Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1875: Ten Men Out

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani taking over the MLB WAR lead, a Taylor Ward/Jared Walsh mixup, an on-air “zombie runner” endorsement, another fruitless hidden ball trick attempt, and the need for an amended rule about replay reviews of slide plays, then (26:03) discuss the Blue Jays firing manager Charlie Montoyo and […]

Goodbye, Charlie, cashing in your chips. Why lie, Charlie, time you came to grips? There ain't no doubt, strike three or out. Goodbye, Charlie, goodbye Hello and welcome to episode 1875 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. If you want to know why Meg is laughing, listen to the very end of the episode.

After another fine two-way effort, I am pleased to report Shohei Otani is now leading the majors in Fangraph's War with 4.8. That is three-tenths of a win higher than Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado and half a win higher than the AL runner-up, Rafael Devers. So according to both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, which both have him at 4.8 as we speak before Thursday's games, he is on pace for 8.7 war, which would be a tad behind his 9.1 Baseball Reference war from last season, but ahead of his 8.1 Fang baseball reference war from last season, but ahead of his 8.1 fan graphs war from last season. So essentially, he is having an equally impressive season, I would say. As we talked about recently, he's doing it a little bit differently. He has been even better on the mound and a little worse at the plate.

But overall, it has equated to basically repeating the almost miraculous season that he had last year. So still miraculous. It's just really quite something, you know? Like the Angels are not a good baseball team. They really are not. They really are not a good baseball team, but he's just so special right now and it's you know you sit

there and you're like there are a lot of a lot of guys who you know can rack up impressive victories against so-so teams and some of his pitching performances have been against teams whose offenses are like kind of whatever but not most of of them, Ben. Most of them, you know, it's like last night he was pitching against the Houston Astros. And I don't know if you know this, Ben, but the Astros are pretty good. I do know that. Pretty good. I mean, I know they got the Martin Maldonado of it all, you know, hanging out in the nine spot there. Yeah, he had a couple hits off of Donnie actually.

I know, because baseball remains undefeated in being itself. But yeah, he's just... It's really something quite special. And I just am enjoying it greatly. I think that my one worry for Otani... Are you ready for my worry? It's the same worry that I think that we have had for Mike Trout at various points in his career, which is that board voters will just get tired of voting for him. I think that that is kind of where I'm sitting now.

Because he's just making a straightforward case from a value perspective. He's making a straightforward case in terms of his stats on both sides of the ball here. case in terms of his stats on on both sides of the ball here but i think that as we have discussed like even if he were a little worse and he were close he should just be in that conversation because the fact that he's doing both things to this level is so amazing and we seem to tire of the spectacular in a way that's pretty remarkable although we're're all still really in awe of space and the photos from it. Yes, space is special. But you know what else is special? Showa Yotani.

So maybe he'll be like space. He'll be like our wonderment at the vastness of the universe. In his multitudes. Yes. Yeah. There were 32 strikeouts in that game. Yeah. It was a nine inning game.

Otani struck out 12. Christian Javier struck out a ton of guys. That was an AL record, I believe, at least in a nine inning game. Seems like too many strikeouts, but that will happen when Otani faces Javier. Anyway, I sympathize with the Angels broadcasters because we talk about Otani a lot on this podcast.

We don't talk about Otani as much as they do. And when you listen to an Angels broadcast, they are, of course, very enthusiastic about Otani. They don't have a whole lot else to be enthusiastic about at this point. And so they do tend to repeat themselves a lot, which is inevitable. And they tend to say, what else can you say very often? And then they say something else about him, which you have to do. But one thing that they often do, which has kind of become an inside joke for me and my wife, is that they will be talking about one aspect of his performance.

So they'll be celebrating that he just pitched a good inning or he just hit a triple as he did in that game. And then they'll be like, oh, by the way, he's pitching next inning. Right. Oh, by the way, he's up first next inning, you know, as if like any of us had forgotten that he was a two-way player constantly. Or whenever they show a graphic that compares just his hitting or just his pitching to other hitters or pitchers, they'll be like, oh, and by the way.

Don't forget. Watch out. It's such a trope on these broadcasts that my wife and I will just be like, oh, by the way. Oh, by the way. Don't forget. No one has forgotten, I assure you. But anyway, I did appreciate that Patreon supporter,

Sir Parsifal, who also posts on the baseball subreddit, he had a 1,000-word post on r slash baseball headlined, Otani last night was not the first Angels starting pitcher to hit a triple since Nolan Ryan in 1972. And he goes through a very long argument about why he was not, in fact, as some people had insisted that he was, which concludes the player Otani did not hit a triple as Otani the pitcher last night. He hit one as Otani the designated hitter. He isn't a starting pitcher who hit a triple. He's a designated hitter who hit a triple. He's also a player who is a starting pitcher and who hit a triple, but he isn't a

pitcher who hit a triple. I hope this a pitcher who hit a triple i hope this clears things up for everyone look i think that if anyone is going to appreciate that kind of clarification it's going to be us and it's true like remember was it last year ben that's uh salvador perez hit like a bunch of home runs and he was as a catcher or not as a catcher. Yes. And, you know, look, we pay such close attention to these things. And these records are meaningful. I mean, some of them, admittedly, much more meaningful than others in terms of your engagement with them. But, you know, the category of good hitting pitchers who are just really pitchers who happen to hit like we should hold that category sacred because first of all it doesn't exist anymore right and because it is um it is delightful

because of its peculiarity and so i think maintaining a line around otani like there is so much that we can appreciate about him and think is amazing i i just compared him to literally the universe yep so this is not a dig but i i think having um category fidelity is important because then you can appreciate things like the you know the the actual pitchers who in spite of themselves have hit triples because that's like a that's a special kind of category and i think one distinct from the marvels that we have been fortunate enough to see from otani so i think it is a meaningful distinction when you're talking about a catcher and whether they did something as a catcher or not because being a catcher actually subjects you to some wear and tear that dhing doesn't so it is maybe meaningful if you hit those home runs while you're actually catching. In Otani's case, no one disputes that he is pitching, that he was pitching and that

came when he tripled. But because of the two-way rule, there is some confusion about like, is he both a DH and a pitcher in one to be sacrilegious? Is it some kind of like Holy Trinity situation where he is both at once? Or is he one when he's doing one thing and the other when he's doing the other thing? I think the case that's being made here is that he is a DH when he's hitting and he's a pitcher when he's pitching. And yet he is doing both of those things in the same game. So this is a very fine point here.

This is a very fine distinction and pedantic distinction to draw, but I do appreciate the well-reasoned argument there, if not the fact that he did write the MLB in the course of that 1,000-word argument, which he has since explained to me is a choice. It was not a mistake. It was an intentional choice that he has decided to make. And I suppose I will respect that decision as the Royals who are vaccinated respect their unvaccinated teammates decision, at least publicly. We will get to that. That's quite a thing to come to another thing, Ben. That is how I feel about it, basically. That is the level of respect that I afford that position.

Yeah, we're going to get to the Royals. Should I wait to do my... Should I wait? Let's wait to uncork it because I have one more thing to say here about the Angels, which is that Tyler Wade was traded back to the Yankees. So that particular national nightmare is over. Ward and Wade no longer teammates, no longer even organization mates. However, no longer teammates, no longer even organization mates. However, that does not mean that we are finished with broadcasters mixing up the names of Angels players. I will play a little clip here.

I have already played it for you, but this was from Wednesday's game. And this is Astros play-by-play man Todd Callis, who had a little issue with Jared Walsh. Ward was called out on strikes his last time. Christian falling behind 3-0 to Jared Walsh. So now we discover that Jared Walsh can be mistaken for Taylor Ward, which happened last week. I played a clip from Matt Vaskirjan who did it. In that case, I think he just forgot who was batting as opposed to screwed up the names. But in this case, Callis was just kind of stumbling over the names, I think.

And so Walsh was up there and he said Ward first and then he sort of caught himself in his second saying of Ward and it ended up being Warsh. Warsh? Yeah. Ward, Jared Ward, Jared Walsh caught himself just in time there, but not quite. Anyway, so we still have that. We thought it was going to be Martian Walsh would be the issue.

But apparently Ward and Walsh is perhaps an even more serious issue. So we're not done with this segment. I don't think it's just changed a little bit. I mean, I would posit the following, which is that there is a half season left to go. Why assume that we will not see every possible iteration of this

bit of confusion? I assume we will see them all. Yeah, we have had Walsh and Marsh probably. We've had Walsh and Ward. I don't know if we've had Marsh and Ward. Maybe that's not close enough, but that spot is still unchecked on our bingo card perhaps. So everyone keep your ears out. However, while I am bringing up broadcaster snafus, I come also to praise a broadcaster because we were notified of this clip as well.

You're about to hear a snippet of the Nationals broadcast from the Nationals Mariners game on Wednesday. This is Dan Kolko. You'll hear first the play-by-play guy and then Kevin Franson, the color man, chiming in. Doesn't get credited with an earned run for giving up that walk-off to the Braves because the run was inherited due to the ghost runner. Zombie. man chiming in. So I have to salute the heroic work by Kevin Franson stepping up there in defense of the zombie runner and doing it after it had already been labeled a ghost runner by his partner. So it would have been easy for him just to sit in silence and all that would have to happen for the ghost runner to prevail is for people who know better not to act. And yet he spoke up and he insisted and he explained why it's the zombie runner, which was great. I don't know if he's a listener or if he got this somewhere else, but I applaud Kevin Franson for speaking up here. He is a career sub replacement level player, according to both fan crafts and baseball reference word, but clearly an above replacement broadcaster from this clip alone. an above replacement broadcaster from this clip alone yeah i mean i think that it is about taking the opportunity in the moment to say oh but but you can see him out there i mean and like the logic being displayed here it's it's hard to argue with right yeah um now one could of course say that

there aren't literal zombies but you know you do see a human person out there. And so it's closer than a ghost would be. So I just appreciate the commitment to, you know, to really furthering our bit more than anything. Me too. Well done, Kevin. And in another of our running bits, I will say that there was yet another report of a hidden ball trick attempt. This one, this came in the Mets game on Wednesday also, and it was the bottom of the seventh, I believe. And Travis Darnot was on first.

