more publicity and send some funds their way.

It really just comes down to, if you can afford it, I think this is a very good cause. I've done a lot of volunteering over the last year in New York City to try and make baseball more accessible for young kids who don't have access to it, who can't afford it or, you know, like don't have a batting cage or don't have uniforms. And Lost Boys is doing really good work on the south side of Chicago for a lot of those kids. And so if you can, if you can donate, please do. It's, I have a little website where people can donate. There are a bunch of different ways to do it.

You can even just Venmo me and I will put all the money in to lost boys myself. If you donate over $75, I will record a hello video, a thank you video for you on the bike. So there, I guess there are some good things to come if you give money besides you know helping out Lost Boys yes we will link to your website and to Lost Boys and where all that information

is and you will also be wearing some sort of tracker as you ride right so people if they want to do a ride along with Jake if listen if people want to rob me on the road and take my stuff they know exactly where to find me. Someone said that. I think it might have been my mom. It was like, is this safe to let people know where you are? And I was like, look, if someone wants to come find me in the woods outside of State College, Pennsylvania and take my stuff, then fine. Like, okay. That's just a cookie crumbling. my stuff, then fine. Like, okay, that's just a cookie crumbling. Like I can't control that. I will be tracking. I use, I track all my rides on my Wahoo, which is kind of like a Garmin. It's a little GPS tracker. And that kind of beeps out a live feed for people so that you can kind of see

where I am. If you want to come ride with me, that's great. Just, you know, I have a couple of people who've already asked about that. More than welcome. I don't really have the time or bandwidth right now to like tell you exactly like where I'm going to be at certain times. And I just don't know. So just keep an eye on the tracker if you want to come. If you do decide to come join me, I would very much appreciate it if you made a nice donation to Lost Boys in order to do that. But yeah, all are welcome. The more the mer merrier. And if you do rob Jake, rob only his personal funds, not the funds that are earmarked for Lost Boys, because that would be bad. Yeah.

If you rob me, just leave the Venmo alone. You can take my items. Items are okay. That would be very much preferred, especially in Pennsylvania. I think once Pennsylvania is an intimidating place to bike through just because of the, you know, the Alleghenies, the Appalachian, you know, mountains. Once I get into Michigan, it's just, you know, I can walk that. That's easy. Yeah. And what awaits you in Chicago when you arrive?

When you arrive, unfortunately, Tony La Russa. So we will be rolling into Chicago on August 4th. That's actually one of the longest days of the trip is South Bend to Chicago. I think it's like 98 miles, but there is a game the night of August 4th in Chicago, their home against the Royals. We are trying to get as many people who want to come out to that game as

possible. We're hopefully going to get some kind of tickets from the team or find a way to make it a little bit cheaper for people who want to come out to that game as possible. We're hopefully going to get some kind of tickets from the team or find a way to make it a little bit cheaper for people who want to come out. That is also available on the website if you want to come watch that game with us. And then we'll be there in Chicago on the 5th and the next day, just trying to, you know, we haven't totally figured that out yet. I'm kind of focused on getting there. I don't want to, you know, athletes are like one day at a time.

I'm not thinking about tomorrow's starter. That's how I'm approaching this trip. I hope I get to Chicago. I think I will. I feel pretty good about it. You joke about La Russa being on the other end of this. Do the White Sox know of your trip? Have you gotten any feedback from the organization about this endeavor? Kind of. I don't want to do a whole lot there necessarily because I like still don't think Tony La Russa is the right guy for that job. And at some point, I don't remember who it was. It wasn't anybody with the organization. But someone in my life was like, oh, at the end, like you have to get there and like meet La Russa. And like, that's not interesting to me. I don't want to like, I don't want to like, I still believe what I said. Right.

