Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1874: We Are Made of All-Star Stuff

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s hazardous last week, then discuss the ongoing mellowing of attitudes and discussions surrounding the All-Star game, embracing the game’s potential for sentimentality, how it would feel to be a team’s lone All-Star representative, the results of a new poll about robo umps, an NPB record and whether/when […]

Everyone's been on holiday and so They just got back from one All they do is just have fun They all got more friends than they can use Except me cause I'm a fool I'm simple as a bee Has a melody and sea but it don't matter, there are more wishes than stars. Hello and welcome to episode 1874 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, last week I endured not only the unfortunate Brussels sprouts experience we talked about last time, but also a tick attached to my arm and a COVID close contact. Not as close a contact as the tick, but I did hug a cousin who tested positive soon after. However, I am doing fine on all fronts, and I am hoping for a healthy and less hazardous week. I just worry about you, Ben. Yeah.

We were going to, I will say, I will say, an improvement, in my opinion, upon the Brussels sprout. And they are Brussels sprouts. Yeah, it's tricky to say. And that's dumb's dumb you know like we made a mistake there this is yeah i know that it's named after a place and that place does have an s at the end right maybe we could just drop the s at this point for the vegetable or or we need to make it like attorneys general because really the issue is the second S, right?

I ate too many Brussels sprout. Right. Exactly. Because where you get jammed up is saying Brussels sprouts. Like what? That's not a thing. I mean, it is a thing, but it shouldn't be. I think we have some notes.

But unlike the great Brussels sprouts debacle, the 5 a.m. sprouts, maybe that gets us around the issue, right? Yeah. Are there other sprouts that I guess are like bean sprouts or all kinds of sprouts? Anyhow, anyhow, Ben, unlike the great 5 a.m. Brussels sprout catastrophe, yesterday when we were supposed to record, you were like, hey, I got a tick thing I got to sort out. And I was like, okay, cool. She's got a little tick situation. And so I feel like

in addition to being pleased that your well-being is secure in a way that was in doubt for a moment, I'm also pleased that you decided, I need to attend to myself, and so I shall do that in place of pot. You know, we just are trying to encourage a healthy work-life balance.

Yeah, really it was my wife who encouraged me to do that. It's so often someone else, isn't it? Yes. It's not my first tick. I've been through the tick rodeo before, and I've emerged unscathed. I wonder if that's an actual thing. Probably not. Maybe a cricket rodeo, something like that.

Anyway, the point is I'm fine. I'm healthy. I'm happy. I'm podcasting about baseball. Tick circus? Oh, no. They were fleas in the circus in Jurassic Park, weren't they? Yeah.

I'm not sure if ticks are really in the trained pet category, more in the staying away from them. I mean, I don't think fleas are either, to be clear. It was famously an illusion, Ben. That was the whole thing. Always nice when we can turn parasites of various types to our side, just make them entertain us instead of sucking our blood or eating our dead skin cells. That can be useful too. Anyway, I've had probably more ticks in my life than the average city boy. I guess I have

spent some time outside the city. It's one hazard that I don't typically encounter when I'm sitting in my apartment, but I have returned home. No ticks here, to my knowledge. No Brussels sprouts in the apartment currently, at least. No COVID as far as I'm aware. So safe to proceed. So, baseball, I wanted to ask you how you think you would feel just because it's All-Star season, right? I guess we missed All-Star snubs season, which lasts for about five minutes now before all the snubs end up on the roster regardless. But I was wondering how you think you would feel if you were one of the All-Stars who was added to satisfy the requirement that each team have an all-star. And you know that that's why you're there, right? So if you're Paul Blackburn, let's say, of the Oakland A's or Joe Mantaply of the Diamondbacks, maybe, and I don't mean to disparage their seasons, but if I were Paul Blackburn or Joe Mantaply and I showed up,

rolled up at the clubhouse for the all-star game and the best and brightest of baseball are there and I am also there, hey, they're having solid seasons too. I'm just saying they are probably among those whom you might look at and say, if not for this requirement. And to be clear, I'm fine with the requirement. But how would you feel if you were one of those players would you feel some imposter syndrome would you feel that the achievement was at all lessened or would you just feel like hey i'm an all-star look ma i did it i made it this is my childhood dream and here i am i mean i, I think that in general, I'm of two minds about the All-Star game

just as an exercise generally. I want someone to care about it. It matters to these guys. And I like that fans care about seeing their favorite players represented there. And I guess I want it to generally kind of hang together logically. You wouldn't want the All-Star team to be made up of the worst guys in baseball i mean like that

would be funny in its own way i guess but you want it to kind of mostly hang together but i think that we're well served to acknowledge that there are any number of ways to skin that particular cat that's a terrible expression um but you know we're we're prioritizing a multitude of things when assembling the all-star roster and some of those hue more closely to a leaderboard sort than others but that's okay like i think it's fine that there are a number of things that are sort of at play right one of which is a desire to make everyone, meaning every fan, feel like they get to participate

in the Midsummer Classic, right? Some of what we are prioritizing is sentimentality. I think the fact that there are now, the commissioner's office has the ability to say, look, Albert Pujols doesn't really necessarily deserve to be an all-star, but this is his last year, so he should be an all-star, right? I think that that was a good decision. It indicated a firm understanding of at least one of the things that we are meant to do here. selection process because for better or worse like the the number of those that you rack up can matter for other subjective determinations of value later namely the hall of fame right so

we we need there to be like some kind of something there that means that you're on average picking guys who have been have been good but i think it's fine and if i were one of those guys i i would say like yeah like i'm i'm here to make my fans feel good i think we generally they generally do an okay enough job of selecting guys who amongst the options on those teams are like decent you know so i think it's fine and i think that if you're if you're paul blackburn you get to say hey mom i'm an all-star and you know what here's the thing about it regardless of what we think of the all-star game you know what paul blackburn's mom is going to say to him when she finds out he's an all-star you've always been an all-star to me honey right like

moms are just going to be proud because that's what that's part of what moms do that's part of their set of priorities right those are those are the things that they are prioritizing in their interactions with their children so i think it's i think it's fine i get why people get worked up because that's part of your responsibility as a fan and like objectively yeah like i i think i think ty fran should probably be an all-star just to like cite the one that is ravaging my Twitter timeline. But I think, first of all, he probably will end up being one because there are always substitutions, right? And also, it's fine.

I think it's fine. Again, I'm glad someone cares a lot about it because the only reason to do the thing is if at least several someones care a lot about it. I am no longer one of those people. I used to be one of those people. I remember times when I would be like, I cannot believe I must fight this fight on behalf of Kyle Steger. And it's like, no, you don't.

Like, I don't. But I did then. So it's fine. Yeah. No, I think we're collectively in a much healthier place when it comes to the All-Star Game. And I guess that has come with everyone accepting now that it is meaningless or at least not meaningless, but an exhibition. It doesn't have meaning when it comes to actually determining something about playoff home field advantage or whatever. Right. them play each other often and there's interleague play constantly and there's barely any difference between the leagues at this point. And so there's really no intrigue surrounding the game itself.

Now it's just, hey, it's kind of fun to see these good players on a field and laid back and maybe mic'd up. It's just kind of a nice little low stakes evening of baseball. And it seems like the Home Run Derby has actually surpassed the All-Star Game itself in terms of how excited people are about it. And it's good. I think maybe it was better back when it really meant something and everyone cared and the players played the entire games and there was rivalries and everything. Not so much the attempt to try to make it significant by saying that it would determine something of consequence. But back when just organically, naturally, it was a more exciting event because of the scarcity

of the opportunities to see those players play each other and the fact that there were real league differences. And so there was something, a bit of bragging rights at least at stake. So we've lost all that and maybe that's sort of sad in a way. But we have also let go of the impulse to pretend that it is more significant than it is and that we need to get angry about it and that we need to bemoan the selections and be up in arms. And now I think we're all just more philosophical and laid back about it. And partly that's the fact that yes, everyone who is remotely deserving typically gets a chance to be on the team if they want to, what with all the substitutions. And partly it's just that everyone plays so sparingly in the game at this point too.