Dominic Smith, Travis Darnot's former teammate, was the first baseman. And he tried it. He had a pickoff attempt at first, and he faked the throw back. And then he looked down at Darnot, who was stretched out with his hand touching the bag, and it didn't work. And so he threw the ball back to the pitcher, and Darnot laughed a little and seemed to take it in stride and smile. Didn't get him. So I think I'm almost ready to retire this bit because we have learned a lot. The mystery is solved.

The hidden ball trick has not gone away because players aren't attempting it. It is because they are not succeeding in pulling it off. But it is constant. Now that we have eyes and ears out there, we are getting near daily reports of attempts to pull off the hidden ball trick. So at this point, I think it's kind of entered the category of players predicting things, calling home runs, which sometimes people still notify us about that, but it's so commonplace that unless it's an especially strange or notable instance, we don't even talk about them all anymore. So let us know if there's a particularly ingenious attempt or, of course, if one works, I'm sure that we will be aware. But at this point, it's just basically part of the background noise of baseball,

constant hidden ball trick attempts that are not coming to fruition but i didn't know that a few weeks ago i thought they weren't even being tried so now i know yeah i just i feel like destabilized by the set of revelations honestly because i had assumed i had assumed that people were well one more motivated by avoiding embarrassment than they seem to be. So that's something that I should reflect on like personally, perhaps. But I just assumed that this was a cool thing that was thought to be difficult to pull off and so was exercised judiciously. And instead, we are given to understand that it is is cool thing that really good baseball players are

just often not very good at or or i guess i don't need to be like ungenerous in that way i could say that base runners are just sharp you know they're like paying attention they're on they're on the job in a way that i maybe thought they would be a little looser with so i don't know i what rule change can we have to incentivize successful hidden ball trip that's that's what we need to work on ben like we can leave the shift alone get get on get on the the hidden ball trick bandwagon why don't we yeah well speaking of rule changes i would like to see and also that angels game did you see the call on Astros runner Jake Myers when he attempted to steal second and he was called safe and then the call was overturned because on the replay

it was determined that he did not maintain contact with the base as the fielder was applying the tag? Did you see this play? I will send you a link. Yeah, I don't know that I had. All right. But he very temporarily lost contact with the tag. Did you see this play? I will send you a link. Yeah, I don't know that I had. All right, well. But he very temporarily lost contact with the bag, I assume.

Yeah, it was one of those. Yeah, so take this in in real time because this was one of the more egregious examples of this kind of call. So this would be what the umpire review would be. Look at that. Came off just a little bit right there, did it not? There's separation of the bag.

Does he have the glove on that back calf area the whole time? There's a good view here. He beats it by like half a second. And there's separation right there. Yeah, he's out. Yep, and Renifo, that's why he was having that smile. He's like, I think I might have you here, Jake. After review, the call is overturned.

The runner is out. And no one likes this kind of call. And we've been talking about this for years at this point. Like he barely, so he beat the throw easily. And he just, he lost his balance a little bit. Like he popped up after his foot hit the bag. Oh, he should be safe. Absolutely should be safe. This is bag. He should be safe. Absolutely should be safe.

This is ridiculous. He was called safe initially. And then when you do the super slow-mo, you find that as he was, like, maintaining his balance, as he was stopping and he had some momentum and everything. But he didn't, like, overslide. No. He didn't go past the base or anything. He was just popping up and teetering a little bit. And for just the tiniest fraction of a second, his foot, which was in contact with the bag, came like an inch off of it.

Maybe. Just terrible. I hate this kind of call. I hate this kind of call. Everyone hates this. Everyone hates it. We've been bemoaning this kind of call for years now yes and i don't know how it hasn't been corrected yet because other issues that have

been exposed by replay were corrected yeah right like wasn't there that issue with like what's a catch right and like if you drop one on the transfer or something is it we had that weird stretch in like i want to say 2013 or 14 where there were these these like all of these outs being not called because of transfer stuff and right like in the middle of the season the league was like oh that's not what we meant let's fix that and they just did they just fixed it and everyone was like oh thank god yeah exactly and everyone has wanted this to be changed i remember dave cam Cameron writing about this several years ago at Fangrafts, and I'm sure he was not the only one. And it seems like a fairly simple fix. On the one hand, I understand, like, just going by the letter of the law currently, like, look, if you're not in contact with the base and time hasn't been called, I understand why we're sticking to this and we're being sticklers for this point. But it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to change the

definition slightly just so that you could say, okay, once you're in possession of the base, then as long as you're remaining over the airspace of the base. This was Dave's proposal that there should be a safety zone. Right. And I think it's a good one. Yeah, exactly. And it would not count oversliding. Right. This was Dave's proposal that there should be like a safety zone. way that you actually do stop and you're still touching the base. So if you just go too far, I'm more sympathetic with you being called out. So that would be separate, but it's just once you're safe, once you're in possession of the base, as long as you're remaining over the base, if you're slightly separated from it. Now, I guess you could have some weird edge case where like if you hopped two feet over the base for some reason you just decided to test this and you were just like hopping up and down i mean that would be silly but you decided you wanted to

be a competitive trampoliner yeah if you could word it in such a way that it was like you know in the process of the slide and the natural motion right the base runner, you briefly lose contact over the base, then you're still safe and that kind of loss of contact doesn't count. And I would totally support that because on the one hand, yeah, I guess you could say, well, you have to have the proper sliding technique so that you don't lose contact at any second. And of course, the fielders have adjusted their tag applying technique so that they constantly apply it just in case. As in this instance, you might briefly lose contact, but that's not entertaining. That's not interesting.

And there's just a certain amount of momentum that is unavoidable and loss of balance and all of that. And plus, we're trying to encourage stolen bases in the running game too, right? So we're not trying to tell people, hey, go in slower so that you can maintain contact perfectly with the bag like we want to boost the running game, if anything. So come on, like we've been saying this for so many years at this point, and we're going to get some sort of like post-season series deciding play that swings on this if that hasn't happened already so it just seems like something that would not be that difficult to fix well and i guess in in fairness like his foot there's the foot that's on the bag

in this instance and then there's his other foot which is not on the bag right but it's not i think it is it is clearly distinct from over sliding right like i think that this is not a matter of his you know he didn't over slide it's just that the force of him trying to maintain his balance meant that his left left foot left foot i know about yep no his right foot no his left foot his left foot upon review the initial call of which foot it was stands yeah it's it's that one it's the left one but i think that this is is distinct from that indeed i think if you were writing the rule and you were trying to demonstrate it in real time to someone like this might be one of the cases you put forth to be like this is the scenario that we are trying to protect so that

we don't have replay reviews like the one that happened here so this is silly yeah and there's been recent cricket precedent i was informed by patreon supporter raymond chen i really gotta learn more about cricket ben every time i learn about cricket in the course of doing this podcast, which is almost the only time I learn about cricket, it is eye-opening. Yeah, it makes sometimes seem like the batsman was not making contact with the ground just like in the course of natural running. Like if you're running, then at some point in your stride, both of your feet are off the ground. And so this was reworded to say, however, a batsman shall not be considered to be out of his or her ground if in running or diving toward his or her ground and beyond and having grounded some part of his or her person or bat beyond the popping crease.

There is subsequent loss of contact between the ground and any part of his or her person or bat or between the bat and person provided that the batsman has continued movement in the same direction. I think they have since amended batsmen to the more gender-neutral batter. But basically, that was the issue. It was that replay review caught players who had both of their feet off the ground just in the course of regular running. And according to a strict reading of the old rule, when both feet lost contact with the ground, you're considered to be, quote-unquote, out of your ground, and you could be put out. And so they just deleted the provided that the batter has continued movement in the same direction clause. And there was something with a bouncing bat, also a corollary there.

And it's the same sort of situation. So they addressed that. They fixed that some years ago. And I think we could do the same here. And really, I'm sort of surprised that it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, it just seems like it's such an easy thing to make everyone's life better, particularly at a moment where we are obsessed with time of gain. Why not just eliminate an entire category of review that makes everyone annoyed? Yeah, that's a good point too. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Well, since we have covered the pressing hot button topics on this

podcast of Taylor Ward's name being screwed up or other players being mistaken for Taylor Ward, that has to lead the show, obviously. And then a broadcaster correcting another broadcaster about Zombie Runner. Yeah. You know, that's your number two story for the day. Yeah. And then in the C block of your show, you got to go with the fruitless hidden ball trick attempt that not even the broadcasters calling the game noticed but we should probably get to some subjects that are used elsewhere in the world maybe we can start with the blue jays because that will segue naturally into the royals look at you look at your little transition look at you telegraphing. I'm mapping it out. Yeah, you've laid out a road for us to follow.

Yeah, I've broken this episode like a TV writer breaking an episode. I've got all the index cards up on my cork board, and I'm just shifting them around. Which should come first so we could segue from this topic to that topic. Yeah, and then we're going to open a hatch. And anyway. So the Blue Jays fired their manager, Charlie Montoyo, which I think took people by some surprise, right? Some surprise, yeah. We talked recently about the Blue Jays having a disappointing season thus far and the fact that they were only a couple games ahead of the Orioles, which is not a great reflection on them.

But they are still a winning team. They are still in playoff position or just about, right? They still are, I think. I think they still are. Yeah. And if you look at the previous managers who had been fired this year, so the Phillies let go of Joe Girardi and the Angels let go of Joe Maddon, they have lost a ton of playoff probability this season, whereas the Blue Jays have not. Now, what the Blue Jays have lost is division. Division probability, yeah.

Yeah, they've lost a lot of that. In fact, they've lost more of that than any other team, I believe. So they are down 43 percentage points. Now, that's partly because they have been disappointing. It's mostly because the Yankees have surpassed all expectations. the Mariners and Boston are all sitting tied together amongst the wild cards after Tampa. So they're still in position. The Yankees are 62-26.

