Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1773: Hats Off

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Astros re-signing Justin Verlander and MLB’s plan to house minor leaguers, then (19:53) bring on listener and top-tier Patreon supporter John Choe to discuss the single game he played in indy ball, the Moonlight Graham Society he co-founded to recognize minor league cups of coffee, how his […]

Outro Music Hello and welcome to episode 1773 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am lundberg of the ringer joined by meg rally of fan crafts hello meg hello we are going to be joined shortly by one of our patreon supporters who will be answering some emails with us and also telling us a little bit about his life and his interest in baseball but a brief bit of banter before we get to our guest john show so there was one notable signing that we should probably address. Justin Verlander is back with the Astros on a somewhat surprising deal. At least it was somewhat surprising to me, not that he returned to the Astros, but the terms of the agreement.

So this is a one-year, $25 million deal with a player option for a second year at the same value. So it's essentially a $50 million commitment over two years, and he can take or leave the second one if he wants. And Verlander, of course, is coming off missing the entire 2021 season and all but one start of the 2020 season after Tommy John surgery. So it's an interesting case because the last time we all saw Verlander, he was winning a Cy Young Award in 2019 and then having a start where he looked like his usual self at the beginning of the 2020 season. And then he had Tommy John surgery, and he's been gone since then, at least from public view.

And he'll be 39 on opening day. So it's an odd case of a pitcher who essentially the last time he pitched was one of the very best pitchers in baseball. And, of course, has been over the course of his career. But also has not pitched in a professional game for quite some time and has reached a very advanced baseball age. So it's an interesting case, I suppose, to figure out how much that guy should get or how long you want him or what kind of contract even he would be seeking. Yeah. I mean, I think that the contract he got suggests that his services were in demand and beyond just the Astros, right? Like in addition to the 25 million to see what his what he looks like beyond whatever insight houston had into his rehab and and sort of progress that way one would imagine that they

would have better insight than most um and we know he threw in front of teams but if he's getting 25 million plus a 25 million dollar player option year you have to think that like he was pretty well in demand and that houston felt the differentiator was that player option because if he's great if he's verlander he doesn't necessarily you know not exercise that option like i guess he could say i was great but i'm still the age I am. And even without the Tommy John part, I have to grapple with the realities of being in my late 30s. And so maybe he thinks the $25 million is the best he can do. And he goes back to Houston for year two, and everybody's happy because they get good innings, and he gets to make $25 million. But they are carrying the risk that he just

becomes a pumpkin and then it could happen it could happen and then if that happens he's definitely going to exercise his player option and make 25 million dollars to be a diminished pumpkin that's what we think of when we think of justin verlander tiny pumpkins we hope that doesn't happen and even if it does he's a hall of famer already if he goes another pitch but yeah they are obviously banking on him throwing quite a few more pitches so and uh as far as we know i mean yeah i assume he's looking good we haven't seen him but teams have right they must have liked what they saw right i don't think that he gets this contract if you know they walk away from that workout and think oh he's he's cooked like he he won't be back he has a history of doing this, right, of recovering.

He's had down years, and then we thought he was kind of done, and then he was excellent again. So I think that, you know, when you think about players who might be able to overcome the combination of age and surgery, like he'd be on the top of that list for me. I guess we're going to find out. But assuming that he is able to give them some good innings like i really like this move for them brendan gulowski wrote up the contract the deal for us at fan graphs and i think he made the good point that despite houston having starting depth like i think their world series run showed that there is always the opportunity for more depth and some of that depth has its own injury and usage concerns right

and so if verlander is healthy and he's able to really anchor that rotation that gives them flexibility down the line and you know maybe that means that they move one of those guys i guess that possibility exists but i think that it probably means that some guys you know are more flexible in their role and sometimes pitch in the bullpen and sometimes start and they have flexibility come October and it gives them some, you know, protection. If Lance McCullough juniors injury proves to be worse than we've heard it to be at this point, or if he has another problem, you know, he hasn't been injury free really at almost any point in his career. So I think that it's a good move for for both sides this seems like seems like a good deal yeah i remember going into 2020 there was some consternation about

the astros rotation because garrett cole had departed and so they were really depending pretty heavily on verlander and granky which seemed you know you're counting on old guys to keep pitching at their prior level. And then Verlander got hurt and Greinke was not his peak self. He wasn't bad that year, but he kind of declined in 2021 to the point that they weren't eager to use him in the postseason. And he sort of had to be pressed into service. And now he's a free agent, too. So, yeah, can you count on McCullers? And the Astros have developed this new crop of really

strong starting pitchers, Garcia and Valdez and Urquidy and Javier, who's sort of a swing man. And then they have Odorizzi, who was signed sort of out of desperation too. So they have guys, but none of those guys is Justin Verlander. Now, I don't know whether Justin Verlander is Justin Verlander at this point, but evidently teams thought that he still has the potential to be, and hopefully he does. And he has said in the past, somewhat famously, that he wanted to pitch until that's changed his mind, but he probably wouldn't have gone through with the Tommy John surgery if he didn't want to keep pitching for years and think he could keep pitching at a high level. Because at that point, some other pitchers might have just said, oh, this won't really affect my quality of life outside of baseball, so I'll just hang him up here. But no, he went through the whole surgery and the grueling rehab process and obviously he's someone who works really hard and keeps himself in shape and so I would not be surprised to see him still be effective and the Astros could use him I think

it's been a bit overblown the idea that this is like the end of an era for the Astros I think that's mainly a perception created by the presumed departure of Carlos Correa, which I still think they could and perhaps should make every effort to resign him. It doesn't seem as if they're going to, but most of the rest of the roster is returning. So between Correa and Brent Strom, somewhat surprisingly departing for the Diamondbacks, I mean, those are potentially big losses, but they're still the core of a team that has made it to the alcs for five straight years here and if they are able to get a somewhat effective verlander back then that would be a big boost and one thing i'm kind of curious about is that like verlander has always thrown a lot of

innings by the standards of his era like even in 2019 he led the majors with 223 innings which like even two short years later seems like whoa 223 innings back in the day pitchers used to throw that many innings doesn't happen anymore and i wonder like what would happen if he didn't do that what would happen if he just dialed it back a bit so that he went more for per inning efficiency and effectiveness rather than bulk i mean he has done both in the past but maybe coming off surgery and at his age he just says hey i'm not going to be the guy who goes seven every time maybe i can give you five great innings every time, which is basically what teams want from starters these days. And he's someone who historically has always held something in reserve, right?

Like he's well known for conserving some speed and then dialing up the fastball in the late innings. And he's been very effective doing that. But what if he didn't have to save something for the late innings? What if he just went all out max effort for the first few innings and he's someone who has like basically no second time through the order effect in his career like there's basically no drop off from first time through the order to second time through the order and i think even third time through the order he's worse but maybe not really dramatically worse and so i i wonder if he just had a different mindset

and said, like, I'm just going to give you five or six really great innings instead of planning to go seven or eight. Maybe that helps him compensate for any other lack of skill or durability. So curious to see how that goes. Yeah, and you would imagine that if ever there were a front office group that could help him kind of navigate through that, it might be Houston's, and he'd perhaps be more willing to entertain something like that with a team that he already has a good rapport and an established relationship with and

you know gives them the opportunity to sort of ratchet down some of the other guys innings should they need to I it just seems like a good it seems like a good fit, just not a lot of precedent for a pitcher his age having Tommy John surgery. And so it's hard to say. One would expect that the outcomes would probably not improve with age, but it's not quite uncharted territory, but it's close, as Brendan mentioned, in his sixth oldest pitcher and second oldest starter to undergo Tommy John. So hard to extrapolate from that, really not a great track record, but a small sample as well. All right. So one other little bit of nudes that we wanted to relay. Good news, it seems, is that some of the details,

most of the details of the minor league housing agreement have been released, first reported by Baseball America, and then subsequently I received a press release about this from MLB. But I think everyone looked at it as a positive step when we learned not too long ago that teams would agree to provide housing to, at the time we didn't know exactly who, but it sounded like most minor leaguers, but there was still a lot of uncertainty about, OK, who is going to be covered and how is this going to be implemented and what will the loopholes be? And based on what we've heard on Thursday, it seems like, and you always kind of have to take it with a grain of salt just given how this has worked or not worked historically, how this has worked or not worked historically, but it certainly sounds as if this will be a big improvement and it's kind of the system that people were hoping would happen. Yeah, it's so nice to have good news. There seemed like there were so many ways that this could kind of go sideways and

you know, there's still aspects of it that we don't have detail on. One of the options that exists in this proposal is that if there isn't otherwise adequate housing, the teams can put players into hotels and the details of that part of it have to be fleshed out. So we still have a little more to learn, I imagine, in the coming weeks and months about what exactly this looks like, but they seem to be hitting on the parts that are the most important, getting guys out of leases, out from under having to sign potentially multiple leases in the course of a year and be on the hook for that and the economic and psychological impact that that can have. They seem to have recognized the basics here, which is that the individuals involved might change over the course

of a season because guys are going to be promoted or demoted or moved around or what have you. But they're going to have the same number of guys at every team over the course of the year. That's going to remain constant. And so rather than burden players with the logistics of having to find housing and sign a new lease and move and all of that, this seems to create a much less financially burdensome system and psychologically burdensome system. They're not going to be on the hook for basic utilities, the standards of what the accommodations

have to look like in terms of how many players to a bedroom and the kind of communal space that they have and what actual furniture they're going to have in their apartments and the sorts of things that make a place livable beyond it just being something that shelters you from the elements seem to be accounted for here in a way that's really positive. So I don't think that this changes the conversation around minor leaguers still needing to be paid a living wage, right? We don't want this to be a substitute for that. But I think that when we talked about this, we also acknowledge that this is an important supplement to that question. Depending on the

market that they're in, housing might end up being a really burdensome cost, even if they are paid non-poverty wages. So I think that this is a really important step and long overdue but it's good that it's here you know we'll continue to i'm sure monitor the quality of that housing once they're actually people in apartments rather than just hypotheticals but i think this is good news ben this is good news sure seems like This is good news. Sure seems like it. Yeah. What luxury is a single bed per player, no more than two players per bedroom? Wow.

