Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1854: Comedy of Errors

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the apparent end of Mike Trout’s long-lasting SuperPretzel sponsorship, Willians Astudillo’s return to the majors, the Phillies’ fielding and a seeming surfeit of amusingly bad defensive plays across the league, the arrival of overall no. 1 prospect (and Orioles catcher) Adley Rutschman and how to tell when a […]

🎵 I won't make my mistake again. I won't make my mistake again. I found myself outweighing our resistance. I won't make my mistake again. 🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1854 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, I'm doing okay, but I do have one concern, and it doesn't come close to comparing to losing Roger Angel last week, but I recently learned of the apparent passing of another baseball institution, which has been somewhat important to the history of this podcast. Meg, I am working to confirm, but I see no indication that Mike Trout is still a spokesperson for Super Pretzel. Yeah. What. Yeah. What?

Yeah. I should have braced you for this news. I know you're sitting down because we were recording a podcast. But I am glad that you are because this probably comes as a shock. I know it did to me. And I will tell you how I found out about this, or I think I found out about it. I saw some news that J&J Snack Foods, which owns Super Pretzel, had agreed to buy Dippin' Dots. If you were wondering how much Dippin' Dots is worth, apparently $222 million. So J&J has added Dippin' Dots to their portfolio, which also includes Minute Maid Frozen Ices,

which also includes Minute Maid Frozen Ices, Luigi's Real Italian Ice, Icy, and Super Pretzel, of course, most relevant to this podcast because of its history with Mike Trout. And so I thought I would check in on the Mike Trout sponsorship, see if there had been any new art, any news, any promotion lately. I don't see any evidence that he is still a spokesman for Super Pretzel. I don't know when the sponsorship ended, if indeed it did, but I looked on their website. I looked on all their social media channels. There's just nothing at all recent related to Trout, nor does there seem to be on Trout's channels. So I have sent a few emails to various J&J snack food PR people to confirm this breaking news.

I have not received a response as of yet. Maybe they're busy putting out press releases about the Dippin' Dots acquisition. I don't know. Or maybe they just don't want this to get out there, that Mike Trout may have spurned Super Pretzel. But if I get confirmation or refutation, I will, of course, update as soon as possible. But this is disturbing news because this is the end of an era, if true. I'm not saying it's not journalism what you're doing. Right?

I'd never accuse. Thank you for saying that it is not or not saying that it's not. I wouldn't say that because that would be rude and it would be untrue. Like you are, you know, you're doing reporting, important reportage, as it were, service journalism, one might even argue. But I want to know what the face of the person who received that email looked like when they read it. Oh, no. Someone noticed. We lost Mike.

Maybe he's preparing for... I mean, look, I think that it's wild if it is true. It is the end of an era. It is a changing of the guard, presumably. Who knows what the future may hold for super maybe they signed shohei or something who knows oh man i love that there are multiple kinds of ice that they are chilling like they're like look corner of the market some people need the official ice e i see ice frozen i see i see of majorball, but some need the official Italian.

Anyway, I know that's not what they're purporting, but it is kind of funny. Maybe what we're in for is for Mike Trout to finally fulfill his destiny as the spokesperson for Jersey Mike's. Because that's been sitting there. Yeah. It goes back to at least, I think, October 2012 is the press release that I found. Super Pretzel teams up with the supernatural Mike Trout. J&J Snack Food signs Rookie of the Year bound MLB player Mike Trout. So I don't know when this was discontinued or when that expired.

I know it was active as of a couple of years ago at least. And I think it was still the case when we talked to the cesspit as family barbecue boys on episode 1730 and we did a deep dive about mike trout's relationship with super pretzel and i shared some previous correspondence that i had had with super pretzel pr people about the origin story of mike trout's sponsorship of super pretzel right i forgot that you had already talked to them. Yeah, we have an existing relationship. Right, and so they were like, oh, this guy again.

Yeah, but they've gone silent on me now because this is not as happy a story, I suppose. But I don't know what's going on here. The journalism, it's too hard hitting. Yeah, apparently we're doing a lot of that this week, it seems like. And apparently we're doing a lot of that this week, it seems like. But it is sad because if you look on the Super Pretzel website, they have pictures of what seems to be the current Super Pretzel box art. And it's just Super Pretzels on it. I mean, who's going to buy that if Mike Trout is not on it in his very generic uniform?

That's been like the highlight of the frozen foods aisle for me for years. I think maybe somewhere in the recesses of my freezer, I may still have a box of Mike Trout sponsored super pretzels, which if so, is probably a collector's item at this point. So I will hang on to that and just watch it appreciate. That's my retirement fund there. But I'm sad because it always made sense. Super Pretzel is a New Jersey product. I loved just how kind of hokey it was that Mike Trout, the best player in baseball, maybe the best player ever, was sponsoring Super Pretzel. And this was one of his more visible and long lasting sponsorship relationships. So I'm sad to see it end if in fact it has ended RIP super pretzel sponsorship maybe maybe he is like newly concerned with his uh like his sodium intake right yeah well that's what I was wondering because I think I reported an email from the super pretzel PR people because I had asked like does Mike Trout get an unlimited supply of Super Pretzel? And I forget exactly what they said, but basically they said like he can have as many Super Pretzels as he wants, I think. Yeah.

And so I wonder whether that's a lifetime deal or whether that was only during the life of the sponsorship. Like if he goes back to them now, if he's no longer their sponsor and he's like, hey, can I get a re-up on Super Pretzels here? And they're like, no, sorry. You're not part of the Super Pretzels family anymore. Right. You've been disowned.

You've been disowned by our Super Pretzel family. And no discounts on Icy's for you either. This is a take it or leave it kind of a deal. Maybe he still has the ability to just demand know demand super pretzels whenever he wants is this a record for super pretzel mention in a podcast might be we should call the guinness people yeah episode 1730 set a pretty high bar there but we might be approaching it but maybe maybe he is still entitled to uh super pretzel on demand provided he does not shift to an alternative pretzel brand. Maybe this is an expression of the evolution of Mike Trout's taste. And he simply thought to himself, I prefer a

different pretzel. You know, I've thought about it. I've done my research. You know, he had all this time last year where he couldn't play baseball because he was hurt and we were devastated but maybe part of what he did with that time was to really you know take a hard look at the pretzel market survey his options and he came to the conclusion that there was perhaps for him a superior pretzel to be had and then he had to go find a super pretzel a more super a super duper pretzel yeah that would be shocking because we have seen examples of that kind of thing where you have someone who's very visibly associated with one brand and then switches to the competing brand like when the i'm a mac guy switched from max to pcs oh yeah there have been various examples of

that so if mike trout were suddenly to show up just shilling rolled gold or something like i Oh, yeah. one of them want to extend and the other didn't? Like Mike Trout's like, hey, you know, you signed me early in my career. I'm Mike Trout now. I have had a Hall of Fame career already. I have leveled up. You can't match my price, even though we have seen him give seemingly hometown discounts in the past. And he doesn't seem like someone who is prioritized getting every last dollar if he's happy where he is and with the relationships in his life.

Or did Super Pretzel say, hey, you know what, Mike? You just haven't been very durable lately. You haven't been staying on the field the last few seasons. And I don't know if you're Super Pretzel spokesman material anymore. Yeah. I mean, it could be that Super Pretzel has decided that stats stabilize when someone else is at the top of the leaderboard. you know stats stabilize when someone else is at the top of the leaderboard you know yeah like look we we don't feel as if you are producing the way we want you to and we like you when you're on the

field but health is a skill you know and we at super pretzel believe in putting in the time and we are concerned that these nagging injuries are now a part of your profile that we expect to continue into your later 30s and as part of your decline and so we yeah we think you're great but maybe not super right what if you were to give people the impression that excessive super pretzel consumption led to several month-long calf strain recover. Right. You know, what if people see your face on our pretzel and think, these pretzels, just okay. Well, that's 10 minutes of the podcast down. Wow.

All right. Yeah. It just flies by when we're talking about super pretzels. I think that if we really refine it, like we might have a, you know, we might have a tight tent. We can take our super pretzel material on the road. He should still be entitled to free Super Pretzels because he is still earning the company publicity on this podcast at least. So there's that.

Anyway, I will report back. If I hear more, if I hear that the demise of the Mike Trout Super Pretzel sponsorship has been greatly exaggerated, then I will very happily report that to everyone. But I felt the need. I didn't want to sit on this until I got the book deal and the book came out. It just feels like the public needs to know immediately. So I wanted to put this out there. Yeah, and I think that there's a lot that goes into the health of a democracy. And the superness of the pretzels is one of those things.

