Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1840: How Can You Not Be Pedantic About Baseball?

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the reaction to and tactical underpinnings of the Yankees’ controversial decision to walk Miguel Cabrera, the balance between win expectancy and entertainment, and whether analytically-driven changes have hurt baseball as a spectator experience more so than other sports, then (15:19) meet major leaguers Simón Muzziotti of the Phillies […]

With this in mind, I'll count the time. With this in mind, I'll count the time. With this in mind, I'll count time. You run my mind most of the time Hello and welcome to episode 1840 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Nate Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

Doing just dandy. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm realizing that if you ever change publications, I'm going to get the intro wrong for at least a week. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate. I've changed outlets a few times during the life of this podcast, but given the turnover rate in media in general these days, I'd say that being in the same place since 2016 and having the same podcast intro, it's pretty good. Pretty good run. Yeah, it's pretty great.

And I don't, you know, like I'm not telegraphing anything about a departure or anything like that. I was just thinking about it. I was like, I have a cadence I'm comfortable with. I know well, you know, it has familiar mouth feel. Yeah, it's like when you have a new year and you write the old year on your checks if anyone still writes physical checks anymore or wherever we still write dates if we actually write dates. It takes a while to adjust. So if one of us were to change outlets, then yeah, probably it would take several intros to just rewire the muscle memory or the mental memory

or whatever it is to get that right. It's a pattern that we are both used to. So we've got lots to do today. We've got Meet a Major Leaguer, the great return of that segment. We have a stat blast. We have some emails. I'll just pick up where we left off last time with the Miguel Cabrera intentional walk, which happened as we were speaking, as we were recording episode 1839. And we had a little real-time reaction to the walk that the Yankees issued to Cabrera

as he was sitting on 2,999 hits. So I played along and I booed. And yes, on some level, I took some offense at this or was affronted by this. I guess it was a little less fun in the moment than just going after cabrera i don't really care or i don't really i don't either the yankees or aaron boone i mean i think the main thing the main reason why i don't care aside from the fact that well you've got to win the game right and you know that's got to be your top priority as the manager of the yankees. But also, like, Cabrera will just get that hit today or tomorrow or sometime soon, right? It's

not like pulling someone from a perfect game where, unless it's Roki Sasaki at this point, possibly, like, he's probably not going to be going for a perfect game the next time out. So you're just losing that opportunity forever with Miggy when he's one hit away. I mean, unless something truly tragic happens, he's going to get that hit. So you're just making one group of fans happy instead of another group. And in fact, as long as the Tigers are still at home, which they are this weekend, probably have an even bigger crowd on a Friday than they would have had on a Thursday. So more people will get to say that they were there for Miguel Cabrera's 3,000th hit. So don't really care for that reason as well.

But other Ben Clemens ran the numbers, right, in a post that was just published at Fangraphs on Friday. And he concluded that it was actually a counterproductive decision by Boone, that if you factor in the particulars of the players who were up and on the mound and on deck, in the particulars of the players who were up and on the mound and on deck that it actually cost the Yankees about a percentage point of win expectancy. And of course, it did end up backfiring. Right. Austin Meadows actually hit a lefty and drove in runs.

So that's the range of most managerial decisions, like other than Joe Maddon issuing the basis of an intentional walk. Yeah, it's generally a small these are these are small percentage point sort of differences in win expectancy generally yeah and obviously Boone's decision making process led to him thinking that on balance things were shifted in the other direction that he was actually helping the Yankees win based on whatever he was drawing on but it does seem like very often these days we are having that conversation of fan entertainment versus what is optimal for the team, right?

And sometimes it is pulling a pitcher in the middle of a perfect game or no hitter, in which case it's what is optimal for the team and what is optimal for the pitcher's health probably. But it's bigger than that. Also, it's often like, you know, stealing bases less often than players used to steal bases, right? Because the math doesn't necessarily support the kind of attempt rates that we used to see. Or, you know, you could talk about just pitching styles, hitting styles. Like that has become a conversation in baseball now where

it seems like, and maybe my perceptions are skewed here because I don't follow other sports nearly as closely as I follow baseball, but it does seem like MLB has had the misfortune of maybe having what is on paper the correct decision be less often

the one that is also the more fan-friendly decision as opposed to say the NBA where people mostly like three-pointers I mean yes there's a conversation about are there too many now have we reached the tipping point the breaking point or in the NFL where people generally like passing like strategies that are advantageous or you, like going for it on fourth down, right? Which is exciting, right? Going for it on fourth down, more exciting than punting. And it feels like in baseball, more often, you would end up with punting being the optimal decision. I don't know what it is about baseball that leads to that being the case, but it seems like in most examples,

whenever the numbers come down on one side of a strategic decision, it's generally the less entertaining side, which is kind of too bad. Yeah, it's an interesting thing because I do think that there are people who watch, say, like the NFL and feel like we are missing something because we have deprioritized or maybe the direction of the decision is that we have prioritized scoring so dramatically in the last couple of years and some of the reasons for that are good right like it is i think to the sports ultimate benefit and to our enjoyment as fans benefit to like you know try to minimize devastating blows like to the head and neck

because that's terrifying and bad for people right like that part of football being different is good you know i think that part is good but i miss like some of the the defensive play that we used to see in a prior era because like it's it's fun to see a quarterback gets sacked it's fun to see the ball picked you know and that still happens but it's people are treating they treat people more tenderly you know it's fun to see the ball picked you know and that still happens but it's people are treating they treat people more tenderly you know it's like a tenderness now and some of that is good and some of it is less good i do think that we probably want to be careful not to like confuse our own aesthetic preferences for a statement about the sport like Like, I didn't love this decision because I think that I would have

rather see Miggy try to hit in that situation than not. And I, you know, when I was talking to Ben about writing that piece, I didn't want to put my thumb on the scale to say, like, you have to come out blustering about this. But I think that even if you, like, you should allow people, if this is consistent with how you feel, to still not like it, even if the math ends up saying that it was the right managerial decision. But I don't think that this is like, I don't know that this really says anything about baseball. version of a decision that not only gets made all the time across the sport when we're not looking at a guy on the precipice who's on the precipice of 3,000 hits but that doesn't really rankle fans all that dramatically in other moments the reason we care about this one is because Miggy was about to get 3,000 hits and I think absent that context like intentionally walking

a guy or not doesn't bother us. It's fine for us to say all things being equal. Like I'd like managers to put their thumb on the scale in favor of fans being able to see history. But like you said, like we're going to see it. We just didn't see it that day. And I will say in the interest of intellectual and emotional consistency, the following things were said after this baseball game. And I'm going to bring it interest of intellectual and emotional consistency,

the following things were said after this baseball game. And I'm going to bring it back to Kershaw. A.J. Hinch said he had zero doubt Cabrera was getting walked. This is from Jason back this game after the game. Booney's obligation is to his own team and their chances of winning. He had the matchup behind Miggy that he wanted, so you could see it coming. I know our fans responded accordingly, but I totally get it. And then Cabrera was asked about it

and he said he's not mad he got intentionally walked. No, my own base percentage went up. Yeah, right. And I think that one of the things that I said several times during our conversation around Kershaw was that none of the actual people employed by the Dodgers seemed mad about the decision that was made,

including Clayton Kershaw. And so since no one who works for the Tigers seems all that miffed, I'm going to say this is a thing that I don't have to get exercised about because they're not exercised. I mean, they exercise a lot because they're professional athletes, but I don't need to get worked up about it. I do think that you're right, that there seems to be this tension and conflict. And I don't know how resolvable it's going to end up being. I think ultimately we want teams and managers and players to be making the decision on the field in the interest of their team winning.

That needs to be a consistent through line in how they sort of conduct themselves because the alternative to that is is pretty dramatically bad but there are moments where it's like you have history in the balance and so you should think about how that history factors even if you ultimately don't decide to like let it take center stage in your decision making process i don't know i don't know how like i want i want there to be more stolen bases. I'm game for that. Yeah. I guess it comes back to a conversation we've had before about like who the sport is for. Is it for the players? Do they have ownership of the sport or is it more for the fans? Maybe it's a bit of both, but the fact that the two teams involved don't mind or that the team

that is supposedly the aggrieved party doesn't mind. I don't know that that affects my thoughts that much. I mean, yeah, if Clayton Kershaw had said that he wanted to stay in that game and Dave Roberts overruled him and that kind of thing, that might influence my perception of that decision by Dave Roberts. But it doesn't necessarily change my thinking about the entertainment value. Like, if I want to see Clayton Kershaw go for that perfect game, or I want to see Miguel Cabrera hit in that situation, the fact that they are not upset about having the ball or the bat taken out of their hands, I don't know that it changes my thinking that much. Like, I don't have to be offended on their behalf, but I could still be deflated on my own behalf, I guess.