I mean, they'll just be living in the lap of luxury. But hopefully we won't see any more photos of these just hellscapes of apartments where seven minor leaguers are all crashing at the same time on air mattresses or something. I mean, there have been so many horror stories that we've heard and discussed on the podcast before. And so minor league baseball player, not now and perhaps not ever the most remunerative career choice that one could make. But this certainly helps. And there's just so much evidence out there about the effects of housing uncertainty on people in any profession or walk of life and how it can affect your mental and physical well-being and your sleep. And obviously, from a player

development perspective, let alone a humane perspective, there would certainly be obvious effects there. And researchers have documented those effects. And it just makes so much more sense for teams to handle this. I mean, besides the fact that they can afford it, also just from a logistics angle, teams know like, okay, we have this many players from this period to this period, whereas players don't know where they're going to be or how long they're going to be there. They're coming and going. If they have to worry about breaking leases and signing leases, it's just another enormous headache on top of everything else that they have

to do. So it sounds like this will be a big weight off of many players' minds and that they will all be eligible. They can opt out if they want. But other than players on major league contracts who are in the minors just on rehab assignments, I suppose, or get demoted maybe, or players who are making six figures, the players who are most able to afford housing, everyone else will be covered. And we'll see, I guess, long-term

whether teams will be more inclined to develop dorms and kind of have standardized housing as opposed to having to find places for players to live or hotel rooms or host families, which is still a possibility in some cases. So this is sort of a transitional time. But wherever it ends up, however the transition goes, it's got to be better than it was before. And I was looking at the press release, and unsurprisingly, it's a press release, so you would expect it to sound like this. But it makes it sound like, oh, the magnanimous owners, just out of the kindness of their hearts, have agreed to provide free housing to players. It says, owners unanimously agreed to provide housing to players in 2022 as next phase of improvements. Move comes after increasing salaries, improving facilities, and reducing travel in first season under new system. repeated and increased exposés and pleas for assistance and documented cases of players just not having adequate housing. I mean, owners have had decades to do this if they wanted to. So it's

not like they just of their own volition said, hey, we want to be nice guys and give our players places to live. I think they have gotten sick of the bad publicity or have gotten worried about players organizing or trying to advocate for themselves or unionize or whatever it may be. I mean, that seems to be the primary impetus here. So of course, owners are going to say that they've made big improvements and they're only going to do more. And there is some truth to that, I suppose, but they've basically been dragged and they're only going to do more. And there is some truth to that, I suppose, but they've basically been dragged kicking and screaming to this point. Yeah, we don't need to give them too much credit here.

This is the result of years of writing and advocacy, both on the part of minor leaguers themselves and organizations that have brought attention to their plate. So, yeah, this is long overdue. We're glad it's here, but we don't need to give them too many pats on the back for arriving at what has been a very obvious conclusion for a really long time so all right so we'll save some more news for next time there are some wander franco extension rumors we're reading as we record this and we have maybe some thoughts on awards voting as we record here on Thursday afternoon.

We're still waiting for the full MVP results to be announced. Ben doesn't know if he needs to write yet. Yes. If you're listening to this, then you have heard, but we have not heard as we speak. So we'll save that and other news reactions for next time as a lead in to our first Stove League discussion. for next time as a lead-in to our first Stove League discussion. And as a reminder, we'll be talking about the first four episodes of Stove League next time after that opening banter. So get on that if you haven't yet.

And just a PSA for anyone who is still watching or hasn't started yet, I have found the subtitles on Viki to be the best that I have seen. I have sampled the ones on Cocoa and Viki, the two Korean streaming services that I've been linking to on the show pages. At least early on, the Viki ones, in my opinion, are far superior and more natural and detailed. So I would recommend checking those out. I've heard from others that the Cocoa subtitles improve as the series goes on, and some people have been enjoying it that way.

So whatever works but all else being equal i would recommend watching on vicky but i hope you're all enjoying it and now let us get to our guest we are joined now by effectively wild listener and patreon supporter john cho not the star of cowboy bebop but absolutely the star of this podcast episode john hello hello thanks thanks for having me on. Very happy to have you. And whenever we have a listener on as a Patreon perk, which is fun for us and hopefully fun for you, I always ask how you came across our humble show and what could have possibly possessed you to support us at the highest tier as you do.

I wanted to donate to you as, quite frankly, a thank you. Over COVID, I've been doing a lot of walks and runs, and you've kept me company during these last few months. Yeah, I wanted to donate as a thank you. My 12-year-old daughter is crazy about baseball, and listening to Effectively Wild together has been a great shared experience for us. All she wants to do is learn about so many different parts of the game, and one of the many things All she wants to do is learn about so many different parts of the game. And one of the many things that she wants to do when she grows up is to run an MLB team's baseball operations division. So hearing from voices like yours, Meg and Ben, it helps her dream big. She's actually reading that the only rule is it has to work. She's reading that right

now. And so that's why I wanted to donate, really, as a thank you. You are really indoctrinating her early in the Bible of Ben Lindbergh. I love it. She jumped in fully, and this is not me. It's a nice win. It's a shared passion and not a... Yeah, that's great. You'll have to give me some tips on indoctrinating a daughter in love of baseball in a few years. But we want to ask you about that and a few other specific topics as well as answer some emails. But tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you are, what you do. Ah, okay. So I live in Jamaica Plain, which is a neighborhood within Boston. I live with my

baseball-loving wife and three kids. Some quick fun facts about me is I played exactly one game of minor league baseball. And my love of baseball cards and math and card games has led me to my career as a stock investor right now. And then my two oldest kids and I have also taught an intro baseball analytics seminar each of the past few years at our local public library. So I think our youth baseball league is probably most, maybe the most saber-friendly youth baseball organization around. And the last quick thing is my kids and I are ball hawks. We love going to MLB games early so that we can try to catch batting practice homers. And we have about 70 lifetime baseballs and we give most of those away to others in order to spread the joy. So

we like baseball a lot. How do you position yourself optimally for those? I know that folks have gotten it kind of down to a science about where they can be best placed to collect the most number of balls. It's amazing how many spray charts you can pull up online and you can see where the batters usually hit, who's throwing, is it a lefty that's going to start that day? So the batting practice pitch is usually a lefty. And then it's kind of gambling. Do you try to take a spot where no one is? And I never understood fishing before, right? To me, fishing sounds like you sit around all day and you get a bite every once in a while. And I realized, oh my goodness, like what we do trying to catch these balls.

It's like fishing. And it is a ton of fun to catch a ball in the air. You get butterflies and it's a goofy, fun thing. And even last year during the pandemic, we went our neighborhood kids and I and my kids went to Lansdowne Street right beyond the Green Monster. And there we we'd have a catch on the parking garage. And every once in a while, balls would come over and land on the garage. And we make do. We try to plan as best as we can. And regardless of what happens, we laugh and have fun. So you mentioned your cameo in a minor league game, in an indie league game. And I know

that that has led to your creation of a society for fellow players who have played in exactly one minor league game. So tell us how that came about, because that is a scenario that we have discussed on the podcast previously and Sam Miller has written about. Would you, if you had the opportunity, even want to play in a professional baseball game given the risk of embarrassing yourself and making a mockery of everything. And I think opinions are split on whether people would actually want to do that because it's fulfilling your dream and it sounds so cool, or the risk of just looking really bad at baseball, which as I understand it, you didn't do. But let us know

how that happened. Yeah. So how I got to actually play a game was like, I'm sure everyone listening on this podcast, you know, baseball has been a lifelong love of mine. And after the birth of my second child, I realized, you know what? My life is going to be different, right? I'll be really, my responsibilities changed. And I want to try something for myself, do something for myself. And I kind of think about this as like a midlife crisis project where I wanted one at bat to see how I do. Yeah.

It seems like one of the less destructive midlife crises you could have probably. I think it's cheaper than buying a convertible or something. And so the normal Corn Belters in the Frontier League in 2011, they auctioned off a one-day contract in an exhibition game. And it was a win-win. The organization created excitement for their fans and the money benefited the Humane Society of Central Illinois. And I was fortunate to win the auction and I got a contract for one day. And my manager that day was Hal Anear. And I got to play one inning in the field, in right field, of course.