So now, you know, you get removed from the game after an inning or two if you're a pitcher, or maybe you get a bat or two if you're a hitter. And that sort of stinks because there are still some sports whose all-star games are better about that, I think, about actually putting those players on display for the entire game. On the other hand, I guess it's nice for people to be able to participate and say that not only were they there, but they got into the game. So yeah, now we've moved into this headspace where we're all like,

what would be most fun, you know? What would be most sentimentally satisfying? What would be the best way to promote the sport? If we want Albert Pujols in the Home Run Derby, by all means. I think that's great. And Albert Pujols can still crank one. I mean, he still has power. He may not be able to catch up to everything,

but serve him up a batting practice fastballball and he can still hit some a long way. Especially if it comes from a lefty. Yeah. To be able to see, say, Pujols and Juan Soto in the same home run derby, that's awesome, right? Multiple generations of all-time great sluggers. So I love that. And even the conversation about, well, should Sandy Alcantara start the game because he is maybe the most deserving, or should Tony Gonsolin start it because he's a Dodger and the game's in LA, or even the movement to have Clayton Kershaw. It should just be Kershaw, in my opinion. Right. I mean, some people have advocated for Kershaw starting, even maybe Otani starting too, as he did last year. I think it should be that.

The two L.A. area teams. Right. I mean, I'm fine with that if that happens. Obviously, this is not Pete Kershaw. He is still quite effective. He does not, quote unquote, deserve to be the all-star starter based on his performance this season, which has been quite good. But he missed time, as he often does. So that's fine, though.

Who would it make most happy? We're approaching it from a much more utilitarian perspective now, I think. Just what would produce the best photo ops here and the best memories? And this is not necessarily a new thing. I remember Cal Ripken, Jr. in the All-Star Game in 2001 when he was 40 and hitting like Albert Pujols, right? So it's not a new innovation now that the commissioner can appoint people to the All-Star game like Pujols and Cabrera this year. I think that's cool, but it's not new to have the player in their last lap get to take the bow in the All-Star game.

And sometimes that's a fan selection. And maybe now you need that because perhaps the voting has improved. I don't know. Maybe, you know, you're not going to get Albert Pujols as an all-star starter at this point just for sentimental reasons. And so maybe it is helpful to have that ability to just put him on the team anyway. But I think we all accept that that's the way to approach an all-star team in an all-star game now. all-star game now. Whereas, yeah, when I was young, it was all about who made it, who didn't make it, who should have made it. I was pretty militant about having to have had a good season, a good first half to make the all-star team. There's always the divide, whether you want the biggest stars, even if they're off to slow starts, or you want the three-month wonders, even if they're not quote-unquote stars so much. And I've kind of come around to the latter view with age and with the lack of stakes in the game and everything. So I am looking forward to

it in a low stakes, low level way. And I'm happy that we've all reached this point. Yeah. I mean, like it's, I think that we're kind of mellowing in a way that is useful. Oh, I got fresh news across the transom as we're recording, Ben. You ready for it? What's that? JD Martinez has been named to the All-Star team to replace Jordan Alvarez, which seems to foreclose the possibility of Ty France being an All-Star. Maybe?

Sorry. Oof. I don't know, guys. Do they not see the video? I don't know about that. We retract not see the video? I don't know about that. All right. We retract everything we just said. We're extremely upset.

Yeah. So I think that generally it works out. Now, I appreciate that there are going to be individual players for whom that approach leads to a feeling of sort of having been denied their shot, right? a feeling of sort of having been denied like their shot, right? Because if you are someone who thinks that a blazing hot first half performance, right? You just put up the best 12 weeks of your life or whatever should secure you a spot in the All-Star game, which I'm not opposed to as like one of the things that we think about this exercise, you know, you're not guaranteed that blazing hot first half again.

And so you might sit there and say, I'm Ty France. Am I going to get another shot? I don't know. I don't say that to knock Ty France. I think Ty France is a good hitter. He's a good player. But maybe this is Ty France's chance, and maybe he's not going to get it. And that sucks for him because it does matter to these guys.

It certainly matters to these guys. So I'm sensitive to there's no perfect perfect system and there wasn't a perfect system before and there were still guys who were good and didn't make it and were disappointed so it's not like that is changing maybe the exact population is shifting a little bit in terms of who those guys are but i i think that like we have to acknowledge it's an imperfect process you can only have so many dudes because otherwise kind of all-star game is it if everybody's an all-star that's not right it's not a thing but i think we're kind of focusing in on stuff that has like that grabs you and like i i don't mean this as a knock on tony gonsolin and i really don't mean it as a knock and sandy alcantara but like clinton kershaw should get to start a all-star game at dodger

stadium i think right and it also just doesn't matter as much just because of the usage of the players. Like if who was starting the game, either on the mound or in the lineup, actually dictated who was going to be playing for the long haul. Exactly. It's not like you're not going to see those other guys. Right. Like the All-Star starting pitcher is going to pitch an inning or two regardless. So if it's the first inning or if it's the third inning or the seventh

inning, who cares really? And if they're out there to begin the game, then they get to maybe get a bigger ovation and it's just more of a spectacle and a showcase. And that's nice. And I guess there is some additional cachet to becoming an all-star starter and representing your league in that way. So I see why it would be depriving someone of something. And obviously there have been contract incentives at stake with making the all-star team. And there's still something to be said for when a player retires. We might still say he was a two-time all-star, right? Like it might not dictate your Hall of Fame chances the way that it once did now that we have so many ways to evaluate players candidacy. way that it once did now that we have so many ways to evaluate players candidacy but it still does have some effect on how you're remembered and how you're viewed and just thinking back to

like when i was a kid and if you were an all-star like you had the baseball card that said you were an all-star and when i was little and i didn't really know anything and i was just like sorting my baseball cards like i would put the all-stars in their own sheet right because i figured like oh these guys are good and maybe they were one-time all-stars and they just had a hot few cards, like I would put the All-Stars in their own sheet, right? Because I figured like, oh, these guys are good. And maybe they were one-time All-Stars and they just had a hot few months. I didn't know any better, but I thought, wow, All-Star. So I think a lot of people grew up with that idea. And so it does mean something to them. And so to circle back to where I started with how I would feel if I were a Paul Blackburn or a Joe Mantaply. I guess it depends because if you're Paul Blackburn, you do have a legitimate case as just the best player on your team.

Now, the A's have traded every other good player that they have. But, you know, he's leading the A's in baseball reference war, let's say. So he can at least be confident in that. Whereas Joe Mantaply, maybe not the best Diamondback, maybe not the most valuable Diamondback, just it's easier to add relievers to the team sometimes as a team's lone representative. But first of all, you're the only player on the field wearing that uniform representing that team and that city. That's kind of cool. You probably feel some pride. You don't want to let the home fans down, even if you're representing the team with the worst record in baseball.

But beyond that, if I were those guys, like Joe Mantopoli is 31 years old, right? He has not had a distinguished career. He really just started establishing himself last year. And Paul Blackburn, he's, I think, 28. And just don't look at his ERAs the past like several seasons yeah they were mostly in limited time but he did not make the most of that time like from 2018 to 2021 only 79 in the third innings but he had a 7.6 era 3 and 10 so like if you're paul blackburn you're probably thinking i'm an all-star like okay he's probably conscious of the fact that I'm an all-star. Like, okay, he's probably conscious of the fact that he's an all-star because the A's traded everyone who wasn't nailed down and because

they had to have an all-star. But still, like, I doubt he's under any illusions that he is suddenly the best player in baseball. But to have gone from where he was entering this season to where he is now, which is he's had a very solid first half and he is arguably the best player on his team. Like I'm sure he is pinching himself and he should be, and he can be proud of that. It's quite a career turnaround. So I could see how like, if you were legitimately one of the very best players in baseball and you were like an all-star starter for a while and you had that status, and then your career kind of went downhill to the point where you are only on the team as a non-starter because your team had to have someone then maybe it would

seem like a step down in the world it might feel like a slight but for someone like that who is coming up then it's probably great and it's like hey I get to call myself an all-star and probably have some humility about it, too, I would imagine. But I get to hobnob with the best players in baseball and feel like I belong for the most part. So I'm guessing that's kind of cool. Yeah, I think that that has to feel very special. I mean, there's just the reality of it is like you're always going to have more room for relievers. And so like, you know, you got to pick someone for the D-back. So I guess that's who you're always gonna have more room for relievers right yeah and so like you know you gotta pick someone for the d-back so i guess that's who you're getting but yeah i think that

it's uh i think that it's generally one of those things that you're gonna feel good about because no one has a firmer grasp on how hard being a big leaguer is than big leaguers, right? And so I think that they just have an appropriate appreciation for their own skill and how difficult, even when you're someone who we would describe as kind of lousy and someone who is having a forgettable season on a forgettable team. And I don't say that. That applies to either Joe Mantipoli or Paul Blackburn. They're having good years. But it's just really very hard.