You have a 7.05. That's pretty good, yeah. You know that the Yankees are doing really wild stuff right now because we have talked shockingly little about how the houston astros have a 655 winning percentage ho-hum yeah all they have all they have is a plus 97 run differential nothing compared to the plus 177 that the Yankees have put up. But you all out there might be like, well, but Meg, they've been sort of shaky against the Reds.

And to that I say, you know what? It doesn't matter. Anyway, so Toronto lost a bunch of division percentage, has remained relatively stable from a wildcard percentage perspective. Yeah, their playoff odds are almost unchanged since the start of the season. They're down like five percentage points, whereas the Phillies are down about 25 percentage points, and that's even after their post-Giordi bounce. And then the Angels are down 38 percentage points.

And, by the way, the White Sox are down 27%, but Teflon Tony still sitting pretty in that manager seat, it seems like. I don't know if his chair is even wobbly. Can it wobble when the owner basically appoints you and goes over everyone's head? I think it gets nailed to the floor. Yeah, I think probably so. But anyway, from that perspective, we can't blame Charlie Montoyo for the Yankees just burning up the league. And maybe it seems somewhat unjust given that they have not been a disaster or anything. But they were a popular division winner pick and pennant winner pick.

They certainly were at the ringer where I think we basically all picked the Blue Jays to win that division and perhaps the pennant as well. And there were higher hopes for that team. What was it that Vlad Grojr said? Something about like last year being the coming attractions, the trailer, and this being the feature, the main event. And it has not really been that. So I think what it comes down to is that they've been scuffling. They've gone through a bit of a rough stretch lately. And also, it seems like Montoyo's temperament was not well suited to that situation from what the reporting has suggested. That it doesn't seem like anyone dislikes Charlie Montoyo or thinks he's a bad guy or anything. Quite the contrary.

It seems like everyone thinks he's a very nice guy, great guy. But that perhaps, according to some of the players at least, he didn't really rise to the occasion of motivating them, right? That he didn't light a fire under them, let's say. And is that his fault? Is that the player's fault? Is it the front office's fault for not getting them a better bullpen or pitching depth or whatever weakness you want to point to? It's all of the above, obviously, but it seems like whatever motivational message they thought they wanted or needed to hear, they were not getting from Montoyo, who's more of the steady hand at the tiller. And when the waves get choppy, maybe you want someone who's going to say, I'm taking command and here's what we're going to do. And

you want to feel like someone has a firm hand there. And perhaps he was just taking it too much in stride. I don't know. But that seems to be the prevailing explanation here. It does seem very, I i mean i guess like this is always going to be part of the problem with firings like this which is that we just aren't in the clubhouse in a way to know like is this the sort of thing that has actually been coming for a long time or is it like really shocking or you it's just, it's hard to kind of peg these things. It does feel a little bit like a team that is underperforming relative to preseason expectation, doing a thing to do a thing.

Right. But I don't know, maybe like, maybe there was discord in the clubhouse in a way we can't appreciate. I know that some of the, the quotes after it sort of suggested that. So I don't know. It just seemed to seem odd though. Does strike me as kind of, it sort of suggested that. So I don't know. It does seem odd, though. It strikes me as odd. It doesn't seem like a classic lost the clubhouse situation.

It wasn't like the players were in open revolt or questioning his decision so much. There's an anonymous player quote in Caitlin McGrath's piece at The Athletic that refers to their recent rough stretch. When you're 1-9, you're looking for someone to come in and either kick you in the ass or pump you up just something, some guidance, one player told The Athletic. And you could have it as players for sure, and we did, but you really do need it coming from the top, and that just wasn't happening. I don't know, it sounds like no one bears him ill will,

but another player concedes that it maybe felt like it was time. So that's what it basically boils down to. It's not really an Angels-Phillies situation exactly. And yet here we are with yet another managerial change in firing at midseason, which is not something that we've seen a lot of in recent years. And really, you have to go back to 2018, I think, was the last time there were this many managerial firings. But even then, I think at least one of them was late in the season when you tend to see more of those. So to have things happen like this early in the year or in the middle of the season, that's been pretty unusual lately. And I guess in all of these cases, it's teams that thought they were playoff contenders and planned to be, and then got off to shakier starts than they had wanted to. And so they didn't like where they were. And that's one change you

can make more easily than making your roster better. Yeah. And I guess that, you know, if you're thinking about it in terms of the beats of the season, like it is, I suppose that it's more destabilizing to do this kind of thing after the trade deadline, like as you're getting into the last bit of the, of the year and you're really trying to knuckle, knuckle down,

bear down and secure a playoff spot, you know, this way you have a little bit more time to adjust to something like that. But I don't know. It's a, I mean, I guess we don't want people, we don't want teams to hold on to folks who they think aren't going to help them get where they need to go just for the sake of doing it.

But it always feels like these moves are a little bit like, this might do something you know it could do something there yeah yeah well we'll see bench coach john schneider was named the interim manager so maybe the schneider era will be better i mean if i had to pick like one of these teams to have a post firing bounce and the phillies have had that the angels have not but if i had to pick one of these three that was in the best position to, I would say it was the Pugets, because I think that the Pugets are the best of these teams, and they have underperformed my expectations

more significantly. So you would think that there might be more of a bounce back there, and you could look to some underperforming players and say they could get better, and whether that is because they've gone from Montoya to Schneider or not. I'm just always interested in how you go from one season to the next and the circumstances change and the rosters change and your competitive aspirations change and what you want out of your manager changes, especially in terms of personality and temperament. Like when the Blue Jays were going through the pandemic and they didn't have a home and they were this itinerant traveling team going from park to park and they couldn't go back to their home city and country.

Maybe back then, Charlie Montoya was exactly what you wanted, right? To kind of be the calming influence and keep everyone together. what you wanted right to kind of be the calming influence and keep everyone together and they were an up-and-coming team right now they're expected to be a favorite right it's not about the trailer anymore yeah the main attraction i'm not laughing because what they went through was funny it wasn't it was just you made them sound like they were like you know uh like traveling the countryside with uh yes they're like in Station 11 or something. Yeah, exactly. Here they are wandering.

The traveling symphony. Yeah, they have a carnival barker. They're putting up signs in the next town over. Anyway. So it's put up or shut up time for them. And I guess they told Montoya to shut up. It is always interesting to me, though, and we've talked about how when you let go of a manager, quite often the front office that put that manager in place sticks around.

It's always funny to me when it's like the bench coach that gets elevated because it's like, how different of a regime is this going to end up anyway? It's just I wish Charlie Montoya well. People seem to like him, like you said, and you want the Blue Jays to be good because they're a fun, exciting team. And seeing them make a deep October run would be great. But you would feel so bad for him if it ends up working. I don't know.

It's just a funny. It's a tough business, Ben. Famously, tough business. It's always funny to me that you kind of ping pong and flip flop back and forth between the player's manager and the motivator who's going to go out there and hold you accountable and fire you up. And just depending on whether you're down or up, you just want one or the other. Or sometimes you have a young team that's going through a rebuilding phase. You want one kind of manager and then suddenly it's time to win and you bring in another manager. kind of manager and then suddenly it's time to win and you bring in another manager.

It suggests that there's no way for any manager to adapt to the circumstances and that you just have to kind of like plug and play with this type of person and plug them in when they fit and unplug them when they don't fit and bring someone in and switch it around. I guess there have been some managers who maybe have been adaptable enough to just vary their motivational style and their tactics based on the composition of their roster and what they're actually trying to accomplish in the short term. But maybe that's not such a common skill set or at least isn't perceived to be. The other thing is that the Blue Jays have underperformed while facing other teams at less than full strength this season. teams at less than full strength this season. We talked about this coming into this season, whether to call that an advantage or not, and perhaps it's not fair to call it an advantage because the Jays in some ways are at a disadvantage with the players that they can

recruit and roster. And of course, the quote unquote advantage of playing your entire team is available to any team at any time as long as it gets vaccinated. But I bring that up because the Blue Jays opponent this weekend will be about two thirds of the Kansas City Royals. It's so many guys. Unbelievable. It is shocking. I mean, it's just so many guys.

It is so many guys. Ten players. Ben, did you know that there are 26 on an active big league roster? Yeah. It's so many guys. Yeah. And less than two-thirds of the Royals were vaccinated. That's incredible because we gave the Phillies some grief the other day for four of their players not making the trip to Toronto.

They ended up losing both of those games, whether it was because they were shorthanded or not. I don't know, but it just so happened. It helped, but yeah. Along comes Kansas City, who says, hold my antibodies. We can beat four. That pales in comparison to 10. I mean, we were talking about four and four pretty prominent phillies being a lot then suddenly the news comes across that ten royals are not making

the trip i almost needed to like bring in jeff sullivan for one of his patented wait what no wait what why how reactions because that is basically what I thought as I read this news. I thought, 10? 10? That's so many. Ben Intendi, Coleman, Dozier, Gallagher, Isbell, Keller, Melendez, Merrifield, Singer, and Taylor. 10. Unbelievable. They have just been doing so much research and making so many personal decisions. All of them. It's shocking and then of

course like look i don't think there's like a i'll admit a good way to talk about the decision to refuse to get a safe and life-saving vaccine that is meant to contain a deadly disease right there's not like a good quote you're not going to satisfy anybody but there are like the normal bad quotes about this and then there's whit merrifield's quote about this which was one of the things that baseball players and i think this extends to professional athletes as a class of people one thing that they really seem to value like as a core value is is i'll do i'll do anything for my team to win right we talked about schwarber's quote about real mouton yes they're not bad teammates and we're like but they objective objectively they are like they are right so there's like that then there is he was asked about this, right?

And he talked about why he's not going to do it. That may change down the road. Something happens and I happen to go on a team that has a chance to go play in Canada in the postseason. Maybe that changes. But as we sit here now, I'm comfortable with my decision. And it's like, that sucks. Yeah, right.