And I had won at bat. And how did it go? The at bat was interesting because I won the auction on a Tuesday and the game was on a Friday. And in Boston, it rained all week. So I didn't even have a chance to really get warm and practice. And you hadn't been playing. Have you played at a high level at all previously? Yeah, I did.

But at that point I was 34 years old. And so at that point I wasn't playing regularly. And so I didn't have a chance to practice because it was a pretty quick turnaround to go out to normal Illinois. And even the day of the game, batting practice got rained out. So I was 100% cold. And I was kidding with my wife before the game. I was like, man, maybe I should take the first pitch, right?

And she's like, no, you're crazy. You might only get three pitches. So go swing. So a reporter after the game had commented that, that I patiently took the first pitch. But the funny part about that was I had decided to swing regardless. And the speed of the game was so fast. The fastball was just, I was actually going to swing, but I couldn't because I was so late. And the second pitch, I decided to cheat and swing early and do everything I could, you know, choke up. And I hit the ball as late as I possibly could. So it really went to the right.

I'm a right-handed batter. And then I'm sitting there 0-2 and I'm like, oh no, what do I do at this point? Right? Will I get a curve ball? Will I change up? And so I was guessing and I was like, okay, fastball. I already proved I can't hit it. So he's going to throw it again. And this time I fouled it up over the first base dugout. And there was a little buzz in the crowd, a cheer. And then I'm like, oh my goodness, I on this third pitch, I cheated so much and I'm still late. I'm like, how early do I have to swing? And so fourth pitch, I'm like, oh, if it's off speed, I'm going to be off by a ton, And so fourth pitch, I'm like, oh, if it's off speed, I'm going to be off by a ton. Swing early.

And he threw me another fastball. The ball hit the bat and went down the first baseline. The first baseman dove, knocked it down, threw it to the pitcher who covered the bag. And I was probably out by 30 feet. It was wet turf. And the speed of the ball did all the work. I like how you described it as the ball hit the bat, not the bat hit the ball. And then it was super exciting.

But I had no time to rest because the manager of the team that year was Hal Lanier, you know, from the mid-80s Houston Astros, right? He's like, hey, Cho, you're going to right field. And as you can imagine, the ball found me twice. Sure. Once the ball went in between me and the center fielder it went to the fence so of course i let the center fielder throw it in but the second one was um there was a runner on second and i'm playing right i'm like if there's a single here there's gonna be a play at the plate right and so i uh i was like okay fundamentals you know pick up the ball don't let it get by you.

Throw it as hard as you can. Throw it on the line. Hit the cutoff guy. There might be a play at the plate. So I did everything. I got all my energy behind the throw. I hit the cutoff guy on two bounces. Now, on one side, it looked legit because a lot of people throw balls on wet turf and they let it skip.

But in truth, I tried to throw it in the air to the cutoff person. So the runner was safe, but it looked like I did my job by not letting it hit the wall. And it went to the cutoff guy and no one said anything afterwards. So I think I did okay. What was the reaction of the folks you were playing with? I can imagine, you know, I can imagine that if you're trying to make your way in independent ball and then someone comes in on a promotion that that might inspire a variety of reactions. But what was the team atmosphere like for you? Yeah, I wanted to be really sensitive about that because, you know, this is their career.

And so I didn't say anything in the locker room much, right. And some people thought that was just another person coming through in spring training. And a lot of people came up to me and they talked about my career and what I did, because in independent ball, you're even further, you're not, it's not affiliated baseball. So it's even one step further away from the majors. So it was obvious that everyone appreciated being there and was aware of their baseball mortality. And thankfully, my teammates were super gracious that day. They talked about the experience. They gave tips, suggestions on how to wear the uniform, how to clean your cleats properly.

They were great. They were really fantastic. And they understood how special this was for someone who loves baseball. And yeah, once again, they asked a lot about, hey, how did you get into investments? How did you decide to do this? And because I'm sure a lot of them are thinking about what's next. Yeah. So they were great.

Sounds like the opposing pitcher didn't take it easy on you either. So I guess it wasn't a name brand pitcher that people would know necessarily. But still, that's intimidating stuff. Yeah, I'm just glad he didn't throw me a curveball. Right. Yeah, unfortunately, your appearance has not gotten you a baseball reference page. I guess we were talking before we started recording, maybe because it was a spring training game or because it was ultimately rained out, possibly. And that's something that Sam and I,

when we were working with the Slompers in the book that your daughter is reading, we debated, do we want to insert ourselves into a game just for the glory and for the story to get a baseball reference page? And ultimately we decided not to, I guess, partly out of fear and partly because we felt like we might be overstepping our bounds somehow

or would be abusing our privilege there. But I still think about that and wonder whether we should have done it just to say that we did. So it's pretty cool that you have gotten that opportunity. And I know that you are actively looking for others who have. So you asked us a little while ago if we could come up with a list of players who have appeared in only one minor league game. And Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference was nice enough to oblige and send us a giant spreadsheet, which we passed along to you. And maybe you can link on the show page for people who are interested. And that will hopefully further your efforts with the Moonlight Graham Society.

So tell us about that. Yeah. So over the years, I have met two other people that have become good friends now that have similar experiences. One friend played in the Prairie League in the mid-90s, and he played one game, did not get the bat. And then another friend was a 61-year-old rookie in the Pecos League three years ago. And he's a sidearm pitcher. And he finally had a chance to play. And we met. We watched a minor league baseball game together. And while we're there, we enjoyed talking about our short minor league careers

and enjoyed talking to each other about the creative pursuit of our dreams. And we decided to call ourselves the Moonlight Graham Society. And we decided it's nice to document these things. And storytelling is really powerful. And we thought a lot of these individual unique stories probably won't be documented. And we'd love to do that. So we started a website, MoonlightGrahamSociety.com. And you and Kenny were gracious to send us that list. And we

want to use that to reach out to people and just to talk to them and say, we'd love to hear your story. And we want to meet more people like us. And we actually have a meeting set up this weekend to talk to someone who played one game for the Sonoma Stompers. And so we'll see where this goes and where this takes us. But it's a fun little adventure. And we hope to meet a lot of people. And if people know of people that have played one or very few minor league games, we'd love to be connected. And please reach out to us. We'd love to just sit and chat and hopefully one of these days watch a minor league baseball game together. What is your expectation in terms of the

breakdown within the folks who you might reach out to of people who are in your position and sort of pursuing a dream without really an expectation that they're going to progress through into your affiliated ball versus those who maybe had a shot at playing pro ball and for whatever reason, weren't able to advance past one game or a couple of games? Yeah, we'd love to find out. And I think that's what might make this project super fun is to hear the full story. We just took that list and started clicking on some profiles. And a lot of them, it's one line and it's one game and that's it. And we noticed some of them are, there's this one gentleman, he's, I believe he's 69 years old. He played one game of double A ball for the Red

Sox. And I was like, wow, how, you know, what happened? And then we see another player played four years of college and then played one game of independent ball and that was it. And that's another story we'd love to see. You know, we could look at the numbers and try to infer, but I'm sure there's great conversations to be had. So to answer your questions, I don't know. And we'd like to find out. Yeah. Well, we'll link to that website where people can find all that info on the show page. And just cribbing from your bio at moonlightgramsociety.com, it seems like baseball has been a constant for you basically from the start, watching baseball. You were a Phillies fan. You played baseball.

You were very into baseball cards. Your first date with the woman who's now your wife was at Fenway Park. So it's been baseball all the way, which is wonderful. how that led you to your current career, because it sounds as if your infatuation with numbers in baseball translated to some expertise with stocks and investments, which didn't happen for me somehow. I just never really made the leap from baseball to business. But how did that begin for you? And then how did you get the bug that led you to what you do as a day job? Yeah. Well, I studied engineering when I was an undergrad. And I worked in a couple, I worked in consulting, worked in engineering. And I thought, you know what?

I enjoy what I do, but I don't love it. And the thought is, okay, well, what do I enjoy? And the thought always came down to baseball and to games. And one thing that I always loved was, you know, in the late 80s, trying to, I love baseball cards, and I'm sure a lot of listeners, you know, also love baseball cards, too. And I was always wondering about, like, why are people willing to pay so much for this Jerome Walton rookie card, right? And what's the reason behind this? Or if you read in the newspaper, or if someone might complain that, you know,

the local baseball team signed this baseball player, and everyone might say, wow, that's too much. And my first question was, well, if that's too much, and these are smart people with a lot of information making these decisions, then what is the right number if what they signed for is the wrong number? And so I went to business school and, you know, it was a time to sit back and say, what do I enjoy doing? What do I think I'm good at doing? What do I think I'll enjoy putting a lot of time into? And stocks are very similar to baseball players because I think baseball players not so much are people, just people. What it is, is because you have them for a certain amount of

time, it's really, it's an asset, right? You'll get a certain amount of performance at a certain dollar price. And is this a good asset? Like if you've stripped out the names and I think stocks are similar, right? If you have a average performing company, but you get them at a bargain price, that's a good investment. If you have the best player in baseball, but you pay that player by far the most, then that might not be a good investment because there's probably more downside than up. And so that's why I enjoyed stocks. That's how I got into it. It's because there are so many similarities to baseball. And so I do love looking at the baseball contracts and trying to understand what happened. That was always fun for me.

