Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1737: Walk on, Walk Off

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s post-concert encounter with a podcast listener, Miguel Cabrera’s 500th home run and the future of the 500-homer club, the latest sighting of Tom’s enigmatic message to Caitlyn at Great American Ball Park, the Rockies possibly promoting a GM from within (again), and a few pennant race updates, […]

They say they can see what I'm supposed to be But what is right for them don't mean it's right for me I am a stranger to the light Enchanted by the walkers on the night So the story goes as I watch from my window Across the waterfront But they will never know I am a stranger in this life Hello and welcome to episode 1737 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I went to a concert on Saturday, my first concert since pre-pandemic times, and I actually purchased tickets for this concert in pre-pandemic times. I actually purchased tickets for this concert in pre-pandemic times. It was March 12th, 2020. I bought tickets to see Slater Kinney and Wilco at Forest Hill Stadium in Queens. And I remember mentioning that on a podcast at the time because that was, of course, right before COVID really hit the states in earnest. And that was shortly before we did a podcast about spring training being suspended.

And I remember talking right around then because, of course, we didn't know how long everything would last. And I remember saying something that sounds extremely silly in retrospect and probably sounded silly even then about how maybe it'll just be a few weeks and we'll be back in action or something. And then I entertained the notion that this concert I had just purchased tickets for, which was scheduled for August of 2020, like, who knows? Maybe things won't even be back to normal by then. Will I even get to go to this concert? And little did I know that the concert would be delayed by a full year, of course. So those were the early days. Optimism. day's optimism. Anyway, this concert finally took place and I went out to Queens and the forecast

called for maybe a little light rain or brief rain, but it did not turn out to be brief or light. It was torrential and long lasting and I got totally soaked. It was almost as if I had been submerged. I was wearing a t-shirt and my trusty pajama jeans, which is probably a better outfit than actual jeans because it's no fun to be wet in jeans. But I was sopping, like dripping. When I finally got on the train on the way back, there was a puddle collecting under me just of moisture from me. But why I mentioned this is that I went with a friend and after the concert, which was like delayed and sort of shortened, but ultimately Sator Kenny and Wilco did both play. But after the concert,

my friend was going to the bathroom and I was waiting outside for him. And then out of the darkness and the mist and the rain, I could hardly see, but suddenly there was a voice just coming from someone next to me who said, is your name Ben? And I said, yes. And he said, really love your podcast. So effectively wild listeners, they're everywhere. They're out there now that I'm out in the world. I don't get out much, so I don't get recognized by a lot of listeners. And I guess a lot of listeners don't even know what I look like and probably wouldn't recognize me standing there like a drowning rat but this guy did so that was nice I have a lot of things to say about the story you just told which is new to me the first of which is what are pajama jeans so my sister-in-law has been giving me a pair of pajama jeans every year or two when I wear out the old ones.

They're like an as-seen-on-TV, kind of an infomercial type thing where they look like jeans, but they are pajamas, basically. They are very stretchy, and they do have a drawstring, so I'm not saying that they would fool everyone. But there is a guy who works at my gym. And after I had been going there for quite a while, and he had seen me several times wearing the pajama jeans, he said, you know, you're the only guy I ever see working out in jeans. And then I blew his mind because I just like stretched out my pajama jeans. And he was like, whoa. So yeah, I probably should not

have admitted any of this on a podcast they are very comfy and at least from afar they pass muster as jeans okay so that's that's the first thing the second thing is did you you know because you have hurricane Henri I love that is a very fancy French hurricane it's very French um did you contemplate not going out because there's a hurricane or were you just like I I've been deterred by a, but I will be deterred no longer. So that's sort of the thought process. Yeah, it was sort of the latter. And also the hurricane was not really supposed to hit until Sunday and Saturday and the forecast actually looked decent.

It was like cloudy and maybe it'll rain a little, but then it'll stop. And they had to stop the concert for a while because there was lightning and it's an outdoor venue so here they're like metal benches which would be bad in a lightning storm probably so we all kind of huddled under the stadium and the grandstand for a while and there was like a flash flood and it was bad but then we went back out there and wilco played their set for an hour so it was great. The rain was coming down just in sheets and I was totally soaked, but it was sort of nice. It was like everyone was just getting wet together, but we were also just sort of immersed in the music. So it was nice. Just hadn't seen live music for a while. Okay. And then the final thing I was going to ask is,

did you happen to enjoy pizza at Nick's Pizza before you went? No, I did not. Did not do that. The next time you go to a concert at Forest Hill Stadium, you got to go to Nick's. That was one of my favorite pizza places when I was a Queens resident. I would take the train from Woodside and go have pizza at Nick's. Oh, Nick's. Yeah, there's a lot of good food in that area.

But anyway, hello to the anonymous affectionate listener who said hello and did not introduce himself and just appeared out of the rain and then disappeared out of his rain with his date, it looked like, and just gave me a little surprise because I was not expecting to be recognized

at that moment. I have found that this is a sort of common oddity of meeting people who listen to the podcast. And I think it is a completely understandable one. I do not mean it as a criticism, but, you know, folks very graciously spend time listening to us and it creates this sense that they, you know, they know us because we tell stories about our lives in addition to baseball. Pajama jeans that we wear. Yeah. Pajama jeans.

You know about the pajama jeans. Now we know about your pajama jeans. That's satisfying to say. That's like good mouth feels and expression. Pajama jeans. But what can then happen on occasion is that there is this false sense that the familiarity is reciprocated. is that there is this false sense that the familiarity is reciprocated. And so it is common in instances where I have met people often at Fangraphs meetups who listen to the pod

and are kind enough to take the time to tell me that they like the pod. They don't then introduce themselves. Because they are at a different stage of knowing me than I am of knowing them. But you don't think about that. And I'm sure I would do the exact same thing with like, know if I met the folks who host you're wrong about I'm sure I'd be like oh you know I love your podcast and then I would not say my name and I'd be like thank you anonymous fellow podcaster so yeah it is a funny aspect of of our line of work

yeah relationships we form and don't I felt bad that I hadn't asked afterward, but it was such a strange situation. I was just so wet, just so wet. I was not thinking very clearly. And I was also not expecting someone to say, love your podcast while I was waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom. So I did not have my wits about me. But yeah, glad he said hello. And effectively, a lot of listeners, they're out there in the world. You never know where or when. Wow. Yeah. So we should probably talk a little bit about baseball today. Shall we talk a little bit about Mr. Miguel Cabrera, who hit his 500th home run on Sunday in Toronto against Steven Matz. We'd all been waiting for a while. We'd been on Miggy Watch and he ended it with a

nice opposite field milestone homer. and it's nice when someone at this stage of his career does the milestone thing just because even though the round numbers that we celebrate are sort of silly and arbitrary it is nice to just have a reason to celebrate someone like Cabrera who is obviously on the downside of his career and has given us glimpses of his old self and has had some hot streaks, but on the whole has been a player in decline for some time. And so you don't really get a ton of opportunities to celebrate the career of someone like that, especially someone who's not on a playoff bound team. So we've all just been waiting for number 500 and here it is. And it is an occasion to go back and look and say, hey, this guy sure was good because he got to 500 homers.

And he's done a lot of other good things, too. Not that this is the end of his career. He's under contract for a couple more years. latter stages of his career, at least until the semi-resurgence with the Dodgers this year, you would kind of only notice him when he passed someone on a prominent career leader board. Or when he joined some exclusive club. And Cabrera now the 28th member of the 500 homer club. He has hit those 500 home runs against 346 different pitchers. I'm going to say I just had occasion to go look at his home run log at Baseball Reference,

and I don't know how surprised or not surprised I should be by any of the things I'm about to tell you, Ben. So you tell me, does that feel like a lot, a little, a great many pitchers to have hit home runs against, or are you surprised that it's so spread out? I don't know. I don't know what to think of that. I don't know either.

Yeah. Phil Hughes. Phil Hughes is the one he has hit the most home runs against. He had seven, which is perhaps unsurprising given his tenure with the Twins. He has hit them in 37 different ballparks. He has hit 35 home runs in plate appearances with seven or more pitches.