And if you're doing it at a level where you're going to be acknowledged by your peers and by the fans, I think that's going to feel good. And I think it's I think it should. I think like we shouldn't be in the business of trying to take that away from anybody because like it's really hard. It's like what was who was it who got the like random mvp vote of ryan tapera and it was a mistake i hate that he knows that that was a mistake like yeah you gotta i think we talked about this at the time like you gotta eat that one like let that guy think that you think he's an mvp just let him think it what you know like let him think that yeah all right so speaking of what people think I saw a poll this morning that is relevant to our interests. This was from Morning Consult. And the headline is baseball fans are open to the idea of robot umpires.

So this is probably a shocker. Of course they are. Is this surprising? No, not at all. There were a couple of things that semi surprised me here because they asked the question in a couple of different ways and what way of implementing robot umps would you like. Just generally, people are somewhat in favor, strongly support 16%. Now, this is MLB fans, self-identified. 16% strongly support the implementation of an automated ball and strike system in 2024. 32% somewhat support it. And then 19% don't know, have no opinion.

17% somewhat oppose and 15% strongly oppose. So it's not a landslide here. It's 48% of self-identified MLB fans want a robot ump system in 2024, and I guess just 32% don't want it. And then the rest just don't know, don't care. But they did ask it a couple different ways, and there is a slight victory for you here when it comes to the challenge system. Oh, good. So an automated ball and strike system that calls every pitch and relays the balls and strikes to a human home plate umpire through an earpiece. That is 17% strongly support, 33% somewhat support. And the other option was a replay review system of balls

and strikes with each team manager getting several challenges a game that was 18 versus 17 percent strongly support and 37 versus 33 percent strongly support and don't know no opinion was the same for both so it's just about five percent more approved of the challenge system than the regular automated balls and strike system. So I qualified a slight victory there for your side. Basically, people want one or the other. They don't seem to care that much which, but if you had to pick one, it seems like most people side with the challenge system. So what you're saying is that I should be campaigning. Yeah. Or who knows? Maybe you have changed enough minds that you have actually swung the results here. It could be that. I feel like it's unlikely that I am that powerful, but I like

the idea that we have that kind of reach, you know? Yes. Although- We're influencers. We're thought leaders. Yeah, we are. Although, you know, we're kind of not because they still have the odds up on friday night baseball so our scope is limited to some degree and i guess if we were persuading people of robot umps yay or nay we probably would have been more on the nay side historically so yeah the fact that a plurality wants this perhaps is a data point in favor of the idea that we're not actually convincing people to change their minds about this. But that just goes to show that maybe the challenge system would be a slightly easier sell. They might both be fairly easy sells by the time MLP actually gets around to implementing this. But the challenge system has even more supporters.

So that's nice to know. Yeah. The other thing that sort of surprised me here. So they also asked people whether umpires almost always get calls right or they asked how often they think MLB officials make the right call. And they asked all adults. They asked self-identified MLB fans, and they asked self-identified sports fans, generalists, which I guess could include MLB fans. So do you think that all adults would have a higher opinion or a lower opinion of the accuracy of umpires than self-identified MLP fans? Oh, let's see.

I would think, I would be inclined to think that they have a, gosh, that's hard. A lower opinion? A lower opinion. I'm going with lower. That is true. Wow. I think I might have actually gone the other way if I had had to guess because I was sort of surprised. And maybe it's just that umpires already have a bad reputation with the general public.

Like if you're even aware of the existence of umpires in baseball, then you probably know that people yell at them and get mad at them and think that they mess up all the time. get mad at them and think that they mess up all the time. But it's almost heartening, I guess, just given how often baseball fans complain about umpires, they actually do seemingly have a much higher opinion of umpires than non-baseball fans. So all adults, 29% of them said that they think umpires almost always make the right calls. 25% said they sometimes make the right calls. And then only 14% said rarely or almost never. MLB fans, though, 44% versus 29% said that umpires almost always make the right calls. 37% versus 25% said that umpires sometimes make the right calls. And then only 10% said rarely or almost never. So that's kind of nice, I guess, that the more you watch baseball and pay attention to baseball, probably the more you complain about umpires, and yet also the higher opinion you have of them,

almost paradoxically, counterintuitively. Like you think that they are good maybe, but you know how hard the job is. People know that it's impossible to call balls and strikes correctly, I think. That doesn't stop people from getting frustrated at umpires and sometimes thinking that they're bad at their jobs. But also sometimes knowing a lot about baseball means that you actually forgive umpires for their mistakes because you understand that it's impossible to be perfect at that job. Whereas if you were not a baseball fan, you might think, well, that's their whole job. How could they ever not be good at it? That would be an embarrassment.

They should be dismissed if they're ever wrong. Whereas if you're a baseball knower, then you know that it's impossible to be perfect at that. And you might still want to replace umpires with something better, but you might be more forgiving of their foibles and flaws. Yeah, I think that it is generally positive that people with the most exposures take away. It's like, yeah, this applies more to the self-identified sports fan, assuming that that category is mutually exclusive of baseball fans, which I guess we don't know if it is. That category was kind of in the middle. So they were 37% almost always accurate, 32% sometimes versus 44 and 37 for the fans. sometimes versus 44 and 37 for the fans. But imagine like you're a human person who doesn't follow baseball

and you're on a business trip and you're at an airport bar and SportsCenter is on and an umpire story is happening. The content of that is almost always going to be, look at this call they got wrong. Look at this angry manager. Look at this player who got ejected

throwing his helmet at the guy and swearing at him right like that is going to be the narrative that you have around umpires because as a business traveler who frequents airport bars that have sports center on like that's your exposure whereas if you're like a baseball fan, you do remember the really bad calls and you have some tolerance for the idea of either a robo zone or review of some kind. Right. But like you, even if you even the most rabid of fan is probably able to internalize that most of the calls are fine, you know. fine you know so i think that that's good i mean i think it's bad that people have an impression of the sports officiating crews is bad at their jobs like that probably doesn't you know like the pac 12 or 10 or whatever it is now isn't happy that like pac 12 after dark is a thing like where the where the pac 12 officials in football are just like notoriously terrible and they are like that is a that's that's a true fact about the formerly of League Back 12. And I'm sure that they aren't like stoked that that is people's impression. So it's not to baseball's benefit that people think that the officials are like not great. But it is good that the people who actually care about the sport such that they might like spend time or money on it are like, yeah, these guys are pretty okay. So a few other things. I was struck by something I read in Jim Allen's newsletter about NPB, which is that the all-time strikeout record for a hitter was recently set.

So the record was Kazuhiro Kiyohara's 1955 career strikeouts, and that was snapped by 38-year-old, almost 39-year-old Takeya Nakamura of the Cebu Lions, who is a great slugger as Kiyohara was before him. And he is not playing well this season. You should look him up if listeners don't know him. He's had an interesting career. He has an unusual build. His nickname is Second Helpings. So you can probably extrapolate from that how he is built perhaps. But he got his 1956th career strikeout.

And it's interesting to me that we are not seeing a similar record chase in MLB when it comes to the all-time batter strikeout record. Maybe we've brought this up before, but the fact that Reggie Jackson is still sitting pretty at the top of that leaderboard and doesn't seem to be in danger of losing his perch is kind of incredible given how much the strikeout rate has increased since Reggie Jackson's career. So like all of these players are good. These are all great sluggers, as is Kiyohara, as is Nakamura, as is Reggie Jackson. As we've discussed, if you're really good, sometimes you end up at the top of great leaderboards and sometimes you end up at the top of not as great leaderboards just because of your longevity. So the top of the all-time batter strikeout leaderboard in MLB is Reggie Jackson, Jim Tomei, Adam Dunn, Sammy Sosa.

Like these are good players for the most part. But it is kind of surprising that we don't have anyone closer than Miguel Cabrera, who is at number six right now. He's at 2004 strikeouts, so he is still almost 600 behind Reggie Jackson. Yeah. So he's not going to get there. Justin Upton is at eighth. He's at 1968, and he's young enough that I guess he could have had a shot if he had aged differently or better perhaps but he seems to be on the tail end there and then you have like Albert Pujols you

know he just uh displaced Stan Musial for the third most ever extra base hits yeah he is nowhere close to the top of this leaderboard I'm like scrolling down and down and down because one of the interesting things about Pujols is that he has never struck out a lot, still doesn't really. So Pujols is actually tied in 117th place with Freddie Freeman and Troy Gloss. So he is down at 1,377 strikeouts.

