Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1790: The Fandom Menace

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their holidays, how the omicron variant is affecting sports and personal decisions, and how analyzing COVID case counts is (kind of) akin to analyzing baseball stats, discuss the pace and prominence of signings of former major leaguers by KBO and NPB teams, the results of 2021 interleague play, […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1790 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing quite well during this wonderful week when we are all allowed to slack off, except for this podcast, we're still making these podcasts. But for the most part, this is the most acceptable week in which to slack off of the year. So I hope that everyone is taking full advantage of that. Yeah, I hope folks are resting. We are not completely dark at Fangraphs this week, but we are operating on a light schedule, and it is, you know, it's nice. It's nice to have a little room to breathe in the week, so I hope everyone else is getting

to have the same experience of their jobs or just be off entirely. It should just be off. It should be a national, it should just be off. Everyone should just have it off. Yeah, it's an unofficial off week, I think, for everyone, where no one expects emails to be answered or actual work to get done, although Disney did not send me screeners for the Book of Boba Fett, and so I will be busy writing and recapping live. So that's not the best, but I am kind of looking forward to that on some level. But the holidays were nice

and fun for me and my family. I hope they were for you as well. And unlike you, I did not return home to find a hole in my roof. So that's good too. Yeah. There are moments where I think to myself, am I falling behind important life milestones because I'm in my mid-30s and unlike my parents at this age not a homeowner and then sometimes you come home from seeing your family for the holidays and need roof repair and you're like hey it's cool to be a renter particularly if you're fortunate like I am and have you know good landlords so yeah uh do have some minor home repair that hopefully will not impact the pod in any meaningful way but if if we have a a day of banging oh no that's hello everyone i'm happy to be back yeah but yes if we have if we have our very own banging scheme um everyone will uh

hopefully be understanding but thankfully uh while it is it is ugly to look at and and obviously a pain it is not meaning that i am exposed to the elements in any meaningful way so could be worse yep well i'm glad your holiday trip was able to proceed as planned as was mine and it was kind of touch and go up to the last minute there. What with the latest COVID surge, there was a lot of like last minute testing or failed search for testing in some cases. And I think probably a lot of people were dealing with that. And a lot of sports are dealing with that now as well. well, not baseball. MLB is sort of sidestepping the Omicron surge for now, at least, because it's the offseason plus a lockout to boot. But whenever the season starts, if the season starts, let's hope the season starts, it will become a consideration then as it is now for various other sports, NBA and NFL and college sports. And so there was a lot of last minute replacing of players and conversations about how we proceed in this environment. And then you have the CDC changing some recommendations

about isolating for vaccinated people, which has affected how some sports leagues are operating. So it's sort of a strange time where I feel like collectively as a society and as individuals, we are all kind of coming to terms with COVID just becoming a constant more or less. And some of the conditions and circumstances change, but we are all just sort of adjusting to the facts as they shift and as new variants emerge and as new treatments and preventative measures emerge. And so it's all kind of confusing and we're all just sort of figuring it out as we go,

as are sports leagues and as is MLB or as it will be whenever that becomes relevant. Yeah, it's such a funny thing when the timing, you know, baseball was unlucky. And of course, we apply our usual caveats to these things, which is that the sort of spectrum of bad luck when it relates to the pandemic gets far more severe than what baseball had to grapple with. But we got unlucky in a lot of ways about when the pandemic hit in earnest in 2020 relative to the season. And this is perhaps the first time that the shoe has been on the other foot when it comes to the league's ability to hopefully proceed.

But I think you're right to say that this is an unfortunate reminder that we're not done yet. And the idea that a couple months between now and hopefully a not horribly postponed opening day is going to mean that baseball doesn't have to deal with its own inconvenient variant seems optimistic in the extreme. So I'm sure that we will have until we're further along in this thing.

We just have to accept that there are going to be unfortunate setbacks and, you know, hope everybody gets vaccinated if they're able and gets your boosters and makes good safe choices. But it can feel very daunting. I had that experience preparing to go home for Christmas because it's like you just feel as if you've gotten your feet under you. You know what your risk calculus is for any given interaction or moment. And obviously, it's different living here in Arizona than it is in states that, you know, have decided to like take the pandemic seriously. But I think one of the most disorienting things in all of this is having to readjust that risk matrix. And I was

like, it feels real bad, Ben. It's really bad to have to keep doing that. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like it was extra dismaying that we had that window where it was like, oh, things are getting better. And then suddenly things were getting worse. But also some things really have gotten better to the point where you can't evaluate the current conditions with exactly the same mindset that you would have had a year ago at this time. So last year, I didn't see family for Christmas, right? And this year I did because things changed and everyone in my immediate family circle, including me, was vaxxed and boosted. And so the calculus changes and that will change for every individual and depending on the risk factors

for them and their family. And it's a case by case basis, of course, but within our family circle, it was like, well, we're all vaxxed and boosted, and it seems like Omicron is incredibly contagious, but also seemingly less severe in terms of outcomes on the whole asymptomatic or the symptoms won't be that severe. And there are some siblings and in-laws in my family who have COVID currently or did recently. And for them, it was either asymptomatic or it was just like they had some sore throats. They were kind of tired. They had some sniffles. You know, it was maybe unpleasant, but not more unpleasant than, say, having a cold would have been in the past. And that probably would not preclude you from seeing your family for Christmas, for instance. So it was sort of a strange situation where like leading up to Christmas, everyone really, really wanted to avoid getting COVID as much because they knew that if they tested positive, they would not see their family as that they would have COVID.

Like the worst part of it was just that like you could not do things that you wanted to do more so than actually having COVID at this point. Whereas a year ago, it might have been different. So it's strange. Like I think if you're vaxxed and boosted, there's a lot less reason to be mortally afraid of getting COVID than once there might have been. But you also don't want to give it to someone else, especially someone else who might be at higher risk. And so you still sort of have to isolate

yourself, at least for now. Now we're two years into this thing. And so as it goes on and on and on, then I would expect that more and more people will just sort of shrug and say, well, COVID is a fact of life now. It's like the flu. It's like a common cold. No one wants to get it, but we are not going to go to as great lengths not to get it anymore. Like to be clear, I don't want to get COVID. I would really rather not get it. I strongly prefer not to get it, but I am not living in fear from day to day or adjusting my behavior as much as I would have pre-booster, pre-vaccination, etc. Like I know that there can be long-term complications. You can be the unlucky one of however many. This is just my personal risk assessment as a youngish vaccine-boosted person without underlying risk factors.

boosted person without underlying risk factors. You just sort of start thinking probabilistically, like, hey, I'm probably at a greater risk from the car ride that I am taking to see my family here than I am from potentially contracting COVID from someone. It's just tough to step back and take that view when this is something that has caused a crisis for years and has obviously led to a lot of death and disruption. That's kind of the conversation when it comes to sports too, especially if it's a sport where you do have a lot of players or almost all players who are vaccinated and boosted and in many cases are asymptomatic. And so now I think the conversation is,

well, how do you be responsible without having the same calls, for instance, to shut everything down? And maybe you're not endangering players as much, but you might still be endangering fans. So I think things change. It's almost like, I mean, to make a baseball analogy, which might be sort of strained, but we're two years into this and you have like different eras of COVID already now and you almost have to era just. So like if you look at case counts, I think a lot of us look at case counts with like our 2020 pre-vax brains and we're like, oh no, the case counts are as high as they ever were or higher in some cases. And then you

look at it with your post-vax and boosted brain, hopefully, and you think, well, this is bad and I don't want to minimize the fact that there are still a lot of people who are being hospitalized and are dying. And in a lot of cases that is theoretically preventable and a lot of people who are being hospitalized and are dying. And in a lot of cases, that is theoretically preventable. And a lot of those people are unvaccinated, which makes it more frustrating, if not necessarily less sad, I suppose. But it's almost like when you look at a baseball number that is produced in a different offensive environment or something, and it can mean something completely different for an individual player to produce some sort of statistic in one year or in one ballpark as opposed to another. So it's like when you look at case counts in your area and you're thinking, is this 2020 or is this late 2021? And what does that mean for the different risk that I'm facing?

Yeah, it's a really weird, it's really weird calculus to have to do. And I think, you know, so much of it depends on like what you're, like you said, what your underlying personal risk is and the risk of the people who you live with and see most regularly, because that's going to shift your baseline up or down. But yeah, you don't want to be the person who, you know, doesn't acknowledge the shift in circumstance, which is being vaccinated and boosted.