You mentioned how your daughter has become a huge baseball fan and is reading Ben's book and listening to the pod. And I know that you mentioned to us offline that she also plays baseball and has had some good experiences with her team. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about that. What has baseball been like for her, especially growing up with two parents who sound like they're quite committed to the cause? Yeah. So my daughter, Ginny, she plays on an all girls baseball team called the Boston Slammers. She plays on another team too, but the Slammers, they compete in tournaments run by Baseball for All, which is

just a fantastic organization. Baseball for All supports girls playing youth baseball and young women who play on their high school and college baseball teams now. And some baseball fans might not know that the U.S. has a women's national team that competes in the Women's Baseball World Cup. And many of the women on the 38-player women's national team development program roster played with the Slammers or against them at these events run by Baseball for All. So I think Baseball for All and the Boston Slammers, their programs were celebrating and supporting. And actually, Major League Baseball also continually adds programs to support the skills development of women ballplayers. They just had a program. They invited many high school, young women high school ballplayers down to Arlington, Texas to play in the Rangers Stadium.

And that just wrapped up. And so it's a lot of great opportunities. Girls baseball is growing. It's really great to support. And so it's been fun to share that as an entire family and to see my daughter enjoy the game as much as I did when I was her age. And can you tell us also about the seminars that you and Jeannie have been giving the intros to Baseball analytics. What's the audience for that? And what have you found the best approach to persuasion to be? Yeah. So it's actually my oldest son, my oldest kid, Xavier, also did this too. So Xavier, Ginny, and I would talk to... So I coached in our town league. It's called the Regan Youth League.

And I'm the type of parent who tries to sneak in lessons a lot. So I use baseball to sneak in math lessons. And every year we'd invite the players that are between nine to 12. And we could think about the game. And we'd also talk about how do you measure a pitcher? What's, what's, how should you think about what's important, right? And it'd be down to, you know, think about your pitcher's job is to prevent run, base runners, right? You want to get outs, prevent runners and hey, don't walk. Because if you walk, if you walk a batter, you know, on base percentage is a thousand. If you, in youth baseball, if they hit the ball, you know, the likelihood they get on base is, what, 50-50, right? And we talk about on-base percentage.

We talk about slugging. And we just try to have fun. I just realized, you know, these kids are doing it because they enjoy baseball. They enjoy math. And I just wanted to answer their questions and let them be comfortable learning about the numbers in the game. wanted to answer their questions and let them be comfortable learning about the numbers in the game. And when they go to the ballpark and they look at the scoreboard, they kind of understand what's happening and what slugging is and, you know, why is Mookie Betts so outstanding? And so those are the types that we go and we do like age appropriate math lessons. So it's been a hit. We have parents

that would join us. And I think the parents often would get as much out of our sessions as the kids did. So it's been fun. It's been a great time. I was going to ask what the reception to that was. Are there any stats that stood out to you as being particularly accessible to kids as sort of an entry point? Well, it's funny because when you think about offense, a lot of it is on base percentage, right? but in youth baseball, I don't want to stress walks. I want to stress swinging and development and having fun. So it's kind of an interesting balance. What's resonated is, you know, not giving up homers if you're a pitcher, not worrying about if a ball's hit, don't worry about what happens

because you can't control it. We talk about BABIP at the major league level and, you know, it doesn't apply to youth baseball, but at least they could understand it. We talk about BABIP at the major league level, and it doesn't apply to youth baseball, but at least they could understand it. So oftentimes we let the conversation go to where the kids want to bring it. We often talk about, for example, the baseball Pythagorean theorem, the run scored and runs against. And we talk about, hey, we're about 50 games into the season, right? Here's the team I think is going to fall apart. And I'd ask them, you know, who do you think this team got off to a hot start? Do you think they can continue it?

And it's been fun checking in a couple months later to see how the teams we thought would fall apart, how they do. This year, we noted the Blue Jays and their actual record was much different at that point when we did the seminar was much different than their projected win loss according to runs scored

and runs allowed. So it's fun. And actually, the players that have done this years ago, we still talk every about maybe the 50-game mark of the season. And we say, hey, everyone, tell me your projections. Who do you think will do well the rest of the year? And it's a fun way to stay connected to players that have gone through of the year and it's fun it's a fun way to to uh to stay connected to players that uh that have gone through the seminar so it's fun all right well it's often difficult when we have our patreon supporters on to actually get to emails because our patreon supporters make great guests and they have interesting things to talk about but we did promise some emails and we want to do some emails so let let's get to a few here. Let's start with this

question, which I really like. This made me think this is from Xander, who says, why do you think that we don't have more statistics that are directly equivalent between batters and pitchers? It seems to me that almost every statistic for a hitter could also be applied to a pitcher. For example, why is it not commonplace to know what Max Scherzer's WRC Plus Allowed or even OPS Allowed is? Instead of WIP, why do we not talk about OBP Allowed? This would also allow us to more directly compare hitters to pitchers. How much better is Jacob de Grom at preventing run creation than Mike Trout is at creating runs? Do you think that these types of statistics would be easier for most fans to understand in the long term or make things more confusing?

So I have a few theories and potential explanations. But if either of you wants to kick things off with some ideas about why we don't do this more or whether we should do it more, you have the floor. John? I would love to see this more. I think this is a great idea. And to me, this makes sense. So I fully agree. I think the big key would be that it has to be communicated well. We already get a lot of, I think, information that helps us see how a pitcher's doing, you know, whip, walks per nine, strikeouts per nine. But I always thought context was tough. Like, what's a good whip?

And so I think breaking it down, for example, I think percentiles is really good. Like, this pitcher is at the 80th percentile for allowed on-base percentage. I thought that'd be really powerful. So I'd love to see that. Yeah, I think there are a few reasons why we don't see it more often. And some of them I think are valid and maybe some just have more to do with tradition and how these stats developed but I think the first thing is that generally hitters have more control over the outcome of balls in play than pitchers do so I

think that typically if you take average or OBP or slugging or whatever it is, something that is heavily dependent on BABIP, then it's more telling in many cases for a hitter than it is for a pitcher. If a pitcher has a 360 BABIP allowed like Eduardo Rodriguez last year, then you say that's bad luck. If a hitter has a 360 BABIP allowed pull out well it might still be a little lucky depending on the hitter though that might actually be his skill because he hits the ball in a certain way consistently or he's very fast and he can beat out infield hits so that i think is part of it that with pitchers there's just more defense and luck that comes into play with batted ball results and

so if you want to give a picture of how the pitcher performed, then you can go straight to the factors directly under the pitcher's control or more directly the FIP components, essentially, strikeouts and walks and that kind of thing. So that's, I think, one big reason, but I think there are more. I was just talking to Craig Goldstein and Zach Cram about this, and they had some similar ideas about it. And I think part of it, and you just sort of touched on it, John, is that we have all these per nine stats for pitchers, strikeouts per nine, walks per nine.

Historically, I think because pitchers pitch innings, you know, that's kind of the unit that we use for them. Whereas with pitchers, we use plate appearances or at bats. And for pitchers, I think we're all just used to having things on a per inning or per nine inning basis. And so this is a little different. It's kind of a different framework than we use to evaluate hitters for the most part. And I think with pitchers, at least historically speaking, it was like, well, did you allow a run or not? Which is obviously very simplistic, but you can't really do that as well for a hitter.

I mean, runs created is a sabermetric advanced stat and you have RBI and runs scored, which maybe people will equate to run production, but of course, it's not quite equivalent. So with pitchers, I think people, at least in the past, were less interested in, well, did you allow a lot of base runners? No, just tell me what was your ERA? Did you allow the run to score or not? If not, then I don't care how many runners were on base. Of course, we know that how many runners you allow on base will be predictive in the long run of how many runs you allow it. But I think that's a big part of it, too, is that we just boil things down to runs for pitchers or we look at things on a per nine innings basis. And so it's just kind of a different framework in which to examine player performance. I think one of the places we're starting to see that shift a little bit, and this is, I think, the result of this data just being available is when you look at folks who are

writing more detailed pitch analysis for a given pitcher, right? Yes, exactly, yeah. So it's like in those instances, you know, it's not unusual for a writer at Fangraphs or Baseball Prospectus or wherever to look at sort of how an individual pitch has performed for a pitcher and use that as an entry point to their analysis to help explain, you know, why they're doing well or why they're doing poorly or a place where maybe they could optimize their pitch mix more effectively and see better results. So I think that we are starting to see that stuff. And part of it is just, yeah, we needed the data to catch up to what we were able

to dig into and i think people are getting more comfortable with that now and we're starting to see it more often i don't really have a problem with like the the frame of reference being specific to the the pitcher or the hitter right like i think understanding a pitcher's performance based on strikeout percentage or, you know, FIP or DRA or what have you makes good sense. But I do think that there are times when trying to understand that performance requires digging in on individual pitches. And we have an opportunity to be a bit more descriptive there, I think.

Yeah. And that can get you into trouble sometimes too. Oh, it sure can. Yeah, because sometimes it's like 10 pitches and you're like, oh, that's not enough for us to say anything at all. Yeah, and often it only takes into account the outcome, like it's an at-bat ending pitch. Correct. And what if it wasn't an at-bat ending pitch, but you get a lot of whiffs on it or something. So that can be dangerous.

