Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1869: Big Coach on Campus

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are joined by Jake Mintz of Céspedes Family BBQ to talk about Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson leaving the team midseason to join LSU, why MLB teams are hiring coaches from college and why colleges are hiring them back, whether MLB teams should pay coaches more, the state of player […]

I'm surprised to see you wearing gloves in a strange location I'll never be seen In gloves for a celebration to fancy for me. Hello and welcome to episode 1869 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. And we are both joined by Fox Sports analyst and more athletic, louder half of Cespedes Family Barbecue, Jake Mintz. Hello, Jake. Hello.

I should be very clear that the more athletic and louder, like those are two very different descriptors. Like I would describe myself as loud, but not as athletic. Well, more athletic than Jordan? Wow. Certainly. Only one of us biked across the country. Exactly.

He drove. Yeah, but like, you know, which of you was silly enough to make the bet, really? Well, I didn't say smarter half of it. I said louder and more athletic. I mean, Jake, your Twitter bio says the unlikable half. I didn't go there. I wouldn't go there.

But you went there. I remember, Meg, the first time I ever met you at the Lookout Landing ex-Suspidous Family barbecue event at then Safeco in, I believe, 2015. And one of my takeaways was how many people went up to the two of us and was like, I love Jordan way more. Really? I don't think you said that. Kate may have said that.

Yeah, I don't recall saying that. I mostly just recall being horrified that I needed to transform into a column of dust and salt because of how much older I am than you guys. Not anymore. Yeah, now we're all... I mean, she's still just as much older than she was relative to you. Yeah, but the experience of it is different now. We're all grown-ups here.

Jake and Jordan are fully adult at this point. Right. Right. They've completed their education. Yeah, they're college graduates. They've moved out in the world. Yeah, they can purchase alcohol legally. They're movers and shakers, Ben. Anyway, we're not saying better or worse half. I would never go there. I mean, you can't separate the two. You've got to have both ideally, although

we will have one today and that's good too. We've actually, we've had the two of you on together twice, I think memorably to do a draft of Barry Bond's fun facts and then a draft of Mike Trout fun facts, which devolved or evolved into just a long extended super Pretzel conversation. That was back in the days before we were aware that Mike Trout seemingly is no longer a spokesperson for Super Pretzel, which has been devastating for all of us. But I think this is the second time that we have had you on by yourself, which I hope will not be a source of tension.

This is like when one member of the band starts releasing solo albums or something and everyone's like, well, are you not committed to the band anymore? Do you think you're bigger than the band? Not that we did not invite Jordan or not that he turned us down for that reason. He just was unavailable both times. But we'll take whichever half we can get if we can't get the whole. Jordan is moving from one city in America to another another which is you know hard to schedule around yeah

yeah he's not biking i assume no yeah yeah i mean we we invited we invited both of you yes absolutely to be clear our listeners are like oh gosh what's going on no we're just okay no no tension in the duo here everything's fine ben. Ben, you're making people nervous. Don't want to scare anyone. No trouble at home. Everything's great. So we invited you. Maybe we'll talk about a few things, but primarily we wanted to talk to you about this twins coaching drama that's happening here. We teased this last time.

We said we were going to talk about this, and now we are. said we were going to talk about this, and now we are. So the Minnesota Twins pitching coach, Wes Johnson, has left the Minnesota Twins, and he's going back to college. And this has gotten a lot of attention because it's pretty unusual, if not unprecedented. I guess Jeff Passan put it on Twitter. This is a first, a big league pitching coach leaving a first place team for a college job in the middle of the MLB season. Lots of qualifiers there, Jeff. Very Kirchheny of him. Yeah. But the Twins are in first place, and it is indeed the middle of the MLB season,

almost right smack in the middle. And Wes Johnson is leaving to go be the pitching coach for LSU. So I think probably a lot of people who maybe are not familiar with Johnson's history or just the general attractiveness of a college coaching job versus an MLB coaching job are probably thinking to themselves, why? Why would you do this? Why would he want to do this? Why would he do this now?

Just because I think a lot of people probably think of MLB as the pinnacle. That's where everyone wants to be. That's the highest level, right? And you would never have an MLB player say, I want to go back to D1, probably. So why do you think this has happened? is the timing. Because the timing is bad, right? There's no way around that. It's a tough headline, right? Big League pitching coach ditches team in middle of season to take college shot. But there really is no good time to move from MLB to college because of how the seasons are structured, right? You need to be there in the fall in college because a lot of the development that happens, especially for a pitching coach, right, is happening during fall ball, which runs from like August to November.

And so if Johnson had, say, left the Twins in November, he's way behind the eight ball and it doesn't make sense to hire him in the first place, right? So you have to give one thing up. And I've talked to coaches around the pro game, minors and major leagues, where they're like, yeah, you know, I have this college offer, but like, I'm just really hesitant to jump in the middle of the season. But that's kind of the only way to do it, right? Well, and it's, you know, the fall ball stuff is important for development, but it's also recruiting season, right? So he has work to do now that presumably will be impactful for LSU's roster going forward, right? Yeah. And there was the report that the Twins were hoping to keep him till the All-Star break, but he's going to leave, I believe, after the series, right?

With Cleveland, which tells you how immediate the college season is, right? LSU lost in a regional about three weeks ago, and they're already looking for the next batch of players. Yeah. And Johnson is replacing Jason Kelly. The vacancy was because he took a head coaching job with the University of Washington. And maybe it would be even more surprising to people that this is in title, at least a lateral move, right? Because the Tigers actually seemingly came close to losing their pitching coach too, for the same reason, right? Because Chris Vedder, who had previously been a college coach, he was under consideration for the head coaching job at-

Michigan. Yes, Michigan, because Michigan's coach left for Clemson. And so Federer was thinking about leaving not to be the pitching coach, right, though, to take over as the head coach. Correct. Which maybe might make that more understandable to people, but he ultimately decided to stay with the Tigers. So this is two teams in the same division where this is becoming an issue. And I guess you could say this is because those coaches are part of a new breed of big league coach, right, that's coming directly

from college. Like Wes Johnson, if he's a trailblazer in this move, he was also a trailblazer when he came to the Twins because I think, if I recall correctly, he was the first college coach to jump directly to a big league coaching job or pitching coach job at least. Do not pass go. Do not put your time in the minors. He went all the way, and that's because college coaches seemingly have become a lot more desirable to big league teams just because of some of the coaching trends that have gone on in college lately. Absolutely. And it's a really appealing jump to make. The money is good. It's comparable. I think it's about like a 30K pay raise altogether. I mean, it's all public, right? Because it's a public institution. So all the specific dollar figures get released. But I do think it's notable that Johnson didn't go back to the twins and ask for more money from them, right? This wasn't the type of situation where you get a job offer from somewhere and you pit it against your current employer to get more money, which you should do. That's a good thing. Everyone do that if you can.

But this was not that situation. And a lot of that is because I think for Johnson, it's just a better job, both in terms of what he's doing at work and how much time he is spending on the road. from, you know, the middle of early August-ish all the way to when the season starts in February with obviously some maybe minor recruiting exceptions. But for the most part, that's half the year you're spending at home, which is incredible versus in the big leagues where you're probably showing up to spring training in mid-February and you're done at the end of September or the end of October, right?