It's, you know, maybe to argue against my own point, the intentional walk is almost an inherently anti-entertainment measure, right? I mean, it's a thing that a lot of people just don't like on principle, the idea that you can opt not to face someone and that you can just say, no, pass. I want to face that guy instead. That is often taking the bat out of the hands of maybe a better hitter, the confrontation you want to see. And yet in this era, we see intentional walks a lot less often for a number of reasons. I mean, we don't have pitchers hitting, but also because the numbers suggest that it's not a good idea. So some tactics like sacrifice bunts, which I don't find to be entertaining,

those are a lot less common. Intentional walks are a lot less common. So in some ways, I guess it actually has improved entertainment values. So, you know, and with home runs, which I think most fans on balance find pretty entertaining and exciting. We've seen a lot more of those. That would be the equivalent to the NBA three-pointer revolution or the NFL passing revolution. In MLB, we've seen a lot more homers. Of course, that has to do with the ball as much as it has to do with anything

else. But it's also a reflection of just a change in styles and what you prioritize offensively, again, maybe because of the numbers. So I guess it comes down to, in many cases, like the lack of contact, the lack of steals, and the strikeouts. I mean, that's something that a lot of people lament, and that is certainly at least partly analytically driven. And I guess I would still say that while I generally agree that making more contact is good, having more action on defense is good, maybe having more base runners is good, it can also still be really entertaining when a pitcher is just whiffing everyone. Like when we were talking about Otani the other night and he's just like making the Astros look silly with these splitters and sliders. Like that was a ton of fun to watch.

Maybe not for Astros fans, but for anyone who enjoys Otani or masterful pitching, that was a fun display of pitching prowess. So there's something to that. The way they reacted to Nico Goodrum suggested the Astros fans were just like, we're going to let this happen to us. That's fine. Ultimately, I guess it comes down to just having to have someone step in. Ultimately, I guess it comes down to just having to have someone step in. I mean, my extended spiel on our last episode about the need for roster restrictions on the number of pitchers you can carry, that's an example where, yeah, analytically, it might make sense to have everyone have these super short and say, well, this has gone too far. We're going to take some action here. So I don't know.

Maybe it's a false premise that baseball has actually become less entertaining on net as a result of these changes relative to other sports. I think that is the popular perception generally. And I think there is some truth to it, but it's not universally true. And I guess all sports are sort of subject to the concern that we have about baseball. Sometimes the lack of baseball biodiversity or the idea that there's only one way to play, that there's just one preferred strategy, and that you only have this certain player archetypes who promote that strategy. So you might get that more in basketball or football as well. Oh, we just want guys who shoot three-pointers or who pass or who can catch the ball. It's sort of the same as in baseball

with we want power hitters, we want strikeout pitchers, etc. So again, maybe the idea that baseball has it uniquely bad is a bit overblown. Yeah, I think that that's fair. But also, you're right. Mikey's just going to hit it a different day. He gets to play the Rockies.

All right. So let's see. We've got emails. We've got Meet a Major Leaguer. We've got a StatBlast. Should we just go right to Meet a Major Leaguer and StatBlast, just our special segment? And then we'll get our emails in after that and fit in however many we have time for. Sure.

For sure. Major leaguer It's been a while since our last Meet a Major Leaguer, and we have a whole lot of new major leaguers to meet this season. We've talked about the big ones, of course, many of the top prospects who have come up, but there have been 56 players who have made their Major League debuts so far this season through Thursday's games, and many of them are more obscure and that was the original intention behind this segment which we started last season just because there are so many major leaguers now there are more than ever primarily because of pitching and maybe there will be fewer now because of the changes to IL stint length and the option rules

and all of that. So that should reduce the shuffle somewhat. But as long as we have giant bullpens and pitchers cycling in and out, we are going to have a lot of major leaguers to meet and a lot that even people like us who are pretty plugged in are just not aware of or couldn't tell you anything about beyond their names. So let's get to it. I guess today we are actually not introducing you to pitchers. We are going to go with a pair of position players. So would you care to go first? Sure. I would be happy to go first. This is actually a suggestion to us from Jay, a Patreon supporter. So thank you for pointing it out. And I'm going to introduce us to Phillies center fielder, Simon Muziati,

us to philly's center fielder simone muziati who inauspiciously was optioned to the minors today oh no moments before we started recording but he is still worth meeting he has a pretty he has a pretty remarkable story so here i'm going to start by reading from a piece by matt gelb at the athletic uh muziati was at a hotel in Redding, Pennsylvania when his phone rang last Thursday. This piece is from April 11th. So that, you know, the Thursday before April 11th. It was Jorge Valencia, a fellow Venezuelan and Philly's assistant general manager. He had life-changing news.

Muziotti, who played all of 20 minor league games last season because of visa problems, was going to the majors because Mickey Moniak broke his hand during his final at-bat of spring training. I couldn't believe it, Muziati said through a team interpreter. And I was like, is this for real? Are they really calling me up? And we're going to spend some time talking about his profile, but I just like this bit to close the section of this piece that Gelb wrote. After the news was delivered, Muziati called his parents in Venezuela. My mom couldn't believe it, he said. My dad just started screaming. And the visa problems for Muziati were like a very meaningful problem. He effectively missed two years of stateside development,

right, because we had the pandemic in 2020. And then his visa problems last year kept him off the field for most of the season. And here I am going to read from our prospect report on muziati where he was ranked 19th in the philly system prior to the start of the season visa issues kept muziati off the field for most of 2021 but once he was activated in late august the phillies put him on a fast track he played one game on the complex then three at low a four at high a and four at double a before finishing the season with eight games in triple a that month-long whirlwind makes for a minuscule sample, upon which it seems unreasonable to pin many drastic changes to the center fielder's report. The component most lacking is still his power production,

with just five of his 21 hits going for extra bases in 2021 and none leaving the park. He'll occasionally show an incredible ability to rotate, but doesn't yet do so consistently enough for him to build around it. He can rip his hands through the zone and get the barrel on pitches inside and he can spoil tough pitches on the edge of the zone but most of his contact is in the form of ground outs and line singles that said during the fall he laid off the outer zone pitches he once typically squibbed into easy outs we're enamored with the rotational athleticism here and want to see what happens when he gets to play a full healthy season so he was a 40 future value

prospect entering the season he's sort of renowned for his bat ball skills but as the report here notes not much of power hitter although his speed has translated into pretty good defense so he was brought up in addition to the moniac injury adobo herrera was on the injured list the reason he was optioned today muziati that is because her Herrera is making his return from the aisle. He debuted on April 11th, and his big league production so far is interesting because he hasn't hit all that often. He has mostly been a late game sort of defensive replacement.

He had a pinch running appearance. So he came up on the 11th, and his season stats, you know, they're not much to write home about he is so far hitting 143 250 143 with a 27 wrc plus but that is in all of nine plate appearances so this is a guy who will probably get more consistent development time in the minors for a bit here which is probably something he needs given the amount of time that he has missed. But before he was optioned, he was just, he was having a great time. He said, it's pretty good that I'm playing with Bryce Harper, Alec Baum, Didi Gregorius,

players you see on TV. I'm playing with them. It's amazing. And so we hope we see you again in the big league soon. Muziati, he seems like he just plays with a really great spirit and vibe. I love to play baseball. When I can't do it, it's tough on me. So we hope you see you again soon.

That is Simone Muziati. There you go. He's only 23. He's only 23. Should be back, left-handed hitter. It's not a bad thing to be a pretty talented defensive replacement for the Phillies. No. One would think that that could play. not plan a and maybe it wasn't even plan b and i know they traded adam hazley to the white socks during spring training too so they were super shorthanded and they've been relying on matt

veerling a lot too so maybe it was not the plan but uh it became the plan and he became the beneficiary of that so that's nice and he has some fun stories to tell yeah you wouldn't have expected it based on how often he played in the minors last year no it's it's like really it's really an incredible thing he he had like he just had so few played appearances and that he would be in a position where you know even one understands with the roster constraints that they had in the injuries that you know he was probably being thrust into the big leagues before they would have otherwise had him on that developmental trajectory, but that he was at least playable enough in center and speedy

and able to get that call is great. So he'll go get his work in at AA, and I imagine we will see him back in the big leagues at some point because, as you said, the all-vibes thing. Who knows how long it'll last, Ben? All right. Well, my guy is on the Toronto Blue Jays, and he still is, some point because as you said the all vibes thing who knows how long it'll last ben all right well my guy is on the toronto blue jays and he still is as we speak his name is gosuke kato yes kato he's someone who's actually been on my radar for quite a while although i guess for sort of a

strange fangrass specific reason yes but uh he is uh", 200 pounds, bats left, throws right. So he is a sinister right-hander. And he is from Mountain View, California. He was drafted by the Yankees in the second round in 2013. And he's been bouncing around the minors ever since, 764 career minor league games. four career minor league games. And he's done pretty well there. Career 292, 383, 457 line in more than 700 AAA plate appearances. He's played every position in pro ball except for catcher and center field. So it's his 10th season in pro baseball, and he made the Jays out of spring training. And he sounded as surprised to do that as Musiati did. And he was then optioned, but then he was recalled when Teoscar Hernandez was placed on the injured list. So he is back on the Blue Jays, and he actually made his first start this week on Thursday.

He started at second base, and got a couple of plate appearances. He walked in one of them and scored and he had prior to that only pinch run. I think he made his debut pinch running for Alejandro Kirk on April 9th. And he seems to be a pretty fun and interesting guy. a pretty fun and interesting guy, but I will just say that I've been aware of him for a long time because he lent his name, perhaps unbeknownst to him, at least initially, to a projection system that former Fangraphs writer

and former Effectively Wild guest Chris Mitchell developed called CATO, in all caps. I don't think that stood for anything. I don't know if that was a backer to him. I think it was just... I think it was just after the player, yeah. Yeah, and Chris developed that system initially in a Fangraphs community research blog post back in July 2014, and he named it after Kato. Kato really inspired him to look into how to project minor leaguers and look at the expectations for minor leaguers,

which was the whole reason for being of the Coteau system. Because Coteau at that time, who was in, I think, low A, the Charleston Riverdogs in the Yankee system, he was striking out a ton, but he was also very young for the level and for the league, and he was walking too. And so Chris got interested because he realized that he didn't really know how to balance those things. He's striking out a ton. That seems bad, but he's also really young for the league. Is this on balance better or worse? He didn't know. develop a whole system based on minor league comps and history and age and all sorts of biographical attributes. And that system got more and more sophisticated over time, so much so that eventually Chris was hired by the Minnesota Twins and he now works for the Twins, which is why he no longer writes for Fangraphs or comes on Effectively Wild. But I always enjoyed that work.