But yes, I think that is a case where you see this more often or maybe splits sometimes with other types of splits. I don't know, runners in scoring position or something. If you're doing TOPS plus, like basically anything where you can't do ERA, you know, like the ad, what's your ERA against righties or lefties or whatever it is. And everyone makes fun of that. If you can't do that, then you do kind of have to look at it on a per plate appearance basis, or maybe it's better to do that. So I agree, though, John, that there are some times when it would be intuitive and maybe useful. And there are times when I will cite this, you know, I definitely have cited at times that so and so had this, you know, sometimes it's it's contact quality quality or it's like weighted on base or expected weighted on base allowed or something. But I'm pretty sure I've done, you know, OPS allowed as a stat for pitchers sometimes. Or, you know, sometimes you'll say that so-and-so allowed a certain slash line against all the hitters he faced, and then you'll equate that to like a hitter who produced that

slash line so you can say that so and so turned all hitters he faced into you know insert name of not very good hitter here and that's evan white i have done that specifically yes so i think there are times when it does make some sense and i think it can be a little misleading, though. It's like that apparent paradox of, well, why is strikeout percentage or strikeout rate so useful and predictive for pitchers, but not so useful or predictive for hitters, at least in some cases? So sometimes it seems like, well, it should just be a mirror image of each other, but it doesn't actually work that way.

But I think it is semi-surprising like sometimes it's hard even to just find these stats like the the slash lines allowed like yeah on baseball reference on the player pages i think they're relegated to like an advanced stat section which they're not really advanced stats but they they're just not the commonly cited ones. And on FanGraphs, correct me if I'm wrong, Meg, but I don't think they're even available on standard leaderboards or player pages. You can find them on the splits leaderboards, I think. But you can't just find OPS allowed on Max Scherzer's player page. Yeah, you got to go into the splits tool. player page. Yeah, you gotta go into the splits tool. Yeah, which is, you know,

not necessarily right or wrong, but it's just a reflection of how these stats tend to be used or not used I suppose. Alright, let's take a question from Andrew who says, I was watching a highlight from a cricket match. We always get into trouble when a question

starts with someone watching cricket and asking how it applies to baseball, but Andrew says, they mentioned that when you make an out, you're out for good. This got me thinking about what baseball would be like if this rule were adopted. What happens when you run out of hitters? Would lineup construction change? Would this actually make the Angels a playoff team? Since Trout and Otani would take pretty much every late game at bat,

could you imagine how upset a base runner thrown out at home would be at the third base coach? So first, let me just say, I'm not exactly Mr. Cricket Understander over here, but if I'm interpreting this question correctly, then the questioner is not interpreting cricket correctly. Because when a batter gets out in cricket, or is dismissed, as they say, which makes it seem like the batter has been disobedient somehow.

They're not removed from the rest of the match. They just can't bat again in that innings. But if it's a type of cricket where there are multiple innings, then that batter can come back and bat again in the next one. Or if the team is due to take the field, then the batter who just got out can play defense. So when you make it out, you're not out for good, you're out for that innings, or at least that half of that innings. And this would all be 10 times easier to explain if the word for a single innings was not the same as the word for multiple innings,

like call it an inning, or call them innings or something. Throw us a bone here. But let's proceed as if this scenario were the way it worked, and that once you make an out, you're just eliminated. It's like the Stephen King book, The Long Walk. Once you stop walking, you're done. Assuming baseball worked that way. So the leadoff guy grounds out in the top of the first and he's just done and you have to swap in someone else. How different would baseball be, John? The first thought it would finally make games shorter. I think this is the one way to do that. Right. You'd's a forfeit pretty quick. Or it would make me really sad. The one game I always try to go to every year is when the Angels come to Fenway. And I'd be bummed out if our starting pitcher, the Red Sox starting pitcher, pulled a one, two, three inning and we lose the players

I want to see. So what I think is interesting about cricket is that it seems to – I'm not well-versed in it, but my understanding is that – It's never stopped us from talking about it. Yeah. It seems like the normal thing in cricket is that the batter's score runs, right? And an out is a big deal. So it seems like the roles are kind of backwards, where I think baseball usually it's a big deal when a batter does something,

an extra base hit or so. So I'm not sure really how directly that would apply. And I feel bad for the relief pitchers that would be worried about having to realize that they might have to come up and bat in the games. But yeah, I'm glad you quickly get down to the dregs of the roster. And yeah, it's not quite like cricket where not that I'm qualified to talk about cricket either, but I don't think it has the same. Again, it has never stopped us. It doesn't have the same cyclical sort of structure. You know, one guy goes after the next and then that's it.

You can't bat around in cricket, at least as I understand batting around. You know what? I'm not going to go there. In cricket, at least as I understand, batting around, you know what, I'm not going to go there. So I think if you were to do this, and I don't see really any upside, well, maybe one potential upside, but there just aren't a lot of upsides here because generally we want the good players to stay in the game so that we get to see them play. So this seems antithetical to that. You would have your starting lineup and the good players would generally last a little longer than the less good players, but they still wouldn't last nearly as long as they do now. And no one wants that really.

But if for some reason you did have this rule, then I guess you would see a major change in pitcher usage, right? If you had to stick with the 26-man roster that we have now, your only choice, really, if you don't want to just run out of players or end up with your seventh reliever taking a bat in the middle of every game, is that you'd have to have your starters go deep into games, right? And then you'd have to have a very deep bench of position players. very deep bench of position players. So if you're someone who laments the loss of dedicated pinch hitters and some of the backup defensive replacements and pinch runners, some of those bench roles that are endangered or extinct, and now you only have a few bench guys and you have a backup catcher, and then you have one or two players who play a whole bunch of positions, and that's it because every other roster spot is occupied by a pitcher in this world you would pretty much have no choice but to just hand the pitcher the ball and say you're going to go deep into this game because we can't lose you because we need to use all our roster spots on hitters who will replace the

hitters that make outs and are removed from the game. So I don't know what this would do to the overall level of offense, because on the one hand, you would have starters staying in the whole game, and you wouldn't have bullpen specialists, and there'd be times through the order effects, but then there wouldn't be so many times through the order effects because the players in your starting lineup would be pulled, and you'd very quickly be down to a caliber, a lower caliber of offensive performer. I mean, you would have to, you know, it would basically be like AAA players on the back half of your bench and in the late inning. So

maybe those things would balance out to a certain extent. Does this change the calculus for how attractive it is to have two-way players to give you greater flexibility on your roster, knowing that you need guys who can be competent bench bats because you're going to just have some games where Mike Trout makes an out and then you're just without him for a while, but you are going to need arms and relief at some point. Do we think that it would change how attractive a truly well-developed two-way player would be for teams?

I ask that not really having any conviction in the answer. But again, I never have any conviction in any of my cricket answers. So things aren't that different. My thought is you'd have to have a lot of catchers, too. Oh, gosh. Oh, yeah. And well, if Major League Baseball wants more stolen bases, hey, maybe this is another way. my thought is you'd have to have a lot of catchers too because oh gosh oh yeah and well if major league baseball wants more stolen bases hey maybe this is another way maybe that's true yeah maybe

we shouldn't talk about this too much so major league baseball doesn't catch on and think this is a great idea yeah but you don't you don't you know from major league baseball's perspective if you're incentivizing this is a terrible trade for them, right? Because you're getting starters who have to go deep, and those are expensive. And you're getting hitters who, in theory, are a little less injury prone, and that can be expensive too. So you'd have a bad game, and you'd have some players who are more expensive

than they were previously. So that seems like they'd say, no, thank you. Then again, you'd have like half of your roster would basically be scrubs. Yeah, I guess that's true. We're almost interchangeable. I mean, it would be like the players at the back of bullpens now get optioned over and over and shuffle back and forth. Right.

And they make the league minimum. And so probably MLB might be on board for that aspect of it. So yeah, let's move on before we get into the ideas for next week. We don't know what we're talking about. It's cricket. It's just cricket. It's not even really cricket. All right. Alistair says, and this might be another question from the hope we don't do this department. I've been reading the book Mine, How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives, and a large part of one of the early chapters discusses intellectual property and the difference between some things we deem worthy of protection and others we don't. One of the reasons we might not provide copyright and

patent protection is because the first mover advantage provides its own reward. The example given is NFL coaches develop new tactics or plays every year because the first mover advantage can make you a successful football team. The innovators get the reward of the playoffs and possible job promotions for their work, and it's a big enough reward that they don't usually seek protections. I don't think it applies to baseball as nicely, but it got me thinking, what if it were allowed to protect your intellectual property? Offhand, I could think of maybe pitchers might protect a new pitch. Teams might protect certain shift formations, or maybe batters would even protect a stance. might protect certain shift formations, or maybe batters would even protect a stance. Is there anything else you think might fit this scenario? If things were protected, how do you think players would handle it? Like if you could sign a player and get his patents, how much extra value would that be worth? How many players do you think would license their IP to other teams or players? This is a fantastic question.