And even in season, you're traveling significantly less because in the college season, right, you're playing a weekend series every other weekend. So every other weekend you're home. During the week, you're home the whole week. And if you're a family person, you know, if you're, then that's a good thing, right? You just get to chill with the kids, spend more time with the kids yeah well and i think that i'm just looking at a report here from from dan hayes and the athletic i think one of the things i don't want to correct you jake but it sounds like the the complete compensation package might actually be more lucrative coming at lsu than it would for the twins i think from a base salary

perspective it's pretty comparable he'll earn 380k with lsu and was earning 400 000 for the twins. I think from a base salary perspective, it's pretty comparable. He'll earn 380K with LSU and was earning 400,000 with the twins, but the sort of total compensation package, and I don't know what else is included there, is up to 750K with LSU. That's pretty sick. You got to love the SEC, man. SEC is crazy. And that is an important part of it. I have, this is from the Baton Rouge Advocate, is the article I have in front of me, includes $800 a month vehicle allowance and relocation bonus of $25,000. And then there's some really interesting things that are in the contract about what jobs he's allowed to leave for and how much money he has to give back to LSU. But that's the

other takeaway here, right? LSU is very representative of a trend in college baseball right now, that there's money coming in. I would probably say in total, maybe around 20 programs make money, okay? Which is important to know as a whole. And maybe that's a shockingly low number to people, but the TV revenue has only recently started coming in in the last handful of years. Right. That being said, LSU is very much at the top of the list. Yeah, it's one of those programs for sure. Yeah. But they've, and I just think it's worth pointing

out that their new head coach, Jay Johnson, who came over from Arizona is known as a really good recruiter. And already in this, you know, I guess we're calling it a transfer window now with the transfer portal, has swooned a number of really big names in the college game to transfer to LSU, including Tommy White, who kind of went viral at the beginning of the season for hitting, you know, 35 home runs in the opening weekend. And Christian Little, who was a pitcher at Vanderbilt, who was getting a lot of hype out of high school a couple of years ago. Well, and he had already brought over half of Arizona's roster with him when he made the initial move. So he was in good shape there. I mean, Ben made mention of sort of the changing landscape from a pitching perspective in college. And I guess for our listeners who are a little

less familiar with the college game, can you talk about your perception of sort of how advanced pitching writ large is and then how concentrated that advancement is? Because like my, my closest college team is ASU and you look at the way that ASU is doing pitch design and it will perhaps not shock people that a program helmed by Willie Bloomquist feels behind relative to places like LSU. So I don't mean to say that the entire college sort of landscape is taking a step forward collectively, but kind of where is pitching in college right now and how are teams thinking about pitch design in ways that might even mimic big league clubs? Well, it's in a very bizarre spot. And there are a number of factors why. Pitching this year in college baseball on a statistical level has never been worse. Now, that is due in part to injuries from a number of the topters that weren't drafted due to, you know, there was a trend of people coming back for fifth year, fifth year seniors, because the draft is smaller now.

But as a whole, pitchers sucked this year. Offense was way up across the board in college baseball. But at the same time, there's a huge discrepancy between the programs that are ahead and the programs that are behind, even bigger than what you see at the big league level because there's less of a pressure from ownership or like a 35 year old GM with a Harvard degree right breathing down the neck of a coach who's been there for so long if you look you know an example uh take a look at UCLA so coach John Savage has been there for a long time right he had the Garrett Cole, Trevor Bauer teams and was one of the first guys to really embrace some of the basic things that driveline was doing or at least, you know, allow your players to do that. Right. But now he hasn't

really moved at all in the last decade and is considered very behind the eight ball. Right. More of an old school guy. And then you have programs, for example, at Wake Forest has an entire like pitching den. I know of a division three program, Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, they have their own like pitch design Rapsodo lab. Okay. So it really does run the gambit from super ahead to super behind. But there are certainly some around the college game that are like, OK, well, teams are spending all this money on pitching development. And where are we?

Right. Pitching has never been worse. So I think people are confused. And I think that's what makes Wes Johnson such an alluring hire because he knows what he's doing and he has a track record of getting pitchers to pitch better. And in such a confusing landscape, especially for a team like LSU, who had one of the nation's best offenses last year and flamed out in a regional because they didn't have arms, Johnson makes a lot of sense. Yeah, he was really respected and desired. And so is Federer with the Tigers and someone like Tanner Swanson, the catching coach formerly of the Twins, now with the Yankees.

Derek Falvey with the Twins has been really big on the idea of using the college coaching ranks as sort of a farm system for the majors, although it doesn't really map onto it exactly that well just because it's harder to hire college coaches. As we've been talking about, that job is pretty cushy sometimes too. But there is that idea because some of those programs have been really advanced and maybe even ahead of MLB organizations. And some things maybe about the college level makes it easier to change and experiment and do things that are a little unorthodox. Maybe there's a little less scrutiny or you're less bound by tradition and everyone is turning over and players are coming and going anyway. a little unorthodox. Maybe there's a little less scrutiny or you're less bound by tradition and

everyone is turning over and players are coming and going anyway. So in some senses, it's maybe easier to try new things, I think. But there are a lot of ideas there and tactics. I mean, the mid-plate appearance pitching change that we have talked about forever on this podcast, strategy as we call it, they do that in college baseball. They don't really do that in the major. So there are a lot of respects in which it seems like a great place to breed big league coaches, except for the fact that they might not always want to be big league coaches because it's kind of nice to be college coaches too. So I wonder whether we got an email from a listener named Sebastian who just sent us this on a recent recent episode of the podcast Kauffman Corner, host Randy Giserely and Soren Petro spent some time discussing Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson's departure for LSU and the reports that he would be making more as an SEC coach than he had been as a major league coach. The hosts raised the possibility that compensation for coaches may be the latest market inefficiency for less money teams to

exploit in the vein of analytics departments 15 to 20 years ago. I was curious what you all make of this. If a high-level pitching coach is making $400,000 a year at a good team, would a smaller team offering, say, $600,000 or even a million give them a significant advantage, or would the impact before the market adjusted be marginal? So I guess that's the idea. Like if you have to outbid LSU to get or keep Wes Johnson, maybe that's still going to save you money relative to signing some top of the market free agent pitcher or something. And if you think that he's going to make your pitchers better, then maybe it still makes sense anyway. It totally, I totally agree with that. I mean, if you take a look at what

some of the top assistants are making in college, right, you have, it's basically around $350,000 to $400,000. That's the range for like Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Kirk Sarlos, who former big league pitcher was making a half mil as the pitching coach at TCU before he got the head coaching job. And it's not as if big league teams don't have mil as the pitching coach at TCU before he got the head coaching job. And it's not as if big league teams don't have the money to beat those offers, right? To keep smart people around the big league field. There's also a component to it, Ben, that's like, okay, what's a more enjoyable job? Right.

Because if you're the big league pitching coach, you're trying to convince guys who've already done it. They've already succeeded. They have gotten to the big leagues without you, right? So they have a very firm understanding of what allows them to succeed. Whereas if you're, you know, maybe a roving instructor in the minors, if you're, you know, a head coach in college or a pitching coach in college, the clay, there's a lot more molding you can do. And there are benefits and detriments to each of those situations. But just thinking for me, I would imagine that being a big league pitching coach is just a lot of ego massaging.

