Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1868: And Here Come the Sunflower Seeds

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a surprising ESPY nomination for Jorge Soler, another Tyler Wade/Taylor Ward broadcaster mixup, the massive Mariners-Angels brawl and ensuing suspensions and pizzas, Bryce Harper’s broken thumb and not-broken face, Mark Appel finally making the majors, an update on the Joc Pederson–Tommy Pham feud, the Yankees getting no-hit, the […]

I've been told many times before to think I'm number one And I do, I guess it's true, I think I'm having fun But maybe I ever just think of you, but now I know it's true No matter what you do, you're my number one It's true, I never needed you, I never wanted a girl It's gonna be a banger, Ben. Hello and welcome to episode 1868 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

Doing okay. I just got an email about the 2022 ESPYS nominees. Oh. Which I have not thought about the ESPYS for a while, the ESPN Sports Awards, but they're still happening. Apparently, they're coming up on July 20th. They're still happening. Apparently, they're coming up on July 20th.

And let me give you the nominees for best MLB player at the 2022 ESPYs. I'm ready. Okay. Shohei Otani. Cool. Off to a roaring start. Bryce Harper. Okay.

Aaron Judge. Okay. Jorge Soler. Huh. Huh. Yeah. That's about what I thought. and this is for their performance in 2022 so this doesn't actually say but at least according to the espy's wiki i think it is

over the past calendar year okay which does make it a bit more defensible yeah because jorge soler so he had that horrible start to last season with the Royals. Then he was traded to Atlanta July 30th. So we're not quite at a year since then. Yes. But at least the beginning of his bad season with the Royals, I guess, would not count. And if we're going by July 20th when the ESPYs actually take place, then I guess we will be at almost the one year mark of when that trade happened.

And then, of course, he went to Atlanta and he had a fantastic second half of the season, 882 OPS, and won the World Series MVP. Right. And I guess that makes this a decent... I don't know that he would have... It makes it... He wouldn't be my vote, but one can understand the logic of it, right?

One can understand the logic of it even if I wouldn't give him my vote, right? Because in Atlanta, before the postseason, he hit... I guess part of what I find surprising about this is that if i were assembling a ballot and i were doing it from the perspective of like maybe i'm not super inclined toward analytics and so like the the performance in the postseason the world series mvp like that's very

resonant to me fine okay but i'm surprised that that they would pick a hitter hitting less than 300 if that is the rationale, right? Because even in Atlanta, he hit 269, 358, 524. He hit 14 home runs. He had a 132 WRC plus. He was worth a win over the course of his atlanta tenure and then of course he had the postseason performance but i'm still kind of surprised if that is you know if it's postseason plus like a you know his tear in atlanta and then you don't forget his hitting 215 for the marlins so far this year yeah exactly you know with just a 107 wrc plus now he has he has managed 13 home runs in in this offensive environment but also like he's horace so like you know i know that the the power hasn't always manifested in games it was a thing that we talked about you know who who are you jorge like what is your true right sort of what is your true sort of, what is the real manifestation of your power going to be?

Because it's not like he didn't have impressive raw, but it wasn't always manifesting in games. And like the year that he hit 48 was 2019, and we had the rabbit ball. But then he managed 27 last year, and you're like, okay. And then like, I don't know what to say about 13 home runs in this offensive environment,

but with a guy who has the capacity for the power he does. So anyway, odd choice. I mean, I think maybe marginally more understandable given the postseason accolades in particular, but it is interesting because even with that nice run that he went on in Atlantalanta like he was below replacement level at least by our version of war now some of that is obviously attributable to like the defensive metrics being poor but you know it's not like i don't know that's a is there anyone

else is it just those guys just that's it that's your your Mount Rushmore of baseball in 2022. Otani, Judge, Harper, Solaire. That's your final four. To recap, you have two reigning MVPs, right? Yes. You have a guy who has to be the runaway odds-on favorite to be this year's AL MVP. Yes. And then you have Jorge Solaire. Reigning World Series MVP. yes you have four eyes reigning world series mvp so i guess like it's an mvp kind of logic is really the unifying theme but that's a that's kind of funny that's a funny thing 23

championship win probability added in that single postseason round last year so how about that don't think otani and harper can say that. They sure can't. I mean, it is kind of interesting to me that they weren't like, let's pick the best player from the reigning, the defending world champs. It's not like they were like, Freddie Freeman, you know. They didn't pick him. He was the best guy on Atlanta last year. They weren't like, no, you know, we got to pick that. No, they picked Jorge Soler.

You know, he was really good in that postseason. He was instrumental, I think, to both getting Atlanta to the postseason and then helping them win their World Series championship. So by a very specific sort of logic, his inclusion makes some kind of sense. But I don't know that he'd be the guy even just from Atlanta who I would have picked. Yeah. Well, as far as I can tell, fan voting is now open. Oh, so Aaron Judge is just going to win this award, right?

Well, unless we mobilize the Effectively Wild audience to stuff the ballot box for Jorge Soler so that he is nominated or named the best MLB player, Jorge Soler. That would be quite an honor. Yeah. Who would you, I mean, I pick, I say judge because he's a Yankee. And so if this is a fan vote, it seems likely that he will just win. If I were going to pick a second choice, I imagine it would be Otani because he's probably the best known baseball player. The interesting thing is that there is a separate category, Best Athlete Men's Sports. Okay. And in that one, the nominees are Steph Curry, Aaron Rodgers, Connor McDavid, and Shohei

Otani. That is a weird field. That is a super weird field of people. But if Otani is nominated for best athlete men's sports, does that not presuppose that he is the best athlete in MLB? Could he be nominated for best athlete in men's sports without being the best athlete in MLB? Aren't they kind of telegraphing

who they think the best MLB player is here if they're nominating Otani and only Otani? Where is Jorge Soler's nomination for best athlete men's sports? Well, and now I'm very confused because, like, what is the organizing principle behind that vote? vote because you might think to yourself oh it you know it's about who won like you know like aaron rogers was the nfl mvp last season and obviously their season for 2022 hasn't their 2022-23 season hasn't commenced yet But Curry didn't win the 2022 NBA MVP. I don't think, right? Wasn't it joking? Well, he won the finals MVP though, right?

So he gets in with the Jorge Soler. There's like a really competing hierarchy of MVPs that I find quite confusing. The internal MVP logic of this awards field is not. And who was the fourth guy? Is he a soccer player? Connor McDavid, hockey player. Hockey. Oh, gosh.

We're going to get email. I'm sorry. I was so happy for the avalanche. Send all your emails to Meg. No, I'm sorry. I just, I don't. I will freely admit my own ignorance. I apologize.

Yes, but I think we can glean from this that World Series MVP or Finals MVP trumps all. I guess. Hey, I mean, if you won the MVP and you won a title. But yes, but no, right? Because if that were true, then Jorge Soler would be the... Good point. Good point.

And that would be a very wild nomination. And you always feel kind of bad in moments like this when there is sort of an odd selection because it just makes it sound like you're really down on Jorge Soler and I don't mean that at all like Jorge Soler is like a perfectly useful big leaguer um and he was as we have just discussed very useful to Atlanta you know during that run and but like he shouldn't be the best baseball player that seems kind of that seems silly fans decide so i'm gonna pick aaron judge i bet i bet the answer will be aaron judge and then it would be great if otani did win best male athlete which like somebody might say you know

it's what he's doing is so amazing that the degree of difficulty he's pursuing within his own sport just exceeds these guys. Right. Yeah. Then you have an issue of a lack of internal consistency and internal logic because what if Aaron Judge is the best MLB player, but Shohei Otani is the best athlete in men's sports? Yeah.

Just does not compute. There will be steam coming out of everyone's ears as they present these awards. They will deactivate like some original Star Trek robot who is presented with some kind of conundrum by Kirk. So now you all know that the ESPYs exist and that Jorge Soler may be the best MLB player. I thought that was important news to pass along to our listeners. Yeah, that's, you know, and then like, if you can't,

you don't have integrity in ESPY voting. Like, what do we have as a country, really? Yeah, well, we'll see who can mobilize their voters, whether Jorge Soler has a great get out the vote, whether he has, you know, like local campaign offices that have been preparing for this and they've got their messaging out there. They're going door to door to win this thing.

I'm pulling for him, frankly. So we've got a lot to discuss. We had a base brawl. We had a regular old Donnybrook. Donnybrook probably doesn't even go far enough. This was beyond Donnybrook. There were punches thrown in this thing. So many aspects to discuss of the

Angels-Mariners brawl. We have a Bryce Harper injury. We have some other interesting news and follow-ups and stat blasts and pass blasts. We, I think, will not discuss Wes Johnson today, the Twins pitching coach who is going

back to coaching college because we will talk about that next time with a guest yes so we will get to that it is quite interesting yes but lots of other stuff on the agenda today i guess we should probably begin with the brawl but as a segue into the brawl i want to bring back everyone's favorite segment a broadcastercaster mixes up Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward. This is great because we have ears and eyes everywhere. People who are listening to every flavor of broadcast that the Angels are involved in. So we started out with Joe Davis mixing up the two.