Yes. I think it's a smart aleck in me. The first thought was that maybe a team would try to get a patent on banging on trash cans. Yeah. I don't know if you can patent something that's illegal. One of my favorite parts of sports, pro sports, well, actually all sports, is innovation. NBA in the 80s was the whole idea of twin towers or the in football the run pass option and college football is a lot of innovation or even the split-fingered fastball when they came out. I found that fascinating how that grew but boy this is really interesting. I think I would you know as a fan I would try to figure out would this help

or hurt the product? Would I enjoy it? And it seems to me it would hurt it. Even when you have new strategies, it's not every team follows it. And I think that variety is great where some teams decide, we're going to invest in starters, we're going to go more depth and not go top heavy with stars. And it's nice to see different strategies play out on the field. But the later points were really interesting because on the field so but that the later points were really interesting because uh if the ip protection goes to the team or the player like my thought is like yeah would you keep a player would you not cut a player if he had this asset right right or would you keep a player around just to use that or what happens license it to his

teammates hey you're allowed to throw this pitch that I invented. Yeah, or if the player retires, right? What happens? Yeah, does it revert to the public domain at some point? Yeah, does it expire? Right. Well, and does everything that we have now just exist? It's like everything now is Buck, right?

It's all Mozart. Like this is just in the public domain. We have to start from today forward. And I don't know that the development of pitches or strategies is so cleanly delineated. If you're a pitcher and you have a particular way that you like to grip the ball, well, that might be to your benefit, but maybe you work with someone in player dev and they change the pronation of your wrist a little bit or they suggest that your release point be slightly different. Is that your pitch? Is it theirs? Is it both of yours together? Like, this seems like we're just getting the entire sport bogged down in litigation for the next 50 years, which is everyone's very favorite thing.

Yeah, I think about video games as I often do, because in video games, you can't copyright game mechanics. There may be certain implementations of mechanics that you can copyright in certain cases. say that's mine and no one else can make that now which is good i think because we don't have only one developer or publisher that is licensed to make platformers or shooters or fighting games or whatever it is you can't say i was the first person to do a double jump in a video game and now no one else can do a double jump and i think that's good i guess you could say that maybe it suppresses innovation in some ways, but I think in video games, there's so much potential area for innovation. And it's good that if someone comes out with something, then someone else can, you know, copy it, I guess you could say, or learn from it or incorporate it or improve upon it. And then you get the benefits of competition, which can be good for consumers and different people get to put different spins on

those things. So I think that also applies to baseball in that it's better to have it out there. I mean, what if the Rays, for instance, you know, not that the Rays invented the defensive overshift or the four-man outfielder. There's precedent for these things decades before. But if you were to start this at a certain point and now suddenly, I don't know, you could patent or copyright seam shifted wake or whatever the latest innovation is and then that just travels with that pitcher

or with this team, I mean, it would reward you in that you have some incentive. Like in some ways, i guess it would promote variety because only one player or one team would be able to do that thing and so you would have the team that shifts or the team that throws this type of pitch or something and no one else would be able to do that so you're building in a certain amount of variety. But I guess you're also restricting competition and making it easier for that team to dominate with that tactic. I mean, if only one team is allowed

to throw a slider or a splitter or whatever it is, there's going to be a big imbalance there. And other than that team or that particular player, I don't know who else would benefit from that. Well, the seems shifted wake example brings up another question for me that I thought of when you sent this to us, which is like, what are we defining as the moment of the patent, right? Because you have skills in baseball

that we come to appreciate when we can better quantify their impact from a value perspective. But that doesn't mean that people weren't using that skill prior to the quantification, right? So like, you know, people were framing pitches as long as they've been receiving them because that's part of being a catcher. We didn't know how valuable that was until we could put a number on it. It sounds like, you know, seam shifted wake is, I don't mean to say that it's unsophisticated, but that it is in some ways being able to put specific quantification and measurement to something that other, you know, that coaches

had a sort of intuitive understanding of within the game for a long time. So, and this is probably betraying my ignorance of like patent law, which is perfectly fine with me, but like, what are, what is the moment at which we say, oh, this is a this is a skill now versus something that people were just kind of feeling their way through, perhaps not as optimally as they they do once we can put some data around it. But what when are we when are we doing the patent? When is patent? And then do you get patent trolls who are just squatting on certain ideas and just come up with every conceivable baseball strategy and then no one can ever change the game in any way ever? That would be bad too. Or is it about the implementation? You know, is it like when Brian Grosnick wrote about the idea of the opener for Beyond the Box score in 2013, I want to say it was? Like, can he patent that? And then no one is allowed to use the opener unless he says so, or is it about implementing the opener,

which is very different from blogging about it or, you know, bullpen games or, or whatever it is. I guess you would end up with sort of a static version of baseball maybe, which would probably be bad. I mean, maybe we wouldn't end up with the imbalance between batters and pitchers that we've had in recent years. Like you could just sort of freeze baseball at a certain point when you decide that it looks good and just stop the innovation at that point. But in general, I'm in favor of the innovation and kind of the cat and mouse back and forth battle that we have historically seen. Plus imagine the chilling effect it would have on public research potentially,

right? If what you get when you come up with a cool new idea isn't just potentially a job with a team, but like the patent to the thing, right? Like your incentives to give those ideas away or subject them to public sort of back and forth is going to be a lot more limited because who knows? You might be sitting on a million dollar idea. You don't know. Right. Yeah. Terrible.

We shouldn't do this. No. Against removing players when they make an out. Against patenting everything in baseball. Okay. We can close with a couple of quick ones here. And these are also about strange scenarios in baseball games. Dan, another Patreon supporter, says,

Suppose the following situation. It's a tie game in the bottom of the ninth or later, and the manager loses track of the runners on base. Thinking there are two on, he puts up four fingers and orders the intentional walk. But it turns out that the bases were actually loaded. Meg, you have more rulebook reading experience than i'm sure i do and john does as well i don't know whether this is specifically addressed but there's always kind of the blanket like umpire has discretion to make a decision to avoid something that endangers the integrity of the game or makes a mockery of the game i don't know whether you think this would fall under that general category i have not asked

anyone but in my own reading of the the official rules and also there's like a separate umpires handbook you know there's an operations manual there's all sorts of it's all sorts of stuff we can't just put it all in one place what would we do i would say yes like this is i think that especially with the gambling component present yeah you you want to avoid not only the actual interference of of betting in the process but it's very important to avoid the appearance of any sort of interference. So I think in that moment, what the ump would probably say is, hey, you know they're loaded though, right? And then I go, oh, gosh, I was distracted. I had a branch in my eye or, you know, I was thinking about my shopping list. I've got to get milk on the way home or something. And then they would refuse the

intentional walk because I think we're going to be very nervous about potential impropriety with the infusion of gambling into this space. So I think that they would say, yeah, we have to do what's best for the game, not just this one, but the capital G game. Oh, that's interesting. My first thought was that the umpire should let that happen. Yeah. I think the manager should only double check to make sure that what the umpire should let that happen. Yeah. I think the manager should only double check

to make sure that what the umpire heard is what the manager said. Well, this whole situation brings up a lot of inconsistencies. Like I don't know what the exact situation is, but for example, when a team bats out of order. I was just going to bring that up. Yeah. Or a runner leaves the bag early on a tag up.

Right. Or, yeah, so it's, yeah, I don't know what the right answer is. In those cases, right, the umpire doesn't point it out, doesn't say, hey, you screwed up, unless the other team realizes it and points it out, right? So the umpire lets you suffer from your mistakes in those scenarios, although those are not necessarily game ending or game breaking. I mean, I don't know how this could happen by accident. You'd really have to be zoning out and not just the manager, but the entire team really. In theory, the manager is probably going to be consulting with his coaches, the bench coach. It won't be unilateral and someone will say something. I don't know if it's like no backsies once you put up the fingers to say that you're walking someone.

But I'd imagine that all your players and coaches would be like, no, wait, wait. And maybe the manager could change his mind quickly. I don't know what the rules are on that. I would think that there would be some leeway allowed. But yeah, I would say say again like who does it benefit like yeah maybe you should suffer the consequences of your actions if you're not paying attention to the game like if the fielder forgets how many outs there are and throws the ball into the stands or something well then the runners get to advance those bases right

you don't get bailed out for those mistakes so i can see that perspective but then again who would want a game to end this way no one really it's not fun for fans like even if it is not trying to throw the game intentionally it's not a satisfying ending so even on those grounds i think i'd probably prefer that the empire say something so from your reader question the other day about what's the worst way to end a... Oh, gosh. We have a new answer now. Yeah, exactly.

And we also have seen intentional walks with the bases loaded in the past, right? Yep. Not as a walk-off, but it is arguably not a bad strategy. It could happen, yeah. It's not sabermetrically supported, and it certainly wouldn't be in this case.

I don't see any potential advantage to losing on purpose here. Unless, I don't know, you're trying to end the game or lead a savior bullpen or something. Maybe this is the alternative to bringing in a position player pitcher. You just walk in a run intentionally, but no. But don't you just forfeit in that moment? Well, this is a way of forfeiting, I suppose. But yeah. Maybe we should see what they do in cricket.

Exactly. Yes. Is there a cricket equipment? Some guidance. Yeah. No manager would do this voluntarily just because it would make him look so bad. I mean, the questions, the press conference, it would forever be a stain on the manager's record. So don't see it happening, but probably shouldn't be allowed anyway.