And he has tipped me off in the past to some minor league free agent draft candidates based on some unsung Coteau picks. And in that initial 2014 post that Chris wrote, his system, his rudimentary at that time system gave Coteau only a 27% chance to make the majors. And he obviously beat that. And Chris tweeted when Kato made his debut to say that he was happy to be proven wrong about that. And Kato seems to have embraced this role when he was signed by the Blue Jays back in January.

He actually tweeted out a video of former folk hero and Blue Jays utility man muninori kawasaki the famous clip of kawasaki saying i am japanese and uh he changed that clip he like uh embedded his own name in there so that kawasaki said i am kato basically so he's embracing that. And at the time, he had a little Twitter FAQ. Do you hit lefty or righty? Lefty. What position do you play? Yes.

And how many bananas do you eat in a day? Two. Because a monkey never cramps. Is that true? I don't know. I mean, they can't exactly tell us. No. They do a lot of swinging and don't seem to do a lot of falling.

So perhaps. Anyway, he wrote a post for the Players' Tribune back in March in Japanese for International Women's Day, where he wrote about all of the women in baseball who he has intersected with in some professional capacity and who have helped him to this point in his career. And he has an interesting philosophy about defense. He's a good defender. And he explained this in an MLB.com article earlier this year. He said, I take it personally, hitting always overshadows fielding. And that's just part of the game. But there's a pitcher on the mound who's my teammate. That's not just his career. It's his life.

That's how I view defense. I'm going to do anything in my ability to help this guy's career out and also his life that's the way i view the infield i think that's what leads to some of the edge that comes out of me on defense so that's an interesting little philosophy that's nice and he was photographed back in march in spring training wearing some pretty tight pants and someone joked on twitter that maybe he had borrowed robbie ray's pretty tight pants. And someone joked on Twitter that maybe he had borrowed Robbie Ray's famously tight pants, formerly for the Blue Jays.

And it turned out that it was not a joke. He actually had borrowed Robbie Ray's tight pants. He was wearing Robbie Ray's pants. Stop it. Yeah, he was. Really? He wanted the tightest pants that he could find. And apparently Malik Smith one day said he wanted the tightest shirt that they could give him.

And so he wore a tight shirt onto the field. And Coteau said, you know what? I'm going to copy you. I'm going to try to get the tightest pants. I knew Robbie had those tight pants last year and I wanted to wear them. And so he did. So that's interesting. wear them and so he did so that's interesting and uh you know he's willing to play anywhere and do anything and i don't know how long he will last on this blue chase roster because it's a

pretty talented infield if you hadn't noticed so he is uh in there with vlad and bigio and bichette and all these big names and also Santiago Espinal, who's another utility player who's been on the Bucs before. So I don't know that Coteau will survive the cuts that happen at the end of this month when rosters are trimmed from 28 players to 26, but I'm rooting for him and hoping that he'll be back one way or another.

So good for Coteau. He's like the modern day Bill Pakoda. He went his name to a sabermetric projection system. So he's a niche famous for that, but also now more famous because he is a major league player and he beat out his former teammate greg bird for that roster spot bird is now with the yankees back in the minors of course but he put in the time he put in the effort and here he is on the blue jays so good for him yeah and the the projection system that he inspired didn't even make it so we can't write about catchers coming out of baltimore without

hearing snark so he's got that going for him. All right. Well, those were major leaguers we just met. And, of course, feel free to recommend any other major leaguers that you think that we and our audience should meet. Always enjoy shining a little light on some of the lesser known players out there because being a big leaguer in whatever capacity, is pretty impressive even if it doesn't last that long all right so let's just segue straight into the stat blast here And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's stat blast. Okay, so this stat blast I had originally planned to deploy yesterday,

but it turned out I had a lot to say on the subject of roster limits for pitchers. You had so many words, Ben. And this is a podcast where we say words, so that's not a criticism, but I haven't heard you that worked up about something since the zombie runner rule. I know, yeah. I'm going to have to write about this something since the zombie runner rule. I know. Yeah. I'm going to have to write about this probably just to get it out of my system. But the question is, what is contributing to the length of games these days? We know that games are longer than they used to be.

And generally, we talk about that being a result of pace and longer time between pitches. And that is certainly true, but that is maybe not all that it is. And I got an email, we got an email from a Patreon supporter who prompted this little inquiry here. Patreon supporter Daniel wrote in to say, I saw a line graph in Axios showing how the average game time has gone from two hours to over three hours in the last 70 years. And a friend and I were wondering how closely the pitch counts are correlated to this. Can you tell us how many more pitches are thrown per game now versus, say, 1950? If game time is up 100%, I wonder if pitch count is up 100% or more like 70%? Any help appreciated? 100% or more like 70% any help appreciated. So I had to disappoint Daniel in the sense that we don't have pitch counts going back that far. We only have comprehensive pitch counts in MLB going back to 1988, which is when Sam famously used to say, this is when modern baseball began. So I can look back to then, but I think this is an interesting thing and an unsung thing because we talk a ton about pitch clocks and i'm an advocate of the pitch clock we talked about that recently but

the pitch clock would not prevent more pitches from being thrown it would just make them speedier right which might only solve part of the problem like for instance there was an earlier Yankees-Tigers game this week that was very long. It went so long. It went on for... It's amazing that Miggy didn't get his 3,000th hit in that game because I'm shocked that it has concluded. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

It was cold and the pitchers were wild and Garrett Cole was bad and a lot of things happened. But our friends at Cespedes Family Barbecue used StatHead, which of course is our sponsor for this segment, to determine that this was the second longest nine inning game with a final score of four to two on record. That's a lot of qualifiers, but it was second only behind a 2011 YankeesRed Sox game that lasted four hours and 21 minutes. This one, I think, lasted three hours and 59 minutes. That's not a coincidence that those Yankees-Red Sox games are so long. It's not just that their pitchers or their hitters dawdle. It's that they tend to have good hitters and they tend to have patient hitters and they take a lot of pitches and throw a lot of pitches. So it's both things. pitches and throw a lot of pitches. So it's both things. But the fact that this game lasted so long well, the number of pitches thrown in this game was 371. And this season, the average number of

pitches thrown in a nine inning game, 297. So this was 25% more pitches than are thrown in the average nine inning game now. And it was 28% longer than the average nine inning game in terms of time, which is three hours and six minutes now. So those things very closely mirror one another. So you might think, oh, just everyone was taking a long time, but it was that a lot of pitches were thrown. There were 14 total pitchers. So there were a bunch of pitching changes, but there were 16 walks, there were 24 strikeouts, and that is kind of emblematic of the way baseball is played now. There are a lot of pitches thrown. So if we look at 1988, the first year that we have full data for, and thanks to Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference for a bit of research assistance here.

baseball reference for a bit of research assistance here. Back then, there were about 3.5 pitches per plate appearance or per batter faced. Now there are about 3.9. So we've added about 0.4 pitches per plate appearance, and it's gone up fairly steadily since the first year that we have this data. And I think there are multiple reasons for that. One is that there are a lot of foul balls these days, which Travis Sotchick has written about, just an epidemic of foul balls, probably because pitchers are nasty. It's hard to hit their stuff.

And so there's more fouls. And also, Travis noted, there's been a significant reduction in the amount of foul territory in new ballparks as opposed to older ballparks. And so there is, in theory, less disincentive to hitting foul balls now because they're probably going to go into the stands. And also, you're probably not going to hurt anyone now that there's netting or at least there's less chance of that. So more foul balls, but also more nibbling or waste pitches or however you want to describe it, right? Like a ton of breaking balls.

Everyone's going for the strikeout. They're trying to get whiffs. They're trying to get chases. I wrote about this at The Ringer a few years ago. Like no one's pounding the zone anymore. I mean, there is a movement now. anymore. I mean, there is a movement now. We heard Matt Brash say this on our last episode that now some teams are telling their pitchers who are just unhittable, just like, hey, throw it over the middle or as best you can, and it'll go one way or another, but like no one will hit it. So don't

try to get too cute. But in general, like, you know, because there are fewer fastballs and because strikeouts are king now, you're just seeing more and more pitches per plate appearance and you also have to factor in how many plate appearances there are per game because that fluctuates as well with the level of offense and the majors and the on base percentage that is actually pretty standard if you compare now to 1988 for, there were an average of like 76 batters per game between the two teams in 1988. And now it's like almost exactly the same. Actually, it has been higher, like at the peak of the, you know, turn of the century high scoring era was like 79. And then it dropped, you know, lower, but now it's at 76, which is basically where it was. So that's kind of consistent. But basically, if you look at just where we've gone since 1988, in general, last year, our last full season, the time per nine inning game was up 15.2% relative to 1988.