Well, if in fact we have lost the Mike Trout Super Pretzel sponsorship. I thought you were going to say, if in fact we do still live in a democracy. I was going to be like, oh boy, we are taking a, you know, maybe not inaccurate, but dark turn. A reasonable segue as well. But we have regained Williams Estadio, Major League Baseball player at least. least. He's back in the big leagues. The Marlins have called him up. So that is heartening, I think. Maybe we lost a little affection And he was very much playing to type in AAA with the Marlins. I don't know whether you saw his slash line, but he was hitting 286, 326, 464. In 89 plate appearances, he had two walks and three strikeouts. That is a 2.2% walk rate and a 3.4% strikeout rate.

So vintage classic Astadio, which is heartening because other low strikeout mainstays, like suddenly Nick Madrigal strikes out sometimes and that was disturbing, but at least we can count on Williams Astadio and his lack of three true outcomes. Although he did hit four home runs. So there was the one outcome at least, but not the other ones that I value him not doing more often. So nice to have him back. And maybe we'll start getting some Williams-Estadio highlights as opposed to punches and lowlights again sometime soon. Yeah, our affection became complicated.

But hopefully we see a rejuvenated Estadio and one who has has thought better of of that uh form of conflict resolution makes yeah uh better healthier choices going forward you know yeah speaking of lowlights do you have any notes for the phillies these days because uh you had no notes initially for the phillies defense yeah now you might have notes i feel like we have to just tear up the segment we did last week about the most embarrassing baseball plays of the season because we've been a couple strong contenders since then i you know it's it's made me think about a lot of stuff like it's made it you know for one thing it made me think about what i know in my heart about scorekeeping and errors and earned runs.

I get it a little bit more now, but I think they're not okay. They don't seem like they're okay. As friend of the podcast Emma Batchelor said on Twitter, the Phillies defense, not even once. It's been an adventure, a roller coaster. The most recent example is a play that I think, look, I'm not a professional scorekeeper, and I would point people to Craig Goldstein's box score banter

on this exact play for a more thoroughgoing explanation. But I thought I was like, well, there have been approximately five errors at a wide pitch in this moment. And yet there seemed to not be as a result of a home run. So do you want to set the stage for what happened here? Yeah, the prelude to that play, I guess the day before,

there was a pretty embarrassing one too, right? I've lost track. I think that it's weird because sometimes it seems like whichever team is in kind of the Phillies nexus of terrible defense also plays terrible defense. So like the Dodgers. Yeah, it's like it's catching or something. Yeah. The Phillies had a walk-off. Are we calling it a walk-off? I guess by our listener last week's definition, it was not a walk-off, but it was certainly a game-ending play where Dodgers second bas, whether we were calling it a walk off or not. They won on that. And then there was a case where Roman Quinn, the Phillies outfielder, he just straight up muffed one. It's the new snot grasses muff is Quinn's muff, I guess. But that was just the prequel to the main event here, which started with a wild pitch appropriately.

Yes. And then JT Real Muto picked up the ball through to second. Now, the throw was high. I couldn't tell from the angle that I saw exactly how high it was and whether it was out of reach. It would have taken a hop or a leap at least, I think, to corral it. It was online. Yeah. It was online. Yeah.

It was high. I think it was catchable. Yes. But it sailed over Gene Segura's glove. Bryson Stott was backing up. He was not expecting the ball to get to him, but it did. And he kind of whiffed on it too. It was like a three-way ole, kind of like bullfighting type thing here then it goes

to the outfield where Oduble Herrera is like the third line of defense here and it goes under his glove too and it rolls all the way to the wall or most of the way to the wall and the runner came around to score right yeah oh yeah Dan Svea Swanson sure did score on that play. Sure did score. It was really embarrassing because the play, the throw was not wildly offline, which is embarrassing in its own way. In a way, this was worse and more eye-catching and unusual because three players had what seemed like a legitimate chance to glove this ball and

none of them did. So this was just spectacularly bad. It wasn't the worst maybe, but it was spectacular. Yeah. It was a lot like the Titanic where Kate Winslet is walking along and she is having the boat's mechanics explain to her why. Right. It can never sink. Yeah. Like, you know, it can flood so many compartments. Got the watertight compartments. Three, but not four.

And you're like, oh, and I don't remember if that's the exact right number, but I think the comp stands. And yeah, it's just like it managed to leak through so many different lines of defense. If this play had been hit head on, you know, probably the boat doesn't sink, but this play like ripped across the sides of the defense, and then they were all tore up, and it sunk them. And we should say that like, you know, this all happens, right? And I believe that Herrera was the only player to be assessed with an error here and i think that the rationale for that was that austin riley who you know you could be forgiven

for forgetting was involved in any of this at all because he's the least memorable part of this uh he then hit a home run and so i think the the logic was that dansby swanson would have scored anyway because of the home run so okay fine like score keeping fine but it's just a moment where you sit there and go i know that we knew the plan was like vibes but a couple of things first of all much of the vibes was supposed to be like an outfield consideration i think that we thought there would be like some amount of vibes plus defense on the infield. And the Phillies infield has its leaky parts. It is not as if it is a completely leak-free enterprise.

There are perhaps already a couple of bolts in the side of the Phillies Titanic that are coming loose. But not this, but not four. Not four. And I agree with you like Real Muto he first of all good catcher this this throw not unchallenging but but not impossible by any stretch and Gene Steger is decent out there and so is Stutton I don't know Herrera we've Craig made that point it's like it's not the likely the usual suspects. If I told you that multiple Phillies had screwed up in the field, you would not name these guys toward the top of the likeliest suspects. So that is even more dismaying, I guess, if like the good Phillies defenders are capable of this kind of play. It seems as if in addition to perhaps being an atmosphere that permeates the field and thus catches other teams' defenders in its... I'm mixing a lot of metaphors here, but in addition to that,

it's not something that is contained either to the Phillies or even specifically to their outfield, that it has sort of seeped through to the dirt. And now who knows what happens from here, you know, but it seems it seems not the best. You know, running a baseball team has to be a funny thing because you like want people to talk about your team. But I think you do put qualifiers on the circumstances under which you want them to be the point of discussion, right?

Yeah. This feels much more like being Twitter's main character than anything else. Yeah. And just looking at the overall Phillies defensive stats, they haven't been necessarily unprecedentedly bad or historically bad. They have been certainly among the worst fielding teams if we go by defensive efficiency, a metric in which the Los Angeles Angels are actually leading the major leagues. How about that? But it's Rockies at the bottom, and that's largely a product of their giant field. And then San Francisco Giants second to last, which is also concerning. And then it's Phillies. And if you go by other metrics, the Phillies are second worst to the Giants in defensive runs saved. They are, I think, worst or tied for worst in OAA,

outs above average, the MLB stat cast metrics, which you can see at Fangraphs as well. So they are, if not the worst, certainly one of the worst and maybe are just finding their actual true talent defensive level now, or at least their defensive level without Bryce Harper in the outfield, which he will not be for the foreseeable future. So I don't know that it's going to get any better. I don't know that they have been as bad as feared. Maybe they've been just about as bad as feared. It's hard to win when you are giving away that many outs and bases on defense.

that many outs and bases on defense. And I feel like, and it's purely anecdotal, but it seems like we've seen more spectacularly bad individual defensive plays this year. There have just been a bunch of howlers, just blooper-level bad plays. And maybe I'm just paying more attention to that for some reason. I was looking at at obviously like BABIP is low. Right. Defensive efficiency is pretty high. Like when balls are getting put in play, it's on the high side these days that the defenses are converting those balls in play into outs. So it's not as if there's been some league wide defensive breakdown. And even if you look at fielding percentage, which I haven't for quite a while, but it's 985 this year, which seems to be in line with or even a little higher than the par

in recent seasons. So maybe I'm just happening to notice these plays. Maybe they're just getting gift more or something, but they're just for a quarter of the season or so, it seems like there have been a lot of very strong candidates for like, this is the most embarrassing play of the baseball season. Oh, there's three quarters more of the season to go. So I don't know what to make of that. And maybe I am just reading too much into it. I do note that our guest on episode 1795, when we were doing the Measuring the Unmeasurable series, the author of the blog Harib's Hangout, he recently published a post where he suggested that he thinks maybe the way that the baseballs are being stored are making them more slippery on the surface. And that that is responsible for players complaining about how slippery the baseballs have been. And he supported that by looking at the rate

of throwing errors as a function of opportunities. And he found that there have been a good deal more throwing errors this season than there have been in recent seasons. So maybe that's part of it. Although this Phillies play was not scored as a throwing error. It was more of a three-way catching error, really. I mean, we should just have a Titanic stat, I think is our takeaway from this moment. I don't know what to attribute that sense to, but I share your sense. It feels as if,

and I don't know if this is just a reporting issue is the wrong word, but like you said, we're just seeing these more and the base rate of them is really not all that different. But it does feel like there have just been some spectacular goofs. I mean, I guess it's possible that one explanation is everyone just forgot how to field in the

long offseason. You know, they weren't doing those drills. And then all of a sudden they were like, well, boy, I guess we got to do them again. Right. Yeah. I'm generally suspicious of any argument that like players are getting worse or something like that. Like generally, I think players are getting better and equipment's getting better and all of that. And obviously, positioning is getting better and all of that. You're still going to have a lot of plays at the edge of your defensive range where you could screw up. But these aren't even that. It's not like these are, oh, look how far he ran and then he screwed up. It's like, nope, it was right to him and somehow he still screwed up. So anyway, I guess there's no real way to quantify that. I can't really stat blast like embarrassing defensive plays.