So no one seemingly is within striking distance. You have Giancarlo Stanton at 44th. You have Nelson Cruz at 21st. Like, it doesn't seem like anyone is going to overtake Jackson anytime soon. And some of the other guys who you might have thought of in recent years, like Chris Davis, Ryan Howard, they're in the top 20. Derek Jeter is there. That's kind of interesting. Bobby Abreu.

Yeah. Jose Canseco. Mark Reynolds is at 11th. Like, if you look at the single season strikeout leaderboard for batters, then it's festooned with players from the past decade or two. It's Mark Reynolds. It's Adam Dunn. It's Davis. It's Yohan Mankata.

It's Joey Gallo, Chris Carter, Stanton, Judge, et cetera. It's all players from this era. But Reggie Jackson, still standing alone there, and no one really challenging him, which you would think is odd, because you would think, well, maybe players are having better conditioning, maybe they're having more longevity. And then there's just so many more strikeouts in the game now that you would think someone would be making a run at this thing if not having already shouldered reggie aside yeah it is it is kind of remarkable i mean the guys who have been around long enough to sort of be within range from a longevity perspective right the pool says you're right that there is like for him specifically,

he was not much of a strikeout guy. And then you can imagine a shift in the like profile that would be tolerated over time, right? So like the guys who are posting big strikeout rates, but are still productive and whose production we are perhaps able to better appreciate because of advanced stats like maybe those guys are just far enough away that's a weird way of describing that

they're they're sort of early enough in their careers that they aren't threatening yet right does that make sense but it is surprising that it would be so secure right that it would be so secure, right? That it would feel so like- Yeah, because the strikeout rates doubled relative to when Reggie was playing. So it's odd. I mean, it's not easy to be an extreme strikeout machine and still play for a really long time. So he was an outlier in that respect. But even so, you would think

that it would have overcome it. With pitchers, for instance, you might be surprised that, say, no one has struck out 21 in a game yet. But, of course, you have pitchers not going as deep into games. So there's a change in pitcher usage there that counterbalances the increase in strikeout rate. Whereas with hitters, you don't get that as much. I mean, maybe there are a few more rest days here and there and teams being more conscious of that but there's also i guess not more games relative to when reggie was playing necessarily but to earlier eras so so that's something too so

it's odd i mean i guess maybe trout could potentially get there yeah if he stays good for a really long time he's like in 150th place and he just is like a hair more than halfway to reggie at this point so it's possible if he were to play for 10 more years and maybe strike out more as time went on but you wouldn't say that any individual player like I think the odds are pretty decent that someone who's active right now would take over that top spot, but it's hard to point to a presumptive person who will definitely do that. Yeah. It's, it's a strange, it's a strange thing. I just like, how are, I know we've talked a lot about this sort of era of baseball that we're in where it's like this sort of chaseless stretch that we seem to be in did you know how long robbie

grossman's errorless streak was uh was working no yeah it was like he had an error and that's the only reason i knew about it it was like a lot of games played without an error. And anyway, I was just thinking about like how odd it is that we don't have more of those. We've talked a lot about it. So I remain on the hunt. I remain on the hunt for a chase, right? You know, you want to swear and judge needs to keep on keeping. I want to have the fever. You know, we need something to talk about in September. after his age 34 season. So he was the one you might have banked down, but I guess he had old player skills as a young player and not enough skills as an old player. So it's tough. I think it will be broken at some point, unlike a lot of baseball records that it's hard to imagine how they could be broken without some radical change in the game. But I think this one will get broken it's just it's surprising that it hasn't happened already yeah it's just surprising maybe gallo i don't know if gallo will have the i mean he's yeah this is the thing like you know some of those guys seemed like they had they had either curtailed the strikeout tendency enough to prolong their careers

or the other stuff they were doing was so superlative and had sort of stabilized such that we were going to see them play for a really long time. But Gallo hasn't been good for like a year now. Right, I know. Yeah, he actually has fewer than 1,000 career strikeouts. I know. How is that true? It seems like he's had 1,000 this season. I don't believe you.

977 strikeouts. With Gallo, you're always surprised that he has so few of things unless they're home runs. It's like, what? He only has that many sack flies or he has only that many singles. Yeah, the sack fly thing for me is very strange. Yeah, he's just so extreme. But you'd think that he would have even more. But I guess he hasn't played that much. He's had fewer than 3000 career plate appearances. So yeah, Trout's a better bet to do right but it is surprising that it is it's still surprisingly tricky needle to thread you know who are you let's say so like since 2012 yeah it's like

chris davis doesn't play baseball anymore yeah paul goldschmidt 1428 upton cru Cruz had a bunch, right? But like Upton's pretty close to done. Cruz is probably pretty close to done. Stanton, like, okay. Harper, Trout, Martinez. I didn't do those quite in order. But you know, like it is a, man, Chris Davis had a lot of strikeouts. Yes, he did.

Chris Davis strikeout. Ben, did you know how much Chris Davis strikeout? Like I knew it in an intellectual way, but not in a specific way. specific way, if that makes sense. They have struck out a tad too much. Yeah, it might have been too much. It might have just been too much. And of course, that's just looking at the raw strikeout total and not your rate.

Keyon Proxton. Now I'm just being mean to Jeff. Yeah, because there were strikeout rate outliers. Even when the strikeout rate was low league-wide. There were guys who still struck out a lot. Like even today you might look at them and think, well, they're not contact guys. I mean Reggie's career strikeout rate was what, like 23% or something. That's basically league average now.

So really that doesn't stand out at all. He did have some seasons that were higher than that, especially later in his career. But yeah, it's tough to be good and K a ton for a really long time even now. And yeah, maybe it's the fact that contact skills correlate in some way with aging gracefully so that it is tough to whiff a ton when you're young and be able to rack up those strikeout totals and then still age well so that you can keep catching up to balls and still make enough contact to survive when you're older. So maybe you have a tendency to flame out earlier, younger. Anyway, trout, me do it. So that's someone to watch for. I had a few other observations. I guess

one thing that stood out to me, we have our 10th anniversary week coming up next week. Another reminder here to get your little audio tributes in if you're so inclined. If you want one played on an episode, just send in a 30-second or less voice clip, introduce yourself, say something about what the podcast has meant to you or how you have interacted with it. But I have been listening to some old episodes in preparation for something that will be running next week. And in a very early episode, one of the first 10, which would have been in the summer of 2012, Sam was saying something about how Mike Trout had established himself as clearly better than

Matt Moore at that point, which sounds laughable in retrospect. Sam was saying like, okay, Trout is definitely better than Matt Moore. Now the only conversation is Trout versus Harper. And then I said, well, we might be having that conversation for a while. And as it happens, we're not even having that conversation so much, although they're both excellent. Three months into the season, I think everybody says, I guess we're four months into the season now, everybody would say that Trout and probably Harper are ahead of Moore. So it does not take long for us to get more certain about these guys. And I think everybody now is more certain that Mike Trout is a better bet than Matt Moore

going forward. And probably the only argument left is Trout or Harper, which I think is still an open bet. But Matt Moore was, I guess, notoriously somewhat famously ranked by some reputable outlets as a better prospect than Mike Trout. Pre-2012, he was the number two prospect, according to Baseball America. Trout was number three. Harper was number one, right? So Baseball America had more ahead of Trout heading into 2012, as did baseball prospectus, I believe. And that was, of course, the season when Trout, as soon as he came up again, established himself as the best player in baseball. And I don't think that that would happen again today, not just with these specific

players, obviously, but if the situation were the same with some prospects coming out now, I don't think people would probably rank more ahead of a position player just because he's a picture yeah right people have an understanding of the injury rates and also just of the the changing role of starters we keep putting our hands on that burner yes it does happen you know we get excited about guys and we're like, let's touch the hot stove. Right. You know. You do have fewer pitchers just on the top of prospect lists generally. I've looked at that and written about that in the past. So I don't think that would happen necessarily. But I am happy to see that Matt Moore is having quite a little year for himself.