And pitches per nine innings was up 11.8 percent so it's like 15 percent increase in time 12 percent increase in pitches so the increase in just the number of pitches thrown actually explains maybe most of the increase in time of game which is uh perhaps problematic because even if you put pitch clocks in place, that might not actually do anything to address that issue. Well, and I find it disconcerting because I think the things we want to think of as extending game length is like advertising and pitching changes and futzing around with your gloves in the box and stepping out and all that stuff.

And we tend to sort of bucket all of that in dead air, right? Like we're thinking about that as sort of the space between the action. But like we can't say pitches aren't action, right? It's not action in the field in the way that like stolen bases would be or putting the ball in play. And so I think that that part of the sort of nervousness about the direction of the game we can maintain because those things are different.

But it suggests to me that we maybe don't like baseball as much as we do. Because pitches are good and you get to a point where like enough with the foul balls already. We all sound like we're in an episode of Seinfeld, but it suggests something kind of worrying about how we interact with baseball. That we're like, you know that thing that these guys

spend their entire lives training how to do or react to? What if we had fewer of those things? That makes me worried, Ben. That makes me a little nervous that so much of what we don't like about the time of game stuff is baseball yeah it i guess it it's pitches or action certainly but yeah you also have more pitches per batted ball event or per ball and play right so maybe the way to think about it that won't make me fret at two in the morning is that the ratio is out of sync to what we want. We're out of balance with what we would ideally see in terms of balls in play versus pitches delivered to the plate, but it does make me nervous. It makes me a little worried. Yeah. No, I mean-

It doesn't make me feel better. Travis noted that there are more foul balls than balls in play now that that happened. Those lines crossed a few years back. And so, yes, if you could have more action pitches like plate appearance ending pitches at that ending pitches, then I think we would like that. But more pitches that just lead to deeper counts and no outcome, perhaps that's not as exciting. But I think, you know, just in general, like 1988, the average time of a nine inning game was two hours, 45 minutes. Now, as we speak, it's three hours, six minutes. So, you know, if we've added about 20 minutes or so to the average time of game there, we've also added about 30 pitches. So it was 268 pitches per nine innings in 1988. Now, thus far this season, it's 297. And, you know, it's been right around 300 now for several years. So I think it's just maybe an underappreciated thing. Like we talked about the pitch clock as a panacea.

I'm still absolutely pro pitch clock, but I just, I think we need to maybe do something to reduce the number of pitches to it. It seems like just in the last few years, we've seen an increase in game time without really a corresponding increase in the number of pitches. So just lately in this last several years, an increase in game time without really a corresponding increase in the number of pitches. So just lately in this last several years, maybe those things have become decoupled in a way that has led to more attention. Like, you know, just batters, pitchers are dawdling without actually

throwing more pitches over that short timeframe. So that may be why we're focusing so much on time between pitches. And I think we should focus on both. It's just that putting the pitch clock in place might not get us all the way back to the late 80s. It might only be a smaller advantage. like that so it should work but there is also this other underlying core cause so i think the solution obviously is to limit the number of pitchers on active rosters because if uh only if pitchers have to go deeper into games then they will not be able to afford to waste so many pitches right so they'll just have to come in there and throw strikes and therefore we will see fewer pitches per plate appearance and things will move along more speedily well and i think that it's useful for us to remember that like the number we're trying to manage to is not zero like we want there to be baseball

so we don't have to you know i think that what we should do and what we are likely to do seemingly is to like implement the pitch clock and see what reduction we get and we might say like that's enough like we're we're moving along it feels like the game is sort of moving at a pace that is more in line with sort of what our expectation is and see where we land on that because maybe our perception of you know how much action we're getting how many balls are being put in play is going to balance in the game's favor once we have 20 fewer minutes or however many fewer minutes we have where it's like the the underlying characteristics of how many pitches we get and how many balls in play we see might not shift all that dramatically but you know given how they will

be spaced it will feel sufficiently different for us to be like, yeah, look at this fun zippy afternoon that I'm having at the ballpark. Since we don't have to reduce it to nothing, we just have to reduce it some, I think that we're able to try a thing and see how it goes, see how it all feels, you know, can try it on. And then, you know, if we need to do further trimming from there, we can. And we can say, you can never take your batting gloves off, even to pee. You must simply have them on always. Stop futzing with them. Why are you doing that so much? And then there will be like a horrible contagion of some sort or results of that.

And they're like, okay, you can take them back off to pee, but you must keep them on in the box or something like that, you know. And we'll try some different stuff and see what works some hitters pee on their hands they don't want gloves on because they really wish we didn't know that because it's a very small number of guys who have ever entertained it as a thing that they would do and and i submit that the few was too many and it has an outsized place in my brain it is a thing i know and it is a thing that like people who don't know about baseball seem to know about baseball like i have had relatives who are like did i hear right that like sometimes baseball players pee on their hands and then i have to be like this is not common like just because it is true doesn't mean it is like

meaningfully true it's a big country people do all kinds of stuff it doesn't mean it's a trend yeah good point well i have mentioned before that i think we maybe make too much of the distinction between pace of game and length of game because those things do go hand in hand often yeah but i think even if like a waste pitch a pitch that does not produce an outcome of the plate appearance is not super exciting still more exciting than standing around doing nothing. So I think even if we still have more pitches than we used to, and therefore that makes games longer, I think it would still be an improvement to have those pitches be faster and less time elapsing between those pitches.

So we should do both, but be aware that the pitch clock might not address everything all right thanks for that question so let's answer a few emails here this is a comment really from nat who says it's never too early in the pod to be pedantic about baseball that's our our motto how can you not be pedantic about baseball and nat says i was pretty happy when the league decided to mic up the umpires for replay announcements but my heart fell when I first heard the ump speak words aloud and over the first couple weeks of the

season it's only gotten worse here's the issue the ump will get on the mic and say something like after review the call stands the runner was safe at first San Francisco loses their challenge their challenge I'm sure you see the issue many of our challenge. Their challenge. I'm sure you see the issue. Many of our listeners

are probably thinking, no, I'm not. What is the issue? It is maybe not an issue to them. But San Francisco, Nat says, is a singular noun, and American English traditionally uses the singular form when referring to a team by its city. The Giants are plural, but San Francisco is singular.

In every single game I've watched or listened to, the ump makes the same mistake. Miami loses their challenge. Minnesota loses their challenge. Is this a mandate from Manfred, or do we as fans need to start a letter-writing campaign? little postscript here. In British English, it's proper to use the plural form for all collective nouns. For example, Fulham are playing Chelsea this weekend, or you two are going to play a concert for the Queen. But we don't play cricket here in the US. Well, some people do. And we make our pronouns agree with their antecedent nouns. So Nat is worked up about this. I am with him. I don't know if I'm as worked up about it as he is, but in general, we're both editors. And if someone were to write this in some copy that we were editing, we would probably change it if we were sharp that day. So I guess we have some copy editing notes for MLB umpires. Right. And there are definitely instances, I think, with increasing frequency where you will use like a plural pronoun to refer to a singular proper noun, right? We do that all the time with respect to people. So it is not as if it is always improper. Sometimes it is perfectly proper. It is exactly what you should do.

This is easily one of the biggest, like most frequent copy edits I make in text at Fangraphs. I don't say that to call out Fangraphs writers. This is clearly a pervasive issue within the way that people write about baseball. But yeah, my preference personally is to use their when referring to say the Giants or the Twins or the mariners or the yankees or whatever and then when i'm referring to the city i say it's and it's the same when i'm referring to team or club when i when it says team or club it's not right right so yeah they should say like the giants retain their challenge or you know the mets lose their challenge yeah the fact that it is so consistent across the umpire population suggests to me that like when they when the league wrote what i assume

is like the memo that they wrote to umpires about how these were going to be announced that like that is the example sentence that was used my response part of my response in email to this question was what happens when like the mets and the yankees play one another right yeah you know when you say new york there you're losing clarity and potentially confusing people so you should just use the team name because then you get around the the the there uh it's issue entirely you have agreement and in the instances where you have teams like you know the white socks and the cubs play one another you which chicago do you mean you know i guess there they could say like north side and south side that'd be kind of cool that'd be kind of cool

like south side loses a challenge and then it's like oh this is an indictment of a whole part of the city my goodness so i think that this is you know like much pendentry not pedantic pet pet what what's the word i want here we are tree wait hold on because you refer to uh pedantry pedantry you know i think that the humility of this moment is important as we're snarking about people i'm gonna i'm gonna say dylan you should leave it in you know to air is human you know so there we go and then there's the thing about the divine i don't remember anyway this is a bit of pedantic nonsense that doesn't it doesn't actually matter that much like we should we should say i don't think that this should necessitate a letter writing campaign just think about those poor umpires they're probably nervous enough And then they're going to be getting letters about how they should be saying

giants and not. It's fine. I mean, it's wrong, but it's like not a bit of wrongness that matters. You know, it's like not it's unimportant wrongness. And there's a lot of important wrongness out there. So maybe, you know, we want to concentrate our efforts there. But it is a thing I notice. I wonder I'm trying to think now as a person who watches football i guess i should say american football where there have long been explanations of rules decisions and replay decisions i'm trying to think what they do i think they say the the city name i think it's the same and i think they say there so maybe this is like maybe all maybe there's like a convention is there like an officiating conference it would probably take place in las vegas because all conferences seem to and maybe this is like the preferred method