But you also don't want to be the Dylan. I'm going to swear you don't want to be the who gives someone COVID. Right. So, you know, navigating that, I think, is tricky. And I think it's hard when when it does feel I've had this experience quite a bit living in Arizona. Like you're kind of on your own making those determinations i mean the arizona department of health does a good job but like the state government is not reacting as uh as significantly or nimbly as you would perhaps

want them to so it can feel very daunting to have to like determine that i'm like i'm a you know i'm a baseball editor so i am very comfortable admitting i'm out of my depth and just doing the the best that i can to you know not be a recluse and not be a dick so you're shooting for something in between those things that yeah is responsible and and reasonable and yeah i wish that it didn't require quite so much individual determination there. Please take this choice away from me. In pre-pandemic times, if you were under the weather, you had a cold or a cough or something, you probably shouldn't have gone to the office. People still would have appreciated you staying

home while you were nursing that cold. Even if you weren't afraid I'm going to kill someone by exposing them to this, like you might expose them to a few unpleasant days or prevent them from participating in some event that you have to test negative to qualify for. So it's just kind of a common courtesy more so than a mortal fear in some cases. But it is still a consideration because there are unvaccinated people and people who can't get vaccinated for various good and legitimate reasons too. And you have the whole worrying about incubating some new variant, which could be worse than the current one. So it's still a concern, but it's one that in some individual cases is less acute, but we're all kind of wrestling with it as sports and leagues are. And sports always sort of reflect society in that sense. And it's like to extend the baseball analogy further, it's like that fun or unfun fact that was going around early last season about how the average MLB strikeout rate was the same as Dave Kingman's career strikeout rate. And of course, Dave Kingman was known as this extreme strikeout guy in his day.

And now this is just the baseline. Now, the strikeout rate did end up actually declining slightly by the end of the season. And so it is sub Kingman right now. We have not quite crossed the Kingman line, although we are probably heading there. Why hasn't that become a thing as an aside? We pick on Mendoza. We pick on poor Mendoza, but

Kingman is just like, I reflect the modern game, so suck it. I guess it's just that the Mendoza line is still bad. Yeah, fair enough. If you bet 200 now, even though we're paying less attention to batting average these days and fair enough and you can have like a yasmani grundahl kind of line

where you're flirting with the mentosa line but you're still a productive player right the best line there's ever been yeah but the kingman line like that's kind of the point i was attempting to make i don't know if i'm gonna get there but the idea is that like, well, you can be Dave Kingman. Now you can have Dave Kingman's strikeout rate and it is not necessarily problematic for you personally. Like you can still be a really good player. Like it's easy to be a productive player and hitter with power to make it work even vaguely. Now it's just kind of par for the course. And in both cases, I suppose it's a sign that maybe something has gone wrong on a wider level. Like if the entire league is striking out as often as Dave Kingman, that is probably not ideal and maybe you should do something about it. Similarly, if society has these high case counts, that is also not ideal, and hopefully you could do something about it, although maybe that ship has sailed. But on a personal level, it does not necessarily mean that you have to stay indoors forever the way that

you might have a year ago, for instance. So I guess that is my strained baseball stats analogy for evaluating the current covid surge and i doubt that will be helpful to mlp and the players association when they have to sit down after they figure out every other problem facing the sport right now yeah and figure out how to deal with that well so it's funny though that you mentioned the like staying home thing because i had this thought you know as we're looking at the Omicron stuff. And I was thinking ahead to like what the what the industry calendar is going to look like next year. Because obviously we didn't have winter meetings again. And there are some events that are kind of fixtures of my yearly calendar that we haven't had in a while.

And one of them is Saber Seminar. Yeah. I think the last time I is that the last time that I saw you or was the new york event the last time that i saw you those came last i don't know it was probably the new york event because that was i remember being cold yes but you know i went to saber seminar and i was sick like i was i felt really crummy had to drink tea the entire time, was like only able to have one beer at our reader meetup. And I ended up feeling kind of okay about it because having a cold meant that I didn't

experience spontaneous hugging at quite the rate that I usually do. But I look back on it now and I'm like, I can't believe that I did that. I got on a plane. I flew from Seattle to Boston. I probably exposed an entire plane's worth of people to my stupid summer cold and then was like i'm gonna go to a conference with a bunch of people we're sitting in an auditorium all day i was like what a jerk i was i shouldn't have done that and it this has totally shifted my perspective on ever doing something like that again where it's

like if if next year there is a saber seminar and i am sick with just a summer cold i will stay home so you know that part is good i guess but it has been it's been a time it's been a weird stretch and hopefully less hugging in general it's just it's not that i am not excited to meet people who read the site and listen to the pod. That is lovely. I just, you know, I don't need to hug you if I don't know you. That's all. Like, maybe we'll become great friends. And then, and I'm a person who hugs friends.

So then we will hug. But before that, like, no hugging, please. Yeah, that seems very reasonable. So you were away last week. And that was pretty decent timing from a podcast perspective. Because there was not a lot of news to discuss we have not been buried in baseball news over the past week we have not published a podcast in over a week now because i front-loaded last week's shows but haven't missed a whole lot there have not been a lot of news items in the last week where i was like oh no

gotta get a podcast up about that. There has been next to nothing. One thing there has been has been international signings. And I've been trying to figure out whether anything is out of the ordinary there or whether I am just noticing now because of the utter absence of all other news. Like you subtract the typical background noise of the baseball offseason and all the rumor mongering, and suddenly the few bits of signal that are still there are much more prominent. So now like every KBO and NPB signing, I am suddenly aware of in a way that I wasn't previously. And so I was trying to figure out like, well, is this unusual? And probably you could actually do a stat blast about this. And maybe at some point later in the offseason, I will.

But I'm not sure whether anything is out of the ordinary when it comes to players signing overseas and recent MLB players signing with KBO or NPB teams, because that does always happen to some extent in every offseason. And it does seem like there would be more incentive to do so this offseason. Because if you are a marginal major leaguer and you're kind of on the fringes and you're out there with hundreds of other free agents and there's all this uncertainty surrounding not just COVID, but the lockout and you don't know when the lockout will be resolved or if the season will be delayed or shortened, or even if it isn't, will there just be a crush of signings right before opening day? And will you just get left out in the cold because you're not a super sexy free agent? And so you can imagine that if you're a player in that class, you might look at the guaranteed money that an NPB or KBO team is offering you today. And sure, why not sign a one-year deal and have the certainty of making money and getting to play?

And then you can always come back next year. On the other hand, there are limits. There are roster rules, right, related to how many players and how many foreign players those teams can sign. And as far as I know, those haven't changed this offseason. So I don't know that they're actually allowed to sign more foreign players than they usually are. And so maybe they're maxing out those limits and those quotas in a way that they don't usually. But I kind of suspect that it has more to do with us just paying closer attention and being less distracted and i asked jason martinez who runs roster resource

at fangraphs about this and he said as i said that it seems like there are more of those reports going around and more of those signings happening but he also suspects that because of the limitations on foreign players on a roster it's probably just our perception of those things more so than reality. Right. Yeah, I suspect that that is true. I would be, gosh, I just I would be such a bad free agent, Ben. I'd be a terrible free agent, even in a moment where there isn't a lockout and all of that. Uncertainty does not tend to sit very well with me and i like knowing where i'm gonna live so i would need i'd really need my agent to like work against my own

worst impulses when it comes to advancing my career because i just be like that seems fine now i don't have to move this is great i suspect that you are right that the absolute number of deals that are being signed is not actually that different. I wouldn't be surprised if perhaps the timing of them is a bit, you know, if they're happening maybe a little bit earlier than they otherwise would because there are other people like me who are like, I just want to know where I'm going to go. And once you've decided that you are sort of on the side of being willing to go live in another country and accept that as an adventure and go learn about another place and make money playing baseball somewhere that isn't the U.S., you know, once you've crossed that line, I feel like, what are you waiting for? You got to just go and do. But, yeah, I don't think that the rules have changed much although my understanding and and this is something we should perhaps ask

an expert about but i think that for kbo teams they are allowed to have some developmental roster spots for international players now and so i would imagine that there is sort of a tier of guy maybe earlier in his career who was like, well, I can make much more than the minor league numbers if I go do my developmental work in Asia. So that might be a factor here. Although the names that we have seen so far, I don't think really support that theory as the primary motivator. Yeah, I was going to say, just scanning down the list of KBO and NPV stories at MLB Trade Rumors, the names of the players who were signing are right around the caliber that I would expect. It's not as if stars are suddenly signing there. It's like just scrolling down the list of KBO signings. You've got Rio Ruiz, Socrates Brito,

Ronnie Williams, Charlie Barnes, Nick Martini. signings you've got rio ruiz socrates brito ronnie williams charlie barnes nick martini i mean you know these are yeah these are players who i would say yeah maybe you should go sign with a kbo team that might be your your best route to playing time and financial security yvonne nova you know and some of them are like names that you know because they used to be good or more prominent players, but they've fallen on harder times. Glenn Sparkman, Adam Pletko, Mike Tauchman. I mean, these are generally not players who are coming off like great successful seasons and are just like going to go to the KBO now. DJ Peters, Yasiel Puig, who, of course, has a metric ton of baggage associated with him in addition to the performance concerns. Kevin Krohn. Or if we look at NPB, you've got Chris Gittens, right, who's kind of a

classic, like maybe quadruple A-ish, you know, great patience and power that will probably play well in NPB package. Andrew Suarez, you know, it's Freddy Galvis, I guess, is maybe a somewhat bigger name than you're used to seeing going over there, but not to a great degree. Right. And Dries. So, yeah, you know, if there were suddenly all stars who were signing there, that would be a big difference. But it's kind of the class of players who I think often sign. So, yeah, until that changes, I'm not sure that this reflects a real change. Until that changes, I'm not sure that this reflects a real change. We got a related email from listener Jacob. This was a few weeks ago who said, with the lockout going on and only minor league transactions allowed, would you predict that we see more minor league transactions this year compared to normal because the front offices have nothing better to spend their time on?