I like that as a stat. I don't know if that, I don't think any of this is meaningful apart from the fact that it's all meaningful, right? Because it all rounds together to be 500. But that, that's fun. Like that he had a bunch of pitches and then he would hit a home run, but he felt satisfied when, uh, when that happened. He has only hit seven walk-offs. i was asking you this before we started recording does that feel like a small number or like wow he's hit seven can i put can i give you a number to put that number in context barry bonds famously the all-time home run leader only 10 only 10 walk-offs so i guess that's about the right ratio of walk-off homers to career homers at least with

those two guys yeah and i guess you know given where they are typically in the lineup that probably makes some amount of sense but i i just i think that when you have a big number you assume that some of the constituent elements will also feel big and sometimes they don't sometimes they just don't feel big 252 of those have been on the road, 248 at home. I really appreciated the reception he got when he hit today. I think it's really nice when fans have a sense of the import of a moment, even if it has disadvantaged their team. I think Pujols had a big milestone hit when he was at what was then Safeco

and is now T-Mobile. And the crowd responded appropriately. And it's just nice when we are both fans of a team, but also fans of the game and can kind of appreciate that we are witnessing history in a particular moment. So that was cool. Yeah, especially because it's a close game, right? Right, yeah. And the Tigers, well, it's still going as we speak, but it's in extra innings. And the Blue Jays are at least on the periphery of that wildcard race and they actually need every win. So that's somewhat significant's fun to hit home runs with two outs it really gets the other team like yeah we were so

close and then and then uh and then we failed to contain him couldn't contain him ben interesting that he has more homers on the road which is well it's a product i guess he's been playing in pitchers parks his whole career right because uh right marwin's home park was pretty much a pitcher park when he debuted and now comerica i'm just looking at the baseball savant park factors over the past few years and And Comerica Park is the third worst home run hitting park behind Kauffman Stadium and Oracle Park. And Oracle Park over the last couple of years, since they made some changes there, probably better than that. So yeah, it's been a tough environment for him to hit home runs in and he has nonetheless made it to 500. So you would expect that if you look

at someone's career and you see that they've hit more home runs on the road, normally you would expect to see the opposite because of home field advantage. So that just goes to show that if you were to normalize his stats in some way, he would probably rank even higher on the all-time leaderboard. Right, exactly. So it's been quite a career. I think he is one of the players who I have enjoyed watching hit more than pretty much anyone else. Like he's just one of my favorite pure hitters to watch. And so the decline has been at times painful, but it has been very cool that he has had the opportunity to, like you said, give us some flashes of what he once was. Cause what he once was, was like spectacular. It was

really, it was really very spectacular. And I guess we should go all the way back to the beginning. His first home run, career home run number one, was hit on June 20th, 2003 against Al Levine. And it was a walk-off. Yeah, and he has had kind of an unusual combination of high average and power, which is rarer than I realized. There are only a few guys, a handful of guys who have 3,000 hits and 500 homers, and now he's not quite at 3,000 hits, but he is going to get there if not by the end of this season, then presumably early next season. He entered Sunday with 29.54. So the only ALNL players with 500 career homers and 3,000

hits, I'm citing from MLB.com here, it's Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez. And soon, Mikel Cabrera will join that group. So it's really like only a quarter of the 500 homer guys also have 3000 hits. And he could get there and probably will get there with a 300 career average and could retire with a 300 plus average. And yeah, I know it's batting average and 300. And this is all arbitrary. But this whole segment is sort of a celebration of arbitrary things or at least arbitrary ways to appreciate actually great players. And if he does retire with a 300 plus average and the 500 plus homers and 500 plus doubles and 3000 plus hits, he'd be the third modern era AL or NL player to do all of those

things behind Henry Aaron and Willie Mays, maybe the two greatest right-handed hitters in history. So yeah, that's pretty good. And I was just trying to figure out if he will end up with the career 300 average. And I think he will because he's at 311 now and he's hit 250 and 246 in 2021. So he's under contract with Detroit for two more seasons, assuming he does not finish in top 10 in MVP voting in 2023 or something, which seems unlikely. That would cause his option to vest. But if he were to retire after the 2023 season, his age 40 season, then I was just trying to figure it out. If he gets like 800 more at-bats before then and he hits 240 over those 800 at bats, he would finish at 305. So he would have to really get a lot more at bats than that or have his average just completely

crater for him not to do it. And Pujols was kind of in that boat. And of course, he just played on forever and he lost the career 300 average last season. He finally dipped below that, but it doesn't matter all that much. I don't think anyone should necessarily retire to preserve the 300 career average. And that would have been a much bigger deal in an earlier era of baseball history. I remember Mickey Mantle lamented that he dipped below 300 at the end of his career and retired with a 298 average that mattered to him. I don't know how much that would actually matter to a modern era player now that batting average has been de-emphasized. But I was thinking also, we don't make as big a deal of the 500 homer club

anymore just because we're in an era of high home run rates and we had the PD era with high home run rates and there are just more members of that club. So now it's like you got to get 600 to really be special. But it has been a while, like not since David Ortiz in 2014 has there been a new member of the 500 Homer Club. And just looking at the list of active leaders, there isn't anyone who's necessarily going to make it very soon. It depends.

Nelson Cruz is at 443. Of course, he has been ageless to this point, and it would not be surprising if he picked up a few more this year. I think he just went on the COVID IL. But if he picks up a few more this year, and then if he got 25 to 30 over the next couple of years, nothing about Cruz would surprise me at this point. But it also would not shock me if he does not prove to actually be ageless

and at some point does become aged in the next couple of seasons and doesn't quite get to 500. If he doesn't, it's going to be a while because you've got Robinson Cano at 334. He's not going to get there. You've got Giancarlo Stanton at 332. He could get there.

Depends on his health and his durability. And even if he does do it, it would be several seasons until he gets there. And then you've got Justin Upton, 324. He's not going to do it. Joey Votto, 323. Don't think he's going to do it. Although, given his recent performance, I don't know. I guess we can't completely put it past him,

but it would require him to continue to be the home run hitter he has been this year for several more seasons, so probably not. Evan Longoria, 314, he's not going to get there. And then Mike Trout, 310, and we certainly hope that Mike Trout will get there. So Trout might be the next guy to do it unless Cruz can do it in the next couple of years or I guess Stanton, although Trout probably would do it before Stanton,

I would imagine, I would hope if Trout continues to perform at his high level. So it's not as if there has been an onslaught of guys joining the club lately and there won't be an onslaught in the coming years either so it's not quite as special obviously as it once was but it's still semi special yeah i should also say just in case people are listening they're like but meg you've forgotten an important fun fact about his first run it was it was his debut that was in his, he was 20. Only Edgar Venturia at 19 was younger as a Marlin to debut.

So a special day for Miggy in any number of ways. Yes, indeed. He still has a 143 career WRC plus despite his recent decline. So that's pretty darn good. Yep. So I wanted to mention we talked last time about the message on the Reds video board. Ben. From Tom to Caitlin. There have been further developments. I don't like any of this. We talked about it on Friday that at the Reds game, there was a message between innings, one of those sponsored messages where people wish each other happy birthday or say welcome to the ballpark or whatever. And there was a message that said, Caitlin, I was wrong. Talk to me, Tom. Now, this appeared for the first time on the Reds video board on Thursday, just this simple message that was amid all of the normal ballpark messages between innings that say happy birthday or welcome to the ballpark or whatever. There was this

succinct and sad message from Caitlin to Tom. It just said, Caitlin, I was wrong. Talk to me, Tom. So this appeared for the first time on Thursday. We talked about it on Friday. On Friday, it appeared again, identical message. On Saturday, it did not appear. So it seemed as if this was at an end.

And then Sunday, it was back. So three of the past four games, the Caitlin and Tom message has appeared on the board. On Sunday, it appeared just above a message that said, Granny Game Day 2021, which I have questions about what that is. That sounds like a lot of fun. But Caitlin, I was wrong.