We don't have a category for that. Like Toot Bland for base running, like we need that for fielding where it's like it's not just any generic error. Like that was a special error maybe it isn't any worse but like that nationals play where there was just an attempted pickoff throw and that turned into like a two run pickoff attempt like how often does that kind of thing happen maybe more often than i'm remembering i don't know it's not even like they're more terrible teams than there have been in recent years there's a lot of terrible teams. Like the Nationals are bad, but they're just kind of like run-of-the-mill bad. I mean they're a non-competitive team that is in a down cycle and they had some success

and then they were bad and traded some veterans and now they're just a bad team. Like it's nothing that remarkable. They aren't even like the Orioles of recent seasons or anything. So I don't know. There was that famous famous Astros play, right, when the Astros were tanking and were terrible and they had the Yakety Sax Benny Hill type play that got gifted, still gets shared sometimes. But it just feels like there's been a profusion of those plays. So I wish there were a way to track that. Anyway, we will accept nominees

for candidate for most embarrassing baseball play of the season. There's plenty of season left. Back in the day when I wrote a baseball prospectus, I had a recurring column where I talked about the things that I wish were play indexable. And I put this on the list. And I think that we need to differentiate them. I think there are two options. One is just the yety sacks because that's what everybody thinks of. But I like this idea of a multi-part failure that sinks the whole endeavor. I don't know.

We need to think carefully about how... Is there enough distance between those categories? But it sure is something to watch. And it's the kind of thing where once you see the capacity for it among players who, even if you accept their defensive limitations, you understand to be professional baseball players who more often than not are going to make the play they need to, even if they're not particularly good.

They're probably going to get the routine ones, right? Your sense of you can feel secure in that, except that once you see them capable of this like i think it it low-key puts you on edge for the rest of the season you're just bracing in the back of your mind for when are we gonna get another one of those right it's like almost watching amateur ball or like low-level indie ball back with the stompers like every play was sort of suspenseful because there was no such thing as a routine play, really. This is why you should watch more college baseball,

Ben. Yeah, so I've been told. So I wonder, I guess you could probably quantify it like if you had access to full stat cast data, just like how much running around was there? Just like it clearly, you can't quantify it reliably by just number of errors on the play because there was one error on this Phillies play we're talking about. And that just is not a reflection of how bad it was and how funny it was. So the funniness of it, the humor quotient, maybe that's something you could quantify with like number of throws. Like you would have some pickles and some rundowns there where they would end happily for the defense and you'd have a lot of throws, like you would have some pickles and some rundowns there where they would end happily for the defense and you'd have a lot of throws. We did talk about a Nationals one that was embarrassingly bad, one of those too. But yeah, like if you could quantify like the amount of

movement on the field or maybe the duration of the play, like how long did this play last exactly? Because the longer it lasts lasts maybe the more screw ups there are generally at least if it's not a pickle play so you could probably come up with candidates if you had access to that sort of data just errors alone won't do it but i'd love to see an attempt yeah you want like you want something you definitely need something there's a there's a college baseball player his last name is Dill. Perfect. He's a pitcher and I need him to be involved in solving a pickle. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, Phillies. And you sit there and you're like, it's going to feel like let's say that everything kind of shakes out for them and they're able to, you know, get a playoff spot after all this time. And then they, you know, it's going to feel a lot worse if this happens in the posies. Sorry, Phillies fans. I'm rooting for it to not happen. I feel bad. I feel like I was indifferent to the potential downsides

of the all vibes strategy. And it wasn't sensitive in a way that it should have been. So I feel badly about that. The problem, other than the defense, which we knew was a problem, but one problem is that they just haven't really been hitting all that well either. Like they're a middle of the pack offensive team and you got to be better than that if you are a bottom of the barrel defensive team. Yes.

You got to do something to make up for that. Yes. are going to be substantial, but at least the defensive factors that are under the pitcher's controls, they've held up their end of the park. And for the most part, at least the starters have the bullpen. It's always going to be interesting for the Phillies and for a Dave Dombrowski team. So since we last spoke, or at least since we last spoke about things other than real-time probabilities on baseball broadcasts, the top prospect in baseball arrived in the major leagues. Adley Rutschman arrived. He is a major leaguer. We met him over the weekend.

The highly touted consensus number one for quite some time now. He's on the Orioles. He's catching. We are getting to see him. He had a triple in his first game, although that was also sort of a misplay, I think, to some extent by Brett Phillips. But anyway, he's here. He's been long awaited.

And now we're getting to watch him. So that's good. It took longer than everyone would have liked, I think, for various reasons, for injury-related reasons, for service time manipulation-related reasons. And the Orioles, look, they've been bad. They have perhaps been a bit better than they had been in recent seasons. Like we talked on the preview about might they not lose 100 games this year? And they are on pace to lose fewer than 100 games. So that's something.

They are on pace for lose fewer than 100 games. So that's something. They are on pace for 65 wins as we speak here on Thursday afternoon. They're 18 and 27. That's a 400 winning percentage. I suppose that qualifies as progress and Rutschman is here. Grayson Rodriguez will probably be there at some point. I know they're taking it slow with him as well. But there are some watchable players, some rootable players on there, and some players who you're starting to see the foundations of what could be a competent and perhaps a contending team down the road. Still a long way to go before they get to that point. But the core of that is going to be Rutschman. So here he is. Here he is. And, you know, it's always such a, these moments are always a little bit fraught because you

don't want to like yuck anybody's yum, you know, like I'm excited that the top prospect in baseball is in the majors. That's exciting. That's exciting for me as a person who isn't particularly invested in the Orioles as a franchise, right? I think that in these moments, it is useful to sort of talk about the various forces that have held him back from being in the majors before now, right? And you always have to deal with, especially when you have these early injuries,

like injuries in the early going. We don't know for sure what Baltimore would have done if Rutchman hadn't gotten hurt in spring training and have been fully healthy but I think that we can make an informed guess that he wouldn't have made the opening day roster and you know I think that there's an argument that that could be made and people can disagree with this that he was perhaps ready to be called up last year so it's I don't know it's always it's always fra. I think part of what we are reacting to in these moments where it seems like an organization has tried to put their thumb on the scale and game a guy service time so that they get to keep him for another year. Like the biggest sort of damage that gets done in that moment is to the player,

right? Rutschman is a 24 year old catcher, right? So his timeline to free agency is relevant. Rutschman is a 24-year-old catcher, right? So his timeline to free agency is relevant. Especially with robo-umps on the way. Right, exactly. And his profile does change somewhat if his superlative defense is not part of the overall package in quite the same way that it is what he is still responsible for framing. So it's not that it'll be bad, it'll just be different and it will be you know probably less valuable so there's that piece of it to consider i think that one of the smaller and still relevant uh bits of disappointment is that you can't just have this like on uninhibited enjoyment of the moment i mean you can to be clear like if you're an orioles fan and your reaction to rutschman coming up is just that you're excited, like that's fine. That doesn't make you a bad person or anything like that. But I think that for observers, we have to like grapple with the fact that, you know,

we are excited. And part of why we are excited today is injury. And some of it is the sort of machinations of the organization. So one of the things that I wish we could enjoy in the way that top prospects are promoted is just to be able to assume that when they are one of the 26 best guys, when they are ready, that they will be on the big league roster. And that doesn't mean that the same timeline is going to unfold for everyone, right? I think that part of my frustration is there are going to be guys who take longer to cook, who do benefit from more development time in the minor leagues, who, you know, have their long-term trajectories improved to the upside by having the time that they need and not being rushed. And one of the things that the practice of service time in the

industry writ large sort of denies us is the ability to say yeah i believe you you know and so that's one of the other reasons that i wish that this practice would go away admittedly not as important as like these guys getting to you know maximize their earning potential but one of the things that sort of operates in the background whenever we have these so adly rutschman is here and i hope that he has a long career and I hope he delights Orioles fans both now and in the future and I hope that like when guys like him are ready that they are up just when they're ready so yeah I forget what the quote was I know Orioles GM Mike Elias said something during the spring about how he had a chance to break camp with the team which is

something that you say one way or another unless you're Kevin Mather with the team, which is something that you say one way or another, unless you're Kevin Mather with the Mariners, right? It's possible that he did before he had his arm injury. As we discussed, a record number of prospects made the majors early this season, maybe because of a CBA change. So Retchman might have added to that total. He's pretty polished and he's not super young for a prospect of his caliber who's just making the majors he's 24 people have made the case that well he was ready last year and again it's the Orioles so the standard of readiness if the standard is are you better than your big

league counterpart right now well maybe the standard is a little different for the Orioles than it would be for a team that had a great catcher already something like that and you want to you want to take both into account right like i had to deal i personally this was an affliction that i suffered right like mariners fans will remember how quickly zanino was rushed to the majors and that messed up his development for a while and he has been able to salvage a very productive big league career but like you know it is not just a matter of is the guy currently in that spot on the big league roster good or bad or hurt or whatever like you do want to take where the prospects development is into account because you don't want to like break somebody yeah so like we you know it's not just a matter of is he one of the 26 best guys like it needs to to be more complicated and all that. You may have a better idea than I do. But just that someone is hitting at a level, does that mean that, OK, they should be promoted in all cases?