He is still around. He is 33 years old. And he's become the Rangers' latest old pitcher reclamation project here. And now pitching exclusively out of the bullpen, I guess for the first time in his major league career, because he came up as a starter and then was a swingman and back and forth. Now he's pitching exclusively as a reliever, and he has a sub-2 ERA and a sub-3 FIP in almost 40 innings for Texas and still walks too many guys. But getting grounders, getting strikeouts, probably gotten a little lucky, but he's still throwing pretty hard. He's throwing not that much softer than he was when he came up, and his velocity has bounced back a bit in this relief roll.

And that's kind of nice because we still talk all the time about Harper, even though he's hurt, and we still talk all the time about Trout, and both of those guys will be Hall of Famers. But Matt Moore is not going to be one. However, he is still here, still kicking around, still having a little resurgence here, And that's sort of nice to see. He's made himself into, I guess, a trade ship heading into the deadline. And that's something that I don't know whether I would have said about Matt Moore in the past few seasons where he had six-something ERAs or barely pitched.

And he's just been all over and been through so much injury-wise. So nice to see that he's still kicking around too yeah it is and i would love to talk to the guys like that where it's like you were ranked ahead of someone incredible or you were traded for someone who ended up being incredible and then you stunk about like how that felt but why would they tell me like why would they tell me sometimes you need time and perspective and you call them when they're 93 years old and you're cold calling people on podcasts then they'll talk to you about it probably right but it's probably too soon right like maybe you know it's funny how you can go through periods of re-evaluation on these things that shift depending

on how the guy who is good has been doing like you know there have been times when like the the shelby miller dansby swanson deal looked like really obviously terrible and then there were times where it was like well it was bad but it wasn't as bad because like dansby was kind of underperforming and then like he's been incredible this season's you're like oh boy so anyway i just wonder how shelby Miller's doing, I think is my takeaway here. How are you doing, Shelby? Hope you're well. Let us know. Yeah.

So, we do have a trade deadline approaching, and we'll get into that in a week or two probably. But I think I look forward to the trade deadline as much these days to see what the Rockies do or don't do as I do almost anything else. Like, I'm very curious about which contenders will add good players, etc. But I'm always so perplexed by what the Rockies are going to do or say they're going to do or end up doing and whether they are even aware that there is a trade deadline taking place. And this occurred to me because I saw at MLB Trade Rumors a headline that said, Rockies reportedly open to trading Chad Kuhl and Alex Colomay, which fine, of course. Why wouldn't they be?

Chad Kuhl, by the way, just sounds more meme than man. Can't believe that that's an actual person. But Chad Kuhl. But the Rockies are not shopping, closer Daniel Bard. And the MLB Trade Rumors post, and this is sourced from a Bob Nightingale USA Today report, despite Bard's impending free agency, the Rockies will apparently try to extend him in the coming weeks instead of working on a trade. So this fits into, I think, the lineage of the Trevor Story, John Gray sort of, what are they doing? Do they think they're actually going to

extend these guys? Why do they want to extend these guys? CJ Krohn, Michael Givens, like Givens, they ended up trading, but they hung on to everyone else. And sometimes it seems like they are in denial about their odds of extending someone. And sometimes it seems like they don't know what they want to do. And why would you keep Gray and then not extend him and not even extend him a qualifying offer? Like, it's just so perplexing and Rockies-esque. And so that's what I'm wondering about Daniel Bard, who is having exactly the kind of season that you would think, just taking the teams and the players' identities out of it, that you would think that a team teams and the players' identities out of it, that you would think that a team like the Rockies would want to trade, right?

Because he is a 37-year-old closer. And do the Rockies really need a closer? They're not currently a contending team. He was not very good last year. We know all about what he went through during his long extended absence from the majors. And I could see why he might have some fondness for the Rockies because they brought him back and he broke through again with the Rockies and they gave him that chance and let him establish himself and helped him get to that point. So maybe he does want to stay. And I guess that's nice if there's mutual interest there. It's just like 37-year-old closer, not typically really your extension candidate for a non-contending team. That would be like, hey, let's see what we can get for this guy. We appreciate the time and the memories, but we'll let you go sore with some other team where maybe you can pitch in a playoff race or pitch in the postseason.

So the idea that they're holding on to Bard because they want to extend him, it's like not the type of player you build around necessarily. If you want to keep him just because you like the guy and he's a nice story, which he absolutely is, then no harm in that, I guess. But you just really never know what the Rockies are thinking when it comes to the deadline. So I look forward to finding out or never actually knowing, but just wondering and speculating along with everyone else. Yeah, it's like, I realized that sometimes, and I don't say this to knock the reporters who end up reporting this stuff. So like, that's not my intent. But I realize that sometimes the tone or particularities of these conversations can get, if not lost in translation,

there can be a little bit of a literal game of telephone effect. So I don't want to put anything at the feet of the Rockies that they aren't responsible for, because God knows they're responsible for enough. But it is interesting that they seem so disinterested in at least presenting the front of an org that is good at this. Because you're right, it's fine for them to say,

we don't think that the return on this is going to be, the trade return is going to be all that compelling and we like this guy and we like having him around and we still have to finish out the season so you know like we'd rather just rather than get a couple or even just one low level prospect or whatever we're just gonna just go hold on to that guy it's fine like that is a that is something that people might nitpick and they might take issue with but like i think it is an understandable thing to say versus like we want to extend them and it's like no you why like don't tell people you want to do that that's goofy you know so they're a real weird org you know they sure are it's nice to have one weird one at least that we can all kind of scratch

our heads i mean it's not nice for rocky's fans but just the entertainment value you feel bad for people who are directly affected by it but everyone else just gets to play like rocky's tea leaf reading and figure out what they're ever trying to do there so there are teams that i am interested in for other reasons about what they'll do at the deadline but we'll'll probably get to that. It seems like there have been fewer specific rumors than there used to be. I don't know whether I'm remembering that wrong or whether it is because teams are occupied with the draft heading into the deadline. And so they're not thinking or leaking as much. We don't get as much advanced scuttlebutt because they're trying to figure out like 2022s. Scuttlebutt because they're trying to figure out like 2022s. Yeah. Or whether it's CBA related and there's just generally been a crackdown or whether teams are just running tighter ships.

I don't know what it is, but it seems like we tend to get fewer specific rumors these days. But I don't know. That could just be my own perception of the matter. I am kind of curious about what a team like the Orioles will do, because they're your classic seller, you would think, or you would have thought a couple of weeks ago. I mean, they are improved, obviously, but not realistically contending for a playoff spot, although they have non-zero playoff odds there. Playoff odds are on the increase. They've won eight in a row as we speak. That may have changed by the time you hear this, but they've just been a pretty good team since starting 7-14 in April, I think it was. I mean, they have played pretty well. Even going back to the Rangers and the Angels, it's something, but it's not that much. But doing what they've done over a period of a couple months now, it's pretty impressive.

And I just wonder whether because of this three wildcard system that we have now, you have a situation where you could theoretically be in contention. you could theoretically be in contention. Like the Orioles now, there are a few surprising things when I look at the standings and juxtapose one team with another. But the Orioles, who are 43 and 44 as we speak, they are two games out of a playoff spot. They're two games behind the Blue Jays. And the Blue Jays being 45 and 42 is, in a sense, almost as surprising maybe as the Orioles being 43 and 44. I thought that team would win the division. The Orioles are a game ahead of the White Sox in the wildcard race, right?

That is shocking. That is absolutely wild. Yeah, shocking is the right word. It is shocking. Mariners are tied with the Blue Jays, by the way, in playoff position. But really, the Orioles being where they are is just amazing. I guess there are a number of things that are surprising when you look at the standings, but I don't know that anything is surprising as that.

Like looking at where the Orioles are and then looking at where other teams that are not the Orioles are and seeing that they're right in the same range. And they've done that in the AL East. So looking at strength of schedule, ESPN's strength of schedule at least, they have the second highest strength of schedule. And so for them to be in that powerhouse division with four really good teams and still basically be 500 and ahead of a team in the central. That's amazing. So that's awesome.

Good for them. And yeah, maybe they're playing a bit over their heads. And if you look at some of the individual offensive and defensive stats, let's say, like, they don't seem like they should be where they are necessarily. So, I mean, part of it's the defense, which Mark Simon just wrote about for Sports Info Solutions. The defense is much improved, at least according to DRS, defensive runs saved. He noted that they had, I think, two positions that were not negative last year, and now they have eight. So that's an improvement. If you look at defensive efficiency or outs above average, they look more middle of the pack than top of the leaderboard.