of announcing the results of a replay review because i i think that they say like you know seattle retains their challenge or because it's the seahawks seattle loses their challenge that's a little joke for all my fellow annoyed at p carol heads out there um you know so yeah i think that this is like a consistent theme across sport not just in baseball so maybe they're just taking a cue from from the nfl or the nba or the wmba or whatever you know yeah i would actually prefer that they yes change it to the team name and say there because even though it's uh correct technically correct the best kind of correct to say seattle loses its challenge or whatever it still sounds sort of stilted right it sounds

i mean we know we're talking about a team of players it's a whole collective and we're not talking about the city of seattle we're talking about this group of players and so it sounds sort of strange to say it's even though that is what i would write or change it to probably so i think yes just changing it to the team name and saying they're just that avoids a whole host of issues so i think that is what we should support and another thing that's been bothering me i was trying to write the podcast description for our most recent episode where we were talking about the a's it's really hard to make the a's possessive yeah right like you can say the a is like oh the a's attendance this season know, the A's ballpark is the Coliseum. But that's not right, really, because A's is just like it's a shortened version of athletics. And so you haven't actually really made it possessive. It's not that they are the A and this is the A's ballpark. And so what are you going to do do say the A's is and have like multiple apostrophes

just do the athletics and put a one on the end yeah you can do that or you can just write around it or say Oakland or something but it's uh that vexes me sometimes because normally I would just refer to that team as the A's but then when I want to make that possessive, uh-oh, I'm in trouble now. All right. This is a brief one from Brian, I guess, related to that stat blast. Do you think the pitch clock, if it actually gets Major League Games down to 245-ish, which is somewhat in doubt now, will incentivize eliminating the zombie runner rule or at least maybe waiting to implement it in the 11th or 12th inning? Sadly, I'm guessing no, but would be interested in your opinions. Yeah, I think it could help if game time were a less pressing concern and something that people were complaining about a little less often.

It wouldn't hurt the campaign to do away with the zombie runner. I think primarily people want the zombie runner just because of the possibility of the extra long game, which to be fair, I guess if I'm advocating roster restrictions on pitchers, am I suggesting that maybe you might need to keep the zombie runner? Because if you only have a certain number of pitchers, then it's hard to plan for that rare 15 inning game. I don't want to give more ammunition to the pro zombie runner lobby. But anyway, if you were able to trim 15, 20 minutes off of game times,

then, you know, you'd be saving on average, probably more than the zombie runner is typically saving you in an extra inning game. So I think it would help. It might just be so entrenched now or at that point that you might never get rid of it. But I'm still holding out hope and it couldn't hurt to trim the time it takes to play the nine innings before you get to extras.

Right. I think it helps to bolster the case. I feel like we have lost this battle, particularly since the terms under which it was introduced weren't like explicitly about game time they were more about like they were about game time but not as a games go too long it's like games go longer than nine and sometimes much longer than nine and we want to it was limiting the time of game was about limiting contact between the players or at least that was what we were told right and so it's about game time but it's not really about game time or strain on the players i guess right spring training exactly and now it just seems to be a thing that they like and i don't get that this is another

example they're working against see working against the interest of fans like imbues it with like a purpose that it just doesn't have see i think that's part of my issue with this whole thing it's like they're not trying to job anybody maybe the indifference is worse like you could you can think that but it's not as if they are looking at it and saying here are the interests of the team and those are the interests of the fans and screw those cats anyway not the feral cats but us us. Yeah. All right. Rob, Patreon supporter, says, as a long-suffering Mariners fan, what other kind is there? My favorite thing about my team for a long time was the anticipation of what could be with whatever top prospects we had at the time. Remember Jeff Clement? Boo.

It was really cool a few years ago when Fangraph started rating the tools of each team's prospects on the 20 to 80 grade tool scale with current and future values that determined the value of said prospects. And I, of course, ate it up with guys like Julio Rodriguez and Jared Kelnick. However, I'm always disappointed when I look at a guy like, say, Eugenio Suarez and see that he debuted too long ago to have the prospect analysts rate his power on the scale. Today, it got me thinking, why don't we keep rating these guys' tools as they get older and grow into established major leaguers? We have more data and video on them than anyone, and I think it would be really cool to have a running list on fangraphs of a guy's power and hit tool as he ages and seeing his speed slowly dip from 60 down to 30 as he turns from centerfield to first base. Selfishly, I'd also like to get confirmation of Eugenio Suarez's 80-grade power, but I

guess his power doesn't need a grade when you see him rifle a low-line drive to right center in T-Mobile that somehow gets into the stance. We have thought about doing this, actually. We have had talk of like, should we sort of maintain tool grades for players as they progress through the majors? And the reason we haven't is mostly because like, we just don't have the people to do it. Right. And it's a less pressing need because to this email's point, like they do generate stats.

Yes. to this email's point, like they do generate stats. Yes. Which isn't the same exactly as a tool grade, although we do sort of use our understanding of big league stats to inform tool grades and to think about like, what does this tool grade translate into if it were part of a player's major league stat line?

But we have stats, like we have all these stats. We have so, we're lousy with stats. And so while that isn't quite the same as saying like among the the major the big league population like who are the guys who have true 80 grade power we have a a sense of like who is an elite power hitter and is hitting consistently for power versus the guys who don't do that so there's been less of a need but But we have talked about it. But then we're like, you know, 11 of us. From a full-time perspective.

So I was like, this is not enough folks to do it. So, yeah. Yeah. It would be educational, I guess, just to have that as a resource when you're comparing to minor leaguers. Which is maybe what scouts are doing in their heads. But it would be nice, I guess, for fans to be able to calibrate things like, oh, okay, that is what 70 power looks like. I know that guy in the big leagues.

And so I can map that onto someone who is said to have a present or future value of that in the minors. But yeah, especially now that we have StatCast, which is basically giving you scouting type information and so you can look up the percentile of someone's sprint speed or hard hit rate or whatever it is or fastball velocity like we have some analogs of that stuff already and we also have the results whereas with the minor leaguer you're trying to project how good are they going to be with a big leaguer we know how good they are currently are they going to be with a big leaguer we know how good they are currently and they could still improve of course you could still have a future tool grade

for a big leaguer that's different from their present tool grade but yeah i see why it's not that pressing and why we have decent analogs of this already but yeah sorry about jeff clement sorry about julio rodriguez's slow start i know he's gotten jobbed a bit with balls and strikes, but it has not been any more encouraging than Jared Kelnick's slow start was last season. It's great to see those guys. It'd also be nice to see those guys break out. I'm sure it's coming. our listeners are interested in the specifics of how Julio has been getting jobbed. Justin Choi wrote about that for us at Fangraphs today. It is a fun piece that I think, you know, this time of year is so weird to write about baseball because you're like, does this mean anything? I don't know. And I think that Justin did a very nice job of sort of appropriately caveating that. But he looked at the called third strikes that julio

is experiencing he's basically getting like the lefty strike zone but as a righty and so that's that's interesting to have happen it is not the only issue one might take with sort of his early performance so like you know caveat it appropriately but anyway go read that piece because it was good you know justin saw an injustice and he was like i'm gonna describe it to you uh and he looked at like how hitters strike zones tend to evolve as they age and some of the confounding factors there and anyway it's a good piece and everyone should go read it yeah we actually got an email about that prompted by julio from patreon supporter paul who was wondering about the idea that there's a bias against younger

players when it comes to strike zones and i sent him some previous studies about that and i know justin looked at it a little there seems to be a little something there yeah maybe a little bias towards accomplished players and veteran players but it's not enough to explain cleo rodriguez's strikeout raid or you know it's not so much that you would really notice it in a meaningful way it's an edge case here or there so he's just had some unfortunate calls go against him all right question from

Jake who says I was in the depths of YouTube yesterday and as a Red Sox fan stumbled on a video covering Dustin Pedroia's 25 game hit streak in 2011 I really enjoy following hit streaks as their novelty in relation to one of the records considered to be unbreakable make the stakes surrounding them relatively high. This led me to consider, if a player like Dustin Pedroia, who had a good but certainly

not Hall of Fame-worthy career, had broken Joe DiMaggio's unbreakable 56-game hitting streak, would that be enough to at least merit a couple extra years on the ballot? Similar to the question about Kyle Higashioka being on the cover of MLB The Show, what would be the minimum a player would have to do in addition to breaking DiMaggio's record to get in the Hall of Fame? Or do you think it would not have an effect? Oh, man, I applaud you for having a depths of YouTube moment that didn't result in something terrifying. So good on you for that. That's the first thing I would say. I mean, for having a depths of YouTube moment that didn't result in something terrifying. So good on you for that.