Maybe. Like you look at some of the players who have, if not flamed out, at least struggled to get established. And, you know, we talked about Jared Kalanick recently. And he was someone everyone was clamoring for him to be called up and understandably so. And I think the problem with what Mather said was that the team had seemingly decided before even seeing him or evaluating him that he was not ready and then they said, no, you have to go back. Then he came up and it would appear that he was not ready and he's not been ready since. So I don't know whether that's something that you could have known before he came up or not. That's the question. Like he was hitting, obviously, he looked ready, at least to outside observers. So if someone is raking at AAA, is there any way to know that they're not ready unless they actually get up there and struggle? Maybe if you are that

team and you've been following them their whole career and you actually know that they still have some vulnerability that AAA pitching is not able to exploit, but big league pitching will. And maybe sometimes the go-to excuse that we all make fun of, of so-and-so is still working on his defense. There are some cases where so-and-so actually does still need to work on their defense a little bit, but sometimes we've seen no doubt lock type prospects get called up and struggle, not hit the ground running. And maybe there is some period of adjustment that is just going to be necessary for most players, even for Mike Trout there was. So not everyone comes up and is Juan Soto. And I don't know whether you can distinguish between

the Kellnicks and the Sotos without actually promoting them. But that's why I've tried to maybe express a little more uncertainty about, oh, this is a travesty because so-and-so is definitely ready. Like, do I think that Adlai Rutschman could have handled major league competition last year? Yeah, probably. I mean, he and a lot of people missed 2020 in the minors, and I don't know what kind of lingering effect that has had or is still having.

It's possible that that is actually impacting players' development here. But there are a lot of considerations when it comes to this. So I do understand being impatient and thinking this guy should have been up before. Right. And I think that, again, this is part of why our ability to assess it is in some ways contingent, at least in part, in an assumption of good faith right it's hard yeah that's the thing you know it's hard for us to say you're right like there are going to be guys who who come up and seem to be ready and facing big league pitching or facing big league hitters exposes something that they have to then go back to triple a to sort out and do that work within an environment

that is understood to be developmental there are going to be guys who get to the out and do that work within an environment that is understood to be developmental there are going to be guys who get to the majors and like really blossom because they've done everything that they can do in triple a and like the thing that they need to sort out is big league pitching right like this was this was part of what got said about francisco lindor that he was like he was kind of bored in triple a he was just like, I need to get to the big leagues. Or Ronald Acuna Jr. maybe too. Right. And so there are going to be guys like that. There are going to be guys who come up and they have kind of a slow burn start. And then all of a sudden they're looking really good. Like, you know, Julio Rodriguez didn't look incredible his

first couple of weeks. And he still has some stuff to sort out around breaking ball recognition. And you can tell that they have already like adjusted his stance a little bit, but he was able to make those adjustments at the big league level, kind of on the fly as he was going. Right. So there are all kinds of developmental timelines. And then there are guys who you just think are going to be great and come up and they just aren't.

And that happens too, because prospects are players and people. And so sometimes they don't work out. And that happens too, because prospects are players and people. And so sometimes they don't work out. And so we can acknowledge like the whole range of outcomes that are possible with a prospect. And provided that the team is centering that decision around the readiness of the player, you know, if we are really able to believe that that is the lens through which they are making their determinations, then if, you know, a team says he needs another month, if we are really able to believe that that is the lens through which they are making their determinations, then if, you know, a team says he needs another month, then like,

I would believe them. But we just have seen so often that that is not really the driving consideration or it isn't the only consideration. And, you know, Kellnick's a great example of this to your point. Like the Mariners changed the terms of engagement around jared kelnick's promotion from readiness to willingness to sign a pre-debut extension they're the ones that shifted that right that's the that was the new yardstick by which they were judging whether or not he would be on the big league roster or not that doesn't have anything to do with his readiness one way or the other right so we need a system where we can have some confidence that what's really the the motivating factor behind an individual player's promotion is how ready are they to be a big league contributor and that the the sort of animating principle of the franchise

into which they might be promoted is trying to win as many baseball games as possible and if we have confidence in both of those things then they're going to be guys who just sit down there for a little bit longer that's okay but we will have a greater confidence that it isn't because you want an extra year later you want a game super two or any of that stuff so that's why i think that like we have to the media observers here are going to probably keep pressing the point even if it like you know dims the day a little bit because it's a really important conversation and you know we i think long term owe it to to players and also to fans to like keep pressing for the idea that you should just try to win as many games as you can with the best guys at your disposal yeah the teams have

kind of poisoned the well when it comes to taking them at their word when they say that someone still has work to do and that's not why they're being promoted. There are cases where that is true. Yes. But there have also clearly been cases where that has not been true. Chris Bryan exists. Yeah. Right.

So it's kind of like when teams say they're losing money. Has there ever been a team that lost money in a certain season or didn't have a great financial year? Yeah, maybe. But the vast majority of times that they seem to say that, it doesn't seem to be the case. So when someone else says it, you kind of have to look at the track record of teams saying that sort of thing. And I know this has come up to when the team then promotes that prospect's promotion, right? And has a video. There was the reveal video of Adley Rutschman when he was informed that he would be coming up. And, you know, I think you noted something on Twitter about this and others did too, that maybe from one

perspective, well, you waited forever to promote this guy and then you're kind of capitalizing on the wave of goodwill that comes from his promotion. Right. I have mixed feelings about that because on the one hand, it's a really exciting event whenever it does occur. And it brings a lot of happiness to people, I think, to Orioles fans who maybe by the Orioles' own doing have not had a lot of those opportunities to celebrate lately so like I wouldn't want the fact that the Orioles have maybe made those fans and Rutschman himself

wait longer than they should have to see him in the majors then also deprive the fans and the players the opportunity of being as joyous about that occasion as they should be because it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And no matter how long you waited, it's really cool. And I feel almost bad for the players because they get, like, pranked, right? Like, they get called into the AAA manager's office and it's, like, under the guise of some routine conversation. And then they just slip in, and you're going to the big leagues or whatever. But it's fun to watch that reaction and then like their teammates mob them and everything. So like, yeah, are the Orioles kind of like benefiting from the social media clout of putting that out there

after also depriving everyone of the experience of seeing Rutschman for a long time? Yes. On the other hand, I would not want that not to be publicized and for us not to be able to enjoy that moment along with him or for him to enjoy that moment. It's more fun if it's uncomplicated, I guess, like maybe it was with Julia Rodriguez when those came out. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, that was fun. And there wasn't the same baggage associated with his call up in particular probably. Right. So I get that it's like a little more complicated in Rutschman's case.

On the other hand, like I'm glad I got to see that and I'm glad that Rutschman got to enjoy that moment too. Right. You know, it's a tricky thing and part of this is like people might rightly ask, Meg, what are your expectations here? Like they were always going to tweet about it, right? They were always going to post the video. They were always going to tout his promotion because to your point, it is exciting. And it is exciting for folks who aren't just Orioles fans.

And we want teams to give their fans stuff to be excited about. Like I think that is an animating principle of this podcast is the official editorial stance of Effectively Wild, the team should do stuff to make fans happy like that. for deciding Adlai Rutschman's timeline. If PR professionals were responsible for when we call up prospects, we'd probably call them up way too early. Yeah. Right? You don't think Orioles PR people would have been happy to have something to celebrate and promote for the past year? Yeah.