Then we had Mark Gubiza, the Angels broadcaster, mixing up the two. And now this was sent to us by at B. Connolly on Twitter. This is from the June 24th game, Angels and Mariners, and this was Mariners TV broadcaster Dave Sims. Top of the order here's Taylor Ward struck out on a 2-2 pitch. And he fell back safely. Jumped ahead of myself. The TWs, it's Tyler Wade here. So in Sims' defense, they were batting back-to-back here. Yeah.

Which really, like in the Gubiza example, one of them was on base and the other was batting. And in this example, Wade was batting ninth and Ward was batting first. So they were back to back in the lineup, which is like just cruel and unusual, really, for broadcasters to have to keep them straight just being on the same team, period. But then one is on base, one is in the batter's box or one is at the plate and one is on deck. I mean, it's just it's too much to ask of anyone, really. But the best in the biz, they are just not equal to the task of keeping Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward straight. Yeah, it seems to be something that unites all broadcast booths, that it is just it is just flummoxing. And you pointed out to me in chat before we started recording that like this team, there's just a lot of opportunities to goof it up when it comes to their roster.

Like we've got Taylors and Tylers and we've got Marshes and Walshes, which sounds sort of similar. And then Ben, I feel as if you joined me in my long struggle to differentiate Dan C. Swanson from Charlie Culberson, right? Like you were aware of my, well, it was my personal nightmare, but I feel like it was also a collective nightmare. And then like Charlie Culberson went to the Rangers and there was peace in the kingdom. And then, have you laid eyes on Noah Syndergaard and David McKinnon? David McKinnon, yes, I have. That's the same guy.

It's been a big feature on Angel's broadcast lately. Yeah. Yeah. I think McKinnon has called up recently. Yeah. I think he said that Cindergarten is like a taller, more ripped version of him or something. Like he's more Thor-like than McKinnon. Sure, yeah.

But there's clearly a resemblance there. Yeah, he is, at least in terms of their listed heights there's four inches of difference between them and about 40 some odd pounds knowing cinder guard i would imagine a good amount of that is muscle but yes i don't care it's the same it's that's i'm gonna swear that's the same guy like that they're not different they're the same the number of times that i've thought is no cinder guard pinch hitting why are they pinch hitting what are and then i'm like no it's not that's that's david mckinnon and um i am gonna get it wrong for like the rest of my life potentially like i think i might just always get it wrong and so and and

then you know he's he's david mckinnon and i always want to call him billy mckinney who is a different guy yeah doesn't look as much like him but it's just i think um you know i don't know if we need more names or we just need to avail ourselves of more of the names but we got to do something because this is a problem yeah at least mckinnon doesn't sound like cinder guard and culberson doesn't sound like Swanson. No. These are more lookalikes than surnames alike. So that's something.

But yes, I have become acquainted with David McKinnon. I have met this major leaguer who it seems like this is such an angel's thing that someone will be called out of obscurity and then will suddenly be batting cleanup behind like Otani and Trout like David McKinnon hello you are now like providing protection in the lineup for the likes of Mike Trout at this point and he was really raking at AAA but he's a 27 year old rookie who I was not really familiar with until recently. But yes, he is a major leaker now. And speaking of Walsh and Marsh, I will just play that clip because we got another tip from at Tristate BB on Twitter. And he tipped us off to the fact that Terry Smith, the Angels radio broadcaster, he screwed up Walsh and Marsh.

the Angels radio broadcaster, he screwed up Walsh and Marsh. 2-0 is the count here on Marsh, or Walsh, I should say, in the pitch, and that's a little low. And I've made that mistake too. I have made both of these mistakes on this podcast, some of which have probably been edited out and others of which probably have not, but I have also stumbled over Walsh and Marsh and Wade and Ward. And that's sort of how this whole segment started. So it reassures me that even people who call all of this team's games, they still cannot seem to keep these players straight. No, they're all the same guy. It's not two guys. It's one guy moving back and forth.

So that brings us to the brawl. This was a serious brawl. This was a serious brawl. I was watching this one live. Ultimately, we had, what, 12 people involved in this receive suspensions. That's a pretty high casualty count from this thing. It all started, well, it's hard to pinpoint where these things start often, but I guess we could say that in a sense it may have started because Mike Tr out of the way and came close to being hit in the head and was not thrilled about it. And then the next day we had not only retaliation, but pretty clearly premeditated.

It would appear so, yes. Yeah. It would appear so, yes. Yeah. At least that seems to have been the conclusion that MLB's disciplinarians reached. Yes. Because the Angels and Phil Nevin, replacement for Joe Madden, he started Andrew Wants, rhymes with pants. Wants. Helpfully says his baseball reference page.

Does it really say rhymes with pants? It does say that. Yes, it does. That's delightful. This was his first major league start. He was working as an opener here. And there was some surprise, I think, expressed by the Angels broadcasters at the time that Andrew Wentz was starting at all. Wentz. And quite quickly, it became clear why he was starting. He seemingly was put in there solely as a sacrificial lamb and also a sacrificing lamb.

He was there to deliver sweet revenge and retaliation to the mariners, which he did in more than one way, right? He not only plunked a guy but threw behind a guy i have trouble keeping the sequence of events straight in brawls but there were multiple incidents here yes so i mean i will say that i think two things can be true simultaneously i do not think that eric swanson meant to throw at mike trout but i can also totally appreciate mike trout and the angels being like hey don't do that it's bad i mean swanson was kind of all over the place during that that relief outing and if I remember correctly it was a tight game that the Mariners were ahead in right so the incentives to purposefully hit Trout don't seem to be there but it got quite close to his head and I

can completely understand them being like no rude don't because i was watching it and i was like well don't do that so and there's always an element of like you go after the franchise guy right right there's added weight and baggage to it if they'd thrown near david mckinnon perhaps it would not have been quite as huge a deal who knows but right they would have spent the next hour debating whether it was david mckinnon or no cinder guard so that probably would have taken the juice out of it if it had been ward or wade then they would have had to figure out which one of them it was if it was walsh or marsh i mean yeah it really it really changes things up but then you are correct that the day of the brawl brawl day yes first wance like pants like pants he threw behind julio

that's right it sounds like you're like um doing a stereotypical accent of a southern person trying to say whence like wance i don't know it's just a it's a name anyway they should replace that on the baseball reference page not wince like pants but wince like you are a stereotypical southern person doing an accent of wants. Yeah, because, you know, I think that what you're going for when you're giving pronunciation guides is like descriptions that everyone can relate to. So they say the name right. Anyhow, so yes, he threw behind Julio and then he plunked Jesse Winker.

Yeah, a nice polite plunk on the posterior. On the bum. Where you're quote unquote supposed to do it, right? Yeah, he got him in the bum. And then all hell broke loose, Ben. Yes, it did. And we should say benches had been warned after the Julio pitch, right? Correct.

Because tensions were high already because of Trout and maybe because Wants was in there at all. Wants. And then benches were warned. And in theory, if you're warned and then there's another plunking, there should just be an automatic ejection. An automatic ejection. Right.

Which didn't seem to happen immediately, right? Because Scott Service, Mariner's manager, he was gesturing for him to be ejected. Yeah, like get him out of there. Right. And then he was, but there was just a lot happened. There was like a big, one of those like cartoon kind of brawls where you just see a giant dust cloud. Yes. And then like someone walks in and out of the cloud and then they come was in classic Otani-esque fashion, not really throwing punches. He was holding people back. He was on the periphery. He seemed to be perhaps even smiling a little bit, just a classic Shohei, but supporting his teammates, I suppose. But you had the whole thing. You had the bullpens running in, right, like in parallel.

You had the whole thing. You had the bullpens running in, right? Like in parallel. And then actual punches being thrown, which it does not always happen. You had Anthony Rendon poking Jesse Winker in the face. Yes. Anthony Rendon with a cast on his right hand using the left hand to do that. Yes. And you then had J.P. Crawford coming over top, trying to land some blows.

You had many, just a multitude of people falling down, falling all over themselves. You had the fight break up and come back together several times. You had Scott Service in complete disarray. He looked like he was untucked, noarray like he looked like he was tucked in everything untucked no ball cap he looked like he was right there in the middle of it his he has been thought to be on a quite wobbly stool in in recent weeks because of the mariners underperformance but i think we have talked in the past about how that clubhouse seems to like him quite a bit, actually.

And I think that moments like this are probably part of why he has managed to endear himself to those players because he gets right in there. As I noted on Twitter, I tend to think that brawling is pretty just goofy. You can just have your feelings without punching people. And it can be quite dangerous. And the mariners catcher torrens dinged his shoulder as a result of this brawl so like there were in addition to the suspensions which are hefty for some of their players like you know there were also some injuries

that resulted from this so i think it's it's goofy to do but i have enjoyed learning that jesse winker is not a hold me back bro kind of guy like Jesse Winker he seems to I will do another story now seems keen to both start and finish it and you know I feel like a lot of guys in baseball they're one or the other kind of guy and and mostly the first kind not the second I think that is not true of Jesse Winker Jesse Winker I want to get to the other things that transpired in the course of the fight this feels like it's good a time I need to get to the other things that transpired in the course of the fight. This feels like it's good a time, Annie, to share Jesse Winker's quote. After the game, as he left the field following his ejection, he just double birded the entire ballpark.