So we talked about our theories and why this made us uncomfortable last time, so we don't have to rehash all of that, I suppose. But the fact that it has repeated now, not every day, but three out of four days, that makes you think that it's probably not Tom is just aware that Caitlin happened to be attending the game unless she happened to attend three of four Reds games. She happened to attend three of four Reds games, just not that fourth one. And Tom knew exactly when she was going and when she wasn't going. Like at this point, it seems like it's more likely that either it's legitimate message, but he's trying to attract her attention via social media buzz. Like he wants this to go viral. He wants this to be tweeted about and hopes that she'll see it that

way. So who knows? Maybe she wasn't even at the Reds game or maybe she was there once, but he's just trying to get the attention so that he's shining the bat signal, the Caitlyn signal here. Or it could be that this is not a legitimate message. It's just some sort of viral marketing campaign or something. And it'll be revealed what Tom and Caitlin was all about. Maybe they're characters in a rom-com or something that's coming out. Who knows? Or another option, I guess, is that there was one legitimate Tom-Caitlin message, but now, yeah, copycats, right? And someone wants to keep this going. And no one did on Saturday, but on Sunday,

someone submitted the same message and thought it would be worth whatever this costs to keep it going because they just like the story and want to keep everyone guessing. So it may not be the original Tom messaging the original Caitlin. It could just be someone who enjoyed this and wants to keep the streak alive. I suspect that that is the case. I think that I'm given to understand from observing various Twitter interactions that it is fairly inexpensive to put a message on the video board. I think it might only be like $35. Video board message. We're going to learn about it right now.

We're learning about it in real time. Scoreboard messages, Cincinnati Reds. Here we go. Commemorate, Ben. Now we have to leave it in. Want to see your name in lights? Commemorate your special occasion with a custom personalized message on the right field video board at Great American Ballpark.

Inventory is extremely limited. Well, now I don't believe you. So make sure to order yours today. Scoreboard messages are perfect for birthdays anniversaries marriage proposals promposals shout out to your friends gender reveals birth announcements holiday greetings and much more okay so i'm going to take a copy edit to this while we're on air and say that if you're doing a bulleted list like you should be consistent with capitalization so birthday being lowercase promposals being uppercase seems strange details each message is 35 the message will appear on the

right field video board at great american ballpark at the end of the fourth inning in alphabetical order by the first name of the message first letter of the message rather each message is displayed for approximately seven seconds messages can be up to 50 characters one line including spaces and punctuation message requests must be submitted no later than 48 hours prior to the date of the game if you do not see your game preference listed you have missed the deadline to order okay so this is cheap yeah much cheaper than i imagined so which day did it not appear saturday saturday and it first appeared on Thursday. Is that right?

I believe so. Thursday, Friday, Sunday. Okay. So this, I think, lends further credence to the idea that it is no longer a message from the original sender. Because here's what I suspect happened. People saw it on Thursday. And they were like, we should have a goof.

We should have a fun time and they did not get their message in in time for a saturday repraisal but they did get their message in on time for sunday so i think that this is i think this is tom foolery and even if it isn't i think the red should stop displaying it because either it's a legitimate message from a guy who has very strange boundaries and i don't know that we need to further those or people are having a laugh so i think that it should meet its end yeah i think i spelled something wrong there are no refunds for typos made on the part of the purchaser please double check spelling and content before submitting your order are there any message restrictions the rights reserve the right to approve and edit

any message if necessary messages that are that are obscene, lewd, inappropriate, offensive, include foul language, and or reference negatively to any major league baseball organization or player will not be accepted. Wow. Additionally, the message cannot be used for commercial purposes. However, you may welcome a group or company that is attending the game. Was that a pun when you said Tom flutery or was that unintentional that was unintentional i i think that at this point it's just a reflex like i have no control over it anymore yeah it's part of my personality um i need to go to some sort of special program well the reds have not lost since the message from tom to caitlin started appearing so this could also be some Reds fan who is super superstitious and thinks that maybe we got to keep the win streak going here and we don't want the curse of Caitlin.

So we've got to keep the message on the board because we're in a wildcard race here. So that could be it. I don't know. It could be it. I thought the original wasn't from tim it's always been tom it's been tom the whole time well i think that i think that tom you should you should take a break man and like uh you know well maybe he has it's just it's out of his control now he started something ah goodness well i did want to mention just because i invoked that

pennant race there the reds have inched ahead of the padres now in that no wild card race the padres game is just getting going as we speak here on sunday afternoon but if they lose that one the reds would be up by a full game and it looked like the dodgers were about to close the gap with the giants to maybe one and a half games. But then there was a walk off, right? Lamonte Wade. Or was it a game winner late in the game? It just it seems like the Giants have done that a zillion times this year.

That's not a precise number. I have not counted. But it is like shocking to me how many times they have pulled out a victory from the jaws of defeat in the last inning or two. So they preserved that lead there finally. And the Dodgers have closed ground. The Reds are nipping at the Padres heels and the Yankees are on fire as well. And, you know, we were waiting for this early in the season. There was a point where we were like, hey, don't worry about

it. Just it's a long season. The Yankees are good. Everyone expected them to be good. And then there came a point where those struggles persisted to the point where they actually became unlikely to make the playoffs, at least according to the playoff odds. Then they made their midseason upgrades and maybe also have some regression to the mean going on here. And now, I mean, there is a chance that they could give the Rays a run for their money for first place in the AL East. It's a four and a half game lead now. The Yankees idle on Sunday because their game was rained out because of that same storm I was mentioning earlier. So they're not going to close the gap further there, but they have been making up a lot

of ground there and Red Sox falling farther and farther behind. And it really is surprising to me that the Yankees like, yeah, it's partly obviously getting Gallo and getting Rizzo, but it is also just the players that they had performing better. And really the weirdest part of it is that they had the better. And really, the weirdest part of it is that they had the fewest stolen bases in the first half, and they have the most stolen bases in the second half, which is really strange because it's not like Gallo and Rizzo are speed demons. It's Greg Allen, and it's Tyler Wade, and then it's other players who weren't stealing before who have started stealing all of a sudden. So that very slow, very right-handed, very station-to- they've been sort of speedy out of nowhere. So this just looks like a pretty darn good team

all of a sudden. And the pitching depth is improving. Corey Kluber and maybe Luis Severino coming back sometime soon. The defense has been somewhat improved. So I'm not saying this is the scariest playoff team, but it is pretty much for sure a playoff team at this point which was not something that you could say a couple months ago regression remains undefeated yeah we're not undefeated but it does have a pretty good record historically so yeah and suddenly cashman getting a lot of credit. And I don't know if Aaron Boone is getting credit or at least the calls for his head have become much more quiet, suddenly subdued all of a sudden. So yeah, a lot of it was like, oh, these guys need to go. We need to get new people in here. And really, who knows whether you actually need to fire someone or not

when a team is underperforming. It's hard to draw a line from the manager to the team or from the GM to the team. But those guys have had a lot of success. That management team has had a lot of success, not World Series-wise lately by Yankee standards, but they have put good successful teams together. And this looks like another one. So yeah, I don't know that I would be terrified of the Yankees going into October because there's still a lot of question marks behind Garrett Cole in the rotation. But there's a lot of at least mid-rotation talent there, and it's a solid team. It was a really very bad loss yesterday, Ben. I don't know. It's been a while since I've seen a loss that bad. It's such a shame because Jankowski was inches away from making the best home run robbery catch I've ever seen, ever in my whole baseball watching life.

It was not to be. The Padres are pleased, but I think Philly's fans are like can we never speak of this ever again please yeah I mean suddenly the NL East looks over it's it's not entirely obviously but there's a five and a half game buffer as we speak between yeah and Philly and then another two games before you find the Mets who have just self-destructed so that division and yeah and Atlanta I mean this was a division where like there was one team over 500 most of the time and like barely and now Atlanta 68 and 56 it's not too shabby especially given all of the losses that they have suffered over the course of the season.

So yeah, that is not over exactly, but it's looking closer to over in a different way from where it was also a couple months ago. So the two New York teams, really, their fortunes have been either falling or rising at the same time, going in completely opposite directions. Yes, they are quite divergent at this point. And I don't know. It's really surprising to me that the tweet didn't help. No, I guess not.