I don't know if I want to do that if I can make the same amount of money and see my family more. Well, and it sounds like Johnson was, and I don't think that any of the twins guys who have been interviewed about this would maybe put it in these terms, but it sounds like he was very adept at that part of the job, right? That he was someone who these guys really respected and responded to and who was able to communicate in an effective way with them and in a persuasive way. But to your point, it's like, that's still work, even if you're good at that work. Whereas like, imagine, and this is a question I'll put to you, like, you know, imagine you're a kid who either didn't get drafted out of high school or did,

but didn't, you know, love where you were drafted. And now you're sitting across, you know, the table from a guy who has experience like helping make Sonny Gray good. Like you're going to listen to whatever that guy says. So how, how long do you think it will take for us to see sort of the ripple effects of his hire from a recruiting perspective as it pertains specifically to LSU? I mean, you could maybe argue that you're already starting to see it. I don't know what the, you know, I would imagine that in meetings with potential transfers, it's like, hey, we have this guy, we just got him from the Twins, or we're in the process of hiring, you know, a big league pitching coach. That's a big deal for someone to want to go there.

You'll see it immediately. As soon as next season. I mean, from a recruiting perspective. It'll be pretty imminent. And it's an investment that's worth it for LSU. Because it helps them develop. And development in college baseball is so important. Because you're getting so much less of a finished product that needs to win games.

So the amount of change that can happen to a player between 19 and 20 is enormous. Like they might not even be done growing. Right. And so that's a big impact. And then, you know, being able to say that we have a big league pitching coach as our pitching coach is huge on the recruiting trail. So it's more than worth it for LSU. Yeah. As we've discussed, I guess the alternative to paying one coach a ton of money by coaching standards is that you just hire a ton of coaches, which a lot of teams have done. Not that you can't

do both, but you can do the giant's approach of just having 13 coaches or whatever they have. And maybe that makes up for, you know, if you have one super guru who is great, that's wonderful, but that person might only have so much time. So if you can get your hitting coach and your three assistant hitting coaches and your three assistant pitching coaches and everything, then there's just a lot more bandwidth and ability to talk to a lot of people than there would be for any one person, no matter how great. But I did wonder just how much competition there is among college programs for certain coaches, because Johnson has moved around a lot, right? Even before this, I mean, he was at Central Arkansas and then he was with Dallas Baptist, another program that has been very advanced when it comes to player development and analytics.

And then he was with Mississippi State and then he went to Arkansas, right, before he was with the Twins. So is that typical? Like I often read about head coaches who've been with one place for decades, it seems like. But is there a lot of like bidding for other coaches or coaches just going from place to place, like kind of climbing the ranks? Yeah, it depends. What's different about Johnson is that what you'll see is you'll see assistants move with their head coaches a lot, right? Like as a package. That happened, I believe, the head coach from like New Mexico State brought like his entire staff when he got the job at Washington State. That's something that's pretty common. Another example of a guy like that would be Nate Yeske, who used to be the pitching coach at Oregon State and then was at Arizona under Jay Johnson, who's now at LSU. And Yeske then went to Texas A&M this past season. And so there are kind of these high level upper crust guys who will bop around a little bit more. But what they're all looking for is the head coaching job at a power five school.

That's the most alluring thing because the money is great.'s really prestigious it's a good work-life balance you make a lot of money off of camps and speaking engagements too it's a good life if you can get it and i think we're gonna see more coaches take the same path i think i tweeted about this the other day but it's like okay if you're 20 years ago the way to be a college coach was to be a good player at a good college, be a volunteer assistant, be an assistant, and then be a college coach, right? Or like you coach high school and you parlay that up. But what we're seeing now is the path is really coach it like a small college, implement all this progressive stuff, have it work, get a job with a big league team,

climb that ladder, get to the big leagues, parlay that to go back to the college game, whether it's as an assistant or as a head coach, right? And I think what we're going to see over the next couple of years is more coaches who have come over from the college game into the big leagues, making that leap back if the money's right. Is there anyone who strikes you as still interested in doing the opposite of parlaying their collegiate experience into a major league position? I would say for sure. I mean, it just depends on what people want. The guy who jumps out to me, I mean, I don't know him personally, but Connor Dawson, who I believe was a minor league hitting coach with the Mariners and is now one of the two co-assistants with the Brewers, is someone who coached college ball at Marshalltown Community College in 2019.

Right. And St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Kansas for three years before that and parlayed all of that into a job with the Mariners. And now he's the big league hitting coach for Milwaukee. And I would imagine for a guy like that who maybe never had experience playing at a big division one school, there might not be as much of a draw, right? As some player, as some, I mean, I don't know this personally. Like, I don't know Connor. I'm just kind of hypothesizing. We won't hold you to it. Thank you.

Just kind of hypothesizing. We won't hold you to it. Thank you. But yeah, it's super compelling to me because it opens the door for a very different type of coach at the big league level. And I think it's worth trying to find that coach, right? But then now there's the risk that they leave you and they hop back to the college game. So while we're on the subject, you were just covering the College World Series, right? Which concluded and the Ole Miss Rebels swept, beat the Oklahoma Sooners.

They won their first College World Series title or men's College World Series title. For those of us, won't name any names who perhaps don't follow college baseball as closely. Ben, he means himself. He means Ben, Ben Lindbergh. Ben Lindbergh of Effectively Wild. That's what Ben means. He does. He means himself. He means Ben, Ben Lindbergh. Ben Lindbergh of Effectively Wild. That's what Ben means. Ben, you not following it is not as bad as Craig Goldstein's just absolute disdain for college baseball, which is one of my favorite things.

He hates it. So for us, what should we know, if anything, about the tournament, about Ole Miss, about the College World Series? Did anything notable happen? Yeah, a lot notable happened. I mean, it depends on your level of notable. Yeah. You know, for me, like, I have a problem. And so notable was like the Division III World Series selection show.

But for the purposes of- Well, you're a D3 guy, I mean. Yeah, I mean, come on. But for the purposes of this incredibly broad audience, I would say that a number of important things to know about the college season. One, I already mentioned, offense was up like crazy and a bunch of the top arms got hurt. The University of Tennessee was perhaps the single greatest college team of the 21st century. Number one overall.

I think they went like 53-7 in the regular season. And they were upset in the Super Regional, the semifinal round before the College World Series by Notre Dame, in one of the most shocking upsets of all time. Tennessee was a very entertaining brash. They talked a lot of crap. Everyone wore a ton of eye black. Their manager was getting ejected every three games.

It was that kind of vibe. As far as Ole Miss is concerned, it was a very interesting team. They were one of the last four teams to make it into the tournament off the bubble. A lot of people felt like they didn't deserve to be in and that they only got in because they were an SEC team. They were projected to have a great season, really stumbled in the middle of the year before getting hot late. The guys on that team, Jacob Gonzalez is a top 10 projected pick for next year.

He was our shortstop. And then they have this fifth year senior named Tim Elko who tore his ACL last year and played through it and then came back for a fifth season and won the College World Series. Very cool. And then the two other storylines from the College World Series that stood out to me,

one was this guy in Oklahoma named Cade Horton, who was a top high school quarterback prospect who went to Oklahoma from Norman, Oklahoma, tore his UCL right before his freshman year, before the 2021 season, rehabbed, came back this year as a sophomore, made like eight starts. And in the World Series was 96-97 with like a six slider and went from like an eighth round pick to a probable first rounder. Yeah. So he's a guy to keep an eye on.

I actually went and watched his game behind home plate. I put on my scout fit disguise. Where I just threw on a bucket hat and a polo and sat in the second row and no one asked any questions. Did you do your hair like Kylie does? Absolutely not. Would never dream of that. I have self-respect.

And then the last thing to know is a gentleman named Ivan Melendez at Texas broke the modern record for home runs in a season, which was previously held by Chris Bryant. The bats have changed many times in college baseball. So you kind of have to view all the home run records differently. Sure. So like Pete Incaviglia, I think hit like 9,000 home runs in a college season. But he was using like a trampoline as a bat.