Double freedom rockets, yes. Just aggressively. There was no ambiguity about what he wanted the Assemble crowd to do. And after the game, and here I'm quoting from Corey Brock of The Athletics' story about this dust-up. The only thing I'm going to apologize for is slipping the fans off. Winker said, that's it. As fans, they're spending their hard-earned money to come watch us play a game,

and they didn't deserve that. So I apologize to the fans especially the women as if this brawl were the titanic and we were prioritizing life sounds like it's from a past blast from the 19th century it's like ladies day at the ballpark or something i cannot i am sorry that the delicate sensibilities of the ladies and children in the crowd were offended. Yes. Of course, there was a little girl there who had been present for a previous brawl and hopefully is not scarred by just seeing brawls every time she goes to the ballpark. Fortunately, she gets nice makeups after the brawls

because the players and teams will give her things to make up for these traumatic sights she's seeing at the park. But that was an aspect to the story. That was the least of what was happening with Winker after the game, which I guess we can get to that too. Yes, but then after everyone is pried apart, after birds are flipped and many, many people are ejected, many people are ejected.

Many people are ejected from this game, including three of the Mariners starters on the day. So that seems suboptimal. Yeah, I believe Ryan Tappara, the Angels reliever, was ejected twice, I believe. I think that might be true, yeah. Both the home plate and third base umpires. Yeah, they got him twice. And in addition to his poking of Jesse Winker in the face, Both the home plate and third base umpires. Yeah, they got him twice.

And in addition to his poking of Jesse Winker in the face, Rendon was on the field while he's on the injured list, which we're not allowed to do. So that, I think, probably factored into his suspension as well. And then, Rocio Iglesias was not done. He was still worked up, and he threw an entire tray of seeds yep just like at an empty field everyone had retreated to their dugouts to try to regroup from a it was like a 20 minute long delay such a big brawl that it took 15 or 20 minutes to resolve and then he also threw gum on the field because he was quite fired up. Yeah.

One of the greatest gifts in some time, I think, just the slow motion and the majestic seed bags just going every which way. Like just a beautiful shot. It sounded like it should have been narrated by David Attenborough or something. Like it's just a great nature documentary

here of sunflower seeds just scattering to the winds. Just beautiful. Warner Herzog considering baseball here. The sunflowers, they fly. That's why Warner Herzog. I think it's really good. I've heard worse.

Yeah. Is it about as good as your southern person saying whence? Whence. So much happened here. I'll just list off the suspensions, I guess. So Angels manager Phil Nevin, 10 games. So we should talk a little bit about that because that is by suspension standards fairly severe, although considering what he did here, perhaps not severe enough. I don't know. Jesse Winker, seven games. And yeah, not only did he want to finish and start, he also wanted to restart maybe multiple times. I mean, he kept coming back and just kicking up the

festivities again. You had Rendon, I guess a literal insult to injury situation or suspension to injury situation where he's out for five games after he comes back next year, presumably. Right. And he doesn't get to sit on the bench for the next seven games. Also, basically like the Angels entire coaching staff got suspended. Yeah. More or less. Assistant pitching coach, five games.

And then Wants was three games. Tapera was three games. J.P. Crawford was also five games. Iglesias, two games. Julio Rodriguez, two games. And then Angels bench coach Ray Montgomery, two games. Angels catching coach Bill Hasselman, one game. And then Angels major league interpreter Manny Del Campo, two games.

I don't know exactly what he did. El Campo. Two games. I don't know exactly what he did. I don't know whether he got suspended for interpreting some choice words that were directed from the Angels to the Mariners or whether he was participating in the Fisty Cuffs, but how about that? Even the interpreter was getting in on the action here. So Nevin is the news maybe here because 10, I mean, we've talked about how MLB tends to go fairly light on these things if they really wanted to curtail or just get rid of this kind of activity, then they would throw the book at players and they don't typically. 10 games, kind of a lot, but makes sense, like should be more, if anything. I mean, just considering what happened here, like Nevin puts Lance in that situation, presumably orders him to do what he did. Maybe he was a willing participant in that, but tough situation to put a pitcher in. And then totally premeditated, like thought about this for a while, right? I mean, this isn't even like a heat of the moment situation for Nevin.

Like he slept on this. He decided his starting pitcher assignment seemingly based on this. That's bad. That's bad to just explicitly put a pitcher out there and just have them hit someone and go after Julio Rodriguez, who is precious to everyone already. And then also Winker. I mean, that's not good. So 10 games. I mean, we've been joking about a lot of things that happened during this brawl because it was a fairly telegenic brawl.

And I guess fortunately no one got seriously injured. There was just a lot to talk about here but to instigate it in that way that is at least worth 10 games yeah i mean look i don't want to first of all luis torrens did go on the il so there was at least some injury to be had here but i think that the only not that it is a defense of brawling as an activity but at least some injury to be had here. But I think that the only, not that it is a defense of brawling as an activity, but at least as a means of understanding sort of the emotional state that one has to be in in order to be like,

I am at work and I'm going to get in a fight. Like the heat of the moment does stuff to people. We do not always make calm, cool, and collected choices. Sometimes we see a guy throwing a ball around the head of a friend and we get all riled up and we have to go and defend that guy and be like, no. Yeah. Hurts to get hit by a baseball. It hurts to get hit by a baseball. And sometimes guys think that they have the sort of necessary command to land that in a place and then they miss and you always have to deal with

that possibility and it can be devastating so like i get i get the the drive there so if you remove that where you have the you know the sort of emotional distance from the thing to say look that could have been very bad it would have been really bad if mike trout had gotten hit in the head but first of all, he didn't. Second of all, it seems as if that were unintentional, as if Eric Swanson wasn't trying to throw at Mike Trout's head. And it was yesterday. We have space.

We have breathing room from the worst gut-wrenching fear that something like that can inspire to make better and more sound choices. And you especially have to do that if you're the manager. Like your whole thing is supposed to be making good choices and sort of being an example and a leader of your dudes. And I understand that people want to defend their friends and they don't want to let stuff go. But when you've had a whole day to think about it, you just got to say, we're going to move on from this. Everybody's going to move on from this so that it doesn't continue to escalate in a way that becomes unpredictable and potentially damaging. And so, yeah, I think that if you're a manager and you fail that test, there do need to be

consequences for that. Because thankfully, what happened here was that Julio Rodriguez was startled but not hurt. Jesse Winker got plunked in the butt. I think Luis Torres is going to be fine. And anyway, he was a participant in the brawl, so he has his own role to play here, I suppose. But you can't assume that this stuff is going to work out okay for everybody. It can be really bad. Now, we did have a listener named Chris who pointed out that, in a sense, Nevin may have helped the Angels to a victory here because he did get Wilker, Julio Rodriguez, and J.P. Crawford tossed from this game, right, while the Angels lost a couple of relievers and the Angels went on to win this game two to one, right? So who knows? Maybe Winker and Julio and Crawford, maybe they would have produced a run and the

outcome of this game would have been different, in which case, well, probably worth it to lose Phil Nevin for 10 games to get a win. But that is not how we want to judge this thing. We're talking about the morality here, not the win probability added. And this is not how we want to judge this thing. We're talking about the morality here, not the win probability added. Yeah. And this is not what we want to see managers do. I wonder, like, if something like this happened again, I wonder whether there was any kind of talking to by MLB to the Angels like when Wentz is announced as the opener. Right. And maybe it's after the fact it becomes more

obvious what this was. But if this were to happen again, I wonder whether there would be some sort of intervention where someone would come in and say, now, why is this guy starting as an opener today? Like, what is your baseball reason, your justification for this that does not have to do with a hit by pitch? And then someone could say, just so you know, if he does happen to plunk someone here, we will hold you responsible. So are you sure that you want to stick with this starting assignment? So hopefully this will not happen again or if someone telegraphs their intent in exactly this way again that someone would step in and issue a warning even before the game begins. Yeah, I mean, I think that I did enjoy him after, Nevin after the game being like,

I don't want to talk about it. I'm not going to engage in that. I've moved on to other things. Like I, that, there was no intent here. And it's like, I don't know. I think we'd all just be well-served to realize we're not as clever as we think we are. Or that we are cleverer than clever as we think we are.