Maybe you can make a prediction now and then revisit it later in the year to see who is correct. We did not make a prediction now and then revisit it later in the year to see who is correct We did not make a prediction then But I think if I had made a prediction I probably would have guessed that there would be more And again, I don't know for sure And this is something that maybe we can actually run the numbers on later But I asked Jason Martinez about this too And he says that to him it seems like there are actually fewer minor league

transactions than normal thus far. And that maybe the pace will pick up in January if it seems like the lockout will keep dragging into February. But he has his finger on the pulse of transactions much more closely than mine. And he has not noticed any uptick. And if anything, it's the opposite. I was going back and forth on this question because I remember when we got that email and I was like, what do I think the answer to this is? Because on the one hand, yes, it's like the thing that you are able to do. But I don't think that so many minor leaguers change teams because they are meant to balance trades that involve 40-man guys coming back, right? Like we are trading, you know, our future potential for the production we're going to get right now

because we're ready to go on a run and like make a play for the division. We are in our window of contention. And so the number of trades that are just prospect for prospect, I don't think that it's as big a percentage of the overall trade population as listeners might expect. So I was kind of conflicted because I don't think that most teams are in a spot where they were wanting to make transactions just to do it, right? And what if the guy you move now is someone you're like, oh man, I could have gotten a big leaguer later if I hadn't moved that guy. What did I do? I would imagine that front offices probably put a number of procedures

in place before the lockout became official just to be like, so we're not going to do anything stupid while we can't do other stuff, right? We're going to make sure that we're not breaking glass on scenarios that are going to end up coming back to bite us later. I'm sure that they're being really mindful of the desire to do something, not always being the most productive desire when they might want to make bigger moves later. So I'm not sure that I'm terribly surprised by that, but I was kind of conflicted in the early going. So half of my brain was smart.

Right. Right. Yeah. I guess there are also just fewer minor leaguers now than there used to be. Also that. I mean, maybe not among the class of players who are typically like signed to minor league deals. I mean, it's like you eliminate short season leagues and maybe those players wouldn't have been moving so much anyway. But there are just like fewer affiliates and fewer minor league players so if you are doing some kind of historical comparison right that might skew things sort of but because i'm a massive star wars nerd and have star wars on the brain both personally and professionally a lot of the

time i've been kind of envisioning this offseason as the moment at the end of the Phantom Menace like during the Duel of the Fates. Spoiler, Darth Maul kills Qui-Gon. What? He did what? Yeah, he did that. Sorry. Sorry to spoil the Phantom Menace for any of you 20 plus years later. But before that happens, the fight is paused because there's this like energy barrier that comes down and separates Qui-Gon from Darth Maul and Obi-Wan from the others. And there's this cool moment where Darth Maul is just pacing angrily and staring daggers at Qui-Gon, whereas Qui-Gon is sitting there meditating and just gathering his thoughts before they resume the fight. Not that it helps him. Whatever you have to say about Phantom Menace, Duel of the Fates is wonderful.

Yeah, that seems pretty cool. Why I went to see that movie several times in theaters. Part of it is that I was like 12 or whatever. But also, I think it ends on such a high that you're like, oh, maybe that was really great. I should go back and see it again. And then you get stuck in a cycle of seeing it over and over. No, it's not the worst, but it's not great. Anyway, there's this moment in the middle of the fight where it pauses and you know that the fight is going to resume, but the combatants are handling it in different ways.

And so that's how I've envisioned MLB teams. You have to imagine that AJ Preller is pacing around like Darth Maul. Oh my gosh, yeah. And Jerry DePoto and they're wearing holes in their carpets. And then maybe some more zen GMs are just meditating and enjoying the relaxation. And you just know that when those barriers come down, when the lockout ends, there is going to be a flurry of activity again, and someone will get chopped in half and tumbled down a reactor core kind of thing although he's not dead another spoiler he comes back but uh you know what that's okay we

don't have to i don't have to do it i think my favorite part of that scene is how many times he thunks against the sides of the room as he falls down, oh, no. You're having a bad day, and somehow it has gotten worse. Yeah. Maybe it's not a reactor core. Palpatine falls down a reactor core. Darth Maul, I guess, maybe. I mean, they all come back when they get thrown down the endless shaft. It's only a matter of time until they return in Star Wars.

Somehow Palpatine returned. Anyway, let us discuss slightly more baseball banter I have a few emails and a stat blast to get to here but I just wanted to mention because I learned something yesterday that I did not know and I'm curious whether you knew this do you know which league won interleague play in 2021 oh I think I once knew I think that i did the national league win it did not oh then i didn't know at all i don't think i ever knew and i it dawned on me because i was reading a post at tom tango's blog about it was like a nitty-gritty math heavy post about how when you make war you have to do league adjustments and how sometimes one league

is stronger than the other and prior to interleague play it was harder to do direct comparisons and so he had a graph of interleague play and and winning percentage by year and i realized that that was the first time that i was even aware of the outcome of interleague play in 2021 which is something that i have been hyper aware of in the past like it's been a big story like which league is better like there was that extremely long streak of al supremacy yeah which ran from i want to say 2004 to like 2017 think, was maybe the first year that the NL had won in a long time. No, 2018. Yeah, it was 2004 to 2017.

The AL won every single year in interleague play. And then 2018, the National League broke that extended streak. And so during that long AL streak, it was like a frequent topic of conversation why is the AL so dominant and there are all these different theories that abounded I've done entire like podcast roundtables about like why is the AL always winning in interleague and then finally the NL snapped that streak and that was a story so in 2018 the NL had a 527 winning percentage in interleague. And then in 2019, it raised that advantage and the NL won 553 in interleague play. And then it was like it ceased to be a story. And even just Googling after I had this epiphany this week, like nothing was written about it. Like there were no stories. there were no fan grass posts. It was like hard to find the information. I mean, I know you can find it if you dig on baseball reference or there's a Wikipedia page associated with it, but at no point seemingly was it ever a news story or something that anyone cared about or observed. Now in 2020, it was a perfect tie. The leagues went 149 and 149 in interleague. And even though the 2020 season was dramatically shortened, interleague play was not really. There were only a couple fewer games than there usually are in interleague because of the way that the schedule was rearranged to

minimize travel. And so you had teams playing a third of their games against the opposite leagues equivalent of their division. And so there was still a lot of interle against the opposite leagues equivalent of their division. And so there was still a lot of interleague play and the two leagues battled to a draw, which I guess is kind of interesting because that was the first year where you had the universal DH. And sometimes people will speculate that the AL has done as well as it has because there is some DH advantage. In 2021, you go back to having the DH and you go back to a more normal season. And the AL went 167 and 133. That's a 557 winning percentage. That's a pretty

commanding lead that is tied with 2015 for the highest since 2012 when the AL had a 563 winning percentage. And as we all know, of course, the NL team eked out the victory in the World Series. But on the whole, AL won in interleague. And that's not a perfect measure of league quality necessarily because it's still a small-ish sample. And you can look at run differential and that sort of thing if you really want to get in the weeds. But for a long time, I think the AL was on top, maybe partly, slightly because of the DH, but Russell Carlton has looked into that and run some studies. And it seems like even in games where the DH was not in effect, the AL still won more

than you would expect it to. And so it doesn't seem like it's entirely the dh and there are reasons to think that that dh advantage that purported advantage is actually overblown and so there are other theories about well maybe it's like the yankees and the red socks who are just kind of raising all boats payroll wise or other teams have to like be smart or spend a lot to keep pace with those teams that are the big market teams that are always on sunday night baseball basically so there are all sorts of theories but the al was dominant for a long time then the nl suddenly snapped that streak now it

seems like the al is back on top again so maybe it's just that there's no obvious narrative now, you know, like no one had an extended streak extended further or snapped. And so there wasn't as much reason to point it out. But I just realized this is something I used to pay close attention to. And I had zero awareness of it this year. So I wanted to share that knowledge with you and everyone else the dh explanation stopped being compelling to me as like the primary driver and i think it's probably just like a mix of a couple different things that and there's probably some amount of just like random variation thrown in there too but it it stopped making sense to me as a compelling explanation because yes you do i mean we have talked a lot on this podcast about the difference between pitchers hitting and, you know, actual hitters hitting and how meaningful that is. But I also think that the, the way that the DH position is staffed by a lot of AL teams is changing, right? So the, the number of teams that have sort of a dedicated thumper, you know,

the, the Nelson cruises of the world, like there actually aren't as many of those guys seemingly as they used to be. Like that position is used just as often to like, you know, get a guy in the lineup who needs a day off in the field. Like there's a lot of catchers, you know, and first basemen who maybe are dinged up. So you kind of have guys rotate through as a way to stay fresh, but not lose the bat.