And so Melendez breaking Chris Bryant's record was certainly notable. He's probably like a second or third round pick. If everything breaks right, he is, you know, Pete Alonso type kind of guy. But that was your download. That was your download. You didn't need to watch any games. It's great summary. I feel completely caught up now.

I saved so much time. Yeah, you did. But you missed out on so much. Jake, you mentioned being behind home plate for a game. You have been to College World Series, I believe, when the draft used to be in June. And you have now been to events where we are still a couple of weeks away from the draft. How would you describe the change in major league presence at one versus the other? Because obviously, you know, boards are being constructed.

There are teams who know who they like, but they have this opportunity to scout a couple more guys for a couple more weeks. Well, this was the second time I'd ever gone to Omaha. And the first time was in 2018. And I was admittedly drunk the entire time. I did not work it. Not a reliable reporter that go around. I went for fun. I went and watched baseball for fun it was very fun so i can't give you that answer based on my experience but talking to scouts behind home plate that night there was one who uh you know like a just a great old-timey scout i've been driving around the midwest since 1968 you know like that kind of guy yeah and he was like yeah i've been going to this for 10 years this is in my area and i was often the only person there and now there were probably 15

guys behind home plate you know and it's it's a big deal because the draft is now after it and so it matters it was a relatively weak batch i I think, of first round prospects that actually made it to the College World Series. So it might have been even bigger had someone like the top 10 picks been there. But there was a notable difference for sure. Well, I'm sure the underserved portion of our audience that cares deeply about college baseball will be getting a little taste of coverage next month, probably in a few weeks when the draft rolls around. But this was something. Can't say we didn't talk about this college baseball season. It just happened. Well, Ben, you didn't. You didn't talk about the college baseball season.

No, but I gave you the platform. I don't even work here, man. I mean, I will say, you know, I hosted a podcast this year about college baseball. And it was a very interesting experience following college baseball and Major League Baseball at the same time. And very difficult. Because, you know, there are 15 games on a given night in MLB. There are like 100 in college. There's so many teams. college yeah there's so many teams and like flipping back and forth between the two i think i gained a better appreciation a deeper appreciation for each and they each have their benefits and their you know their downsides a ball's put in play in college ben and meg yeah you don't know what's gonna happen because yeah defense is bad yeah right however defense is bad right yeah exactly that could be a good thing it could be a good thing. It could be a bad thing. We talked about that recently.

So I did want to ask you about a couple big league things before we let you go. What's that? First, you wrote recently about the Astros catching combination, which is, I'm going to guess,

historically inept offensively. I haven't looked at previous seasons, but right now the catcher combo for the Astros of Martin Maldonado, Jason Castro, they have a 28 WRC+. The next lowest team, the Guardians, is at 43. So they are by far the worst offensive catchers in the majors this season. And you contend that this is okay. This is perfectly fine. And it's not a reason to panic. So how do you think they make up the value there to counteract the lack of offense? Yeah, it's bad. I mean, it's not just like

bad numbers wise. Like it's a tough watch, right? And it is notable that they're both 35, right? And they've been around the block and they've both been there for a long time. I just think that it's a very particular situation with Houston where they have a pretty young pitching staff and they have an overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking Latin American pitching staff. I believe they are tied for the most Latin American-born pitchers with at least 20 innings this year, or at least they were when I wrote this article. And having someone like Martin Maldonado is really helpful for that and is potentially, you know, part of the reason why they've had so many arms in the last couple of years overperform. Obviously there are a million factors at play and I'm not saying it's that simple and that

just get a Spanish speaking catcher and all your Spanish speaking pitchers will be really good. Like, no, but I do think that that does play a role. I mean, dude, Christian Javier has a two, seven, three with a one thirty nine era plus. Are you telling me that Martin Maldonado has zero percent of credit for that? You know, I think I think that's important. And we've seen teams really reluctant to trade for catchers in the middle of a season because you have to kind of onboard them. And now catchers are doing more than ever in terms of game planning and game calling that it makes a big deal. Right.

Yeah, especially in this era, I guess, when you see a catcher playing who can't hit at all and it's a team like the Astros, like an analytically advanced team like the Astros, you have to think there's a reason for that and that they've done the math and they have decided that, yes, not only do we want to play him, like we want to bring him back. You know, they have made that decision. And obviously they've been something Mathis is playing, you know that he's doing something right, that he's justifying his playing time. And maybe in the past you would have said, oh, they're overrating the defense and actually he is hurting them more than he's helping them. And I guess that's still a possibility. But it's not as if the Astros are not able to analyze that and are just like old school, like, yeah, we just want like a catch and throw guy. We don't need any offense from catcher. Like presumably they have just actually evaluated that this is worth it. Now, maybe they didn't think they would be this bad. I don't think they did.

I'm sure they would like them to be better at hitting. Right. It's not as if James Click is like, this is great. Yeah, right. I tend to just side on most of the baseball teams now are smarter than us, I think. If not all of them, right? I know there's like a ton of great work on the public side, whatever. But like most of these teams now, they have a process.

And you can disagree with the process. I know I do many times for certain teams and whatever. But the Astros are not – that front office is not a bunch of dummies. Right. Right? They're not just like, oh, well, lookie here. Look who's catching every day for our team. Who?

Who is this? You kidding? What? Right. And so I'm just inclined to be like, oh, yeah, they know what they're doing. Like, they're smarter than me. Yeah. I'm not in charge of the Astros for a reason, right?

Yeah. I'm not in charge of the Astros for a reason, right? Yeah. We've talked about that before where like maybe years ago it was like maybe the sabermetric people, the people in the public sphere actually did know better about some things and in some ways. And so when they would critique MLB teams, it was like, oh, I'm actually learning something. Like they know something that these teams don't. Now, not so much. And yet you also don't want to give them a complete pass whenever they do something because they're not infallible. But they have at least considered and evaluated the situation and probably more than we have.

Like there was a – Ben, there was a meeting probably. Oh, yeah. There was probably a Zoom meeting sent out from someone in the Houston Open office to someone else. And the headline was Martine Maldonado? Yeah. And then they did a Zoom and he's still catching. Yeah. I think that you're right, Ben, that we don't want to assume that every choice is the right

one because that's how you end up with entrenched and not particularly stellar orthodoxy. And part of the public side's virtue is being able to say, hey, we're going to poke you and see if this still makes sense. But I don't know, like I don't want to give Houston too much credit, but it's not like they're the Rockies. I was exactly what I was going to say. Somebody in there is going, yeah, all right. At the end of the Zoom call, we still feel good about the Maldonado choice. Right. Yeah, all right. At the end of the Zoom call, we still feel good about the Maldonado choice.

Right. The other thing, I don't know whether this is something that you have authored these tweets or Jordan has, but which one of you is the Vinnie Pasquantino enthusiast among the two, if not both? Because we met him this week. We met a major leaguer, Vinnie Pasquantino. He is now up with the Royals. They have made the trade of Carl Santana, AL Central lifer Carl Santana. I guess he was with the Phillies that one year. Yeah, that one year. He is now with the Mariners, and that was a move that was at least partly to make way for the new blood. That was when he broke the TV screen. Do you remember that story? Yeah. Where they were playing so much Fortnite that he went into the clubhouse and bashed in the TV with a bat.