Or that we are cleverer than Phil Nevin thinks we are. Right. It's like, you know, Phil, it seems pretty transparent that that's what this was. So I know you're not going to say that because if you come out and say, yeah, I wanted to plunk them, then your suspension is going to be even longer. But we're not dumb. Yeah. Quite a coincidence. Quite a coincidence. like we're not dumb yeah quite a coincidence quite a coincidence so in other hit by pitch news i guess we should note that bryce harper got hit by one too this was seemingly unintentionally but his left thumb is fractured he's having surgery he'll be out for six weeks big blow to the phillies of course in that as we know he is a candidate to compete with Jorge Soler for best MLB player. So obviously he is quite good. Now, Harper's quote about this, I don't know whether you saw this,

but here's what Harper said. I kind of wish it would have hit me in the face. I don't break bones in my face. I can take 98 to the face, but i can't take 97 to the thumb wait okay wait there's look i don't want to trivialize this it's super sucks that harper is hurt it's super sucks he is gonna miss time he is having a fantastic season like he but wait what i first first of all price like no offense i know you've been hit places before but like i don't think we want to test this theory But wait, what? First of all, Bryce, like, no offense. I know you've been hit places before, but like, I don't think we want to test this theory. No, I would not test this theory. Pretty sure you could get, you could break in your face.

I think your face is a breakable face. I'm not saying it's a punchable face. I'm saying it's a breakable face because it's a human face and they are famously breakable. Yes. So that's one thing. I love the one mile per hour difference in the VLOs he listed there. Something about that I find intentional, right? Yeah. I was reading a story because he got hit in the face last year. I assume this is what he is referring to here. And fortunately,

he was okay and he did not break his face. But that, in the story I read, that was also a 97 mile per hour fastball as was this 97 mile per hour fastball that Blake Snell hit him with. I don't know. Maybe he remembers it being 98. Maybe it was 98 according to some readings. But I didn't hear him say this.

So it is possible that this was said with a smile and that it was tongue in cheek and that he's joking about just being more impervious in his face than his thumb. But if not, or if anyone is listening at home and taking this advice to heart, I would say that, yeah, this is sort of a small sample situation where I would not choose to be hit in the face instead of the thumb because I did not break my face but did break my thumb. hit in the face instead of the thumb because I did not break my face but did break my thumb. Perhaps it's possible that you are more likely to break a bone if you are hit in your thumb than in your face if you are wearing a batting helmet and taking other precautions. But if you

do break a bone, it would be more serious than if you break your thumb. And there are other terrible things that could happen there. So no, I would say thumb overhead every time. Yeah, I mean, I get it. I know perhaps he feels as if he has tested those. He has a good sense of the structural integrity. Maybe Bryce is also concerned about the tiny weird bird bones you have in your hands. You got the little weird bird bones in your feet, you got these little weird bird bones

in your hand. Maybe he views those as particularly vulnerable because they are tiny and bird-like. I'd like to clarify that I know that they are a difference. They are not actually bird bones. I'm not suggesting that we're all like animals. I'm just saying they're tiny and small like bones in birds. Anyway. I followed you on that.

Yeah. It's really a shame. I feel like we have this happen a couple of times a season now where we look at Bryce Harper and we're like, hey, that Bryce Harper guy is really good. We should probably talk about this. Harper and we're like, hey, that Bryce Harper guy is really good. We should probably talk about this. You heard of this Bryce Harper fellow?

Because he is hitting 318, 385, 599. He has 15 home runs. He had a 166 WRC plus. I know that he has not been able to counterbalance the defensive situation of the Phillies. But the fact that he has been so productive as he has dealt with injuries before this, pretty impressive. And now, man, I really feel like I cursed the vibes. I think I cursed the vibes, Ben. I mean, I wasn't the only one to point out

that they were just operating on vibes. So we are perhaps collectively responsible for this, but it's pretty bad. Yes. Well, we're also responsible for jump- it's pretty bad yes well we're also responsible for jump starting harper's career at the beginning of last season right when we said why is nobody talking about price we never talk about him anymore yeah we lit a fire under him and he went out and won an mvp and got an espy nomination so right i think it all kind of equals

out but unfortunately those numbers will stay the same for a while because he will not be back. So that's tough. However, in better news for the Phillies, they did have a debut, or at least they had a call-up. Not a debut yet, but Mark Appel. We are about to meet Mark Appel. That is a major leaguer I did not think we would meet. I didn't either.

Last time on Pedantic Corner, we talked about former first round pick, the idea of talking about, or former number one overall pick, right? Or former first overall pick. And the listener's contention was that you should not say former first overall pick because once a first overall pick, once a number one pick, always a number one pick. So I guess that contention will be tested in the case of Mark Appel, who, of course, was the number one overall pick in 2013. I guess out of deference to that listener, we'll call him still a number one pick. Although we did

get listener and Patreon supporter Joseph. He pointed out regarding former first round picks in baseball, it's actually quite common for players to be drafted twice in the amateur entry draft, once out of high school and then again after college, sometimes more than twice. So a player could be drafted in the first round while also being a former 32nd round pick, right? So Mark Appel, he was drafted eighth overall, and then he was drafted first overall. So I guess either way we could say he is a former first round pick. That works regardless. So let's stick with former first round pick. And I guess we could say number one overall pick, Mark Appel. But it's been a while since then. He is 30 years old and in fact turns 31

next month. And his career has been through just so many ups and downs and endings and beginnings and for a while seemed destined to be on the list of number one picks who never made it, which is a fairly short list, just never even made it to the majors, especially in recent years. And he has not yet debuted as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon. Perhaps he will have by the time people are listening to this. I hope he will have. But what a nice story. I might play a little clip actually, because I talked to him in 2018 when I was working on the MVP machine because I was writing about player development. And he was a notable example of a player who had not developed

as was hoped. And the Astros, who really turned into a pitching development powerhouse and remain one to this day, they changed some things based on the experience with Mark Appel and some of their perceived developmental failures and telling him to do this or that or having him stick to certain routines when he wanted more time between outings or having a less than consistent message from one level to the other in terms of what he was supposed to do or what pitches he was supposed to throw, etc. I think we live in a day and an age where so much value and so much worth that players feel about themselves and get for themselves is based in their performance. And baseball is a hard sport. It's hard to be successful. We see all the guys in the big leagues that are successful, but we don't ever see or talk about the hundreds of thousands of guys that have tried to go through the minors and haven't done it successfully and what they wanted to do their whole lives. And I was just in a unique situation because people noticed me and saw me because of where I was drafted and, you know, the skills that God had

given me over the course of my life that I was able to kind of put together into a package to get guys out in college pretty well. But I think my story is just kind of one of kind of being in the spotlight of so many people's stories that really don't get to share theirs. And when I talked to him, I guess he was probably 26 at that point or so. He had retired. He was out of baseball and he was very open and philosophical about everything. I mean, obviously things had not worked out the way that he wanted them to work out, but he was out there talking about it and not hiding from it and being very open about everything. And

I felt for him, even though he seemed to have largely come to terms with it. But after that, he just restarted and he tried to make a comeback with the Phillies last year. Didn't go so great in the minors, but off to a really strong start at AAA this season. He had a sub two ERA and 28 innings as a reliever of the year candidate or perennial all-star, like they will be viewed a disappointment. Now, that's not true for everyone, but when you're looking at like, you know, first overall picks, former first overall picks, right? Often the expectation I think among fans is that those guys are going to have not only careers and not only long careers, but incredibly productive careers. And sometimes that doesn't take into account, you know, the things that might go into a guy being the first overall pick. Like, for instance, that he was willing to cut an underslut deal relative to what that thought would generally generate. Right. Like there's all kinds of stuff that go into a first overall pick.

generate, right? Like there's all kinds of stuff that go into a first overall pick. And it's really hard to play baseball. And even guys who both team side folks and public analysts think are going to be surefire big leaguers don't and they don't pan out. And they, you know, are the kinds of players who we end up writing profiles on 10 years later and like, whatever happened to that guy. And I think that it's just it is always useful to remember how incredible it is when these guys make it to the show at all, because it's just this really difficult thing that is being asked of them. And it is, you know, not always as dramatic as it is in this case, but it is, I think, useful for us to just bear in mind when we're talking about prospects generally that it's

really, really hard. And if they get there and if they're able to stay there for any length of time like that is something that you know doesn't mean that they should be cooper's town bound but should should merit us saying like good on you that's pretty cool so i i hope that he you know i hope he gets more than just a couple of outings i hope he he's this is the start of a turnaround where we look back and we're like wow what a wild career that guy had you know at the very least he has removed his name from the list of like number one yes never made it yes it's got to be a little bit of a load off even if he had kind of uh yeah himself to that idea still got to be nice yeah i imagine that it is like an

incredible it is just an incredible thing it has to be a tremendous Yeah. I imagine that it is like an incredible, it is just an incredible thing. It has to be a tremendous relief. Yep. Didn't make it with the Astros and didn't make it as a starter or an ace, but hey, he made it. Yeah. Not that many people have done that. So that's very cool.

Right. I didn't mention, by the way, I alluded to what was going on with Winker after the brawl. There was the whole pizza, I guess we can't call it pizza gate. That is a thing. This is a different pizza story, a much more wholesome pizza story. So in addition to the story about seven-year-old Abigail Courtney, whom I mentioned, who was there on that day when she went to see Joey Votto, and then he was ejected in the first inning Twitter, a fan and defender of Winkers,

ordered a pizza to be delivered to the Visitors Clubhouse at Angel Stadium. She just ordered a pizza. She was in Arkansas, but she found a local pizza place called Mountain Mike's, nine miles north of Angel Stadium, ordered a small pepperoni pizza on DoorDash with the delivery instruction, for the visitor's clubhouse, pizza is for Jesse Winker. And she did this, I think, largely for Twitter. She told Steven Nesbitt of The Athletic, who wrote about this, that she put the odds of Winker receiving this pizza at 0%.