I'm so snarky. Yeah, the only other bit of news that I wanted to bring up here is that Bob Nightingale reported that the Rockies, it looks like, are leaning toward naming Bill Schmidt their interim GM, their permanent GM. Now, Bill Schmidt has been acting as their GM since early May when Jeff Breidich left, and he was prior to that their VP of scouting. Now, he's been there forever. He's been handling their drafts since 2000. And on the one hand, if you've been with the Rockies forever, that is maybe not the best item on your resume. However, the Rockies problem has not been drafting and developing talent from within. It's more about the fact that Breidich was a complete

zero when it came to adding free agents over the last several seasons. So he has made some good picks and brought some players along, but you do still sort of have to be wary of just someone who has been immersed in that front office and that front office culture for decades now. I get the sense that Schmidt is fairly respected, but still like you kind of want to if you're a Rockies fan just like blow it up and start fresh as opposed to someone who has been there for so long because that's kind of been the knock against the Rockies and against Dick Montfort the owner that they have been too loyal like there's a certain virtue to loyalty of course but that they have not gone away from

people who have been in that organization forever. Dan O'Dowd was the GM forever. Breidich had been in the organization forever. And Schmidt has been in the organization forever. And so if you think this is a dysfunctional front office, then is promoting someone from within that front office the way to solve that? I don't know. I guess it's possible that Schmidt was brilliant all along. And if they had just given him the reins, then the Rockies would have been fine. But still, it's got to sort of scare you if you're a Rockies fan and you just want something, anything, everything to change. And promoting another high ranking executive from within that

same front office is not that dramatic a change. Yeah, I think that it's tricky because a lot of what is tempering my reaction to him being promoted, and I think you're right to say that if you talk to scouting people, he's well-respected within the industry. I think people think that he has good baseball acumen. As you noted, the drafting hasn't really been the problem for them? It's been supplementing their homegrown pieces with good signings, which they've just seemingly been unable to do. And then of course, there's like the, you know, environmental concerns in Colorado

that just make winning there hard, regardless of how good and savvy your front office is. But I think that the issue that really remains here is one of ownership, right? Because the idea behind bringing in someone new, well, that's only as good as ownership's willingness to listen to that ownership, right? Because the idea behind bringing in someone new, well, that's only as good as ownership's willingness to listen to that person, right? And selecting someone who is going to strike out

and sort of forge a new course for the franchise, well, you have to be empowered to do that within an org. And the owners seem pretty content and committed to being involved. Yes. Put it that way. And that involvement has not always seemed to be to the organization's benefit, and it doesn't seem to be particularly clear-eyed

in terms of understanding where the Rockies are in their competitive window, which, as we have spent a lot of time saying over the last couple months, is seemingly nowhere, right? Just kind of nowhere at all. So I don't think that his resume necessarily precludes him from being the solution that the organization needs, but I think that the organization has to want one and that has to come from ownership. And I don't know if you're more likely to get results there, if there's a new voice that's brought in with sort of the explicit mandate to shake things up,

or if maybe ownership is more likely to listen to someone with whom they've had a longstanding working relationship and one that seems like it's been relatively productive. So I don't quite know what the answer is. I think the best thing that a Rockies fan could hear would be the Monforts being like, we're just going to let him kind of figure it out for the next little bit and hire some new people and bring in reinforcements to sort of rebuild the front office to be in a position to

move the organization forward and hopefully put a winning team on the field and it seems very unlikely that we're going to hear those words in any sort of combination come out of ownership's mouth. So I don't know, Ben. It seems bad. Yeah. He is also, of course, the executive who presided over the trade deadline inactivity. And so a lot of the head-scratching non-trades of Trevor Story and Herman Marquez and John Gray and Daniel Bard and others, you know, to varying degrees, those non-trades were kind of confusing, including to Trevor Story himself. And so if you thought that was weird, and many people in baseball did, he was the one who ultimately made the call there, unless of course it was ownership and who knows. So maybe there was that and he didn't create that situation.

And I guess you could say that some of those trades could or should have been made even earlier before he was elevated to this role. But that didn't give you the most confidence in the world, I guess. So if that was the audition, then it seems somewhat surprising that he got promoted based on that audition. But I guess ownership was happy with that. And maybe he had his reasons. And maybe the market for Story just wasn't what people expected it to be

because Story had not been performing up to his usual level, which could have been because he was fixated on probably being traded and all the trade rumors, who knows. But if the concerns were there that he wasn't going to be the Trevor Story of old then yeah I guess maybe he figured hey I've had some success with draft picks before so I'll get a comp pick here and I'll make something out of that. I don't say this with special inside knowledge of what went on in in the war room around the deadline but I suspect that Schmidt's promotion or assuming that that goes through that his promotion would suggest that ownership was involved in the decision not to make to move story because I would imagine that if they had been open to him being traded and he hadn't moved at the deadline, that you probably view that as sort of dispositive on Schmidt being able to continue in that role, which perhaps suggests that they knew that he wasn't going to move

and maybe had either reviewed what Colorado had been offered or said, look, we're just not going to move on from this guy. We're going to stand pat and then figure out what we're going to do with the organization in the offseason. I don't know. I don't want to give him credit for ownership meddling because I don't know, but I suspect that there's meddling. It just seems like meddling is a safe assumption

when it comes to Colorado, right? That's like a not terrible default posture to have. Yeah. I should mention, by the way, that Atlanta just swept a nine-game road trip, which is pretty impressive. We did that stat blast recently about road trip sweeps and how tough they can be. And granted it was against Washington, Miami, and Baltimore. So not exactly murderer's row, but still when you're in the heart of a pennant race

and you've got a nine game road trip and you end up going nine and O over those games, pretty impressive. And one last point about the Yankees. I wish they would go with the all-beef boy outfield every day, which they have resisted. It has happened every now and then where you have either Gallo in center maybe or mostly Judge in center, it seems like, and then you have the one who is not in center is playing a corner and Stanton plays a

corner instead of DHing. And if they could do that consistently, it would be a really incredible lineup that they run out there, at least when they're all fully healthy. But they haven't done it regularly. They still have been using Brett Gardner or others who have kind of rotated in and out of that spot. And I guess they are doing that because they don't want Stanton to get hurt. And that probably makes some sense. I don't know. He has gotten hurt without playing the outfield at times. But obviously it does up the risk somewhat.

But really the offensive upgrade between whoever would be playing center and Stanton. Then you've got Voight who is hitting again, and you've got Rizzo, and you're trying to find playing time for them. So if you can open up that DH spot, then the offensive difference between whoever would be there and whoever would be in center field is pretty sizable. So it's, I guess, a kind of cost-benefit thing

where it's like, do we want to keep Stanton healthy and preserve him in Amber, hopefully? Or do we want the offensive boost as we try to chase down Tampa here? So mostly they have gone with the former, but I kind of like when they go with the latter just because they're so huge and it's such a murderer's row when they run all those guys out there. I'm skeptical that they will, though, because as Lindsay Adler noted, with today's game having been rescheduled for September, they play 20 days in a row down the stretch. Now,

granted, six of those games are against the Orioles, and then they have a stretch against the Rangers and also Cleveland. So they have some teams that are swooning, one might say, but they also have six against Toronto in that stretch. They have three against the Red Sox. They have some against the Mets. They have that random game against Minnesota because of other postponements. So I would imagine that they will be preserving sort of health

or prioritizing preserving health and trying to engage in load management given how many games they have to play in a row, even if they are playing those games against some weaker competition, depending on which stretch of the 20 it is. But yeesh, yeesh, Ben. It's a lot of games in September with only really three days off from the whole month. Orioles up to an 18-game losing streak now. It's really very bad. It's not good. It's really very bad.

Yeah. All right. So we want to wrap up with a couple of our recurring segments here, Meet a Major Leaguer and Stat Blast. I have two Stat Blasts, I think, but maybe we can do Meet a Major Leaguer first. Sure. major leaguer it's the thrilling debut of somebody new let's meet this mysterious major leaguer should i go yeah go ahead i picked i'm gonna tell i'm gonna tell you something i picked this uh this

meet a major leaguer just because of the name okay just because of the name. Okay. Just because of the name. It's a valid reason. We're going to meet Paki Naughton. And Ben, I think it's a crime that Paki Naughton doesn't play for the Red Sox. He's from Massachusetts. He went to Boston Latin. But also, can't you just imagine Boston Sports Radio saying Paki Naughton's name? Can't you just imagine them saying, I'm going to do a swear, but I'm going to do it in a voice. I don't know if that counts as a swear.