Dude, that sentiment sucks in a lot of different ways, right. You're really going to say and then go in to work until the deadline and expect to hang out and have a good time? They're like, well, I won't make this. I won't endure this small inconvenience for you losers. But if I get traded to the Yankees and they got to go to Toronto, well, I don't think about it then. Like, what is that? Yeah, right. What message does that send to your teammates? That's loser shit right there. I'm sorry excuse my swear he's a team leader i mean he's been there so long they've

held on to him famously there for such a long time right perhaps longer than he should have been from the royals perspective but that sort of sets the tone i think when you have someone like that or someone like hunter dozier in that clubhouse who is thinking and speaking this way. So Hunter Dozier, who said he doesn't do any vaccines. That is the quote. But that he's not against vaccines. He just doesn't do any. Then he continued, I live a healthy lifestyle.

I work out. I want my body to naturally fight stuff off. And sure, it probably can naturally fight it off if you're a hunter-dozer. But what about everybody else? Have a higher chance of infecting someone else. And also, you're going to miss the series. Right. That alone.

Right. So you can't naturally fight off being ineligible for this series in Toronto. So, yeah, I mean, the Royals are not currently in contention and really weren't expected to be. But if that's why Whit Merrifield isn't doing this or one of the reasons for he's saying like, yeah, if I go somewhere else where I care about winning more, where winning might actually matter, then maybe I'll do it. Like, that's not great. I don't know whether that's better or worse than just the litany of personal choice, personal decision, individual choice, et cetera, et cetera. But really, 10 is just a shocking total at this time for any one team.

I was just talking to Ben Clemens and we were just trying to figure out probabilistically, like, what's the chance that this could happen at random that 10 players could be clustered in Kansas City, 10 unvaxxed players just by chance? Even in the U.S. population, I believe looking at the latest CDC figures, 75.5% of the adult U.S. population is fully vaccinated. adult U.S. population is fully vaccinated. So that would imply that if we were going by that, which I don't think we should go by that, but if we were going just by that, then you would expect, say, 6.5 unvaxxed players on average on an MLB roster, and there would be an 8.1% chance of 10 or more unvaccinated players on that roster by chance. Now, if the baseline is higher, which it is, I think, so last year, 88% of minor leaguers were vaccinated. And as of the end of the postseason, 88% of tier one MLB personnel were vaccinated. So tier one includes players, coaches, and trainers. And by the way,

the Royals, I believe, had a few unvaccinated coaches as well, which is perhaps not shocking. But if 88% was the baseline for tier one, and let's say players wouldn't be too different, and that was at the end of last season, so some players could have gotten vaccinated since then, then you're talking about a 0.5% chance that you would just happen to get 10 on the same roster at the same time. 88%, because according to a USA Today study, entering the All-Star break, 354 of roughly 398 players on 13 teams that visited Canada were vaccinated, or 90.8%. So I think that would be including the Royals even, which would suggest that maybe for non-Royals teams, it was more than 90%. But even if we say 90% of MLB players are vaccinated, then you're down to a point one percent chance that it could just happen at not suggesting that they actively tried to acquire unvaccinated players.

I don't think that they did. And there are comments by Royals personnel who expressed disapproval of that, including Dayton Moore. You know, a lot of people have made jokes about the Dayton Moore anti-porn stance and all of that and, you know, whether that could be correlated here. But Dayton Moore at least came out and said publicly that he's vaccinated and he wishes that the Royals players were vaccinated. And I'll just read his quote here. I'm very disappointed. We don't have many of our everyday players with us in Toronto. That's disappointing to our organization. That's disappointing to our clubhouse. And that's disappointing our fans. At the end of the day, we can't make anybody get a vaccination. We did our share of talking. We did our share of education. But at the end of the day,

all our leaders at upper levels made a decision to be vaccinated. That was our choice. Our families are vaccinated. That was their choice. Not going to judge another man or woman who chooses to think differently. There's a reason they feel the way they feel. However, the players have known for a long time since we left spring training that this would be a consequence of that choice. So look, is it that the Royals have not done as good a job relative to other organizations about educating their players or impressing upon them the importance of getting the vaccine. I don't know. That is one conclusion that it wouldn't be totally unfair to draw from this large cluster of anti-vaxxers on this roster. I don't know what other conclusions you could come to. I mean,

one thing that did occur to me is that the vast majority of the unvaccinated players who have not been able to make the trip to Toronto, I shouldninated players who have not been able to make the trip to Toronto, I shouldn't even say have not been able to, they have chosen not to make that trip, right? 94% of them, according to that same USA Today piece, have been American born, which is not surprising, I guess, when you consider that a lot of the foreign players, if not all of the foreign players, would have had to be vaccinated, I think, just to play in the country. So it's sort of similar, like they've already had to make that decision just to play. So of the remainder, then the ones who are unvaccinated, they would, of course, be disproportionately U.S. born because they were already here.

And as we know, there's a sizable contingent of the U.S. population that is anti-vax. So not shocking there a lot of foreign players contributed probably to the fact that they had a lot of unvaccinated players as well, because those players didn't have to get vaccinated just to be on the Royals in the first place. So they were tied actually with the Dodgers, who also had 23. That's the most of any team on an active roster, according to Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. And the Dodgers also were, I think, slightly ahead of the Royals in the most 40-man roster U.S.-born players. So they have a lot of Americans on their roster is what I'm saying. And I guess that's a contributing factor too. But does it go deeper than that? Perhaps. It's not great. It's not a great look for that organization.

Yeah, it's not. I mean, I appreciate his comments, Dayton Moore's comments after the fact, because I think it is important for them to say like, no, organization at the senior levels trying to lead by example and provide these guys with resources to help them understand the the consequences of not getting faxed right and the safety of getting back so i think that's important to do but yeah it does sort of merit i imagine some reflection on the orgs part of what their processes are if there is any deviation from what they're doing relative to other orgs that have been more successful in persuading their guys around this stuff. I think your point about the composition of the roster is well taken. That probably accounts for a lot of it. So, you know, I think that we knew coming into the season that given the general sort of at the population level political leanings

of baseball players that this was likely to be a concern that it would be a concern for a great many teams that it would be you know most immediately a concern for the other teams in the aleast but that the you know the effectiveness on rosters is not limited to those clubs. And yeah, this is the most meaningful from a numbers perspective that we have seen. But you think about other contenders this year, like the Red Sox still have guys who haven't gotten vaccinated. Now, some of them subsequent to the last trip have said, I'm going to be vaxxed in time for the playoffs

so that if we have to go up there, this isn't going to be a gating factor. But there are other contenders who aren't. I mean, like Robbie Ray was the Mariners' big offseason signing. And right now, if Seattle had to play a playoff game in Toronto, they couldn't start him. So this stuff, I think as we've said before, you want the most compelling argument to be one of care. This is how we take care of each other.

This is how we take care of the community that we're a part of, whether it's a clubhouse or the city that that clubhouse is in or our families or whatever. This is how we demonstrate care. And if that's not going to do it, you hope that they're going to say well i like money and this is going to prevent me from having as much of it as i otherwise would but then that doesn't always work either like yeah and so you know it's i think it's a a problem because these, these guys, because of the peculiarities of the lives that they lead and the, you know, the social circles that they operate within and the sort of distance that being a famous, uh, and successful athlete can give you from sort of the day-to-day of non-famous working people, the social consequence aspect of this is always going to be filtered somewhat, right? How much time with normal folks is like JT Real Mudo spending? I don't know. Maybe it's a lot. Maybe I'm totally wrong. But it's disappointing that the social pressure within the organization to want to win and the financial pressure of losing game checks isn't enough because the social pressure part of it is just kind of weird for these dudes. It's different than it is for other people.

Right. Yeah. 10 guys is just so 10 guys so many guys so many yeah guys dozer i singled him out before i believe he's had covid i think he had it in 2020 he said it it's not like i'm worried for hunter dozer's well-being so much it's just that you never know to be clear we don't want these guys to get sick either oh sure right and of course they're not at extremely high risk they're not at extremely high risk. They're not at the highest risk portion of the population, even if they are unvaxxed. But still, you never know. And also, you could spread it to someone who is more vulnerable. But beyond that, just the

purely on the field, are you being a good teammate by actually showing up for the game and making the trip with the team? And we should say that although publicly there's been a lot of respect their decision kind of statements from their vaccinated teammates, not so publicly and maybe anonymously, it seems like there is a bit of unrest and dissatisfaction about this because there was a Sam McDowell piece in the Kansas City Star and he quotes a player unnamed who wrote, a few of us are ticked, not ticked the way that I was last week with a literal tick, but ticked off. And it continues, as the unvaccinated players say their teammates have been understanding of their decision, a handful of vaccinated players have voiced complaints about the situation to members of the coaching staff in recent weeks. They're

reasonably annoyed by the situation and struck by a feeling of abandonment that's only heightened by the fact that the 10 are skipping a weekend series as the Royals occupy last place in the American League Central. Some have concluded that their teammates simply don't care, or at least don't care enough. And I can absolutely see how they concluded that. Well, you can very strongly conclude that about Whit Merrifield. He basically said it. Yankees play in Toronto a lot. Yeah. But the Rangers, the Rangers were 100 percent vaccinated. They didn't have to leave anyone behind either. And they're in more of a Royals-esque competitive situation. And I was seeing Evan Grant tweet about that on Twitter.