But it worked. And the whole thing was sort of live tweeted and it became a nice story. And the delivery driver, Simranjeet Singh, he was in touch with Dil and he did it. He delivered the pizza to gate six. He handed off the pizza to a security guard and the guards then did like a baton thing, a relay race. They took the pizza to the clubhouse. Winker got the pizza, DMed Sophie Dale, thanked her for the pizza. So this is quite a story. And I probably also would have put the odds of Winker receiving this pizza at 0%. Would you have thought there was any chance that if you just brought a random pizza to a ballpark and said, this is for... I mean, I guess the odds are maybe almost better than if it were a home player? I don't like maybe if you're a security guard and it's a visiting player, you're like, well, it's not my job to protect the visiting players and I don't want to deprive them of their pizza or something. I guess it is your job to protect them, too.

I don't know. I just would have thought thanks, but no thanks. Right. Like, you know, it's the thought that counts. Nice gesture. But we cannot be just bringing food to players like if this were to become a thing, if everyone else were like, oh, this was cool. Now I will do this and I will order pizza for my team's players all the time. That would probably cause a bit of a headache at the all ball game.

So I'm surprised that this worked, but it did so credit to the guards credit to the delivery driver who received i think hundreds of tips from the public who were appreciative of his efforts here cool so that's a nice little bow tie yeah this weird base brawl story base brawl man don't don't this is why we need my feelings phone booth, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah. Maybe make Phil Nevin watch the games from there. Just watch them from the feelings phone booth. Yeah. Speaking of physical conflict, the story that we'll never die and that we don't really want to die, the Tommy Pham-Jack Peterson feud. Well, I think I'm ready to move on.

You ready for it to die? I'm ready to move on, Ben. to move on ben i haven't is there another there is another update there is another update yeah so it turns out now this update was not instigated by either peterson or fam for once but on the chris rose rotation podcast atlanta relievers tyler matzak and josh tomlin were on and this topic came up and Tomlin divulged and Matzik divulged that this was going on for quite a while. So Matzik said this was going on all last year. What?

Right. So Peterson was with Atlanta. Matzik was with Atlanta. So these guys got a front row seat here. Matzik said this was going on all last year. So we would hear about this in our clubhouse before this ever happened. The biggest one is when we went to San Diego at the end of the year and he, that's Jock Peterson, literally did not leave the clubhouse. Jock did not leave the clubhouse because he knew Tommy Pham was out there and Tommy Pham wanted to slap him and beat him up.

And so he just stayed inside the clubhouse, didn't take BP for three days, just hid inside the cage and then would come out for the game. It was fantastic. So the whole clubhouse, everybody knew this. And he thought that Pham had left the league and like he was good to go, came out. And then, yeah, Pham still won. So according to Metzik, Peterson was lying low here for months and then evidently thought the coast was clear and little did he know that Tommy Pham was still lurking, biding his time, just the long con here.

So how about that? You said you were ready for this to die but are you okay first of all i can't believe that they missed an opportunity to say famtastic instead of fantastic that indicates to me that they are not punsters that isn't surprising but it can still be disappointing so that's one thing the second thing is okay maybe i do want to know more because i know that we have had the facts laid out we have had the facts laid out in what one could argue is excruciating detail from multiple sides but i now find all of the explanations for the amount of like force and

feeling and longevity in this story to be somewhat wanting like Was there other stuff that happened between these two? Is there some epic story of the draft night for this league where Jock Peterson took too long every single time and then ended up auto-drafting anyway? Why? I cannot account for. I know it was a not small amount of money, and I know that Jock Peterson seems to have miscalculated the degree to which he and Fam had a jokey, fun relationship.

But I really just think, like, if you are under the impression that another person is that angry with you, you're going to, like, hide out in the cages? That's the solution? You're not going to try to, like like send a representative to the opposing clubhouse to be like can we broker a piece can we make this right between us because it seems very i just think that like everyone should go to therapy i don't know man this is so weird it's just a it's so long to hold on to this stuff it just seems like a really... And I don't know. Obviously, we don't know any of the people involved with this personally. So we don't know how they tend to react to conflict

or how they tend to react to slights. Maybe this is typical behavior. Maybe there was... We've talked before that sometimes you don't know what's going on with a guy. And sometimes we will be fl what's going on with a guy. And sometimes we will be flummoxed by a manager deciding not to have a particular reliever come in and take advantage of what we perceive to be a better matchup. And it turns out that guy's got personal stuff going on and he wasn't all there or whatever. Stuff is going on with these guys all the time that we don't know.

And so maybe there was other stuff going on for all the time that we don't know and so maybe there was other stuff going on for tommy fam that we don't know about and uh that that was heightening his experience of all of this i don't know but it just seems like a lot everybody involved seems like they should like spend some time apart and and reflect on their choices because this all seems just like too it just seems like too much It just seems like a lot too much to me. It's got to be either a book, an oral history, or a several part narrative podcast. Oh no, we don't need any more of those podcasts, Ben. There are a lot of them.

They have rapidly proliferated, but I think there is a hole in the market for this particular one. I would listen. That's all I'm saying. I guess we could be the ones to make it. I don't know. We do have a baseball podcast, but I'm sure this will not be the last, but just wanted to let you know that there was more. A couple other news items. So the Yankees got no hit, right? Combined no hit. And we've talked plenty about how we feel about no hitters and how we feel about combined no hitters specifically.

Now, I will say that obviously, like once you go from one pitcher to multiple pitchers, you have instantly degraded the achievement of the no hitter tremendously in your mind. There is, I think, an additional degradation with each reliever that you use. So in this case, it was Christian Javier. He went seven and was brilliant. And then you had two relievers finish off the last two innings. To me, there is a slight difference between that and one of these like six pitcher type marathons, I think. But really, once you go from one to two, you've basically broken the seal and it is no longer that special to me. However, when it's the Yankees, that is a little more special, even if it is a combined

no-hitter because they were the best team ever to be no-hit, at least in terms of winning percentage. I think minimum 50 games into a season, Sarah Lang's had the stat, and they were by far the best team. Again, I guess if you were to go by batting average, given that they are not a high batting average team and that it is a low batting average era, they are, at least now, post-no-hitter,

a 240 batting team. They're middle of the pack in batting average, so I guess there's that, but clearly a good offensive team and a great team overall. So that is an accomplishment to no hit the Yankees in the season they're having when it seems like they come back and walk off every day, including the following day, right? When Aaron Judge had won. And I think Dusty Baker said it was like Judge to us two in this series. Yes. They split the series and Judge had a couple of decisive hits there.

So, again, showing why he is in a class with Jorge Soler again. But did want to note. I'm just never going to get over that. I mean, I don't think you have to, at least until the voting. Not until voting has concluded. Yeah, for now you're safe. I was noticing, though, that on the Fangraph's playoff odds page, so we've talked about how someone needs to break up the AL East, right? That the Yankees are this juggernaut, that four teams have been in playoff position.

right, that the Yankees are this juggernaut, that four teams have been in playoff position. What stands out to me, though, is that, you know, even the Orioles are not bad. I mean, the Orioles are 35 and 40, as we speak, right? The Orioles are a credible baseball team for the first time in several, several years, right? Yeah, they sure are. Yeah. They sure are. Yeah. And that is shocking to me because the AL East now in this division, according to the FedGraphs playoff odds, is more likely to make the playoffs than it was when the season started. That to me is pretty wild because usually if you're a team whose playoff odds have gone up, that will often come at the expense of your fellow teams in the division, right, who are some of your competition for making those playoffs. But in this case, that's not what happens. I guess in

this case, it is at the expense of the White Sox, who have almost the same record as the Orioles. The Orioles are 35 and 40. The White Sox are 34 and 38. How about that? How about that? 35 and 40. The White Sox are 34 and 38. How about that? How about that? So the White Sox are down more than 31 percentage points. The Angels, who also have an Orioles-esque record, 36 and 40, they are down 26% or 26 percentage points. The Mariners are down 15 percentage points. The Tigers and Royals are down double digits too so it's like basically the al east is just sucking the blood from every other al playoff contender now granted the orioles are up from 0.1 chance to make the playoffs to 0.3 chance to make the playoffs so don't get too

excited orioles fans like they are a more respectable roster these days than they've been in several years. But they are still not going to make the playoffs in large part because they are in the AL East. And that is the toughest decision you could possibly be in. But it's kind of amazing because the Yankees are, according to the playoff odds, complete lock, 100.0%. Blue Jays, even though they're not off to perhaps as hot a start as some might've expected, they're up to 95%. The Red Sox are up to 78%. The Rays are up to 62%. And then you have the Orioles up to 0.3%. But still, and every team in this division, I guess,

looks like the Blue Jays are basically right where they were projected to be or they're still projected for like 92 wins, which is what they were expected to get before the season started, according to Fangraphs. But the Yankees are up by 12 projected wins relative to their projected preseason total, which seems conservative. If anything, the Red Sox are up by one or two wins. The Rays are up by a win. The Orioles up by eight projected wins. So this entire division, just from the top to the cellar, firing on all cylinders, the AL East powerhouse. I think that while you are right that the Orioles are not going to play October baseball this year, and they probably won't play October baseball next year. I think that there are two meaningful jumps

in your experience of a team when you are a fan. There's the jump from being a trash fire to being respectable, and then there's the jump from being close to an actual playoff participant, from contender to participant, regular participant. I think those are the two most meaningful sort of changes that one can have to one's fan experience. So I don't disagree with you. And I don't think that you're trying to make Orioles fans feel bad, to be clear. But like, I do hope that Orioles fans sort of bask in the respectability of their team, because like being able to go into a game and not feel just certain that your that your favorite team is is going to lose.