And so that stopped being quite as compelling a difference to me, even though obviously the gap between real hitters and pitchers has gotten more chasmous. Chasmous? Is that a word? I'll allow it, but I'm going to go with no, probably. Chasmous? Chasmic. Chasm?

It's what Darth Maul fell down. He fell into chasm. It was a chasm is chasm chasm it's what darth maul fell down you know he fell into a chasm but anyhow i i so like that explanation has been a little less compelling to me in recent years although i say that without having done the work that like russell has done so so there's that part but i don't know i think some of it is just kind of the way the cookie crumbles the payroll thing is interesting to me but then then you have the Dodgers. It's not like there aren't teams that spend in the NL. I don't know. It's a curious bit of business,

but if you would like an in-depth analysis of it, I can let someone at FanGraphs know, because gosh, is it going to be hard to come up with stuff to write about in January. Yes, please. It'll be interesting once there is a universal DH, if that advantage for the AL persists and that explanation no longer applies. Because even in 2020, yes, there was a universal DH, but it arrived late and teams didn't necessarily have a chance to plan for it. And so Rob Means recently did a whole series on that at Baseball Perspectives.

Rob Means recently did a whole series on that at Baseball Perspectives. And so the NLDHs in that year may not have been what they were or what they will be in a season where everyone knows going into it that that will be the rule. So we'll see in the long term whether an advantage for either league persists and maybe we'll get a little more clarity on it then. But I don't think that's been the primary factor. So I think there's more at work there. I don't think that's been the primary factor. So I think there's more at work there. It did seem like, though, that the NL was getting a disproportionate number of the young, exciting stars in the game in the past few years. And again, haven't necessarily run the numbers on that. But, you know, you had your Sotos and your Acunas and your Tatises, and often they were National League players.

And so it seemed like maybe the balance of power was sort of swinging. But in 2020, not so much. And of course, like the interleague matchups switch around every year and which divisions and which teams play each other and the quality of those teams can fluctuate. So a single season is not necessarily all that telling. It's just the AL had that streak going for so long that clearly it meant something at that point. It was probably not however many consecutive coin flips coming up one way. But chasmic is a word. Chasmic.

Yeah. Dictionary.com says it's rare, which I would agree with. I was not aware of chasmic, but that's what you were looking for there. Describing a chasm. I think chasmous is a better... I mean, it doesn't really sound quite right. It has weird mouthfeel as a word, but chasmous. I get jammed up with purposely because it sounds to my ear as if someone is saying...

They mean the opposite. They're saying without purpose, purpose less. Anyway, here we are. I'm a professional editor. It's fine. Last thing I wanted to mention, my friend and colleague from The Ringer, Zach Cram, tipped me off to the New York Times' quiz

of faces that their readers recognize from 2021. It's the do you recognize these notable People of 2021 quiz. And so it is various famous people who were the subjects of stories in 2021 for one reason or another. This was posted on December 16th, and so it has the results. So it's just a whole lot of public figures from various fields. And Shohei Otani is one of these faces and figures. Would you care to guess what percentage? Now, this is just of Times readers who voted in this poll. I mean, you don't necessarily need to be a subscriber.

It's just anyone who saw this New York Times quiz. Would you care to guess what percentage identified Shohei Ohtani from his headshot? This is going to bum me out, isn't it? Possibly. Can I ask a question? You can tell me if this gives too much away. What was the average rate of identification?

Do we know? I don't know. I know that at the high end, I mean, you had like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were leading the way at 94%. And then at 2%, you had playwright Jeremy O. Harris and 3% an actress from Squid Game. So it really runs the gamut. I don't know exactly what the average is, but there's a wide range. They use the whole scale. It's not like the scouting scale where you really have 80s or 20s. I'm going to guess 36%. You overshot that by a multiple of three. Really? 12% recognized Shohei Otani. Yeah. Shohei, who I just saw- Is he in uniform? See, that's the thing. You can only see his head, but his head is sporting an angel's cap. So he's wearing a baseball cap, which you think would probably help, right? Baseball cap, baseball player. Even if you don't know the angel's insignia, you'd think that might be a clue. That might be a clue, but it's tough.

Just today, before we started recording, I saw that Otani won the Associated Press's Male Athlete of the Year Award, which was an award I totally knew existed before today. But I think LeBron won it in 2020, and now Shohei Otani won it. So he's like clearly a crossover figure. crossover figure. I mean, the fact that he's on this quiz at all, I guess, is a bit of a victory for baseball, because I would guess that in many years or most years, there just are no notable baseball people as far as the New York Times readership is concerned. I do think that this is probably a reflection of the voting pool here as much as it is of Otani. I mean, I don't know that the percentage in the general population would be dramatically different from this, but like, I would guess that in the general population, you would not have, say, five times as many people recognizing Amy Coney Barrett as Shohei Otani. Like, I don't think, I think that's probably has something to do

with the New York Times readership and the people who are coming to the Times for sports coverage as opposed to like news and politics and such. So I'm going to guess that like Amy Coney Barrett being at 63 and Otani being at 12 doesn't necessarily reflect the American population as a whole,

but it is sort of depressing in that I want everyone to be aware of Shohei Otani and to be able to recognize him. But I'm going to chalk this up partly to the medium here. Yeah. I imagine that your average ESPN viewer probably has a better sense of Otani, right? Because he was just such a huge story in sports. And so while the Times has a sports section, which is quite good, you know, if that's not what you're going there for, you know, if you're going for political news and to figure out how to make a galette,

then you're perhaps not as in tune with the sport page. But yeah, I would imagine that like, you know, if you're asking the general population, and that population watches sports TV in some capacity, especially the panel shows that they would have a sense of who Otani is. And like, you wonder, you know, like, how do the other athletes do? Were there other athletes? So there were other athletes the most recognizable according to this quiz simone biles was up at 79 and of course you know she was a big story not just because of the olympics and her performance there but also her deciding not to perform in some events and the

whole conversation that sparked then you had aaron rogers at 42 and he also has other reasons maybe why people were aware of him not only is he a big nfl star but he also guest hosted jeopardy and then became the subject of a whole covet controversy as well so you had that and then suny lee the gymnast was at 20 so you had an nfl player and two gymnasts were the most recognizable. Now, here's, I guess, if you want to look at this from a baseball supporter perspective and be heartened. So I don't know whether this is encouraging or discouraging, but there was a three-way tie at 12%, or at least if you don't go out to other decimal places. At least if you don't go out to other decimal places, Otani was at the top of the 12% heap tied in a virtual tie, at least with Doja Cat and Virgil Abloh. So rapper slash singer and fashion designer who passed away this year. So I don't know if that helps you calibrate things, but then maybe somewhat surprising at 11%.

So just below Otani is Gianis antetokounmpo oh and you might think well nba mvp who won a championship and was the subject of a best-selling biography by one of my colleagues at the ringer yeah would be more name recognition and again like i don't know if there's some like xenophobic aspect to this possibly or not even like xenophobic, but just people being more aware of people who are from certain places or look certain ways, let us say. But it could also be market size. I mean, you have a Milwaukee Bucks star, maybe not as visible as on some big East or West Coast team. Like with Otani, you could say, well, he wasn't in the playoffs and the Angels weren't good. Obviously with Giannis, you can't say that, but maybe you say small market, something like that. Or maybe, you know, he kind of broke out in a big way and hadn't been as huge a star for years and years and years so still though you would think that you know

generally nba player like you always hear of the nba it's a star driven league right whereas mlb is not and so you would probably expect the big basketball star to be above the big baseball star and so i guess in a way that is kind of encouraging but yeah also not really because more people should know about both of those guys yeah i don't know it's like on the one hand i imagine that the times readership in addition to skewing toward other kinds of news also skews older but you would think that would help baseball right you'd think it would help baseball to have olds involved in the equation. So yeah, I don't quite know how to account for that. And you're right, there are probably some other factors involved,

some of which are perhaps not too complementary toward the readership or at least the voters. Like you said, I guess you don't have to be a Times reader to be a voter necessarily, struggling to identify folks who don't look like them or or what have you but you'd think the baseball cap would help yeah it's kind of a clue you would think so yes and did they have to type in the name themselves or were they given a list actually yes and i think that is that's a's hard. I mean, that's not hard for Shohei Otani, for us, but like...