And he said, I don't think the back status was part of any acquisition effort this winter. But the Rangers were both diligent in explaining it and clear that overall they were trying to establish a clear team first culture. And so everyone being vaccinated just fit in with that. And so it's hard not to fault the Royals, like whatever messaging they were doing. I mean, maybe they just happened, just happened to acquire a bunch of extremely stubborn players. But you got to think that maybe the messaging was not what it could have been so that's got to be disappointing for royals fans one of many disappointing things for them yeah and you know especially when it's not just going to affect

this series but you know it's going to have an impact on i mean it's going to have an impact on the trade deadline, right? Of course. Yeah. There's already been some reporting about that, right? Like the Yankees not interested in Andrew Benatendi anymore. effects within that organization that extend beyond this series or even this season where you know they were in a position where they could either help their team win now or they could no it's not the you know i don't think that like andrew benintendi is like obligated to think about his own trade value but it it would be naive to assume that this isn't going to have an effect on the future fortunes of the royals even if marginally right so it's uh it's it's disappointing yeah they might have to hang on to whit merrifield yeah gosh it's like you really really should have traded him before now so i

guess the the silver lining at least for some people involved in this situation, is that as there's a ripple effect where the Royals call up a bunch of players from AAA and then other guys get promoted presumably from lower levels to AAA, I think there are going to be many major leaguers to meet. I think there are going to be maybe three Royals making their major league debut in the lineup. So that's something. And that maybe leads us into a meet a major leaguer segment that we wanted to do here. And we had already preselected players who I think will fit thematically with this conversation. And you picked a royal. And fortunately, you picked right. You lucked out. You didn't get one of the anti-vaxxers. Oh, man.

So who's your major leaguer to meet? Meet a major leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. Let's meet this mysterious major leaguer it's the thrilling debut of somebody new let's meet this mysterious major leaguer my meet a major first of all ben can i tell you how many times i've almost accidentally closed the window that has all the tabs for this yeah we've been talking about doing this for a while yeah and like the last the first time we talked about it, I think was last Friday,

and then our episode was kind of getting long, and we were like, yeah, we'll wait. And I was like, Vinny Pasquitino, who's who we're going to meet, he's not going to be any less Italian because I understand the world through a very narrow lens sometimes. But yeah, we are going to meet Royals first baseman,

Vincent Joseph Pasquitino. Vinny to his friends and to all of us. Pasquitino was an 11th round pick out of Old Dominion in 2019. He's from Virginia. He's a Virginia guy. And he entered this offseason ranked fifth on the Royals list. So Pasquotino entered the season for us at FanGraphs. He was 111th on our top 100.

And you're going to say, but that's more than 100, guys. You'll remember, hopefully, that we hard rank everyone who's a 50 future value and above. So he was at 111 as a 50 future value he was did better than that by the zips top 100 he was 65th and then by the time the royals list rolled around he was fifth in their system which is not a knock on him there are some good guys ahead of him some of whom i would not be able to introduce you to in this segment if we were doing it today and here i shall read from his scouting report from this offseason. Pasquotino is not a graceful athlete.

Even his home run trots look like they require a fair bit of effort, but he can really hit, which is the thing we care about most. There are missile defense systems with less precise tracking ability than Pasquotino, who seems to be lasered in on everything that crosses the plate and is on time with remarkable consistency. He will track and whack breaking balls that most hitters would swing over top of, and he can also flatten his bat path and get to fastballs at the top of the strike zone. At age 23, he was a little old for a bat-only prospect who split the year between high and

double A, but his numbers there were incredible. He walked nearly as much as he struck out, he only caved 13% of the time, and he has such precise feel for contact that we think he'll get to all of his modest raw power in games. it's an atypical first base profile since there isn't loud raw power but the hit power blend projects for an output similar to yuli guriel's which not a bad comp if you're a first baseman and we're confident pasquotino's hit tool will make him a consistent annual run producer so pasquotino was called up in late June. He made his debut on June 28th. Then Pasquitino has hit, he has hit two home runs in his big league tenure so far. Now those did not come in his debut where he was DH. He went 0 for 4. So like that, nothing, nothing to write home

about that day. But he has hit two home runs and both of them, Ben, if you watch them, are home runs where you would not necessarily know immediately that they were home runs. In fact, Vinny Pasquitino was convinced that they were not home runs because he hit right on the top of the fence. And so he like stopped at second base. He thought he had been thrown out at second base and then he got to continue his trot so if you're in the mood for someone looking like adorably sheepish i offer you vinnie pasquitino's first two home runs but i think another thing to note about him is that he is like known to be funny he is known to be funny i think our listeners will remember when we had jake mintz on recently that like he he referenced vinnie pasquitino as like an actually funny guy right not just a baseball funny guy but an actual funny guy and this is something

that he seemingly is known for amongst his his teammates and so yeah i don't know he so far So far, his line is modest. One might say it is modest. He's hitting 182, 318, 309 for an 87 WRC plus. This after hitting 283, 72, 576 for a 144 WRC plus in 296 plate appearances in AAA earlier this year. But he is able to travel to Canada. So he has that going for him. And yeah, it's Vinny Pascottino. All right.

Well, my guy is also someone, I guess this is vaccination related because he got his shot because of a player who did not get his shot. And that is Bubby Rossman. Bubby Rossman. Bubby like a grandma? Well, he is not literally a grandma, but that is what it made me think of. Yeah, like Bubby like a Bubby. Yeah. I mean, so you're part Italian, which is part of why you got excited about Vinnie Pascantino. I'm half Jewish, not observant or anything, wasn't raised in Judaism,

but still seeing Bobby Rossman is making me verklempt over here. And he is in fact, a member of the tribe. He is 6'5", 220. He is 30 years old. He's from California. And he just made his debut this week for the Phillies in relief. And he made his debut because he was replacing Kyle Gibson, who was one of the four unvaccinated Phillies. And I should clarify because I had noted that Gibson had offered an excuse that was not just personal decision. He had cited medication he was taking for ulcerative colitis. cited medication he was taking for ulcerative colitis. And I have since learned that that explanation that he gave doesn't really seem to hold water. He said, the medicines I take don't let me build up antibodies, so I don't have a vaccination. In response to Gibson's comments, this is from the Philly Inquirer, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation said it supports and

encourages patients with inflammatory bowel disease to get vaccinated for COVID-19. We also got a message from a listener and Patreon supporter, Aaron, who is a gastroenterologist. And when he messaged us and said gastroenterologist here, I really thought the message was going to be about Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts. Yes, but it was not. He wrote, the medication that Kyle Gibson is likely taking for his ulcerative colitis either makes him more susceptible to severe COVID illness, or if it is one specific medication, has no impact whatsoever on his immune system. In this pandemic, we have not only recommended vaccination and boosting for

our patients on biologic therapy, we also recommend an additional treatment called Evusheld, which helps boost their immune response to the vaccine. So his explanation, as is typical with these anti-vax goofballs, is bullshit. Wait. I didn't warn Dylan that I was going to swear, but hey, I'm quoting, and it is bullshit. Wait. I don't want to make light of a very serious thing, but the medication is called Evusheld? Evusheld.

Evusheld? E-V-U-S-H-E-L-D. So is it possible? It's like EvoShield, sort of. Or is it possible that Gibson didn't want to take it because it has the word Sheldon in it? That's possible also. Anyway, what I'm saying is that maybe what he said was just another way of saying it's a personal decision and he did his research, etc. So not sure he has any better excuse than the other Phillies. But because he didn't make that trip, Bobby Rossman got to and he got to make his major league debut. And then he immediately got sent down after that. So that is unfortunate. But he is a major leaguer and we did meet him and he came directly from AA Reading. Pascoe did not hit AAA on his way to Philadelphia or Toronto in this case. But he pitched an inning. He gave up a couple runs in that inning on a home run and a walk. He did strike a guy out. So it wasn't a great debut, but he did debut.

He made the majors. And actually his catcher in that inning was Garrett Stubbs, I believe a fellow Jewish player and a former Effectively Wild guest, a bubbla of ours. So the Phillies had a bubby stubby bubbla battery. He is someone who has been around. He has been around quite a lot, actually. And he was not the only Phillies pitcher to debut that day. Nick Duran, another reliever, he came up and pitched, I think, a scoreless inning. And an infielder named Will Toffee

also was called up along with Rossman. Rossman was not as smooth in his debut, but he's been everywhere. He is a 22nd round pick of the Dodgers in 2014. He has played for the Israeli national team. He has played in Mexico. Basically, he was with the Dodgers from 2014 to 2016. And then he was out of affiliated ball for several years. And he played in multiple independent leagues. He played in the American Association. He played in the Can-Am Association.

He played in the American Association again. He played in the City of Champions Cup, which I believe was like a 2020 replacement for the Frontier League during the pandemic. It was like a short-term, small little competition. And he played for the Nerds Herd in Joliet, Illinois. Not our kind of nerds. I think it's like the candy nerds, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Oh, yeah. So I guess that's my kind of nerd too.

But he was on the Nerds Herd. He was a member of the Herd. And then he played in the Atlantic League as well. So he was all over the place just playing in all the indie leagues. And then he made it back to the Phillies. They signed him this year. in the Atlantic League as well. So he was all over the place just playing in all the Indy Leagues. And then he made it back to the Phillies. They signed him this year. He was pitching fairly well as mostly a starter or actually, I guess, a swingman in AA. And then he got the call here. And I don't know when or if he will be back, but I guess the bright side of someone like Kyle Gibson deciding that they're not going to get backs and they're not going to make that trip to Toronto, even though their team

is very much in the playoff race, is that someone like Bubby Rossman gets his day in the sun. So good for him. Welcome, Bubby, and goodbye, Bubby. And we hope that we will see you again someday. But he is, I believe. Under different circumstances. Yeah, hopefully. Let's hope under different circumstances. But he is, I believe, the first Bubby in Major League Baseball history. Although there was a Fred Talbot in the 60s who was nicknamed Bubby. And I guess we should note that Bubby's name is not actually Bubby either. His name is Charles Rossman.

Oh, that's way less good. Yeah, but, you know, he goes by Bubby and he's listed as Bubby either. What? His name is Charles Rossman. Oh, that's way less good. Yeah, but, you know, he goes by Bubby and he's listed as Bubby everywhere. So he's basically a Bubby. Bubby. I don't know the origin of the nickname, but I will endeavor to discover that. But happy to hear him and to see him and sorry to see him go already. But we have met Bubby Rossman. Bubby Rossman. Bubby!