That's the first thing I would say. I mean, it's a little bit hard for me to imagine. I do think that this could have some kind of an effect. I think Dustin Pedroia is going to hang around the ballot for a while when he is considered. But I take the question in the spirit in which it is given. he is considered. So but I take the question in the spirit in which it is given. I mean, I think that there are players who have had sort of shining moments who don't end up sticking around all that often. I think that it's less about the quality of the milestone than the general ballot crowding. Right. So I think that there are a lot of Hall of Fame voters who, assuming that they

have room on their ballots, will sort of throw a vote to a guy who they know isn't a lot of Hall of Fame voters who, assuming that they have room on their ballots, will sort of throw a vote to a guy who they know isn't a Hall of Famer, but whose case they think merits like a little bit further consideration or whose career was like in the very good but not great sort of range. And so as sort of a tip of the cap to that player and an acknowledgement that like their case, they should at least get talked about for more than a year. I think that people will vote for those folks, but it assumes that there's room on their ballot to do that. And I think this is part of what we in the BBWA have sort of pushed back against, which is like limiting the ballot the way that it has makes it hard for guys like this to sort of get a couple of years of conversation right they don't get three or four years of profiles from jjaffee they maybe only

get one because there just isn't room on the ballot to always consider them and some of that stuff is clearing out now right we we've sort of of moved past the bulk of like really obvious guys. And so maybe we'll get a couple of years where this is considered, but I think it's fine for that to be part of the calculus for a hall of fame voter and for them to say like, this guy's not going to get in, but we should talk about him a little bit because he had a very good career and he merits consideration. Like I'm fine with that. And I think that, you know it it probably would take something like breaking you know joe dimaggio's hit streak for it to really have you persist on the ballot because like i said there are guys who have sort of brushed up against greatness only temporarily and they're only

around for like a year or two on the ballot but i think that if you if you broke one of the like unbreakable records like that would probably buy you a couple years, right? If it were Pejoria, who has a case as it is, it's not going to be a convincing case probably, but he is not so far from the Jaws Hall of Fame standard for peak second baseman. He didn't have the longevity, obviously. But if it was a really good player like that that and he also had just one of these really special you know vaunted records i think that could potentially get him over the edge and i wouldn't even say that it necessarily shouldn't i don't know i mean if uh if it's just a nobody

otherwise who just happened to have a 56 game hit streak like that would be pretty special. And there should be an exhibit about that in the Hall of Fame for sure. But maybe not a plaque in the Hall of Fame room. But I think that, you know, there are a lot of really memorable achievements, single season or single game achievements that have not gotten players into the Hall of Fame. Like Roger Maris is not in the Hall of Fame or Denny McLean with his 30 wins is not in the Hall of Fame. Like there are a lot of memorable accomplishments like that that were just not enough because you have to be really good for a long time to get in typically. Although there are some other players who were in because, you know, they hit the homer that Bill Mazeroski hit or something, which, you know, probably put him over the edge. I mean, there are cases like that. But I think at this stage, you would need to have a borderline

career as it is just based on the numbers and other accomplishments. And then that could push you over the edge. I think that is basically it. Like if Dustin Pedroia had a 57 game hit streak, I don't know how mad I would be if someone were to vote for him just based on, hey, he was really good. And also he did this thing that no one thought could be done again. So, yeah, I could see it happening. And, you know, I guess I could keep you on the ballot for a few years. Not that I care all that much about how long someone who isn't going to get in and probably shouldn't get in remains on the ballot. Someone who isn't going to get in and probably shouldn't get in remains on the ballot.

But as you said, like if there's a conversation to be had about the worthiness, then yes, by all means, keep them on a little longer. But I think we should value this to some extent. Like I don't look at the Hall of Fame as, you know, taking fame really literally. But some people do. Some people think that you should consider that. And if you held one of these records, then that would make you pretty famous. Yeah, for sure. All right. A couple of questions about roster turnover, which we talked about on our most recent email show. Zach says that I resonated with the question about team turnover. For the record, I often intentionally buy the jerseys of underdog players who are at risk of being let go.

I'm a Yankees fan and bought a Phil Hughes jersey in 2013 and a Gary Sanchez jersey last year. A related question I have is regarding why free agent players always seem to just go to whichever team offers them the most money. I would think if I was already a multimillionaire, I wouldn't need any more money. That financial freedom would enable me to prioritize other concerns like loyalty to my teammates loyalty to young fans not moving my family becoming a team icon etc are pro athletes just fed a steady diet of get rich propaganda or could they possibly have a more selfless motive that is if top players are paid more it raises the value of more marginal players we have a lot to unpack in that question i mean i think so i think

a couple of things one i don't know that we have like a perfect understanding of the various motivations and weightings of those motivations when guys are making choices like if the if some of the rumors reported around freddie freeman's choice are to be believed. He arguably maybe could have made more money elsewhere when you take into account the tax treatment that he'll receive in California, and he just wanted to go home if he wasn't going to be in Atlanta. I think the idea that that stuff never factors or isn't used as a tiebreaker or what have you

is probably not a totally fair assumption. I think that a lot of guys take that stuff into account when they're thinking about where they're going to go. We don't know all that often. We don't know which offers were on the table. Yeah, generally, I think they probably take the biggest offer, but we don't know. We don't know how big the one they accepted was relative to the ones they were offered. It could be more common than we think that they pass up more money elsewhere. Yeah. So I think we probably just don't know. I think that we have definitely seen instances of teams having to really dramatically, really dramatically is probably too strong, but having to slightly overpay to attract free agents because maybe their team is still emerging into a period of contention or like they are in the, you know, upper northwest

corner of the country or whatever. So, you know, that was definitely something that was reported when Cano was making his decision and landed in Seattle that they paid something of a premium to get him there because, you know, they wanted to attract this guy who maybe wasn't considering Seattle as a destination. So I think that there's a lot that goes into that choice. I do think that there are definitely players who, and we see this, you know, happen around the arbitration process too. There are players who they, it feels important to them to establish those precedents and comps for the players who come after them and so they think it is important to you know i'm one of the best players of my generation i want this contract to

be a contract that exists in the ecosystem of free agency or in the ecosystem of arbitration so that the next guy who wants that money can point to it and say well there's precedent for this like what do you mean of course teams do this that guy did it and so i well, there's precedent for this. Like, what do you mean? Of course, teams do this. That guy did it. And so I do think that, you know, it depends on the player. And again, like how much that matters to a guy probably varies. And certainly not all of them come out and say, like, this is why I did this, but some of them do. So, you know, I think that that is a motivation for guys. I think that the idea that you know there's there's like again this is where baseball is so weird where the economy of baseball is so different than other parts of the economy where it's like there's being a millionaire and then there's like getting the mookie betts contract

you know and betts is maybe a bad example of that because he got paid pretty well in in arbitration but like there's there's the money you can get in in a system that is designed to suppress your value so that you are a bargain to your team and then there's free agent money and so i think that while that money the money that players make particularly really good players who do well in arb feels at a substantial remove to us and our experience. Like there is also, they are at a substantial remove from the contracts they are able to potentially get in free agency. And like that's like changed the course

of your family's trajectory money, right? Like that's generational wealth. That's, you know, your kids and their kids don't have to worry about stuff the way that they might have before. And, you know, we can have conversations about how great that is like societally, but within the economy of baseball, like that is the sort of course that those contracts tend to take. So, and I'm not saying that this question assumes that that's necessarily a bad thing,

but I think that it's important when we're trying to think about how those decisions get made to sort of put a couple million dollars up against a couple hundred million dollars and appreciate the gap that exists there in much the same way that there is a gap between a couple hundred million dollars and then the billions of dollars that the guy writing the check has, right? So it's just a lot of different stuff that goes into it.

Some guys are like, I want a ring, and so I'm going to go to the place that pays me really well and is also hyper competitive you know some people you know maybe you've always wanted to play for the yankees or maybe you don't want to play for the yankees like you know there's there's a lot that goes into those choices and i think while we often get sort of the the after the fact tick tock of like what went into the decision to sign somewhere, right? Like that's one of my favorite beat writer stories is when they get the guy in the room and they're like, okay, walk us through how this came together. But we don't tend to get as full or even unaccounting of all of the other offers that they looked at and said, no, that's not enough or no,

that is a great amount, but I'd rather be here. So yeah. No matter how much you have, you just kind of want more, or at least you do if you're the sort of person who becomes a multimillionaire maybe. And athletes are competitive, right? And maybe they're competitive in the salary realm as well, or at least their agents are. And so they see someone else who they think they're better than making this much money. Well, they don't want to make less than that guy, right? They want to get what they're worth. Even if they don't actually need the money in order to buy something that they want, they still want to be paid appropriately. Right. your teammates, loyalty to young fans. Well, there are going to be young fans wherever you play, right? And so you'll make some sad here, but you'll make some happy there.

Loyalty to your teammates. Well, yes, but you'll have teammates wherever you go, and you can't count on those teammates staying there, right? Because the teams might trade them away, or they might leave via free agency. So you can't really predict these things. It's not like, well, if I stay here, then this team will definitely be a winner and we will keep this entire accord together. I mean, you never know. It's out of your hands. So you just kind of have

to worry about yourself and you can't necessarily plan on this team or that team being great for the long haul or you getting to stay together and play with your friends, especially in this era where there's more turnover. And I think some of the hassles of moving, like sure, moving sucks for anyone, but moving sucks a lot less when you're rich and you're moving from one mansion to another and someone is moving your stuff for you. It's like you might like a certain city or a certain place more than another, but when you're in that tax bracket, you can live somewhere really nice no matter where you are in the world. And so I think some of the regional advantages or disadvantages are muted by the fact that you can just afford to make your immediate surroundings the way that you want them, regardless of where you are geographically. Well, and a lot of players, you know, they have where they live during the season and then they have where they live in the off season. So that might not even be a permanent fixture of their life. And, you know, I think we always talk about the importance of free agency

in part because it's like, you know, you should get to pick your employer. Like you should have some say about where you work and where you live and i think that that's a big part of it but teams have some influence on that process right and so if keeping players with their home team for the duration of their careers were like a core value of a franchise they have a way to try to put their thumb on the scale they can offer the best contract right it's not as if you know and there are any number of reasons why atlanta might prefer matt olsen to freddie freeman and we don't have to re-litigate that whole situation but like it was clear that part of what happened in that instance was that the braves were ready to move on to someone else right like they were ready to move on to a guy who was younger. That front office was ready to have their guy at first base in a way that, you know, Freeman wasn't for them. And so I get why fans like the player who