For Giannis, that might be challenging. Right, and it could be the kind of thing where, you know, I'm thinking of like my mom in this moment who is always, whenever she sees a movie, it's like, and it has that guy, you know? And then she's like, uh, uh. But if you say the name, she's like, yeah, that guy. So, you know, if they had multiple choice now, I guess you could benefit from lucky

guesses in that instance. But I would imagine that the form of survey had some impact there. Yes, that is a good point. And it says we're lenient on spelling. So I don't know. Maybe they had like every possible variation of what a job to have to sit there and sift through everybody's- If you calculate the number of ways that people could spell Antonecupo,

you'd probably get up into the millions or something. Yeah. It would be a scary number of conceivable ways that people could possibly misspell that. But yeah, that could be a factor. You're right. All right. And I did want to mention, by By the way that former Fangraphs writer Sungmin Kim, he tweeted on Christmas Eve

That this has been the most Nuts KBO offseason that he Has followed in many, many years So that might support the idea that There's been more activity, although I Think he was basing that not just on Foreign imports, but also on KBO free agents switching teams

So I don't think it was solely about foreign players signing there, but maybe that played a part. Anyway, just wanted to note that. So while we're talking about people not recognizing Otani, let's answer a question about Otani. Not that anyone here would have trouble identifying Shohei Otani in a quiz, I don't think. But Chip, Patreon supporter, says,

I had reason to look at Shohei Otani's B-Ref page, the reason being 8.45 on a Monday evening during Minnesota December. Good reason. As good a reason as any. Otani's 2021 was the most memorable individual baseball season since at least 2001, Bons and Itro, unless I'm experiencing a massive oversight. I don't think you are. It could be argued that it surpassed those and challenges the Maguire-Sosa race of 1998.

My question is as follows. Otani has now played four full seasons, meaning he needs six more to be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Imagine he decides to hang it up right after that 10th season. Maybe he decides he wants to swim in the 2028 Olympics. What do the next six seasons need to look like from him to make him a Hall of Famer? Will six straight four-war seasons with two each from batting and pitching do it? Does he need to win another MVP, a Cy Young? What if he goes to full-time hitting and is a six-war outfielder for those seasons? None of these war figures would

make him a Hall of Famer based on Jaws, but the fame factor here is big. So the overarching question is, based on being the biggest czar baseball has seen in decades and having the most exciting season we might see in a very long time, what is the minimum that Otani needs to do on the field to assure Cooperstown residency? Oh, gosh, that's hard. We need Jay. We need Jay Jaffe. gosh that's hard we need jay we need jay jaffe i i mean i think that if he averages i'm gonna pick a number and then i'm gonna immediately feel silly about it okay part of the problem that i imagine he is going to encounter is that you know like this year he was so exceptional and when you combine his hitting and his pitching war,

that is a number that is an obvious MVP number. The lower down that war spectrum he goes, even if the combined number ends up being like, oh, that guy had a good season. That was an all-star worthy season. I worry that people will find it kind of gimmicky. If he's doing four wins and it's two attributed to hitting and two to his pitching.

I don't know. I don't know that it will hit people as being as impressive if he doesn't have sort of an individual star making performance. I don't think he would have been the MVP if he had only hit, but he would have been like he probably would have been an all-star, right? Like people would have looked at that, especially in the first half and been like and been like wow that's amazing he made the all-star team two ways right and he kind of tapered after that but i think that like that was a legitimately great season just on one side of the ball i think that if you have him as as a two-win guy on both ends

i don't think that'll impress in quite the same way, even though like the thing he's doing is still incredibly difficult. It's like, oh, so he was like, he was okay. Like he was definitely above replacement level, but he was like just okay at both things. Like people aren't going to see that quite the same. I think that he's going to need to have a number of sort of star seasons on one side and potentially both to maintain people's appreciation for the difficulty of what he is doing even though it is still really hard does that make sense yeah i don't want to dismiss the premise of the question but no the first thing i will say is i don't care sure much whether otani makes the hall of fame or not like i think there is some value to the hall of fame conversation and

it helps us appreciate players sometimes and helps keep certain names front and center but i also think maybe we can go a bit overboard on immediately after a guy retires oh was he a hall of famer was he not a hall of famer and if he isn't then he is lesser or we don't need to remember him or something like you have the career you have and whether some portion of the bbwaa voters or whoever is actually deciding who gets into the hall of fame whenever otani is eligible like if they decide you know three quarters of them decide that he is worthy like that's nice i'm sure he would appreciate The honor and so I would be happy for him and I'm generally in favor of Otani Appreciation but like whether he gets

In or not will in no way Diminish like the joy that he has Brought me personally or the Difficulty of what he accomplished this Single season like even if he never Has a season like this again it Was still incredible it was the Most fun I've had

watching a baseball season at least since 1998 and possibly ever. And I don't know that I will ever derive the same joy and just awe that I felt watching him do what he did. And so in a way, it's like irrelevant to me whether he is able to put together whatever career war would be necessary for enough people to vote him in like it'd be nice but you know he's already done those things and made me feel those feelings and that's kind of all i care about but if we're talking about it i think that obviously like if he had six more seasons like the one he just had that would do it yeah because at that point like he would be a worthy candidate like even according

to jaws right like he'd have a hall of fame peak for sure yeah and he would be like pretty close i mean he'd be like around 60 war or so at that point which is like where you start thinking oh yeah maybe hall of famer depending on the position so like if he does that he'll have a case that doesn't even really rely on the fame it'll just rely on what his actual statistical accomplishments are i think he might get some leeway when it comes to the fact that he started his mlb career a little later and you know he won an mvp award in npb years before he was even playing in mlb. And so I think as with Ichiro, I mean, Ichiro has a pretty legitimate Hall of Fame case

just based on his MLB performance. But I think there's also an understanding that, oh, well, he didn't debut in MLB until his age 27 season. He was already a really good player for several seasons prior to that. And so with Otani, I think maybe you bake that in a little bit and you know there were injuries that prevented him from putting it together in

mlb sooner which i don't know that you need to give him any leeway for that because injuries happen and they've kept a lot of players out of the hall of fame but i think like there's obviously like no argument that he's a hall of fame talent. So it's kind of that career versus peak argument that always comes up where people will be like, well, this guy had this period of seasons. And so the fact that he didn't hang on for a few more years, I mean, does that matter? Like, obviously there's still value to it. With Otani, like he had this season where he did something pretty much unprecedented, certainly in a century or so that no one thought could be done. And he was clearly the best and most valuable player in baseball and was also doing it with a degree of difficulty that no one else was facing. And so if you were having a Hall of Fame and if we're just based on fame, then he'd be in just based

on that single season. So I think when it comes down to it, you don't typically vote that way. Like the whole, you know, can you tell the story of baseball without player X argument? I don't love that argument because for one thing, you don't necessarily need to give a guy a plaque to tell the story of baseball. You can tell the story of baseball without that. And also there are a lot of players who you can't tell the story of baseball in a complete way without who do not have plaques and will never have plaques because they were like Mark Fidrich or whatever. And they burned really bright and were really fun for a short time. And that was that. And it's OK. Like Mark Fidrich should be in the story of baseball and so should Tommy John and so should Roger Maris and all sorts of players who at least as of now are not in the Hall of Fame. And that's fine. Like, they'll probably be in an exhibit. So it's okay. Like, Otani will be there one way or another, even if he doesn't have a legitimate Hall of Fame case like just on the statistical merits

unless he performs at this level and stays healthy and durable for that entire time. And hopefully even if he doesn't quite stay at this level, he will play more than six more years and he won't suffer more serious injuries and who knows. But like if he's an all-star level player but not an MVP level player for the next six seasons he would get votes for sure oh for sure like he would probably be on the ballot for 15 years would he actually cross the line if say he has I don't know like what is he have now like 15 career war or something in that region and most of it is concentrated in a single season probably even less than that i guess and so you know if you were to add to his 10 to 15 war that he has now

like another six seasons of let's say four war or something i mean you know then you're getting up into like if he has 40 and he was this mvp and all-time great talent would he get in i think probably still not but he would get significant support yeah he wouldn't be a one and done by any means like he would you know he'd be a guy who kind of lingered on the ballot and we would get to talk about it every year and you know you would get to talk about the the joy he brought you and how hard it was for you that he's not getting in but like so here are some here are some comps i would i would put out there so like this year you know like jonathan vr was a two-win player andrew benintendi was a two-win player. Andrew Benintendi was a two-win player. Josh Rojas and Austin