I actually was planning last week before the debut of Bubby to talk about Spencer Strider, which really would have been bending the rules. Partly because he's pretty prominent and we tend to do lesser known players in the segment. And also because technically he debuted late last year and we tend to stick to the current season. But if you are not aware of Spencer Strider, I was planning to make you aware of him and I will just ensure that everyone is aware of him. If you are not aware of Spencer Strider, just go check out what that guy's doing because he's been a big part of the Braves turnaround as well as Michael Harris. And those guys came up and have really been a boost. And I guess Strider was with the team from the get-ves won against the Mets in that

high-stakes series this week was the one game that Atlanta won in that series was started by Spencer Strider. So he's really been on some kind of run. He has one of the highest strikeout rates in the majors, and he really has not lost any effectiveness in the shift from the bullpen to the rotation. He's basically been just as good, if not better. So it's been really impressive. And he was not a top 100 guy. I mean, he was not a non-prospect. He was originally a 35th round pick, but then he was drafted ultimately in the fourth round

in 2020. But, you know, he's got a great mustache and he's got great stuff. And he has really vaulted himself onto the radar, not being a top 100 guy anywhere. He started last season in A-ball, I believe, and just climbed the ladder really quickly, whiffing wherever he went. And I was talking to Eric and he said, you know, well, today he probably would be if everyone were to re-rank everyone. would be if everyone were to re-rank everyone. And he noted that, you know, it's maybe too soon to say because he is very fastball reliant. He has, if not the highest rate of fastballs thrown by a starter this year, maybe the second highest after Joanna Doan, who has not had nearly as good results, unfortunately. But Strider is very much fastball slider,

and maybe that will come back to bite him at some point. You know, Eric noted that there have been guys like, well, Chris Paddock or Matt Brash early this year who made a splash and then stopped splashing. And Strider, though, he has kept it up, and he's been really good. And I'd encourage everyone to check out the post that Justin Choi had at FanCrafts on Thursday because that's really interesting. He talked about why Spencer Strider has gotten such better results on his fastball than at least, but the characteristics of Strider's fastball and movement and release and the way that those things work together and extension and all of that makes his fastball way more effective than Hunter Green's, which is famously fast, but also infamously ineffective, it seems lately. And he's been better when he's not throwing the fastball. So you got to go deeper than velocity. Sometimes like pitching analysis is increasingly complicated in a way that is intimidating to me at times. And I can't imagine what it is to people

who are just like, wait, we need to know something other than velocity. Yeah. Sometimes that's the tip of the iceberg. So spencer schreider pretty awesome and a pretty big part of atlanta's turnaround this year too the one part of it that is good is sometimes you're like i continue to be stymied by this guy who just like never was as good as he should have been like why wasn't he ever better and then you learn things about like his fastball shape and its angle and you're like oh so at least you know it can be illuminating it makes you makes you look back on guys who are ranked highly and go okay so like it made sense to do that at the time and we wouldn't do that same thing again probably you know at least not

in the same way we actually got an email from a listener named daniel who noted that strider probably won't qualify for the eraRA title because he didn't switch over to the rotation in time but if you extrapolate his pace it would equate to something like 5.7 wore over just under 162 innings pitched so he wanted to know the most valuable pitching seasons by someone who didn't qualify for the ERA title you have different season lengths that could be different innings totals for qualifying, but by Fangraphs were the most valuable pitching seasons with fewer than 162 innings pitched. 2016 Clayton Kershaw, 6.3 War in 149 innings. 2018 Chris Sale, 6.2 in 158 innings. Then you have 2001 Pedro,

2014 Jake Arrieta, 1977 Bruce Suter in relief. 1986 Mark Eichhorn also in relief, although in 157 innings, Carlos Rodon with the White Sox last year, and then Jacob deGrom in 2021 in just 92 innings. That was still just about a five-war season. So those are the targets to beat for Spencer Strider. Can I just share another deeply Italian thing? Sure. So Sam Haggerty has been getting some run with the mariners uh you know mostly it was because they had a number of guys suspended because of the brawl they had with the angels all those guys are back but i'm pretty sure sam

hagerty is still up with the big league club he um his walk-up music is the godfather theme oh wow nobody has walk-up music like sam hack it's the best thing i've ever i've ever like experienced ben it's perfect i guess his mother was born in italy this is from divish and it's in honor of her and uh so he plays that or like old school motown because he's from the detroit area and so you know he's just like a he's a like a utility guy a spare outfielder but he might be the best player in baseball because of this. So I don't know. We got to spend some time noodling on that, I think.

All right. Well, congrats to him on that choice. Congrats to Vinny on being a big leaguer. Mazel tov to Bubby. So I just wanted to mention a lot of people have sent us the clip of this Pesopalo game. This is Finnish baseball. And longtime listeners may recall episode 1302, Jeff Sullivan and I did an episode about Pesopalo and talked about the interesting permutations of baseball.

It's like kind of recognizable as baseball, but like a funhouse mirror version of baseball. And it is fun. And in this semi-viral clip that has been going around and being sent to us, there's a Pesopalo game going on where there is a river just beyond the bounds of play and the ball bounces into the river and the fielder dives headfirst after the ball goes sailing, plunging headfirst into the river. It does not seem to be a deep river because he is not submerged but he is very wet indeed and i think that this would be a fun thing to bring to mlb

except for the logistical reasons why it would be tough to have basically like a moat surrounding the field because you do want fans to be there but we all get a thrill out of when you have a park like Pittsburgh or San Francisco where the ball can end up in a body of water, right? But typically a player cannot end up in that body of water. And that's what sets this clip apart. And you'd think that they would have put a fence up at some point. But no. And I guess I'm glad they didn't.

And I assume the player is okay i hope the player is a bit of a fall like it's it is not yeah it's a fall i mean his landing is somewhat cushioned by the water but again it's like it's shallow it's like if a pool were this deep there would be a sign posted that said no diving, right? And there'd be a lifeguard who was like blowing the whistle on anyone who did dive. And yet if you end up in this river here, like you almost inevitably have to dive or roll at the very least. So this seems unsafe and also potentially amusing, but I will link to this clip for anyone who has not seen it yet.

And anytime we talk about weird qualities of ballparks or odd field dimensions, this is one that I don't know we've talked about. This is like basically a pit on the field, except that it's a pit with water in it that is just beyond the field. I mean, I want to know the conversation that goes, well, we can't put a wall there because what if they run into the wall? to know the conversation that goes well we can't put a wall there because what if they run into the wall like that would that would injure them and then you're like left with this yeah fall down a short hill into a shallow body of water and it's like well that's fine that's okay yeah i think in pesa palo there are no fences like there's no ground rule double so the ball is actually in play when it's in the river, and generally it's a home run, but I guess the fielder still tried to go get it. This is not a rarer occurrence, seemingly.

This place I probably shouldn't even try to pronounce the name of the stadium. It looks like it would be Sarikenta or Sarikente, but I think it translates to the island stadium because it's surrounded on all sides by water. And there are actually YouTube montages I will link to that are several minutes long of just fielders diving headlong into the river. So it's not a surprise. It's not like something unplanned happened here. Just, yep, Island Stadium. That'll happen there. You have to cross a bridge to get to it. So I don't know. Even if you can't have a fence in Pesopalo, maybe give them water wings. I don't know. Even if you can't have a fence in Pesopalo, maybe give them water wings. Anyway, we're glad that Timu Nurmio, the most recent fielder to take a dip here, is okay.

Yeah. Also, in odd field dimensions and characteristics, we have a new development in the banning the shift movement, which is that MLB is testing out yet another way to ban the shift or to prohibit players from standing in certain places. So they've come up with this thing that they're calling the pie slice, which I guess is an accurate label. It kind of looks like a pie slice, although I reject it because pie slice makes it sound like a good, tasty appetizing thing, which is not how I feel about the pie slice personally. But this is going to go into effect starting next week in the single A Florida State League. And it's going to be chalk lines on the field that extend from each side of second base toward

the outfield grass, creating a pie sliced shaped region behind the bag where no infielders can play. So they either have to stand farther to either side of the bag and back, or if they want to stand closer to the bag, they have to be shallower and play in and thus have less lateral range of movement. So they had already been testing anti-shift rules that were prohibiting infielders from playing on the outfield grass or requiring two infielders to be positioned on each side of second base. So this is basically mandating a larger, wider opening in the defense up the middle to bring back the up the middle hit that people have lamented the loss of? First of all, it reminds me of like a trivial pursuit wedge. That's what it looks for me. I mean, I guess like, sure, test it out. Let's see. But I just don't care for this.

I don't think I care for it. I also am skeptical of, I know that they have to start somewhere, but I'm just skeptical of testing these things at the lower levels of the miners. When it's like are you getting is what you're detecting like the effect of this rule that you're putting in place or is it the effect of the quality of the defense at that level which isn't like terrible but it's

not amazing either depending so like I just don't know how much signal you're really getting out of that noise I don't know man yeah and they don't shift as often at that level as they do in the majors right less to compare to but if they violate the rule i'm quoting from jason stark here by playing inside the chalk lines the team at bat gets to choose one of the following the outcome of the pitch the outcome of the play or an automatic ball what wait start stark likens it to a baseball offsides call so the outcome of the pitch the outcome of so the pitch i assume if like if it's a strike on the batter yeah then i guess the offensive team the team that's batting could say he was in the slice. So you get an automatic ball instead of the strike. Okay. And then the outcome of the play, when does that happen?

So if the batter grounds out, let's say, and it's an out, then you could say, oh, but he was standing in the slice. So that seems like two, the range of, we've talked before about like one of the things that you're trying to do when you're setting these rules is to like have them be proportional to the infraction right you want whatever the the remedy to the team that has that has been the subject of some kind of rules violation to be proportional to the scope and size of that rules violation and i get that like i suppose theoretically if you're in the slice that's that like you're recording it out and that's a big thing but that seems like a really wide range of proportionality i don't know man i just think that like we're not i'm increasingly on your side. It's the thing we got to figure out is the pitching piece.