Can't you imagine them just being like, fucking Paki Naughton. Can't you imagine it? It would be great. They would be so... They'd get callers. They'd be like, Paki Naughton. He's a pitcher. He can't go five innings. My Boston accent is terrible, but you got the point. You can imagine it

in the real voice. All of that to say, we're going to meet Paki Naughton today, who, as I mentioned, went to Boston Latin. He had Tommy John in high school and so went undrafted out of high school, went to Virginia Tech, and then was taken by the Cincinnati Reds in the ninth round of the 2017 draft. He worked his way through Cincy's system. 2017 draft he worked his way through cincy's system and then on august 31st of last year he was traded along with jose salvador to the angels for brian goodwin so he was part of the brian

goodwin trade he obviously did not play last year but he made his he he was called up excuse me on August 4th of 2021 and then made his debut on August 8th against the Dodgers and here is how that little outing went for him he got Billy McKinney singled and then he got Trey Turner to fly out which like if you're Paki Naughton and you get your first out against Trey Turner I bet you're feeling pretty good about that and then Max Muncy grounded out to the pitcher and I bet you're feeling fantastic. But then AJ Pollock singled, which allowed Billy McKinney to score. And then Pollock advanced to second. Paki Naughton intentionally walked Albert Pujols. At some point, we should just do an entire episode on the Pujols resurgence. I know we talked about it earlier this episode and have mentioned it a couple of times, but good for, you know, just good for Albert. that's what i gotta say and then cory seager grounded out to end notton's afternoon he

has since been optioned back to triple a his big league line at the moment he has a nine era but a 168 x era and a three uh excuse me a 617 f1-7 FIP. So, you know, variable. That walk really hurts you when you only had the one inning, though. Has yet to record a big league strikeout, but we have faith in Packy. I mean, he pitched to an ERA and a FIP in the 4s in AAA so far this year. So, you know, I'm sure that we will see not and again uh because it's the angels and it's pitching and they often need those but you know like uh mostly i just wanted to say packy not in a bunch of times so that's packy not i do have i do have a further fun fact about packy not

that he he brings virginia tech's current count of major leaguers to four, joining the ranks of Jesse Hahn, Joe Mantiply, and Chad Pinder as Hokies. Aren't they Hokies at Virginia Tech? They're Hokies? I'm the wrong person to ask. I think they're Hokies. And he's Paki Naughton, and he is from Boston. I mean, it's just like if you were making up a guy to be from Boston and play for the Red Sox, wouldn't you name him Packy Naughton?

Wouldn't you be like, ah, Packy Naughton? Yeah, I can't decide whether he sounds like turn-of-the-century gangster or something. I mean, why not be both, Ben? Why can't he be a Prohibition-era gangster who also played for the Red Sox? Yes. And, of course, his given name is patrick joseph notten right and yeah nicknamed packy did you say why he was nicknamed packy no he's uh called packy because his younger brother liam could not say patrick as a kid so he called him

packy and it stuck this is like how my younger brother Cole couldn't say Lauren, my sister's name. So she was Garwin for a long time. We just call her Lauren now because we're all adults and know how to say words. But at the time we were like, Garwin, sure. Yeah. Those don't sound at all like babies are fascinating. Yeah. I always wonder about that. When do you just know that you're sticking with this? Initially, oh, it's cute. The baby can't say Patrick, so he says Packy, right? And then maybe the whole family starts calling you Packy as a joke. But how long does it take until it's like, no, this is just my name now.

It's not an inside joke at home. It's not until Liam can actually pronounce Patrick. It is just going to be my name. And it's my name like at baseball reference and MLB.com. And like, it's my professional name. Yes, please call me Packy because my younger brother could not pronounce Patrick when he was very young. When do you decide?

Like, yeah, let's just stick with that. You know what? That's just my name for the rest of all time. Yeah. I mean, like how many guys do you think there are on Baseball Reference whose nickname is the Baseball Reference name they're listed as? Right. Yeah.

I mean, I bet it's not everyone, you know, especially now that we have the field for nickname. He just doesn't have a nickname. They are indeed the Hokies, Ben. They are the Hokies. Yes, I see that on his Twitter bio now. Yeah well I mean it's distinctive we would probably not be talking about Patrick Naughton on this segment but no because he's Packy we're talking about Packy Naughton right because you know uh Boston Sports Radio doesn't sound as fun or as Boston-y when

they're saying Patrick right Patrick like that's, that's an accent agnostic name, but Pachynot and fucking Pachynot and Ben. It's not even good, but I enjoy doing it. Yeah, I enjoy you doing it. So my guy is also one with an interesting name, Griffin Jacks. Griffin Jacks was nominated by listener Paul. Feel free to nominate major leaguers you want us to meet.

He was drafted by the Twins in the third round 2016 draft, and he is the first ever major leaguer who went to the United States Air Force Academy. So he is interesting because of that. He is interesting because his name is Griffin Jacks. He's interesting because his father, Garth Jacks, played 11 seasons in the NFL as an offensive lineman. He's also interesting because of this strange quirk he has where he very aggressively and somewhat suggestively licks his lips when he gets excited on the mound sometimes. And I sent you a video of this, which I will also link to on the show page and you just

responded with an all caps nope nope nope I don't know how often he does this I hope it's not too often because I rather would unsee that I think but that's his thing so Griffin Jacks, he took an unusual path to the big leagues. Now he is a 6'2", 195 pound right-handed pitcher for the Twins. He is from Phoenix originally, and he has actually been pitching pretty well of late. He struggled initially. His first appearance did not go well. He debuted against the Yankees on June 8th in relief and gave up three runs in an inning on a couple homers and didn't really get a whole lot better from there for a while. And on July 3rd, he had moved to the starting rotation by this point. But at the

end of that day, he had an 8.66 ERA. But today he has a 5.11 ERA. So clearly things have gone better since then. And over his last five appearances, all starts, he has a 2.73 ERA and a 6.33 OPS allowed and 21 strikeouts in 26 and a third innings against seven walks. So he has improved and maybe we haven't noticed because no one's watching the twins these days or because he started quite poorly, but things have started to look up for him. And just to talk a little bit about how he got here. So his wife is also in the Air Force and she was promoted to captain on May 24th. That was just a week or two before he was called up. And if he had remained on active duty, he probably would have been promoted to captain at that point too. So he would have been Captain Jacks. And he is not. He is Lieutenant, First Lieutenant Griffin Jacks.

He is still in the Air Force Reserve. So they selected him in 2016 and they gave him a pretty hefty bonus, about $650,000. And at the time, and I am quoting here from an MLB.com piece from this February by Do Young Park. Jax would return to the Air Force to complete his senior year as necessitated by the Academy while forgoing his senior season for the Falcons and immediately join the Reserve while having his required years of active duty deferred. So he made four appearances for the rookie level team during his summer break in 2016 and made the haul back to the Academy with the expectation that his professional career would continue upon his graduation in 2017. But then things changed because the Trump administration changed the rules to require two years of active duty immediately following graduation.

So he could no longer put this off. And a lot of academy graduates, they have a 60-day leave between graduation and their first active duty assignment. So a lot of them take some time off and see the world. But Jax spent that time making five starts for Elizabethton and the Class A Cedar Rapids affiliate. And then he went to Cape Canaveral, July 2017, and began his work as an acquisitions officer working with civilian contractors like SpaceX and Boeing. as an acquisitions officer working with civilian contractors like SpaceX and Boeing. So he never actually flew jets or anything or any other kind of plane in the Air Force. Not everyone does. So then things changed again in April 2018 because he was accepted into this program called the Air

Force World Class Athlete Program, which allows soldiers to train for the upcoming Olympic Games as their active duty job responsibility for a two-year period. And he kind of lucked out in that regard because the Olympics were coming back to baseball for the 2020 Games, which turned out to be the 2021 Games. But there had been no baseball in the prior Olympics. There will be no baseball in the subsequent Olympics. So the timing worked out well for him. So he wasn't paid by the Twins because the Air Force didn't allow alternate sources of income for active duty soldiers. But he went to Fort Myers and made a bunch of appearances in 2018 and then

pitched a full season in 2019 in the minors and then got an invite to spring training in 2020. And he had a career minor league ERA of like 3.18. He did very well. And now he is more or less a regular major leaguer. So he completed his two required years of active duty, and then he transferred to the reserve in November, 2019. So now he still has to serve out the remainder of his five required years as part of the reserve, but it's pretty flexible. It's like 24 days a year. And so he can do that in the off season and just play baseball. And so his life has sort of settled down and all the turmoil and the changes in various political administrations. Now he just gets to play baseball and he is playing baseball pretty well, but he completed like 200 parachute jumps as part of his training.