Like, I still don't think he's the right person for the job. And I don't want to give off the vibe that I think he is ever. And so we'll see. Maybe we can do something with them. If the White Sox organization is willing to, you know, make a donation and then we can have, we'll see. Maybe we can do something with them. If the White Sox organization is willing to make a donation, then we can talk. But other than that, no, that is not something I'm – I'm not interested in reconciliation here, if that makes sense. I would love it if he made a donation just so he could show up at the finish line and laugh at you. Okay. Hey, Tony La Russa, if you want to come ride 100 miles with me then okay where exactly will you be setting off from yankee stadium oh okay so ben if you would like to come i was gonna say yeah i

could ride a few blocks with you and then peel off and be like i'm done yeah i'm going home now i live uptown so yankee stadium is yeah i'd so Yankee Stadium is two miles from me, very close by. So I would say around 10.30 a.m. on Thursday the 22nd, we'll be departing. I will be in the Bronx for about a minute and then I'll cross back into Manhattan and over the GW Bridge and into New Jersey. Day one, we will be going by Hinchcliffe Stadium in Patterson, New Jersey, which is one of the surviving Negro League fields. So we're going to try and kind of pepper baseball sites that are somewhat along the way throughout and kind of highlight those as we go. But yeah, I will be leaving from Yankee. We're better,

right, than Yankee Stadium. Yeah. Well, at the very least, we will be watching your GPS blip as you go just for moral support. Thank you. How long exactly was it before La Russa was officially hired that you made your pronouncement that there was no way La Russa was going to be hired? That's a good question. I don't have the dates in front of me. What I almost remember was that La Russa, the rumor started like during the playoffs, if I'm right. Yeah. At first it was incredible. It was, there's no way, which, you know, you, your only mistake was saying so on a podcast and attaching a promise to it. I mean, you know, you weren't an outlier in thinking that this was not going to happen.

No, my incredulousness was not the issue here, Ben. It was the, it It was not just the claim of going to Chicago. It was the walk. I said walk. I didn't say bike, right? And I am biking it and knew that I could bike it. I was a biker. I'm not a walker. And so that is really the biggest mistake that I made with saying that I could walk it and not bike it. But I would say maybe two weeks in between. And there was maybe like there was the first rumor and I said there was no chance. And I said if it happened, I would bike to Chicago. And then there was like a two or three week period where there was more and more rumors. It was like this might actually happen.

And each time I went back on the pod, I was like, no way. Like this is stupid. There's no chance. And then the day that it happened, you know, my mentions were everywhere. They were, it was a problem. Everyone was like, oh, here you go. Looks like you're walking. And Ben, as you're aware, there's at the ringer, there was a story of a gentleman who I never got the pleasure to work with named Donny Kwok, who made a wager once about – I think it was what if Germany did not get out of the group stage at the 2018 World Cup, he would eat a soccer boot. He would eat the boot. And he never did.

And Donnie never ate the boot and Donnie no longer works at the ringer. And so when I made this claim and it happened, everyone at the ringer was like, oh, you got to eat the boot. And I was like, what are you talking about? And so now I am I am nibbling the boot. I am not fulfilling my original promise, but I am doing some of it. And I hope enough of it. If there are some people who are like, you didn't fulfill your promise. I'm like, you know what?

Well, screw you. Like you walk. You know, I'm sorry. I can't. You found a happy medium, I think. Like you had to do it and it's for a good cause and it's good content, but you had to be accountable to your followers as well because, you know, they couldn't trust any of your wild claims in the future if you didn't stand by this one.

And let me say this. When I am on mile 133 on day five of the trip, and I am hiking up to Evansburg, Pennsylvania on a nine and a half percent incline, and I am at the end of my line, people are not going to be like, oh, well, you should have walked. If suffering is what you are after, my dear listeners, you will receive it. I promise. Did Jordan exact any concessions from you in gracefully allowing you to bike instead of walk? Yes. Jordan and our podcast producer,

the incredible Bobby Wagner, I will be making a donation to Lost Boys from my own piggy bank in a way to buy myself out of the walk is how I think we described it. Wow. So you have to bike all the way to Chicago and you still don't get off for free. You also have to spend money to get yourself out of walking. I need to be a man of my word. And I said I would walk and I'm not walking. And I feel more embarrassed that I said I would walk than that I'm not walking. But I want to be someone people trust, Ben. And I think that biking this will do 85% of that. And I hope that my donation will do the other 15%. Yes. You got to be accountable as a journalist. You got to at least bike to Chicago

if you say you're going to walk to Chicago. Of course. And then will you be riding back in the barbecue mobile with Jordan? I will be driving back. My father has a big birthday milestone like two days after I get to Chicago and so I need to zoom back to the East Coast to be there in time

for that. But yes, we will be driving back in the barbecue mobile as you call it. I love the confidence of giving yourself so little wiggle room in your schedule yes this is no people have said what if it rains what if it rains you will be wet i will be wet there is a level of rain in which i will bike in i actually have been training in the rain like as ben knows it has been very rainy here in new york over the last couple weeks and i have actually taken those opportunities to practice suffering in the rain of going