plays for one team their entire career. There is something really special about a guy being your guy and not having been someone else's, right right there's a bond and a relationship that can develop there that i think is really special but you know the player isn't the only person building that relationship the team is is doing its part two and you know sometimes the team that had a guy during his team control years will say like hey we want you to stick around forever like we see a lot of extensions we see a lot Like we see a lot of extensions. We see a lot of guys test free agency and then still go back to their old team. Like that definitely happens, but it's not as if they have no say at all. So yeah. And then the other turnover related question was from Ted, who said your recent discussion

of roster turnover and its effects on rooting interest in episode 1836 reminded me of an ad I heard recently for a service called Jersey Assurance, which attempts to mitigate the cost of trades and free agent signings for fans of individual players in MLB, as well as in the NBA, NFL, NHL, and possibly other leagues. As I understand it, if one buys a jersey bearing a player's name from the official MLB store, then you can claim a free replacement uniform if that player gets signed to another team within 90 days of the purchase, either the same player's jersey on his new team or another player's jersey from the team that the chosen player is leaving. First of all, I'm not sure why this policy isn't called jersey insurance, not assurance, since that's what it is. Second, it got me thinking about the differences between rooting for a team and rooting for an individual player. For players whose fan base is largely independent

of the team they play for, like Shohei Otani, does it even matter to his fans what team name is on the front of the jersey so long as Otani's name is on the back? Isn't there a certain kind of hipster authenticity in wearing proof that you were rooting for Otani in his Angels days before he moved on to, say, the Dodgers or whatever? As someone who owns a shohei otani samurai japan jersey yes probably

although that was a gift i'm sorry the reason i'm laughing is because it implies that like there is someone out there who will eventually claim like i liked otani before he's good and he's like he was the mvp man i think the secret's out. Yeah. Well, he was the MVP in Japan. But yes. And even for fans of whole teams, is a jersey with a former player's name on it really worth so much less than one with a current player? Is it possible, gasp, that rooting for teams and individual players are not wholly separate phenomena?

My first loyalty is to the twins, but I still feel a little surge of pride when a former twin performs well elsewhere. For example, when Eddie Rosario got his moment in the sun in the NLCS last fall. Curious to hear whether you think jersey assurance is a good deal for fans or just a nice gesture without much practical value. In any event, I bet we can all agree it's a better deal than getting an extended warranty on your printer, since it doesn't require any added fees to take advantage of jersey assurance. since it doesn't require any added fees to take advantage of jersey assurance it's also just like they're in insuring or assuring jersey stuff but like health care is what it is anyway we could sit with that for a minute i do think it's like particular balance really depends person on the person right like and it can depend on the player too like like for instance ben here's a thing that i own here's a thing i

paid american dollars for that i earned by working i own a wade leblanc players weekend mariners jersey it is first of all it's ugly because the mariners players weekend jerseys that year were not attractive it's wade leblanc so it was definitely like a a hipster baseball thing to buy and i love it very much and i loved it when wade leblanc was on the mariners and i loved it when wade leblanc was off the mariners like it didn't and now wade leblanc's retired and i still love it so some of it depends on on the player some of it depends on sort of the iconography of that player within the franchise right so like i imagine that there are plenty of dodgers fans who still like wear their cory seeker jerseys even though he departed

in free agency because like he's a great player and like he was on a world series winning team and he was a top prospect and like he was an important part of a lot of very good dodgers teams i think that how the player departs probably matters a lot in this, right? Like if a player is traded, you're not going to hold that against the player. Like that's the team deciding to be done with someone, not the player deciding to be done with his team. I think that like the way that they leave and sort of how that is covered probably matters. So like is he seen to be being like, I gotta get out of here, man.

And then you might not feel amazing about the player and kind of want something new. I find the 90 day part of it really interesting because it's like, what are the circumstances under which that is happening? I guess like then it's like a guy being traded because you're probably not buying a jersey that you want to be free of

when a guy is approaching free agency and you understand that he might leave, right? Like this is, oh, I got a jersey for my... I got a... Well, you probably shouldn't be buying jerseys of Oakland A's, but like I got a Matt Olsen jersey for my birthday. Let me take a big sip of coffee

and look at Twitter, right? Yeah. No, I think the A's gave like as an incentive or reward to their season ticket holders, they gave them like Matt Olsen jerseys or something. And then they traded Matt Olsen away. Yeah. So like, you know, some people will do the thing

where they have a jersey and then they alter it slightly using like tape or whatever to reflect a new player so like i saw a kid on the dodgers backfields this spring who had taken what was clearly a cory seager jersey because it had the number five and had put like had taped a piece of paper over the name plate and it just said freeman because now fred now Freddie Freeman is number five. And so I'm sure he was like, I'm a kid. I famously don't have a lot of money. Kids often don't. I'm not going to buy a whole new jersey, but the number is the same, and I'm stoked on Freddie Freeman, so I'm just going to make a little alteration, and that's the approach that I'm

going to take. So sometimes people do that. I don't know. I think people like their teams. They like players. Sometimes they like their team more than they like players. Sometimes they want a new jersey. I don't know. I think it really depends on the person and their relationship with that franchise and that particular player. Yeah. I don't think I would take advantage of this if it were trading in the jersey for the player's new team, I don't think I would do that. If I were a fan of the old team, I would rather just keep the jersey of that player with the previous team than I would go to the ballpark looking like a fan of that other team

that the player now plays for. So I don't think I'd do that. Whether I would change from that player's old jersey to another player on my preferred team's jersey it depends I guess it depends on how that player left as you said and what lingering fondness I have for him and is there someone else who's currently on the team who I like just as much and would want to support with that jersey. Not a big jersey person just in general. Growing up, I only had a Bernie Williams jersey, which I still have, I think. And I like having the National Japan jersey of Otani. So I could, in theory, support Otani without like, you know,

I mean, it would just journalistically, I guess, I'd feel weird like wearing a jersey of a particular team if I were at a ballpark, perhaps. But I don't love the idea of like trading it in for another team's jersey. It would almost be nice if you could kind of like somehow have like a generic jersey of the player that was like not tied to any team that that player was on. So that it's just like, hey, I like this player. I'm supporting this player i'm supporting this player wherever he goes so that would be kind of nice there's just no way to like separate those two things yeah it's like a jersey of the team that happens to be of this player so in general like you know if i'm gonna go to a team's ballpark and i'm a fan of that team i would rather be

wearing that team's colors and i think it's fine fine to have a player who's no longer on that team as long as he's not like notorious or something. In fact, that's one of the best parts of going to the ballpark is you just remember some guys. You see all these like random, like, why do you have that guy's jersey on? You know, or it just reminds you of someone who used to be good for that franchise. So that is totally fine. Like as long as that player didn't wear out his welcome, I would really have no desire to trade it in. But I guess if you're not paying anything extra, it's nice to have the option. You might be giving it as a gift or something.

Maybe you're giving it to a kid who's just like getting into fandom for that team and is not going to have enduring memories of this player who just left. And so you want to give that kid a jersey of a player who just signed like a 10 year extension or something because they're going to grow up watching that player presumably play for their team. Yeah. I also just like people just wear whatever they want, you know, like it's fine. I mean, I think you're right that like if you have a jersey for a player who's done something icky, like maybe don't wear that one because you don't want it to be mistaken for endorsement but yeah i think that i don't know like yeah it would be nice also little kids are like sensitive you know like they form strong attachments and they feel very distinctly about things and so maybe they just want the team jersey there should maybe

it should just be a program for children i don don't know. Yeah. It's strange that there's a stigma surrounding wearing a band's t-shirt to that band's show, but there's not any stigma around wearing a team jersey to a team game. I don't know why there's a stigma for wearing a band shirt to a band show in the first place. It's just like it was in a movie once and now everyone says that. I don't know if you're aware of this, Gutter, but there actually was music recorded before 1989. What is this? You're going to wear this to the show. You're going to wear the shirt of the band you're going to go see. Don't be that guy. I guess we don't root for a musician or a band in the way that we root for a sports team where we like affiliate ourselves with them and glory in their success.