That would be probably a deal breaker for me. I don't think I am going to be enlisting anytime soon. Don't really feel like jumping out of any planes if I can help it. So he did that. And now compared to that, I imagine that playing baseball, probably not quite so scary as jumping out of a plane very high up. His wife outranks him now and is still serving. And she is, I think, an intelligence officer at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. She's kind of keeping up that parallel career while he plays baseball and licks his lips on the mound. But his plan, if baseball had not worked out, he was evidently interested in joining the special forces and could have become a combat rescue officer where he would have been involved in personnel recovery operations and like jumping out of airplanes to rescue people in the water and that sort of thing but as it turned out he doesn't have to jump out of any planes anymore if he doesn't want to yeah i mean

yeesh i i wouldn't want to jump out of a plane it is interesting that the rules around this stuff change and it feels like it shouldn't change so frequently that it can have an impact on players careers but it's like this happened with him like it was an issue with noah song so you know this is you would imagine that both for the player and the organization drafting them that a bit more predictability would probably be welcome here well all right we have met our major leaguers for today pack Paki Naughton and Griffin Jacks, a couple of excellent names added to the roles of major leaguers. So now let us wrap up with our stat blasts.

They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, All right, so first stat blast comes from a question submitted by Juliet, who says, when Brewers pitcher Eric Lauer was in a jam against the Nationals in the fifth inning of today's game, this was Saturday, Brewers manager Craig Council signaled to intentionally walk Juan Soto before pulling Lauer from the game before the next batter. Had Soto scored later that inning, he didn't, so none of this ended up mattering,

I assume it would have counted as an earned run against Lauer since he was responsible for the walk to Soto. However, instead of walking Soto and then replacing Lauer, Council could have just as easily pulled Lauer and then walked Soto, putting the responsibility for the runner

on the incoming reliever, Jake Cousins, without the pitchers themselves doing anything different. I assume in these situations, the manager would typically do what Council did, put responsibility for the runner on the outgoing pitcher, since the outgoing pitcher is almost always already responsible for other runners on base at that point, and thus the need to intentionally walk the batter. However, I was wondering if this

is a common occurrence. Do pitchers often exit before or after an intentional walk? And if so, if my intuition is correct, that the outgoing pitcher is usually given responsibility for the runner. So I know that this sometimes happens the other way around because I was watching an Angels game recently, as I am wont to do. This was on August 10th, Blue Jays and Angels. And this stuck in my mind because Shohei Otani was the recipient of the intentional walk. So this was the top of the sixth inning and Trent Thornton was pitching and there were a couple outs, but there was a man on third and Otani was coming up. And so the Bougies brought in Rafael Dolis and he issued the

intentional walk to Otani. So sometimes it's the guy you're yanking who as his last act issues the intentional walk. And sometimes it's the guy you bring in who as his first act issues the intentional walk. Now, I got some numbers from Lucas Apostolaris, effectively Wild Listener and Baseball Prospectus writer and researcher, and he sent me the numbers for the situations broken down going back to the year 2000. So the first thing that we should mention is that most intentional walks are not issued in situations like this, where you have a pitching change. It's about 90% of intentional walks. It's just the same pitcher

on both ends of the intentional walk. But we concentrated on these cases where there is a pitching change. And we also looked at it so that we could exclude pinch hitters because I thought maybe that would make a difference. Like if you have a pinch hitter come up, then that could change the calculus that might make you more likely to issue the intentional walk and you might not have done it if they hadn't pinch hit. too and then Lucas said he also eliminated all intentional walks that occurred on the first at bat of the half inning that's very rare but that's basically just a way of working around the zombie runner if you want to put someone on base to set up a double play or something so we adjusted for all of those things and I have an answer here for Juliet and her inclination was correct up until very recently but now things seem to have changed. And for a reason that we can probably pinpoint here. So as we all recall, the 2017 season was when the rule changed to require you to actually stop throwing intentional balls.

You can now just signal that you want to intentionally walk someone and you do not have to throw four wide ones anymore. And this appears to have changed the patterns here, which one would expect because I remember this being a common talking point, maybe even something we talked about on the podcast, where like if you bring in a new pitcher, do you then want to force that new pitcher to immediately throw four balls? Like does that somehow screw up that pitcher's rhythm? Maybe it's better to have the outgoing guy do it and then the new guy comes in and he just gets to pitch like normal. So I think that was something of a concern. And then I guess there's also the consideration that sometimes you're just trying to buy time for a reliever to warm up. And so if you want to issue the intentional walk, that used to be a way to buy some time because it took some time to throw four balls back and forth. Now, not so much because you're just sort of signaling.

So both of those things up until the 2017 season were reasons why you might lean towards the outgoing pitcher doing it and not the incoming pitcher. And sure enough, if you look at all seasons from 2000 to 2016 or so, it is consistently 80 something percent of the time it was the outgoing pitcher who would issue the intentional walk ranging from like 79% to 88%, I guess. There was some variability from year to year just because there aren't that many cases. There were like, you know, in the low 100s,

basically instances every year when this would actually arise. So there was some fluctuation, just a small sample, but basically, you know, 80 to 85-ish percent of the time, it was the outgoing pitcher. Now, 2017 was the first season where you could just issue the automatic intentional walk, and nothing was all that different that season. 83.3% of the time, it was the outgoing pitcher. Now, 2018, second season of the new rule, 77.9%. Okay, it's not a drastic decline, but that was the lowest rate in this entire time period starting in 2000. So, all right,

not a sea change, but a slight change that maybe reflects something. Now, 2019, third season of this, 65.2% of the time is the outgoing pitcher. 2020, very small sample, just 20 instances, but 65.0%, another slight decrease. That brings us to 2021. Through Saturday's games, the rate this season has been 48.7% of the time. So this season for the first time, at least this millennium, the incoming pitcher has actually been more likely to issue the intentional walk. And this is only 39 cases because we haven't played a full season and intentional walks are just growing more scarce by the season. So it hasn't arisen all that often. But 48.7, it's now basically like a coin flip.

It's like 50-50 whether the outgoing guy does it or the incoming guy does it. And I guess that makes sense, right? I guess it makes sense that it would be about 50-50 because there's no discernible reason for it to be one or the other that I can think of like unless you think that the outgoing guy like deserves that runner more like you know unless it's just hey I think that this guy should be charged with that runner he should be responsible for that run or that guy and you know if you think like well this guy got himself in a jam he's the reason why we have to issue this intentional walk. So we'll just add it to his tab, essentially. Like, that's the only reason I can think.

Like, strategically, there doesn't seem to be that big a difference. I guess, like, I don't know if you thought, like, the new pitcher would be bothered by the fact that the walk was charged to him, even though he didn't do anything to deserve that walk being charged to him. But, like, he doesn't actually have to throw the four balls anymore. So it kind of makes sense that it would be 50-50, I suppose. I feel like it might be bad for clubhouse chemistry to put it on the guy who can't get his way out of it, right? To say, you know, you're stuck with these runs and don't have the chance to to do anything about it

we're gonna leave it to the next guy and then what if he doesn't clean up that mess and i understand some of the situations you're describing probably come into play right that you have to bring in a new guy because the past guy didn't do a great job and so it's like here additional consequences but but you know an intentional walk that feels that feels like the sort of thing that you'd hate to get dinged with because you didn't you didn't pick right that's coming from the manager that's not you and so i don't know if i were a manager i might say yeah we will wait yeah i wonder if it has to do with like how that first pitcher was pitching that day. Maybe.

If he was having a rough day, then it feels like piling on. It's like I don't want to give him another walk and another potential earned run charge to his record, so I'll give it to the next guy. I wonder if we went case by case, whether there would be any trend toward the guy who's having a rough day. Go easy on him. Don't give him another walk that he couldn't actually control. But yeah, I see what you're saying, but I guess it's just,

it's kind of a case by case or manager by manager. I haven't looked to see, but I wonder whether single, like each individual manager has done it consistently. I mean, again, it's only like 39 cases, so you might not even have many managers who've done this multiple times. But I wonder whether it's internally consistent, whether, you know, managers who have been faced with this situation multiple times have made the same decision in both times or whether even that has varied. That sounds like the sort of thing I'd spend too much time trying to figure out. out. Yeah. Well, we may have already spent too much time on this. I don't know. It's very insignificant, but it is kind of interesting to me that there is this very apparent change in the rates that this was very stable from year to year. And now it has clearly shifted for a pretty obvious reason. So sort of insignificant, but also sort of satisfying that this has changed in this way as you would,