Meadows and Alex Verdugo and Michael A. Taylor were basically two-win players. Yandy Diaz, Hunter Renfro. They were contributors to teams and some of them were contributors to playoff teams, but you're not looking at those guys being like, how will we put together

the Hall of Fame case for Josh Rojas? That's not what you're doing no he is still doing a harder thing than that because he is also pitching but i do think that you know he needs he needs more star turns to be you know a guy we look at and go wow like yeah otani hall of famer no you know like you said provided he stays healthy, I think that the possibility exists that he just does what he needs to to get there on his own merits and we don't have to worry about it

and you'll get to vote for him. And won't that feel so good, Ben? You'll be so excited. You'll be like, I got to vote for Otani. And you'll get to tell people the story of the season that meant so much to you. But if what you are is like jameson tyon plus uh you know andrew benintendi like i think that people will read that a little bit differently

so he should just keep being awesome and then we don't have to worry about it but i i'm with you i think that i understand why especially as guys retire there is this instinct to start to i mean you're not eulogizing them exactly, but you kind of are, right? You're eulogizing their career. And the natural question to ask is like, where do they stack relative to other guys? And then you think about the other retired guys and you're like, some of those guys are in the Hall of Fame. So we should wonder if this guy is. We could just, we could take a breath to appreciate guys' careers and just, you know, remember fondly the times that they shared with us

and that we got to watch them and how we got to derive joy and wonderment from it. Like, we don't have to wonder, like, is a couple of seasons of Cal Quantro plus Michael A. Taylor a Hall of Famer? It's like, I don't know. But know, but we could just be excited about these guys as they sort of move on to other things in their lives and appreciate their careers as they were. Because it's very, I don't know, it feels like it's jumping the gun.

If for no other reason than we spend so much time on Hall of Fame discourse. Why do we have to do it two times? Just do it the one time every year like you're going to. It's like, you know, it's like when people celebrate Christmas in July. I'm like, I get what you're going for, but we don't have to do it.

You've got a whole month and it's most of November too. So anyway. Well, related question from Reggie, Patreon supporter, who says reading about Ichiro exploits and some of his recent exploits just love itro just the post-playing career itro who just like show up and just like strike out a bunch

of high school players or like hit a bunch of bombs in high school batting practice if you write him a letter he's like the great pumpkin or something where like he'll just like show up at like the the most sincere team that like wants him to appear and he'll he'll just appear in your pumpkin patch magically someday except like he actually will appear and he will suit up and play baseball for you on the great pumpkin but it's wonderful i just love how much he loves baseball but reggie says reading about more itro exploits made me ponder a question that I will share with you. I think it is safe to say that a redraft of the 1992 amateur draft would have made Derek Jeter the top pick. My Astros blew it. I believe even the Astros have

acknowledged blowing it on that pick. But now ponder if we had a true worldwide draft and ponder also if Japanese players in high school were in this alternative world eligible for that draft. Ichiro turned 18 in October 1991 and would also have been in Jeter's high school graduating class. Looking back, if Ichiro could have been taken in the same draft as Jeter, could a case be made that Ichiro would have been the top pick? I mean, sure, because we know stuff yeah i mean i think he should have been i don't think he would have been because there would have been a big bias against him at that point by mp teams like even when he ultimately came over after years of succeeding in the mpb there was still some skepticism about whether

his skills would translate. So certainly at 18, even though he was already a good and well-known player, I think a lot of MLB evaluators would have dismissed him. So he would not have been taken. But in retrospect, knowing what we know, yeah, I would take Mitro over Jeter, right? I mean, even if you look at the time that they overlapped in MLB, I think Ichiro pretty easily outwared Jeter from 2001 on. And Jeter was already a really good player before that, as was Jeter. But if we assume that their careers had started at the same time, or maybe even could have debuted a bit earlier, perhaps I think that he would have had the superior career record, at least value wise. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, if you are a time traveler, and like, imagine, here's, can I ask a different question related to this question? Congratulations, Ben, you're a time traveler, right? And you go back in time and you're now also a baseball GM.

You're having a really good week. And you know what kind of career Ichiro is going to have, right? And so you know that you should draft him, right? You should take him first overall because what he's going to do is going to be incredible. How long do you keep your job if you do that? Oh, yeah. Right. how long do you keep your job if you do that oh yeah right that yeah we've answered the the time traveling mlbgm question or forms of that in the past right like uh how good could you make your

team how much of an advantage would it be to know the outcomes and how long would that advantage last that's always uh that's a fun one yeah because like you know that each euro is going to be each euro but nobody else knows. And as you said, some of the press when he first came over, it was just yucky. We can just call it that. It was awful. And that was after he'd had this great career. And so I think that people would be like, we must fire the time traveling GM.

Yeah. Especially if they didn't know if you were a time traveler. If they did, they might be like, we must burn him at the stake like a witch. I believe that Ichiro, even though he was a high school star in Japan, he wasn't drafted until the fourth round of the NPP draft in November 91, I think, because he was not a big guy, you know, not tall, not physically imposing. And so there were skeptics even in Japan about Ichiro at that time. So certainly there would have been here.

But I think knowing what you know, I would take Ichiro. I mean, in some ways, they're somewhat similar players and had some similar skill sets. And both were a lot of fun to watch. But Ichiro probably even more so now obviously like if jeter gets to keep the championships in this scenario i mean you know you like each row won a championship in japan but then he went and played for the mariners so if like we're including that if we're not rerunning the whole timeline but we're saying like do you want the guy who won five rings in mlb or the guy who didn't win any or if you're like really highly valuing jeter's leadership or like

you know his reputation for clutchness or whatever intangibles like i think that's the only way that you would want jeter but like you know if we're talking about well the yankees draft itro instead of jeter and then you just replay the whole thing over again, I think they still probably win a bunch of championships. Yeah. Maybe butterfly effect. Maybe they don't win all of the same number of championships. Maybe they win more championships. Yes.

Who knows? But, you know, if you have banked the rings, then I'm not saying, like, the Yankees would want to go back and do it over again i think things worked out fine for them but just knowing purely the value that those two players provided i think i'd give the edge to edro i think that he is the the player i thought i've thought a lot about this because unfortunately the sport has given me a lot of reason to contemplate the question in the last couple of years. But I think that he is the player, he being Ichiro, where if we found out that he was secretly a monster, and all signs point to that not being the case at all. But if we found out that Ichiro was secretly a monster, I would find that devastating. I think that that is actually at the top of my list of guys

where I'm like, just be, you know, don't be a monster. And, you know, he seems to be holding up his end of that just fine. So that's nice. But I just, it's just, what a special, what a special person. He's just a special guy. And we were so lucky to get to watch him for so long and then enjoy the, yeah, enjoy the glow after. What a cool, what a cool thing we got to do.

That's nice. All right. Last question, and this was actually posed in a Facebook thread that sparked some discussion. So this is from listener, Patreon supporter, Raymond Chen, who says, what if the Hall of Fame were like Congress? This is like the one way to make the Hall of Fame worse and more divisive. But with a fixed number of people in the hall. So every year, all the seats are up for grabs. So you're not just voting for, say, David Ortiz, but you're voting for David Ortiz to replace, say, Rabbit Moranville. Maybe an ex-Hall of Famer can fight back and regain their seat. The Hall's composition can shift over time, always reflecting the current attitude toward players and the game. The more I think about this, the stupider it sounds, but it makes the Hall of Fame more dynamic and adaptable and removes the problem of if we vote this guy in, he'll be in forever.

So this is a calculation that some people make on individual ballots. If you want to vote for more than 10 people, and that means you can't vote for someone else. But we're talking about like your plaque gets removed at a certain point or is subject to removal. So it is a living document. It is an ever-shifting body. I can see some advantages to this and also some disadvantages to this. Oh, my gosh. to this and also some disadvantages to this oh my gosh i have like smoke coming out of my ears and a strong compulsion to smack my head on my desk repeatedly as a way of answering this question yeah i don't think that we should do that i think that that's a bad idea because see here's the

thing we're about to be done with some of these guys we're about to not have to i mean like you know the era committees are gonna do what they do but that's not that's not a ben problem and that won't be an eventual meg problem right like that's that's somebody else's problem which is a very um which is perhaps uh another way that this is an apt metaphor to congress but i i think that it is fine for us to say these guys are Hall of Famers and baseball changes and our understanding of value changes and our understanding of who is good relative to whom can refine over time as our measures get more sophisticated and are tinkered with.

But I don't think, and perhaps my perspective as a big hall person is informing my answer here because I'm not fussed by the idea of there being more and more guys in there. I still think that we should be rigorous in how we do it. And I think saying like anyone who played gets to be in the Hall of Fame doesn't really serve the purpose of the institution. But I don't think that there's any downside to us, you know, every year, letting a couple of guys in who speak to the current generation of fan as like their best guys. I think that that's fine.