out and just feeling what that's like, making sure you're safe, you know, wearing bright colors. You have a lot, I have a lot of lights. I, there is a level of rain I will bike through. There is also a level of wiggle room here that I have not given myself. That is a good point, Meg. And I, this is just one fun tidbit. There is a segment of the trip,

the one I keep talking about on day five, that goes from Williamsport to Evansburg. The last 20 miles or 15 miles of that ride is all uphill, like about 9% gradient, which is very, very steep for about two miles. I have actually reconned that exact segment already. I had to be in Pittsburgh for something. And on the way to the drive to Pittsburgh, I stopped and reconned the scariest part of the ride to make myself feel a little bit better. I don't know if it made me feel better or worse, but I did do it. I did recon it. So before we let you go, I wanted to ask about La Russa because as you said, he has not changed your mind. He is not getting you to admit that you were wrong about whether he should have been hired, just whether he would be hired. And it's an interesting question of how

you evaluate a manager because we were critical of that hiring and perplexed as I think many people were just because, you know, not only had he been out of the dugout for so long during a time when the game was changing, but also the process through which he was hired seemingly being kind of Jerry Reinsdorf ramming that through. And then the DUI in his history, which we didn't even immediately know about the second DUI, which then surfaced very quickly, and all of the other comments he has made and the concerns about him managing that team in particular with all of these young, fun players, et cetera, et cetera. There are no shortage of reasons to think that maybe this was not the ideal move and that maybe the White

Sox didn't even really need to move on from Rick Renteria in the first place. But here we are in mid-July and the White Sox have the best record in the American League. They have the best playoff odds in the American League as we speak. So on that level, if you just say, well, managerial performance is how good the team is, then great job, Tony Russo. Of course, it's more complicated than that and there's been some criticism of specific managerial moves that he has made or not knowing certain rules and then of course there was the Jermaine Mercedes blow up and all of that so there's been a little bit of strife

but obviously not enough strife to derail that team. So how are you thinking of his performance or how we even judge how a manager does and how much he is or isn't responsible for? I mean, there's a lot here. I think that the first thing I've learned is the impact a manager has during the regular season, I think is relatively minimal compared to the postseason. And that, especially from a tactical standpoint, that I think once the postseason happens and the White Sox have to play the Astros every day or the Red Sox or Tampa or whatever, the faults of Tony La Russa will become more exposed. I also think there was that article Andy McCullough wrote, I believe, at The Athletic yesterday, have it open on a tab. But I believe the premise was that, you know, whether everyone dislikes him or likes him, they're pulling in the same direction.

Right. our manager one year. We didn't like our coach. And we had like a players only meeting. It was like, hey, we're playing for us and not for him. And we won 12 games in a row, you know, and anything to make kind of the clubhouse come together does work. I think there are a lot of noisy factors here that are making the White Sox season so far kind of separate itself from the Russo. Like the division is very bad, right? Yes. It's the worst division in baseball, probably. It's very, very bad. And they're eight games up. If they had Tampa or Toronto or Boston in there, there would be a lot more criticism. I don't think we can safely say that he has done a good job or a bad job based upon what we've seen so far. And it is a really good team. And I think there's been a lot of debate over the years, right? Like what impact does a manager actually have, right? And that is,

I would say, one of the least quantifiable things in baseball. And some people will say it's a lot of impact and some people will say it's not. Yep. And I think this is like a mark in the column for not that much impact at the end of the day. Yeah. And you know, some people who thought that was a great hire or think Larissa is the perfect person to lead this team might say, well, that's cheap. They're having such great success and you say he's not responsible for any of it. And as you said, it's hard. I'm almost agnostic on virtually every manager because it's so impossible to say. And one thing I think we said, I want to say we said back when we were talking about the possibility that he might get hired or him actually getting hired was that this team might just be La Russa proof. Even if he is not the right person, even if he is not great, even if he costs them some wins, they might be good enough that it ultimately won't matter.