I guess, expect it to. And yeah, along the lines of what you were just saying, I know that Michael Shore has been a big advocate of changing the rules when it comes to inherited runners and earned runs. He thinks that if you did not allow the runner to score yourself, then you should only be charged with a fractional earned run, essentially. So you could go by just like base by base, like quarter of a run or something, or maybe that doesn't make sense because the run expectancy wouldn't quite match up there. He and Joe Posnanski and Brendan McCarthy just did an episode of the podcast about this where they did a debate about how this should work. And by the end, they all seemed to agree that it would be more fair for there to be some change. They didn't

exactly agree on what that change would be. But Brandon was talking about how frustrating it was to leave a game and then be charged with those runs. It's still, as someone who wants to see Shohei Otani rack up the best stats that he possibly can. I'm still sort of bothered by the fact that the game that I saw him in Yankee Stadium, he left the bases loaded with two outs, and then Aaron Sleggers came in and allowed all of those runs to score, and they were all charged Shohei Otani, and he has been lowering his ERA ever since then. But that's rough. So yeah, the idea is that you would be charged with a portion of that run if you like allowed the runner to reach base, but only first base or only second base or something. And then the reliever comes in, then he would also have something at stake. You know, he would be charged with a fractional run as well if that runner ended up scoring. boring yeah so it could be like in the nfl where guys get credit for like partial sacks right yeah i like that idea because i i do think that you know there's something about having to come in

with the bases full of guys even if they're not full of guys with a couple of guys where you're like well this makes magnifies the impact of smaller mistakes potentially but also then you make small mistakes and they're seeing like there should be some consequences for those so i like the idea of sort of partial runs what a nightmare from a stat perspective but i know that's the other thing like we're already doing era out to a couple of decimal spots so you know i guess it it wouldn't be visible at that stage but it would be when you're actually calculating it or like in the box score, it would be a little messier, but it would be fairer. I mean, I guess you could say that like ERA matters less than it used to and earned runs are already sort of that was kind of Joe's argument, which is basically like, you know, this is already a mess.

Like, why try to make this slightly more fair? We should just abandon the whole thing. And Mike was saying, yeah, OK, maybe. But that realistically is not going to happen. Like, we're still going to be tracking earned runs and ERAs for the foreseeable future. Now, as far as like teams and how players are paid and all of that, it probably doesn't matter much anymore because you're looking at more advanced stats and things that are under the pitcher's control or even, you know, batted ball quality and that sort of thing. But still, it matters to perception and it matters to the pitchers,

certainly. So, yeah. And, you know, it's tough. You'd have to figure out exactly how to calibrate it because, like, you couldn't just do like a quarter of the run because like letting the guy on base like that's a bigger deal than letting the guy advance from like first to second or something like that first base right is the big one but then also like if you are brought in with runners on base or with the bases loaded or something like it's harder to pitch yeah in those situations it's harder to pitch with men in scoring position or with a guy on third. So you have to worry about pass balls or wild pitches. So that's tough too.

So it's less of a headache to just say, yeah, stick with this traditional system because we're all used to it. And hopefully we've moved on to better ways to evaluate pitchers anyway. Yeah. I suspect that like the weight of inertia is often what rules the day in situations like this. But I don't think that we would design the system quite the way we have if we were doing it from scratch like

if we started today and we're like let's do baseball all the fields are the same size first thing and then second of all we're going to figure out how to deal with uh assigning responsibility for inherited runners that would be like the second thing we would do right yeah and i remember this being a topic of conversation like back in 2016, 2017, when we knew that the rule was changing to automatic intentional walks. People asked like, do you think there will be more intentional walks now? Because all you have to do is just hold up your hand and your finger and signal for it. And I forget what we guessed, but intentional walks had been becoming less common for quite a while just because, you know, sabermetrically speaking, they're generally pretty ill-advised. And yeah, there was no real bounce back in the rate of intentional walks.

Like it went from 0.19 per game in 2016 to 0.20 per game in 2017, but then back to 0.19 in 2018, and then 0.16 in 2019. And then of course, things get weird with per game stats, but they've been even less common in these last couple seasons. And I'm sure even more so if you were to take out the weird zombie runner ones. So yeah, this is coming into play less and less often these days. But when it does, and when there's a pitching change, and when there's no pinch hitter, although actually filtering out the pinch hitter didn't make that much of a difference really, but now we know that it's essentially a toss-up as to who gets that intentional walk charged to their record. Well, all right then.

Yeah. Now, the last question and stat blast here, This is prompted by an email from Mike, who says, After taking an online quiz created by one of the Sox Machine site writers asking to name every player in White Sox history who has ever hit a walk-off home run, I ran across the amazingly named catcher Yam Yaryan. I don't know if it's Yaryan or Yaryan. It's probably Yaryan, but I'm just going to say Yaryan because it sounds more like yam and I enjoy that. So needing to look this person up, I discovered that while he hit a walk-off on September 7th, 1922 against Cleveland, he only had two career

home runs. This of course naturally raises the question, has there ever been a player whose only career home run was a walk-off? I imagine that there has been, but then who had the most and fewest plate appearances of those players? I want to believe that no one has done this, if only so that I can remember the immortal Yam Yar Yan for this. Other fun facts, Yam played 20 seasons in the then minors until he was 47 years old and once hit 41 homers in a season in Wichita. So we started this episode by talking about walk-off homers, and we are coming full circle here to end with walk-off homers. So just a few things about Mr. Yam Yaryan for a second here,

because how could I not look up? No, how could you not? So obviously my first question was, why is he nicknamed Yam? And that was a harder question to answer than I expected it to be because his actual name is Clarence Everett Yar-Yan. And somehow he ended up being Yam Yar-Yan. And I was looking through newspapers.com through the old archives to try to figure out why he was named Yam or nicknamed Yam. And I kept finding other nicknames of Yam Yaryan, which was really not helpful. So I found this, the Birmingham News, March 1943.

Ty Cobb gave him the nickname of Old Muscles in an exhibition game between Birmingham and Detroit. He was an almost dead left field hitter and hit more balls against the fences than any other barren slugger. So he was nicknamed old muscles that did not help me answer why he was nicknamed and then i found another newspaper article this was in the hartford current march 1932 veteran catcher once earned nickname tarzan of the miners so this says ever Yam Yaryan, who once earned the title of Tarzan of the Miners because of the brutal punishment he administered to little baseballs with hickory cudgels, should add quite a punch to the New Haven Bulldogs with whom he recently signed.

Yam is no spring chicken, but hitting is one thing the boys don't forget how to do, nor is Yaryan exactly a dud as a receiver. I read a number of articles about Yem Yaryan and the press, the contemporary press was in awe at the size of this lad. Like he sounds like he was an absolute unit or something you would think reading these accounts. Like here's another one from the Chattanooga Daily Times, 1931. Yem Yaryan, the strapping backstop picked up by the lookouts last week, and he hit a homer in this game. And they say Pat served a slow one to Yam, a wobbly affair on the outside edge,

but Yam doesn't have to get them perfect. One twist from those brawny shoulders and that horse hide flattened out against the old stands in left. And it goes on from there about how Yam is just such a fearsome, intimidating physical specimen. I'm reading these accounts thinking this must have been a monster of a man. Would you care to guess the listed dimensions of Yam Yaryan, keeping in mind that this is someone who played almost a century ago? Six foot. Not even. Not even six feet?

Yam Yaryan listed at 5'10", 180. Oh. He's like basically my size, and the press at the time was going on about just the strapping immense size of Yam Yaryan. So different era. I'm sure he was quite strong, but also 5'10", 180 in the 20s and 30s was a little bit different from what it is today. So anyway, my search finally concluded, and I did discover why Yam Yaryan was nicknamed Yam Yaryan.

And it was, I guess, pretty much what you would have expected. I mean, I was looking everywhere for confirmation. I imagined that, well, maybe he just liked yams. Yeah, does he just like yams? Yeah, that's it. He just liked yams? He just liked yams. Oh, my God.

Hartford Courant, 1932. Yaryan got his nickname from his insatiable fondness for yam pies. And the New Haven grocers will have to send south for a supply of the toothsome tubers if yam is to feel at home this summer. I like the idea that they actually did have to. The New Haven grocers were like oh we just signed yam yar yan we better stock up shipping some pies here yeah i also like his insatiable appetite like was he just downing these things daily or was it one of those things where like maybe he just

happened to eat one at a certain time and everyone was like oh yam yarian over here and it just stuck like packy notten or something like you know you know that that viral tweet from a couple of years ago about the grink the typo so it's like in brackets me telling my story how i survived a plane crash and lived on a deserted island for a year it was crazy then in brackets friend who once got a text from me where I accidentally called the Grinch the Grink. Was the Grink there? So I wonder if it's a similar thing where like maybe Yam Yaryan just like he had a yam pie with the wrong person at the wrong time.