And then the next year he wasn't on the Phillies. How about that? Yeah. They sided with the streamers. So tell us about Vinny. So Jordan and I met Vinny a couple of weekends ago. We went out to Omaha, Nebraska before the College World Series and did play-by-play and color comedy. I guess we didn't do play-by-play. We did a AAA broadcast with Mike Farron. He did the play-by-play and we did three color commentary games for the Omaha Storm Chasers,

which was a very fun experience. It's something we'd never done before. And let me tell you, everybody, it's so hard. Yep. I am not brief, you know? Like, we were doing a radio broadcast with the 14 second pitch clock, you know, with a three person booth. Yeah.

It's tough. Tough. But Vinny was there for the storm chasers. And the way I describe it is this. There are in my head five types of baseball players. OK, there are mean ones. There are, in my head, five types of baseball players, okay? There are mean ones, there are boring ones, there are kind ones, there are funny for baseball ones, and then there are funny ones, right? I'm sure you've all had these experiences.

Yes. Important distinction to draw in the humor department. I'm not going to critique any player on this platform with the recording button going for being in any of these especially funny for baseball which is a huge insult i'm sure maybe after we're done i'll say a name uh but vinny is in this top group he is just like the type of like i i don't want to be like oh these guys are your friends right because you know I don't actually know him all that well I was just very struck and smitten by him as a human and that was really nice because he has developed this cult following online recently and he fits the vibe like he's aware of it he loves the nickname he came out and we watched a college world series

game together the next day, which was very fun, which he said was the first baseball game he'd been to as a fan in a very long time, or a baseball game in general as a fan. But this is, I feel pretty comfortable saying this is a guy that I think he's okay to like. Yeah. He's now Italian Nightmare is the nickname. So he was Italian Breakfast, right? which was a play on the billy butler nickname and now he's the nightmare well yeah yeah you know it's much scarier no one's intimidated by breakfast yeah right and he was raking at triple a2 in addition to being funny he hits lots of dingers he was like so overqualified at the level and I think that part of it is that the Royals maybe wanted to maintain expectations because Vinny's a very good player. I don't think he's a franchise savior.

Yeah, he's 24, almost 25, right? Yeah. I mean, it's like Reese Hoskins or Trey Mancini. He's a good first baseman. He's not going to win any MVP awards probably, but he'll maybe make a couple All-Star games. He's pretty good, but I think the Royals were wary of him being, you know, the dude on the horse coming in. Yeah, the heir to Carlos Santana. Whoa!

Whoa! Wow. That's not how Italians would be like, it's ours. I'm Italian, I can, ah, it's ours. I'm Italian. I can say it.

It's fine. I'm not. I also wanted to ask you about this because you have played the game, capital P, capital T, capital G, maybe capital T. I don't know if you capitalized the T there. Not with AP. No, probably not.

Yeah. I won't say where you played the game because that might detract from your authority. Not in my mind, but in other people's. But you guys tweeted or quote tweeted the Mike Trout seemingly getting annoyed about Atlas Peguero, his teammate is tipping pitches and he doesn't look too happy about it. And I guess people probably extrapolated from this like eight second clip because the initial tweet says that he looks so fed up and you can probably read that into him. And I think probably a lot of people are thinking like, what is Trout feeling these days about still being an angel and having signed his entire career over to the angels and like would he and Shohei Otani have made the same decisions that they made about where to play if they had known

exactly how this was going to work out anyway the question was more about tipping pitches and just like how prevalent you think that is and how much it matters because everyone's always intrigued by pitch tipping right because there's like this detective element to it. It's like you're loose out there and you're just like picking up on these little tells and it's really intriguing. And sometimes you will hear often after the fact like, oh yeah, we had his pitches in that game, right? And there's sort of an assumption almost with like Astro's style sign stealing. It's like, well, if you know what's coming, you can hit it automatically, which I think is not true necessarily. And I think pitch tipping is sort of similar in that like you might think you have the pitches, but do you really? And is it easy to hit them anyway? Just like,

do we make too big a deal about pitch tipping or do you think it really matters? Like if we were able to quantify like this guy is tipping pitches right now, like what is his true talent when he's tipping pitches? Like actually he is a sub talent when he's tipping pitches? Actually, he is a sub-replacement level pitcher now because they know what's coming. Or is this pretty rare at the major league level? I've got to think at the college level, probably a lot of people are tipping pitches. I don't know whether the players are all able to pick up on it as well as MLB players would be. So there's your prompt, pitch tipping. What do you think? Okay. So I have a couple of

stories and i have some thoughts but i'll do my thoughts first it doesn't happen at the big league level as much as at the college level because there are cameras everywhere and teams are there's probably like someone's job on every team is to make sure that no one's tipping pitches and it's probably someone's job to make sure that they're finding when other teams are tipping pitches and that i know is a lot. That's what a lot of advanced scouting is these days, because so much of it is online. Or even like, you know, video work and motion tracking and like you could probably quantify these things potentially.

I'm sure teams are doing that sort of thing, too. Yeah. So I would say, again, I think it does matter if teams are putting so much time and effort and thought into it. It has to at least matter in theory to the players in their minds. And I think it probably matters less than, you know, 100 points of OPS, but it matters, right?

Especially it matters in certain counts. It matters in fastball counts when you can be 100% sure that you're sitting on something. It does make a difference. In college, we did a lot of this. We did a lot of sign stealing even because in college you relay from the catcher, gets the signs from the dugout, right? And you could just watch like we would have one nerd on the end of the bench, which was me at times, you know, writing down every single sign sequence

from an opposing coach and then like just trying to figure out what pitch is what. And then by the third inning, you break the code and then you're doing like verbal calls to your hitters. A fun one would be like, if it's a fastball, you'd be like, bash that ball. And then if it's a curve, you'd be like bash that ball and then if it's a curve you'd be like crush that ball wow that's some advanced cryptography there yeah can't crack that code and then the last thing i'll say is so my senior year as a division three pitcher i was very good and i figured out a lot of stuff but one of the things i didn't figure out was tipping pitches. I did it all the time. I would come set with a fastball and I would like, before I did that, I would hold the ball like behind my back. Right. And so you could kind of see my hand. And so after a game against Greenville college, their best hitter came up

to me and said, Hey man, I just want to let you know you're tipping your changeup whenever you come set. That's courteous. Isn't that super nice? Could you imagine a big leaguer ever doing that? No. No. Yeah. Super nice.

Yeah, that's great. So kind. All right. Well, that's pitch tipping. I just noticed, by the way, that your bio at Fox Sports describes you as the louder half of Sespas Family Barbecue. So I didn't even, I mean, I don't know if I saw that and forgot or whether you just said that about yourself, but I feel less bad about calling you that now. Ben, if you are a self-deprecating person, you can spend less money on therapy, like a little less. Only a little. Just a little less, but it does help.

Like a little less? Only a little. Just a little less. But it does help. Yeah. There are two more players I want to bring up. Now, I know that this is not a hive mind situation where like when Jordan writes about something, you just automatically know everything that he knows, like a Borg collective kind of thing. But he did just recently write about Raphael Devers.

And I did confirm with you. Before we started recording, I confirmed that you have heard of Raphael Devers so that if I did bring him up, you would not be completely lost there. The singer? I've been looking for a chance to mention him because we got an email from Ethan about how we had not mentioned him. He said, I'm hoping to prompt a discussion about Raphael Devers on the podcast, one that does not revolve around the doom Red Sox fans feel about his contract because he is delightful and great at baseball and his affinity for lying down on the field is the kind of thing that makes me love tuning into baseball every day. Just think his season deserves the Jose Ramirez

patented. We don't talk about this guy, but he's kind of wonderful banter. And that is probably true because I don't know if he has really come up on the show this year. And he is having like a MVP caliber kind of season. And we should probably just like acknowledge that for a moment. So I don't know whether Jordan's enthusiasm for him has transferred over to you or whether you have some. But we maybe like take him kind of for granted just because he's been around for a while. He came up so young. He was pretty good right away and then has had like a couple excellent seasons. But now he seems to have like reached another level where at least according to Fangraphs War, he has accrued 4.2 war already

this year and was at 4.3 in like more than twice as many games last year. And he was pretty good last year. So he's hitting 332, 396 hundred. That seems good. Do you concur that that seems good? That's all right. Yeah. Is that it?