And of course, they've had to get through a lot of significant injuries. So it's not as if they've had the easiest time of it. But yeah, I was just reading Andy's article, and I'll link to that on the show page. But it sounds like they're not necessarily all on the same page exactly with La Russa, but to the degree that they're on different pages, it just hasn't seemed to hurt the team, at least as Andy was able to suss out. And it seems like that clubhouse is fairly close. And there were already leaders in that clubhouse. So it seems like La Russa has kind of come in and maybe to his credit, not tried to totally remake the team in his image and turn them into the scrappy La Russa non-bat flippers or whatever.

They have Abreu and they have Anderson and they have these players who are responsible for the cohesiveness of that clubhouse and seemingly still are. And so in that article, Anderson said, Tony's like the dad. We're like the kids. We're like the bad kids who don't listen, which is a pretty interesting quote. And he said, we're all not going to be thinking The same thing we're all different we're from All over the world and we're here trying to win So what so this is after the You mean Mercedes incident so we said

Let's flush that and keep moving get back Focused to what we're trying to do here and As you were saying Lance Lynn Said Tony's got this master plan I learned it a long time ago if everybody Is pulling in the same direction then they'll play Better on the field together and if that direction is that you're all mad at Tony, then that works well for him too. He doesn't care as long as you win. So maybe it turned out that

people don't love him or get along with him and that might work in the White Sox favor too. So it's just so hard to evaluate these things. It is very hard to evaluate it. And I think the thing that bugs me the most about their decision to hire him at the time is the process, right? Jerry Reinsdorf, the ownership went above the members of the organization to make this hire, right? People who had worked for years to build that team up from the inside, people who then had no input in terms of who is going to lead the next team. Right. Right. That creates an issue within the culture of the organization.

Right. And you cannot evaluate, it's so difficult to evaluate what a manager's impact and role is, but you can evaluate the decision and the process to which they had to take to get there. Right. And so until five years from now, we can have this conversation again i guess but we know for basically a fact how it went down right and so that is where i choose to take issue with the process of hiring him at the time yeah yeah well he's a hall of famer jake what can i say and uh yes he is flags fly forever and maybe they'll get one. So do plaques. Plaques stay on the wall forever unless we decide to remove them.

Which we should. Some of them we should. Some of them we should. Yes. All right. Well, we do want to talk to you again soon. You mentioned that your dad's birthday is right after you complete this trip. Is your dad's birthday Mike Trout's birthday?

My dad's birthday is not Mike Trout's birthday. Okay, but they must be close. My dad is actually Mike Trout. I am Jake Trout. We knew you were young, but we didn't think you were that young. I know, I know. Dang it.

Mike Trout is all of our dads. Mike Trout is not my dad. He is turning 30 on August 7th. Wow. We would like to have you and Jordan on to kind of repeat the performance that we had in episode 762, where we devoted a whole episode to Barry Bonds fun facts. And I don't know if that would work quite as well with Trout because no one's fun facts, no one's stats are really comparable to Barry Bonds, but we'll come up with something, I

think. So if we can find a time and then we can recap how your ride went, hopefully you will have arrived on time and survived. And so if we can find a time after you make it back to the East Coast in time for Mike's birthday, then we can do that. And you'll still be sore, but hopefully up for podcasting. That sounds great. I'll bring cake. Okay. And if you ride through East Town on your trip, be careful.

It took me a second because I don't watch the show, but now I understand the joke. We're going to come out of Delco with some great accents. I will say a sneak peek for all you Fangraphs listeners. One of the highlights of the early days of the trip is that I will be going to Eric Langenhagen's childhood home and I will be sifting through his buckets of jerseys. He won't be there. You'll, you'll just be there.

He will be there. Oh, he'll be there. Okay. He's going to be in town. I thought you were just going to show up and say hello to his family. Nope. He'll be there. Okay.

That's probably better that way. All right. Well, you can follow along with Jake and with his GPS tracker as he sets off. You're setting off in less than a week. What day is it exactly? Thursday, July 22nd. I leave. And of course, you can hear him on the Baseball BBQ podcast at The Ringer. You can hear him and see him and read him at Fox. And you can find him and Jordan at Cespedes BBQ on Twitter. Thank you, Jake. You can also find me on a highway somewhere in Ohio.

Good luck. Bon voyage. Don't rob me. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, as have the following five listeners, Miguel Fitzhugh Morales,

Finn McHattie Straley, Chris Pascoff, Gretchen Ehrenkofer, and Jacqueline. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group 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 fan crafts calm

or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance this week we made it through the break baseball is back have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance this week. We made it through the break.

Baseball is back. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. I'm out.