And after that, or maybe like it was, you know, one day and he just happened to eat a bunch of yam pies and forever he was Yam Yaryan from then on. But it was very frustrating digging to the archives and I'd find some articles that were like, Yam Yaryan who needs no introduction. And it's like, no, he does. Or at least I need to know why he was nicknamed Yam Yaryan. Anyway, now we know.

Yam Yaryan. Yam Yaryan. He just really liked yams. Well, he couldn't have been Beef Yaryan. Yam Yaryan. He just really liked yams. Well, he couldn't have been beef Yaryan because he was not a beef boy. Well, by the standards of the day. A beef let. A beef let, if you will. I guess so.

Anyway, that was not even the question. But it took me down a detour to figure out a little bit more about Yam Yaryan. And I also learned more about yams themselves. You know, yams are kind of a confusing entity. Like they are often interchangeable with sweet potatoes, but are not always actually sweet potatoes. There are some yams that are different from sweet potatoes. Anyway, I learned a lot, but that is beyond the purview of the StatBlast. So I sent this question to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson.

And I should probably remind everyone after that long diversion into Yamyarien that the question here is, has anyone ever hit one career home run, but that one home run was a walk-off? And so Mike was sort of doubting that it had ever happened or hoping that it had never happened so that Yam Yaryan in his one career walk off and two career major league homers, although he did hit more than 200 in the minors. So Mike was hoping that Yam would be the only one or close to the only one. But no, Ryan says, I was ready to look this up. And for the answer to be no, that it has never happened. But in fact, it has. And not only has it happened, it's happened 16 times. And Ryan says, upon further thought, I suppose this isn't that far-fetched. On the aggregate, a little more than 1% of all homers are walk-off homers. Hey, how about that? That's sort of the stat we were wondering about earlier in the episode. So I guess it makes sense that Miguel Cabrera has 500 career homers and only seven walk-offs because only 1% of homers are walk-offs. So, or a little more, which matches up perfectly. So there we go. And Ryan continues, there are 1,495 players with one career homer. That's through the end of the 2020 season. And 16 is about 1% of 1,500. So how about

that? So I'll just read out the list of 16 names here. This is from earliest to latest. We have Bernie James, Bob Patrick, Walter Sessi, Jack Conway, Bill Davis, Steve Hargan, Jose Garcia, Keith Lampard, Dave Criscione, Craig Lefferts, Juan Guerrero, Willie Canate, Ray Montgomery, Essex Sneed, Craig Brazell, and Henry Urrutia. He was in 2015, and Bernie James, the first guy on the list, was 1933. Now, some notes on the list. Two pitchers are included. Cuban middle infielder Jose Garcia has the most plate appearances of anyone on the list. So 662 plate appearances for Jose Garcia, one homer and one walk-off. And Orioles catcher Dave Criscione had the least 10, 10 plate appearances. Now Criscione, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, is a bit of a 15

minutes of fame story. He played seven games over a two-week span in the summer of 1977, and he went three for nine, including his one and only homer, to walk off the Brewers in the bottom of the 11th inning on July 25th, an excerpt from his Sabre bio. Baltimore nearly lost the rain delayed Monday night contest on July 25th on a surprising ninth inning homer by Len Sakata, a five foot nine Brewers rookie who'd been in the majors for five days. When the Orioles came back to force extra frames, however, Criscione entered the game in the 10th. Brooks Robinson led off the bottom of the 11th for Baltimore and the catcher grabbed his bump Willis bat to hit next. Rudy May told Criscione, you know what we need, baby.

I just kind of winked and then went on on deck, he said. The 40-year-old Robinson grounded out in what proved to be the final Memorial Stadium at Bats of his 23-year career. His locker was adjacent to Criscione's and the Orioles legend had welcomed him by name on his first day in the big leagues. As Criscione, wearing his orange alternate Orioles home jersey, prepared to hit next,

he knew that his brother Pete and family were among the leftover fans from the announced crowd of 8,219 on a late, damp night. They had driven down from Dunkirk, aware that chances to see him in Major League action might be few. Sam Hines, a 6'6 right-hander, missed with a fastball. He then threw a slider that his fellow rookie fouled off. There's a little uncertainty about how many pitches ensued. The exact count has been reported as 2-1, 1-1, or 1-2 by various sources, but nobody disputes that Criscione crushed a game-winning homer

about 360 into the left field seats. I was running so damn fast that I almost missed first base, he said. I was smoking. I was on my way to second and said to myself, this is going to be over before I get a chance to enjoy it. So I kind of slowed up. The fans, the players, everybody went berserk, said Orioles publicist Bob Brown.

When Dave got back to the dugout, he was screaming woo, woo, woo, said Baltimore manager Earl Weaver. He scared hell out of me. When his brother joined the postgame clubhouse celebration, Brooks Robinson handed Pete a beer while Dave entertained reporters. My father's on his second childhood because

I'm in the majors and Joe Garagiola told me he'd put me in the Italian Hall of Fame, Criscione said. He also remarked, I hope I never wake up. And then he would go 0 for 3 on July 28th and work as a defensive replacement on July 31st. And that was it. That was his last game. He was not called up in September.

Then in 1978, he was cast as a backup and had only 207 at-bats all year at Rochester. They want to play Kevin Kennedy every day, he explained. Red Wings manager Frank Robinson told me there's nothing I can do about that. It prompted Criscione to ask for a trade. That request was not granted. Thus, in 1979, Criscione did not report to the team. Why waste my time? Go down there and get released, he said.

I don't want to play the same role again. He finished his career with a.274 batting average and 79 homers in 828 minor league games and a 333 average with one very memorable round tripper in the majors. So that's a 173 career OPS plus. Not bad. I will link to the data that Ryan sent along. He also included the total tally for walk-off everything, which led to some interesting fun facts. So there have been 22 recorded walk-off balks in MLB history. No batter has been at the plate for more than one. Johnny Gomes is the only player ever to have multiple walk-off hit-by-pitches, August 21, 2011, and April 11, 2012. And on August 1st, 1971, Willie Crawford became the only player in MLB history to walk off a game due to catcher's interference. From a write-up on BaseballToaster.com, in the 1971 game that ended on catcher's interference, it occurred in the bottom of the 11th in a front of it to get the pitch and then tagged Moda. However, since Crawford did not have the chance to swing the bat because Bench was standing in front of him and out of the catcher's box too, Bench was charged with catcher's interference and Gibbon was also credited with a balk under Rule 7.07.

This is not to be confused with the August 12, 1995 Dodgers game, which also ended in a walk-off catcher mishap. In that game, the catcher touched the ball with his mask while the bases were loaded. That's something that happened just this season in the majors, which invoked Rule 7.05d. Each runner, including the batter-runner, may, without liability, to be put out advance two bases if a fielder deliberately touches the thrown ball with a cap mask or any other part of the uniform detached from its proper place on the person of said fielder. That's an equipment violation, not catcher's interference or a catcher's balk, but that happened recently too.

And then Joe DiMaggio is part of a tie for most walk-off triples all time with three shared with his contemporary second baseman, Connie Ryan. The record for most walk-offs without a walk-off homer is Luis Aparicio, who had 14 walk-off events, 12 singles, one error, and one wild pitch with no walk-off homers. The record for most walk-offs consisting entirely of homers is eight by Ralph Kiner. So eight walk-offs, all homers for Kiner. And most walk-offs straight up is Frank Robinson with 29. But relatively close to the top of the list is recently mentioned Manny Mota, who had 20 walk-offs with only one being a homer.

And Jim Tomei, who hit 612 queer homers, he has the record for the most walk-off homers with 13. So thanks, as always, to Ryan. That's all going back to 1916 when Play-By-Play becomes available. Wow. So now it is time for you to go on vacation. Vacation! All right. Well, we will be for you to go on vacation. Vacation! All right.

Well, we will be without you for a few episodes. You will be missed, of course. The show will go on and we look forward to your return. I'm going to buy some pajama jeans. Yeah, maybe you'll be recognized by someone while you're wearing them. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. 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 keep the podcast ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Robert Milholland, Bennett Akin, Dan Hirsch, and Tim Livingston. 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.dancrafts.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 another episode soon. Talk to you then. Reach out your dream in disguise Angels and silver strings hang from above Let love and laughter shine wherever you go