Ethan mentioned the like lying down on the field thing. Alex Spear of the Boston Globe just wrote about this the other day. Like he's doing this thing now where he will just like lie down for a while on the field. Like he'll catch a line drive and then he'll just like stay down there on his stomach for a while. Or like he'll just chill on the field just like sitting there. Or like if he dives back to first, if he's on first and there's a pickoff attempt, he will just lie there for a while until the pitcher is coming set again or he'll just sit down until his own pitcher is about to pitch again. A true Shavasana king.

It's awesome. And so he said in this article, the play is already done. I don't need to rush and get up right away. So I just take my time. Nobody is waiting for me. So I'm taking some time for myself, which I really appreciate. And Nick Pavetta said, I have no idea what he's doing, but I think it's the funniest thing ever. I think it's hard for us to really understand because not a lot of people are on his level. It just works for who he is.

And it brings a little personality to the table of what type of baseball player he is. He likes to goof off, have fun, but he's also showy. He likes people to know he's a top, top echelon talent and you don't want to mess with him. So it's sort of like a Devers being Devers sort of situation, I guess. But he said, I feel very confident and I know the kind of player I am. That's why I feel so comfortable out there. I'm very confident. He's just confident enough to sit down sometimes. It's important to remain grounded in the moment, Ben. You guys should do that on the pod.

Literally grounded. You should do that on the pod. Just like take a second. You know, appreciate it. I am sitting right now. I mean, I'm not laying down. No. That's because I'm worried about, you know, touching the mic and making noises.

Yeah. So in conclusion, I guess, yeah, Raphael Devers is awesome. And we probably should talk about him more than we do, I guess. And we won't talk about the contract situation and the walk-year situation for the sake of Red Sox fans who may be listening. I think they're going to pay him. Yeah, you think so? I do. I think he's improved his defense a ton this year, and there's probably a reason for that. He put a lot of work

into it in the offseason, I think. That's why he has to rest. That's why he needs to rest, as of all that work. You didn't want to pay him all the money to be a bad first baseman if your top prospect, Tristan Kass, is a first baseman, right? That doesn't make sense. But if he can play third base for another five years, then yeah, they'll pay him, I think. And the last player is another player Jordan wrote about, Klay Holmes. And I wanted to bring up Klay Holmes because obviously he's unhittable and he's awesome. And he has seemingly stolen the Yankees closer job from Meroldis Chapman, who's about to be back, but seemingly is not about to be reinstalled as Yankees poser because Clay Holmes, it appears, has taken that job from him. He has pitched

incredibly well. And he seems to be yet another player in the Pirates to any other team pipeline. When that trade was made, when the Yankees traded for Clay Holmes last year, I don't know that anyone noticed particularly or like thought that much of that. But as soon as he went from the Pirates where he had like a career five something ERA, I think, with them and had almost a five ERA when the Yankees acquired him. And then it was sub two for the rest of the year. And it's sub one this season. And he is just dominant and unhittable and it seems like another case of someone going from the pirates changing his picks mitch right so they have just like changed his repertoire to the point where he junked his curveball that he

used to throw and now he just throws sinkers like 80 of the time with some sliders Bonds in 01. Yeah. I mean, I've been impressed by like Frambois Valdez and his scrum ball rate, but he can't compare to Clay Holmes and Britton might be back before the end of the season. Those guys are teammates, obviously. So imagine if you have like Britain and the right-handed Britain. You know who loses that? You know who loses that? Who? NYCFC, New York City Football Club, who has to play on that turf. Yeah, good point.

So there's an article by Jason Mackey who wrote about this and talked to Holmes about like the transition from the Pirates to the other team. And it sounds like just another classic case of like, he got to the Yankees and they were like, yeah, we want to take your curveball away and just have you throw tons of sinkers and face a lot of righties. And he was like, cool, that sounds good. And he has been dominant ever since. And it's kind of amazing because this is like the reverse Tyler Glasnow situation or like some of the other guys who've gone from the Pirates and it was about like scrapping the sinker maybe and like throwing four seamers more or breaking balls. And in this case, you'd think like the Pirates would have been in the perfect position to tell Holmes throw nothing but sinkers because that was their thing for a while. But no, like he was throwing a fair amount of sinkers with the Pirates. But as soon as he left, it was like just doubling down on sinkers. So amazing to me that this keeps happening, I guess, and that he has been as good as he has.

Ben Clemens wrote about Holmes for us. And at the end of his piece, which he published on May 23rd, he said, will he keep up his 4-2 ERA and 1-5-7 FIP? Almost certainly not. And Ben was right because now his ERA is all the way up to 0.50 and his FIP is 1.68. Yeah, regression has hit him hard since then. Yikes. But this is interesting because Cameron Grove, whom we've had on the show, he did some analysis the other day and tweeted that the fraction of pitches that his pitching models think should be thrown more often than they are has trended down over time, presumably because teams have figured out ways to measure pitch quality and adjust usage accordingly. So there may be fewer pitchers out there who just like should be throwing their best pitch or their second best pitch more often than they are because they have already made those adjustments. But Clay Holmes is just an example of that trend. And it's just kind of amazing to me that that still happens as often as it does. So he is now displaced and unseated Chapman. But the interesting thing is that he does not have an entrance song.

So he is a closer, but he does not have an entrance song. He has not chosen one yet. And I'm wondering if there are like unwritten rules of closer entrance song etiquette when you're on the same team as Chapman, who has a long distinguished history as a closer and has his entrance song and had a rough start to the season. And now he's like a soft tosser basically. He's like sitting 97. So he's perhaps not the same flamethrower that he was. How long do you have to wait if you're Clay Holmes to say, I have an entrance song now? Chapman can't be on the team. He can't be on the team anymore. You think? You think? You have to wait for him to go?

Because it would be like I'm showing him up. This is out of deference to Chapman maybe that he has not yet selected a song. I think he should pick something really lame on purpose to say like, hey, I know you're still here.

I'm not trying to be a bad teammate. So I don't know. Like what's the worst possible walk-up song? Maybe like a really slow Bon Iver ditty. Yeah, I was trying to think of something with like sync in it or grounders or something, but maybe the point is that he just, he can't choose one. Maybe, Ben, he's just funny for a baseball player. Maybe, Ben, he's just funny for a baseball player. We got an email from a listener named Jack who said that 37-year-old Justin Turner is still walking up to the plate to Lil Jon's classic 2013 hit, Turn Down for What? Yeah, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Jack said, I vaguely remember rolling my eyes and thinking, ugh, what a trendy and bad song. The first time I witnessed this, now it has not so quietly become one of my favorite recurring things in the game of baseball.

I don't really have much more to say other than that it has been an odd sight for new Dodgers fans to see their rugged late 30s third baseman walk up to an early 20 teens party jam. I was thinking that because we don't care as much about walk-up songs as we do entrance songs and closers are so associated with their entrance song that when you think about Mariano Rivera you think about Enter Sandman when you think about Trevor Hoffman you think about Hell's Bells I don't really think of songs so much when I think of hitters and I don't know whether that is because there is less consistency they do, they do change them. Yeah. So like Justin Turner keeping this thing for so long is an outlier, which I guess makes sense because if you have to hear the thing four or five times a game, then you get sick of it.