Okay. Last question. And we got variants of this question from two different Patreon supporters. So Paul says, why do players wear hats? What would happen if a player refused to wear a hat? And then Kevin, Patreon supporter along the same line,

says, watching a lot of the Women's College World Series this month, a few players don't wear hats in the field, such as Florida State's shortstop. The internet is ambiguous on the question of whether hats are mandatory or not, but they aren't specifically in the rulebook, and the arguments that it's part of the uniform and therefore has to be uniform aren't convincing to me. You're allowed to not wear sunglasses or long sleeves or high socks or a certain type of cleats. So why are hats different? The question is, what would be the response if someone started playing without a hat?

Would they get treated as a show-off or attention seeker or for some reason? Or would people be cool with it and more follow their lead? Surely there wouldn't be a real impact on performance, at least in night games. Or if you strongly disagree with the premise above that it's okay, then what if a whole team decided to stop wearing hats, which seems clearly allowed by the rulebook? I think this is a fantastic question. One of the things I love is sports uniforms. So I feel like this question is right up my alley. I will say the first thing is softball is an awesome sport, but I do think softball and baseball are different sports. So I think we can have different answers for this. And I usually am for individualness, but I kind of like the hats.

over dinner is like things in sports uniforms that bother me. And I could tell you some of them, but you can't unhear them. Meaning like the Yankees jerseys, the logo for the Yankees on their jersey, their helmets and their hat, they're all different. And only until three years ago, the Detroit Tigers, the D, they were different. And they just made them consistent just a few years ago. And then baseball teams with an even number of letters in their team name, like Astros, the way they oriented across their chest, it's uneven because you have six letters and where the flap is on your shirt. So

I've thought a lot about uniforms, but for this question, I will say this. I would say only allow players not to wear hats, only if you have really great hair like you have to earn it right so i think bryce harper uh cinder guard culberson yeah vlady jr guriel one of the my favorite things every spring is two of my kids play hockey and in minnesota there's a big state tournament for their high school all the high schools play in this tournament and there's this video that comes out every year about the Minnesota State High School all-hair hockey team. And so they have terms like flow and lettuce and such. It's a great and funny video that you can watch on YouTube. And so I think only the people with great hair could get away without hats.

Well, Sindergert brings up an interesting point on this question then because – The quality of his hair has ebbed. Right. So I have often wondered also, sometimes they'll take their caps off when they're in the dugout because they're getting cozy to sit and wait for the rest of their dudes to bat. And you start to realize how many of them are starting to bald. Oh, no. Which as an aside, nothing wrong with balding.

You might have a bald spot and an otherwise great head of hair. It's very subjective. I've often wondered, I'm like, is it accelerating the balding process to have to wear a hat at work every day? Does it make it work? I don't know how men's hair works, but it has made me wonder if it make it work i don't know how men's hair works but it has it has made

me wonder if it makes it worse so maybe if if uh the expectation was at least when you know them not having the the bill of the cap wasn't helpful from a son perspective like maybe if we let them not wear hats there are more good heads of hair i've heard from friends whose doctors say that the hats hurt. So this would help them. Interesting. My proposal is holes, though, because if you have someone like DeGrom who used to have great flow and then he cut it. So what do we do?

Force him to wear a hat? It's kind of tough. But he was happy to cut his hair. This is the thing. He was ready to be done with the flow. We got to let these guys express themselves. I'm fine with that. Yeah. hair this is this is the thing he was he was ready to be done with the flow we gotta you know we gotta let these guys express themselves i'm fine with that yeah yeah this is tough for me because i'm not a hat wearer in civilian life i don't have anything against hats just never got in the habit

of having things on my head so i don't really wear hats either for protective purposes or for fashion purposes i hardly wear anything for fashion purposes. I wear things for comfort. And for me, wearing something on my head is not the most comfortable state of being. But for a baseball player, like, obviously, there are practical reasons to wear hats. For one thing, protection from the sun. Skin cancer is a great risk for baseball players. So you want to cover up as much as

possible. And then maybe also it helps with keeping the sun out of your eyes and having to field balls. I mean, it doesn't apply necessarily in all cases, maybe if you're in a dome or something. But even if you're in a dome, even if you're playing night games, there are bright lights, there are all sorts of distractions. It probably helps to narrow your field of vision a little bit. And if I were a baseball player, I would probably want to wear a hat, not just because it's the standard look, but also because like you can kind of hide under your hat Andy Pettit who would just like really smush that hat down on his head and he would have the curved brim and you could just like kind of see his eyes just staring out from under the brim and I think that's a good look or if you make an error or something you can just kind of hide you know it's like you can go incognito a little bit other than your name and number being on your back and so on.

So I see the benefits. But technically speaking, I think you could theoretically get away with this. I mean, it's true that hats are not necessarily specified in the rules as far as I know. There is something in the rulebook about like no player whose uniform does not conform to that of his teammates shall be permitted to participate in a game, which again, as Kevin pointed out, kind of inconsistent depending on what you think constitutes part of the uniform. And then also it seems like there's a possible loophole there in that if the entire team decides we're not wearing hats today, then you can conform to your teammates' look by not wearing a hat. So it seems like if you read the fine print, you could get away with this if you wanted. And there's the John Ulrud precedent, right, of wearing a batting helmet in the field. I guess he still has some kind of headwear on. Or catchers, of course. You know, they're wearing masks, but they may or may not be wearing

a cap under it and if they are then it's facing backwards so there's some variety here and if you were to mount a strict legal challenge if we had the the kirk flood of caps come along and say i refuse to wear a cap from now on point to me in the rules where I have to do this, then maybe you could get away with it. But you'd probably be ostracized and you'd face all sorts of slings and arrows and it would be tough. And maybe you could patent your capless look and then only you would be the player who's allowed to go hatless. And one open unresolved issue with this would be if your team's down by four runs and you mount a rally, what do you do? Right. I think for the sake of the team.

I find it interesting that the hat's not part of the rulebook, the uniform. Like recently, there's a lot of inconsistency with socks and players wearing different socks and colored belts and stuff. And I did not know that about the hat. Yeah. I've imagined though that if you're a ballplayer and you finally make the big leagues and you like put on the uniform, like being able to have the complete look that ties you to the tradition of that team's uniform, like that's probably a special moment for you, right? I doubt that there are very many guys who are like i hate these caps plus

they've been wearing ball caps their whole lives like they've been wearing ball caps since they were in little league so they might feel incomplete like you kind of feel naked in public without the cap on but yeah i wonder if there are any secret like i hate these stupid hats i mean yeah it gives you hat hair gives you smelly hair it's all down. And yes, if you do have a glorious mane, then you have to hide it, you know, hide your light under a baseball cap. No one wants to do that. Could you imagine Dustin May coming out without a hat on a hot, humid day? That would be quite the sight. Yes, Dustin May and I have the same hair. It's just different colors. So yes, I can very much imagine what that would that would be quite the sight yes dustin may and i have the same hair it's just different colors so yes i can very much imagine what that would look like yeah i mean baseball caps look good generally on baseball players at least it's because we expect them to be wearing

them i guess but also some baseball players just look better just because of their head shape or where their eyes are or whatever you know you see some player without a hat and you're like, oh, wait, that's what he looks like. I don't even recognize him. Chris Bryant, that's what you were like under there that whole time. I didn't even realize. So I think it can be beneficial from an appearance perspective, too. And it's just tradition. It marks you as part of the team.

It's classic. It's a baseball cap. That's what it's called. It's right in the name. I think if we're going to fight this fight that we start with Yankees and facial hair. Like this is, the caps are not the top priority. No. All right. John, thank you very much for your support on Patreon and for your help here today. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Please say hello to your kids for us. And if you want to plug anything before we let

you go or remind anyone of any plugs you made earlier, please do. Oh, yeah. Thank you for having me on. This has been quite a joy. I would love to, if you want to visit MoonlightGramSociety.com, if you know of players that have played just one or very few minor league games, we'd love to connect with them and just share stories and support your all-girls baseball teams. Like Baseball for All, it's a fantastic organization. Support them when you can. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, our pleasure. And as a teaser for next time, when we will start our discussion of Stove League, I know that you are, what, mid-watch right now? What would you say to anyone who's still on the fence out there? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? I heard it was a Korean drama and I'd say, boy, it's quite dramatic. My parents moved from South Korea to Philadelphia right before I was born. And it's besides getting, I feel like the show was made for me. It has the baseball, it has the drama.

There's a lot of really neat views of Korean culture. So you can pitch this as this is a cultural experience. Yes. All right. Well, there you go. You heard it here from John. Everyone watch. Okay.