The pitching piece is how we address this stuff. It's not like making people play worse defense. And also, aren't you going to stand right next to the line? Well, yeah, it does limit you still to some extent. I mean, yes, Jason likens it to the neutral zone in football or the restricted area in basketball, that area under the basket where defenders cannot draw a charging foul on an offensive player. Those sports limit how teams can play defense in those areas. Now baseball will experiment with the same concept. So I'm trying to be open-minded just because, yeah, there are

analogs in other sports. And also because just like doing the pass blasts the way that we have. I'm conscious of the fact that anytime anything changes, people get all up in arms about it and then enough time elapses and everyone says, oh, yeah, why would you ever not have done that? But still, I don't like it. I don't like it. And yes, maybe there would be like an indirect effect here where it's more advantageous to put the ball in play and therefore perhaps hitters would have a more contact-friendly hitting style. You could also come to the opposite conclusion as some people have, which is that basically like if you're not allowed to shift, then everyone who's already just gripping and ripping and trying to pull the ball basically will have even less incentive not to do that.

So it's unclear, but I prefer that they target the pitchers, whether that is a mound movement or my new preferred solution, which is just limiting the number of players on the active roster at any one time. Whatever. I just I don't like it. Maybe I will get used to it in time. time. Whatever. I just, I don't like it. Maybe I will get used to it in time. And I don't think that this particular implementation will happen in the majors as soon as next season, I would assume, but it is still just disturbing and unsightly. Disturbing. It is disturbing and it is unsightly. Yeah. All right. Did you know that MLB sponsors some professional golfers? What?

Yeah, that happens. I had just learned about this today. Apparently, there is a PGA golfer, Cameron Young, who wears an MLB patch on his jacket as he is playing golf. What? as he is playing golf. What? Yeah. And he's not the only one. There have been some previous golfers who have done that too. And apparently he wears this MLB logo

on his left shoulder. It's a sponsorship and it comes with access to any MLB park for some previous reporting. Wait, so this golfer has the same rights that I do as a BBWA member? Yeah, and you don't even have to wear a patch everywhere you go. No, but I have to bring my card.

Wow. That's very strange. Very interesting. I did not know that sports sponsor other sports athletes, or at least that MLB does that. Maybe they think golfers are your target market for baseball fans. Probably a lot of overlap there, right? Like a lot of older people, older audience, whiter audience, maybe baseball hotbed, unless all of those golf fans are already baseball converts. But yeah, I mean, if this is an option, can we get an MLB patch on LeBron's uniform or something?

That would be great. It might be a bit pricier. You might have to do more than tell LeBon he can just go to games for free but this is something that's happening which i was not aware of i will admit that i am i am rightly flummoxed by that mostly because like i feel like you're like golf swings and baseball swings are like often not this they're not the same swing that's not the same kind of swing. They both involve swings, which is at least more similarity than a lot of other sports. And there are a lot of good baseball players who are also good golfers.

But still, I mean, I guess it looks weird, but there's no like PGA uniform. I mean, I guess there's a PGA dress code, but everyone's just wearing some variety of polo shirt generally. So I guess there's nothing stopping you from wearing a logo of MLB, but it does look kind of odd. Anyway, I didn't know that that was happening. Now I do, and now everyone else does. That's the biggest story in golf right now. There aren't any others. All right. So quick stat blast here they'll take a data set sorted by something like er and minus or obs plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it and analyze it for us in amazing ways

Here's to day step last This is a question that we got some time ago And you will be able to tell Because it has not aged well, I guess you could say. So the subject line is managerial longevity. This is from May 31st from listener Austin who says, typically I like to focus on the players when taking in baseball games. They are the ones playing after all. However, on a broadcast over the weekend, I saw that Craig Council was the third longest tenured manager.

It surprised me because I hadn't thought of him as being around that long, only eight years so far. So I've been looking at the current managers and was surprised at some I couldn't even name the team for. But I wanted to see if there was a large rate of turnover among managers now compared to earlier years of baseball. That data was hard to find, but I did look at overall managerial service, not just with the current team. And it almost seems to me that we're in an era of keeping managers around longer than in previous eras. So he goes through some of the numbers and he tried to calculate the turnover rate. And he concluded, is this a historic era for keeping managers around the league? Do you think there is a reason why these numbers are so much higher now than the historic numbers? Is there a way to dive into the turnover

rate, et cetera, et cetera? So he wants to know if this is actually an era of great managerial longevity. Now, this was written shortly before three managers were fired, including a couple of long-tenured managers. So probably Austin would not be writing the same email today, but it is interesting to me because when he sent this, it would have seemed to me that, yeah, there haven't been a lot of firings lately. There certainly haven't been a lot of midseason managerial firings lately. managers and they're closely aligned and it's a dialogue. And so you would think that there would be less jettisoning or less bad blood between those parties. Anyway, frequent StatLess consultant Ryan Nelson looked up the numbers and basically he looked up the average for each season going back to the beginning, the average games managed all time among managers that season and the average games managed with their current

team that season. And I guess this is probably more easily conveyed via graphs than via words. So I will link to the data and I will link to some images. But it did seem like there was something to this, at least before these recent firings, that the lines on the graphs had been going up a bit as time had gone on in terms of the overall tenure and the tenure with not so much the same team as with previous teams. Like Ryan kind of concluded that maybe managers were getting even more second or third or fourth chances, that there were more retreads. And some of this is sort of a small sample. There's a huge, steep plunge in the graph when Connie Mack retires. And there were fewer teams then too.

But still, when someone like that enters or leaves the pool, like when Tony La Russa entered the chat suddenly, that boosts the average for all-time games managed. In fact, it looks to me like the local maximum the year with the highest median games managed among all managers was 1950, which was Connie Mack's last year as at least the nominal manager of the Philadelphia A's. So late 40s, 1950, and then early 2010s, like 2010 to 2012. That was another high point for long tenured managers. You still had La Russa around at that point. You had Leland and Manuel and Bochy and Davy Johnson. So those were some spikes. But basically, Ryan concluded the takeaway is that managers are managing longer and for more teams, which did sort of surprise me because I thought maybe we were an era of younger guys without previous experience

getting chances, you know, like your Ollie Marmoles or your Craig Councils when he was first hired. But you do have your LaRussas and until recently you had your Madden and you have your Dusty Bakers and you have your Melvins and your Bud Blacks and your Buck Show Alters, right, who has just recently reentered the pool. So it does seem as if there was a trend toward just more managerial tenure. And, you know, this is looking even in the years since there were fewer teams and shorter seasons as well. And also like kind of lopping off the early years of Major League Baseball history when there just hadn't been enough previous seasons for those managers to amass a lot of career service. But it seems like especially the numbers with some ups and downs as various managers get hired and fired have kind of been increasing in recent years, at least for like experience with previous teams.

You also don't have player managers anymore, and they may have tended to have shorter tenures in the past. So I think that's been the general trend, and I think that does maybe make things a little more surprising that we've seen all these midseason firings. And I did just kind of rerun the numbers now after those firings. So like last year, the average number of games managed overall was about 674. The average games managed with the current team was 327. And so the average games managed with previous teams was about 347. And at the start of this season, the numbers had increased a bit to about 851 career games managed. That was the median and 384 with the current team. Now we have seen about a half season more played. So that gave the managers who kept their jobs more time to rack up games. But also we saw three changes. And so now those numbers are down to about 717 games is the median all-time career and 391 for the managers with their current teams.

And those numbers are, you know, not that far out of line with just where we've been for the past 20 years. just where we've been for the past 20 years. And the past 20 years have been a bit more than, you know, I looked at since 2001, and those numbers were generally higher than the numbers since 1981. And those numbers were slightly higher than the numbers since 1961, just going back to the beginning of the expansion era in 20-year buckets. So, yes, Austin was right that it seems like there's been a bit of a trend toward longer tenures, but that can vary very much from season to season and even from month to month, as we learned shortly after receiving this email.

Yeah. And then the other one came from Trevor, who just wrote in this week in response to something that happened in a game on Wednesday, the Mariners at Nationals game. In this game, Trevor writes, four Mariners, Adam Frazier, Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suarez, and Kyle Raleigh managed to hit home runs. While this isn't particularly noteworthy, what is noteworthy is that these four players wear numbers 26, 27, 28, and 29, respectively. When the Mariners broadcast team shared this, I was unreasonably satisfied and also curious to know, has this happened before? Taking it a step further, how many players on the same team have worn sequential numbers? I was much more interested in the second of those questions because is this noteworthy? I mean, I guess it's noteworthy if you're a Mariners broadcast. Why not note it?

But I don't know how fun it is in general that four players happen to have sequential numbers and homered. And how much longer could the record be really than four? Probably not that much higher. the record be really than four, probably not that much higher. But I did ask Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference about the second question about how many players on the same team have worn sequential numbers. And he was able to look this up for me. And the record is the 1966 Kansas City Athletics, who had number six through 37, all were worn at some point by a player during the season. So that's a span of 32 consecutive numbers were used by that team that season. So that's the record.

And then you have the 1957 Tigers. They went from 1 to 31. So that's 31 numbers. The 1939 Cardinals, they went from 1 to 30. The 1951 Pirates, 2 to 31. The 1955 Pirates, 3 to 32. Those are all roughly from the same era, as you may have noticed. And Kenny notes that in the wildcard era, the spans are smaller with both larger numbers more frequently in play and more retired numbers unavailable. So it's less common now to have a lot of sequential numbers for both of those reasons. So in the wildcard era, the 2002 not-yet-Guardians managed to connect 22 numbers north of the Jackie Robinson mark, which is very impressive. Rookie Cliff Lee's September call-up, wearing 65, landed them on the list here.