And also maybe it just doesn't matter as much because it's not like as huge a production. You're not like running in from the bullpen and closing the game like you could just be coming up in the seventh inning of a blowout in May or whatever. So there's not as much juice to the hitter entrance song. But I think if I were a hitter, it's a lot of pressure because like if you pick one song and then you stick with it for your entire career, you're going to hear that thing thousands of times. But like I kind of like to be associated with a certain song the way a closer is associated with their song. Jake, I know that you have to go, but I just want to share that when I went to the Pac-12 championship game, there was an Oregon State hitter, and now I don't remember who, who walked up to the Fergie song, that London Bridge.

In the year of our Lord, 2022, a young person was like, you know what song I want? That London Bridge song. Hey, style is cyclical. Yeah, this is one of those areas where funny and funny for baseball are distinguished, right? Because there's always a song. Who was it who was walking up to the SpongeBob theme this year? I believe Oscar Gonzalez was playing.

Yeah. I mean, that's funny, I guess. But then 10 other players will probably probably do it and it won't be funny, but it'll be baseball funny. So you hear that a lot with entrance songs, I think, where it's something where you wouldn't expect in that situation. All right. We will let you go. And people can find you on Twitter at Jake underscore Mints if you only want the Jake tweets without the Jordan tweets, if you want the Jordan tweets too, then you can find them both at Cespedes BBQ. And of course, they are both writing and doing video stuff at Fox Sports. Thank you, Jake. Thank you. And maybe one day I'll have my own podcast again. That would be great. We'll see.

Okay, Mick, we have let Jake leave. We are still here. I just noticed that the Yankees were playing possibly while we were talking to Jake. They have already played today and Clay Holmes finished it off for them and got three outs all on ground balls. So the CRA is down to 0.49 and his ground ball rate is up to 82.4%. So can Clay Holmes beat Zach Britton's ground ball rate record? One of my favorite storylines of this season. We do have another example of the Taylor Ward, Tyler Wade mix-up. I honestly did not expect this to be a recurring feature.

I know. This has been so much more fruitful than you were anticipating at the end. I know. I thought it happened once. I didn't think we have a whole network of eagle-eared listeners. Does that work? Do eagles have good hearing too? Probably. I don't know. I don't know. What's something that has really good hearing? I don't know. Eagles, sure. Dogs. Dog-eared is already a saying. That means something else. Yeah, and it means something different. Anyhow, we'll noodle on that and get a bunch of emails about it and appreciate every single one.

Yeah. The point is we have a lot of listeners who are watching games and apparently are watching Angels games. And it would seem that this is a near daily occurrence for broadcasters to stumble over Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward. So let me play the latest example. This was sent to us by Patreon supporter Ross. This comes from the June 27th game between the Angels and the White Sox. And this is Steve Stone. As Tyler Ward, Tyler Wade rather, just came in the ballgame.

So he does not have his first at bat yet. This will be his first at bat of the night. So there it is yet again. And I love that often when they correct themselves, they don't even quite get it right. They might still get it like half right and just do like a Tyler Ward or a Taylor Wade or something like that. Just half somewhere caught in between. It's amazing to me because what have we done four of these now? I think in like a week or something.

It's been a different broadcaster every time is the amazing thing. It's not as if like one person has a hang up about this and has like a verbal tick about Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward. It's now been four different people. It's been Joe Davis. It's been been four different people. It's been Joe Davis. It's been Dave Sims. It's been Mark Gubiza. And now Steve Stone, the latest victim of the tyranny of Tyler and Taylor. So amazing. They're going to start have to like teach this at broadcaster school. It's going to be like a lesson that you learn, like you go home and you have to say like instead of our fathers or Hail Marys or something, you have to say like Tyler's and Taylor's just to make sure that you get this straight. I do love that as you were preparing to introduce the clip, you yourself paused as if to say, I'm not confident that I've gotten these names right.

I'm not. I'm absolutely not. Every single time there is a part of me that like whatever part of your brain that sometimes like starts thinking about what you're doing. So you'll be walking suddenly and then you'll be like, is this how I walk? Is this how this happens? That's what happens every time we talk about Wade and Ward, where suddenly I'm very conscious of the movements that my mouth are making because they could betray me. Yeah, it's like when you stop to think about braiding your hair for even two seconds and then you end up having to start all over again.

Yeah. So I had one other follow-up thought about the Freddie Freeman situation that we talked about last time because I think I have a comp from my own life here. It seems, as we noted, that Freddie Freeman, maybe he's had a little trouble acclimating to LA. I mean, he's playing at his usual high level, but he has been sort of sad to return to Atlanta and there are all the circumstances about did he actually want to leave and how did that happen? And has he fully settled in there, which were ramped up by Clayton Kershaw saying that it was very cool to see the reception that Freeman got in Atlanta. He's obviously been a big contributor for our team, and I hope we're not second fiddle.

It's a pretty special team over here, too. I think whenever he gets comfortable over here, you really enjoy it, which suggests that he is not currently comfortable, which makes it more impressive that he is hitting the way that he is. But if that is true, if he is not fully settled in, I would understand if that would be the case, because this happened to me when I went from grammar school to high school. So I was in the same grammar school, St. David's, from nursery through eighth grade. So that's, you know, up until I was 14, back to basically my entire life that I could remember at that point. I don't know how old I was in nursery, but, you know, it's like almost all of my conscious life at that point was going to this school and with many of the same friends in a fairly small class. Then I went to high school, Regis High School, and a few people from my grammar school went to that high school, too.

But for the most part, not. It was new faces in a new place. And it was only a few blocks away from my grammar school, same neighborhood. So I like went to the high school the same way that I went to the grammar school on my way in the morning or on the way home. So it was a weird sort of like, this is almost the same, but very, very different. And at least for the first trimester of high school, I don't know how long exactly, but like I would go back to my grammar school sort of like in a sad puppy situation, like after the high school day was over

where like, you know, I guess I made some friends and everything, but it was like I felt a real sense of displacement. And I was close to some of the teachers at my grammar school, including my eighth grade teacher, Tom Ryan, who's like a big part of my baseball development. You know, he was a huge Yankees fan and we used to talk about baseball at the time and he had tons of baseball books in his homeroom. And like he was at my wedding, like he's an important person to my childhood. And so like I would walk over there after high school and just like hang out at the grammar school, like sort of sadly with some of my teachers and the people that I like there. And I'm sure that they were thinking like, we got to kick this kid out of the nest. They never said that to me. They were very welcoming,

but I'm sure some part of them was like, didn't you leave? This tiny baby bird needs to learn how to chew his own food now. Yes, he has to risk breaking his bird bones when he leaps out of the nest. This didn't go on for that long. I wasn't doing this as a senior in high school or anything. Eventually, I got comfortable, but that made me sympathize with Freddie Freeman, who has been moved not only between teams but across the country. I mean, I know

he's from that area and everything, but like how long had he been with that organization? A really, really long time, right? He was with the Braves in the big league since 2010. They drafted him in 2007. His entire baseball career was with Atlanta. So how could it not be jarring? I mean, even if you're an adult and you have a family and a life and all of that, it's a little bit different. But still, I can totally see why it would be tough for him to go from one place to another, that it might all the time but like returning to the place where you used to you know be an important part of an organization and a community and a place you called home and where you kind of came up as not only a baseball player but a human being like that sort of jars loose other stuff like i i i don't think that it's surprising or strange or like you know an expression of like regret necessarily or sustained regret for him to like just have some feelings when he's there that seems very human to me and i i can you know i saw kershaw's quote because i