John, thanks very much. Thank you very much. All right. Before we go, you may have noticed that I did not supply a stat blast today. And that was because I am outsourcing today's stat blast to yet another Patreon supporter, Michael Mountain. interest in it, but discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day still past. Some of you may remember back in 2018, we had Michael on multiple times to preview and review his baseball road trip, which was 30 ballparks. He went to all the MLB parks in a span of 36 days, and we talked to him about how he planned that trip and how it went.

went. And last week, there was a Reddit thread by someone who pointed out that after the minor league contraction and with all stadiums allowing fans again, it is now theoretically possible to attend a game at every major and minor league park in 2022. And Michael, given his baseball road trip experience, took this as a challenge and wanted to come up with the most efficient itinerary. And now that he has done that work, we wanted to have him on to explain his results. So Michael, welcome back. Thanks for having me again, Ben. So I think I probably asked you a few years ago to explain your method for figuring out the optimal route here. But as a refresher, how did you go about figuring out the order of parks and games here? Sure. So the method for this trip was obviously

in large part the same as my previous major league only excursion. There's a few things that you have to treat a little bit differently just given the size of the problem you're working with, but the basic strategy is essentially to start by trying to figure out the minimum number of days that you need to visit all the parks. And then once you've identified that time window, you can then start to look for optimizing the actual travel distance and how long you're on the road. I see. So what are the constraints you're working with here? How many parks are we talking about? And I guess, like, what's the maximum amount of time that youpril and wrapping up in the first couple weeks of September, depending on the level. There's 149 ballparks. There's 150 teams, but the A-ball, Jupiter Hammerheads, and Palm Beach Cardinals share the same stadium down at one of the spring training facilities in Florida. So I decided, and the Reddit post that I took inspiration from

also made the determination that this is more about visiting the sites than seeing all of the teams. So I elected not to try to get both of those teams in the same park at home. Yeah, that would be pretty difficult. So what did you come up with here? How long is this going to take? Well, in one sense, I succeeded beyond my wildest hopes and dreams. And in another sense, I don't think I quite lived up to the billing that you presented me with, because unlike my major league trip, I cannot guarantee that this one is optimal. Again, just based on the size of the problem. Just too many permutations. Exactly. Instead of the 2,400 or so major league games, you're talking about about 10,000 games in the total schedule. And there's about 100,000 different legs of the trip, possible legs, you know, traveling between one game and another. So the search space is just too large to really exhaustively search completely.

The search space is just too large to really exhaustively search completely. But I was not expecting, frankly, to find a trip that involved no travel days. So this is actually, other than the all-star break, which you can't avoid because you need more than half the season to do this. So you have like three days off in the middle. But other than that, every day that there's a game on the schedule, you're seeing a game. And so you're able to do it in 153 days. And I found quite a number of possible solutions that meet that timeframe. Again, not able to guarantee which one of them is the most optimal, but the best one that I've found is about just under 33,000 miles of driving, which compared to my previous MLB trip, that's about double the

mileage. But again, you're seeing five times as many games. So the return on investment is pretty substantial. Right. What is the total mileage? So it's 32,983 miles approximately based on Google Maps. I should note that this was intended as a driving itinerary, and there are some constraints to try and avoid situations where you're asking an impossible task of a driver or a drive team. So the intention is that you don't have to leave before about nine o'clock in the morning to get to your next site, and that you're not having to drive late into the evening as well. So do you know what the longest leg is in terms of travel time or distance? Yeah. So based on those constraints, it's hard to ask for more than about 10 hours of driving in a day, which,

you know, that constraint I set up sort of based on my own comfort level and knowing what I've been able to do in the past, both on baseball road trips and other long-haul driving. So the worst individual leg is, unsurprisingly, getting out to the West Coast. Just the lower density of teams as you move further west until you get to California just makes that a very tricky thing to do effectively, and especially because you're trying not to take any days off. I did make some assumptions about game time because while some major league teams have already announced game times for their 2022 schedule, almost none of the minor league teams have.

On the plus side, with the restructuring of the minor leagues and schedule simplification, basically every minor league schedule is a six-day homestand Tuesday through Sunday followed by a Monday off so I just assumed that all of those were evening games except for the Sunday which would be an afternoon and that may not be exactly correct but hopefully there's only a handful of legs that would actually depend on that being 100 accurate in order to make them I didn't prepare you for this question but do you know which team is most distant from all other teams? That is a good question. In the major league schedule, in the major league only problem,

I know that it's Seattle. I'm not certain for this. It might be Colorado, which is interesting because Colorado actually ends up being the last stadium visited on this itinerary, which, again, that's helpful because you only have to get to it once and you don't have to leave to go somewhere else. So it might be Colorado, but I'm not certain. Could anything induce you to make this trip? No. No, I do have some thoughts about future baseball travel. But I have to say after the 2018 excursion, I think the road trip concept, I've gotten my fill of that. exercise in trip planning is potentially next time the league expands to look at some sort of schedule that includes flights and attempts to visit all the stadiums as quickly as possible

with the thought that if there's more teams than there previously were, you could make a case that that should count for some sort of a new record of some sort. Yes. So where do you start and where do you end? I guess there are multiple ways you could do it. Sure. So for this solution, you start in Atlanta. I mentioned you end in Colorado. And the path sort of roughly starts out with a figure eight loop. So you sort of go up towards the Northeast, New York, Boston, Philly area. Then you swing out west towards the Great Lakes, Upper Midwest, head down towards Florida and get some of those Southeast stadiums. You can spend a week just driving around Florida, seeing all the teams that are down there.

Then heading West over to Texas to complete the bottom side of the figure eight before heading back through Kansas City and St. Louis to get the other Northeast stadiums like Pittsburgh and Toronto that you weren't able to hit on the first time. Again, the fact that you're trying to see an entire league basically when only half of them are going to be at home at a certain time mostly means that you have to sort of go through each area twice. Not completely, but that actually tends to be a little bit more optimal than you might think, just because it's too hard to get all of the games to line up otherwise. Yeah. If you wait long enough, Rob Manfred might keep contracting the minor leagues to the point

that this will get a lot easier to do. Yeah. The more he cuts, the closer to optimal I can get. I don't want you to think that I'm encouraged by that prospect. No. All right. Well, will you post your itinerary or itineraries? Can I link to them somewhere on the show page somehow or make them viewable to people in case anyone does want to plan it? I'm just putting it out there. If you have a lot of free time and a lot of mileage on your car and you really love baseball, you are guaranteed a guest appearance on Effectively Wild at the end of this odyssey. I don't think that that is sufficient

incentive to make this trip, but I'm just saying, if you do, you are welcome to come on as Michael did, and I believe during your trip, we also met up at a diner for lunch, so if you want to do this, I will have an omelet with you at a

diner of my choice, and then have you on the podcast. But you have to visit roughly 150 ballparks. So I'm not sure that's worth the price of entry. Yeah. And if you're able to beat my schedule, I will give you a prize of inestimable value. Okay. All right. Well, people can check this out themselves. Anything you want to plug while you're here, Michael, other than your itineraries? Support Effectively Wild on Patreon, and you can also follow my novelty Effectively Wild Twitter account at nocontextewpod. Yes.

I tweet random quotes from a random Effectively Wild episode about once every weekday. I have noticed. I've wondered how you do that, whether as you listen, you just jot down strange phrases and you just work them into a rotation, because sometimes these will go back years. So I don't know whether you're going back and listening to old episodes or you remember these things or how does this work? Yes, I have a backlog of episodes left to go back and re-listen to, but yes, I'm just taking quotes as I come back across them. Wonderful. Yes, sometimes they are somewhat disturbing out of context, but that is the point of the account. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you for your computations. Good to talk to you again, Michael.

Thanks, Ben. Take care. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks to John and to Michael and to all of our other Patreon supporters. You can read up on what's known as the traveling salesman problem if you want to learn more about why Michael's task is so complex. However, I am looking at and linking to his itinerary, and apparently there are four teams that the traveler would encounter four times on this trip as either the visiting team or the home team. The Altoona Curve, the Quad Cities River Bandits, the Washington Nationals, and the Seattle Mariners, which might be a good thing in 2022. Again, we would encourage you to start watching Stove League. We'll still follow our regular programming as we do our periodic Stove League discussions over the next few weeks. So there will be something for everyone, but Stove League is for everyone as well.

Again, check it out on Viki, the streaming service, if you can. And thanks to everyone who has emailed or commented or tweeted us the Atlanta Braves Instagram post from this week. A Ronald Acuna Jr. quote, If I was giving 500% before, I'm about to start giving 1,000%. This is, of course, a callback to a series of Effectively Wild episodes years ago, during the Jeff Sullivan era, where we chronicled the many examples of players saying that they gave some percent well above 100.

I forget exactly how high we were able to document examples of. I don't think 1,000% was the leader in the clubhouse, but it's been a while. Anyway, I enjoy how once we talk was the leader in the clubhouse, but it's been a while. Anyway, I enjoy how once we talk about something repeatedly on Effectively Wild, it doesn't matter if years go by, our listeners have long memories and they will call our attention to anything relevant. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners, like John and like Michael, have pledged some monthly or yearly amount to support the podcast and help us keep it ad-free and get themselves access to some perks, including potentially joining us on an email episode or getting access to our Patreon-exclusive AMA episodes or getting access to the patron-only Discord group, which is where I connected with Michael about this podcast appearance. patron-only Discord group, which is where I connected with Michael about this podcast appearance. Today's Patreon thank yous go to Corey Kelso, Ryan Morgan, Grayson Wolfe,

Elizabeth Baldwin, and Yo-Yo. 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. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild sub You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit called Effectively Wild. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance.

We will be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you soon. So everyone cares Cause the hat that he wears is on the wrong way And I heard them say Don't be square, so square we'll stay Without them, they, who are they anyway? They're just beating each other at being each other with nothing to say.