That's like that's breathing room that's really meaningful to the fan experience. So I hope that all of their young dudes continue to progress and the ones who are excelling continue to excel and that the roster is given the resources it otherwise needs to be really good because that's a fan base that deserves to have a bit of fun because it's been a good minute. Yeah, and their bullpen has been good, which is one of those weird things that can happen. But we talked earlier in the season about their strategy of just like catchers setting

up right over the plate and not varying their locations and just encouraging their pitchers to throw strikes seems to be working fairly well. And yeah, I mean, technically, to be pedantic, I guess I should point out that they will play five games in October. They have five scheduled regular season games in the first week of October. So there's that, but the first week of October. So there's that, but not the kind of October games you were referring to. And they may very well trade some players at the trade deadline. Sure. They might be, in fact, they likely will be a

less good roster come August 4th, 3rd. What day is the deadline? I'm kidding. I'm perfect. third what day is the deadline it's it's i think the reason i'm getting jammed up is because like it's on like the second but the deadline is three or something like there's like a weird it's on the third but the deadline is two my time because it's five eastern so anyway uh come the middle part of october they might be a little less fun but you you also, Orioles fans, might be in a position to wish cast on prospects that the team now has in the system that might help with the second big transformation of fan experience. So, you know, who knows? Who knows? Yeah. You've got Retchman up already. And I know Grayson Rodriguez got hurt and may not be up this year. And maybe D.L. Hall is struggling to find the strike zone a little,

but then you have Gunnar Henderson, who is set in the minor leagues on fire. So things are looking up, and you could wish cast at least for next season. If only the Orioles were in a different division. Yeah. They need to petition to move to one of the centrals. Yeah, you would think. Should we mention for a moment this Freddie Freeman situation with his agents? According to Buster Only, Freeman has fired his agency, Excel Sports Management.

Evidently, he is listed within baseball system as currently being self-represented. Perhaps he's in the process of changing representation. Freeman said, last weekend in Atlanta was a very emotional time for me and my family. I'm working through some issues with my longtime agents at Excel. My representation remains a fluid situation, and I will update if needed. This is all happening amid what seems to be some ongoing, I don't know what to call it, regret, dissatisfaction with how his free agency played out, which we talked about quite a bit at the time. The surprise of him going from Atlanta to LA and the circumstances that led to that. And he had a tearful return to Atlanta, right? And

it seems like in his heart, he has not fully moved on, although he has been his perfectly fine Freddie Freeman self for the Dodgers. And I'm sure Dodgers fans are happy to have him. And we talked about why that was a pretty nice landing spot for him, too. But that was just sort of a fishy situation that he ended up leaving in the way that he did. And there was some kind of conflicting reporting about it, but it seemed like he perhaps wasn't thrilled or that he hadn't expected for it to go that way. And I guess this is another indication that that could be the case. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. It's a weird one because obviously, he had a very emotional

presser on his return to Atlanta. So it isn't as if he has conducted all of this privately. But there's been all this talk about it, and I don't know. It just doesn't seem surprising to me that a departure like that, even if you are pleased with your general situation, would be emotionally complex, particularly if you're back in the city for the first time. And then I can understand fellow Dodgers being like what the heck man like you know you're a dodger like isn't that great but it just seems very weird to have all of that it just fundamentally doesn't feel like my business yeah you know like that's that's often how i feel about these i'm like i don't really candidly like that's part of my reaction to the

like the slap stuff i'm like the slap makes it something that we know about and so we have apparently we just have to keep talking about it but like fundamentally it's not my business that doesn't concern me it's not something i need to know about so i i hope that like he is able to find some satisfaction by being able to be back in California and with a really good team and an instrumental part of it. And I hope that what we are seeing is just an expression of regret and not an indication that there was malfeasance, probably isn't the right word,

but some sort of bad dealing on the part of his agent at Excel. His wishes not being represented yeah like that that part of it does seem like something that it would be good to have clarity on because that's like that's a labor question and not a feelings question which again fundamentally just doesn't feel like it's my business like it's fine for him to i don't mean to say like he should shut up and not express his feelings i don't mean like that like if freddie wants to cry at every press conference that's his but it just doesn't seem like it's my business so anyway i don't know that's all i have to say about it i guess i i was gonna say no we don't have to talk about it and then i talked for four minutes so welcome to effectively wild and i sent this to you before we started recording but this

williams astadio play so oh that's my reaction oh buddy yeah let me play a quick clip astadio going for the tag oh oh i didn't tag him with the oh that's why he had the ball in his bare hand and he tagged him with the glove nimmo stopped did not try to advance to second and aguilar made the throw to birdie who gave it to astadio who then put the tag on him so as you heard from that, Asadio tried to tag a runner without the ball in his glove. And he sort of started a double play and it was called that way. called that way, but then it was overturned after replay showed that he had missed the tag because he applied the tag with his glove after he had already removed the ball from his glove and was holding the ball in his other hand. So this was mildly embarrassing, I suppose. But yet another Williams-Ossidio highlight. Although I was thinking in his defense, I guess this is not really in his defense at all, but is it odd that like, so when he did this, he made this phantom tag, I guess you could kind of call it.

He did not get the runner out because he was holding the ball in his other hand and he tagged with the glove and he did not tag directly with the ball and thus the runner was not out. He then threw to first where the first baseman caught the ball at Galar. And the weird thing is that when a first baseman catches the ball, I mean, this is how a force play works. I guess this is not weird. I am describing the distinction between a force play and a tag play. But like, weird. I am describing the distinction between a force play and a tag play. But like, when you have a force play, it's like wherever the ball is, like once it is in your possession, it's like instantly the possession of that ball applies to any part of your body, right? So if you have the ball in your glove as a first baseman and then you touch the bag with your foot, then by the transitive property or something, it's like the ball being in your glove, which is in your hand. That is the same.

It's like it's everywhere at once. Like the ball, once it's in your possession and you touch the bag, then he's out. But if you don't touch the runner directly with the ball, but you are still holding the ball, then there is no transitive property there. It's not like, well, I was holding the ball and I touched you with this other thing, and therefore it is as if I touched you with the ball. But we don't think of it that way when it's a force play.

It's completely different with a tag play. I guess that is why it's a tag play and not a force play. But it's still sort of a strange thing. It is. When you catch a ball and the force is in effect, it's like instantly that possession of the ball then applies to every part of your surface. And whatever you touch, it's as if that ball were in that spot. So I was having these philosophical musings about force plays versus tag plays and how does the possession of the ball actually transfer to your extremities on a force play. That's probably not what Williams

was thinking of in this moment. No, I doubt it. But I think that, you know, your little soliloquy there would fit very nicely as an email that says, so I was watching baseball hideout. Yeah, probably. You've unwittingly added an entrant to what I would term a delightful genre. Yeah. Anyway, Williams was soon after designated for assignment by the Marlins. Probably no connection there.

Probably not, oh, he forgot how to apply tags? Well, we don't want him anymore. I think there was probably more at play there. Yeah, probably. But the timing, unfortunate. Hopefully, Williams will be back at some point. All right. So Robbie Ray is starting tonight.

And I have a Robbie Ray stat for you here. This is a stat blast I've been sitting on for a while now. Analyze it for us in amazing ways Here's to day's to past This is a question that came to us from Emil And this was a couple weeks ago that he sent us this, so the numbers have changed, but perhaps you saw this. He says, I came across this tweet Monday night with a screenshot from the Mariners broadcast highlighting the difference between Robbie Ray's performance in the worst inning of each of his outings and the remainder of those outings. And so the graphic on the Mariners broadcast, it showed that in his worst inning,

he had a 24.55 ERA. So that was like 11 combined innings, just totaling up the worst innings in each of his start to that point. He had like a 25 ERA. And then in the rest of the game, he had a.99 ERA. So this was, again, like 11 innings versus 54 and two-thirds innings. So a lot of the damage had been done in his worst innings of his outings. And so Emil said that 25 to 1 ERA ratio between his ERA in his worst innings and his ERA in the rest of his innings seems like it could very well be a record. Has any starting pitcher with some reasonable innings pitched minimum ever had a larger ratio? Would a stat like TOPS plus be a useful thing to look at here? I'm sure Ray's performance will level out soon enough, but after one third of the season, this might be an oddity that sticks around.