But still, like, it's impressive that they are where they are and they are playing. It looks like, what, a few games ahead of where they, quote unquote, should be based on. But not like a lot. Not a lot. That's the thing. Like, I was looking this up as you were talking. Not a lot. That's the thing.

I was looking this up as you were talking. Their record is a game better than what their Pythag Pat expectation, I think three games better than their base runs record would suggest they should be. But it's not like it's 10. It's not like the Pirates should be five games worse than they are. So should the Mets. Interesting. Anyway, so it's not an absurd number.

I don't think that anyone has the expectation that they are going to be a real threat to the top of their division, but they are at least in a range when it comes to the deadline where you're like, how sentimental is Mike elias like now we have to care about that we have to think about the answer to that question because that's probably going to dictate their behavior over the next couple of weeks not very i'm guessing but it's

still yeah he is uh an ex-astro as we recently. So I am sure that he will take the long view here, and perhaps he should, and perhaps that is the role that a GM should play. But Orioles fans are pretty excited these days. I was talking to my friend and editor Mallory Rubin the other day, and she was telling me how excited her dad is about the Orioles. And at that time, I think the Orioles were still like 10 games under.500. That was before the winning streak. And I was saying, it's sort of sad that they were so bad before that if you're like 10 games under 500, it's like catch Orioles fever all of a sudden. But now they're basically right at 500. And that may change by the time the deadline rolls around in a few weeks. Maybe they'll be a bit farther behind. But because of this system, if

you're anywhere close to respectability, you are within theoretical striking distance. You are going to be close enough that when fans look at the standings, they will see a single-digit deficit there. And so the Orioles have a bunch of guys they could trade.

Now, there are a lot of guys I think they should keep on that team. And maybe even someone like Trey Mancini, just because of what he means to that organization and vice versa, et cetera. Maybe you hold on to him even though he could be a trade candidate otherwise. But you look at their relievers, right? And their bullpen has been effective, but maybe you want to deal some of those guys while their value is high, et cetera. So that would be deflating, I imagine, for Orioles fans who are like, wait, this team is watchable again for the first time in years. We don't have to hang our heads like we are in the AL East. And yet we are somehow kind of a contender at this point.

And then to have the front office that engineered the tanking be like, well, we're close, but we're really not there yet. And they may be right about that, but still to like be closer than you've been in several years and then to have them take away instead of adding. Isn't going to feel great. No, it probably won't feel that great, but it might have to be done. It might have to be done, but also like, okay, so who are your like trade candidates for the orioles well just about anyone in the pulpit i mean you know your jorge lopez's yeah i guess like there are enough guys on there that they seem like they're part of the the core i mean not just the the obvious like adley rutchman and sure cedric Mullins, but like even someone like Anthony Santander and Ryan Mountcastle and, you know, guys like that.

It's like they could be part of the next good Orioles team because the next good Orioles team might actually not be that far away. Right. And they're going to get reinforcements. They have exciting prospects who aren't that far away. going to get reinforcements. They have exciting prospects who aren't that far away. And I see on the just updated Fangraphs pre-draft farm rankings, the Orioles are fourth after the Rays, Pirates, and Guardians. So there is a lot to look forward to there. I mean, just about anyone, you know, like obviously Jordan Lyles, you know, who's like never pitched for a good team for any stretch of time.

So hopefully he actually gets to pitch for a contender for a while. That'd be nice for him. But I guess like part of what I think you consider if you're a fan of a team is like it does. I mean, obviously it matters who they trade. but like some of the names that I think would be the most painful for an Orioles fan to let go of are likely to stay on the team for the exact reason you just said. Like the Overton window sort of shifted on the Orioles in a positive direction. And so some of the guys who are like not super young, but aren't past 30 yet,

like those are guys you probably want to hold on to because like, you know, you're want to hold on to because like you know you you're gonna be fighting for a wild card spot maybe next year in a like i think a more prolonged and sort of earnest way austin hayes's yeah right and so it's like i don't know maybe the the calculus on who they would want to let go of is gonna be a little bit different because now you know not that you would say no to like really good very like young prospects but like the prospects you want back are probably going to be different too right like you are going to prioritize close to the majors guys

in theory or at least i would think you might because now like you want those guys up soon so that you can go you know make some noise so i don't know it's just you're right it's an interesting like what do you how do you understand yourselves i think that like in contrast to our conversation say about colorado like i i imagine that as orgs go baltimore is pretty clear-eyed about what they have and what they need so it will be interesting to see sort of how they try to utilize the one to to sort of solve the problem of the other but i think that it is a more complicated trade picture for them than i would have thought it was going into the year because i think they're they're not good i don't think they're actually like, but they're not bad either.

I mean, I think that they have, we talked about the shift from being terrible to being respectable, and then the further shift you do from being pretty good to a playoff team. And I think that they're definitely past the point of respectability at this point, in a good way. They're moving along. Yeah. It's nice to see. Yeah. They're in a different mile of've you know they're they're moving along yeah it's nice to see yeah they're in a different they're in a different mile of the race now than they were yeah i am kind of

curious i'd like to see a deep dive analysis of the effect that the fence dimensions yeah had on that team you know we talked about it when that happened and it was like well the orioles don't have a great pitching staff and they gave up a ton of dingers. And so they hope maybe that it will favor them more than their opponents. And I know that it has hurt probably like Trey Mancini has lost a bunch of homers to that new fence, deeper fence, higher fence, etc. I would like to see just what the net gain or loss there has been, if we could figure that out. Maybe that analysis has been done. I haven't come across it yet.

But yeah, it's been fun to see them be not good, but better. So I congratulate Orioles fans who have stuck it out and are now just starting to reap the rewards. And don't be deflated and discouraged if they do take a slight step back here in the next month or so, whether win-loss wise or trade deadline wise, because hopefully that will just be a last bump before they take another leap forward. Yeah, I think that we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that this time it will be in service of winning quite soon, as opposed to prior years when you could not say that. Right.

Just a couple other observations before we finish with the past blast. First, don't have to dwell on it, I guess, because what else is there new to say at this point but the phillies anti-vax contingent which is not new for that franchise but relative to other teams this year they are losing more prominent players than most have yeah when they are going to toronto to play the blue jays so they have lost alec bohm who i guess they lost anyway to yet another finger injury. That team has had a rash of those. When it happened, have we gotten a definitive diagnosis on it yet? I haven't seen one. He was sliding, and he came up, and he's like, it's broken.

It's broken. You could see him mouthing, it's broken. And I was like, oh. And then they showed the replay. And anytime you get an injury replay, you're like, is this going to be gross? And then you're like, oh, yeah, that was gross. And yeah, I think you're right that that is is broken so i don't know if we know that for sure but it seemed like it was yep but in addition to him it is also aaron nola it's jt

real muto it's kyle gibson i believe gibson does have some medical condition he is cited that he is on some medication for ulcerative colitis that could be playing a part in his decision to be unvaxxed. But RealMuto came out and made pretty clear what his decision is, which is he said he consulted with doctors he knew and decided that he did not need the vaccine. He said, it's an extremely unfortunate situation. Obviously, my teammates know how I feel about them and how bad I want to be out there with them, but it's unfortunate I'm not able to make the trip. He will lose more than a quarter of a million dollars. And he said, I'm not going to let Canada tell me what I do and don't put in

my body for a little bit of money. It's just not worth it. Look, not a shock that there are people in MLB clubhouses who are thinking this way. I did see that Kyle Schwerber, home run derby participant, he said there's no clubhouse resentment about the players who are not going to Toronto. He said, we have each other's backs. There isn't one hard feeling. Just because we're headed to Toronto doesn't mean someone's being a bad teammate because they didn't get it. Which, like, literally doesn't mean that, though. Yeah.

Doesn't it pretty much mean that? I don't want to deny Kyle Schwarber his emotional reality because he gets to think what he thinks about it. And maybe he doesn't even feel that way. He's just saying that because you have to share a clubhouse with these players one way or another. And it's a long season. And just in the interest of diplomacy i mean he might very well mean that but you might also just say that if you didn't fully mean it yeah all of that could be true but i i am going to respectfully disagree with i guess like the question that i always have when this stuff happens right is and

i have i have this question for al teams and i certainly have it for national league teams like what if the blue jays win the pennant yeah you know what if they make the playoffs right they're barely clinging to that spot right like it doesn't you know and if you're if you're on the phillies first of all you you know, who knows where you'll be in October, just generally. But like, what is your, what is the understanding of how good or bad a teammate you're being gonna mean

if you're unable to play in a playoff game, if you're unable to play in a World Series game? Like, to play in a playoff game if you're unable to play in a world series game like and i struggle clearly to understand this perspective just generally so i guess there's that but you know i really don't quite know how to reconcile the idea that i think that for all of these guys, like the idea of playing in a World Series is something that you have been working toward and desiring for your entire life probably, right? If you're JT RealMuto, you've wanted to win a World Series forever, right?