But I'd also note, and I don't mean this as like a dig at anyone who works for the Orioles, and I meant it about the team when I noted that I thought it was kind of tacky, but like when you work in social media or PR for a team, you work for a team, right? You're not a discrete entity. It's not like the Orioles account on Twitter is run by fans. Like it's run by professionals who have skills and part of what they are meant to do is to do PR for the organization and that there is like a calm strategy that is going on here and it is meant in some ways

to facilitate the decisions of people who are in the front office and potentially in the ownership group and to make those look as good as possible. So like we can acknowledge

all of those things together and like I said, if you are an Orioles fan, my expectation is not that you have to have like a super complicated relationship with this moment like you can just enjoy that moment that's fine you know and I think that you're probably super aware of the different factors that have sort of pushed and pulled

Rutschman in different directions in terms of his promotion but like this is good stuff to talk about it's important stuff to talk about and if if you decide like, I'm going to think about that tomorrow after he has been in the big leagues for a day, that's fine too. All right. I just wanted to pass along the news that MLB and the Players Association have agreed to delay the imposition

of stricter pitcher limits on active rosters. Yeah, so. I thought you were going to say that they have decided that all pretzels are bad and that we are moving on from pretzels. And I was going to say, I think that's a mistake. Some of the pretzels are good. So the plan had been for the 13 pitcher limit to take effect on May 30th.

That has now been delayed until June 19th. Let's hope it does not get delayed further. At least I'm hoping for that as someone who is a fan of that measure or even stricter ones in the future. There's just been so much conversation about like, are we going to run out of pitchers this season? And I just am tired of that idea that there are not enough pitchers to get through the season because there are just so many pitchers. And if there are not enough pitchers, then I feel like that is the fault of the teams for teaching pitchers to pitch the way that they do now. And maybe that's not something

you can just change on a dime. If you've taught a whole generation of pitchers to throw max effort and all the relievers go one inning at a time, you can't just audible and say, now you're going deep into games. You need a little bit of runway there to actually change instruction there. But all the bemoaning of like, oh, we don't have enough arms, and there's just going to be injury issues. There are going to be injury issues, I guess, and that seems inevitable. But I just think there needs to be a change in how teams are handling pitchers. I don't want to be a broken record about this,

but it just seems like there are more pitchers than ever. So if the problem is not enough pitchers, we must be doing something wrong here. I just don't know what to do about it other than to gradually impose these limits. So I hope that this will actually go into effect in mid-June and perhaps even be lowered in the future slowly, gradually, responsibly. But I hope that just does not get kicked down the road repeatedly like the zombie runner where everyone just says, oh, it's just for now. And then it just gets extended over and over again because no one actually has the will to change it or the players or the teams resist it. So we will see. But I wanted to pass along that news item. I think that the obvious solution to several of the problems

we have highlighted both in prior episodes and over the last couple of minutes is just to promote Grayson Rodriguez. Sure. Yeah. Here's a picture for you. And there was also the news. I have named a picture. That the Yankees have signed Matt Carpenter to a major league contract. Yeah. I am kind of curious about what he will do for the Yankees because I was following his offseason transformation. Matt Carpenter, 36 now, has not hit in the majors for quite a while. He started this season with the Rangers in AAA after rebuilding his whole swing in the offseason. There's a big Ken Rosenthal feature about that. He was kind of convinced by Joey Votto, like, hey, you need to change some things here and you can do this at your age and at this stage of your career. So he changed a lot of things about how his swing works. And then he went to AAA. And after a slow start, it really seemed to be clicking.

So I am very interested in whether this will continue to click and whether it will click at the major league level. Because after that slow start, I think Ken tweeted that in his last 68 plate appearances since April 17th, he had an 1173 OPS and six homers. So things were going well. And he asked for his release from the Rangers, I think, because he was not going to get a big league opportunity there. But now that seemingly he will, we will see what he does with it and whether he can become another example of a player who remakes himself late in his career and takes advantage of some of the tools and tactics and information that are available these days. Yeah, you noted the slow start, but even if we just take, granted, this is 95 plate appearances, but even if we just take his AAA line from this year, not splitting out the slow start from his recent, I was about to say his recent hotness, which I realize is a thing to say out loud on a podcast. His line at AAA so far this year, well, not so far this year, this year, hopefully for the last time, 275, 379, 613 for a 140 WRC plus. Yeah, not bad.

Walk in almost 15% of the time. So, you know, I think the weirdest thing about this is going to be that he's going to have to shave. Yeah, that's right. That's going to have a, he's going to have like a weird, he's going to have, I'm sure his face is fine. I don't mean to say he has a weird face or that he's going to have a weird face. But the strange thing happens with them where it's like, you know, they go to the Yankees and they have to shave. And then they have like half of a familiar face. Yeah, right. Maybe that's a good segue into our last topic for today because it involves another Yankees infielder.

Oh. Has had to shave and looks completely different. Talking about Josh Donaldson and Tim Anderson here. Not my best work on that segue, maybe. Well, I mean, it's not an inaccurate description. He has not been in the news because his face looks different after he shaved. I don't think that the length of his stubble is what has garnered attention.

No, although because he was in the news, my wife noticed and I guess she saw a picture of him and she said, oh, there are two Josh Donaldsons? There's another Josh Donaldson? And I said, no, same guy. And she was like, but this is not the Blue Jays' Josh Donaldson. No, he shaved. He just looks different now.

Wait a minute. Sorry, we have to, like, we're going to, I want to bracket this because we are going to talk about some like very important stuff that is like way more important johnson's beard but yes he didn't have a particularly distinctive like facial hair profile while he was with toronto and minnesota did he like i don't remember him with a full like big beard it wasn't like a bushy like dallas keitel kind of thing it was like a full, like, big beard. It wasn't like a bushy, like, Dallas Keuchel kind of thing. It was like a chin strap, like a goatee kind of situation, I think.

So, yeah, it was not the most dramatic transformation. But I guess for whatever reason, she felt like clean shaven. Josh Donaldson was unrecognizable for some reason. for some reason. But aside from the facial hair, he is very recognizable because this is Josh Donaldson kind of to a T here. And this is maybe the most egregious example of Josh Donaldson, Josh Donaldson. But it is part of a pattern for him going back years here. So just to summarize, because we have not recorded early this week, we kind of missed this entire saga or all of the many twists and turns and permutations of it, which I guess is good, because now we can kind of talk about it in its entirety, or at least in its entirety as of

Thursday afternoon. So this really has roots that go back a year or maybe multiple years, because Josh Donaldson has been beefing with the White Sox for quite some time now. And Josh Donaldson just generally has been beefing with the league as a whole and sometimes his own teammates for his entire career roughly as well. But this specific incident this past weekend, he taunted Tim Anderson of the White Sox by calling him Jackie maybe multiple times. And this led to a benches clearing incident because White Sox catcher Yosemite Grandal told him when he came up, you can't do this and stood up for Anderson basically. And then that kind of brought it to public attention.

And then the whole thing came out. The players had differing initial explanations of what happened. Donaldson made it sound as if this was a bit of playful ribbing, just some joshing between friends, seemingly. And he said that he had said this to Anderson before, that they had joked about it, seemingly. And to be clear, this is a reference to a 2019 quote in Sports Illustrated, right, where Tim Anderson said that in some respects, he felt like a new Jackie Robinson. He was not comparing himself to Robinson as a player or even as a trailblazer, but he was just saying, you know, he's an outspoken Black player in a

league where there are not a lot of Black players, and there's a lot of policing of non-white players and their attitudes and their behavior on the field. And so he felt like he was very much in the minority, which he is in that sense, and that he was sticking up for himself. And in that sense, he felt a kinship with Robinson. And I guess, you know, if you want to take issue with him even making that comparison, I'm sure people did at the time, and maybe you could. But Donaldson here is saying, oh, he's, you know, just like friendly, taunting here. Anderson has come out subsequently and said that that is not at all what happened.

First of all, like that explanation just on its face didn't really pass muster just because like clearly these are not friendly people. Like they do not get along. They were already beefing because of a slide the previous week, right? But also Donaldson has been beefing with the White Sox because of sticky stuff, accusations with Lucas Giolito. And then there was an incident

with base coach Daryl Boston and him blowing a whistle when the White Sox made good defensive plays. That's going back like four years at this point. There does not seem to be any love lost between the White Sox and Josh Donaldson or between Anderson and Donaldson specifically. So the idea that this was just like, it's just, you know, our love language here. I call him Jackie and he laughs along. Like that was not really credible. And Anderson has since said, I don't know if you have the exact quote. I do.