So I sent this to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson. There are a couple ways that we could look at this and that he looked at this. In one of them, Ray's performance to that point was notable, and in the other way, it was not that notable. So Ryan starts, not only is 25 to 1 not a record, again, that is the ratio of his ERA in his worst inning of each outing combined to all of his other innings combined. Not only was that not a record, it's not even particularly notable. In fact, going back to 1916, the typical value for this ratio for any given pitcher is 14 to 1. So this was not that unusual. He says, I think this is an example of something seeming outrageous

because we don't really understand what is happening and we don't have context. Take Max Fried as an example. I picked him randomly before looking at the stats. Pretty good pitcher, not an extreme as far as we are aware. If we look at his first four starts of this year, so April 7th against the Reds, his worst inning was the sixth. He had two earned runs there in two thirds of an inning. That's a 27 ERA. April 13th versus the Nationals, his worst inning was the first. He gave up two and runs in that inning. That's an 18 ERA. April 19th against the Dodgers, worst inning was the first. No earned runs, one inning. That's a zero ERA. He had no bad innings in that game,

I guess. April 26th versus the Cubs, his worst inning was the third, and he gave up one earned run in one inning. That's a nine ERA. So Ryan says in this fairly normal sample, Freed pitched 24 innings of three ERA ball, but in his worst innings, he had a 12.27 ERA. In the remainder, he had a 1.26 ERA. So the ratio is 10 to 1 or so. We see that normal conditions would give a ratio in the double digits. Now, an actual extreme example is George Red Witt, who in 1958 made 15 starts. In total, he allowed 13 runs over those 15 starts for an ERA of 1.61. Excellent.

But he never allowed a run in more than one inning per game. per game. In other words, all of his runs came in his worst innings, which gave him a 7.16 ERA in his worst innings and a zero ERA otherwise for an infinite ratio. So Witt was the only pitcher on record to allow all of his runs in each start in one inning. And sometimes you will hear this about players where it's like, well if we could just uh take out his worst couple starts or something and it's like well yes if you could do that for everyone it would help a lot if you could take out the worst innings for george red witt in 1958 take out his worst inning in each start then he never would have allowed an erd run so that was special yeah ryan says the worst non-infinite ratio of all time was by 1948 Boston Brave Vern Bickford. That year, over 22 starts, he allowed 37 runs in his worst innings for an ERA of 17.84. And in all of his other 85 innings, he allowed one run for an ERA of 0.11. That ratio is 168.5. There have been five player seasons with a ratio higher than 100,

49 higher than 50, and 683 higher than Robbie Ray's at the time, 24.79, all in at least 100 innings pitch in games started, which is a higher minimum than Robbie Ray's innings total to that point. Now, what is notable is just how bad Robbie Ray's worst innings are or were. Yes. So only 25 player seasons ever have had 100-plus innings and a worst inning ERA higher than Robbie Ray's, and only four since World War II. Ray higher than Robbie Ray's and only four since World War II. 1997, Mark Leiter at 24.96. 2008, Carlos Silva, 24.97. 1962, Jay Hook, 25.15. And 1954, Marion Fricano, 25.26. And 1953, Murray Dixon, 27.45. So the interesting thing Ryan says about this is not, look how good Robbie Ray is in his best innings versus his worst, so much as it is only look at how bad Robbie Ray's worst

innings are. So his worst innings to that point were quite terrible. However, his updated numbers, entering his start on Tuesday, and perhaps I will be able to provide an update in the outro, depending on how poorly he pitches and how quickly he's out of that game, but his updated numbers,

worst inning ERA of 20.44, down from 24.5, and other innings ERA of 1.31, up from 0.5 and other innings ERA of 1.31 up from 0.99. So that's a ratio of only 15.48 to 1 down from about 25 to 1 and the difference of 19.1 down from 23.55. So he has already gotten a lot less extreme. He is in arguably uninteresting territory at this point, Ryan says. He is 59th percentile in ratio, 94th percentile in difference, whereas previously he was 93rd percentile in ratio, 99.9th in difference, which would have been 11th all time out of almost 10,000 qualified seasons. So it was early, and this was a small

sample, and it was super extreme. And it would have been weird if he had sustained it, but he has already not sustained it. And probably, if anything, it will get less extreme as the season goes on. But now we know about Vern Bickford and George Redwitt. So this was all worth it. Thank you, Emile. But how tight were their pants? Probably not nearly as tight, I would imagine. Although, I don't know. They didn't have, well, it depends.

Maybe we can find some images. Sometimes they had some baggy uniforms back in those days. But thank you to Ryan for the stat blesses. And since there, you can find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. And thanks, as always always to Stathead, powered by Baseball Reference, which sponsors the Stat Blast segment and which we use and unfailingly recommend, frankly, whether they are currently sponsoring us or not, which hopefully they are not aware of. But we love Stathead and we recommend it all the time and use it for lots of listener emails that sometimes don't even make the air because they are just so simple and easy to answer because you can just look them up on StatHead.

Not only baseball, but also many other sports, and it's been recently souped up and upgraded and made faster and new capabilities, and you can get a discount of $20 on an $80 one-year subscription if you use our coupon code WILD20. That is W-I-L-D-2-0. Meant to say that Williams-Astadillo tagging without the ball situation, you noted that would have been a good time probably to have two gloves. He needed another.

He should have had two gloves. He should have had two gloves. He should have had two gloves. Problem solved, two gloves. Yeah. We talked about this last time and we concluded that generally it would not actually be advantageous to have two gloves. But this was one situation where if he had had two gloves and the ball, then almost by default he would have had to had the ball in one of those gloves. Now, I guess he still could have tagged with the glove that the ball was not in. So this was not a foolproof plan, but still. We did get some people pointed out, by the way, that we were entertaining the idea that outfielders were probably the most likely to benefit from this. But Alex, who I think initially

asked the question, he followed up and some other people suggested this too. Upon further reflection, I'm out on the two-glove outfielder, but I'm in, all in, on the two-glove first baseman, at least with the bases empty. The only time he'd need to make a throw would be a flip to the pitcher, which is relatively rare and can also likely be accomplished with a relatively simple glove flip. With most first basemen being left-handed, they're at a disadvantage when fielding hard-hit balls up the line as well as offline throws to their left. And I guess you would have the option of having two gloves with which to scoop. I guess you can't, like, trap. If you had two gloves, I mean, you can't have two gloves, I guess, to begin with,

so this hypothetical is already wrong. But if you did, if you could use multiple gloves for a scoop, that seems like it would make it much easier because you could just kind of clap them together and trap them, which is probably why you're not actually allowed to do that. But I agree. First baseman would probably be a better bet there. I agree. First baseman would probably be a better bet there. And also, I meant to say that George Red Witt just seems like an effectively wild email hypothetical waiting to happen there. The player who only gives up runs in one inning at a game, right? Or Vern Bickford, like when he gives up runs, he'll give up a lot of runs in that inning. But in every other inning, he'll be great.

He'll give up a lot of runs in that inning, but in every other inning, he'll be great. That seems like definitely a question that we have gotten or would have gotten if not for this actually having happened and been brought up. This is episode 1868, and this is something that happened or two somethings that happened in 1868. The first item is a complaint in the American Chronicle of Sports and Pastimes, which really just says what it is. You know what you're getting when you pick up the American Chronicle of Sports and Pastimes. You're going to get some chronicling of sports and pastimes. This was January 9th, 1868, and they were suggesting that baseball is no longer played like it had been eight or ten years earlier. Now recall that the 1858 pass blast was a similar complaint. This item is bylined Old Pete O'Brien, which might be Pete O'Brien, a former star player for the Atlantics of Brooklyn or someone using his name in vain. The underlying complaint is that money has entered baseball and that ruins everything. So the writer says, somehow or other, they don't play ball nowadays as they used to some eight or 10 years ago. This is 1868, remember? I don't mean to say that they don't

play it as well, for the fact is I never saw the game played in the splendid style it was last season. So that's something at least, right? Because so often it's they don't play the game as well as they used to. The fundamentals are bad, right? And sometimes you would hear that even then. This person is not saying they are worse at baseball, but, he continues, I mean that they don't play with the same kind of feelings or for the same objects they used to. It appears to me that ball matches have come to be controlled by different

parties and for different purposes than those which prevailed in 1858 or 59. Just look at last season's games, if you want to understand what I'm driving at, and then think of the games which were played in Brooklyn and Hoboken 10 years ago. Look at the class of men who now fix up your matches, and then think of the fair and square style of men who controlled your clubs in the good old times of baseball. Two words, baseball. Ah, it's a pity things are so, boys. But I tell you now, you've got to put a stop to this heavy betting business. Okay, he may have been on to something there. And to get your clubs out of the hands of the politicians. Or the first thing you'll know will be that every respectable man will be down upon your game like a thousand of brick.