And I also would feel bad because, you know, some of the current Hall of Famers who might be in danger of like getting the axe are still around and can advocate for themselves and i imagine that their clubs would advocate for them right and say like of course he is still a hall of famer like here we are we're the saint louis cardinals and we're gonna tell you why but some of these guys are like long dead and no one who watched them is around anymore either and like their families are probably quite far removed from those legacies. And so I would also worry about us being perhaps a little too quick to prune some of the older members,

even if we can acknowledge in the present day that our standards for who is a Hall of Famer have improved. We've gotten more sophisticated at this. It's not their fault that people used to be kind of wishy-washy with this stuff like they don't need their plaques taken down i just can you imagine the ballot too would you have to vote on every guy oh yeah that would be complicated too right and then like what do you oh no i i think that there are good reasons to not do this. Then I think there's also the it would be unbearable

to experience every year reasons, which are good but kind of lazy on some level from my perspective. No, I think it's fine. It's fine to say this is the game that we have immortalized and we are adding new members to that immortalization and there might be chasms some of the the current inductees and future ones but that's just how the cookie crumbles and how baseball evolves and that's fine yeah so let me see if i can list some pluses and minuses here i first of all i think that if you are going to do this you should

probably freeze it not at a number but at a percentage of all players or something like that just because if you keep it to 250 as there are more and more and more major leaguers then it's going to be a more and more exclusive right rarefied territory right you're going to have qualified players who are kept out arbitrarily just because of the cap yes right and so i think you know it's you should probably have more congress people too right if you want proportional representation of the population and you want so many people per representative then maybe you should have more congress people and so you should also probably have more hall of fam. But if we just say we're freezing it at a certain percentage, I think you've mentioned some of the disadvantages. Obviously, like it's a methodological, logistical headache. It probably saps some of the honor and joy of getting in because it's not necessarily a lifetime appointment. Yeah. And I think one of the virtues, one of the features of having these plaques is that you are not just frozen in your own time period.

You can look beyond that. You know who the great players were from the 19th century or from the early 20th century. Whereas you might be inclined to just say, well, I never saw that guy. I've never heard of that guy. Sure, let's kick him out and let's put in the guy I got to see play. And so you'd end up just erasing earlier eras of baseball history, I think. And that would be bad because one of the features and purposes of the museum is to preserve the memories and the legacies of those players, right? So that's a problem, I think. And I do think there are some benefits. Like on the downside, there might be certain things about those players that we actually don't know that people who saw them and covered them and knew them more intimately knew.

I think that on the whole, we probably know more about the value that players in earlier eras provided to their teams than their contemporaries knew. And maybe that is snobby and small minded of me. And maybe I'm being eraist about this and thinking that we know everything now and no one knew anything in the past. But I do think that, I mean, we know a lot more about baseball and how value is produced. And we have better stats to measure even those past performances than people of the day had. So I think whatever we lose in not having seen them play,

like for some people and some voters, like that's everything. It's like if you didn't see them play, then you're not qualified to have an opinion. And I think that's everything. It's like if you didn't see them play, then you're not qualified to have an opinion. And I think that's sort of silly. It's baseball. Like we have really good performance metrics that allow us to evaluate these things, even if we didn't see them. And even if you saw them, did you see them every day and every game? Like, are you the ultimate expert on this person? Probably not. So I think that whatever we lose in that intimate firsthand knowledge of a player's career, we probably gain in just having better data. And I think that probably that different from the way we do it today than people 50 years ago, right? I mean, there will probably be some version of war in 50 years and it'll be more accurate and it'll have some different inputs and more comprehensive information. information but i think just inevitably going from stat cast to whatever that is will be a smaller leap and will produce less differing evaluations than going from no war and no play-by-play data and you know batting average and rbis and pitching wins or whatever for sure like that's going to be a bigger jump but i think that there is the virtue of like well maybe we can

look back and see that that guy actually he wasn't really one of the best baseball players of all time think that is the purpose and it's not about like fame in their day or memorializing who people of a certain era thought were deserving it's about hey what do we know now and then you also have an easier mechanism to remove people for off-field related reasons right which can be a slippery slope, and you could potentially go overboard with that. But also, like, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing, at least in some cases, to revisit that and say, well, according to our values today, like, if we are going to consider character and all of that, well, this person doesn't match those values anymore. We don't want them to represent. So again, like, there's a danger of just, you know, it's just

constantly changing and reshaping itself, and there's no historical consistency. So again, like there's a danger of just, you know, it's just constantly changing and reshaping itself and there's no historical consistency, but also in some cases, you know, maybe even judged like by the standards of their time, there are people who did things that were so egregious that they don't deserve to be in that most elite body. And this would give you a way to rectify that. Yeah. But perhaps then we need like an exceptions process. I think that like having a reevaluation of a player's career from an on-field perspective, like we just have to consider that concrete dry. And it's fine for us to use a different sort of perspective and metric for future instances. But I think that like for on field guys, like, all right, that's just who's in the Hall of Fame. And some of those guys got

in because they knew a guy on a committee and some of them got in because the writers liked them, even though their performance relative to their peers didn't really merit induction. But that's just it. I wouldn't mind the hall having sort of an exception process like when i am a voter if i vote in a guy and then we come to find out that he murdered someone like i might want them to be like you right don't get to be in the hall of fame anymore like i think having some process by which you know new facts that are really meaningful to our understanding of who that person was potentially, maybe there's some merit to that.

Now, we'd have to think really carefully about how we manage a process like that. And then you are sort of subjecting the hall to a kind of gross accounting, which some version of it happens every year when we vote granted but like where you're saying well that offense is bad but it doesn't merit expulsion whereas that offense does that can feel kind of icky for people too so it would be a tricky thing to say okay we need to reevaluate this case retroactively and and sort of expel that person but you know there are there are plenty of professional bodies that have sort of a censure system sort of like that you know occasionally when congress people behave badly we kick them out it doesn't happen very often sometimes we're like oh that's too far you must

be done now yeah so anyway but yes there is some merit maybe to having like in addition to having hall of famers you have like periodically you'll have like an all time team. Yeah. And maybe that's an official MLB thing or maybe not. Or maybe it's associated with the Hall of Fame or maybe not. But that can change over time. So you're not kicking out Hall of Famers who were already in. But you're saying, well, now we have more time.

So the all time team is going to be a little different now. And so maybe some players who were on an all-time team previously will not be now. And there will be some new faces. So there's like a, you know, inner circle sort of Hall of Famers, but maybe not officially or even affiliated with the Hall of Fame. But every now and then it makes sense to revisit that, I think. Yeah, I think that that is a nice way to think about it. That's a good way to do it. That strikes me as a way to sort of be nimble in the face of new information, whether

it's misdeeds or just players who are like, oh, it's like, oh, well, when Mike Trout gets in, he should probably be on some all-time list. That makes good sense to do. Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good way to do it. Okay. I will save some other good questions we got for next time and end with this stat blast. tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day stat blast. Okay, so this stat blast came out of a Effectively Wild Patreon Reddit discussion. There is a StatBlast channel in the Effectively Wild Patreon Reddit where people sometimes post and sometimes answer the sort of questions that we sometimes do StatBlast about. And frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, who is a Patreon supporter, is actually in there. StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, who is a Patreon supporter, is actually in there.

And so he and I just kind of conducted our usual StatBlast process that we do over email, except that we did it in this Discord group. So it was spoiled or shared for some members of that Discord group, but I guess that is a perk of Patreon support. So this was prompted by a question in that channel by fellow Patreon supporter and past guest Michael Mountain, who posted about a Reddit thread here. So this is a Reddit thread in a Discord group that inspired this stat blast, if you're following the origin story here. from last week and the reddit user jazilly on r slash baseball posted a thread what's the most recent game that occurred where every player who appeared in that game is retired or at least didn't make an appearance in 2021 so the most recent game that was played in mlb where every player in that game is no longer in mlb no longer active. And Ryan got to work on that question,

and then I made it even harder for him, as I often do. And I said, well, that's nice. I'd like to know the answer to that question. But really, if you're going to go for it, I want to know the shortest time ever between a game being played and all of the players in that game being gone for good from the majors, which is a much more complicated question, but one he was able to answer pretty handily. So the first question, the Reddit question, Ryan came up with a couple potential answers for that one. So if we go by retired, meaning not on a 26-man roster in MLB in 2021, then the answer he found is April 2nd, 2014, the Dodgers played the Padres and everyone who appeared in that game was not in the majors, not on a major league roster in 2021. However, that game did feature D. Strange Gordon, who is active. He was batting eighth and playing second for the Dodgers that day. He spent 2021, I think, in AAA with a few teams. He's kind of in the journeyman phase, and he, I believe, recently signed a minor league deal with the nationals so he's active if he never plays again