That is probably one of your core principles as a person, right? That is the thing that you have been striving toward. You have sacrificed a ton in your life. The people you care about have sacrificed a ton in their lives to help facilitate their pursuit of that goal in all likelihood. And so I just don't know how you bump up against, you know, a request to do a thing that keeps yourself and other people safe and say, well, no, I'm going to sacrifice this other dream so that I can say F you to Canada. Like you say those words out loud and then go, that all hangs together.

That's fine. You know, it's just so silly. Yeah. You know, it's more than silly. Like silly is kind of trivializing it. It is like you should go get the jab. Go do it. It's kind of it's being a bad teammate to the human race and also to the Phillies.

I mean, I guess it just kind of not only are you depriving yourself of playing time, but you're also perhaps somewhat increasing the risk that other players could contract this. And if it's not serious, they might still miss a little time. And that hurts the team's fortunes. And I guess it all just comes down to like, look, if there were a scenario where it was like PDs were legalized and we were talking about that kind of injection and someone said, no, I'm not going to get PEDs, well, we wouldn't say that's a bad teammate, that they're not taking advantage of the opportunity to take PEDs because we might say, well, there are some legitimate health risks and concerns with that. So it would be a bad teammate to peer pressure your teammate into taking something that might

be harmful. So in JT RealMuto's head, presumably, he has come to believe that this is harmful, or maybe it's just one of those political dunking kind of things. But he has somehow come to believe that this is harmful. So I guess it all just comes down to like, are you being a bad teammate? Yes, certainly, I think, according to reality. But in whatever ecosystem he has consumed information about this vaccine in, presumably he thinks that there is some harm to it. And so I guess whether someone is a bad teammate or is perceived to be depends on what they think of the actual vaccine, which most of us who are reading the research and trusting the trials, et cetera, are saying this is safe and helpful and others are not. So I guess it just basically it's your standard debate about is this vaccine helpful or harmful?

And obviously we're on one side of that and JT RealMuto is on the other side of that, but that really frames whether you think he is a good teammate or not. From our perspective, it seems like this is almost the definition of bad team mating. Yeah. I mean, like you said, in the specific case of that clubhouse and in the more general case of the community that he lives in. I also wanted to say that Wanda Franco, who is not an all-star, unfortunately, and has not played like an all-star, he has not been bad, but I have been a bit disappointed that Wanda Franco's season has played out the way that it has. He's had a series of injuries most recently. He has a hemate issue now, and he's going to be out, it sounds like, for five to eight weeks. And it's just sort of sad just because he came on so strong last year,

and we were all looking forward to the first full season of Wander Franco, and he's looked really good at times. And obviously, just being the age that he is he is still just 21 not even an old 21 and he has been better than an average major league player which is still impressive and the contact skills and are there and everything but it seems like we're going to have to wait for next year to see the fully healthy and operational and effective full season Wander Franco. And that's too bad because I thought that the big coming out party might be this year to the extent that that didn't happen already last year.

And really, the Rays have just had a tough time with injuries in general. Rough go. Really rough go. Yeah, it's been bad. According to the Baseball Prospectus, hurt scale on their injured list ledger. They have, it looks like, 15 players out with injuries right now, which is more than any other team. They are, I think, second only to the Reds in games missed and days missed. And they're up there in wins above replacement missed as well with the Reds and the White Sox.

So, yeah, that's tough in a tough division and franco is the latest casualty including a couple of others like kevin kiermeier but they've been playing shorthanded for much of the season yeah it's been it's been a really rough go and some of the folks i think the problem right now is that you're getting to the point where it's like the diagnoses that a lot of these guys have indicate that they will either maybe potentially not be back at all or that they will not be back for a while and that division is so tough and the wild card race is so tight because the mariners are good and the orioles are you know somewhere between respectable and good so they got they got. Like by the time, you know,

the parts of that roster that can come back do, where will they be, you know? Yeah. And the last thing I wanted to bring up was a bit of a baseball mystery, which is that it seems like shifting against right-handed hitters is working well all of a sudden.

And no one seems to know why exactly. So Tom Tango of MLB has had a couple posts about this on his blog lately, which I will link to on the show page. But in the past, we've discussed this. It seems like teams have been hurting themselves on the whole when they have shifted against right-handed hitters. shifted against right-handed hitters, that has actually been counterproductive and that they've maybe made that up against left-handed hitters against whom it tends to be more effective. And we've talked about why that may just be a function of infield alignments and the way that hitters tend to pull most of their grounders. And you have to have a first baseman who is somewhere near first base. So inevitably, you're just going to

have a different alignment with a righty up there and there will be different holes and more real estate exposed and everything. And so it seemed like it just maybe didn't make so much sense to shift against righties and that teams have gotten over exuberant with the shifting against righties. But this year, for the first time, according to Tango's analysis, and he's done the complex analysis of just rates while also shifting more often than ever against left handed hitters. Are they doing it more? But it seems to be working really well, where if you match it up and you look at the hitters who have seen those shifts and how they've done with and without them on, they're actually doing significantly worse, the right- which is pretty responsible for the decrease in offense. I know it's a little bit the ball, but it's also the BABIP, which has been lower the last couple of years than it had been before that. But 289, and it has come up a bit, and maybe it will continue to come up a bit, but 289 is the lowest it's been in 30 years. So that's notable, and it seems like this might be a big part of it. And I don't't know why I don't know why this is happening Tango didn't seem to have a theory for why this is happening and so I'm just putting it out there letting everyone know that this seems to be happening I guess this is increased ammo for the band the shifters if the shift is working so well and it seems like there is not this fatal

flaw of the shift so there's that that might make that an easier sell heading into next season which is unfortunate i think it shouldn't though you still have to like you still need to present your theory of baseball right you still have to say the why do you think this is going on you need you need that before it should matter because otherwise it might just be some kind of weird bit of randomness it's probably just ben you know what my theory is just a weird just weird bit of randomness could be could be although might just be a weird bit of randomness more than half a season here and it's not a rare event so i don't know it's it's a little perplexing that both the frequency and the effectiveness would improve. Like if the frequency had dropped off, I might think, OK, they're just doing it more selectively. They're picking their spots. But no, they're picking more spots and it still seems to be working better. theories about why that is, please let us know. Perhaps there's something about different groups

of hitters being shifted. Possibly I haven't really looked into it myself, but I don't know how a bunch of teams would have improved in this respect all of a sudden, or whether maybe the shift is slightly different. Maybe it still qualifies as a shift, but it's subtly different positioning wise in some way that has affected this. Or maybe it's the counts or I don't know what it is, but just putting it out there. It's interesting and surprising to me.

Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's definitely weird. Yeah. All right. Now we have the pass blast. This is episode 1874. This is a pass blast from 1874, courtesy, as always, of Richard Hirshberger, historian, saber researcher, author of the bases in the third inning, then catcher Cal McVay comes to bat, as reported in the Baltimore American of September 29. McVay then followed with a fair foul, which struck within a few inches of his feet

and, taking an eccentric bound, was lost under the seats to the left. A home run was the result, bringing in the three others, two of whom would have been left on their bases as subsequent events proved. In the ninth inning, a similar hit by McVay was again lost under the seats, and another quote-unquote home run was scored. Richard writes, there are two differences here from the modern game. The first was the quote-unquote fair foul hit. First was the quote-unquote fair foul hit. The original rule was that a batted ball was fair foul depending on where it first touched the ground,

regardless of whether this was in the infield or the outfield. Some batters developed the technique of bunting the ball, putting a lot of spin on it, so that it bounded off into foul territory. This was hard to defend against even when it doesn't go under the stands. The modern rule is that if it first touches the ground in the infield, it is fair or foul based on where it ends up, not on where it first touched the ground fair or foul. This will be adopted in a few years from 1874, not out of any ideological objection to fair foul hits, but because the umpire's views of the ground immediately in front of home plate was blocked by the catcher and batter, so he couldn't really tell where the ball first touched it. The writer's parenthetical question mark, there was actually a

question mark after fair foul, likely hints that he thought the hit not legitimately fair. The second difference is that there was no conceptual distinction between in and out of the field of play. Nowadays, there's a clear line between the two. If the ball goes out of the field of play, there are rules establishing where the umpires will place the runners. In 1874, they played the ball where it lay rather than taking penalty strokes. If the ball goes under the stands, the fielder will crawl after it and the batter will keep running. If he can make it all the way around the bases, more power to him. McVeigh is having a good day managing this feat twice. And fair foul hits were outlawed just a couple of years after this in 1876.