But it's no use talking like a father to you fellows. You're in for biz in playing your matches now and have forgotten the time when your club's name stood higher as a fair and square club than it does now when i say your club i mean that you can take the cap and put it on and if it fits keep it there that's great so i mean i guess there's uh something to that when they did go from like playing amateur baseball to playing professionally and suddenly you were paid to play. I guess there was maybe a little just like playing for the love of the game kind of thing going on. And also like if there was already like game fixing and betting and gambling going on there, obviously that was a problem in early baseball. So this person was onto something. But that has been one of the consistent themes of this series, in addition to people bemoaning new things, people lamenting the loss of old things, which I guess go hand in hand.

The second item from Richard is further evidence of the degraded state of baseball in 1868. Newfangled advanced stats. This is right up our alley. The old system counted runs scored and outs made as a batter, not a fielder, with some tentative dabbling with times left on base. Henry Chadwick in the New York Sunday Mercury of May 10th, 1868. This is what three straight pass blasts I think Chadwick has featured in. He was the one who was admonishing the player for not going to first base after drawing a base on balls. And then he was the person admonishing the convention not to allow black players into the league. So Henry Chadwick, he gets around.

He has opinions on everything back then. One of the fathers of baseball, as is often cited. And I guess that is appropriate given all of the things that we have talked about in reference to Chadwick. So May 10th, 1868, he's grappling with the failings of this system and has come up with the idea of counting how many times a batter gets on base on clean hits. How about that? The true criterion of good batting. The only correct estimate of a batsman's skill in a match is the score of the number of times he makes his first base on clean hits and not the number of bases he makes on such hits. The score of outs and runs and even of left on bases are unreliable in the extreme. A batsman may make his first base by a good hit five times out of six, and yet owing to being followed by a poor hitter, may be put out five times out of six at second base by being forced off his first base,

while the poor hitter being followed by heavy batsmen may be sent home each time. In these instances, it will be seen that the player who did not score a base by a good hit scores five runs and one out, whereas the player who batted skillfully for his bases each time is charged with five outs and but one run. That doesn't seem fair. Now, if the estimate of batting had been correct, the skillful player would have been credited with having made his base five times on clean hits, while the poor player would have scored but one.

He is on to something here. He's not all the way there, but he is on to something. The others being made by his poor hits in sending balls to shortstop, by which the player on the first base could be readily put out at second. In this case, the batsman is not credited with a base on a hit, as in every such case when a ball is hit so as to enable an infielder to put a player out at second base from being forced off, the batsman could readily have been put out at first. player out at second base from being forced off, the batsman could readily have been put out at first. In regard to being left on bases too, that as an estimate of skill is no reliable criterion,

for plenty of men are left on bases who never earned them, and others by lack of skill in running their bases. In reference to taking the number of times bases are made on hits in place of the number of bases, we have to state that while it can easily be ascertained whether the batsman makes his first base on his hit or on an error of play, the difficulty of judging is increased tenfold each base that is run. In fact, it is hard to tell how many bases a man is entitled to after securing his hit, but quite easy to ascertain how he made his first base. And Richard says, say what you will about Chadwick, and there's a lot that could be said about him. Statistics was his wheelhouse. He wasn't always right, but he put a lot of thought into the subject, personally doing much of the heavy lifting of inventing the stats that ended up on the back of bubblegum cards. Here, he is halfway to batting average. He has the numerator,

but the denominator is still games played. At-bats will come a few years later. So they were working on it. They were a long way from on-base percentage and better stats. But they were making some strides. It was really a mess back then. Yeah. If David Appelman and Fangraffs had been around in 1868, there would have been very little to list on the leaderboard. Yeah.

Just imagine how weird our playoff odds would have been. Yep. All right. Well, a few updates for you here. First, we said in our discussion of the Angels-Mariners brawl that no one was really seriously injured, and that was what we knew at the time. However, after we recorded, there was news and there was another injury. Angels reliever Archie Bradley was diagnosed with a right elbow fracture. And how did he fracture his elbow, you ask? Well, he fell over the dugout railing in his

attempt to join the brawl, landed on his elbow, and it broke like his former teammate Bryce Harper's thumb. Sounds like he may miss two months. So, Phil Nevin, Archie Bradley's blood, or at least Archie Bradley's broken elbow, I don't know if he bled, sure looks like that's on your hands. Of course, Archie Bradley didn't have to try to jump over the dugout railing, and he didn't have to fall. But had there been no provocation, there would have been no brawl, and had there been no brawl, Archie Bradley would not have attempted

and failed to leap over the dugout railing gracefully. With the way he's been throwing the ball recently and what he brings to the clubhouse, it's a huge loss, said acting manager Ray Montgomery. Bradley, of course, is famous for, well, being a Major League reliever, but also for pooping himself on the field, which gave rise to a famous Meg post in which he attempted to determine when he might have pooped himself on the field. Not only will he not be back on the field for some time,

but he will also probably have a hard time wiping for a while. In other news, I promised you a Robbie Ray update and here it is. Robbie Ray pitched seven scoreless innings against the Orioles on Tuesday, so I suppose that that means that he brought his ratio down further. In his worst inning, he allowed zero runs, and in all of his other innings, he allowed zero runs. Regression to the mean at work. And I have to pass along another broadcast clip for you. This is from Twitter user at Wayne underscore Randazzle, and Wayne notified us that in the June 26th Mets-Marlins game, Miguel Rojas of the Marlins attempted a hidden ball trick.

Here's the Mets radio broadcast. One man out. Nemo still at second. Marte still at first. Now Pete Alonso coming up. The shortstop, Miguel Rojas, was just having a little fun. He thought maybe he'd catch Brandon Nimmo napping after that ball came in from De La Cruz.

Rojas casually pump fake a couple of throws back towards the pitcher, thinking maybe Nimmo would wander off of second base and he'd get nailed with the old hidden ball trick. But Brandon wasn't buying that. I watched that inning on TV and it did not appear to be captured by the cameras. But we know it happened thanks to the Mets broadcasters and thanks to Wayne underscore Randazzle. More evidence that the hidden ball trick is alive, but not well. People are still trying it. It's just not working.

But this is great. We have a whole network of scouts out there who will alert us whenever there is a hidden ball trick or whenever a broadcaster mistakes Tyler Wade for Taylor Ward or vice versa. To be clear, you do not need to send us any instance of a broadcaster screwing up players' names. Pretty much interested only in Ward and Wade here, though I guess if you hear another Taylor Tyler screw up, you could let us know about that too. Some of you still notify us about whenever someone says effectively wild on a baseball broadcast. Appreciate the thought, but not necessary. It's a pretty common phrase. It's said a lot. That's why we named the podcast after it. Unless it's said in connection with a podcast character, Shohei Otani is effectively wild. Do let us know if that happens. And lastly,

Meg and I talked last time about whether the Cardinals are a fun team and what it means when people say someone is a fun player to watch. Well, we got an email from the YouTuber Sadman Baseball, actual name Dan, who has done the research here. He said, when I heard the conversation on what makes baseball players fun, I couldn't resist. I had to let you know of the nerdiest thing I've done. A few months ago, I sought to create a stat that helped measure the on-the-field entertainment value for baseball players. I knew I wouldn't be able to capture the intangibles like personality, flair, or fan engagement. However, I thought that for most fans, they like specific things about player

performance more than others. I developed a survey to ask baseball fans what plays they like the most, what excited them, and what aroused a sense of wonder. The survey would ask the respondents to rate the plays on a scale of 1 to 10 which we would then use as a weight in developing the stat after many hours of research and input from fans and develop the stat which I am ashamed to say is called funds FUNS. doubles, triples, home runs, home runs over 440 feet, outs above average, stolen bases, stolen base attempts, WPA+, bolts, and outfield assists. These inputs are scaled and then weighted according to the survey. The top 10 most fun players, according to funds, Julio Rodriguez, okay, kind of checks out, Bobby Witt Jr., Trey Turner, Jorge Mateo, Tommy Edmond, Harrison Bader, Adolis Garcia,

Cedric Mullins II, Miles Straw, and Jazz Chisholm. Definitely some fun players on that list. He has also aggregated it for teams and plotted it with war to get a sense of how good versus how fun a team is. As of June 1st, at least, he reports the Cardinals were indeed fun. I'll link to Dan's video where he explains his results in depth. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have signed up already, pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free other than our StatHead sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks.

Joey, Anne Gwynne Robson, Chris Jillings, Eric Peters, and friend of the show, Jesse Thorne, whom I will be seeing in person this week as he records a live episode of Judge Don Hodgman. As a reminder, our Patreon supporters get access to a bunch of extras, including monthly bonus pods, one of which Meg and I will be recording and releasing this week, playoff live streams, access to Discordantly Wild,

the Discord group for Patreon members, and discounts on t-shirts, among other perks. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcast.fangraphs.com. You can also message us through the Patreon site if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Thank you. Outro Music