i guess that could potentially be an answer but he's still out there so he might be back in mlb now if we don't count that game and we go for just anyone who was not active in 2021 then the answer is the June 28th 2013 matchup between the Dodgers and the Phillies so that is Ryan's answer to that question and I will give you the lineups for that day so for the Phillies it was Michael Young Chase Utley Kevin Franson came in to pinch hit Jimmy Rollins who's on the hall of fame ballot now John McDonald came in as a pinch hitter. You had Dominic Brown. You had Delman Young. You had John Mayberry. You had Ben Revere, Carlos Ruiz, and the starting pitcher was John Lannan. And then you had some other guys as subs in that game. And for the Dodgers, you had Mark Ellis, Yasiel Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Van Slyke

pinch hit, Hanley Ramirez, Brandon League, Skip Schumacher, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Jerry Hairston, Tim Frederovich and starting for the Dodgers that day was Chris Capuano so all of those players I mean some of them are active somewhere in the world, but for MLB purposes, they have all graduated into Remember Some Guys land. So that's how long it takes, basically. It's been eight plus years, a little more than eight years since that game was played, and everyone has vanished from MLB. So the question that I wanted to know just all time, what's the least time that is taken for everyone who appeared in a game to disappear from the majors? And I think if you thought about this or if listeners thought about this for a while, you could probably come up with a pretty

good guess because there is a historical reason for this. And if you think about big events in history that interfered with baseball in some way and the games went on, but perhaps not with the players who would otherwise have been playing in those games. So World War II is what I'm getting at here. World War II, the games continued to keep up morale and so forth. But a lot of the players were replacement players for the players who were in the service. And so the answer to this technically is the Cleveland versus Washington game on August 22nd, 1945. And it took 1,500 days exactly after that game for no player to appear in the majors again. after that game for no player to appear in the majors again. But that is, you know, last year of World War II, and most of the players who were in that game never played again after World War II, after the first stringers came back. So that's sort of a special case. That was the first game

of a doubleheader, by the way, because there were two games played between those teams on those days. So if we are not counting that, the non-war-related record is even further back, July 26th, 1906. There was a game between the Brooklyn Superbas and the Boston Bean Eaters, and it took 1,830 days for the last player active from that game to pass out of the majors. It was centerfielder Al Birch, who I believe was a rookie that year, and he hung around for five more seasons before he called it a career, and he was the last man standing from that game. related record, the post-World War II record, so more modern era here, then the answer is May 26, 2009. So on May 26, 2009, the Pirates played the Cubs. The last player to end their career from that game was Adam LaRoche, who last played on October 2, 2015, so that is 2,320 days later. And I guess he would have gone on longer if not for the whole Drake LaRoche saga. So that maybe ended his career a little earlier

than it would have otherwise. And so that leads to this being an answer. However, there is an asterisk associated with this too, not just because of Drake LaRoche, but because this game ended after six innings because yeah it rained i believe that day and so there were no relievers and no pinch hitters and so there were just fewer players in general in that game fewer players with a chance to hang around in the majors for a long time so the final no asterisk winner, if we're going with post-World War II here and actual regulation length game, May 17th, 2006, there was a game between the Astros and the Giants.

from that game was omar vizquel just to bring this full circle oh boy the hall of fame and character discourse but he hung around for quite a while obviously until october 3rd 2012 that was 2331 days after that game on may 17th 2006 and he was the last man standing so there are several different answers depending on how you want to answer this question but ryan gave them to all of us and i will link to the box scores on the show page for anyone who wants to keep these straight but that is uh basically like if you want to know if you're watching any given game and and you want to know like roughly how long will it take i guess i could have asked him the average length of time that it takes. Maybe I will try to ask him that and see if he has that information.

But generally, you can be confident that it's going to be at least six or seven years until everyone from that game is gone, and that would be on the low end. Wow. I'm trying to decide if that's longer or shorter than i anticipated it being i guess it's about it sounds about right right yeah i mean in any given game you're you're gonna have some young players probably right almost certainly yeah and you need a game with a bunch of old guys or maybe just a bunch of players who aren't very good and aren't going to have very long careers. So it needs to be a special set of circumstances to have everyone cycle out quickly, which is good, I guess. I mean, it would be bad if there were so much turnover that you had like the 1945 situation where the year after that you had a very different roster of players and there would be a lack of continuity which would not be good right that would be you wouldn't want it to be any shorter than that that would be very concerning if if it were moving through if it were cycling

through that quickly but um yeah man la roche i haven't thought about that guy in a while ben it's been a it's been a hot minute. I can't believe his final game was a six-inning game. Well, his final game was later. That's right. Okay. Right. Six innings.

I think it's kind of asterisk-y to have six innings because you'd have some reliever or other who would mess it up for you after that. I think so, yes. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thanks for the question. And thanks, as always, to Ryan for the answer.

All right. After Meg and I finished recording, I was able to check with Ryan Nelson, and he was able to give me those numbers. So the median time in any given game between that game and the day when the last player who appeared in that game plays in the majors is 5,505 days. The mean is 5,538 days. So that's about 15 years. So in your typical MLB game, you take all the players from both teams who played that day. On average, the most enduring of them will last about 15 more years. So that's a little more heartening, I think. And I didn't even think to ask this, but Ryan also checked on the longest time between a given game

and the date when the last player who appeared in that game was in the majors. It's 31 years, more than 31 years, from opening day 1949, a game between Cleveland and the Browns. And speaking of Hall of Famers, Minnie Mignoso made his MLB debut that day, and his last MLB appearance would not come for more than 31 years when he played a couple of games for the White Sox as a 54-year-old pinch hitter. So now you know. And one more message from a Patreon supporter, Livia.

Last week I shared some testimonials from other members who had written in in response to our conversation about becoming a fan of a sport later in life. And one more message in that genre from Livia here, who says, it was great to hear your conversation about learning to love a sport later in life and to listen to other people's experiences of discovering baseball as adults. I discovered baseball at age 30. This is my story. I grew up in Italy where baseball isn't a thing. I guess it's a thing to some extent, right? There is an Italian baseball league, but it's not a prominent thing, as Livia would know

better than I. And she continues, I had no interest whatsoever in any other sports, not soccer, volleyball, rugby, etc. I moved to London, UK in 2014, and my disinterest in sport continued. Then came 2020. I love history, and in late February I was reading a book about the summer of 1927 in America, One Summer, America 1927 by Bill Bryson, which had a chapter about Babe Ruth. Believe it or not, I had never heard of him before. I didn't know anything about baseball,

not even the basic rules. I had to look up what a home run was, and yet there was something so fascinating about it, a sport with an illustrious history, yet where numbers meant so much. I had to know more. So I started reading about baseball before I had ever watched a single game, beginning with the rules and found documentaries about its history. Then I watched past World Series games. I discovered the Effectively Wild podcast in late March 2020. I read more books about advanced stats.

I watched my first current games in the 2020 shortened season. Because of the time difference, I don't follow games live, so my enjoyment of the sport mainly comes from listening to baseball podcasts, with Effectively Wild at the top of my list, reading books, and watching games or game summaries when I have the time, a lot of it when I'm doing the dishes or other household chores. I know this can sound weird for U.S.-based fans and also for those who grew up immersed in baseball, but discovering the sport as an adult made it necessary to choose how and when I enjoy it and to fit it around my life.

The only thing I miss is not having anyone to talk baseball with, which I'm hoping to remedy in the new year. Thanks for keeping me company for the best part of the last two years. And thanks for wanting to be in our company, Livia. As I told her, she went from not having heard of Babe Ruth to being an Effectively Wild listener in one month, which has to be some sort of record. And now she is a Patreon supporter. So I'm doubly glad that she discovered baseball. I also just realized I have a hard time reading the word February. February, February, February.

Can we take that R out? It's not quite a silent R, but also no one really says the R exactly. February. February. I believe that's called dissimilation, where you drop a sound because you have to do the same sound close to it in that word. I'm not saying we should start saying February. I'm saying we should just drop the R. I guess right after we change chasmic to chasimus. Little programming note, just so you know, we are planning to conclude our series of Stove League recap episodes at the end of this week, so you have a few more days to watch the final few episodes or, you know, an unlimited time because you can listen to podcasts whenever you want. But we will be discussing those episodes by the end of this week. I think that might be one reason why I'm paying such close attention to KBO signings as well as that I'm rewatching Stove Week. There are episodes about signing international free agents.

So every time I see one sign, I imagine he is going to the dreams. You can be like Livia and support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or annual amount to help keep the podcast going and help keep it ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. keep the podcast going and help keep it ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Connor Nagowski, Eric Figge, Benjamin Lomaster, Michael S., and Lena Gordon, thanks to all of you.

I noticed a little flurry of Patreon signups right after Christmas, so if anyone got some cash for Christmas and used it on supporting Effectively Wild, I thank you for giving us some holiday cheer and getting yourself access to the aforementioned discord group with 400 plus other members as well as patreon exclusive monthly bonus pods one of which we will be publishing this week you can contact me and meg via email at podcast at vangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild you can rate rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod and find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. Meg and I will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Thank you.