think that came out over the weekend. And that was part of what motivated my response last time. I'm just like, I don't think that this is my business. Like, it seems like a thing you guys need to talk through in the clubhouse without talking to us about it. Because I don't think that we are, we're not always like emotionally consistent. emotionally consistent and just because we have like feelings of like pangs of regret that we're not in a place that we enjoyed before doesn't mean that that is like the through line of our current life you know it's just like a very i don't know i i just don't know that people are particularly good at being at always being like stoic or emotionally consistent and it's fine for them to feel some feelings and then like get back to LA and be like, here are my guys,

you know, I'm just, I'm here with, with, with them. So I don't know. I just, I think it's, I think it's all fine. Let Freddie have feelings. And if it's something that the team feels like they need to, to sort of litigate is too strong, but like process and work through because he is going to be there for a number of years and they want him to be happy and they want him to like seem happy right like clearly him being able to not only experience that but perform sounds like i have

a judgment on it that i don't mean but like express it in a way that is obvious to the to his teammates is like important to to them and is fundamentally not my business. Yeah, I guess we're just not accustomed to seeing that level of emotion maybe because, I don't know, all these players are grown up and they've been around the league and they know players elsewhere. But it reminds me of like when Wilmer Flores thought he'd been traded, right? But it reminds me of like when Wilmer Flores thought he had been traded, right? And ultimately that trade didn't go through. But we saw his tears at being traded from the Mets, whom he had been with for his entire career at that point. Since he was a teenager.

Yeah, I mean, 16, right? And so how would that not be jarring, disorienting? I mean, you know, obviously like getting an enormous contract the way that Freddie Freeman did, that makes it easier, probably. Sure, totally. But still, there's an emotional tie there. And especially if you had expected at one point to spend your whole career there, as you did, and if you accomplished so much there, and you meant so much to the people there, and they meant so much to you, and you were part of that community and everything, how could it not be? Regardless of how big your bank account is yes still like it's

a it's a big change so yeah i totally get it yeah adults are no less full of feeling than than kids are our expectations around how they express them are sometimes appropriately different and sometimes asking just entirely too much of other people. I don't know. I get why if you're a teammate of Freddie Freeman, you want to be like, hey, man, let's go. We got a good thing going here. But I think that it takes time to move on from big life change. Even when it's a positive life change.

It's just, you know, it can take a minute, and that's fine. Yep. All right. Let's end with the past blast for today. This is, as always, from Richard Hershberger, historian, saber researcher, author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. Richard did write in in response to our discussion of whether a fielder should but also

could wear two gloves at one time. Now, he said, you and Meg talk about a fielder wearing two gloves as if it were obviously ridiculous, but why? In cricket, wicket keepers do it routinely, and the reasons for it would seem to apply to the suggestion of first baseman doing it when no runners are on base. Now, would it be legal? That is the question. He says rule 3.05 specifies that the first baseman may wear a leather glove or mitt. One could interpret the use of the singular A to mean that he can use only one. But this is not unambiguous.

If this were the intent, the rule could easily state this. And frankly, a close reading of the official baseball rulebook proves mostly how poorly written the rules are. 3.06, for example, allows fielders other than the catcher to use or wear a leather glove. What is the significance of that use? Does this imply that a first baseman can, per 3.05, wear a mitt, but he can't use it? Of course not. This is merely poor statutory draftsmanship.

The real reason this is treated as a joke, the idea of double gloving it, is that it has never been done before. But that is only true until someone tries it. The rules made no account for switch pitchers until this became a practical question. The practical obstacle is that American kids learn from an early age to catch a ball one-handed with their non-dominant hand. This is peculiar to baseball regions. The natural technique is to use both hands whenever possible. Free suggestion for any murder mystery writers.

Free suggestion for any murder mystery writers, the detective figures out that the suspect is in fact an American despite his excellent British accent by casually tossing a cricket ball to him, which he catches one-handed. For a baseball player to learn to wear and use a glove on their throwing hand would require mental rewiring. It might be worth it or the distraction might outweigh the marginal advantage gained. But who knows until someone tries it. This is a good point. And maybe so. Maybe like Joey Votto could just go out there with two gloves someday just doing the double fisting gloves. Maybe that would work. Why not? Give it a shot. I want to see someone test the boundaries here. At the very least, we will have a new entry for our stanky draft, right? Because then there will have to be like the Joey Votto rule is that you can't wear two gloves at the same time. So let's do it. Let's push the boundaries. Doesn't the fact that you're not allowed to catch the ball with your hat suggest?

It does suggest, yeah. That the idea here is that you are limited to one glove and that it must be used conventionally. Yeah, you're right. It probably goes against the spirit of the rules, but if not, the letter of the law. Yeah, I mean, I would look forward to someone trying it and then seeing the umpires react to it. I mean, that would be, who's a good candidate for this? it i mean that that would be who's a good candidate for this because you know it might it might elicit um accusations of of being unserious and we don't want to we don't want to burden anyone with that um so it it probably needs to be like a known a known jokester so that people are like oh so and

so you're always doing jokester things zafufato. This would be great content for TikTok, right? Yeah, I guess. Got to do it for the content. All right. So here's the pass blast. This is episode 1869. Richard writes, lots of possibilities for 1869. Deaking the runner, an intentionally dropped third strike double play, the first known

intentional walk. I would have had to go with the intentional walk had the next guy placed a line drive in the corner, but sadly he hit a pop-up. So instead, I'm going with female admirers acting scandalously. This is during the triumphant tour of the Cincinnati Red Stockings when they wowed the baseball fraternity by sweeping the best clubs in the country. Here's the New York Herald of June 22, 1869, recounting the Red Stockings' visit to Philadelphia. How far they had succeeded in winning the special admiration of some of Philadelphia's fair daughters may be determined from a slight

circumstance. During Sunday night, the rain had fallen pretty freely, and thus an excuse was afforded several of the Philadelphia darlings for raising their skirts just to keep them from trailing on the wet sidewalk in front of the hotel at which the Cincinnati folks were staying, and to show just enough of pretty ankles enclosed in red stockings, which, despite the intense heat of the day, the proprietors of the aforesaid Pretty Ankles had procured and donned to assure the visitors that they had influential, quote-unquote, friends at court. Whoever can secure the favor of the ladies has certainly influential friends at court,

and the fine-looking young men composing the Cincinnati Nine had gained, beyond a doubt, the favor of the ladies. Scandalous. Just scandalous behavior. So they had just lifted ever so slightly in the front. They weren't like doing a woo. No, I don't think it was like a, you know, can-can sort of situation. I think it was just that the sidewalk was wet.

Yeah. I think it was just that the sidewalk was wet, which I guess gave them an excuse to lift the dress a little, just show a hint of ankle here. And those ankles happened to be wearing red stockings in honor of the occasion and the visitors. So perhaps they would have shown off the red stockings regardless of the wet sidewalk, but I guess that gave them an excuse. Man, it just goes to show why we shouldn't bring bell bottoms back. Get everything wet down there. All right, that will do it. Thanks as always for listening

and thanks to those of you who have supported us on Patreon. You can be one of those people too, but today we will be thanking five of them. They went to the Patreon site and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep the podcast coming, help us stay ad-free,

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