Maybe you don't do that so much unless you're like following that band around on the road or you're a deadhead or something. But that's an interesting kind of dichotomy in the attitudes about those things. So, all right. I will just end here. Rapid fire. These are all little statblasty questions that don't really rise to the level of a statblast, but I'll give you the answers. Sean in the Discord group for Patreon supporters said,

After watching the Marlins for a few games, I got to wondering just how many Jesuses there are in MLB. After some checking, I think there are only three active this year, and they are all Marlins. Has any other team ever had more than three of the same first name while having all of that name that were active? And I had not noticed that, but in fact, that is true. The Marlins have Jesus Aguilar, they have Jesus Sanchez, they have Jesus Lusardo. How sacrilegious if I refer to them as the Holy Trinity. I don't know. I guess I just did it. But I like that they have collected all the Jesuses and frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson looked this up and found that it has happened three times previously that a team had three people with the same first name

and had all of those players who were in the league at that time with that name. And I guess this is just matching exact first names, not looking for variants. But in 1908 the Reds had all the dicks. The Reds had all three dicks in the league. They have all the Richards? Egan. In 1936, the Reds again had all the Lees, Lee Handley, Lee Stein, and Lee Grissom. And in 1967, the Pirates had all the Mannies, Manny Mota, Manny Sanguian, and Manny Jimenez. No team has had more than three. 169 teams have had the only pair of players with the same name. There have also

been many thousands of times that a player has been the only active player players with the same name. There have also been many thousands of times that a player has been the only active player with his name in a given year. So this could change, obviously, if there were to be another Jesus in the majors at some point this season who is not on the Marlins. The Marlins have a low A 17-year-old player named Jesus Zabaleta, but I don't think he's going to get there in time to form a quartet of Jesuses. But you could have another recent Jesus, maybe Jesus Cruz or Jesus Tinoco or Jesus Sucre or one of the other Jesuses we have seen could come back and be promoted to the majors. But I am rooting for the marlins to acquire a fourth jesus and just break the record so if uh if there's possibility to add another jesus to the roster this season

i think kimming should pursue that option see oh i think that that is true. And also, it makes me want the angels to pursue actual angel names from the Bible, because then we can make angels in the outfield jokes. Right. Yeah. I don't think that... I don't know. I don't know about religion, Ben. So I don't know if you've offended people.

I don't know you didn't mean to. I mean, the ones that are into Jesus probably are fine with that. I don't know, man. Yeah. All right. And then we got a question from Simon E., who basically just sent us a tweet from Kurt Hogg, who is a Brewers beat reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and he tweeted,

The Brewers outfielders did not record a single out tonight. Someone smart, figure out the last time that happened in a game. So someone smart is Ryan Nelson and also Jeremy Frank at MLB Random Stats who tweeted about this as well. But this was a classic case of I'm not sure if this is weird or not for no outfielders to record an out in a given game for a team. It turns out it's actually not really that weird or that unusual. It happened 164 times this century. Ryan estimates it's probably happened about 500 times at least.

It's tough to tell with earlier years with the scoring that was available then. But the Brewers themselves did it on September 8th, 2021. So it's not that rare. Jeremy tweeted that it had actually happened a few days earlier. The Mariners did it on Sunday, this past Sunday. So it happens like five to 15 times per year now where no outfielder on a team records a put out or an assist. And I think these days we have more fly balls as a percentage of all batted balls, but we also have fewer batted balls. So I think it has become more common in this high strikeout era for this not to happen. So that did sort of surprise me, but that's why we do the stop

blast. Sometimes the null hypothesis, it turns out to be not all that interesting, but that is important to point out as well. And then lastly, we got a question right after opening day from Scott, who said, The Mets broadcast tonight noted that Nationals third baseman Michael Franco had a special game with five unassisted put outs at third base over the course of the game. Keith Hernandez even went so far as to say he had never seen that in a baseball game. never seen that in a baseball game. In the spirit of the recent true ghost player and plays in a row stat blasts, is this truly as special for a fielder as the broadcast believed? What position has the most unassisted put outs in a game or the least other than presumably pitcher catcher and maybe shortstop? So again, Ryan Nelson did his magic here with his RetroSheet database, and I will read his response here. So the record for most unassisted outs in a game, and this is not counting strikeouts for catchers because catchers get credited with put outs on strikeouts, but it is counting other types of put outs for catchers, but still is 13 The record is 13 By Rolando Rooms of the

1989 Cincinnati Reds Who set the record playing right field Against the Braves on July 28th Part of the reason though that this is a record Is that this was a 17 inning game So he had many opportunities To get his 13 unassisted outs The highest number of unassisted outs

In a 9 inning game is 12 Held by two players Lyman Bostock playing centerfield for the Twins against the Red Sox on May 25th, 1977, and Jacoby Ellsbury playing centerfield for the Red Sox against the Blue Jays on May 20th, 2009. accomplished by 10 first basemen and one second baseman. That was Tony Berners-Ard on April 27th, 1984 for Cleveland against the Tigers. But that game went to extras. That was an 18-inning game pre-Zombie Runner. Many first basemen got nine in nine innings. So the record for a non-outfielder and non-first baseman in nine innings or fewer is eight,

which has been done three times by three different players at three different positions. Orioles second baseman Rich Dower on June 29th, 1979 against Dave Steve and the Blue Jays. He caught two fly balls in the third, one in the fourth, one in the fifth, had all three outs unassisted in the sixth and one more fly out in the seventh, plus two assisted put outs and four assists, meaning he had a hand in 14 of the Orioles' 27 outs. Cubs shortstop Charlie Hollicker on July 7th, 1922. He also had eight. And Washington Senators catcher Muddy Rule, or Ruel, on September 27th, 1928 against the Browns. He caught a pop fly in the first, a foul pop fly in the second, two foul pop flies in the third, another foul pop fly

in the fourth, a pop fly in the fifth, a foul pop fly in the eighth, and yet another foul pop fly in the ninth, which is weird. He also had four strikeouts, so 12 total put outs. That's a lot of pop flies in a single game. That'll probably be the next stop last question we get. Anyway, the question about Mike Calfranco, was it weird for him to get five unassisted put outs in a single game? It was maybe unusual, but not unprecedented. The record for a third baseman in a nine inning game is seven, which has been done five times by Heine. Yeah. Heine grow for the Reds.

August 3rd, 1918. Heine grow, of course. Heine grow. The great Heine grow. Heine grow. Oh, course. Heine Groh. The great Heine Groh. Heine Groh. Oh, Ben, what a great day this is. Heine Groh on the Reds. Did he overlap with any of the Dicks?

Let's see. No, he came along after the Dicks, sadly. But good player, Heine Groh. So August 3rd, 1918 for him. Woody English for the Cubs. August 13th, 1932, Hugh Luby for the New York Giants. July 29th,

1944, Willie Jones for the Phillies. August 6th, 1958 and Ryan Friel for the Reds again, September 6th, 2004. So a third baseman has had five unassisted put outs or more in a nine inning game 277 times in history however only 28 times this century so a lot of these names and games i've been mentioning

are from earlier eras a lot more balls in play fewer strikeouts back then so it was easier for this to happen i just would like to say that we'd like to apologize for talking about the red so much it goes in direct contravention of our podcast policy. Yes. And remember, you can follow Ryan on Twitter at rsnelson23, and you can also support StatHead, which sponsors our StatBlast, which I neglected to say earlier,

but this was a bonus StatBlast, so I gave you the StatHead spiel yesterday. But just in case you forgot, go to stathead.com, use the coupon code WILD20 to get a $20 discount on the $80 annual subscription to MLB Stat Head or various other sports powered by baseball reference. So thanks to our sponsors and thanks to our statistical consultants. And thanks to everyone who sent in questions this week. We appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who has sent in pictures of their baseball cats and their entertaining names.

We read a few. We don't need everyone to send us the name of your cat, I guess. But thanks to those who have. There have been some entertaining ones. I'll just read one more from Brian, who says, wanted to share one more baseball cat. This is Rowdy Tail-ez, named after the relatively marginal but enjoyable brewers and former Bougie slugger. Close second when we named him was Vladimir Guerrero Meow. My wife did not want me exclaiming Vladdy in anger when the cat is naughty, as Vladdy is only meant to bring joy. Both of

those names rated pretty high on my pun detecting size,ing size-mograph. Thank you, Brian. I will forgive your puns because your cat is cute. Also, when we talked last time about how it might be a long time until we see another 3,000 hitter after Cabrera, we mentioned many factors such as the low batting average today, but what we didn't mention, I don't think, and maybe it was so obvious that we didn't even have to mention it, but another factor that may delay that is the pandemic shortened season, right? We had a 60-game season. We've had elevated injury rates subsequent to that, and so players have just missed more time, just as players who missed time during the 94-95 strike may have lost some hits off

their career totals. This generation of players has lost some hits too, though thankfully they didn't lose any hits to a work stoppage this season. And last point, when I was advocating for the restriction on the number of pitchers on an active roster, I noted that it might be a somewhat tough sell to the MLBPA, to the union, although it's not eliminating roster spots overall, it's just changing the compositions of rosters. You can imagine that some pitchers might not be pleased about it, but in theory, the union should actually be in favor of it because it might actually lead to a boost to payrolls. I've mentioned this before, but Rob Maines at Baseball Perspectives did some research on how pitcher usage has contributed to the stagnation of payrolls in MLB, and he found

that it has. He wrote, reducing pitcher workload leads to more pitchers on rosters who make less money than hitters anyway. It also yields less money paid to individual pitchers since they shoulder less of the responsibility for team wins. As a result, player compensation goes down. So it might be that it's actually in the union's best interest, maybe not in some pitcher's best interest, but in Major League players' best interest as a whole

to have fewer pitchers on rosters and the ones who are on rosters pitching more innings. So there you go, another problem solved. You can solve our problems by supporting us on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, get themselves access to some perks, David Harris, Tim Whitehead, Michael M. Morgan Barnes,

Bobby Lightweight, and Joseph Borghese. Thanks to all of you, our Patreon supporters. Remember, get access to monthly bonus pods with me and Meg. They get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, Discordantly Wild, and they get access to playoff live streams and other extras. You can all contact me and Meg via email at podcast at vangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

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We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We hope you watch Roki Sasaki, who is scheduled to start again in Japan on Sunday, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. to go anywhere And if you wanted back Could you do anything And grow up as the same man You could make a movie Welcome to New Jersey