Okay. How about that? I have the appropriate tabs. so here i am quoting from a piece in the athletic we will link to a bunch of things here but anderson confirmed tuesday during pre-game media availability that donaldson had made similar comments before but that he made clear to the former mvp that it wasn't appropriate i won't speak to you and you won't speak to me if that's how you're going to refer to me and Anderson said he conveyed to Donaldson, I know he knew exactly what he was doing Saturday. Okay. And then, you know, I think to your point, previously during that weekend, White Sox reliever Liam Hendricks had said,

usually you have inside jokes with people you get along with, not people who don't get along at all. So that statement right there was complete bullshit. I will say we will continue here. statement right there was complete bullshit. I will say we will continue here. One of the bright spots in this very unsettling episode has been just the wall-to-wall uniform having of Tim Anderson's back by the rest of the White Sox, which I really appreciate. Everybody did the right thing by their teammate here, which I thought was great. Tony La Russa called these statements racist. I am sorry, when you are on the wrong side of Tony La Russa called these statements racist. And like, I am sorry, when you are on the wrong side of Tony La Russa when it comes to issues of race, like that should give you extreme pause and inspire some deep reflection. Yeah. And we have taken him to

account for not backing up his players at times in the past, right? With the Jermaine Mercedes incident specifically. But here he came out even stronger than most, right? He used the racist words, which I think even Anderson initially publicly at least said what disrespectful and maybe some other adjective, but I don't think he said racist initially. So yes, there was that. There was the universal backing up of Anderson by the White Sox. There was also the pretty universal not backing up of Donaldson by the Yankees. Like Aaron Boone said that this was not something that should have been said or that should have happened. Aaron Judge came out and expressed his disapproval of this comment. And you mentioned Hendricks.

Hendricks is a former teammate of Donaldson and does not get along with Donaldson. And again, that's a pattern here. And I know that Donaldson in some respects had a difficult upbringing, right? His father was an abuser and was imprisoned for much of Donaldson's childhood and adolescence. So I don't know exactly what he has been through and how that has shaped him. But he has been someone who has rubbed both teammates and opponents alike the wrong way for quite a while now. He is abrasive, to say the least. And I think that has some bearing on this incident. I suppose if you want to try to figure out what exactly his motivations and his intent were here, and I don't know that that's even the most important question, but there has been a lot of discussion of did he mean to say this in a racist way? Was this racially motivated? Maybe it was racist in result regardless of what the motivation was. But people, of course, are understandably surface, like a white player. Yes. this kind of comment like I could imagine that happening it's just the sort of thing that like on the surface like a white player yes saying this to a black player given the context of that

initial statement and comparison by Anderson like even if you give Donaldson like the greatest possible benefit of the doubt here and say that the only thing he had in his head was that like, I don't know, maybe he thought that Anderson had a big head or something, even like invoking the name of Robinson in the same breath as his or something along those lines. Just the context in which Anderson was invoking Robinson was like just the abuse that Robinson had to go through, right? And all the like taunting and the threats and everything else that he had to endure. And even if what you intended it to be was just a taunt i i don't see how it could have been intended as a good-natured taunt given the history between those players and those teams but even if it was just you know substitute whatever like less offensive version of that kind of taunt would be like it's just different than than that version of it where

you are using jackie robinson and all that he represents to taunt a black player it's just like just not a good idea just like just on the face of it you know like i guess you could debate like the degree to which the intent was terrible but like even like the most generous reading of it. It's just it's just not what you want to say. Yeah. And I think that regardless of his intent, the impact of those words was very readily apparent to everyone. And I think Anderson spoke to that quite eloquently. I mean, if you and here I'm, you know, craving a bit from James Feagin's piece on this, which we will also link to. It is quite good about how we just don't really need to take Donaldson at his word here.

But like, you know, when Anderson gave those remarks to Stephanie Epstein at Sports Illustrated, like he was talking about the alienation he feels from baseball and the distance that he feels. And we should remember that that interview was given in the wake of him being suspended for using the N-word. And so there is a tremendous amount of context, both in the immediate moment of him giving that interview and within his experience of baseball in his life that is being brought to bear here. I just don't ever think it's appropriate for anyone, particularly a white player, to try to weaponize Jackie Robinson's name against someone who, and I think another thing we will link to here is the segment that Bradford William Davis did on CNN, where like Tim Anderson is a, is a tremendous like ambassador for the game. Like he honors Jackie Robinson's legacy quite actively,

both in how he conducts himself on the field and the work that he does in the community in Chicago, back home, you know, trying to inspire, you know, young black Americans to be invested in baseball and play baseball, even though he knows how it feels to be alienated from the sport sometimes quite profoundly. So I just think that given all of that weight that's around this for it to be cast off as some like jab when it's this iconic player whose life and legacy is so meaningful to so many people is just wildly inappropriate no matter candidly no matter what the relationship is between the people but particularly when the relationship is one that is at could at best be described as strained right and when the person involved has told you in the past, don't do that, right? Like at the end of the day, these are people in a common workplace.

And Tim Anderson is having like an incredibly important person's legacy sort of thrown at him as if it's a weapon while he's at work when he said, don't do that. Like we don't have that kind of relationship. You're not in a position to litigate this concept generally and you're not in a position to use it as a taunt against me specifically so i just i don't know what's in josh donaldson's heart like i don't i get why there is an instinct to try to like unpack the intent because maybe that alters the potential trajectory for him you know realizing why this is inappropriate and correcting his behavior later but like ultimately we know what this did to the person involved and tim anderson found it to be disrespectful to the point that he was you know moved physically around it so i just you know i don't think that this is ever appropriate and you know

i understand that it's not unusual for players to appeal suspensions but you know this might have been one where like if donaldson wanted to demonstrate contrition if that had been sort of top of mind for him where he would have just taken his suspension and and moved tried to move forward with a different perspective on his past behavior and sort of a different way of comporting himself with other players on the field. So I do find it disappointing that he opted not to do that and is appealing his suspension. He's still on the COVID IL, so any suspension would come later anyway

because he wouldn't have qualified to serve it then. But it was just very like the whole thing was just really icky and i hope that he will whether it is something as weighty and momentous as this or just like being less of a dick yeah at work that like he will conduct himself differently. I don't want to be insensitive to the, you know, sort of tonnage of experiences in his life that have brought him to this point. To your point, it sounds like he did not have it easy, but that doesn't sort of give you a license to treat other people badly. You know, we have to overcome that sort of weight and, and conduct ourselves in a way that is

at the very least respectful. Yeah. And I guess the Yankees got what they expected or should have expected with Donaldson. I remember when they signed him or when they traded for him, Brian Cashman said he's definitely got an edge to him. Maybe that type of personality is going to be good for us. So the idea was like, you get this feisty Josh Donaldson, this red ass, right? And I've seen people make comps like to AJ Pruszynski, like he's that kind of player who, if he's on your team, you'll like him. And if he's on the other team, you hate him. But it seems like- That doesn't seem to be true. No, it seems like a lot of people who are on his team don't like him.

Don't particularly care for him. So I don't know whether it crosses the line from like a good kind of feistiness that could like light a fire under a team or whatever cliche you want to use, like play with an edge. That can be a good thing in some ways, but it can obviously be a bad thing in this kind of way. Like on the field, I guess they've gotten what they expected out of him. He's hit roughly like Josh Donaldson has for the past few years. So he has kind of delivered on the field, but he is also delivered on the field with this kind of incident. And one question about the suspension. So it was a one-day deal and there was a statement that MLB put out. This is from Michael Hill, MLB's senior vice president for on-field operations. MLB has completed the process of speaking to the individuals involved in this incident. There is no dispute over what was said on the field,

although it does seem like there was some dispute about what was said in the past or how it was said at least or how it was received. Anyway, continuing. Regardless of Mr. Donaldson's intent, the comment he directed toward Mr. Anderson was disrespectful and in poor judgment, particularly when viewed in the context of their prior interactions. In addition, Mr. Donaldson's remark was a contributing factor in a bench clearing duration of the suspension here, maybe especially in light of that earlier suspension of Anderson for the language that he used. And maybe MLB coming to a perplexing conclusion about that, because clearly it matters who says things and how they

say them. So is one game the right amount and does it depend on the intent? Like this is sort of a sticky issue, I guess, because if you were saying that this was racially motivated and that Donaldson was actually trying to use Robinson's name almost as a sort of slur, which I saw people interpreting it that way, then it seems like one game is insufficient, right? But I guess there have been other short suspensions for other people using various slurs and offensive statements in the past. So I don't know, maybe it's like kind of par for the course, but that would seem to be undershooting it if all you thought was that,

oh, it's just a little taunting and taunting happens on the field all the time and there's just bad blood between these teams or whatever and he could have just used some other word to express the same taunting then you might say well does he even deserve the suspension like clearly there's more to it than that like players don't just get suspended for taunting each other really generally unless it is in some sort of offensive way. So I don't know what the right answer here is or what the right term is exactly. But I saw people suggesting that it was weird that he got suspended at all.