And I think we talked about this in the Stanky Draft we did because there's a theory that this was done because Ross Barnes had gotten too good at the fair foul hit. And so some people have suggested that the outlawing of the fair foul hit may have killed his career. He did have a dramatic drop off in numbers after that, although it probably seems to come down to the fact that he had malaria and didn't really recover from that more so than the fair foul hit thing. But maybe it was a bit of both. Anyway, this is a very notable difference from the modern game or multiple major differences. I think that they should have just put balls under the stands so that you didn't have to. Because like it could, who knows how far it could go.

But if you have a couple like right there, you could just be like, ah, this is the one. How are they going to know? They're not going to know. There's no one watching you under there. It didn't happen, I think. Yeah. going to know. There's no one watching you under there. It didn't happen, I think. Yeah. I don't know if it happened under the stands, but I know that like the 1890s Orioles who were famous and notorious for innovating and cheating and kind of just stretching the rules, they would sometimes

have extra balls out in like the long outfield grass and they would just substitute them. This has happened even even more recently was it todd frazier i want to say who maybe replaced a ball like grabbed a souvenir ball from a fan when a foul ball had gone into the stands and then he flourished the fake the souvenir ball as if he had caught the ball and then replays revealed that in fact he had to swap them out. You'd probably be able to tell just from holding them too because like souvenir balls tend to be like, you know, they can be a little tackier. Yep, tacky balls.

Yeah. Got a question recently from John who said the discussion about the Ross Barnes rule in the Stanky Draft episode brought up an idea that he didn't remember us discussing. What would it look like if we did away with the foul lines completely and made any struck ball that remains in play a fair ball? If the only goal was to reward making contact, this would be a brutally effective way to do so. And obviously Oakland hitters would benefit greatly while Oakland pitchers would hate their new reality. What other ramifications would there be to this and how much would it change the sport and the way it is played? So yeah, that would be a pretty big change. And that would be

one way to juice BABIP. If you think the shift is working too well, then just allow mega Ross Barnes and anything goes. And if it hits the field somewhere, whether it's fair or foul, there's no such thing anymore. It's playable. I guess you would probably have a reduction, a further reduction perhaps in foul territory. I'm sure Oakland would probably trim that. I mean, we've seen that already, I think, maybe just in an effort to get fans closer to the field and sell better seats. But we would probably see that even more. We would get to the point where there just might not be a lot of foul territory left.

But you'd end up with probably almost like a cricket style of batting at times where you could just have like bunts, basically. Like, you know, little fair foul slap type hits where i mean you could uh if if there's not even a foul ball behind you i mean right you could just have a foul tip that goes to the backstop i mean you'd probably have your backstop moved up too so that would be you just everyone would compress foul territory probably to the point where it wouldn't make as much of a difference but you'd get a greater range of batting styles that's for sure and it would be hard to defend some of them too yeah because uh most of those fielders they have to start the play in fair territory so there's nothing you can do to defend against it really yeah geez well we will end there as we

contemplate that somewhat scary reality. I just saw, by the way, Taylor Ward, all-star snub. It's trending, apparently. Maybe he was meant to be an all-star, but people said, like, Wade, Ward, don't know who any of you are. I don't think Wade made it either, although he's not so much a snub as just a sensible omission. All right. Speaking of Taylor Ward, I believe I called him Tyler Ward in the outro to the preceding episode as I was pointing out an instance where his name was confused for someone else's. So that's very authentic. That was not an Easter egg for anyone. I just screwed it up,

which seems to happen much of the time. That was not the only thing I messed up on that episode, although the other mistake was probably pretty entertaining too. When we were answering a question about when fans stopped rushing the field in MLB, I googled up a Reddit thread and I was just scrolling through and reading some responses without really thinking about them. And one of them referenced when Cleveland beat the Yankees on Jake Taylor's walk-off bunt in 1989. That was not a real thing that happened. That was in the movie Major League. See, I could have played this off as a joke, too.

I was in on it the whole time. I was just trying to see if you noticed. Were you listening closely? But no, I was the one who wasn't paying attention. I had 15 different tabs open. And I was just reading comments without processing what they said, which is probably a pretty dangerous thing to do on Reddit on a podcast. Anyway, oops.

Although I suppose that is a useful data point. If a prominent movie about baseball shows fans storming the field, then perhaps that was viewed as something that could happen at that time. Although that was past the peak of field rushing. Couple other follow-ups. We had not another hidden ball trick attempt exactly, but something close to it. Somewhere between a regular deke and a hidden ball trick. A couple of listeners, Michael and JP wrote in to tell us about this. JP is JP

Hornstra, the writer and reporter. And he says the Cubs were batting. There was a runner on first. The runner took off for second. The ball deflected off the sliding runner and shot directly to Trey Turner, the shortstop, who was more or less between second and third. The ball got to Turner so quickly, he just put the ball in his glove and acted as if nothing happened, that the ball was nowhere in his vicinity. The trick here is that the runner would be looking for the ball after he popped up from his slide and, not seeing it, would take a step off second base. No dice. The runner didn't move, neither did Turner. The ball hid in his glove just long enough to notice the trick. Better luck next time. I guess what made this interesting is that the ball was hiding a good 40 plus feet away from the runner.

More evidence that these tricks are taking place all the time, but that they're not working so well that base runners are maybe more attentive than we give them credit for. And a couple other follow ups in the long lasting walk up song department. Listener Aaron writes in to note that Joe Maurer used TI's What You Know throughout his career, so much so that Maurer's number retirement ceremony included a video tribute from TI. Aaron says it's not a particularly sing-alongable song, so that element was never in place for Maurer. And listener John writes in to say, I bet you anyone who was a Rays fan during our first truly great Corps reign back around 2010 would instantly think of Evan Longoria's usage of Down and Out by Tantric. I don't know if Longo's still using it now, but I'm pretty sure he had it his whole tenure for Tampa. It does seem like Longoria was using it at least as of last year.

John says, I was in the 7th grade when the Rays first got good, and for my friends and me, there was nothing cooler than Evan Longoria. His music was a big part of it. Down and Out isn't a greater iconic song outside of this association, part of it. Down and Out isn't a greater iconic song outside of this association, but that shrieking violin and subsequent wall of guitar announcing the arrival of our beloved heroic slugger is as iconic an

entrance as I'd ever hoped for. No race since has managed to select its equal. Thanks everyone for writing in. Congrats to the Orioles on winning their ninth straight game after we recorded. They are now officially 500. And as noted earlier, you can still email us at podcast at fangraphs.com and send us a voice

memo, a little audio clip of yourself singing our praises. No, not really. You don't have to purely praise us and you don't have to sing either. But if you want to talk a little bit about why you listened to the show or why you've enjoyed it over the years or however long you've been listening, feel free. We've gotten some good ones already. Just remember to introduce yourself at the start if you care to and keep it to 30 seconds or less. All right, I hope you enjoyed today's All-Star discussion. I'm sure we'll have more in the coming week, although currently I'm more interested

in the stars I'm seeing through the James Webb Space Telescope than I am the stars on the All-Star rosters, but we have bandwidth for both. You can support us on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks.

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Anyone, of course, can access our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can contact me and Meg, as mentioned, at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode of Little Wither this week. Talk to you then. The sky seems full when you're in the cradle. The rain will fall and wash your dreams. Stars are stars and they shine so hard. Now you spit out the sky because it's empty and hollow.

All your dreams are hanging out too dry. Stars are stars and they shine so cold. dry. Stars are stars and they sound so cold. Well, it's funny to how we keep going. Let me try that again, Dylan. I was doing fine and then I was like, you sound like a turkey. And then I think you should

leave it all in, Dylan, just to pull the curtain back a little bit. Anyway, your call. So what I was going to say was...