So they had 22, and they went from 44 to 65. That's pretty impressive. But the actual wildcard era record, 1997 Angels went from 3 to 25. That was 23, and that was tied with the 2002 Tigers who went from 24 to 46. So that was 23. And then you had the 95 Cardinals, 23 to 44. 2013 Marlins, 16 to 37. And the 2000 Mets, 15 to 36. So these days, about the most you're going to get is a little over 20 sequential numbers. Whereas in the past, you could go over 30. And Kenny said what would be really cool is to find the most consecutive numbers assigned by a team to active players in a

single game, or I said at least on the same roster at the same time. But sadly, the uniform number data isn't quite precise enough to go to the single game level. But this was still cool. So thanks to Kenny for the help there. And thanks as always to Baseball Reference and to StatHead for sponsoring us. And we always say, go to StatHead.com. You get a great research tool there, not just for baseball, but for other sports. And just reading from the Baseball Reference newsletter today,

there have been recent improvements and updates to the StatHead tool, including the addition of three brand new search types that allow you to look for total stats across multiple games matching your criteria, as well as finding all matching games for multiple years. So you can answer questions like which team had the best run differential in a postseason or which franchise had the most games of five or more stolen bases. in a postseason, or which franchise had the most games of five or more stolen bases. So go to stathead.com, use the coupon code WILD20, W-I-L-D, 2-0, to get a $20 discount on an $80 one-year subscription. All right, that brings us to the Pass Blast. Pass Blast. I have one follow-up here for you from Richard Hirschberger, who provides our Pass Blast, the historian, saber researcher,

and author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball. Richard wrote in that Meg commented how funny it would be to see an all-star game made up of the worst players. FYI, they used to do that back in the day. Oh, this is going to be mean, isn't it? Well, he notes that the classic baseball club of the 1850s and 60s was about 20 to 40 members who gathered about twice a week to take their exercise together. They also occasionally played matches against other clubs, choosing their best nine players as the first nine. They also had a second nine, etc., which also could play matches with other clubs. The worst players in the club formed the Muffin Nine. Muffin Nine?

The Muffin Nine. Matches between Muffin Nines drew crowds of spectators there for the high comedy. There was also the occasional accusation of ringers who really were second or third nine players who were just masquerading as Muffin Nine players. But this existed and people evidently were quite entertained by the Muffin Nines. But this existed, and people evidently were quite entertained by the Muffin 9s. And I asked him, like, is this muffin as in muffin, like the thing that you would eat? Or is this muffin as in like muff? Right, like you would muff a punt. Right. And they're the Muffin 9 because they're doing a lot of muffin. And he said that these

things get complicated fast. It is related to the modern definition of an error, which involves a defender making a misplay, which is clarified to be a fumble, muff, or wild throw. A fumble is not as in football, but is the fielder juggling the ball a bit, losing the chance for the out. A muff is, well, like a fumble in football. This sense of muff comes from an older slang usage. Dickens in the Pickwick Papers has a spectator at a cricket match offering commentary on the quality of play, calling a player Butterfingers, muff, and humbug. So it's not just Scrooge who canonically said humbug or

stereotypically. I mean, he should have said muff and humbug. That would be better. The origin of this sense may be the sense of muff meaning a cylindrical hand warmer. The image being trying to field the ball with your hands in a muff. Oh. Yeah. You know, those old timey muffs that they would wear on their hands to keep their hands warm. Maybe people still do. The 1850s muffins seems to be a humorous expansion of the word.

On the other hand, there is an older slang usage of muffin meaning a fool. My guess is that the hand warmer is the direct influence, but the word was primed for this use. Anyway, the muffin nine, it exists. The muffin nine. The muffin nine. The muffin nine. Signed to the tune of the muffin man. You know, one could argue

Better than the KC-10 Oh! Yes, yes And Richard also clarifies Because sometimes in these Pass Blasts We got a question from Luke who says I've been enjoying the Pass Blast Not just for the cool historical facts

But for the language used at the time I particularly enjoyed referring to the person batting As the striker When did the naming convention change To the, I particularly enjoyed referring to the person batting as the striker. When did the naming convention change to the point where we call that person the batter? And Richard says, again, this one gets kind of complicated because the answer is gradually. But the somewhat more detailed answer is that the original rules used striker, but batsman starts to creep in in 1867, presumably due to the influence of cricket. batsman starts to creep in in 1867, presumably due to the influence of cricket. This was nothing so considered as a conscious decision to change the vocabulary, so the older instances of striker remained gradually pushed out as various rules were revised.

It is not clear when the last instance of striker finally disappeared from the rules, but it was in the 1920s or 30s. The final, so far, step is the replacement of batsman by batter, which cricket has also recently undergone. Batter makes its appearance in the replacement of batsman by batter, which Cricket has also recently undergone. Batter makes its appearance in the rules of 1914. The same process of gradual displacement then occurred, but it is incomplete. There are still a few instances of batsman in the official rules. Frankly, he says, the sensible thing would be a global find and replace and be done with it. But that is not how the rules committee works. works. He says the rules are a lagging indicator of actual usage.

Batsman and batter were both commonly used terms before they worked their way into the rules. This is how they got in. A new rule or new working of an old rule would be written with the writer using the commonly understood term, apparently not realizing that it was not already in official use. This is a recurring pattern in the history of the language of baseball, including terms that began life as blatant slang. So this is episode 1875. The past blast from 1875 from Richard

comes from the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury of January 24th, 1875. So I will quote, It is the wish of every club so to arrange its players as to bring the best batsmen, So I will quote, Okay, still true. than those below them. And therefore, in making up the averages at the close of the season, the only proper method would be to give the percentages of runs or base hits two times at the bat. And a correspondent has called our attention to the fact of the omission of the same in the averages of the Philadelphia as published last week. And in reply, we would state that it is simply impossible to give the number of times at the bat unless access is had to the scorebook of the club whose averages are given, which we did not have in the case of the Philadelphia club.

Every professional club should have a regular scorer competent to attend to a correct recording of every particular of a game as a true record of the fielding and batting is essential to the success of a club and absolutely indispensable to those who wish to know the relative merits of individuals or clubs. The first three men have almost invariably one more chance at the bat in each game than the others, and it gives them an advantage if the average is computed by base hits to games, as is proved in the instance of McGeary, the second striker of the athletics, being second in hits to games and fourth in averages of times at bat. So, Richard writes, the writer is Al Wright, no relation to Harry and George, the scorer for the athletics. The insight is important in the development of the stat, recognizing the inadequacy of the old denominator of games played. This had been borrowed from cricket, where it makes much more sense, but was poorly adapted to baseball. The discussion of McGeary illustrates how the old system distorted the averages, favoring batters in the top of the lineup.

There will be refinements to what counts as a time at bat, but with this development, we get a stat that substantially is batting average as we understand it today. So that is an excellent point by Al Wright. Got to consider not just how many games they played, but how many times they came up in those games. So we're still a ways away from, I guess, distinguishing between at-bats and plate appearances and certainly talking about on-base percentage and better stats than batting average. But at least they were finally in 1875 getting batting average down the way that we understand it today as hits divided by at bats how can we possibly keep these

records yeah right you expect us to keep track of how many times they batted how how would we know oh can you imagine how their minds would have been blown by StatCast? Oh, my God. Or by, you know, being able to just go to FanGraphs for baseball reference and be like, oh, look at all of them. They're right here. There's so many. Exactly. All right.

Well, that will do it for today. Well, here I am again, back a little later to bring you the news that the Royals won the first of their shorthanded games against the Blue Jays. And in fact, the third run in their 3-1 win was scored on a solo homer by Nate Eaton, one of the players who was making his Major League debut in Hunter Dozier's absence. Don't think it's a competitive advantage to lose much of your active roster. But for one night, it worked out OK. That's baseball, Susan. OK, a couple of appeals or PSAs for you.

The first is that we have our 10th anniversary week coming up next week. There's still a little bit of time if you are interested in contributing a tribute or appreciation of the podcast or just a personal testimonial about your experience with it or the part it has played in your life or your appreciation of the sport. If you're interested, please get those in soon. You can send just a 30-second or shorter voice clip. It can be a voice memo on your phone. Just introduce yourself, say your piece, and send it in to podcast at fancrafts.com.

We've gotten some good ones already, but happy to have a few more to play on an episode next week. Secondly, we could use some help with the Effectively Wild Wiki, which has had a series of core contributors or caretakers over the years. The current caretaker of the wiki, unofficially, is Raymond Chen, a listener whom I cited earlier. He's managing the wiki almost solo, and he could use some help, and the wiki has been an incredible resource for me as I look up old episodes in preparation for next week's anniversary. So I'm so happy to have it and it seems like it's useful for a lot of listeners. So if you're interested in helping

maintain it, spruce it up, provide synopses of new episodes, etc. Raymond has a post up in the Facebook group which is pinned to the top now, but it really just directs people to the wiki itself which is effectivelywild.fandom.com. And there, there is a page that Raymond has made called How to Help. And that lays out, as you would expect, how to help. And he says you do not have to make any huge time commitment to this. Creating even one page is a huge help. So it would be great if other listeners could pitch in and lighten the load for Raymond. It's so, so wonderful that we have this wiki at all. It is also wonderful that people have chosen to support the podcast on Patreon. You can be one of them, but the following five listeners have so wonderful that we have this wiki at all. It is also wonderful that people have chosen to support

the podcast on Patreon. You can be one of them, but the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep us going, help us stay ad free, except for our StatHead sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks. Josh Q, DPS, Andrew Fortier, Peter Mastropolito, and Daniel Watkins. Thanks to all of you. Our Patreon supporters get access to extras including the patrons only Discord group, roughly 700 strong, monthly bonus episodes

hosted by yours truly and Meg, playoff live streams, discounts on t-shirts, and more. Again, that's patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Anyone can join the aforementioned Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild, and anyone can contact me and Meg at the aforementioned Thank you. Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Hello and welcome to episode 1875 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Patreon, presented by...

Wait, hold on. I was holding a laugh in so hard because you started and then there's a gap and then... Hello, I'm Ben Lindbergh join us always by maybe when we get to our 20th anniversary i will be flawless with these things okay what was it last year uh who who who you ever get you know too far down the sentence and you're like i know what i want to say but my mouth has decided to do something different that's what that's what happened here