I saw a lot of people suggesting that it was way too light. So does this split the difference or is it weird to split the difference at all in an incident like this i don't know i can appreciate why like on the one hand i think that having an understanding that like intent only matters so much and the impact is what is really important is like a good perhaps direction to to take and go on these things because like we just said i think there needs to be a recognition that like this was hurtful to tim anderson and he found it to be disrespectful and you know especially having previously said hey don't do that for it to happen again suggests like at least a disregard for his

preferences that is concerning to me on the other hand like i do think that there is something particularly pernicious about trying to weaponize like Robinson's name against a black player that probably merits something above and beyond normal taunting that results in a brawl. There wasn't a brawl, but a benches clearing incident. And so I don't know that I have a perfect answer on that. It felt late to me, particularly since there had been clear communication. And I don't know if MLB knew the full backstory about Anderson having said to Donaldson, don't do this. But it seems as if, well, this is the first time that it has led to the benches clearing. This is not the first time that donaldson has done this

and there is a prior expressed preference on the part of tim anderson to not use jackie robinson's name to like try to goad him so it felt light to me and i think that we have talked in the past about it it being hard to know exactly what the right number is for some of this stuff because it feels like you're saying well you know this bad thing is x number of games worse than this bad thing and we can acknowledge that not all bad things are like equally damaging but it does feel weird to try to put specific accounting around that but i will just say that it felt light like i know that joe kelly said it felt light to him you know and he he knows taunting, albeit in a very different way than this. There is the part of him throwing a fastball at Alex Bregman's head.

Not apples to apples for a number of different reasons, but I don't know. It felt light to me. I guess part of what I'm curious about is whether like the fact that the how much did the fact that the benches ended up clearing although nobody you know there were no punches thrown like it didn't devolve into a brawl like everybody went back to their respective dugouts you know the bullpens went back to the bullpens like is that what tipped it for the league yeah i wonder we might not have known about it otherwise i suppose that that's true but

yeah i don't know i find myself just unhelpfully finding these remedies to be wanting and i don't know that there is one that i you know i'm frustratingly not in a in a spot where i have one that i can readily suggest and say this is better but i don't know he did put out a statement on thursday where he said, first and foremost, I have the utmost respect for what Tim Anderson brings to the game of baseball. I stated over the weekend that I apologized for offending Tim and that it was a misunderstanding based on multiple exchanges

between us over the years. My view of that exchange hasn't changed, and I absolutely meant no disrespect. In the past, it had never been an issue, and now that it is, we have a mutual understanding. Again, still seemingly kind of conflicting with what Anderson is saying about this incident. He did then say, I would also like to apologize to Mrs. Rachel Robinson and the Jackie Robinson family for any distress this incident may have caused. Jackie was a true American hero, and I hold his name in the highest regard, which seems dubious that he holds it in the highest regard if he was using it in this way. If you're weaponizing it against a black player, then I'm sorry. No, you don't. Yeah.

I think one aspect of this that was maybe not surprising but sort of disturbing to me was the response of the Yankees fans to this incident, which— And we should say not every Yankees fan. No, of course. The Yankees have a diverse fan base, I'm sure many of whom took Tim Anderson's side of this, so I didn't want to say that, but... Some subsets of Yankees fandom have not covered themselves in glory this season

in multiple incidents. And in this one, after this became a brouhaha the next day, Tim Anderson was booed by some people and some people chanted Jackie at him. Right. Which is like the worst possible response to this. Shut the hell up, I invite you. It's just like, really? Like, you're just going to rally around Josh Donaldson, who has been a Yankee for all of like six weeks at that point. Like I know that we root for laundry and there's just this whole like tribal aspect to it where it's like, oh, he's one of ours and he's one

of theirs. And maybe that is the uniform you're wearing. Maybe it is what race you are. Who knows? Maybe it's a combination of both of those things. But like that kind of thing where it's just like our player can do no wrong and just must be in the right in any kind of controversy regardless of the circumstances so again i don't know how many people it was or what percentage of the attendance that day it was so i don't want to paint with too broad a brush but the fact that that happened at all was like come on please people well and you know particularly when other members of the the team you know are saying this was out of line like this shouldn't have happened you know fandom does a lot of good stuff and i think that it can it can elevate parts of our

personality that feeling of community can be really valuable but it can be really twisted too and i think that you know it is always useful for us and i don't mean to say that this is something that is unique to yankees fans i think this is a you know a danger of fandom like you you have to step back and like have a broader perspective on it sometimes and be like is this really like the hell i want to die on this is like i i want it back like no it's just it's just easy to say that was a mistake and you should say you're sorry because that was wrong to do you know and it doesn't cost you anything to say or think that. And it sure doesn't cost you anything to be quiet if you can't have to that sort of thing. And if there's any upside out of this, I guess it's just that I hope it's given people an opportunity to appreciate Tim Anderson because how good has Tim Anderson been? He's having a hell of a year.

He's so good. It's so good. I mean. And I've been someone like, I guess a lot of like sabermetric sort of people have thought like, well, he can't keep this up at various times just because like he's had such high babbips like yeah he's he has one of the highest babbips in history over a good number of plate appearances it's a 355 lifetime now which is incredible so like when he first broke out like in 2019 when he hit 335 and he hadn't been much of a hitter prior to that and he had a 399 BABIP that year.

Yeah. Everyone was saying, well, unsustainable. Yeah. And understandably so, I think, at that point. But then the BABIPs have gone since then 383, 372, 380. And the batting averages have gone from 335 to 322, 309, 355 so far this season. This is who he is. It might not be who he is forever, but he clearly has this skill and he has actually

improved in some respects. Still, he is improving. He struck out in 11.1% of his plate appearances this year. That's incredible in this era. It's like half of the league strikeout rate. And he is still hitting for pretty decent power and obviously like not only making a ton of contact, but when he does make contact, that's the thing. It's like if you have a 380 or whatever BABIP, then yeah, you want to put the ball in play because it tends to work out really well for you.

So him making more contact, that's like the best possible thing for him because it tends to work out really well for you so him making more contact that's like the best possible thing for him because it doesn't seem to have sapped his quality of contact any and so he's hitting 355 395 513 that's like a 169 wrc plus as we speak that's fantastic yeah he's got a you know 398 wobba like he's been great on the base paths like defense has been fine i know he's had a couple of miscues but like he's just been a he's been a great player this year he's been a really great player and on a team where there have been some bumps in the road in terms of their offensive production like never have they needed him to be this guy more and he's doing it so it's you know

I don't want to say like I hate that this is overshadowing Tim Anderson. Cause like, I think us grappling with this stuff is really important. So I don't want to like diminish it or say that we shouldn't look at it. And like you said, I hope that like talking about Tim Anderson in this context is allowing people to like really sit with how phenomenal a year he is having and what kind of player he is and what he brings to the game, because it's been pretty great. Yeah. And I think another reason why people were skeptical about him is that he doesn't walk. He has a sub 4% walk rate. And that matters a lot less if you are consistently hitting above 300. You're still going to get on base at a decent clip. He's not going to be a great on-base guy without walking ever. And he's still not walking, which is fine if you're hitting.355 in this era. But one

interesting thing, he has a high chase rate. He has a high chase rate historically, and he has his highest chase rate in a few years this year. But there was a really interesting article at Baseball Perspectives this week by Robert Orr that went deeper on swing decisions and plate discipline. And the idea was that, well, if you're just using a one-size-fits-all definition of the strike zone for every hitter, and it's just, if it's outside of the rulebook zone, it's a chase. If it's inside, then it's a swing at a strike. That's good. Well, maybe that doesn't work for everyone. And Robert went to more of a player-specific model looking at where players actually hit the ball hard. And he found

that Anderson has the biggest difference between chase rate and what he called bad decision rate, bad swing decision rate, his metric that he has developed here. So there's actually a giant gap there where he has one of the highest chase rates in baseball, but one of the lowest bad decision rates because he swings at pitches that are outside the strike zone sometimes, but he's able to handle those pitches really well. And apparently like his hot zone is sort of shifted down in a way relative to the typical player or to the heart of the plate. And so he hits a lot of balls really hard when they are away and off the plate, which would be chases, would be bad decisions for some other player to swing at. But for him, those are pitches he can punish. So he seems to just know where he can do damage and swing at those pitches.

Still would be nice if he walked once in a while, but I think it's less glaring than it would be. And he's maybe a good hitter and a fun hitter. So just general Tim Anderson appreciation. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, we started with Super Pretzels and we ended there. You never know where we're going to go. That's what makes us wild, but hopefully also effective. So that will end this episode. All right. Just a few notes here. Thanks for all the responses to the interview with the CEO of In Venue on episode 1853. I'm not sure any interview we've ever done has generated as much discussion in as many places. If you've considered joining the Effectively Wild Discord for Patreon supporters, today would be the day because the Discord for patrons was popping.

But a few things I meant to mention. First, as you heard on the episode, Kelly Prock asked us maybe repeatedly how she could prove or demonstrate the validity of In Venue's probabilities. I think one way would probably be by beating Ben Clemens's ultra-simplistic one-factor model. But one answer I gave her on the phone call prior to the podcast, but did not mention on the pod, was some approach similar to FiveThirtyEight's public validation of its own metrics. They have a page called How Good Are FiveThirtyEight Forecasts? So, for instance, if they say that an NBA team or an MLB team or a politician, for that matter, has a 70% chance of winning, how often did they actually win? Was it roughly 70% of the time? So assuming all of that is accurately logged and published, that seems like a valid and confidence-inspiring

approach that InVenue could take if it is interested in putting that information out there. I didn't observe this myself, but I will note that a few of the listeners who charted and logged those probabilities for Ben Clemens's study have mentioned that they noticed some of the wonkier and more glaringly perplexing predictions changing as soon as they appeared on the screen. So they would see a certain probability and then maybe the stat would change from a reach probability to some other type of probability that was less obviously eyebrow raising. And so that second probability would be the one recorded for the purposes of Ben's study, not the first. I don't know if that has been happening more often. I don't know if it's been happening intentionally. And even if it were intentional, I don't know whether it would

be InVenue doing it or Apple or MLB Network, because they might be controlling what is actually shown on the screen. But some people have raised the possibility that the apparent improvement in the model in recent weeks, though still not to the point that it beat Ben's model, might not so much reflect an improvement in the underlying model so much as getting smarter about what is actually displayed. Don't know that that's the case, but a few of them did mention that. And while I cited some of the many examples of the seemingly wrong way changes within certain plate appearances based on the count. I forgot to mention one mid or late April example that was kind of eye-popping. Leading off the bottom of the ninth in a Cardinals-Reds game, Alejo Lopez was given a 1% chance to reach base on an 0-2 count against Giovanni Gallegos.

Now, Alejo Lopez, not a great hitter. Gallegos, pretty good pitcher, although it is a righty-lefty matchup. And it was 0-2, but a 1% chance to reach. That's 1 in 100. That's like an expected OBP of 10. It seems extremely far-fetched that any actual major league hitter would have a 1 in 100 chance of reaching base at any point in a plate appearance. I think the league average OBP in plate appearances that started out 0-2 to that point was 181. Anyway, Lopez singled, which was not necessarily meaningful, but funny nonetheless. And I'll read this email from Sean. We did get a lot of feedback from people who maybe have some experience in machine learning or adjacent

fields. And a lot of them did suspect that some sort of overfitting was going on. Sean said, I used to work in yield management demand forecasting for a major airline. And based on the explanation, I suspect that model works similarly to ours. We often had problems with forecasts changing counterintuitively when there was a change in the level of detail. If there's enough historical data available for a batter-pitcher matchup, you want it at the finest level of detail possible. I suspect that often there are enough historical plate appearances early in the count to use a very fine level of detail, but there are fewer for counts later in the at-bat, forcing the model to aggregate, which causes weird changes in the probability.

For example, if Justin Verlander is facing some veteran batter, you might have enough OO counts between the two of them that you could use probability at that level of detail, taking into account their pasts. Not that you should, necessarily. But when it goes to O 01, they haven't faced each other enough times to use that probability. It falls below whatever plate appearance threshold the model uses, so instead it uses the hitter's history against all hard-throwing veteran right-handers, so the connection between the two probabilities that viewers expect isn't there

because the data feeding them changed. I don't know if it's exactly that, but I think that could account for the mismatch between probabilities within a single plate appearance. You expect them to go up or down based on ball or strike, but it's a different sample potentially of past events that those probabilities are derived from, and so it won't necessarily be internally consistent within that plate appearance. Just speculation though. Is it possible that a batter's odds of reaching base could decrease after taking a ball or increase after a strike? I have a hard time coming up with scenarios where that could be true, but I don't want to rule it out entirely. Because who knows, if the model is picking up on something amazing, I wouldn't want to dismiss it just because it goes against my expectations.

Maybe there was a massive wind shift or maybe it's something with pitch selection after certain counts. Remember, though, that the model is predicting your probability of reaching base in that plate appearance, not just on the next pitch. What I felt was missing was just an acknowledgment of how hard that is to believe. You want to make the case that it's true, okay. But if I were trying to make that case, I would concede, yes, I know, this sounds extraordinary. And I just haven't heard that from them, which is why I asked the question of whether they have a baseball subject matter expert involved, because that type of person might realize, hey, the burden of proof is going to be high here. We have to make a really strong case. more triples actually makes teams score less or that sacrifice flies are more valuable than doubles and it's not because triples are bad or that you would rather have a sacrifice fly than a double it's just that teams that hit a lot of triples might have a lot of faster smaller speedier

players who don't hit home runs and so on the whole they might not be as productive offensively and sacrifice flies obviously are correlated to run scoring but all l sequel you'd certainly rather hit a double. So if you have some awareness of baseball, then you say, well, of course, that doesn't make sense. That's what the models spit out, but based on what I know about baseball, that can't be true. But if you get extremely counterintuitive results from a model, even if that model in some ways is very advanced, I feel like you have to say either, hey, we're missing something here, or we have to look under the hood and figure out what is happening here because this is incredible.

We just made a major discovery about baseball. Another example of that is from a piece published a few months ago about InVenue where Proct said that one of the insights that the model yielded was that on balance, the impact of the pitcher outweighs that of the batter, which is the opposite of what a lot of previously published research has shown, as I noted in a recent StatBlast. But I do think the whole thing goes to show that greater complexity doesn't necessarily equal greater accuracy. Adding more factors may not make your model better. You could do a pretty decent job just starting with Ben's naive model and adjusting a bit based on projections for the batter and the pitcher and the ballpark and catcher and umpire and weather and so forth. Some people wondered whether this is some sort of attempt to sandbag in order to pull people in to make them think that it's easy to

bet on baseball and then pull a switcheroo of some sort. Generally, I lean toward Hanlon's razor, so I don't know if that could be the case, though I could see why someone might be enticed to bet if they did get odds based on those probabilities. But if the probability suddenly improved, maybe that would be apparent. Also, Matt Carpenter update from his first game as a Yankee. He has a mustache. I know you all were wondering. And two emails in response to topics we talked about on email shows last week.

First, Dan, Patreon supporter, says, I remember the transition when announcers began using walk-off more liberally. I railed that walk-off is just home runs, but truly no one cared. When the baseball pedantry conversation started up, I almost wrote in about this, but a part of me was convinced I'd misremembered the origin of the phrase, and perhaps I was the fool all along.

Low vindication. We have a term for a plate appearance that suddenly and irrevocably brings the game to an end, and that is game-ending. A game-ending single up the middle, a game-ending wild pitch, a game-ending throwing error. Within the big circle that is game-. A game ending single up the middle, a game ending wild pitch, a game ending throwing error. Within the big circle that is game ending plays, there is a smaller circle that is walk-offs, which as the original listener described is when the defense says screw this and just walks away. Properly, it shouldn't even be just a game ending home run, it should be a game ending no doubter, as if the crack of the bat itself sends players moping toward the showers because there's

nothing more to do here. I might adopt game ending. I think I said that earlier in this episode. And lastly, Keith writes, in response to your recent discussion about tortured fan bases, as a Canadian, I would like to offer up an alternative, although maybe not in the spirit of the question, and certainly not recent, I would like to propose the Montreal Expos. I don't think playoff droughts or heartbreak can compare to losing a franchise. Both the 1981 losing to the Dodgers in the NLCS and 1994 strike-canceled season where the Expos had the best record in all of baseball Expos represent the ultimate what-if scenarios for teams that could have been dominant in both the 80s and 90s.

Both teams featured future Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and Tim Raines in 81, and Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker in 94, only to see all of those players and other great players leave Montreal for success with other franchises. I lived in Montreal in the early 2000s and saw the slow death of the franchise. It was a sad end, and you have to wonder if things could have turned out differently for the franchise. Good point, we were really only considering active franchises, but the fact that the Expos are not active unless you count the Nationals makes them even more tortured, I suppose. People also wrote in to note that when we were having our Tyler Taylor discussion,

we didn't consider alternate spellings, such as Tyler McGill, T-Y-L-O-R. Good point. There are enough players with the standard spelling as it is. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get themselves

access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free. Here's another Ty, although not a Tyler, Tyrone Palmer, which reminds me of Tyrone Taylor. Could call him Ty Taylor. Fortunately not short for Tyler. Ron Jolly, Dominic Lewis, Mohamed Khan, and Matt Harrison.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastoffangrafts.com. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and

production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. When Tim was holding court, he was not quick to judge. He knew we'd make mistakes. Everybody does. We talk about baseball, Jim Thompson and Revolution Rock. We talk about anything at all, and we talk. We'll see you next time.